Where is the Orange Muppet ‘Pepe the King Prawn’ awkward meme from?

There is a new TikTok trend that involves a certain orange shaggy-haired puppet King Prawn named Pepe...

The image of the puppet from the 1999 film Muppets From Space of the character looking a little dishevelled has become the perfect meme template for people to use to confess their funniest and wildest stories.

As part of the trend, creators use the image of Pepe several times in a photo slideshow as they write out their entertaining tale, and often add the song "Like a Prayer (Choir Version From “Deadpool & Wolverine") for dramatic effect.

TikTok/kennadypryor

But why use an image of Pepe in particular? Well, the reason for this is that King Prawn seems to accurately encapsulate how people are feeling when they retell their stories that make them feel embarrassed, what with Pepe's chaotic hair, wild eyes, and generally looking like he's having an existential crisis.

Where does the image originate?

The image comes from the 1999 film Muppets From Space.

For context, the Muppets character is a chef and his cooking doesn't always go to plan. In this instance in the filmhe and the Swedish Chef are cooking for the Frog family and informs them that the raspberry flapovers are nearly ready.

He then asks Kermit the Frog when he will fix the oven, which is immediately followed by an explosion from the oven and it leads to Pepe announcing a menu correction to bologna sandwiches - minus the bread.

(Hence why Pepe looks so stressed out, especially in the image that has gone viral).

When did Pepe go viral?

It first began to gain traction last month when creator @caitycline21 posted a viral slideshow, and captioned the clip: "Sometimes I’m late because I’m spending too much time like this".

From there it's been pretty difficult to avoid Pepe from popping up on people's For You page.

The most popular story from this trend has to be the "Olive oil story" where Megan Chacalos (@meganchacalos) recalled the time when she got herself into a palaver which ended in her having to go to school with an olive oil hair mask in saran wrap.

The story has some funny twists and turns, which include Megan passing out in her garage after slipping on oil from her hair mask, setting off her house alarm, her dad nearly hitting her with a baseball bat mistaking her for a burglar and police officers later turning up.

The video received a staggering 62.7m views since it was posted earlier this month and in a follow-up video Megan hilarious recreated the scene - read more about the 'Olive oil story' trending on TikTok.

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