Live-action Flounder Hoax (Little Mermaid)

About

Live-action Flounder Hoax refers to discussions surrounding a fan-made computer-generated image of the fish character named Flounder from The Little Mermaid 2023 live-action movie. Images of the fish began to circulate on Twitter sometime in October 2022 after many users mistook the fan art for an actual promo photo from the upcoming 2023 Little Mermaid film. The CGI Flounder has been described as "grotesque," "Lovecraftian" and "bad" by various commentators who fell for the hoax.

Origin

On June 14th, 2020, ArtStation^[1] user "Nick Pill" posted a series of images he titled, "Flounder FAN ART," adding, "Just mucking around with a Flounder Live Action version." The post gathered over 28,000 views, 19 likes and three comments in over two years (seen below).

Spread

On October 13th, 2022, Twitter^[2] user @IronWolfV posted a tweet that read, "THAT IS FLOUNDER?!!! Oh my god, that looks so BAD." The post gathered over 2,600 likes in over three months (seen below, left). On October 14th, Twitter^[3] user @DoobusGoobus then posted the image alongside a tweet that read, "Y'know? I think art is dead. yep, definitely dead." The post gathered over 77,000 likes in over three months (seen below, right).

An Imgur^[4] upload by Raoul9753 posted on October 17th, 2022, gathered over 109,000 views and 1,000 upvotes in over three months (seen below, left). A February 16th, 2023, tweet by Twitter^[5] user @ChaseMit gathered over 31,000 likes in a day. The tweet read, "I feel like they heard people say it was boring that all the animals looked real in The Lion King and, uh, overcorrected. (seen below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References