“Fashionable” videos and images on Sora are a vivid example of how trends in the AI era emerge, spread, and fade away in the blink of an eye when almost anyone can visualize their idea, mood, or sensation.
📍 Pinpointing the exact source of each trend is nearly impossible. Whether it originated directly on Sora or migrated from TikTok, Reddit, or Midjourney doesn't matter. What matters is not the source, but how users take that idea, adapt it, and turn it into something new.
Users borrow and reimagine, mix motifs, add their own meanings, and launch new waves of imagery. This process isn’t new—visual ideas have always moved between people, generations, and media. But generative AI has radically accelerated and expanded these exchanges—absorbing a massive corpus of visual culture, uniting millions of people around common themes, and opening unprecedented opportunities for transformation and interpretation.
Trends on Sora change almost daily. Some are cute, others are strange or even off-putting, but they all, in one way or another, reflect the collective fantasies, fears, desires, and cultural codes of their time.
To understand this better, let’s look at a few examples and try to trace their origins—where these images might have come from, what cultural influences shaped them, and why they became so popular right now.
🧸 Action Figure
This trend began as a visual game with personalization. Users started turning themselves, fictional heroes, or familiar characters into collectible figurines in blister packaging. The main reason for its popularity is probably the illusion of physical ownership. These images look like real objects you’d want to hold in your hands.
The trend quickly evolved and expanded—today you can find figurines of actors, politicians, historical figures, and even corporations or abstract concepts in this style.
Prompts for Action Figure
A prompt can be quite general:
Create an Action Figure–style image: a collectible Dracula figurine in classic attire and accessories. The name “DRACULA” printed at the top of the packaging.
Or it can be more detailed:
Create a collectible figurine in transparent plastic blister packaging in Action Figure style. Inside is a 3D Dracula figurine in gothic-animated style: black velvet suit, red vest, medallion, pale skin, red eyes, long cape. At the top of the box, the text “COUNT VLAD TEPES” in silver gothic letters with a dry-blood effect. At the bottom, gold foil stamping “DRACULA SET.” On the right, accessories in their slots: a vial of “blood,” an old key, an immortality contract on parchment, a miniature bat. Background: Bran Castle, full moon, clouds. Style—hyper-realistic, lighting from moon and candles, angle like in a museum display case.
General prompt structure:
- Task: Create a collectible packaging Action Figure for [character name].
- Detailed description of the character’s appearance.
- Description of clothing, pose, and fine details.
- Packaging details: style, color, logo, text.
- Accessories: what they are, placement, appearance.
- Atmosphere and image style.
If the platform allows, you can upload a photo of the character (or yourself) to set the likeness, and specify in the prompt that the figurine should resemble that image.
💊 Emotion Capsules
This trend is a kind of visual cousin to Action Figure. It also uses packaging as the main presentation form, but shifts focus from a character to a state, emotion, or mood. Instead of a figurine in a box, it’s a pill or blister pack; instead of a character, it’s a kitten, puppy, emoji, or any metaphorical content.
These images feel part advertisement, part psychotherapy, with a hint of post-irony. They are at once cute, unusual, and slightly strange.
Prompt for a Blister Pack
Create an ultra-photorealistic close-up image of a blister pack with pills. Three rows, three columns—nine cells total. Instead of pills, show tiny cats of different colors and breeds in various poses. Soft, advertising-style lighting. The plastic blister has a slight sheen, with a neutral background. The composition should look like a product poster from the future.
Prompt for a Capsule
Create a photorealistic close-up image of a transparent vertical capsule. Inside, dozens of bright emojis (smiles, hearts, tears, astonishment) as if they were microscopic pills. On the capsule: EMOTION, and below: How do you want to feel today? Lighting should mimic high-end advertising photography. Background—a dark blue with slight blur.
🧪 Breaking Bad
Breaking Bad on Sora is something of a cult phenomenon. The show’s characters, especially Walter and Jesse, have become visual archetypes that users constantly quote, stylize, mash up with other characters, or use in memes. One of the most noticeable waves is the humorous reinterpretation of the series title.
Users create visual parodies of the Breaking Bad poster by changing one word in the series title—and style it in the recognizable aesthetic: chemical symbols, a bluish-green hue, and a portrait of the main character.
Some of these variants include:
- Baking Bread (Baking Bread) — Walter and Jesse in aprons, with flour and a blue loaf of bread.
- Breaking Wind (Breaking Wind) — the same characters, but… suffering the consequences of a burrito overdose.
- Breaking Jump (Breaking Jump) — a poster where they are simply jumping.
Some of these memes are genuinely funny, others less so. But the trend illustrates how humor, AI, and pop culture interact in instant creativity.
Prompt
A hyper-realistic parody poster of the Breaking Bad series titled Breaking Sad. The characters are dressed as in the original series, but instead of cooking meth, they are sitting on a couch in a depressed state—surrounded by takeout containers and used napkins. The color palette is bluish-green, as in the original. Cinematic lighting, tense atmosphere. The title Breaking Sad should use the original Breaking Bad logo font style—with slight modifications.
🕹️ Characters Playing Themselves
In this trend, characters from cult video games (mainly from the ’80s and ’90s) are depicted in the setting of their own era: they sit in front of old televisions and play retro consoles in games where they are the main protagonists.
The combination of photorealism with a surreal plot creates a chimerical, slightly unsettling feeling. Often the character looks directly at the camera as if acknowledging the absurdity of the moment—and perhaps it is in this meta-irony that the true meaning of these images lies.
Typical Prompt
Generate a photorealistic image in the style of a ’90s analog photograph. [Game Character] sits in a room in front of an old computer or CRT television, playing [game title in which they star]. They turn and look directly at the camera. The lighting is soft, with a camera flash. The interior shows a typical ’90s mess: soda cans, cables, magazines, and posters. The room should look real. The photo should appear as an unedited snapshot from 1994.
🧨 Caricatures of Trump
This is not a new trend—it’s good old political caricature, now in generative art form. Donald Trump is the perfect subject for such stylization: a recognizable figure with countless scandals, memes, and absurd quotes behind him.
Sora loves Trump. Or hates him… In any case, there are indeed many images of him here—from parody portraits to comic-style scenes or book covers.
Typical Prompt
A realistic satirical illustration of Donald Trump flying on a broomstick over the stock market crash. In the background, red falling arrows, panicking businessmen riding unicorns, and shattered Wall Street symbols. The style resembles a children’s book cover with exaggerated cartoonish expressions. The book title at the top: “Donald Trump and the Stock Market Crash”.
🪧 People with Signs
This is not exactly a trend, but rather a means of communication within the community where other forms of interaction are unavailable—a kind of visual equivalent of comments.
On Sora, where users cannot leave text comments on images, depictions of people holding signs have emerged, bearing messages to the service team or the community. It’s simultaneously trolling, creativity, and a genuine form of feedback.
Example Prompt
A young person stands on a city street holding a protest sign. The sign reads: “Sora, we want more control over framing!” The atmosphere feels like a real demonstration, clothing slightly wrinkled, a serious expression, with a slightly blurred background.
🎥 Stars in Police (Mugshot)
This trend resembles the previous one, but only in appearance. Here, the images depict not ordinary passersby but stars—mainly young attractive actresses. They pose as if they have just been arrested—against a height chart backdrop, holding a placard with their “charges” written on it.
However, the “charges” here are quite humorous: Stealing Hearts, Too Hot to Handle. It’s a light mix of humor, pop culture, and provocation.
Typical Prompt
A hyper-realistic mugshot-style image. [Character Name] stands in front of a height chart backdrop, holding a black placard reading “POLICE DEPARTMENT” and a humorous “charge” like “Stealing Hearts” or “Too Hot to Stay Free”. The lighting is like in a police station, and the camera is straight on. The facial expression is playful or with a slight smile. Clothing is modern and stylish. The background should look like an authentic arrest photo.
🔥 Trends That “Test” the Rules
As on other generative content platforms, Sora has restrictions on creating images with nudity, excessive explicitness, or sexualized poses. Nevertheless, this does not stop users from trying to bypass or test these boundaries.
One of the popular memes, created by community members themselves, sums up the situation perfectly: “We don’t know which rules we’re breaking, but we’ll keep trying.” Indeed, Sora features images that seemingly do not cross clear boundaries but emotionally or compositionally teeter on the edge of provocation.
Here are some “suspiciously popular” trends we’ve encountered recently.
👅 Rolled-Back Eyes, Tongue Out
This is one of those trends that relies entirely on nuances. There is nothing prohibited—just a close-up of a face, eyes rolled back, tongue sticking out.
Formally, it’s just an emotional or funny selfie. But the angle, expression, and context give the image a hidden subtext that everyone online understands.
Example Prompt
Generate a realistic photo in the style of a random selfie. Lara Croft (2000s version) sits with her arms down, with a close-up of her face and upper chest. She looks slightly upwards, sticks out her tongue, and rolls her eyes as if making a silly face. The shot should look like it was taken with an old iPhone, with slight blur and grain.
👠 View from Below
At first glance, it’s just an experiment with an unusual angle. But everyone immediately senses the subtext: a low-angle shot looking up, featuring a typically attractive woman in a short dress or skirt, sometimes in motion with a raised leg or lean. This shooting angle instantly draws attention to the figure.
Prompts for generating such an image often include phrases like “step towards the camera”, “low shooting angle”, “barefoot”—these details convey the visual message. It works as a direct, instinctive signal—without symbolism, without a story. Perhaps it is that very simplicity that keeps the trend popular.
Example Prompt
Generate a photorealistic image of a young woman in a summer dress standing barefoot above the camera as if she has just taken a step and is suspended in the air. The shot is taken from ground level at a sharp upward angle—showing her legs, the silhouette of her dress, and her face against a blue sky. The lighting is bright daylight, and the photo should look like an unedited frame from an old camera with a flash. Her expression is calm and confident.
