“Where’s My Dad?” Is The Latest TikTok Trend Taking Over Your FYP

The newest TikTok craze taking over your FYP has arrived in the form of the “Where’s my dad?” trend. The now-viral clip is taken from a forthcoming stage production at The Brick Children’s Community Theatre in New Jersey, titled Finding Nemo Jr. The play is inspired by Disney’s 2003 movie Finding Nemo, which tells the story of a young clown fish who sets out to reunite with his father after becoming lost in the ocean.

In the original clip, 12-year-old actor Domenic Innarella is shown voicing a puppet of Nemo, singing the lyrics: “Where’s my dad? I'm all alone. I’m too small to be here on my own. I swam away because I got mad. But now I really need him. Where’s my dad?”

With more than 12 million views and 1.5 million likes as of writing, the meme has rapidly taken over the platform, with thousands of users sharing the video’s audio over grown-up scenarios they wish their dads could help them with — such as getting an oil change, completing tax returns, and signing up for health insurance.

The “Where’s My Dad” trend has now accumulated over 90 million views on TikTok, and speaking to Today, Nemo puppeteer Innarella from the original video has spoken out about becoming a viral sensation.

“They’re all like really funny. I crack up at every single one I see,” Innarella says of the thousands of memes inspired by his performance. “Someone dressed up as me and then someone dressed up as the puppet, and it was like, the guy was like, squeezing her arm to be the puppet. I watched it like a million times.”

Meanwhile, The Brick Children’s Community Theatre’s president and business director, Kendra Zarrilli, also revealed that there has been an increase in ticket sales for the Finding Nemo Jr. play, which is scheduled to go ahead at Grunin Center for the Arts in Brick, New Jersey, between August 4 and August 6. “What we have gotten are A LOT of requests for Streaming…which we have never gotten before,” she added.