The explainer

What is Italian Brainrot?

If your kids have started saying "Tung Tung Tung Sahur" at the dinner table, or a shark in sneakers has appeared on your phone, this page is for you.

Where it came from

Italian Brainrot is a wave of short videos that spread across TikTok through 2025. Each one shows an absurd creature made with AI image tools, a crocodile that is also a bomber plane, a coffee cup with a sword, a cactus with elephant feet, named in a rush of Italian-sounding syllables and narrated by a dramatic Italian voice. None of it means anything, which is the joke, and the names are impossible not to repeat. "Brainrot" is the word the internet uses for content so silly it rots your brain, and the Italian part is the voice and the names. A few of the most famous characters, Tung Tung Tung Sahur among them, started elsewhere and were adopted into the family.

Who the characters are

There is no official list. New creatures appear every week, and the ones that stick become playground legends: Tralalero Tralala, the three-legged shark in sneakers; Bombardiro Crocodilo, the crocodile bomber; Tung Tung Tung Sahur, the wooden figure with a bat; Cappuccino Assassino, the coffee cup assassin; Lirilì Larilà, the cactus elephant in sandals; Brr Brr Patapim, the tree with a monkey's face; Chimpanzini Bananini, the chimp in a banana. Kids trade the names like cards and argue about which one would win a fight.

The game you play outside

Find A Brainrot takes those characters off the screen and puts them on a map of the streets around you. Open the Hunt tab outside and Italian Brainrots appear nearby, always one within a short walk, so there is never a reason to chase one across a road. Walk up and catch it on the map, or raise the camera and catch it in AR, standing on your own pavement. Every catch gets a room at your base, where you feed it, water it and play with it, and it earns coins while you are away. Coins buy tools, decorations and more rooms. Nothing costs real money, there are no ads, and the game never keeps a history of where anyone has been.

It was made with safety for families in mind: a grown-up makes the account and holds the controls, kids get profiles with a PIN and never an email or a password, they cannot be found by search, every friend request waits for a grown-up's yes, and the AR view opens on the outdoor safety rules and asks for a break after ten minutes. It plays on the web on any phone and as an iPhone app with the AR views.

Every Italian Brainrot in the game

Rarest first. Each one has a page of its own, with how rare it is and what it earns.