This took chutzpah. I’m impressed. — Dan

If you’re in the mood for a burger and fries, great news — there are a lot of options out there for you. If fast food is your jam, there’s Wendy’s, McDonald’s, and of course, Burger King. And while the food at those places has a lot of downsides, the options are at least consistent — you can be pretty confident that you’ll get exactly what you expected.

Unless you were in Pittsburgh about a dozen years ago.

Let’s start with a picture.

That comes from Google Street View, captured in August 2013. The sign clearly reads “Burger King,” so if you’re unfamiliar with the brand evolution of the company, you may not notice that anything is off. So to make it clear, Burger King moved away from that color palette and branding package years before that image was captured — and yet, this BK, for some reason, didn’t update its appearance.

For most consumers, that was an easily missed detail, and for months, it flew under the radar. But by February 2014, questions started to emerge. People walked into the restaurant expecting their Whoppers or whatnots, but found, well, something else. The standard shoestring French fries were replaced by thicker, steak-cut versions. The menu wasn’t displayed above the register, but on printouts taped to the counter. The packaging was amiss — one customer told local news station WPXI that “the food was in a brown paper bag, the fries were in a Dixie cup — I’m like, ‘what the heck is this?!’” There were even reports that management was charging customers a dollar to use the bathroom.

Customers and the local press were confused. WPXI checked in with Burger King’s corporate headquarters, which said that it revoked the franchise’s license to use the Burger King name months earlier. According to PopCulture, “the franchise-holders simply continued to operate the restaurant as usual, and when branded supplies from Burger King stopped arriving, they gradually switched to the generic packaging that caught customers’ attention” — but without dropping the Burger King branding from the building.

When the local news media took notice, though, the owners quickly took down all the Burger King signage (presumably, the real King had their similarly real lawyers get involved). The restaurant tried to rebrand as “South Side Burgers,” but their reputation was sullied and it didn’t take. Burger King, for its part, committed to reopening a new Burger King at the location — and they followed through. Today, you can go to the Burger King there, order a Whopper, and you won’t get a lie.

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Today’s Bonus fact: Actor Hugh Laurie once joked that he could eat at Burger King for free for life. In a 2008 interview, he casually claimed — per Mashed — that one of the perks of being a celebrity was a mythical “BK Crown Card,” an elite pass that supposedly granted unlimited free food. He was kidding, but his delivery was so dry that plenty of people missed the joke, and the rumor took on a life of its own. Burger King, seeing an opportunity, decided to reward the myth by making it real: they gave Laurie a lifetime free burger card.

From the Archives: Where the King Dare Not Go: Maybe all Burger Kings are fake, except for this one?

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And thanks! — Dan