Songfacts®:

• Imagine Dragons wrote this power anthem for the Disney animated movie Ralph Breaks The Internet (the sequel to 2012's Wreck It Ralph). The song is an ode to the misfit representing the hardships and struggles faced by the movie's main characters, Ralph and Vanellope.
  
  Hello, hello
  Let me tell you what it's like to be a zero, zero
  Let me show you what it's like to always feel, feel
  Like I'm empty and there's nothing really real, real
  I'm looking for a way out
  
  Speaking to Beats 1's Zane Lowe," Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds explained the song is about "accepting and finding a bit of levity and joy in being a zero... I look back at [my struggles], and I guess the only way I can face it is to see it with levity, and that sounds so strange, I know."
• The song echoes the teenage underdog themes that run through Imagine Dragons' 2017 single "Thunder."
  
  Kids were laughing in my classes
  While I was scheming for the masses
  Who do you think you are?
  Dreaming 'bout being a big star
  
  "I was able to go to a place that was very vulnerable for me," Dan Reynolds told Radio.com regarding "Zero." "I wasn't in any sub-group. I was like not a popular kid, I wasn't a band kid, I wasn't good at sports. I just kind of was someone who went home by myself and wrote music every day and then started a band."
• The song's music video takes place in an '80s-style neon-lit arcade, and stars the Imagine Dragons members as arcade employees and nerdy gamers. There are several references to video game culture, such as Dan Reynolds wandering through a maze wearing a giant, Pac-Man-esque head.