Dororong

About

Dororong is a chibi interpretation of the character Dorothy from the South Korean mobile video game GODDESS OF VICTORY: NIKKE. The character, depicted with the same pink hair and purple eyes as the original, has appeared in numerous memes within the fandom since emerging in 2023.

Origin

Goddess of Victory: Nikke was released on iOS in November 2022 and on PC in February 2023. The game finds players controlling artificial soldiers called Nikkes, who are styled as anime girls.^[1] Among these soldiers is a character named Dorothy (shown below).

Within the fandom for SoulWorker, another Korean video game, a meme spread in roughly 2021 around the character Stella. On July 15th, 2021, Arca.live forum user Kakarot uploaded an image of several Chibi Stellas pulling a sled^[2] (shown below).

On June 12th, 2023, Arca.live^[3] user 수어리해변야스마렵다 started a collection of emotes starring Chibi drawings of Dorothy. These included multiple emotes in which Chibi Dorothy's head was on the body of the Chibi Stella Unibell character, and that character would come to be known as Dororong (shown below).

Spread

The character began spreading outside the Korean fandom and into the global fandom shortly after the emotes were posted. On August 2nd, 2023, Redditor Bunker_Alpha-18 posted an inquiry about the character's origin to the /r/NikkeMobile^[4] subreddit, gaining over 30 points in 10 months, calling her "Gremlin Dorothy" (shown below, left).

On September 12th, Redditor tang_the_great posted an update of Dororong memes to the subreddit,^[5] using the "Dororong" name, gaining over 810 points in nine months (example shown below, right).

The character has seen some use in memes outside of the Goddess of Victory: Nikke fandom. For example, on May 7th, 2024, Redditor OkkieDokkie_ posted a meme with the character to /r/memes,^[6] gaining over 2,300 points in one day (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References