The line comes from Amber Heard's testimony in the 2022 Depp v Heard defamation trial in Virginia, where she described an incident from a 2015 altercation. A clip of her saying my dog stepped on a bee was isolated from the livestreamed proceedings and spread quickly on TikTok, YouTube and Twitter. Users remixed her facial expression and vocal delivery into reaction videos and edits, and the phrase became shorthand for melodramatic explanations. It remains popular because almost everyone recognises the delivery instantly, even without knowing the full court case.