Johnny Bananas under fire for racist remarks on Pop the Balloon LIVE on Netflix

The Challenge vet Johnny Bananas was one of the special guests featured on Netflix's new live special, Pop the Balloon.

The live dating show is an adaption of the viral YouTube series in which one hopeful singles connects with a lineup of contestants to ask them questions and get to know them. If things aren't clicking, they can pop the contestant's balloon and eliminate them from the game, ending their love connection.

On the premiere episode of the live dating special, Johnny Bananas joined the show in hopes of finding love and found himself in big trouble with viewers when he made a questionable remark toward one of the women he was making a connection with.

What did Johnny Bananas say on Pop the Balloon LIVE?

Insecure star and host of Netflix's Pop the Balloon LIVE Yvonne Orji asked The Challenge vet Johnny Bananas about his type, to which Johnny Bananas said they should start by talking about the toes of the women who were appearing on the live special.

After complimenting the "pretty toes" on one of the contestants on the live special, Johnny Bananas stops on one of the Black women in the lineup and says, "You look like you sleep from a tree upside down."

The comment drew a shocked reaction from the contestants as well as the studio audience and the woman that he was talking about said, "Me? Oh you don’t want the smoke from me, Johnny."

Yvonne Orji sent Johnny Bananas backstage after the comment, but the moment still had fans criticizing the show as well as pointing out the fact that this isn't the first time Johnny Bananas has made a comment that came across as racially insensitive.

A clip of the moment was shared to X (formerly Twitter) and garnered over 2 million views following the April 10 live special and many replies criticizing both Johnny Bananas and Netflix as a whole.

In the replies to the post and across X in general, many fans criticized the fact that Netflix's adaption of Pop the Balloon was "gentrified." These claims stem from the fact that the original YouTube series, "Pop the Balloon Or Find Love," was created by two Black content creators, Arlette Amuli and Bolia Matundu, and found an audience of primarily Black viewers.

Although Netflix tried to take the YouTube sensation and put it on the streaming service as a live special, many fans feel like it was lacking the charm that the YouTube series had and felt too much like the contestants, both the regular people and the reality TV stars, were trying too hard to perform and put on a comedy routine.

The change in tone on the Netflix version of Pop the Balloon LIVE isn't the only issue fans took. Many fans pointed out that Johnny Bananas' comment wasn't the first time in recent history that the Challenge alum has come under fire for comments directed at a Black women that came across as racially insensitive.

This isn't Johnny Bananas' first seemingly racist remark toward a Black woman

Earlier in 2025, Johnny Bananas found himself in hot water for a reply he posted on X to Big Brother winner Taylor Hale. The post was a string of emojis: a line of bananas with a gorilla following behind them, which fans immediately took issue with due to the long history of racist caricatures comparing Black people to monkeys.

According to a statement to Variety, the post was shared by Step Up Social, a marketing and content creation agency that Johnny Bananas had hired in order to promote his cryptocurrency project. He told the publication, "I went back and forth with this company for a few days, putting tweets together that I approved being posted from my social media accounts. What I did not approve was them to go rogue and start responding to others."

Along with clarifying that the post was shared on his behalf as part of a marketing initiative, he also said that the gorilla emojid oes not mean the same thing in the crypto world as it does in other contexts and was not meant to be a racially charged message to Taylor Hale.

"There are certain emojis that are symbolic of different things in the crypto world, one being the guerrilla emoji, one being the ape emoji. They symbolize strength, symbolize going in full force," he told Variety and went on to say that he did not take the situation lightly and reached out to Taylor Hale after he was made aware of the backlash he was facing for the post.

While Johnny Bananas claimed that he was considering taking legal action against the agency, Step Up Social took to their own social media account to share a statement explaining the intent behind the message. They wrote, "The Gorilla and Ape Emojis are commonly used in the crypto space to symbolize holding currencies and were central to branding and marketing of the $BANANAS coin."

Despite the fact that the post directed to Taylor Hale wasn't posted by Johnny Bananas himself and was seemingly an awkward mistake by the agency, the damage was already done and detractors of the reality star have been sharing this post in conjunction with the clip from Pop the Balloon LIVE.

Pop the Balloon LIVE airs live on Netflix every Thursday at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT.