Thor: Love And Thunder's Screaming Goats Were Inspired By Taylor Swift Meme

In the comics, Thor travels by swinging his hammer Mjolnir, but for farther distances, he uses two magical goats: Toothgnasher and Toothgrinder. Created by Steve Englehart and John Buscema, the pair of goats first appeared back in 1976's Thor Annual #5. The duo is very large, measuring around six feet tall and they weigh about 1700 pounds.

In Thor's latest standalone outing, they finally make their debut in the MCU, but director Taika Waititi made a slight change to them to become screaming goats. Talking to Insider, the Oscar-winning writer/director said that wasn't always the plan.

"The goats were always going to be in there because they are in the comics, but we didn't know how they would sound," Waititi explains. "Then someone in post-production found this meme of a Taylor Swift song that has screaming goats in it. I didn't even know that existed. So I hear the screaming goats and I just felt it was awesome. A lot of people think it's me screaming. It's not."

Waititi went on to say that he thought it was one of the vendors who were rendering the CGI goats and just added the screams to show progress. "We just thought it was so funny. So it was just a shot of how the CG creatures were coming along, it wasn't meant for the film or anything, it was just an update. And the screams were freakin' awesome."

The viral video classic first hit YouTube nine years ago, with Swift publicly reacting to it five years ago saying she thought it was fine.

"This just happened!," she exclaimed. "I have no idea how, but it ended up being one of the most hilarious turns of events because you have no idea where things are going to come from."

Thor: Love and Thunder is in theaters now.