Dory

Marlin finds Dory lost in the ocean. She says she knows the way, then forgets what she just said. Even so, it's Dory who remembers she can read the writing on the diver's mask and leads them to Sydney. Marlin tries to shake her off and ends up realizing he can't go on without her.

Dory is the one who makes friends where Marlin sees danger. She chats with a reformed great white, gets schools of moonfish to give directions and speaks whale to the one that swallows them. At the key moment, she is the one who asks Marlin to trust her and let go. When she is caught in a fishing net, Nemo and the fish save her.

Andrew Stanton pictured Dory as male until he watched an episode of Ellen DeGeneres's show in which she changed the subject five times before finishing a sentence. The actress was cast and gave Dory the tone of someone who changes her mind mid-sentence. Animator Gini Cruz Santos blended fish movement, human movement and facial expressions.

A year after finding Nemo, Dory lives next door to Marlin and Nemo. One day she suddenly remembers she has parents and that they lived in California, at the Jewel of Morro Bay. She talks the two into traveling with her, carrying fragments of memory she can barely connect.

At the Marine Life Institute, Dory meets Hank, a seven-armed octopus who doesn't want to go back to the sea. He helps her find her parents in exchange for the tag that sends her to Cleveland. Dory also reunites with her childhood friend Destiny, a nearsighted whale shark, and Bailey, a beluga who lost his echolocation.

Dory remembers how she lost her parents: a current swept her through the pipes. She follows a trail of shells, remembering her parents laid shells to guide her home, to a tire, where she finds them. They had stayed close for years. In the end Dory brings Hank and her new friends along and returns to the reef with her whole family.

Ellen DeGeneres voices Dory in both films. Sloane Murray, the 7-year-old daughter of producer Lindsey Collins, voices young Dory in Finding Dory.