Dorime Rat / Rato Dorime

About

Dorime Rat, also known as Rato Dorime, is a continuation of the trend that refers to the lyrics of the French new-age electronica group Era, specifically their song Ameno (sharing many similarities to the Dorime Cheems Doge character). Though the image of the taxidermy rat precedes the meme by several years, including that of Dorime Cheems, it surfaced roughly around the same time as the Cheems variant in late 2019 as a form of bait-and-switch pranks similar to Rickrolling -- accompanied by the text “You have been Dorimed.”

Origin

The original photo used in the meme dates back as early as 2010, posted to an artist’s website called Mouse Angel^[1], whose real name is Jeanie M. According to the Mouse Angel site, Jeanie is an artist specializing in photographic portfolios of peculiar topics such as roadkill still lifes and “taxidermy treasures.” For over a decade, Jeanie has created many of these bizarre taxidermy creations, including a series on “mouse-a-dermy” (which includes the Pope Mouse used in this meme, seen below) that’s been displayed in several galleries, covered in magazines, newspapers and even TV programs. The birth of Pope Mouse stems from a donation by one of Jeanie’s business associates who apparently donated dead mice to her project after they were unused by snake owners as food.

Though the original upload to that site no longer exists for Pope Rat, the Tumblr^[2] page Crappy Taxidermy posted the original image on August 1st, 2010, to their blog. The post has been reblogged and liked countless times by users over the years since then.

Spread

The original creator of the first Dorime Rat meme is unknown at this time, but it appears that the origins stem from Brazil^[3], where online users on social platforms began remixing the Ameno song, spawning the “Rato Dorime” image in late 2019.

One of the earliest online examples found was posted on November 29th, 2019, to Memedroid^[4] by user Ianki_mr under the title “Ameno ameno." The image was liked 454 times and received numerous comments.

The image was then uploaded to YouTube^[5] on December 11th, 2019, by YouTuber Davinisk and set to the Era track “Ameno.” The video (shown below) has been viewed nearly 2 million times since then and liked over 126,000 times.

On Facebook^[6], Dorime Rat has been reposted numerous times by several accounts, particularly seen on many Portuguese pages. One such example was uploaded on December 16th, 2019, by the page Todo dia um novo motivo para reconquistar where it was shared almost 300 times and liked over 700 times.

Twitter users also began spreading the meme further in the following weeks, seen in a tweet^[7] by Alexis o Dino (below) that was published on December 26th, 2019.

An Instagram^[8] account dedicated to Dorime Rat was started on January 11th, 2020, featuring a page that solely posts the image each day. The account, named Dorime_Rat, now has 886 followers.

Reddit also saw widespread use of Dorime Rat in early 2020, with the meme being uploaded to many various subs by users creating remixes, fan art and other animations of the rat. On February 13th, 2020, Redditor^[9] Het_Bluephomet posted a picture of their artwork (seen below) to the r/nhaa sub where it received nearly 5,000 upvotes.

Rato Dorime Ameno (Ameno Dorime Rat) Video Game

On February 10th, 2020, two Brazilian indie game developers released their project titled “Tales of Dorime: Ameno's Rescue” -- a scrolling platformer game featuring Dorime Rat as a playable character. In the game (shown below), players control the Pope Rat while venturing through a dungeon filled with enemies, complete with an 8-bit version of "Ameno" as a soundtrack. IGN Brazil^[10] covered the game in an article on February 12th, 2020, where they spoke to the pair of developers (Daniel Andrade and João Vitor Sousa). In the article, Andrade said, “The idea was to make a Gothic Metroidvania because it made perfect sense when we thought about a mouse-pope that was going to fight demons.”

The game is fully available to play online in your web browser and can be found here on a dedicated website.

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References