The I Baked You A Pie TikTok Trend Explained

If you're lucky, your TikTok FYP makes little sense. Wild pet edits, absurd life hacks, and parodies of Travis Scott's black and white apology reveal that every TikTok trend is one big inside joke. However, the app doesn't make it easy to trace the original joke — and most of the time, you're going to have to depend on your algorithm to help you understand it.

Here's a fun one: The "I Baked You a Pie" sound went viral pre-pandemic, but it's a piece of TikTok history that we like to come back to, every now and then. 856,000 TikTok videos feature the upbeat sound — a conversation between a father and his son that is, in our opinion, the epitome of lyrical genius (and dad jokes): "'I baked you a pie.' 'Oh boy, what flavor?' 'Pie, pie, pie.' 'Dad, I'm hungry.' 'Hi Hungry, I'm Dad.' 'Why did you name me this way? Why why why?'" If you've come across this convoluted storyline and wondered, "Why, why why?" yourself, here's the story behind the viral sound.

A few years ago, British filmmaker and YouTuber TomSka created short animated videos called the "asdf movies." Each video consisted of short sketches made with recurring characters in the form of line drawings. And, according to Know Your Meme, TikTok's "I baked you a pie" trend is a mashup of two popular "asdf" sketches: "the muffin that wants to die" and the "father who baked his son a 'pie flavored' pie." Remixes of the sketches were everywhere — "It's Muffin Time!" by RoomieOfficial is one of the more popular ones, with 35 million views.

In 2018, TikToker Jayden Croes posted his version of a remix — which is the original sound everyone uses on TikTok right now, per Know Your Meme. A highly exaggerated reenactment of a man baking a pie then sparked a wave of ironic duets and nonsensical lip-syncs. If you're still confused, you've probably understood the trend perfectly.