Ellen DeGeneres and her record-setting Oscar selfie learned a valuable lesson on Tuesday: Never get between a boy and his chicken nuggets.
Carter Wilkerson, a teen from Reno, Nevada, better known as "Nugget Boy," joined TODAY via Skype on Wednesday as he basked in the glory of setting the Guinness World Record for the most retweeted tweet in history.
He passed Ellen's famous celeb-filled Oscar selfie from 2014 when he hit 3,435,067 retweets as of 10:37 a.m. on Tuesday.
"It's absolutely insane,'' he said. "I never expected to get this far. I'm a 16-year-old kid from Reno, Nevada, I never thought a month ago that I'd be getting this far, but we're doing our best to keep it up and do some good with it."
Matt Lauer, who knows what it's like to tangle with Ellen in a prank war, made sure to let Wilkerson know what he's getting into.
"May I be the first to personally warn you if you cross Ellen DeGeneres,'' Matt said.
"I'm kinda scared,'' Wilkerson said. "I gotta watch my back now. She did threaten to take my underwear."
Wilkerson appeared on her show last month, where she bribed the teen with a new TV and a year's worth of Ellen brand underwear in a bid to stop him from passing her retweet record. She threatened to take it all back if his tweet passed her Oscar selfie.
It all started when Wilkerson tweeted the official Wendy's account asking how many retweets it would take to get free chicken nuggets for a year. The chain replied, "18 million."
That spawned the hashtag #NuggsForCarter as people tried to help him hit his target.
While he hasn't reached that rarefied air, Wilkerson did achieve his goal, as Wendy's announced on Tuesday that it is giving Wilkerson free nuggets for a year and donating $100,000 to charity in his name.
Wilkerson has turned the retweet phenomenon into a way to give back. He created custom T-shirts with the #NuggsforCarter hashtag, and all the proceeds will go to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption created in the name of the late Wendy's founder.
"I'm a pretty lucky kid and I have a lot in life, so I didn't need the proceeds, so I thought, 'Why not donate them to charity' and that's kind of where it went from there,'' Wilkerson said.
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