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TikTok has once again served up yet another bizarre and strangely morbid viral trend. This time, Dora the Explorer is at the centre of it, facing the brunt of TikTok's dark humor. The Nickelodeon Jr. character, like several other characters like Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse, was an intrinsic part of our childhood.
However, the 'How did Dora the Explora die' trend threatens to breach the sanctity of childhood memories, baffling and shocking many users when they come across the viral trend. So, did Dora really die? Read on to find out.
What is the 'How did Dora the Explorer die' trend?
The 'How did Dora the Explorer' trend started going viral on the platform in the last few days of May, primarily due to its shock factor. This trend would have left many users wondering how they missed the death of such an iconic character, especially given how uncharacteristic it would be for a children's show to write about the death of their main protagonist.
The trend prompts TikTok users to google the titular question about how Dora the Explorer died and to record their reactions to it. It has yielded several dramatic jaw-dropping reactions, which is to be expected. Some of the top videos in the trend have raked in thousands of views and likes for their theatrics.
The most popular video from the trend is by a TikToker Talia (@talialopes_), posted on Saturday, May 28, with the in-video caption:
"Record yourself before and after searching 'How did Dora die'."
The TikTok has garnered a whopping 3 million views and 595.9k likes within just 72 hours. The top comment, with 44.4k likes, represented the fright most people got when they thought that the video was referring to their beloved childhood favorite, Dora the Explorer. Unfortunately, other commenters confirmed their worst fears that the trend did indeed refer to the Nickelodeon adventurer.
How did Dora the Explorer really die?
Rest assured, the titular character did not canonically die in the show. Dora the Explorer aired on Nickelodeon Jr. for an impressive run of 19 years, from 2000 to 2019, closing out with its own movie. However, in the entirety of its run, the children's animated cartoon did not allude to Dora's death even once.
That leads to the question — What does Google pull up for the search result then? Surely if the answer was that Dora didn't die at all, it would not elicit the dramatic reactions that have been populating the platform over the past couple of days.
A quick cursory Google search of 'How did Dora the Explorer die' redirects users to a Fandom.com page titled List of Deaths Wiki. The page mentions 'Dora Kill Count -17,' listing out 17 different death scenarios for the explorer.
Amongst these gruesome premonitions, the ones most commonly cited in the comments of the trend include, "Pushed into quicksand by Boots," "Fell to her death when her parachute failed to open," "Knocked into a river by Swiper and drowned," and "Disintegrated by a lightning bolt."
These aren't just the unrestrained musings and speculations of wildly imaginative brains. All of these morbid scenarios stem from a 2012 musical spoof on YouTube by TheStringiniBros titled Dora No More. The video was surprisingly popular among elementary schoolers back in the day, boasting 8.7 million hits and 88k likes. Despite being a simple parody, the aftermath of this video generated quite the frenzy on TikTok.
