- Capital Pizza & Lounge has been courting Halloween controversy with a fake pizza called the Jeffery Dahmer Special.
- A manager of the Lubbock, Texas shop says it’s just “a fun prop” and will remain on display throughout the holiday.
Related: Four Halloween pizzas that will creep you out
Halloween is a holiday for horrors, but just how creepy can you get with a Halloween pizza?
Capital Pizza & Lounge, with two locations in Lubbock, Texas, has been testing the boundaries with a fake pie named after the notorious serial killer Jeffery Dahmer. TMZ recently published pics of the grisly pie, with a yellow bar across the top screaming, “Warning: Graphic Photos.” However, the Jeffery Dahmer Special is not offered for sale nor is it currently featured on Capital Pizza’s social media or website. It’s strictly a decorative piece for the holiday, a Capital Pizza manager has said.
The pie, TMZ reports, “is pissing off some people and drawing others into the joint,” adding, “It’s not real, of course, but the imagery alone is making some people lose their appetite.”
The Jeffery Dahmer Special boasts a lot of ramen noodles—coated in fake blood and apparently representing human intestines—plus a smattering of fake eyeballs and a fake dismembered finger.
The pizza has stirred up controversy in the social media universe, especially the Twittersphere. Many have denounced it as being in poor taste (so to speak) and disrespectful to Dahmer’s victims. Others think it’s just fine—after all, serial killers are a common theme with Halloween costumes.
In an interview with Everything Lubbock, a Capital Pizza manager, who identified himself only as Keifer, said the pizza was a server’s idea, inspired in part by the TV series about Dahmer currently streaming on Netflix. “It being spooky season and [with] the popularity of the Netflix series, one of our waitresses came up with the idea and made the pizza and just put it up as a fun prop for Halloween,” Keifer explained.
The prop isn’t even edible, he noted. “It’s just a Styrofoam base. It’s got plastic prosthetics on it…eyeballs, fingers, there’s an ear. Ramen noodles are kind of the main thing here and some fake blood, and then, as we do with all our pizzas, we topped it with a pepperoncini.”
The pizza has its supporters and detractors on social media, as you’d expect, but Keifer told Everything Lubbock that it will remain on display until Halloween is over. “Like I said, it’s a fun prop,” he said. “I suppose [it] will become either famous or infamous. It’s only sitting up here for a limited time, then we’ll move into holiday decorations.”