No, flounder does probably not look like *that*. Amid all the gems gleaned from The Little Mermaid’s latest’s trailer released earlier this week — the joy of Halle Bailey’s truly angelic Ariel and the squint-and-you’ll-still-probably miss-it glimpse of Melissa McCarthy’s Ursula, another “still” has sent shockwaves of uncanny valley horror throughout the Twitterverse  — a fraudulent screengrab of a *very* messed up-looking Flounder.



An amalgamation of the most bizarre parts of Flounder’s original design and an actual fish, the fake CGI abomination in question is an exercise in post-modern horror, and terrible, terrible eyebrows.



Featuring sweat-like water droplets coating each hyper-realistic scale, a pair of lifeless, green eyes and an uncanny grin typically reserved for Chuck E. Cheese animatronics, the viral image is not from the film. The brainchild of artist/future horror film mastermind Nick Pill, who uploaded the images to his ArtStation account roughly two years ago.


“Just mucking around with a Flounder Live Action version,” he captioned the images with the clarifying title of “Flounder FAN ART,” which have garnered more than 28,000 views on the platform.



Despite its dubious origins, Twitter still jumped on the fan art as though it were fact — can you blame them after the whole Sonic debacle of 2019? —  speaking to not only the uncanny nature of Disney’s “live-action” — or as close to Live action as you can get in a movie that’s 95% CGI.



So, Disney, if you’re reading this. Step your game up. Not because of these fake images, but in general. Create some new IP, goddamnit.