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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 [[
** 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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* [[Anvil on Head]]: Pretty much an iconic feature of Looney Tunes.
* [[Arch Enemy]]: Bugs and Elmer, Sylvester and Tweety, Coyote and [[Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner|Road Runner]].
* [[Art Evolution]]: The earliest shorts had a '''very''' strong Disney influence in their animation (no surprise, considering the studio was founded by [[Harman And Ising Hugh|Harman and Rudolph Ising]], as well as [[Friz Freleng]], all of who were former employees of Disney) but in the mid to late 30's [[Tex Avery]] and [[Bob Clampett]] slowly but surely began trying to veer off into a less Disney like cartoon style. [[Chuck Jones]] initially did
** Character-specific example: Speedy Gonzales, in his 1953 debut, looked much different than the version by Friz Freleng's unit in 1955. The latter design (which downplayed the visual stereotypes like buck teeth and greasy black hair) stuck, and is the one most people remember today.
** [[Robert McKimson]]'s unit went through a significant art evolution; when he started directing in 1946, his characters had a lot of girth. Around 1950 or 1951, his unit began to slim the characters down; Bugs, for example, actually began to look like the model sheet McKimson himself had created.
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* [[Couldn't Find a Lighter]]: "Bacall to Arms" features a parody of ''[[To Have And Have Not]]'', in which [[Humphrey Bogart]] lights [[Lauren Bacall]]'s cigarette with a welding torch.
* [[Covered in Kisses]]: Happens in a few WB cartoons:
** In ''Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears'', Bugs flirts with Mama Bear to escape harm from the other Bears. But she becomes
** In ''The Super Snooper'', the Femme Fatale turns out the lights and we hear kissing noises. When Daffy Duck turns them back on he has lipstick marks all over his face which she gently wipes off.
** In ''A Gander at Mother Goose'', a cartoon based on various children's rhymes, features a segment with Jack and Jill. When the narrator gets to the part about Jack falling down the hill, nothing happens. He repeats the line a few more times before Jack rushes back down, his face smeared with lipstick, tells the narrator to forget about going up the hill to fetch a pail of water, and rushes ''eagerly'' back up the hill.
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* [[Department of Redundancy Department]]: In "Bill of Hare":
{{quote|'''Bugs''': I could be wrong; maybe it's face ''north'' for a ''southbound'' moose. Or is it the other way around in reverse?}}
* [[Deserted Island]]/[[Far Side Island]] : "Wackiki Wabbit", "Rabbitson Crusoe"; "Moby Duck"; the end of "Touché and Go".
* [[Desert Skull]]: Bugs Bunny wears one in "The Wacky Wabbit".
* [[Digging to China]]: "Tweety and the Beanstalk" and "War and Pieces"
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{{quote|'''Bugs Bunny:''' (watching Daffy plummet to the ground) I wonder if that silly duck remembers he can fly... * hears slam noise down below* ...Nope, guess not.}}
* [[The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You]]: Inverted in ''A hair raising hare'';
{{quote|'''Bugs''': Have you ever felt like there's something... [[Paranoia Fuel|watching you?]] Out there, in the audience."
'''Gossamer''': People?! *screams and runs away [[Efficient Displacement|through several sets of walls]]*. }}
* [[Franchise Killer]]: Believe it or not, this has happened to the series—as early as 1933, in fact. After Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising left Leon's cartoon studio, he hastily hired a new team of crack animators, lead by director Tom Palmer, to rush out three new cartoons featuring his Expy of [[Bosko the Talk Ink Kid]], Buddy. These new cartoons were so mediocre that Jack Warner himself rejected them all on sight, with Leon's studio on the verge of getting shut down. Thankfully, Leon got [[Friz Freleng]] to return to the studio and rework the rejected cartoons into one coherent cartoon, which thankfully saved this new studio from being killed before it even got off the ground!
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* [[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?
* [[The Hunter Becomes the Hunted]]: Three Pepé Le Pew cartoons ("For Scent-imental Reasons," "Little Beau Pepé ," and "Really Scent") end this way, as does "Rabbit Fire" (the first installment of
* [[Hurricane of Puns]]: The Merrie Melodies classic "Have You Got Any Castles?" I mean, the climax of the film's final chase scene ends with Rip Van Winkle opening up a book literally labelled ''Hurricane'' which blows everybody away...and then after everyones gone, down falls the book
* [[Hyde and Seek]]: "Hyde and Go Tweet", "Hyde and Hare", "Dr. Jerkyl's Hyde", "The Impatient Patient" and "The Case of the Stuttering Pig"
* [[Hyperspace Arsenal]]
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** The Coyote was, in fact, ''so'' sympathetically ineffectual that in many viewers' minds the Road Runner became the real villain of the pieces. Hilariously referenced by [[Weird Al]] in ''UHF'':
{{quote|"Okay. Right now I'd like to show you one of my favorite cartoons. It's a sad, depressing story about a pathetic coyote who spends every waking moment of his life in the futile pursuit of a sadistic roadrunner who ''mocks'' him and ''laughs'' at him as he's repeatedly '''crushed''' and '''maimed'''! Hope you'll '''enjoy''' it!" }}
* [[Inescapable Net]]: Used by Elmer on the Proto-Bugs in ''Elmer's Candid Camera''. He escapes and turns the tables on Elmer via [[Faking the Dead]].
* [[Ink Suit Actor]]: [[The Jack Benny Program|Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, and Don Wilson]] appear (as mice!) in the 1959 short, "The Mouse That Jack Built."
** Victor Moore voiced his cartoon likeness in 1945's "Ain't That Ducky".
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* [[Instrumental Theme Tune]]: Sort of. The iconic theme songs, "Merrily We Roll Along" (for Merrie Melodies) and "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" (for Looney Tunes) do indeed have lyrics, but they're never used when introducing the shorts. All we hear are the instrumental versions of them.
** "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" used lyrical variants in ''Daffy Duck And Egghead'' and ''Boobs In The Woods'' while "Merrily We Roll Along" was performed by an animated Eddie Cantor in ''Billboard Frolics'' and ''Toy Town Hall.'' And even before becoming its theme, "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" was used as background music in a segment of "Porky's Garden" (Avery, 1937).
* [[Iris Out]]: Done at the end of pretty much every short. In many Bob Clampett shorts, the "iris out" was often accompanied with a cartoony "Beeeuuuyyywwooooooo!" sound effect (created on an electric guitar). A couple subversions:
** A Fractured Leghorn: The short does an "iris out" during Foghorn's rant. He grabs the iris so he can finish.
{{quote|'''Foghorn''': Wouldn't tell 'em I was hungry!}}
** [[Duck Amuck]]: Daffy, exasperated, says "Let's get this picture started!", to which the short does an "iris out" and "The End" appears. Daffy yells out two [[Big No]]s and pushes the ending card off screen, and the cartoon continues from there.
** ''Hare Ribbin'
** ''Porky The Rainmaker'' (1936) has the iris closing and a farm duck is inside the black area. He bangs on the darkness, then Porky's arm reaches in and pulls the duck back to the outside.
** ''Porky's Garden'' (1937): Two irises re-open as Porky takes the prize money from the Italian chicken farmer.
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* [[Karmic Trickster]]: Bugs is the poster child for this trope. Delivering poetic justice after being wronged is the classic Bugs Bunny storyline.
* [[Knight of Cerebus]]: Some villains from the mid-30s were pretty threatening and scary, such as the captain from "Shanghaied Shipmates", the trapper from "Porky In The North Woods", and the lawyer from "The Case Of The Stuttering Pig".
** Daffy acted like this
* [[Koosh Bomb]]: Where it became famous. Especially the Roadrunner cartoons.
* [[Large Ham]]: Every character in the main cast (and maybe a few from the minor cast)
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* [[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-and-Music-Only Cartoon]]: Many of their cartoons are dialogue free, or fairly close to it. Some examples:
** Any Road Runner short that isn't
** Cat Feud (1958)
** Curious Puppy (1939), Dog Gone Modern (1939), Snow Time For Comedy (1940), Stage Fright (1940) (all starring two dogs. Only vocals in "Dog Gone Modern" are the house welcoming the two dogs.)
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* [[Mister Muffykins]]: Petunia's dog in "Porky's Romance". The mean-spirited little beasty annoys Porky so much that {{spoiler|he ends the short by kicking it through the closing iris}}.
* [[Mix and Match Critter]]: The chicken/turtle hybrid from "The Good Egg".
* [[Mood Whiplash]]: Lampshaded in
{{quote|Bugs Bunny: Well, what did you expect from an opera? A ''happy'' ending?}}
* [[Moody Mount]]: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBhlQgvHmQ0 Yosemite Sam's camel in "Sahara Hare"] and his dragon in "Knighty Knight Bugs".
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* [[Press-Ganged]]: In "Mutiny on the Bunny", Bugs Bunny is forced into service by sea captain Yosemite Sam (who in this cartoon goes by the appropiate moniker of Shanghai Sam).
* [[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
* [[Public Domain Animation]]: Some of the cartoons have slipped into the [[Public Domain]]. Most of them are from the '30s and early '40s, though.
* [[Puff of Logic]]
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* [[Real Joke Name]]: Doctor Quack in ''The Daffy Doc''
* [[Rearrange the Song]]: There are different arrangements of each of the Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes opening themes. In particular, "Merrily We Roll Along" and "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" got a ton of adjustments over the years.
* [[Rebus Bubble]] combined with [[Talking with Signs]] gets you Bugs' mockery of his foes by holding up a sign with "(picture of a screw) + (picture of a baseball)" or a picture of bats circling a belfry.
* [[Recitation Handclasp]]: Giovanni Jones (the fat opera singer) assumes this posture in "Long Haired Hare."
* [[Recycled in Space]]: During the 1964-1969 [[Dork Age]], the WB animation studio tried recycling the Road Runner formula with woodland animals, resulting in Rapid Rabbit—who uses a blowhorn as his trademark—and Quick Brown Fox. Only one cartoon with this premise was produced.
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* [[Red Oni, Blue Oni]]: Daffy and Bugs.
* [[Reference Overdosed]]: Although most of the references are lost in time.
* [[The Remake]]/[[Recycled Script]]: A few examples:
** 1937's "Porky's Badtime Story" was remade in color in 1944 as "Tick Tock Tuckered". Most of the differences were merely cosmetic.
** 1938's "Injun Trouble" was remade in color in 1945 as "Wagon Heels".
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** 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-Person Attack]]: Several examples; see the trope page for details.
** 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.
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** Tex Avery's 1940 short "Hollywood Steps Out" has Cary Grant referencing three of his movies in a single line of syntax: "If ''my favorite wife'' ever knew ''the awful truth'', I'd make ''the front page''."
** Shoutouts to Popeye in ''Porky's Garden'' (1937), ''The Major Lied Till Dawn'' (1938) and ''Scrap Happy Daffy'' (1943).
** Many of Bugs' "signature" lines are actually lifted from other performers, like [[Red Skelton]] and [[Marx Brothers|Groucho Marx]].
** Basically this was Looney Tunes' stock-in-trade -- if there is a bit of business that seems to make no sense, or a sudden impersonation of someone whom you don't recognize, or even just some apparently random lines that seem odd, ten-to-one they're a fossilized shout-out to a bit of pop culture that's been forgotten over the ensuing decades.
*** One good example of the latter comes from the scene from ''Rabbit Every Monday'' cited in ''Clown Car Base'' above. After Bugs and Sam dive into the New Years' Eve party inside his wood-burning stove ([[It Makes Just As Much Sense in Context]]), Bug sticks his head out and for the final line of the cartoon declares, "I don't ask questions, I just have fun!" No one today would realize that he's quoting [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fotDv1XmT8o a song of that title from 1947, recorded by an artist named Billy Taylor].
* [[Signature Laugh]]: Elmer Fudd's "Hehehehe".
* [[Single-Issue Landlord]]
* [[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
** "Old Glory", which has no jokes and is instead a visual retelling of the founding of America.
* [[Something Else Also Rises]]: Usually, it's eyes bugging out, though that's more popular in the cartoons Tex Avery did when he left Warner Brothers and went to MGM; other times, it's ears or tails becoming erect. On one obscure Frank Tashlin cartoon called "I Got Plenty of Mutton," it was a ram's horns, and [[Raging Stiffie|they even glowed red]]. [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|How that got past the Hays Office is anyone's guess]].
* [[Somewhere an Ornithologist Is Crying]]: Roadrunner, Daffy, Tweety, Hatta Mari [the [[Non-Mammal Mammaries|large-chested female pigeon]] spy from 1944's "Plane Daffy"]
** And the Dodo in "[[Porky in Wackyland]]" looks nothing like the real thing did.
** Lampshaded in [[Chuck Jones]] biography "Chuck Amuck", where when he discusses how people have told him that his characters are "realistic", he compares the characters to their real life counterparts, ending with Tweety compared to a real canary, with Jones sheepishly admitting that the only similarity he was able to find being that they're both birds.
* [[Somewhere a Paleontologist Is Crying]]: The short "Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur", with a caveman set along a dinosaur.
* [[Soundtrack Dissonance]]: Carl Stalling's successor as musical director Milt Franklyn died halfway through scoring 1962's ''The Jet Cage''. William "Bill" Lava took over and the difference in music is quite jarring.
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** Six cartoons from 1958 had pre-scored background music tracks (called "needle-drop" in the industry) selected by John Seely, employed during a musician's strike. Most of the tracks heard were also used in [[Gumby]] and, soon after, Hanna-Barbera's early TV shows. Those cartoons were ''Prehysterical Hare'' (Bugs Bunny), ''Bird In A Bonnett'' (Sylvester and Tweety), ''Weasel While You Work'' (Foghorn Leghorn), ''Hook, Line And Stinker'' (Road Runner), ''Hip Hip Hurry!'' (also Road Runner) and ''Gopher Broke'' (Goofy Gophers).
* [[Speech Impediment]]: Daffy, Sylvester, Elmer Fudd
** In fact, almost every character's voice is based on one speech problem or another (including the stereotypical accents of Bugs Bunny [New York], Speedy Gonzales [Spanish], Foghorn Leghorn [Southern United States], and Pepé Le Pew [French]). Several tropes on this site have been named after Looney Tunes characters.
** [[Elmuh Fudd Syndwome]]
** [[Porky Pig Pronunciation]]
*** Daffy's voice was based on that of producer Leon Schlesinger. Chuck Jones was told that after the cartoon was completed Leon had to screen it, so everyone wrote their resignation in advance. Leon never caught on; he thought it was a funny voice.
* [[Spin-Off|Spin Offs]]: ''[[Taz-Mania]]'', ''[[The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries]]'', and ''[[Duck Dodgers]]''
** And let's not forget the [[Spinoff Babies]] series: ''[[Baby Looney Tunes]]''.
** [[Private Snafu]] certainly counts, as it is clearly set in the same universe as Looney Tunes.
* [[Spiritual Successor]]: ''[[Tiny Toon Adventures]]'', which featured many of the Looney Tunes in recurring roles, as well as its semi-[[Spin-Off|spin off]], ''[[Animaniacs]]'', and ''its'' spin off, ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]''. We do not speak of the ''Tiny Toons''/''Pinky and the Brain'' [[Crossover]] series, ''Pinky, Elmyra, and the Brain'', which was made only because [[Executive Meddling|the network demanded it]], and moved far too into conventional [[Sitcom]] territory to be considered in the same spirit as the Looney Tunes anyway.
** [[Chuck Jones]]'s early short "Tom Thumb In Trouble" is played completely straight, and is actually a very good little fairy tale cartoon, just not a ''funny'' one. Years later, after he'd matured in his craft, Jones did "I Was A Teenaged Thumb," which uses wonderfully surreal humor and highly stylized, graphic design-style character designs.
* [[Spit Take]]: In "My Generation G-G-Gap", Porky does a really long one when he sees his daughter on TV at the rock concert.
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* [[Syncro-Vox]]: Used in a brief scene in "Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers".
* [[Talking with Signs]]: Seen a lot in the Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner cartoons.
** Sylvester does this in ''Peck Up Your Troubles
{{quote|'''Sylvester's sign:''' Why didn't I think of this before? (''starts walking up in mid-air'')
'''Sign #2:''' Anything can happen in a cartoon! }}
* [[Team Rocket Wins]]: Yes, there is a moment in which Wile E. Coyote is successful in capturing the Roadrunner. Of course, thanks to [[Rule of Funny]], the Coyote is much...''much'' smaller than the Roadrunner when the former captures the latter causing Wile E. to be absolutely baffled as to what to ''do'' with the Roadrunner upon capturing him.
** There are numerous viewer-created "Coyote Catches Road Runner" clips on You Tube, but [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgj-aNxh_zQ this video], culled and composited from ''Fast And Furry-ous,'' is by far the funniest.
** Elmer Fudd gained the odd victory against Bugs (eg."Rabbit Rampage", "Hare Brush" and "What's Opera, Doc?" (although in that last one, he felt remorse for supposedly killing Bugs, who is only faking it)).
** Daffy Duck, even post-Flanderization, had a few spectacular victories to balance his [[Butt Monkey]] role (eg. "Ducking The Devil", "Mucho Locos").
** With some assistance from Speedy Gonzales, Sylvester chalks up a win at the end of 1964's ''A Message To Gracias.''
** With some assistance from Bugs Bunny, the Big Bad Wolf (from the "Three Little Pigs" story) chalks up a win at the end of 1949's ''The Windblown Hare.''
** Shep, the egotistical canine from Chuck Jones' ''Fresh Airedale'', is more [[Took a Level in Jerkass]] than villain, although his goal—to eliminate a Scottish terrier who was deemed the city's top dog—would seem evil enough to qualify him as a villain. It goes awry as Shep nearly drowns and the terrier rescues him. But when the terrier collapses from exhaustion, everybody—the press included—fetes Shep as a hero that rescued the terrier.
* [[Telegraph Gag STOP]]:
** Used in ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akAEIW3rmvQ&t=6m00s I Love To Singa]''. A receptionist receives a telegram from a sleazy deliveryman. She reads it and the camera pans away.
{{quote|We just received another telegram, Station GOMG. Stop. Your program coming in great. Stop. Think it's fine. Stop. Glad to hear your amateurs. Stop. They're all very funny. ''[camera pans back to show her continually pushing away the deliveryman as he keeps trying to hold her]'' Stop! Keep up the good work. Stop! Good luck. STOP! The gang. ''STOP!'' ''[she pushes him offscreen and he crashes]''}}
** ''The Hardship of Miles Standish'' has a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsFMKMUvFxo#t=3m40s singing telegram] punctuated by STOPs.
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* [[Tree Cover]]: Used frequently.
* [[Turtle Island]]: In "The Ducktators," an Emperor Hirohito duck places a sign on a turtle, who gets mad and beats him up with said sign (despite that the duck briefly stops him to show a button that reads, "I am Chinese"—a reference to Chinese-American immigrants who were mistaken for Japanese and were put in internment camps because of it).
* [[Uncancelled]]: A few times. The first was in 1953 when WB temporarily closed the cartoon unit for a few months, due to a variety of factors like the 3-D fad; the unit opened a few months later. The next was in 1963 when WB, facing increasingly stiff competition from TV and less theaters running theatrical shorts before movies, shut the cartoon unit down again. From 1964 to 1967, cartoons were produced at
* [[Uncle Tomfoolery]]: The reason why there's a collection of cartoons called [http://looney.goldenagecartoons.com/ltcuts/censored11/ The Censored Eleven], though there are some WB cartoons with extensive black stereotypes in them that ''aren't'' part of this collection, but have been banned from syndication all the same.
* [[Unexplained Recovery]]:
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*** Specifically the origin for ''[[Bully for Bugs]]''. As the story goes: One day Selzer, for reasons the crew never figured out, burst into the office and announced: "Bullfights aren't funny!" The writers looked at each other, decided "Well, he's never been right before!", and went to it.
* [[Xylophone Gag]]: And they ''always'' fall for it.
** And the song is ''always'' "Those Endearing Young Charms."
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