Kung Fury: The Most Gloriously Insane Action Film Ever Made – 2026

In 2015, a Swedish filmmaker named David Sandberg released a 30-minute short film funded by a Kickstarter campaign that raised over $630,000. The film featured a Miami cop who gets struck by lightning and bitten by a cobra simultaneously, giving him the powers of the chosen Kung Fu master of his generation. He then travels back in time to kill Adolf Hitler — who, in this film, is a kung fu master known as "Kung Führer." Along the way there are laser raptors, a Viking girl who rides a giant wolf, a Triceratops with a machine gun, and a character called Hackerman who hacks time on a Nintendo Power Glove. This film is called Kung Fury, and it is perfect.

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The Plot: Pure 80s Glory

Kung Fury is a love letter to every excess of 1980s action cinema — VHS aesthetics, neon colors, mullets, synthesizer music, inexplicable martial arts, and a complete disregard for logic or physics. The story follows Detective Kung Fury of the Miami Police Department, who is tasked with stopping a series of murders committed by an arcade machine that has come to life.

When Hitler calls from Nazi Germany to threaten Kung Fury personally, our hero asks his partner Hackerman to hack time itself so he can travel back to World War II and defeat the Kung Führer. Things go slightly wrong and Kung Fury ends up in Viking times instead — where he meets Barbarianna and Katana, two warriors who join his quest.

David Sandberg: A One-Man Film Industry

Kung Fury was written, directed by, and stars David Sandberg — a Swedish filmmaker who spent two years making the film largely by himself, using green screen technology and digital effects to recreate the look of 80s action films with a fraction of a Hollywood budget. The result is technically extraordinary — the VHS grain, the film damage, the oversaturated neon palette are all painstakingly recreated.

Sandberg also composed significant portions of the music, worked with producer Mitch Murder (one of the defining artists of the retrowave/synthwave genre) on the soundtrack, and coordinated the animated sequences that appear during the film. The sheer ambition of the project — and the quality of the execution — is what makes Kung Fury more than just a joke.

Hackerman

Hackerman — played by Leopold Nilsson — is perhaps the most beloved character in the film. A hacker so skilled that he can hack time itself, he delivers his lines with complete deadpan seriousness while manipulating a Nintendo Power Glove attached to a futuristic computer. The phrase "He's hacking time" has become one of the most quoted lines in internet culture.

The Soundtrack: Retrowave at Its Peak

The Kung Fury soundtrack — featuring artists like Mitch Murder, Betamaxx, and most famously David Hasselhoff's "True Survivor" — is a masterpiece of retrowave/synthwave music. "True Survivor" in particular, with its extraordinary music video featuring Hasselhoff, dragons, and fighter jets, became a viral phenomenon in its own right and introduced many listeners to the synthwave genre.

The Kung Fury Aesthetic in Gaming Culture

The Kung Fury visual language — neon pinks and purples, VHS aesthetics, explosive action, retro-futuristic technology — maps perfectly onto the retrowave gaming desk aesthetic. For gamers who love synthwave music and 80s-inspired setups, a Kung Fury desk mat is the ultimate statement piece.

🥋 Hack time, upgrade your desk. Browse our Kung Fury desk mats at astro2049.com — retro-action designs that bring the glory of 80s cinema to your gaming setup.