A Mount Maunganui sandwich has gone viral on the internet, all because of the sandwich's deceit.

What appeared to be a chocka-block lunchtime sammy was actually more of a shamwich, Tauranga resident Paul Gibbs discovered.

A very misleading sandwich. Photo: Facebook.

Paul bought a sandwich a lunch bar in Mt Maunganui and posted a photo of his ham, cheese and tomato sandwich on Facebook on September 12 this year.

Paul had a grumble about how he believed his sandwich 'looked all good in the cabinet” but upon opening it, he found the tomatoes were cut in half and the ham was very misleading.

'Look what was inside – 8 strips of ham on the leading edge,” Paul says in his Facebook post.

Now, the sandwich photo has more than 1900 Facebook likes, more than 2000 shares on the social media site, and the post has gone global.

All this for want of a sandwich.

The photo has been uploaded to online forum Reddit, photo sharing site Imgur, and made global headlines on Distractify and Yahoo! News.

The post has also been shared by American actor George Takei; or Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu from Star Trek: The Original Series.

A Reddit user posted the photo to the online forum with the title ‘F**k this bakery'. The photo went viral, with more than 6000 upvotes and 3700 comments.

The user commented: 'Thankfully, I didn't have to eat it as it wasn't my sandwich but I was certainly mildly infuriated when I saw this photo. Chinese run bakeries do this this all the time in NZ, but this takes the f**king cake.”