Like millions of other Americans, you might be a fan of the simple sandwiches that have made Jimmy John’s one of the fastest-growing fast food chains in the country.
Unfortunately, a story that’s caught the Internet’s attention this week may forever change the way you think of cold meat pressed between two pasty white slabs.
As you can see, that’s a photo of a naked man straddling a dead shark.
The image has incited outrage on social media for a number of obvious reasons.
Even among hunters and fishermen displaying such callous disrespect for one’s prey is considered distasteful and, well, gross.
It’s one thing to pose for a photo with your kill, but quite another to grin like a maniac while humping a giant carcass.
So what does this have to do with the chain that brought the world the J.J. Gargantuan?
Well, there’s a theory circulating online that the animal lover in the pic is none other than Jimmy John’s founder Jimmy John Liautaud.
Yes, Jimmy John really exists, and like Colonel Sanders before him, his two great passions are peddling meat and firing large weapons.
Liautaud has been criticized in the past for hunting large African game and posting photos of his kills on social media.
He renounced the practice in 2015, after finding himself at the heart of a growing controversy:
“I choose to hunt and I choose to fish,” he explained at the time.
“Everything I’ve done has been totally legal. And the meat has been eaten, if not by me than by someone I’m with. I don’t hunt big African game anymore.”
But not everyone believes that Liautaud was sincere when he swore off the big kills.
A very vocal contingent on Twitter and Facebook believes that’s Liautaud getting friendly with a shark he killed.
Liautaud has denied that he’s the man in the photo in a statement issued to Deadspin earlier this week.
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VIEW GALLERYIf he’s telling the truth, of course, he deserves to be let off the hook.
(Just as we deserve to be forgiven for our bad fishing puns.)
But if it emerges that Liautaud is the happy fisherman, then he just dug himself an even deeper hole by lying about it.
Either way, it’s been an interesting week in the centuries-old conflict between man and shark.
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