Ben is the grumpy dog chemist from Outfit7's Talking Ben the Dog, part of the Talking Tom and Friends series that began on mobile in the early 2010s. In the app Ben reads a newspaper, does experiments and repeats what players say in his own voice, which made short clips of him easy to record and share. The nanana taunt spread as users posted screen recordings to video platforms and soundboards, and it stayed popular as a quick, family friendly way to tease someone without using a real insult.