Who Framed Roger Rabbit?/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Why does Judge Doom get to murder a toon (the shoe) in front of cops when showing off the dip?
    • Don't forget, that shoe kicked a police officer square in the crotch. Physically assaulting an officer is a serious offense, especially since he didn't have a weapon drawn or anything (he had both hands full with Acme's gurney). I'm sure that if the shoe's right to squeak freely had been observed, he would have said he was just having fun. ("Just getting my kicks.") Doom makes the point that since Toontown has been under his jurisdiction, his biggest obstacle is getting Toons to respect the law. The implication being that Toons, being mostly indestructible, tend to "play rough" with more fragile humans. The Dip allows Doom something to wave in their faces, saying "You hit us with a mallet, and we boil you down to nothing. Giving the death sentence for assaulting an officer is ridiculous, but you can bet those other shoes in the box had a lot to think about after seeing the fate of the condemned sole. Especially those goose-stepping jackboots.
    • Don't forget that the Toons suffer from discrimination. If one of them dies, nobody really cares.
    • Also, going back to the point that Doom has Toontown under his jurisdiction. That probably means he has legal power over anyone residing in there, including the poor shoe, since no toon is implied to live in the 'human side' of LA. Therefore, even if the cops were horrified by the poor toon's fate, they couldn't have done a thing: Doom had a reason to convict the shoe (Assaulting an officer, as noted above), and since he had full power none could have complained about the sentence, even if it was cruel and unfair. Of course, everyone (exept Eddie) in their right mind seemed to be genuingly afraid of Doom. No-one had the gut to stand up against him, because it was quite clear that the one who would have, had shared the shoe's fate.
    • Doom is also supposed to have a lot of social and political power behind him. The detective that brings Eddie to the crime scene sucking up to Doom from the get-go. Even if the cops were afraid of what he was doing to the shoe, they were probably more afraid of getting fired (or worse) for reporting it.
    • It's also quite possible that murdering a toon is perfectly legal. Eddie had no idea what Dip was before it was explained to him (and he once specialized in toon cases), so it's clearly a very recent invention. Before Dip was around, toons were unkillable, so why would there be any law against killing them?
    • The toon shoe had been stored in a box, as you would do of a prop accessory. When it and the other shoes escaped from the box, nobody made any attempt at communicating with them, instead chasing the toons as if they were kittens out of their basket. The toon shoe itself was apparently unable to talk, but could only squeak. It also didn't seem to understand the situation until it got close to the Dip. All the above elements are strong indication that some toons may not possess human-like intelligence, nor be considered people.
    • Before Doom before invented dip, killing a toon was believed to be impossible. Why would there be any laws on the books concerning murdering that which can't be killed?
      • Exactly. It'd be like writing a law against breaking the speed of light. As far as we know, such a thing is impossible. So why would we bother to make it illegal?
        • If you broke the speed of light, they could probably give you a speeding ticket. Just because there's no specific law prohibiting something doesn't mean that there aren't more general laws that cover it.
          • Right, but that's because the speed limit is far, far slow than the speed of light. It's the same law, just a lesser effect. As noted, nobody thought killing toons was even possible until the invention of dip (laughing to death is pretty much their own doing, you can't force somebody to do it). The only way for killing a toon to be covered under an existing law would be for there to be a law against assaulting a toon. Given how toons love to inflict slapstick in their daily lives, there is almost no chance of assaulting a toon to be covered under a law.
    • What Measure Is a Non-Human?; it's quite possible that by 1947 standards in the movie, Toons aren't 'human' by legal standards and therefore killing them is not considered murder.
  • The Dip-mobile had 2 000 gallons of Dip? How on earth did it run dry in ten minutes (remember that Eddie turned it off multiple times) with that output? Sure, he did knock open the main valve, but it too was quite small.
    • Along with this, what happened to the dip mobile after it was hit by that train? It was still giving off fumes, and still seemed to have some dip in it, so seems to have a good chance of damaging something else when it gets run over in Toon town.
    • For what it's worth, it was 5,000' gallons.
  • I have wondered one thing after seeing this movie: Where are all the Toon/Human hybrids? Given how good looking Jessica Rabbit is, it would be ignorant not to assume that humans wouldn't have humanoid toons as lovers. Since they are both following the rules of human anatomy and biology what would prevent that the woman wouldn't become pregnant and give a birth to a hybrid. Of course, Toons have 'patty-cake' as their own variation of love-making, but why would they then need reproductive organs? (Remember Baby Herman saying how he has a three-year-old dinky) What would be the point of drawing everything that's below the waist? I'm sure Toons don't have the need to go to the bathroom.
    • Toons are not made by humans, they're an ethnic minority; Jessica's line about being "drawn that way" is a play on words. It may seem that Acme and Maroon "own" some of them, but in fact the Toons are under contract in the old Hollywood studio system (they are actors, after all.)
    • In the Roger Rabbit universe, the hybrids of toons and humans are what we in this universe call "CGI characters".
    • Assuming the above theory to be wrong, it might simply not be possible for anyone to be flesh and blood and ink and paint.
    • The odds are slim that a human would be genetically compatible with a toon, since toons have no genetics. You could just as well wonder where all the Human/Inflatable-Doll hybrids are in the real world.
      • Referring to an entirely separate fandom here, Gorillaz's 2D, in an In Character interview with a UK magazine, once claimed that paternity suits from non-animated women don't stick on him because he has no DNA. Maybe it's the same thing.
    • As Linkara and Marzgurl explained, the problem is the paper cuts.
    • Perhaps Judge Doom is a toon/human hybrid. It would actually explain a few things.
    • When Judge Doom is melted, all that's left are his clothes, and a latex mask, and Mickey Mouse and others wonder "what he really looked like". He was clearly a Toon using a live-action disguise made up of accessories you could get a one of those Acme factories. He was by no means a Toon/live-action hybrid.
    • The book mentions toons that are able to pass as human, and lists The Three Stooges and Buster Keaton as examples. Maybe they're hybrids?
  • This movie takes place in 1947. When Doom asks the bar patrons if they've seen a toon Rabbit, Angelo makes a reference to Harvey, despite that movie not being released until 1950. Granted, it was a stage play in 1943, but Angelo doesn't seem like the theater-going type to this troper.
    • He may have heard about it.
    • Maybe he coincidentally made up the concept!
      • Even with the advent of movies going to the theater to see a play was still fairly common, and "Harvey" was (and still is) a very popular comedic play. Back in the forties it was a very well known show (it even won a Pulitzer), and even those who might not have seen it firsthand would still know the basic story from word-of-mouth.
  • Given the film's popularity, why aren't the original book and the book sequel to the film republished?
    • A case of Fridge Brilliance - people seek out the books when they feel underwhelmed by the screen adaptation. This troper only became interested in reading His Dark Materials only after seeing the movie and feeling that there's should be so much more. Roger Rabbit was so awesome that people didn't care about the original source.
      • Really? This troper, and most people I know, tend to seek out the source material if I particularly enjoyed a movie for a sense of completeness (is that a word?). I found it very annoying that it took me years (this was pre-internet) to find a copy of Who Censored Roger Rabbit. (Who P-P-Plugged Roger Rabbit still eludes me.)
    • Who Censored Roger Rabbit? is legally available online for free.
  • If dip is supposed to quickly kill all toons, why wasn't Benny the Cab affected other than sliding when Judge Doom spills a barrel of it into the road?
    • "Quickly" does not necessarily mean "instantly." Benny is affected; when he slides off the road you can hear a very loud hissing noise as the Dip is eating away at his wheels, and in subsequent shots you can see that all his tires are flat, because they've been partially melted (which is why he has to get behind the wheel of another car instead of driving himself when taking Roget to the Acme factory) -- but luckily for Benny, the only part of him that was actually in contact with the Dip was his wheels, and only for a few seconds at that. Since he was going so fast, he managed to skid off the road and out of the Dip puddle before he melted away. He seems to have gotten new tires at the end of the movie, so probably he went to a Toon mechanic or something.
    • Yeah, but Judge Doom was only touching by his feet and he still melted, Benny got far more exposed to the dip than he did.
      • No, Judge Doom was actually far more exposed than Benny was. Doom was hosed town by a torrent of Dip and then ended up standing in a huge puddle of it -- and remained standing in the Dip. Benny's skidding over the Dip was over in a couple of seconds, after which he was out of it and on dry land. Doom was soaked in the stuff, and stood still in the puddle while he melted. Which took almost half a minute.


  • Sure, toons might have SOME prejudice against them in the movie's world, but surely Judge Doom knew that genocide would get him in trouble with the law and couldn't exactly be covered up?
    • Toon Town has its own set of laws, conveniently under Doom's jurisdiction. There's probably a law somewhere in their insane, toony lawbook that makes it all completely okay.
    • Also, it's more than just prejudice to the humans of the movie. Toons are nothing but studio property.
    • It might help that in Real Life the U.S. government was carrying out its own mini-genocide during the time period. Perhaps you've heard of the Eugenics Movement?
      • False. Some US states had compulsory sterilization laws, but there was never any federal-level eugenics program of any kind.
      • And sterilization is less brutal than abortion, so it's something of a stretch to call it "genocide."
      • Still fits the official definition of genocide, the purposeful intent to destroy a group in whole or in part. Genocide doesn't necessarily have to involve outright killing.
    • Doom was insane and so was his plan.
    • Easier explaination. There was no law about killing toons at all because Toons were supposedly unkillible before Dip was created, thus a law against killing them would be pointless because no one could kill one. And Doom makes the rules in Toon Town. He invented Dip after he became the Judge of Toon Town, thus he is the law in Toon Town. There was no law against killing an unkillible toon before he created Dip and he stopped one from being created afterwards. Yes, a law could've been made afterwards, but you can't be tried for something you did before it became illegal. People might not have liked it, but there wasn't anything they could do about it.
    • Acme's will suggests that Marvin Acme was the sole owner of all the real estate in Toontown, and Doom is the sole authority figure over the same territory. If Doom gets the will and doctors it to list him as sole beneficiary, then there is nothing to stop him from condemning every toon building, demolishing them, and writing off the casualties as "belligerent trespassers". None of the LA cops go in there, and unless Amnesty International spontaneously pops into existence 15 years early, who else really cares?
      • He doesn't even need to go that far, it seemed evident that without the will presenting itself Acme's estate (all of Toon Town) would be forfeit to the current lawful governing authority (hence why Doom was trying to acquire the will, either to hide it or destroy it). So if the will was not present to name a beneficiary it was government property under Doom's jurisdiction, he could to whatever he wanted there under the bounds of the law, and like it's been said above, there was no law about killing toons.
  • When Acme's corpse is being taken away, why is there a lump under the sheet where his head is considering HE HAD A SAFE DROPPED ON IT? Shouldn't it be flat above the neck?
    • As dark as it was, it was still a PG movie, and that might have been a little too much.
    • Illogical Safe?
    • If I recall correctly, only part of the head of the chalk outline was actually touching the safe, so the rest of it could have been okay. Come to think of it, there ought to have been more of a mess, given the mode of death...
    • I'm just watching that scene the movie now, and there isn't a lump under the sheet where Acme's head is. That is very clearly a headless corpse, albeit covered by a sheet.
  • How did Teddy die and Eddie's arm get broken from having a piano dropped on them in Toontown? Shouldn't toon physics have spared them both any injury (see Eddie flattening in the elevator or surviving his SEVERAL stories' worth of falling)? Even if the piano itself was real, it being dropped in Toontown at the "little dive on Yockster Street" should have caused it to adhere to the local rules.
    • Not necessarily. He was flattened in a toon elevator, and landed on a toon street. In other words, the physics of Toontown seem to vest in the physical objects, not the town itself. I would assume that a real piano would be lethal simply because toon rules don't apply to it, and Judge Doom seems smart enough to know that.
    • The chase was proceeding at the human part of city. The piano was real human piano.
    • Eddie and his brother are not toons, and therefore are no less vulnerable than other humans.
    • Eddie survived the fall onto the toon street because he was caught by a toon. The elevator flattened him because that's what happens when toon-elevators move quickly upward--the toon-ness was working on him. Having a piano dropped on you, with no toon interference, would work normally.
      • I always thought it was a question of intent. Bugs and Mickey didn't mean to hurt Eddie when he was falling off the building, they just wanted to have fun. Doom set out to harm the Valiants.
  • How much does the Ink and Paint club have to pay to repair or replace the Pianos that the ducks shoot apart during their act? They did look like real pianos, although this does bring up another question of how much toon stuff costs to make.
    • Jessica Rabbit. Duh.
      • Explain, please.
      • Presumably, the poster above's point is that Jessica Rabbit draws a sufficiently large paying audience to enable the owners to cover the damages caused by other acts.
    • Plus, I'd bet that enough people go there specifically because they want to see a pair of bad-tempered ducks beat each other up. Wouldn't you? Marvin Acme even says that they never actually finish their act.
      • And it is an act, in all ways, and the destruction of the pianos are a part of it. In an earlier draft of the script, when Eddie sneaks in backstage, we see to piano movers coming in with a replacement piano, lamenting that "it makes me sick to think of these beautiful pianos gettin' chopped into match sticks every night by those screwy ducks." Clearly the Ink and Paint club can afford the pianos, or they wouldn't have had the act in the first place.
        • There's also an extra scene in that same draft with Donald and Daffy testing out the new piano, chatting quite amiably, reinforcing that their fight is part of the act.

Donald: Phooey! Out of tune again!
Daffy: Not to worry, Donald. We can fix that with my sledgehammer.
Donald: Never mind, Daffy. I've got an axe in my dressing room.

  • From the Pattycake sequence, it looked like Patty Cake was the toon equivalent of sex. How, than, does Baby Herman's "3-year old dinky" come into play? Or does Toon sex simply involve whichever activity best sets off the couple's Rule of Funny?
    • Blue and Orange Morality comes into play here.
      • How so? And why would Marvin Acme want to be a "sugar daddy" for Jessica Rabbit, as he was, if all he got out of it was the chance to literally play pattycake with her?
      • Maybe Marvin Acme is turned on by playing patty-cake. People will turn anything into a fetish...
    • Perhaps pattycake is a common form of foreplay amongst toons.
      • And "baking a carrot cake" means secks.
  • Before Judge Doom became Judge Doom, he was simply Doom. How he is supposed to look without inflatable human clothing? Maybe it's was too intense for young viewers, but still...
  • If toons can only be killed by dip, how does Eddie kill a bunch of the weasels with laughter at the film's climax?
    • This is an interesting question. But if you notice, the weasels who die laughing end up as ghosts. However Smart-Ass, the weasel who fell into the Dip, didn't get a ghost. So perhaps Dip is the only thing that can erase a toon from existance completely, mind, body and soul.
    • There must be plenty of undead toons, like Casper or dancing skeletons. Also, how many times have we seen Sylvester's soul get separated from his body, only to later retrieve it? This is really just another of those visual gags that define toon nature. On the other hand, we have Teddy Valiant, Marvin Acme, a shoe, R.K Maroon, Smart-Ass and Doom, presumably all dead for real.
    • I figure that the weasels weren't killed by laughter. They were 'incapacitated'. Even in ghost form Psycho was still capable of turning on the Dip Machine. Possibly the ghost weasels could be brought back, if you reunited their ghost animations with their bodies, but Smart Ass, who was Dipped, would not be able to be brought back ever.
      • Odds are their bodies all got soaked in the Dip when the warehouse flooded, so none of them are likely to be coming back. Poor little guys.
    • Does that mean that little shoe Doom dipped didn't get to go to Heaven?!?
    • Maybe the Dip causes the Toons to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. That makes me feel a bit better about it.
  • The weasels are pretty scummy characters, but when they find out Doom plans to completely erase Toon Town from existence, along with every other toon, one would have thought they'd have something to say about it. Or that they would at least be shown as only doing it because they're scared. As it is, they don't even seem bothered. They don't seem anything like as crazy as Doom himself, so why don't they have a problem with Toon Town being erased?
    • Greasy, Wheezy and Smart-Ass may have been too greedy or cowardly to stand up to Doom, perhaps wishing to stay at the right hand of the devil rather than in his path, and reap the benefits afterward. Psycho was too Axe Crazy to care, and Stupid...too stupid.
    • It's also implied Doom promised to them a great percentual of the Freeway's profits once Toontown would have been destroyed. Anyway, what makes you think they're not deranged and sociopath like their boss ? It's quite possible they have the same Doom's personality: a toon who wants get rid of his own race for greed (and probably pure sadism as well).
    • With the Toon Town gone they'd be among the few remaining toons. Their value to producers would skyrocket!
    • Who's to say that Doom might not turn the Dip on them down the road? Considering they're betraying their own species Doom probably doesn't trust them and might just eliminate them once their usefulness to him is over.
  • If pattycake is a Toon equivalent of sex and/or foreplay, this really brings a huge level of Squick to various cartoons which show small children playing it. Ack. Then again, maybe it's only an equivalent specifically to Roger and Jessica - every couple's got their quirks.
    • Um...I don't think pattycake is the "equivalent" of sex and/or foreplay for toons. I think Roger was just bummed because Jessica was having fun without him. Like kids who cry because no one will play with them on the playground.
      • I don't know, they sounded very...into it.
    • Maybe the toon children were like Baby Herman, and mentally adults.
  • Where did Toons come from originally? It seemed implied that there were Toons, and then people started filming them (so they existed before animated movies). Did they exist in some alternate world (Toontown) that humanity never discovered until the early 1900s? Also, what would be the repercussions of Toons in regards to the first or second World War (or any wars)? Not all Toons are harmless, and if an army could field unkillable soldiers who deal with their own set of physics, then the result would be the humans dying off rather quickly, and the remaining Toon soldiers fighting endlessly.
    • Toons may be invulnerable, but they are not omniscient. We've seen plenty of cases in cartoons of characters (and groups of characters) conceding defeat to another, sometimes when sufficiently battered up (as what frequently happens to Daffy Duck) or when they've run out of options (as with Tom sometimes in Tom and Jerry). There are a LOT of questions about the rest of this world with toons and how they work. You could fill up this page to capacity with such questions. Of course, if toon warfare exists, they'll be using a lot more Dip soon.
    • According to Roger, it's against the nature of Toons to kill. Doom was an exception.
  • So Eddie hides Roger from the Toon Patrol by submerging him in his sink filled with water. A paint-thinner-solvent mix can kill a Toon for real, but not water?!
    • Water-proof ink?
      • Yep, well sort of! For the period, animated characters were drawn/painted directly onto acetate. Water based inks/paints wouldn't have worked. Brushes plus mistakes, etc. had to be cleaned with acetone, turpentine or benzine! Modern water-based paints/inks can be waterproof once they are dry, and paint onto acetate, but I don't think anything similar was available at the time.
  • Why does a joke/prop factory have a road-roller?
    • Perhaps in case they need to film a cartoon where a character gets flattened.
    • To flatten the portable holes, of course. Alternately, it was part of the construction effort involved in installing the enormous dip machine, and they hadn't gotten around to sending it back to the construction garage. Alternately alternately, it was going to be used in one of Judge Doom's nefarious plots, a backup-backup-backup plan to get rid of Eddie (or whomever) in a way that's just as cartoonish as how his brother was killed if he somehow made it that far and defeated the weasel-minions.
  • It would have probably spoiled The Reveal but why during the final battle, doesn't Judge Doom uses immediately his toon powers against Eddie but just his sword - cane and other Acme tools ?
    • I saw it as Doom not really caring to use his powers, he thought Valiant was beneath him. But it really doesn't matter, since his true personality is absolutely insane, I doubt logic even goes into the equation with it.
  • Speaking of spoiling The Reveal... Santino mentions Doom having bought his Judge-ship by "spreading around a lot of simoleons" in Toontown; Eddie later at the movie theater with Roger, explaining how his brother died, says the toon that killed him robbed a bank and "got away with a zillion simoleons". Of course, it turns out that Doom is one that killed Teddy, since he used that money to get his master plan under way. What bugs me is that Eddie didn't piece THAT together right then and there. I mean, I get that the liquor binges might have dulled his skills at least a bit, but COME ON, he's supposed to be a master detective, right?
    • On the other hand, the bank was known to have been robbed by a toon, Judge Doom was considered, to all obvious appearances, human, so the connection isn't immediately obvious. Eddie may have assumed the Judge had been paid off by a corrupt toon if he thought about it at all. This wouldn't be so uncommon in the noir films of the 40s.
  • What exactly happens to the toon bullets after they're shot? Do they go on to living their own lives?
    • At a guess, I'd say they're reusable and eventually return to Eddie or Eddie's gun until the next time they're needed.
  • Why, in order to escape from Lena Hyena, didn't Eddie used the stairs of the flat instead of tryng to exit out of the Men's Room (which also caused him to fall) ? One more thing, everytime Eddie has someone pretty hideous and terrified in front of him like Toon Judge Doom it always takes four/five seconds before he finally run away. I personally would'have run like hell without even look at.
  • Hypothetically, how would Happy Tree Friends work in this universe? Are they a species of toon that get their guts and stuff torn out for the norm, but they can easily put them back in or something like that?
    • Toons work on Rule of Funny, so the Happy Tree Friends may be completely normal Toons, just specializing in humor based on blood and gore. It's not that hard to imagine that some later-generation Toons might decide that the old "anvil on the head" routine was old and tired and begin experimenting with edgier material.
  • Is Raoul just, like, the most insanely anal-retentive OCD director ever? I know in the script it says stars but many times scripts say lots of things which for whatever reason can't be done during filming. Raoul scraps an entire take lasting several minutes, all because Roger sees birds and not stars. So what? Why are stars so important, Raoul? Will stars really make the fridge payoff that much better than birds? Are you a slave to the script, Raoul? If Roger can't do stars for whatever reason, use whatever he can do, like the birds. A good director would do that rather than constantly redo takes, wasting money and film and people's time. And on top of this, Raoul is a real jerk to Roger about it. This makes him a really poor director.
    • Either he's upset because Roger is messing with his "artistic vision" of what the cartoon should be, and for some reason thinks that stars will make or break the picture, or he for some reason has it in for Roger. Or you're right and he's just a Jerkass director -- but that's actually pretty realistic. Remember, this is the 1940s, which in the real world was some time of turbulence for the movie industry in general, with actors and animators alike were fighting for better pay and better treatment. Given the discrimination against Toons in the world of the movie, I doubt they are unionized, and so people like Raoul can treat them any way they like with no fear of repercussions.
    • Regarding Raoul being a jerk to Roger, well, there's a reason we have the Prima Donna Director trope; movie directors acting like prissy, over-sensitive dickheads throwing a temper tantrum when they don't get their way or when their 'vision' is compromised and taking it out on others isn't exactly unheard of.
  • So what exactly happens to someone if they don't manage to get away from Lena Hyena? In a crazy place like Toon Town, Eddie couldn't have been the only one to have a run in with her. What would happen to others who found themselves in the same situation and didn't have Eddie's luck.
    • A slapstick escape plot?
  • So, when Doom and the weasels are looking for Roger, Doom uses 'Shave and a Haircut' to draw him out because no Toon can resist completing it .... except for some reason THE WEASELS THEMSELVES Or DOOM for that matter. Seriously ...?
    • It's probably not about finishing the rythm per se, but about blowing your cover. Toons operate on Rule of Funny, even (or especially) when this is a serious inconvenience to them, and so a Toon who is hiding won't be able to resist answering the "shave and a haircut" knock simply because it's funny that he'll thoughtlessly give himself away like that. Genre Savvy Doom is simply exploiting this weakness -- there are probably other tricks he could have used, such as pretending to sneeze and compelling Roger to say "Gesundheit," but he went with the rhythm, possibly because it looked cooler and more intimidating.
  • Doesn't Jessica Rabbit have any casual clothes? There's one photograph of her wearing a bathing suit, but for the whole rest of the movie she's wearing a strapless lounge dress (with or without sequins).
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Who_Framed_Roger_Rabbit%3F/Headscratchers?oldid=1232028"