The Funniest Tweets, Jokes and Burns About ‘The Unknown’ and the Glaswegian Willy Wonka Catastrophe

Oompa Loompa doopity doo, Willy has got some explaining to do.

When the London-based company House of Illuminati (somehow their actual name) first pitched their Willy Wonka-themed event, “Willy’s Chocolate Experience,” to the family crowd of Glasgow, Scotland, they described the ticketed spectacle as “immersive,” promising to “create lasting memories” with “whimsical performances” and “surprises at every turn.” However, the experience that House of Illuminati actually delivered to the sorry saps who forked over £35 apiece to tour the sparsely-decorated dungeon warehouse was full of sad, scantily clad Oompa Loompas, meth lab-looking factory props and some interdimensional terror named “The Unknown.”

House of Illuminati “sold a dream and delivered a nightmare,” one outraged parent reported after the festivities immediately turned ugly. At Willy’s Chocolate Experience, traumatized children screamed from the industrial horror, enraged parents coalesced into an angry mob and the Glasgow police were even called to shut down the disaster. The internet has dubbed Willy’s Chocolate Experience “Fyre Festival for children,” and the past few days have seen some incredibly funny posts at the expense of House of Illuminati and the sugar-coated calamity they unleashed. Here are some of our favorites…

Scottish actor Paul Connell, who was hired to play one of the three Willy Wonkas at the virally ill-fated event, spoke to The Independent about the bizarre production process that created an even stranger result, saying that the script organizers gave him to memorize was “15 pages of A.I.-generated gibberish of me just monologuing these mad things.” During the making of the show, Connell was as confused by the darkest presence in Willy’s Chocolate Experience as Twitter is now, as he said, “The bit that got me was where I had to say, ‘There is a man we don’t know his name. We know him as the Unknown. This Unknown is an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls. … It was terrifying for the kids. Is he an evil man who makes chocolate or is the chocolate itself evil?” 

But perhaps the most upsetting detail of the disaster was the confectionary component of the experience. “We were told to give (the kids) one jelly bean and a quarter cup of lemonade,” Connell explained. “No chocolate at the chocolate experience. There was supposed to be a chocolate fountain somewhere but I never saw it.” 

No chocolate fountain was probably for the best — the tragic fate of Augustus Gloop is probably the only part of the source material the House of the Illuminati could have gotten right.