Will Liquid Death's Big Game Ad Make Heads Explode?

A watermelon massacre. Did not see that coming

No humans were harmed during Liquid Death’s second consecutive national Super Bowl ad. But a ripe watermelon paid the ultimate price. The cheeky massacre was the opening salvo in a 30-second PSA-style spot fronted by a doctor and punctuated with sight gags.

The premise: Since conventional energy drinks can make your head explode, what’s the aftermath for those wired, over-caffeinated folks? Well, for starters, they’re now headless. That causes all kinds of logistical problems.

Liquid Death, working with its in-house Death Machine production arm and director Mike Bernstein, follows 2025’s viral hit “Safe for Work” with this year’s “Stop Exploding,” which serves as a coast-to-coast coming-out party for a new Sparkling Energy drink line.

The products, with caffeine roughly equal to a cup of coffee, are “guaranteed to not explode your head,” per the ad’s tagline. They were formulated with Dr. Darshan Shah, who stars as the voice of reason in the commercial, a combo of cautionary tale and comic relief.

The brand picked the largest media stage to hype its no-sugar, “unextreme” energy drinks, which wade into a booming but crowded category that Mintel estimates is worth $23.9 billion.

“Stop Exploding” was one of two concepts that made it to production. A punk rock brand, continuing to wear its metal ’tude on its sleeve, is banking the other video for future marketing.

Muse checked in with Andy Pearson, vice president of creative, to get some backstory on “Stop Exploding,” the latest in a long line of provocative content that laser targets its youth demo and has helped boost the startup to a $1.4-billion valuation.

Muse: What’s the thinking behind buying another pricey Super Bowl spot?

Pearson: In years past, we’ve leveraged it incredibly successfully to drive mass awareness of the brand and partnered it with strong retailer programs. This year, as we’re launching our new Sparkling Energy line, we know we can hit around 100 million unique impressions instantly. Combining our strong brand with new news that we’re entering a popular category, this sort of awareness play is a no-brainer. On top of that, since we create and produce our work in-house without relying on celebrity talent, our end costs for something like this are a fraction of what other brands pay. It’s not a vanity play. We’ve done this as a very strategic business decision.

Did you think about the competitive environment—or broader cultural mood—when you were planning this ad?

We are always 100 percent focused on giving people things that are entertainment, not marketing. But the Super Bowl is the one day out of the year when almost all brands are trying to entertain people. So within that context, we usually think about how we make something that doesn’t feel like any sort of traditional “funny ad.” We’d rather do something that surprises people because they didn’t expect to see it within the context of Super Bowl ads. This year, it’s presenting something that at first blush feels almost like a pharma ad. In years past, it was making beer-style commercials for our canned water and iced tea.

How did the idea go from early discussion to execution?

We always knew we wanted to feature Dr. Shah, since no other energy drink would ever feature a doctor. From there, we tried a bunch of different ideas for a month or so. We actually had another idea we were planning to move forward with, but then our creative director brought up the thought of having people’s heads explode from too much caffeine, which felt like a really fun premise. We went ahead and shot both spots and decided in the edit which we wanted to run on the game, knowing we’d use the other one elsewhere.

How were the headless characters created?

Simple VFX work with our friends at Dark Arts.

Any details you can share from the shoot?

Our headless runner is someone we’ve featured previously. We shot him with a poo cannon in our iced tea launch spot and then drenched him in a shower for a few hours as our mask-clad “Soap for Psychos.” And now we cut his head off and hit him with a car. But he’s been a good sport about it.

This isn’t the first Liquid Death marketing to feature disembodied heads—please explain the appeal.

I believe this is the first time we’ve featured headless bodies. Normally we’re more of bodiless heads sort of brand. So we’re branching out here.