3 min readHyderabadMay 3, 2026 05:03 PM IST
Michael Jackson‘s Thriller is the most imitated music video in the history of popular culture. Zombie choreography, red leather jackets and horror-tinged dance sequences have been recreated on every continent, in every language, across every era since the original dropped in 1983. At some point, someone put together a playlist of those recreations and tributes, which was saved to Jackson’s YouTube account under the playlist called ‘Favourites’. Somewhere in that compilation, between tributes from across the globe, was Chiranjeevi.
Golimaar, the song from the 1985 Telugu film Donga, was among the montages stitched together in that playlist. Of all the Thriller recreations the world has produced, Chiranjeevi’s version was considered worthy of inclusion in a collection associated with Jackson’s own channel.
The song
Golimaar appeared in Donga, a Telugu action drama directed by A. Kodandarami Reddy, released in 1985. The film starred Chiranjeevi in the lead role of Phani alongside Radha, with music composed by Chakravarthy. The song borrowed Thriller’s zombie aesthetic, its choreography structure, its red costuming and its general visual energy with considerable confidence. Chiranjeevi performed it with the kind of physical commitment that Telugu audiences had come to expect from him, and the song became one of the most talked-about sequences of that era in Telugu cinema.
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The journey to global meme
For nearly two decades Golimaar remained beloved within Telugu cinema circles. Then the internet changed everything. The clip was posted to eBaum’s World on October 1, 2006, and within days had been reuploaded to YouTube. A phonetically subtitled parody version, colloquially known as the Buffalaxed version, turned the sequence into a global viral moment. International audiences who had never encountered Telugu cinema were suddenly watching Chiranjeevi dance in a red suit, completely absorbed. The song was nicknamed Girly Man by viewers who could not read the Telugu title, and that label followed it across the internet for years.
The clip accumulated millions of views across multiple uploads. It was referenced in the Hindi film Go Goa Gone. It became one of the most recognisable pieces of Indian cinema on the global internet, entirely through organic sharing.
The actor who did it all
Chiranjeevi is one of the defining figures of Telugu cinema, with a filmography spanning more than 150 films across four decades. His dancing has always been the aspect of his craft that sets him apart from his contemporaries. Donga, released at the peak of his commercial popularity in the mid-1980s, remains one of the touchstone films of that era in Telugu cinema.
