The Tom Lizard character from the Hoppers animation became a phenomenon on social media, especially on Tiktok

In Pixar’s latest animation, Operation Beaver, animals rise up in resistance against highway construction plans. Picture: Pixar

Puffy-eyed In recent months, the little green lizard has appeared at a fast pace on social media, especially Tiktok.

The meme videos inspired by the lizard’s antics have collected hundreds of millions of views on different platforms.

The character is named Tom Lizardand it comes from Disney and Pixar’s new From Hoppers Animation (2026). The film premiered at the beginning of this month, but the lizard became a social media phenomenon long before that.

The first ones joke videos about Tom Lizard started going viral when it appeared hinting at the upcoming movie Elio animation in the end credits last June.

In the scene, Tom Lizard stares repeatedly at the lizard emoji key, while a robotic voice shouts: “lizard, lizard, lizard”.

Pätkä was used in memes to describe, for example, snoozing the alarm clock, choosing a song, remembering the password or bombarding the mother with phone calls.

When Hoppersanimation was released, Tom Lizard videos on social media increased even more.

In scenes taken from the film, Tom waves excitedly at the camera, surveys his surroundings with interest, or shouts at the top of his lungs while waving his arms. Sometimes its eyes wander in different directions.

The antics of the likeable and somewhat simple lizard gave material to numerous relatable self-deprecating memes.

In many Tom Lizard videos, the subject of the joke is poor concentration. The lizard hitting the keys also became a metaphor for overexcitement, burnout and “mixing up”.

Small N the popularity of the green lizard came as a surprise to the filmmakers.

“You can never really predict these things. As soon as you deliberately try to make something viral, it’s bound to fail,” Pixar’s creative director Pete Docter tells for Reuters.

Tom Lizard is a supporting character in the film. The main characters are beavers, one of which is actually a human who has come to get to know the world of animals in the form of a robot.

Pixar brought the lizard to the center of the marketing of the new animation with social media attention.

Among other things, the character has appeared prominently in connection with the Super Bowl event, in advance screenings of the film Hoppers and taken over the studio’s own social media campaigns. Lizard robot voice has also been created web page.

Various people, animals and characters appear repeatedly in social media humor videos from time to time.

Popular fictional meme characters have become, among others, The Mandalorian Baby Yoda appearing in the series, Ice Age Sid the sloth from the movie, The Muppet– series characters and SpongeBob SquarePants.