Gumball and Darwin Flying / Jiafei's "In My Head" Remix

About

Gumball and Darwin Flying, also known as Gumball Flying and Jiafei's "In My Head" Remix, is a scene from the Cartoon Network show The Amazing World of Gumball in which the characters Gumball and Darwin are singing to Mr. Robinson amid flowing, white fabric and then fly away up into the sky. The scene was paired with a so-called Jiafei remix of the Ariana Grande song "In My Head" in early 2023 on TikTok, becoming a prevalent meme on FlopTok. Many also used the TikTok sound with other viral videos of objects and people flying up into the sky. The Gumball scene is originally from the episode "The Sale."

Origin

On September 24th, 2015, season four, episode eight of The Amazing World of Gumball titled "The Sale" aired on American television.^[1] In one scene of the episode, Gumball and Darwin are singing to the character Mr. Robinson surrounded by flowing, white sheets. They then float upwards into the sky, flying while still singing. The scene was uploaded to YouTube^[2] on October 25th, 2018, by the official account of the show, gaining roughly 5 million views and 43,000 likes in five years (shown below).

On October 12th, 2022, Soundcloud ^[2] user jiafei product posted a Jiafei remix of Ariana Grande's "In My Head," gaining roughly 2,400 plays in seven months (shown below). The remix went viral on TikTok^[3] eight days later on October 20th when user @zorrinya posted it and received roughly 350,000 plays and 32,900 likes in seven months.

On February 4th, 2023, TikToker^[4] @oluiztv uploaded a meme that added the Jiafei song to a spliced version of the scene from Gumball, gaining roughly 246,200 plays and 47,700 likes in three months (shown below, left). The video is currently the first known usage of the meme. On February 7th, TikToker^[5] @oluiztv then uploaded a cropped version of the video for others to use (shown below, right).

Spread

On February 5th, 2023, TikToker^[6] @rhll_resk posted a slightly different version of the meme, gaining roughly 396,100 plays and 36,400 likes in three months (shown below, left). Going into February 2023, creators added more captions to the meme, initially staying within non-English-speaking circles. For instance, on February 20th, TikToker^[7] @shifting_glow posted an iteration, gaining roughly 36,400 likes in three months (shown below, right).

The meme became increasingly viral in May 2023, started by a cropped version of the meme uploaded on May 16th, 2023, by TikToker^[8] @cropitycrop that gained roughly 4 million plays and 562,200 likes in 15 days. Thereafter, many creators used the video's TikTok^[9] sound to make memes related to the viral Gumball meme. For instance, on May 25th, TikToker^[10] @ice_screamed used the sound for a porta-potty flying up into the sky, resembling Gumball and Darwin. The video received roughly 23.4 million plays and 4 million likes in six days (shown below).

Over the course of 15 days, the TikTok^[9] sound of @cropitycrop's video accumulated over 17,800 videos using it. Most of the videos showed objects flying into the sky, resembling Gumball and Darwin from the original scene.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References