The Grimace Shake has arrived in Skyrim, because of course it has

Grimace, a big purple mascot from McDonalds, looks up at something off-screen.

(Image credit: McDonald's)

This Skyrim mod makes me want to go and lie down for a bit. Uploaded by user MissleMann, the Grimace Mead mod is simply credited to "He watches". Great. On the plus side, NexusMod's virus scan feature has designated the Skyrim Grimace Shake as "safe to use", which somehow fails to be reassuring when faced with the prospect of downloading this purple eldritch horror.

If you're unfamiliar with the Grimace Shake, it's one of those infectiously weird TikTok trends that there's just no escape from. The premise is as follows: you receive a McDonalds Grimace Shake. You wish Grimace a happy birthday. You drink it. You are then found in a puddle of Grimace-coloured blood by your camera person, presumably dead. It's also spawned more Twitter memes than you can shake a Grimace at.

NO FUSE, DON'T — (Image credit: @PlayApex on Twitter)

happy birthday grimace excited to try this sha-- — (Image credit: @AmongUsGame on Twitter)

Happy Birthday, Grimace! — (Image credit: @sonic_hedgehog on Twitter)

This version of the Grimace Shake, named the Grimace Mead, can be bought from Belethor for the staggering price of 170 septims. That's about 18 loaves of bread, or 28 potatoes. Mercifully, I didn't have to download this cursed artefact onto my machine to give it a test drive, as a channel named Jackary on YouTube has already done that for me.

Drinking the Grimace Mead will see your character quickly black out—presumably from trying to hold all in all those birthday wishes—and wake up in a secondary location, sometimes surrounded by purple goop. Shockingly you don't die, which proves that the Dovah-Kiin is somehow strong enough to resist a drink with an otherwise 100% mortality rate, if TikTok is any indication.

I can't help but feel a sense of gaming patriotism as I watch Jackary's dragonborn brawl with a Horker, his screen coated in a purple haze. The mod is essentially a shitpost, but shitposts have formed an important ingredient of Skyrim's modding community for over a decade, such as the infamous Thomas the Tank Engine mods of yore, or a more recent mod that turns all dragons into the state of Ohio. It's simply tradition.

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.