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• Accidental Innuendo: "Whack him, Pesto! I'd like to see you two in a round of whacking!"
  • "I dub thee Sir Yaksalot, Sir Waksalot, and Lady Dotsalot."
  • Then again, knowing this show, it's doubtful whether is accidental.
• Awesome Music: Tons of it. Yakko's World is a standout and also a Crowning Moment of Awesome for its performer, Rob Paulsen, who can still perform it on request and at the same tempo from memory almost twenty years later.
• Complete Monster: King Salazar the Pushy from The Movie is made out to be one, but this is Played for Laughs.
• Ear Worm: The theme song. God, the theme song.
  • Not to mention "United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, Peru..."
  • And "Wakko's America".
  • And the "International Friendship Song".
  • Hell, any of the songs. Least most of them had some educational value if you remembered the lyrics. So in a way, they were educational television.
  • And then... Macadamia Nut. Dear. Lord. The first time hearing this song... well, it's oddly addicting. It's not that it will never leave the listener's head, it is that one may want to listen to it again and again, over and over.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Slappy Squirrel and Minerva Mink.
  • And of course, the biggest darkhorses in the show, who actually achieved Breakout Character status...

"Gee, Brain! What are we going to do tonight?" "The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to Take Over the World!"

• Funny Aneurysm Moment: The episode Magic Time had famous magicians Schnitzel and Floyd being abusive to their pet lion and elephant, and later are mauled by said animals in revenge thanks to the Warners. The two magicians are even dropped off in a jungle, where it's quite obvious they get more of the same. As of October 3, 2003, that might not be so funny anymore.
  • One episode had the gimmick of shorts pairing different characters together, such as Pesto and Runt. Brain's role in "In the Garden of Mindy" saw him paired with, well, Mindy - a young girl prone to causing great harm to her animals without realizing it. Uh, yeah...
  • Seeing Dot fawn over Mel Gibson is a bit unsettling now, given his more recent transgressions.
• Genius Bonus: Some of the cultural references in this show were obscure for adults, to say nothing of kids.
• Harsher in Hindsight: After several high-profile scandals led people to become more aware about childhood sexual abuse in the eighties, Pip goes from being relentlessly boring to a possible child molester after he takes a bath with Yakko and Wakko in Chairman of the Bored.
  • Dot's crush on Mel Gibson has definitely proven to be such of late.
  • "A Quake, A Quake" is pretty funny, but the end line takes on a new Oh Crap meaning after 2006:

"We want to find some peace and quiet, so we're moving to Beirut"

• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "Fields of Honey", Babs's guiding angel, in a spoof on Field of Dreams, tells her that even though Bugs Bunny is over 50 years old, he retains his youth because laughter is what keeps a 'toon young. Now with Animaniacs, which can be seen as either a continuation or spin-off from that series, the fact that while not a true Looney Tunes character Slappy's ancient nature may be suggesting she is either an obscure character, forced into retirement, was truthfully not funny, deliberately ignores the earlier series or Slappy is not telling us something.
  • The first time we see Slappy, she's watching her own cartoon and complains that her end bit got cut short by a commercial. From her commentary and actions then and in other shorts, she's retired - but it looks like her cartoons are still being run, which keeps her alive and in fairly good shape. Compare her apparent physical fitness to that of the friend who played Bumpie's Mom - they're both said to be about the same age, but the friend isn't as well-preserved; the friend looks like she's in her early sixties at least, while Slappy seems like she's closer to her late thirties or early fourties. All this is Wild Mass Guessing, sure - but it's fairly plausible, no?
  • In "Hot, Bothered and Bedeviled", Ron Perlman voiced The Devil. Hmm...
  • Also, "Hot, Bothered, and Bedeviled" began with a Saddam Hussein-esque dictator of Iraq getting dropped through a trap door into Hell. The Real Life version of this in early 2007 would add a noose, but the principle's the same.
  • The "Wheel of Morality" segment made some prophetic jokes.
  • In "Critical Condition" the Siskel and Ebert parodies are tormented by Slappy for giving her a really bad review, finally being put inside an dinosaur movie and squashed. Cut to 1998, when Godzilla by Roland Emmerich comes out, and he just mocks them a little in-movie though Expys. Siskel even asked by he "didn't have the monster squash them" after he went though the trouble of putting them in a monster movie.
• Ho Yay: Well, they do all have a tendency to greet everyone with a big kiss (mostly guys), and Wakko seems to have a thing for Don Knotts, during and after 'Taming of the Screwy'...
  • Pinky and The Brain started here, and they've always been kind of Ho Yay-ish.
• Memetic Mutation: "Wakko's America".
  • "Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Columbus is the capital of Ohio!..." Jess Harnell can still sing the whole song from memory.
  • Also an awesome Ear Worm.
  • "Yakko's World" is also legendary.
  • Brain's "Brainstem" (sections of the brain) got a good run as well. Basically any song where anyone lists everything that makes up anything.
  • "...G'night everybody!"
  • "When the whippoorwill / Whippoors in the wind / The wind can whippoor back / Oh nice and chubby baby!"
  • "Hellooooo Nurse!"

"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?" "I think so, Brain, but *insert completely random and off-topic question here*"

• • WE'RE HAVING SOUP TODAY!
• Nightmare Fuel: Very, very little in the show itself, but the Randy Beeman stories do tend to waver between this and Nausea Fuel.
  • Also, one word: Freunlaven.
• Painful Rhyme: The reason why "Yakko's World" wasn't as accurate as it could have been.
• Periphery Demographic: What happens when a majority of the best jokes are of the Getting Crap Past the Radar variety.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Skippy Squirrel was seriously annoying in his first two appearances before settling in as his aunt Slappy's sidekick.
• The Scrappy: The Hip Hippos (for their attitudes) and Mindy (for the crap Buttons has to go through for her sake.)
  • Mindy actually has a few fans. It's her mom who's universally hated.
• What Do You Mean It's for Kids?: Admittedly hard to believe with the sheer amount of Parental Bonus and Parent Service.
  • This effect was unintentionally created by some overly literal Russian translations of the show's title. While the official translation was safe, some promotional materials and TV program listings left the "maniacs" part untranslated. In Russian common usage the word "maniac" is used almost exclusively as a synonym for "Serial Killer".
• The Woobie: Buttons.
  • Also Chicken Boo himself near the end in just every Chicken Boo cartoon, after his disguise is off.
  • Rita also counts as a woobie, as most of her misfortunes show examples of unfairness and inequality.