Outback Steakhouse has publicly denied that it’s practicing witchcraft, despite abundant evidence to the contrary. I mean, look at this:
First of all, props to @eatmyaesthetics for taking the time to map this shit out; I’ve personally tracked down a lot of Outbacks in my lifetime but never mentally connected the dots. But now that I know the truth, it’s impossible to see it any other way: You don’t just get a 10-ounce steak for $12 without at least a little help from the devil.
Now that the door has been opened, Twitter users across the country are onto the steakhouse, or should I say, satanhouse:
Sin-cinnati indeed.
And one more:
Complex points out that “it should be noted how many users went out of their way to draw the pentagram—in some cases omitting nearby locations to link Outback restaurants miles away in order to make the connection,” but what is life if not one long attempt to distill meaning where none probably exists?
Outback shrewdly decided to play along, dropping an image of a miles-wide Bloomin’ Onion hovering ominously over Florida:
And this 30 Rock scene also invokes Florida! COINCIDENCE? Of course not—there are no coincidences. But a bit of digging around has led me to realize that the plot is actually thicker than a bucket full of blood-red paint:
Outback was founded in Tampa in 1988. One of restaurant’s four creators is named Trudy Cooper—the same name as the former wife of astronaut Gary Cooper, who claimed to have seen a UFO while flying over West Germany in 1951, an account which he later walked back. But in 1957, his crew reported that they saw a “strange-looking, saucer-like” aircraft that did not make a sound either on landing or take-off. From Wikipedia:
According to his accounts, Cooper realized that these men, who on a regular basis have seen experimental aircraft flying and landing around them as part of their job of filming those aircraft, were clearly worked up and unnerved. They explained how the saucer hovered over them, landed 50 yards away from them using three extended landing gears and then took off as they approached for a closer look.
He held claim until his death that the U.S. government was indeed covering up information about UFOs.
Surely it can’t be the same Trudy Cooper—the astronaut’s wife died in 1994, and the steakhouse’s founder was alive and well for a photo in 2013...right? And yet, when you Google “Outback Steakhouse,” the name that pops up among the founders is Trudy Olson—Olson was Cooper’s maiden name—with a link to...you guessed it. The astronaut’s wife.
Honest mistake, right? Must be.