People ‘sad’ after seeing what Liver King looked like before his radical diet began

If you've been on social media over the past decade or so, chances are you'll have come across a bloke named Brian Johnson.

For those who don't know who he is, you'll probably better recognise him as the 'Liver King' AKA the guy who made a living out of eating a brutally carnivorous diet of, you guessed it, raw liver and other meat for more than 10 years.

However, in a brand-new documentary that only landed on Netflix on Tuesday (13 May), Johnson shockingly denounced his carnivore diet after convincing his millions upon millions of social media followers to strive towards a more primitive lifestyle—all so they could buy into his supplement empire.

And now, people have been left seriously 'sad' after seeing what the controversial 'Liver King' looked like before his radical diet began.

Take a look at the official trailer here:

Now, naturally, questions started to rise about how Johnson had gotten so big on the seriously unbalanced diet which is far from recommended by doctors.

His fans soon began to wonder if he was taking steroids to maintain his bulky aesthetic - a claim which he denied a load of times.

However, in 2022, everything took a turn for Johnson when a YouTuber exposed leaked emails that allegedly proved that he was taking fitness-enhancing drugs which totalled to around $10,000 a month.

In a video addressing the email leaks, he told his followers that he was 'embarrassed and ashamed' due to the fact he 'lied and misled a lot of people'.

"Yes, I’ve done steroids and yes, I am on steroids monitored and managed by trained hormone clinicians." he said.

"There's no denying that man. I knew he got me," he later said in the Netflix doc.

After watching the doc, one X user shared a series of snaps of Johnson before his major transformation which shows him smiling with family looking more more 'normal'.

If you are ever find yourself tempted to post for likes, remember that Liver King was a totally normal guy before he started getting likes, probably way happier and healthier pic.twitter.com/rPiBiRy587

— thad🥛☀️ (@turbothad) February 13, 2025

One person chimed in: "Christ this makes me sad. Why did he f**k this up. For who. Strangers on the internet?"

"Wow that's tragic," lamented another, as a final X user echoed: "OMG this makes me cry..."

Johnson, who once swore off any foods that weren't meat, poultry or eggs, seemed to have come full-circle at the end of the doc as he was seen foraging for fresh fruit.

"I was so convinced all the carnivore stuff, that’s what you need to really kick ass in life. I’m convinced now that I was starving myself," he admitted. "I guess I want the world to know I was wrong. I got it wrong. I got all of it wrong. I think as each passing day goes by, I realise I don’t know sh*t.

"There’s a lot more that I don’t know than I do know. Like an extreme approach to anything probably ain’t f*cking working out."

Reflecting on that chapter of his life, Johnson mused: "People say sh*t like 'born again', I don’t f*cking know what... How to describe it. Other than I feel like I was just kind of meandering through, like I was the f*cking zombie of life.

"I was so intense and so focused on growth and numbers and getting the message out... I have this new freedom."

He resolved: "I don’t have to lie about anything."

Untold: The Liver King is currently available to watch on Netflix.