AI's biggest World Cup star? It's a fake Erling Haaland

Erling Haaland has spent the 2026 World Cup doing what he does best — scoring goals and generating content.

The Norwegian striker's unpolished posts on his Snapchat account, which has upwards of 3.3 million followers, have made him one of football's most meme-able personalities, with regular posts featuring his nostril-angle selfies comparing himself to Shrek, bald filters, silly Q&As and comedic skits.

The problem is that much of the content circulating online, however, is not actually his and it is largely AI-generated.

A video that racked up more than 31 million views on X in a matter of days last week showed the Manchester City forward mid-mouthful in a restaurant, flinching at his own reflection.

Community notes flagged it almost immediately and fact-checkers traced the footage to a comedic skit by Chinese duo Jin Long and Qiu Qiu, posted to TikTok on 15 June with Haaland's face swapped in using AI. The correction did not slow the clip down.

On 8 July, the same account posted further AI-altered videos of Haaland, which continued to rack up thousands of impressions.

A Haaland-Vinícius AI double act

Not all the fan content has been unwanted, however.

Ahead of Norway's last-16 clash with Brazil in New Jersey, fans began circulating edited videos superimposing Haaland's face onto Marlon Wayans' character in the 2004 comedy film White Chicks, with Brazil's Vinícius Júnior cast as Terry Crews in the film's iconic car sing-along scene.

Haaland spotted one of the edits on Instagram and asked that he and Vinícius recreate it in real life.

Yet the most-shared posts have depicted Haaland as a fur-clad Viking warrior bearing double-headed axes and commanding a longship through perilous waters.

It was not entirely of their own making. In 2023, photographer David Yarrow shot Haaland alone, waist-deep in an Oslo fjord, in full Viking dress.

Ahead of the 2026 World Cup, the Norwegian Football Federation brought Yarrow back to photograph the full squad. The resulting image, titled "The Vikings are coming," showed all 26 players armed with swords and shields on the shore of a fjord, a longship looming behind them. Haaland, by Yarrow's own account, had pushed for the squad follow-up himself.

Fans wasted little time running with with the theme, flooding social media with AI-generated variations — Haaland mid-battle, clad in armour, axe raised — blurring the line between sanctioned mythology and fan-made fiction.

Right-wing and far-right accounts, drawn to Haaland as a symbol of white, blonde and physically imposing masculinity, have been particularly prone to sharing the Viking-themed content.

The Chinese obsession

Much of the AI content has its roots in China, where Haaland has become something close to a folk hero.

Since joining Weibo and Douyin, China's version of TikTok, on 6 June, he has amassed 1.6 million followers on Weibo and 5.2 million on Douyin in the space of a month.

Hashtags related to the striker have generated more than 490 million views on Weibo alone.

Chinese fans have given him two distinct personas. On the pitch, he is the "Nordic Cyborg" or "Robot Striker" or a goal machine of almost inhuman efficiency.

Off it, he is Habao, roughly "Ha Baby," a goofy, approachable giant whose exaggerated expressions and off-pitch antics have made him a fixture in Chinese meme culture.

Many of the fan edits circulating on Chinese social media are of a song, titled "Haaland (Ha Ha Ha)," that is set to the tune of Moskau, a 1979 track by German Eurodisco group Dschinghis Khan — recorded more than two decades before the Norwegian striker was born.