It all started with a lizard named Tom — a green cartoon lizard created by Pixar, first seen in the post-credits teaser of Disney/Pixar's 2025 film Elio. The teaser, promoting the upcoming 2026 film Hoppers, shows Tom dazedly tapping a glowing screen to generate lizard emojis while a robotic voice repeatedly says "lizard."
The raw clip first surfaced via YouTuber The Pixar Nerd on June 20, 2025, gaining minor attention. But everything changed on July 27, 2025, when TikTok creator @igreenscreenthings transformed it into an editable green screen template — and the internet lost its mind.
The upload amassed over 260,000 views and 14,000 likes in days, inspiring thousands of TikTok remixes — repetitive task humor, brainrot scenarios, and endless wordplay. Know Your Meme and NBC News recognized the post as the key catalyst, with the template spawning more than 78,000 derivative videos shortly after.
@igreenscreenthings continued the saga with variants like "Lizard Drank" and "My Lizard," celebrating it as their biggest milestone. The lizard became more than a meme — it became a movement. And now, it lives on the blockchain as $LIZARD.