Darla Sherman is the secondary antagonist of the 2003 Disney•Pixar animated film Finding Nemo. She is the niece of Philip Sherman and was going to get Nemo as a pet fish from her uncle, but failed.[]
Appearances[]
Finding Nemo[]
Darla is the 8-year-old niece of Philip Sherman, a dentist. Although she is not truly evil, and thus not a villain, she is rather rambunctious, immature and often becomes overexcited when she receives pet fish, which ironically has frequently resulted in her accidentally killing them in her excitement.
Gill and the other fish in Sherman's fish tank describe Darla as a fish killer and that Nemo is supposed to be her new pet fish. The last fish she received in the previous year, Chuckles, was killed by her because she wouldn't stop shaking the bag Chuckles was in. In the scene where Darla is about to take Nemo from her uncle, Nemo plays dead, but Darla thinks he is just sleeping and starts shaking the bag in overreaction. Gill then fires himself out of the tank and lands in her hair, causing her to let go of Nemo bursting his bag. After Gill catapults Nemo into the air with a tooth mirror, Darla tries to grab him, but she misses and he lands in the dental sink and is sucked into the spiraling water going down the drain leading to the ocean. After Dr. Sherman returns Gill to the fish tank, Darla grabs the sink, looking down in it, yelling “Fishy!”, wanting Nemo to come back, but she accidentally breaks it, causing it to harshly squirt water in her face.
Toy Story 3[]
Darla was seen in the magazine that Molly Davis read after organizing her donations for Sunnyside Daycare.
Finding Dory[]
Although her uncle does not make a physical appearance in this film, a photo in his consulting office makes a cameo appearance in the Marine Life Institute when Dory meets Hank in the quarantine office. This may imply she has relatives working at the institute.
Disney Parks[]
Darla appears in some Finding Nemo related attractions (although she doesn't do meet and greets) such as the Finding Nemo - The Musical show at Disney's Animal Kingdom playing the same part she did in the film, and in the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage attraction in the lagoon diving with her uncle. In Tokyo DisneySea's Nemo & Friends SeaRider, Darla appears in a sequence taking place at the Marine Life Institute's touch tank where she grabs the SeaRider submarine, but drops it when Hank grabs it from her grasp.
Trivia[]
- According to one of the Finding Nemo books, the shirt Darla was wearing in the film was given to her by her uncle after her pet fish Chuckles died.
- Darla was named after Darla K. Anderson, a Pixar employee.
- She appears in Toy Story 3 in Molly Davis' magazine.
- Darla, in a way, is very similar to Sid Phillips, as they are both naughty human children who serve as antagonists towards the main character's races (toys and fish, respectively), although while Sid is a genuinely nasty child (in first Toy Story) who relishes in his sick experiments, Darla appears to be much more nocent and seemingly did not mean Chuckles and Nemo any real harm, and apparently genuinely caring for Nemo (evidenced by her calling out to Nemo when he went down the drain).
- During Darla's visit, the patients sitting in the waiting room who hear the commotion between Dr. Sherman, Darla, and Nigel are a young boy named Gilbert Sherman who is Darla's twin brother(reading an Incredibles comic) and his mother Heather Sherman who is Darla's mother, a brunette-haired teenage woman named Lily Sherman who is Darla's older sister she is seen wearing a purple shirt, and a balding man named Mandy Sherman who is Darla's grandpa.