Marcel was created by Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer Camp and first appeared in a short stop-motion film shared online in 2010, where the tiny shell's earnest narration quickly made him a viral favourite. Two follow-up shorts kept the character in circulation before the feature film Marcel the Shell with Shoes On arrived in 2021, bringing him to a much wider audience. Online, the character has endured as a symbol of small-scale optimism and gentle humour, which is why short voice clips continue to appear in wholesome memes, reaction edits and cozy video essays.