Marlin — protagonists

Hero Overview

Gallery

Do-gooder

Full Name

Marlin

Alias

Clowny

Marty
Clown Boy
Jelly-Man
Dude
Carlin
Mr. Grumpy Gills
Mr. Bossy
Conscience
Dad
Daddy

Origin

Finding Nemo

Occupation

Adventurer

Powers / Skills

High intelligence

Swimming speed

Hobby

Worrying.

Caring for his son.
Protecting his friends and son.
Being impatient.

Goals

Find and rescue Nemo and reunite with him (Finding Nemo).

Help Dory find her family (Finding Dory; both succeeded).

Family

Coral † (mate)

Nemo (son)
Over 399 unborn children †

Enemies

Barrcuda

Darla Sherman
Philip Sherman
Bruce, Anchor, and Chum (formerly)
Anglerfish
Jellyfish
Seagulls
Cleveland Truck Drivers
Giant Squid

Type of Hero

Paranoid Parent

“	There there there. It's OK, Daddy's here. Daddy's got you. I promise, I will never let anything happen to you... Nemo.	„
	~ Marlin comforting an unhatched Nemo.

Marlin is the main protagonist of Pixar's 5th full-length animated feature film Finding Nemo and the tritagonist of its sequel Finding Dory.

He is the father of a little clownfish named Nemo, who is taken to Sydney, Australia, by divers. He meets a blue tang named Dory to help him get there.

Marlin is a nice and caring parent to Nemo, but can also be a bit impatient and easily irritable. Due to the tragic death of his wife and Nemo's would-to-be siblings, he is also protective to the point of getting on Nemo's nerves and even embarrasses him in front of his friends in public, which ultimately results in a conflict that goes unresolved until they reunite.

He is voiced by Albert Brooks, who also voiced Jake in Dr. Dolittle and by Jess Harnell in video games.

History

Finding Nemo

In Finding Nemo, Marlin is first seen with his wife Coral, and they are about to be parents of many unborn children, Marlin plans to name all the males "Marlin Jr." and all the females "Coral Jr.". However, Coral states she likes the name "Nemo". Marlin says they'll only name one Nemo and he wants the other to be "Marlin Jr.". However, that same day, a barracuda attacks their house, knocking Marlin out cold. When Marlin wakes up, he finds the cave the eggs were in empty and Coral nowhere to be seen. Realizing that Coral and the other children were all killed by the barracuda, Marlin cries. However Marlin finds only one of his eggs. He names it Nemo, since that was one of the names his wife wanted to call one of her children. Through the years, Marlin has became overly protective over Nemo, much to his annoyance. Marlin feels that the ocean is way too dangerous and doesn't let him swim in open water; he even doesn't want Nemo to go to school.

One day, Marlin eventually allows Nemo to go to school. After Nemo and his classmates leave, the other fathers say they're going to the drop-off, some place that Marlin fears is bad news for fish. When Marlin catches Nemo about to swim into open water, he quickly stops him and tells he can't swim very well, and embarrasses Nemo in front of his classmates. Nemo then gets enraged with his father and swims into open water. Marlin tries to order Nemo to come back, but he doesn't listen. Suddenly Nemo is captured by a pair of scuba divers. Marlin chases the divers' boat, but is unable to keep up with it. While frantically asking other fish for help, he bumps into Dory, a blue tang who claims to know where the boat went. However, Dory soon forgets who Marlin is and the fact that he was looking for the boat, because as it turns out, she has short-term memory loss.

After a run-in with some vegetarian sharks named Bruce (whom they first encountered), Anchor, and Chum, Marlin and Dory find a mask that Dory reads that says, "P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way Sydney," but after reading the mask in another scene, a hungry anglerfish shows up, roars at Marlin and Dory, then chases after them. However, the duo manage to trap it by using the mask to tie it around a rock. Dory remembers what the mask says and on the way continues to repeat it until Marlin comes upon a group of Moonfishes and tries to ask them, but they only make fun of him, so Dory asks them for Marlin and they give them the directions to Sydney, to which Marlin thanks them. But unknown to the clownfish, the Moonfish also give Dory a warning not to swim over a trench. However, when Marlin and Dory reach the trench, Marlin makes Dory swim over it, much to her warning and they get stung by a group of jellyfish and knocked out. When Marlin wakes up, he finds that he's riding a sea turtle named Crush on the East Australian Current. Marlin asks Crush if Dory is okay and Crush points down to another turtle where Dory appears to be "dead". Marlin swims down to her, sees the scars on her side from the jellyfish stings, and blames himself for her getting hurt. But Dory wakes up from her "death" because she was playing Hide-and-Seek with the turtle kids. Marlin then tells Dory and the turtle kids about his and Dory's journey.

Later, after they left the East Australian Current, Marlin and Dory get swallowed by a whale, which was chasing krill.

Later on, when Marlin got sick of being stuck in the whale, he tried to break himself free, but fails, and he drops onto the whale's tongue, crying. Dory asks him if he's okay, but Marlin doesn't answer, so Dory swims down to him to comfort him and immediately says the same eight words "There, there. It's all right. It'll be okay" to do so. Marlin tells Dory his promise to Nemo, but Dory explains to her friend that he can't never let anything happen to him. Fortunately, the whale shoots them out of his blowhole and into Sydney Harbor. They finally find Nemo in the dentist's office and charge in, aided by Nigel the Pelican, but the plastic bag the dentist is holding with Nemo inside it falls onto a sharp dental tool and springs a leak. Marlin believes Nemo to be dead and tells Dory they have to go their separate ways, unaware that Nemo has escaped the dentist and his spoiled niece, Darla. Eventually Dory brings Nemo back and father and son are reunited. Suddenly, a fishing net captures Dory and some groupers. Marlin began to feel more worried for her only because he regrets himself for abandoning her especially when she managed to find his son, nemo wanted to save but marlin was almost blinded with his overprotectiveness again until nemo reminds him if they tell the groupers to swim down together they can save dory. Soon marlin finally agrees because it reminded him how he lost Coral once and his children but this time he won't lose Dory either and yet his son Nemo again. Ather marlin managed to encourage the groupers to swim down while finally using Dory's catchphrase "Just Keep Swimming" to embrace their inner strength. After that Marlin is reunited with dory and an unconcise Nemo who both apologize each other including Nemo claiming he didn't mean to say "I hate you" which led his bravo to get the best of him while marlin admits he shouldn't be paranoid and overprotected in the first place. After this marlin decided to give Nemo more freedom while he and Dory watches him go to school.

Finding Dory

In the sequel Finding Dory, Dory is living with him and Nemo a year after the events of the first movie. One day, however, while helping teach Nemo's class, she suddenly remembers her parents and decides to head off and find them. While she doesn't have a lot of details to go on, she remembers that they live at the "Jewel of Morro Bay, California", and though Marlin is initially very against the idea of going so far, she manages to convince him by appealing to his understanding of the need to be reunited with a lost family member since that's what happened to Nemo previously (While he still secretly thinking about Coral who he misses his own mate). Therefore, he asks for help from Crush, the sea turtle who helped them in the last movie, and he and the other turtles take them on the California Current so they can reach their destination faster. However, shortly after getting off, Dory ends up accidently waking up a giant squid, which relentlessy pursues and tries to eat Nemo. They manage to trap it in a large shipping container, but Marlin angrily scolds her for putting them all in danger. Feeling hurt, she heads off on her own near the surface, and she is then captured by a couple of staff members of the trio's very destination, the Marine Life Institute, due to them mistakenly believing there's something wrong with her. Guilt-ridden for indirectly causing this, Marlin tries to find a way to free her from the Institute. Thankfully, he and Nemo get help from two lazy sea lions, Fluke and Rudder, and a common loon named Becky, who, despite being scatterbrained, can transport them inside the institute in a bucket.

They have some setbacks along the way though, chief among them, Becky getting temporarily distracted by food and leaving them on a tree branch, which leads to Marlin trying to get them unstuck, but his effort causes them to get sling-shotted into a small tank outside a gift shop. During this time, Nemo angrily calls him out for making both Dory and Becky feel like they can't succeed for being critical of their shortcomings and not showing any confidence in their abilities, which causes Marlin to feel remorse for being unintentionally insensitive and judgemental. However, after thinking outside the box like Dory, they manage to find a way out of the tank and into a tide pool. After getting away from a chatty clam and going into the pipe system, they manage to find and reunite with Dory there. She brings them up to speed on how she received unexpected help from a cranky octopus named Hank, hence how she got there, but she also expresses nervousness about meeting her parents again since she got lost from them all those years ago. However, Marlin assures her that they'll be overjoyed to see her and apologizes for what he said to her earlier. Soon after, they make their way to quarantine and find the tank that has all the regal blue tangs in it, but with limited time due to the tank being shipped with a bunch of others to another location in Cleveland. However, Dory soon finds out from them that her parents left the institute to find her a while ago and never came back, making her panic over the possibility that they may be dead. Hank then quickly grabs her, but forgets Marlin and Nemo, and after that, he gets discovered by a couple of MLI staff members, forcing him to flee and accidently drop her into a drain, flushing her out into the ocean.

While this is happening, on the truck, Marlin and Nemo are asking around for Dory since they've lost track of her in the confusion, but are unable to find her. However, the truck soon stops, because while they were being taken from the institute and being transported on the highway, Dory managed to find her parents by following a trails of shells just like the ones they used to put out for her so she could find her way home, and thankfully, though they left the institute, they situated themselves just outside of it in case she ever came back. However, despite the happy reunion, Dory also remembers that her friends/new family are being transported away, and with some help from both Destiny and Bailey, manages to devise a plan to have a bunch of sea otters get on the highway and temporarily halt traffic. After the truck is stopped, she gets aboard and Marlin calls for Becky, who manages to get both him and Nemo off the truck and back into the sea in the bucket she used to transport them into the institute before. However, she forgets about Dory, who gets stuck on the truck when the otters are shooed off the highway and traffic starts moving again. Despite this setback and everyone worrying about her, she and Hank then hijack the truck, weave through traffic and ultimately crash it into the water, releasing all the fish inside, which he, his son, Dory's parents, Destiny and Bailey witnessed in awe.

After this, they all went back to the reef together, with Hank even becoming a substitute teacher in Mr. Ray's absence. At the very end, after seeing off Nemo as he heads off for another day of school, Marlin accompanies Dory to the drop off to make sure she doesn't go wandering off, but then enjoys the view with her and praises her for finding her parents.

Appearance

Marlin is a small clownfish with bright orange and white scales. His stripes, fins and tail are lined with black and he has large brown eyes.

Trivia

Albert Brooks fell in love with the Deconstructionist aspect of Marlin - a clownfish who isn't funny - and ran with it. Director Andrew Stanton states "we have about an hour of audio from Albert telling a series of jokes really, really badly. They didn't make any sense, but that was the part that was funny!".