Animaniacs/WMG

Boo-ryshnikov is a giant chicken.
A chicken I tell you! A giant chicken!
 * How dare you insult the great Boo-ryshnikov!
 * You said the same thing about Davy Omelette!
 * You have just won the Internet.

The shorts that are not set on the Warner backlot are the Warner cartoons.
It's the only possible way that they can travel through time, suddenly become kings of a country, etc.
 * Then the writers must be prophets. Someone wrote contemporary 1990s references existed in the 1930s.
 * Come on, don't tempt them...
 * Ooh, so the water tower would be their-* WHACK!*
 * But we all know Wakko is a-*BANG*
 * Always thought Animaniacs were a parody of "Steamboat Willie"...
 * The introduction says the Warners' films "made absolutely no sense," so they were locked away in the studio vaults. But all the Warner films they show during Animaniacs make perfect sense; they're wacky, sure, but not incomprehensible. That's because the films made in the 1930s are full of references to modern pop culture. The Warners aren't time travelers, but they ARE prophets/espers.
 * They got locked in the water tower before they could appear in any 1930s cartoons. Once freed, they made cartoons in the 90s.
 * Wrong, they show in their "75th Anniversery" episode that they appeared in several cartoons prior to their incarceration in the tower, first next to the original star of their shorts, Buddy, and then later their own shorts, including a disastrous attempt at letting Wakko direct.

The Warner studios lot is littered with time portals.
This is how Yakko, Wakko and Dot end up in different time periods. They travel through the time portals to have fun with historical figures.
 * It could also be how Ralph the Guard can be seen in 1930 catching the Warners for the first time, and is later seen in the modern (1990's) setting having not changed one iota. Also, the three Goodfeathers were in World War II, Rita and Runt have survived both the Salem Witch Trials and Nazi-occupied Poland, Mindy and Buttons have been seen hundreds of years in the future without aging a bit, Pinky and the Brain were Merlin's pets, Slappy (and even more unbelievably, Skippy) at Woodstock, the Hippos being on Noah's Ark... Come to think of it, almost no major or minor character has any consistent timeline.

This also explains the 1990s pop culture references in the 1930s. It's like how the Genie in Aladdin travels to other times and why he ends up making pop culture references about us. (See Wild Mass Guessing on Disney Animated Canon. Looney Tunes and the Disneyverse meet in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?? so it may even be the same portal network.)

This also explains why the old guy always wants the Warners locked up. He doesn't want them interfering with the timeline, and so he keeps them locked up to make sure they don't erase him from history or something. That, or he's trying to make sure they don't get in the way of his diabolical plans with the portals...
 * Portals? The Warner Brothers and Sister probably have a Heavy Companion Cube stored somewhere in their home... But no cake.
 * (Puts on red cap, tail and Scouse accent) What's this about a cake?

Trips to the past are actually just hypnosis sessions with the Doc designed to make the Warners experience their past lives
Hey, they had animation for awhile. Heck, how do we know they didn't jump off of the cave walls?

Animaniacs, Tiny Toon Adventures and Freakazoid!! are incarnations of the three Looney Tunes archetypes
Tiny Toon Adventures is normal kids' programming (compared to the other two) so it's the Every Man archetype. Animaniacs is chaotic but good-natured, so they're The Bugs Bunny. Freakazoid!! is the most random of the three of them, so it's the Screwy Squirrel.

After they were captured in the final clip of the last episode, the Warners were put back in the water tower, with a new lock.
Sequel Hook!

The one thing that can break the Warners' spirit...
Introduce them to their fans. Every single one. No exceptions.
 * If you're pondering what I'm pondering, I think Dot would react with a hearty "Deee-sgusting!", Wakko would eat their computers, and Yakko would just give a "Goodnight, everybody". Nothing can break their spirit, because they just get aggressive when other toons would BSOD.
 * Or if they were indroduced to their (non-furry/crazy) fans, it would be a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
 * We've already seen the two things that can completely break their spirit - a gas station bathroom, and anyone more insane, annoying and impervious to pain than them (see Mr Director, Baloney, that weird nanny). Their fans are more insane and annoying, but not more impervious to pain.

Yakko, Wakko, and Dot are developmentally disabled.
This is why Dr. Scratchandsniff is always speaking about them as if they are children even though they are in their sixties.
 * Wow. That's... that's really depressing. Erm... good job?
 * They may age as a cartoon character would rather than a regular being.
 * How do you get the idea Yakko is developmentally disabled with his wit?
 * He isn't. Dr. Scratchandsniff simply refuses to acknowledge that he could be different from his brother.
 * Fifty years locked in isolation in a water tower would developmentally disable anyone.
 * They were already nuts, even for cartoon characters, which was why they got locked there in the first place. And then they were left to fester together and feed off each other's insanity for a good six decades...frankly, they held up a lot better than they should have.

The Warners are Eldritch Abominations.
They were drawn into this reality by the summonings of a human mind. They have the power to warp reality on a whim and toy with humanity for their amusement. They drive anyone who spends time in their company insane. No one can discern their actual species because the shapes they assume are merely the projections of the mind of the cartoonist who first glimpsed them, trying to make sense of the horrors he witnessed.

Fearing the chaos and ruin they bring about, they were locked away in a tower for generations, gradually forgotten, until one day..

Think about it.

Slappy Squirrel and Screwy Squirrel once had a thing together.
They were going out for a while in the 1940's, but they split up after Screwy was finally permanently institutionalized. No one else was ever good enough for Slappy, sadly.
 * Screwy dies in his final cartoon. Perhaps that had something to do with their split up. The resulting grief made Slappy cranky and bitter.

The Warners are the results of gene splicing gone horribly wrong.
Somebody decided to splice a monkey, a cat, and a dog together with a human's brain.

The Warners are cats like Rita is.
Even though they look much more ambiguous than Rita, the Warners have a muzzle length, nose color, tail, and paws with retractable claws like that of a cat. Even their ears look like they can pass for overly stylized cat ears.

In the Animaniacs universe, a cartoon's age is proportionate to experience rather than time.
Slappy Squirrel and her enemies have been around for a very long time, having released works which date back to the thirties, maybe earlier. They are now incredibly old. The Warner siblings, on the other hand, were created in the 1930s, yet are still as young as they were upon conception. Slappy and company's works have seen consistent release since the characters were concieved. The Warner siblings, on the other hand, had no released works--all the reels were locked away once they were.
 * This actually makes sense. Ether that or they were intended to be immortal.

The reason Mindy consistently calls her mom "Lady" is...
Because her parents are so neglectful of her that Mindy views them as strangers.
 * That or she is actually her step-mother.

Almost all of Mindy's adventures are really Buttons having nightmares.
Buttons is almost always seen trying to sleep right before one of Mindy's escapades, and it would explain why Mindy is capable of doing things that aren't humanly possible such as scaling Notre Dame Cathedral. Additionally, it explains the weird behavior or many objects that Mindy chases (Balloons that float only when it's inconvenient to do so, lollipops with indestructible handles, balls that never stop bouncing) and why Buttons always winds up taking fantastic amounts of punishment before getting put in the one situation he was told to avoid. Further, it also explains why almost no adults can be seen anywhere, and the few that are don't even question why Mindy is out by herself - Buttons would think all humans inept and ignorant after being around Mindy's parents all day. The only time the adults have a realistic response is in Cat on a Hot Steel Beam, making this perhaps the only 'real' incident Mindy ever had (The bit with the staple gun notwithstanding).

Yakko was high at least a few times throughout the series.
Mainly during "Yakko's Universe" and "I'm Mad." "Yakko's Universe" sort of speaks for itself since it's so. . . trippy. "And the universe extends/To a place that never ends/Which is maybe just inside a little jar." Then in "I'm Mad" it's not so much the song as it's the way Yakko acts. A few times he's completely spaced out, probably under the pretense of being sleepy, but he just ends up looking like he's stoned.
 * Makes even more sense when you consider that his voice is a spoof-Beatles accent, and those guys were on everything. Their lyrics also tended to sound a lot like the ones in "Yakko's Universe".
 * Except that it's Wakko who had the Liverpudlian accent.

The Movie isn't an AU world but the real one
The series are just dreams/nightmares the characters have to coup with their terrible real life. Thus why the movie was much more serious! Alternitively see next.

The Movie is a prequel
The movie takes place before the series, after Salazar is overthrown, things gradually change to the series timeline. Alternatively, it's the world the characters were in before being 'imagined' in the series world.

The Movie is just that.
It's a movie, done by the whole cast in the Warner Bros. Studio. After all, it's like one big musical, and the one time we see every single Animaniacs character together in one feature. Remember that they are, basically, Animated Actors.
 * Makes sense. The Movie's a bit Disney-esque anyway, and it's fun to imagine them all on the set. (Just imagine the outtakes!)

Mindy will grow into a Feral Child.
It will be just like the tragic Real Life case of a girl from the Ukraine who was left outside with dogs throughout most of her childhood, and as a result acts like one.

Skippy's parents are dead.
This is why he lives with his Aunt Slappy. It also provides some insight as to why seeing Bumbie's mom die has such a devastating impact on him, maybe his mother died similarly.

Slappy is not actually Skippy's aunt.
Taking the WMG that Slappy and Screwy once had a thing and the fact that we never see Skippy's parents - plus that the one time Slappy's taken out of the picture, Skippy is taken away by child protective services rather than being sent back to his parents. What if the reason we don't see Skippy's parents has nothing to do with them being dead? We don't really know how old Skippy is - he's young, but...well, so are the Warner kids. And since when Slappy started (during the Thirties) and through most of her career (Fourties to...what, mid-Sixties or late Seventies?), it would have been very unseemly for a single woman to have a kid out of wedlock - in fact, being caught as an unwed mother could have ruined Slappy's career...unless she said that Skippy was her nephew, whom she was taking care of for his parents while they were sick/on vacation/dealing with some problems. Sure, it might've become a paper-thin excuse after a while (after all, Skippy's parents never show up to take him back) but as long as she didn't show any evidence that it was a lie, most people would be willing to go along with it. Why risk Slappy's wrath if they don't have to?
 * This troper loves this WMG. It makes the Wham! Episode involving them have an even more heartwarming ending. This is so material for a fanfic.
 * This could have potentially far-reaching implications if other cartoon characters who were inexplicably given nephews {Donald Duck, Jerry, Popeye) were doing the same, and their nephews are actually out-of-wedlock children.
 * Agreed, this WMG is awesome. Somebody get crackin' with that fanfic!

Slappy is the Disney-parody gray squirrel -from Screwy's first short- after the tar was beaten out of her by Screwy and Meathead.
For no other reason than comedy. The reason she's so different? She was beaten so badly that she couldn't live long with her current body, being more "Disney-styled" and less flexible or resistant to permanent injury. So... they redrew her. They had the tec- pencils.
 * The squirrel was named Sammy, but maybe that was short for Samantha. And she became Slappy after she was redrawn and possibly had some Sanity Slippage as a result of the beating. Looking at the Art Evolution Bugs Bunny, Tom of Tom and Jerry and Betty Boop underwent, this WMG is not too much of a stretch.
 * Having thus been subjected to such severe Break the Cutie, she trained herself in the way of the violent cartoon character and travelled the world, seeking revenge on Screwy. Of course, he was dead by that time, so she began to dish her vengeance out on anyone who crossed her path. It made her feel a lot better.

Rita and Runt dropped out from the first season because they ran into the Pound Puppies and finally found a home.
They've wandered around the world- no reason why they couldn't wander straight out of the studio and into another. And since getting dogs and cats good homes is what Pound Puppies do, they actually got their dream!
 * This troper assumed that Real Life Writes the Plot was inverted involving them, since they ended up living with Scratchinsniff at the end of The Movie...

Marilyn Manson is the lost Warner Sibling.
White face? Check. Black fur/hair? Check. Far from sane? Check. Tongue spends more time outside than inside his mouth? Check. Barely accepted by legal standards of sanity? Check. Family name?

Slappy is Screwy Squirrel's sister.
Combine some of the elements above regarding the thing Slappy and Screwy had, but instead of wild nights of passion, they were just siblings who happened to both get in the same industry. Then Screwy dies, leaving a son. Skippy did inherit the fur colour. (Then again, this assumes that one parent could've had a grey and red squirrel for kids, so go figure.)

Skippy is a young Conker.
Think of it, They look similar if you compare Skippy with young Conker from Diddy Kong Racing. He had his adventures (Conker's Pocket Tales) in a nearby friends house (Berri, soon to be his girlfriend after he turned 13).

Once the show was cancelled, 9 or 10 years later, he was busted by doing something illegal (perhaps by doing something the censors wouldn't allow, like something majorly bad) He went to rock bottom, changed his name, started drinking and smoking, and started disobeying his parents words, and followed Slappy's words of wisdom, except in a more, exaggerated way because he didn't look into it much.

His attitude is the result of having Former Child Star Syndrome. One day he had a hangover so bad, he ended up in a field, and that's how the events of Conker's Bad Fur Day starts.

The Warners aren't mean, they're just poorly-socialized.
Think about it: Unlike Slappy, who goes about everything with an air of ornery malevolence, the Warners are only ever playful, unless they're playing Karmic Trickster. So they don't mean to hurt anybody in the shorts like "Schnitzelbank" and "The Kid In The Lid," they just don't understand, in all of their merry-making, that they're going to far.

And let's face it, if you were locked in a water tower for 60 years and 80% of your life with only your two siblings for company, you'd probably have trouble playing with others, too.

Wakko warner is a time lord and his Gag Bag is his TARDIS...
What? SOME-one had to say it!

Spielberg will make a CGI/live-action Animaniacs movie.
And why, you ask?

(1) Gen-X nostalgiafests are HUGE at the box office right now (Transformers trilogy, Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Smurfs, etc)

(2) The success of Super 8 might motivate Spielberg to continue looking at his older stuff for ideas.

(3) The Warners already have an "attitude" and make pop-culture references--just like in a Dreamworks movie, only they were already like that so it's not a sell-out.

(4) If you're even on this page, you know the fanbase is still thriving. And most of them would be old enough to bring their kids to see it!

In other words, 'tis box-office gold waiting to happen. I'm guessing CGI/live-action not just because it's trendy, but because Animaniacs took place in the "real world". The humans could be played by live actors, with the "toons" and Funny Animals being CGI.
 * I'd personally hope for 2D animation used to create a Roger Rabbit Effect, but that may be too much to hope for these days. Unless the Who Framed Roger Rabbit? sequel comes out and is a box office smash, which would make this movie even more likely.

When and if the show is revived, it will include a Take That to Justin Bieber
No explanation required.

Katie Kaboom was a teenage pregnancy
Doesn't her mother look a wee too young looking to be around late 40's? Could be another Judy Jetson on our hands

The antics of the Warners is really a hallucination of Doctor Scratchensniff
The Warners are his three pets which become chaotic due to his imagination