In his smart Awl article which explains why the utterly gross McRib sandwich likely only makes occasional appearances on the McDonald’s menu, Willy Staley also recalls why the sandwich originally came to be. An excerpt:

“The McRib was, at least in part, born out of the brute force that McDonald’s is capable of exerting on commodities markets. According to this history of the sandwich, Chef Arend created the McRib because McDonald’s simply could not find enough chickens to turn into the McNuggets for which their franchises were clamoring. Chef Arend invented something so popular that his employer could not even find the raw materials to produce it, because it was so popular. ‘There wasn’t a system to supply enough chicken,’ he told Maxim. Well, Chef Arend had recently been to the Carolinas, and was so inspired by the pulled pork barbecue in the Low Country that he decided to create a pork sandwich for McDonald’s to placate the frustrated franchisees.” (Thanks Longform.)

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McNugget rage surveillance video, 2010:

Ray Kroc explains why the chain is called “McDonald’s”: