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Looney Tunes: Difference between revisions
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* '''[[Sylvester Cat and Tweety Bird|Granny]]''' -- "Little Red Walking Hood" 1937, Avery. A kind, elderly woman most remembered as Tweety's owner, and [[Cool Old Lady|who packed a hidden amount of badass-ery]] when inflicting pain on Sylvester when he tried to catch Tweety.
* '''Elmer Fudd''' -- "Elmer's Candid Camera", 1940, Jones. One of only three humans in the regular cast, the others being Yosemite Sam and Tweety's owner Granny. The [[Butt Monkey]], often [[Too Dumb to Live]]. An avid hunter, thus Jones' favourite adversary for both Bugs & Daffy, reaching a peak in the iconic [[Duck Season! Rabbit Season!|Rabbit Season]] trilogy. Less popular with the other directors -- particularly Freleng -- who found him too wimpy. To compensate, the other directors often made Elmer crafty in their pictures; see "Quack Shot" by Robert McKimson, where he's one step ahead of Daffy the entire cartoon, and "Hare Brush" by Friz Freleng, where it's debatable that he faked being insane in order to both avoid the IRS and get revenge on Bugs Bunny. Surprisingly, Elmer didn't appear as frequently as most people think, only encountering Bugs in over 30 pictures out of Bugs' 168 short lineup.
** Note that there is some controversy over when exactly Elmer debuted, depending on whether or not you count Egghead, who was called "Elmer" in some of his later cartoons.
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* [[Acme Products]] (indirectly) - the Coyote's quest to catch the Roadrunner with gadgets inevitably purchased from the Acme Corporation
* [[And Call Him George]] - the Abominable Snowman
* [[Duck Season! Rabbit Season!]]
* [[Earthshattering Kaboom]] - Marvin's snit fit in "Hare-Way to the Stars" when Bugs foils his attempt to clear the Earth out of his view of Venus: "[[Where's the Kaboom?]]? There was ''supposed'' to be an Earth-shattering kaboom!"
* [[One Buwwet Weft]] (formerly)
* [[Pronoun Trouble]] (possibly; the phrase turns up in "Rabbit Seasoning", but refers to a series of variations on [[Duck Season! Rabbit Season!]] and has nothing to do with gender)
* [[Road Runner vs. Coyote]]
* [["Seen It All" Suicide]] - one of many reasons why the Looney Tunes get edited on TV
* [[That's All Folks]] - but often subverted, see below
* [[Where's the Kaboom?]] - "There was ''supposed'' to be an [[Earthshattering Kaboom]]!"
* [[Wrong Turn At Albuquerque]]
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* [[Animated Anthology]]: The [[Cartoon Network]] show, titled ''[[The Looney Tunes Show]]''. In addition to a [[Framing Device]], there will be a revival of the original ''Merrie Melodies'' concept in the form of two-minute music videos featuring the Looney Tunes themselves, as well as 2½-minute CG Road Runner shorts.
* [[Anticlimax]]: "The Wild Chase" is about Speedy Gonzales and Road Runner racing each other. {{spoiler|The cartoon ends with Sylvester and Wile E. Coyote crossing the finish line instead.}}
* [[Anti
* [[Anti-Villain]]: Elmer Fudd, Sylvester and Wile E. Coyote.
* [[Anvil On Head]]: Pretty much an iconic feature of [[Looney Tunes]].
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** Look at any number of Freleng's cartoons of the 40s and 50s and you'll see contrasting animators styles within each film. In "The Wabbit Who Came To Supper" (1942) you'll see Jack Bradbury, Cal Dalton and Gerry Chiniquy's styles (Bugs' face in each cartoon is wildly inconsistent); in "Show Biz Bugs" (1956) has Chiniquy, Virgil Ross and Art Davis' styles (less jarring).
*** Bob Clampett's cartoons even more so, to the extent that Clampett would intentionally play up the contrast of Rod Scribner's loose, wild animation and Robert [[Mc Kimson]]'s more subtle, Disney-like animation.
* [[Ascended Fanboy]]: Bugs Bunny was given the honorary rank of Master Sergeant in the US Marine Corps after the cartoon "[
* [[Ash Face]]: A regular gag whenever firearms or explosions are involved. Sometimes the basis for a blackface gag.
* [[Aside Glance]]
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* [[Ate the Spoon]]:
* [[Author Existence Failure]]: It's interesting to imagine what Milt Franklyn might've come up with for the remaining 3-4 minutes of "The Jet Cage" had he not died while scoring it.
* [[Backwards
* [[Bad Guy Bar]]: The bar from "Lady Play Your Mandolin". Keep in mind, this short was made and is obviously set during Prohibition, and the patrons of the bar proudly proclaim themselves as sinners.
* [[Bad Guys Play Pool]]: Dan Backslide in "[[The Dover Boys]]"
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* [[Christmas Special]]: 1979's "Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales", which featured three shorts: "Bugs Bunny's Christmas Carol" (featuring Yosemite Sam as, who else, Scrooge), "Freeze Frame" (a Road Runner short set at wintertime), and "Fright Before Christmas" (a Bugs/Taz short). The first and last segments were directed by [[Friz Freleng]], while the Road Runner short was by [[Chuck Jones]].
** There was also a modernized speical called "Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas" which is basically ''A Christmas Carol'' but with Daffy as Scrooge.
* [[Cigar Fuse
* [[Circling Birdies]]: Often the result of falling anvils, falling boulders, mallet hits, falling pianos, fights covered up by [[Big Ball of Violence|the big, dusty ball of violence]]. And even then, birdies don't always circle around the character's head -- sometimes it's stars, sometimes it's brightly-colored dots or orbits, sometimes it's something completely different (like kings as seen in 1949's "Rabbit Hood.")
* [[Cliff Stack]]: Pretty much created the trope.
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** Similarly, "A Scent of the Matterhorn" featured the crew members' names written in faux French.
** "Nutty News" features upside down opening credits.
* [[Cross
* [[Crossover]]: Sylvester, Elmer Fudd, Mama Bear, Henery Hawk and Porky Pig all appear in Daffy's ''The Scarlet Pumpernickel.'' Daffy appears in Foghorn Leghorn's ''The High And The Flighty.''
** Daffy and Taz are paired together in ''Ducking the Devil'', their only classic cartoon together.
* [[Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass]]: Chester from the two Chester And Spike shorts. Also a [[Pint-Sized Powerhouse]].
<!-- %% Crowning Moments of Awesome and Funny belong in their respective sections. Do not add them here. -->
* [[Cut a Slice, Take The Rest]]: frequently, with various characters, and often with cake.
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* [[Family-Unfriendly Violence]]: Surprisingly and ironically, much less common than in other contemporaneous classic cartoon series, like [[Tom and Jerry (Animation)|Tom and Jerry]]. Any violence will tend to leave the recipient more dazed or angry than seriously hurt, and if the victim in question has fur or feathers, the only real damage they suffer is losing said fur or feathers.
* [[Feuding Families]]: "A Feud There Was", "Naughty Neighbors", "Hillbilly Hare", "Feud With a Dude"
* [[Finger
* [[Fire and Brimstone Hell]]: As seen in "Draftee Daffy", "Satan's Waitin'", "Devil's Feud Cake", an episode of "The Bugs Bunny Show", "The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie", "The Three Little Bops", and alluded to at the end of "The Hole Idea".
** Friz Freleng's cartoons in general have this a lot (along with characters going to [[Fluffy Cloud Heaven]]), particularly the Censored 11 short, "Sunday Go To Meetin' Time," in which a lazy, black man named Nicodemus skips church and hits himself in the head while chasing a chicken, and finds himself in Hell for all of the sins he committed when he was alive (such as skipping church in favor of gambling, stealing chickens, stealing watermelon, and just raising hell [or "dickens", as the cartoon put it]).
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* [[The Golden Age of Animation]]: The original shorts were a product of this. Since then the characters have been successively (if not always successfully) deployed in the medium's [[The Dark Age of Animation|Dark]], [[The Renaissance Age of Animation|Renaissance]], and [[The Millennium Age of Animation|Millennium]] ages.
* [[Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress]]: And it's ''always'' a looooong way down, especially in Wile E. Coyote's case. [[Gravity Is a Harsh Seamstress]], too.
* [[Hair
* [[Hair-Trigger Temper]]: Yosemite Sam's shtick. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXCJC9e4dB0 He even rapped about it on] [[The Looney Tunes Show]].
* [[Hammerspace]]
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{{quote| '''Bugs''': Uh-oh: Railroad dick!}}
* [[Hellevator]]: Not an elevator, but in "Satan's Waitin'", an escalator transports Sylvester to Hell. The escalator makes a return appearance in "Devil's Feud Cake" when Sam first appears in Hell.
* [[
* [[Henpecked Husband]]: Daffy in the appropriately titled "The Henpecked Duck". Daffy again in "His Bitter Half" and Yosemite Sam in "Honey's Money".
* [[Here We Go Again]]: In "Greedy For Tweety", immediately after Sylvester, Tweety, and the bulldog are released from the hospital, they start chasing each other again. Nurse Granny notices this while looking out the window and places the patient cards back in the "in" slots in anticipation of the three being injured again.
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* [[Honest John's Dealership]]: Acme
* [[How We Got Here]]: "The Old Grey Hare" features a sequence of Elmer and Bugs as babies when they first met.
* [[Huge Rider, Tiny Mount]]: Subverted with Red Hot Ryder from "Buckaroo Bugs" (Clampett, 1945).
* [[Human Mail]]: Porky Pig twice tries to get rid of Charlie Dog this way. [[The Cat Came Back|Charlie always gets sent back.]]
* [[Humiliation Conga]]: There're a lot of examples, but the best one is an early [[Chuck Jones]] cartoon called "Good Night Elmer", one of the few cartoons to have Elmer as the star, rather than the antagonist. After doing everything he can to get some sleep -- including nearly destroying his room -- what should appear outside his window but the sun?
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* [[Limited Special Collectors Ultimate Edition]]: From 2003 to 2008, Warner Bros. released the ''Looney Tunes Golden Collection'' series, spread across six volumes and covering over ''400'' classic cartoons, hours upon hours upon hours worth of commentaries, documentaries, interviews and historical bonus content in general. However, for the kiddies, a [[Vanilla Edition]] series of these DVDs were released called ''Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection'', which were essentially bare bone collections featuring the more well known, family friendly Looney Tunes shorts. The new single-disc Super Stars DVDs follow the [[Vanilla Edition]] practice, but Platinum Edition Vol. 1 is coming to Blu-ray in November and looks like a continuation of the Golden Collection-style releases.
* [[Literal Junk Food]]: Many a short begins with Sylvester looking through the trash as if it were a buffet, using a trashcan lid as a tray.
* [[Loads and Loads of Characters]]: [[Looney Tunes]] has many characters, apart from Bugs and the gang. Only a majority of them are [[One
* [[Long Runner]]: The series ran from 1930 to 1969, just one year shy of 40 years. Of course, various characters came and went during that time.
* [[Lord Error-Prone]]: Daffy, in several [[Chuck Jones]] parody shorts (most notably [[Duck Dodgers in The Twenty Fourth And A Half Century|those starring Duck Dodgers]]). Usually featuring Porky as his [[Hypercompetent Sidekick]].
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* [[Meat O Vision]]
* [[Mechanical Horse]]: Or something along those lines is used briefly in "One More Time".
* [[Metronomic Man
* [[Mickey Mousing]]: So much so that there are musical accents to something as simple as characters blinking. Arguably, though, this is part of the charm of the music.
* [[Mime
** Any Road Runner short that isn't "Zip Zip Hooray" or "Road Runner a Go-Go" (the only vocal is RR's "beep beep!")
** Cat Feud (1958)
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* [[Moody Mount]]: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBhlQgvHmQ0 Yosemite Sam's camel in "Sahara Hare"] and his dragon in "Knighty Knight Bugs".
{{quote| '''Sam''': "Whoa, dragon, WHOA!!"}}
* [[Morally
* [[Motion Blur]]: Speedy, Road Runner, anyone who needed to leave/arrive in a hurry.
** In a host segment of ''The Bugs Bunny Show,'' Bugs demonstrates a cartoon "zip" out of and into a scene (complete with vibration to a stop upon entering), the zip-out in regular speed and in slow motion.
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* [[Offscreen Teleportation]]: The minah bird is a master of this.
* [[Oh Crap|Oh, Crap]]: Wile E. Coyote, Private Snafu, Ralph Wolf, and [[Those Wacky Nazis]] do this a lot. Even Bugs Bunny gets a few every now and then.
* [[One
** Fresh Airedale
** The Foxy Duckling
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** Larry Storch replaced [[Daws Butler (Creator)|Daws Butler]] as the voices of Merlin the Magic Mouse and Second Banana after their initial appearance.
** After Mel Blanc died, numerous other voice artists filled in for his various characters.
* [[Out
* [[Outlaw Couple]]: Bunny and Claude
* [[Overly Polite Pals]]: Mac and Tosh, the Goofy Gophers.
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** 1936's ''Boulevardier From The Bronx'': Claude tries to catch a fly ball but has dozens fall among him. He says "Aw..." followed by a razzing sound effect.
* [[Prehistoria]]: Most notably ''Caveman Inki'', ''Prehysterical Hare,'' and especially ''Wild Wild World''
* [[Press
* [[Pro Wrestling Episode]]: In "Bunny Hugged", Bugs was the mascot of wrestler Ravishing Ronald, but when he gets pummeled by the Crusher, Bugs steps into the ring as the Masked Terror.
* [[Produce Pelting]]: Numerous instances, such as in [[One Froggy Evening]] when the frog doesn't sing on cue for the audience, and "Show Biz Bugs" when Daffy is hit with a single tomato after his "trained" doves fly away. See also the "Daffy's Inn Trouble" example above in [[Broken Record]].
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** Daffy says a silent prayer in "The Henpecked Duck"(1941, Clampett) as he tries to make his wife's egg reappear (the disappearance of which led to her filing for a divorce from Daffy).
* [[Scenery Porn]]: As with many classic cartoons, a lot of work was put into everything, including the background art.
* [[Scooby
* [[Screwed By the Network]]: The constant editing for content of these cartoons on all major broadcast and cable networks, not to mention [[Network Decay|Cartoon Network]] getting rid of the Looney Tunes cartoons between 2004 and 2009. On November 2009, Cartoon Network made an attempt to regularly bring them back, though they've once again disappeared from CN's airwaves after the New Year's Day marathon of 2010. There is word of a Looney Tunes show being made for Cartoon Network, but there's no word on whether it will be a return of the classic shorts or something new entirely.
** It's an entirely new series, patterned like a sitcom.
** As of March 2011, the classic shorts are back. Unfortunately, they mostly air cartoons starring Bugs and Tweety.
* [[Screwy Squirrel]]: Early Daffy was practically the [[Ur Example]]. Also the pre-Wild Hare proto-Bugs, to the extent many animation historians consider him a different character.
* [[Second
** Zigzagged in Tex Avery's "Cross-Country Detours," which shows a realistically drawn and animated frog. The narrator entreats us to an actual scene of a frog croaking, after which the frog pulls out a gun and blows its brains out, followed by a disclaimer card that states that the management of the theater is in no way responsible for the [[Incredibly Lame Pun|lame puns]] in this cartoon short.
* [[Seldom
* [[Sensitive Guy and Manly Man]]: Porky and Daffy.
* [[Shadow of Impending Doom]]: Usually immediately followed by [[Anvil On Head|an anvil or some other object to the head]]
* [[Shout
{{quote| '''Daffy:''' "Just giving my bosses a plug...I've got an option coming up!"}}
** Lampshaded in a number of cartoons, most notably in "Daffy Goes Hollywood" in which he disguises himself as the Academy Award ("J.L. is waiting!") and in "The Big Snooze" which has Elmer tearing up his W-B cartoon contract after being bested by Bugs once too often.
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** Shoutouts to Popeye in ''Porky's Garden'' (1937), ''The Major Lied Till Dawn'' (1938) and ''Scrap Happy Daffy'' (1943).
* [[Signature Laugh]]: Elmer Fudd's "Hehehehe".
* [[Single
* [[Snowball Fight]]
* [[Something Completely Different]]: 1968's "Norman Normal", which is entirely dialog-based humor, with none of the slapstick and wacky gags associated with the series. It also didn't feature Mel Blanc or any of the other regular voice artists. In fact, it wasn't called a Merrie Melody OR a Looney Tune; it was instead called a "Cartoon Special".
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** Marvin the Martian's first voice in "Haredevil Hare" is higher pitched. Mel Blanc deepened it in the next cartoon, "The Hasty Hare", and kept it that way for the remaining cartoons.
* [[Wartime Cartoon]]: Actually helped to set the zany, fast-paced tone of the rest of the series.
* [[Weapon, Jr.]]: In "The Old Gray Hare", there's a flashback where Baby Elmer has a pop-gun which he fires at Baby Bugs. The episode also begins with an elderly Elmer obtaining a [[Ray Gun]].
* [["Well Done, Son" Guy]]: Inverted. It's usually Sylvester trying to gain the approval of his son, Sylvester Jr.
* [[We Sell Everything]]: Considering the company ACME stands for A Company that Makes Everything, and their label is on many of the things used by the characters, it's a case of this trope.
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* [[Whammy]]: Every time the cat in Robert McKimson's ''Early To Bet'' loses to the bulldog at gin rummy, he has to spin a "penalty wheel" and suffer whatever physical punishment it lands on (from a cabinet file corresponding to the wheel number).
* [[What Happened to The Mouse?]]?: Or in this case, the monkey. In the Sylvester and Tweety cartoon, "Canary Row," Sylvester lures an organ grinder's monkey away with a banana before clubbing him in the head off-screen and stealing his clothes. You'd think there should be a scene where after Sylvester's latest attempt at catching Tweety fails, [[Brick Joke|the organ grinder and the still-injured monkey return to exact their revenge on Sylvester]]. That never happened, leaving a very [[Unfortunate Implications|unfortunate implication]] that the monkey Sylvester clubbed in the head is dead and [[Fridge Horror|the organ grinder is oblivious to what transpired]].
* [[Whole
* [[Wholesome Crossdresser]]: Bugs
* [[Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?]]: Porky frequently switches jobs, as does Daffy.
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