Untold: Liver King Review

“I’m laughing and having a good time, but whether that was the point of this or not, I do not know.”

The Liver King built an online fitness empire by devouring raw meat and promoting an all-natural ancestral lifestyle, with the muscles to back it up. Featuring interviews with the man himself, his family and business partners, this documentary unravels the wild story of The Liver King’s rapid rise to internet fame and the controversy and backlash once a steroid scandal came to light.

Directors: Joe Pearlman

Brian Johnson

Distributed by: Netflix

Release Date: May 13, 2025

Platform: Netflix

Anyone with access to Instagram or TikTok would have seen the self-proclaimed ‘Liver King,’ real name Brian Johnson. He’s a muscular man with a big, burly beard, always shirtless. He’s usually seen yelling about the most alpha-male stuff and eating raw animal meat. Of course, this includes the liver and even the testicles of animals. And he’s the latest subject of Netflix’s Untold documentary series.

As the documentary shows, and as Johnson discusses on-screen, he was secretly using over $10k worth of steroids a month, as part of his grifter behaviour. He links his behaviour back to his childhood, and being picked on for being a small kid, before also admitting the many different types of grifts he’s used to get ahead in life, and pulling the pin out of his own pity balloon.

There are two ways you could watch Untold: The Liver King, and the first and normal way is going to be wrong. Trying to understand what makes Brian Johnson’s head tick, and read between what is and isn’t bull-testicles other than the ones he’s eating, is a hard job. On the other hand, this documentary is very entertaining and wildly funny if you’re willing to give in to watching Brian for what he is, a cartoon character. He turned hyper-masculinity into a brand, and he’s made millions off of that, and I’m shocked by any of this, except *waves hands around at the year 2025.*

Brian created these nine nonsocial ‘ancestral living’ traits, including getting angry about kids being on their phones all the time, while relying on his audience to watch all his videos. But he’s also convinced his wife and his two kids to live this life with him and fully commit to the bit, which leads to the best interaction in the film.

In complete seriousness, and the camera work and music to back it up towards the end of the film, Brian is spending time with his family as his Liver King empire comes crashing down after his steroid use has gotten out to the public. And he’s using this time with his family to commune with the world, and he turns to his oldest son and asks, “What does oxygen come from?” When the son cannot think of the correct answer, Brian delivers the perfectly delivered seriousness of “wind, it comes from wind.”