Looney Tunes/YMMV

"Daffy Duck:: Have you got a marriage license?
 * Nightmare Fuel: Quite a few shorts have this: "The Big Snooze" being the most blatant. Lampshaded in three Chuck Jones-directed cartoons: "Scaredy Cat," "Claws For Alarm," and "Jumpin' Jupiter", where Porky takes Sylvester to these scary places to sleep for the night, and only Sylvester can see the scary things just about to happen to Porky...
 * "Chow Hound":
 * "Porky in Wackyland" can be a little too bizarre for some.
 * Porky In Egypt (1938): In this scene, Porky's camel Humpty Bumpty starts to hallucinate while in the desert heat.
 * Adaptation Displacement: Bob Clampett's adaptation of Dr. Seuss' Horton Hatches the Egg (1942) used the book itself as a storyboard with additional gag ideas (and Horton's "Hut-Sut" song) written in.
 * Alternate Character Interpretation: It's been debated that Elmer Fudd in "Hare Brush" was faking insanity and pretending to be a rabbit so he wouldn't get busted by the feds for tax evasion. This is further evidenced by Elmer's final line, after Bugs (in Elmer's clothes) is hauled off to jail: "I may be a screwy rabbit, but I'm not goin' to Alcatwaz..."
 * Archive Panic: Exactly 1,000 classic-era theatrical shorts, plus the SNAFU shorts and other bits of miscellanea. At least there haven't been new Looney Tunes shorts regularly made since 1969. That would make the series even more grueling to get through.
 * Award Snub: Despite winning seven Oscars, almost no Looney Tunes productions has ever gained an Annie Award, which is an award ceremony exclusively for animation. The biggest letdown would've had to be Looney Tunes: Back in Action losing to a certain CGI talking fish movie.
 * Then there was the famous incident in which A Wild Hare, the first Bugs Bunny cartoon, as well as Puss Gets the Boot, the first Tom and Jerry cartoon, were passed up for an academy award for one of MGM's Happy Harmonies shorts, The Milky Way all due to Cute Kitten.
 * Boring Invincible Hero: Though it's debatable how "'boring" they were, most of the Looney Tunes recurring protaganists (Bugs, Tweety, Speedy, etc.) are often presented as extreme Karmic Tricksters who outsmarted their Rogues Gallery without so much as batting an eyelid, though largely due to the foes they go up against. That said the WB staff did make attempts to balance this at times, Bugs' winning streak was balanced with the odd Butt Monkey role every once in a while, while the De Patie Freleng shorts used a more hapless Speedy.
 * Complete Monster: Lawyer Goodwill from "The Case Of The Stuttering Pig".
 * The trapper from "Porky In The North Woods".
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: "What's Opera Doc" and Rabbit Of Seville
 * If most of Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn's scores don't count as CMOA, I don't know what does!
 * Dork Age: Every cartoon produced in the 1960s after the WB animation studio initially closed its doors.
 * And some of the cartoons made after Mel Blanc died and other voice actors were hired to replace him (that includes the TV shows like Baby Looney Tunes, Loonatics Unleashed, and The Looney Tunes Show), like Greg Burson, Billy West, Jeff Bergman, Tom Kenny, etc.
 * Arguably this could include the batch of 75 black-and-white Looney Tunes that were previously part of the Sunset Films/Guild Films packages which WB had sent to Korea in 1967 to be redrawn and painted in color. The trace jobs were sloppy, color schemes were off key and synchronization faltered in spots.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Michigan J. Frog
 * Also Pepé Le Pew has become this in recent years, most likely due to Moral Guardians accusing the cartoons of advocating sexual harassment and Dave Chappelle's stand-up comedy piece about how watching your favorite childhood shows as an adult lose their charm when you discover the perverted side to them.
 * Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Tweety, the Roadrunner... hell, any major character that wasn't in the lineup from the beginning.
 * Marvin The Martian, for generally being a (semi)competent villain, having a hilarious voice, and actually succeeding a couple times became pretty popular.
 * Fetish Fuel: Thanks to Values Dissonance, a lot of the crossdressing, male-on-male kissing, and just the Pepé Le Pew cartoons in general can be misconstrued as this. See the Fetish Fuel page for the proof.
 * "I think Bugs Bunny's pretty when he wears a dress".
 * Comic artist Robert Crumb admitted to being sexually attracted to Bugs Bunny (prior to his fetish for women with big butts).
 * Foe Yay: Bugs and Elmer (i.e., Rabbit of Seville, Bugs' Bonnets, What's Opera, Doc?), Bugs and Yosemite Sam (i.e., Hare Trimmed) ... Bugs and most of his adversaries at some point, really.
 * Daffy and Porky:

Porky Pig:: G-g-gosh no, I'm not married.

Daffy Duck:: Aha! Not married eh? Well -- *jumps into Porky's arms* -- whaddya say you and me go steady?"


 * Gannon Banned: Spelling Looney Tunes as Looney TOONS will get you a lot of ire on forums.
 * Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Speedy Gonzales, despite being perceived as an Ethnic Scrappy by Cartoon Network and even banned from airing, was very popular with Latin Americans, Mexicans to be more specific.
 * Speedy is also very popular in Germany itself, enough to have gotten his own show there in the '70s, complete with its own unique (and often remixed) theme song.
 * "Grand Theft Auto" Effect: It's not uncommon to hear a song outside of Looney Tunes and immediately think of Looney Tunes, such as Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse".
 * Because of this and The Weird Al Effect, a lot of old tunes from the '30s and '40s are only remembered at all because they were sung in a Looney Tunes short.
 * Growing the Beard: Initially, the Looney Tunes started as shameless ripoffs of Disney's success and Merrie Melodies was just made to sell Warner Studio's sheet music (it's the 1930s version of the music video). That all changed after Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising parted ways with Leon Schlesinger, forcing him to assemble a new staff--many of them important in shaping the studios future. While the shorts still remained Disney like in nature, Tex Avery and Bob began going against the status quo of animation, starting with Tex's landmark short "Gold Diggers of '49" where he started taking advantage of cartoons being able to do anything and use them as vehicles for gags. It's generally agreed that things vastly improved as a whole when Tex Avery and Bob Clampett began to direct, as they were both a big part of shaping the Looney Tunes sense of humor we know today. However, it's the '40s that are often seen as the high point in the studio's history (ironically, Avery had left WB in 1941, but his influence had already been established).
 * Hilarious in Hindsight: In "Tortoise Wins By a Hare," one of the headlines on the newspaper advertising the race between Bugs Bunny and Cecil the Turtle reads, "Hitler Commits Suicide." This cartoon was released in 1943, a mere two years before that actually happened. It would be Harsher in Hindsight, but this is Hitler we're talking about...
 * Some jokes unavoidably get this, due to inflation. Daffy complaining about paying 25 cents for cab fare in "Show Biz Bugs" is one of the funnier examples. Most people nowadays would kill for fare like this.
 * In 1990's "Box-Office Bunny", Daffy complains about paying seven dollars to see a movie. Compare that to today where it can cost more than twenty dollars for just one person to get admission!
 * Mind you, it's Daffy Duck we're talking about.
 * In "Norman Normal," a drunken guy starts telling the title character a joke about an Eskimo, and Norman talks over the guy and says it's wrong to tell jokes that are designed to make another race look inferior. This is funny enough owing to the Censored Eleven, but doubly so when you consider that "Hocus Pocus Pow-Wow," the cartoon released immediately before "Norman Normal," has since been removed from circulation for precisely this reason.
 * Iron Woobie: Wile E. Coyote and Sylvester.
 * Jerkass Woobie: Some see Daffy as this.
 * Yosemite Sam is probably a better example of that than Daffy is.
 * Also, Claude Cat in the Hubie and Bertie shorts. Wasn't a Jerkass in those shorts though.
 * The Woobie: Penelope Pussycat, especially if you consider the hints that she actually does like Pepe.
 * Magnificent Bastard: Cecil Turtle
 * Recycled Script: Several early black-and-white shorts were later remade in color:
 * Porky's Badtime Story (1937 with Gabby Goat) as Tick Tock Tuckered (1944 with Daffy Duck)
 * Injun Trouble (1938) as Wagon Heels (1945)
 * Scalp Trouble (1938) as Slightly Daffy (1944)
 * Notes To You (1941 with Porky and unnamed cat) as Back Alley Oproar (1947 with Elmer and Sylvester)
 * Porky's Pooch (1941) as Little Orphan Airedale (1947)
 * Porky In Wackyland (1938) as Dough For The Do-Do (1949)
 * Friz Freleng's cartoons are notorious for recycling scripts from earlier cartoons (and recycling scenes).
 * The Problem With Licensed Games: Averted with the Looney Tunes racing game for the Dreamcast, played perfectly straight with Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal, which was critically panned (but sold very well, unfortunately).
 * Rooting for The Empire: Most of the shorts' antagonists are jerks, but utterly harmless and pitiful, usually getting maimed and humiliating to a sadistic degree by their far more competetant foes. Chuck Jones implemented this trope deliberately with Wile E Coyote and the Road Runner and even lampshaded it in Adventures Of The Road Runner.
 * The Scrappy: Buddy, the studio's main character from 1933--1935. Unusually for a Scrappy, he wasn't that annoying. In fact, he wasn't really anything at all -- his problem was that he had absolutely zero personality, which was compounded by the dull, plotless cartoons that he starred in.
 * A lot of people feel that the Roadrunner and Tweety deserve this title too, though they also have their fans.
 * Also Pepe Le Pew due to how formulaic his shorts are.
 * Heck, even BUGS BUNNY was one in his earlier years as Proto-Bugs. Audiences didn't sympathize with the guy because of his tendency to screw characters over for no reason. Allegedly, the audience applauded when he was Falcon Punched by his latest victim in "Presto Chango!" His laugh was found annoying, too. Obviously, Bugs is now one of the most well-recognized characters ever, and most people don't remember that he was a Scrappy.
 * Also an example of Rooting for The Empire, but more and more people ended up supporting Wile E Coyote and Sylvester over Roadrunner and Tweety.
 * Cecil Turtle, mainly because he's the only one who can outwit Bugs time and time again.
 * Seasonal Rot: The period in which the quality of the shorts goes downhill varies for everyone, but it's generally agreed that when duties moved to DePatie-Freleng in 1963, things took a turn for the worse and, outside of a few exceptions, never really recovered.
 * There are some who argue that while DePatie-Freleng's cartoons were a big step down from the studio's heyday, they were still better than 95% of what the other animation studios at the time were producing. However, even DePatie-Freleng fans generally admit that the quality of the cartoons totally disintegrated when the Warner Bros.-Seven Arts era began in 1967.
 * Tear Jerker: You'd never expect it from these cartoons, but the ending to "What's Opera, Doc?" defiantly invokes this. But then again, who expects a happy ending from an Opera anyway?
 * "Feed the Kitty" also unintentionally is a tear jerker for some. Chuck Jones said it was meant to be funny, but something about how heartbroken Marc Anthony the bulldog gets when he thinks his pet kitten is being baked into a batch of cookies (when the audience is shown that this is not the case) just kind of tugs at the heartstrings, as silly as the situation is.
 * "Feed the Kitty" was an exercise in personality animation and how Chuck Jones could elicit emotions from audiences by using the characters' expressions. That, coupled with the music by Carl Stalling, was why that scene with Marc Anthony crying over his baked kitten was so heart-wrenching.
 * They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Gabby Goat from the '30s, who was basically a Captain Ersatz of Donald Duck, could have been a great star if they had bothered to have any chemistry between him and Porky.
 * Uncanny Valley: One of the That's All Folks endings had a very ugly looking Porky Pig. Observe.
 * That Porky was from when they started using the drum ending in 1937, in which they used the design used by the Tashlin or Hardaway/Dalton unit. They started using a cuter Porky from the Clampett unit in 1939.
 * Unfortunate Implications: The ending of "The Wabbit Who Came To Supper". See Getting Crap Past the Radar.
 * And the Pepe Le Pew cartoons thanks to Decade and Values Dissonance.
 * Unpopular Popular Character: Daffy
 * Viewer Gender Confusion: Tweety. It doesn't help that his first appearance was pink.
 * Weird Al Effect: A lot of the characters (particularly Pepe Le Pew and Foghorn Leghorn) are based on near-obscure celebrities that people these days wouldn't recognize without thinking of the Looney Tunes. Pepe Le Pew is based on French actor Charles Boyer, while Foghorn Leghorn is based on Fred Allen's "Senator Claghorn" character.
 * Were Still Relevant Dammit: Much of WB's use of the characters since the '80s can be seen as a form of this.
 * What an Idiot!: It's a wonder Private Snafu wasn't declared 4F due to mental incompetence.
 * What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?: A lot of people (particularly the ones who grew up seeing the Edited for Syndication broadcasts of the Looney Tunes on Saturday morning TV, after school on weekdays, or on Cartoon Network before 2004 and have never seen the cartoons made before 1948, including the World War II-era shorts and the Private Snafu cartoons) will be surprised to discover that the Looney Tunes has a lot of humor that is either not appropriate for children or will fly over the heads of children and those who know nothing of the pop culture or history at the time. In that regard, the Looney Tunes can be seen as The Simpsons or Family Guy if either show was a 5-7 minute short shown exclusively in theaters before a feature film, right down to the fact that all three are or have been shown on TV with jokes and scenes cut for time and/or content and are readily available on DVD or online with these "offending" scenes intact.
 * In interviews with each of the main directors when asked this question they reply that they never had kids in mind when making their cartoons.
 * The shorts originally played before anything in the WB library (which could include gritty crime dramas aimed at older audiences), so yeah, they weren't for kids. It's just that due to edgier material that has come out since its heydey (as well as the aforementioned airings on Saturday mornings), a lot of the content seems tame today.