Looney Tunes: Difference between revisions

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''I just look around and find ol' Rubinoff there''|"Merrily We Roll Along," the ''Merrie Melodies'' theme (first used in the cartoon ''Billboard Frolics'', 1935)}}

 

For a complete filmography of the original cartoons, [[Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Filmography|visit this page.]] For a taste of the best shorts the series has to offer, refer to ''[[The 50 Greatest Cartoons]]'' list, as well as ''[[The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes]]'' list. For the 2011 animated sitcom that premiered on Cartoon Network, go [[The Looney Tunes Show|here]].

 

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For tropes about Looney Tunes in comics, go [[Looney Tunes (comics)|here]]. See also [[Noteworthy Looney Tunes Staff]] for info on the many people who contributed to this franchise.

** Don't forget Sylvester the Cat (particularly in the cartoons where he has a son who's constantly ashamed of him)

** Wile E. Coyote, in the [[Suddenly Voiced]] cartoons where [[Wicked Cultured|he plays a genius trying to catch Bugs.]]

* [[Alan Smithee]]: There were a few shorts where the director was left uncredited, but not because the work was so bad that the director wanted nothing to do with the project (even Norm McCabe put his name on his cartoons, [[Old Shame|despite revealing that they were awful years later]]). The uncredited Looney Tunes cartoons were mostly due to the director having been fired or quit and WB Studios at the time had a rule stating that only those who were employed were allowed to have their names in the opening credits of the shorts.

** There are at least two cartoons that have a true [[Alan Smithee]] credit. Both directed by Friz Freleng. "Hollywood Daffy", Freleng refused credit on after Mike Maltese presented the story and gags. Freleng felt the cartoon was too wild and crazy to suit his own style (something Bob Clampett would have directed), but was obligated to direct it anyway. This is why the cartoon has no director's credit. Freleng also isn't credited on "Dough for the Do-Do", a color remake of Bob Clampett's "Porky in Wackyland". Freleng felt it was based on Clampett's idea, and he felt it would be plagiarism if he credited the cartoon as his own.

* [[Alcohol Hic]]: Used in numerous shorts when a character is drunk. Most notably, "High Note", where the drunk note hiccups throughout most of the short as he stumbles around.

* [[Alien Invasion]]: Bugs accidentally causes an alien apocalypse on Earth at the end of "Hare-way to the Stars".

* [[Alliterative Name]]: Most, if not all of the Looney Tunes characters (Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Road Runner, Porky Pig, Cool Cat, etc).

* [[All Just a Dream]]: The ending of "Smile, Darn Ya, Smile!", parodied in "The Mouse That Jack Built", plus "Water, Water, Every Hare", "Scrap Happy Daffy" and "The Wearing of the Grin".

** "Scrap Happy Daffy" was more of an "[[Or Was It a Dream?]]", considering Daffy wakes to find {{spoiler|the goat and a group of nazis stranded at the top of his scrap heap}}.

** "A Cartoonist's Nightmare", as suggested by the title.

* [[All Psychology Is Freudian]]

* [[Big No]]: A few shorts have this:

** The Chuck Jones Warner Brothers cartoon Duck Amuck:

'''Daffy''': Nooooo! Nooooo! }}

** The Friz Freleng cartoon "Bucaneer Bunny" has Yosemite Sam (a.k.a. Pirate Sam) say a couple of Big No's when Bugs attempts to throw a matchstick inside his pirate ship which is filled with gunpowder.

* [[Black Comedy]]: "Fresh Airedale" and "Chow Hound", two dog and cat themed cartoons from Chuck Jones.

* [[Bloodless Carnage]]: Despite the high levels of violence in several cartoons, there was never any blood, although Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck would sometimes cover himself in ketchup pretending that he's bleeding in order to throw off his enemies, squeeze a tomato, or pour red ink (as seen in "Hare Trigger").

** One particular example is in "The Whizzard of Ow", wherein during the climax, Wile E. Coyote's mode of transportation turns into a crocodile, which proceeds to bite the Coyote's nose off.

* [[Born in the Theatre]]: Most [[Looney Tunes]], classic or modern, aired in theaters before they aired on television, and they often have gags messing with the [[Fourth Wall]] of [[Film]].

** The Tasmanian Devil, despite only appearing in five of the original shorts, became immensely popular due to later spin-offs and merchandising. Essentially nearly every mainstream character was decided this way, having usually been cast as a one-timer or side role alongside a an intended star before becoming popular with the audience.

* [[Brick Joke]]: Lots of Looney Tunes cartoons will have gags/characters that don't really add to the story until the big punchline later in the film. A lot of Road Runner cartoons run on this (a perfect example is a retractable wall from "Stop, Look and Hasten" (1954, Jones)). An example from "Little Red Walking Hood" (1938, Avery), which had Egghead walking past the action randomly:

'''Egghead:''' Who, me? I'm the hero of this picture! (''clobbers wolf with a mallet'') }}

** "The Dover Boys" has a gag similar to the "Little Red Walking Hood" one: a strange, mustached man in a sailor suit wanders through the cartoon several times, looking like a walking [[Big Lipped Alligator Moment]] and nothing else. That is until {{spoiler|he ends up hooking up with the girl the heroes had been trying to save the entire cartoon.}}

* [[Clown Car Base]]: Sam's wood-burning stove holds a 1950s New Years' Eve party (and, in a later clip show, a late 1970s disco party), in "Rabbit Every Monday".

* [[Coattail-Riding Relative]]: In "Hare Trigger", Bugs Bunny briefly hides from some rabbits waiting alongside the railroad tracks.

* [[Cold Opening]]: While not a cold opening in the strictest sense, many Road Runner shorts from the late '50s and early '60s (particularly "Beep Prepared" and "Hopalong Casualty") featured a bit of action before the title of the cartoon was displayed.

** There's also "Porky's Romance", in which an introduction to Petunia Pig is made before the title card is shown. She keeps tripping over her lines and becomes increasingly desperate.

'''Petunia:''' '''''<big>[[Cute but Cacophonic|EXCITED?!? WHO'S EXCITED?!? I'M NOT EXCITED--!!!]]</big>''''' }}

* [[Comic Trio]]: Chuck Jones' Three Bears shorts.

* [[Delivery Stork]]: One of Freleng's recurring characters is a stork that's so drunk that he delivers babies to the wrong expectant couples. Seen in the shorts, "Apes of Wrath," "Stork Naked," "Goo-Goo Goliath," and "A Mouse Divided".

* [[Department of Redundancy Department]]: In "Bill of Hare":

* [[Deserted Island]]: "Wackiki Wabbit", "Rabbitson Crusoe"; "Moby Duck"; the end of "Touché and Go".

* [[Desert Skull]]: Bugs Bunny wears one in "The Wacky Wabbit".

** 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]).

** "The Three Little Bops" uses it to turn the Big Bad Wolf from an anti-heroic wannabe to a smooth player:

You gotta get hot to play real cool! }}

* [[Flanderization]]: Different directors often focussed on different aspects of a character, most notably with Daffy, Bugs, Elmer Fudd, and Porky.

* [[Forgot I Could Fly]]: This became a running gag for Daffy in the Duck Dodgers spin-off and recent webtoons on the Looney Tunes website.

** The short "The Million Hare" predates those:

* [[The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You]]: Inverted in ''A hair raising hare'';

'''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!

* [[Handsome Lech]]: Pepé LePew (Oh hell, any Charles Boyer-esque French stereotype applies here)

* [[Hangover Sensitivity]]: Bugs is assumed to have a hangover at the beginning of "Hare-way to the Stars":

* [[Hard Head]]

* [[Hat Damage]]: Done to Foxy in "One More Time" and Daffy in "Ali Baba Bunny".

* [[The Hat Makes the Man]]: In "Bugs' Bonnets", random hats fly by and land on Bugs' and Elmer Fudd's heads, altering their behavior to match each time.

* [[Have a Gay Old Time]]: In "Half-Fare Hare", Bugs says:

* [[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.

* [[Hello, Nurse!]]

* [[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.

* [[Heroic Wannabe]] / [[Hero with an F In Good]]: Daffy Duck as Western Type Hero, Stupor Duck, China Jones, Boston Quackie, Robin Hood, Duck Dodgers, etc.

* [[Hollywood Healing]]

* [[Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain]]: Arguably a [[Trope Codifier]], as almost every villain in the series was a moronic [[Butt Monkey]] as likely to fall by their own idiocy as by the actions of the protaganists themselves. Even the rare subversions of this trope (eg. Nasty Canasta, Rocky and Muggsy) ultimately suffered [[Villain Decay]] and fell victim to it.

** 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'':

* [[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."

* [[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. A couple subversions:

** A Fractured Leghorn: The short does an "iris out" during Foghorn's rant. He grabs the iris so he can finish.

** [[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|Big Nos]] and pushes the ending card off screen, and the cartoon continues from there.

** ''Hare Ribbin'" has the dog, after having committed suicide, suddenly rising, stopping the iris out to say "This shouldn't even happen to a dog!", and then the iris out closes in on his nose.

** In "Daffy Doodles", he tells Porky to wait till J. Edgar Who's-Its hears about this.

** Bugs Bunny in "Roman Legion Hare" (which for some unknown reason has been left out of Cartoon Network's screenings of the cartoon):

* [[Meat-O-Vision]]

* [[Mechanical Horse]]: Or something along those lines is used briefly in "One More Time".

* [[Mix and Match Critter]]: The chicken/turtle hybrid from "The Good Egg".

* [[Mood Whiplash]]: Lampshaded in "[[What's Opera, Doc?|What's Opera Doc]]":

* [[Moody Mount]]: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBhlQgvHmQ0 Yosemite Sam's camel in "Sahara Hare"] and his dragon in "Knighty Knight Bugs".

* [[Morally-Ambiguous Ducktorate]]: Daffy, of course.

* [[Motion Blur]]: Speedy, Road Runner, anyone who needed to leave/arrive in a hurry.

** The dog in ''Hare Ribbin''' (1944) goes through similar contrition after taking a bite out of the rigged Rabbit Sandwich. When he wails "I wish I were dead!", Bugs hands him a gun and he blows his brains out, only to rise, stop the iris out and say "This shouldn't happen to a dog!" (Clampett's director's cut of the cartoon has Bugs shoving the gun in the dog's mouth and pulling the trigger.)

* [[My Name Is Not Durwood]]: From ''Hoppy Go Lucky'':

'''Sylvester''': Okay, so I'm George. }}

* [[Mythology Gag]]: The name of the high-rise building in which Porky lives in ''Porky's Pooch'' (1941): Termite Terrace. (Of note, all the backgrounds in the cartoon are live-action photographs.)

* [[Naked People Are Funny]]: The ending of "All This And Rabbit Stew".

* [[Name Drop]]: This exchange from the Bugs Bunny cartoon ''French Rarebit'' (1953):

'''Bugs:''' I don't mean Antoine o' Flatbush! }}

** Antoine's actually exists in New Orleans. It's at 713 St. Louis St. and has been in business since 1840.

* [[Non-Mammal Mammaries]]: Hatta Mari in "Plane Daffy"

* [[Non Sequitur Thud]]: Lots of them, some of which are the funniest and most memorable lines in the shorts. Daffy seems to be the most common victim.

'''Daffy''': [[No More for Me|No more for me, thanks!]] I'm drivin'! (Rabbit Fire) }}

** Visual non-sequiturs: The penguin trio of "The Penguin Parade" (1938) stop their song midway to make grotesque faces at us; Bugs making a fruit salad on Elmer's head in "Rabbit Of Seville."

** The legendary Porky Pig "blooper" in which he hits his thumb with a hammer and stammers "Son of a b-b-b-b...son of a b-b-b...son of a b-b-b-b..gun!" He then [[No Fourth Wall|turns to the camera]] and says "[[Double Subversion|You thought I was gonna say 'son of a bitch,' didn't you?]]" Oh yes, it's real, all right -- it was included on "Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 4" as an extra. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuAfeXboyxA See it here.]

** Just averted in ''Blooper Bunny.'' Daffy's beak gets impaled by the loose plank Bugs noted earlier.

'''Daffy:''' You smug son of a-- (''Bugs just does make a "cut" motion to camera, and the scene is abruptly cut'') }}

** 1960's ''Rebel Without Claws'': The Confederate general, consigned to using Tweety as a messenger, walks off and mutters "Damn yankees!" As the North turns Sylvester loose as an interceptor, Tweety turns to us and says "I tawt I taw a damn Yankee tat!"

** Averted in ''Tortoise Beats Hare'' (1941) after Bugs discovers that Cecil Turtle won the race:

** The Road Runner's bogus scientific name in 1959's "Wild About Hurry": Batoutahelius.

** 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.

* [[Rhyming List]]: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4VX8Cjok1w This] short uses a rhyming list each floor for an [[Elevator Floor Announcement]].

* [[Right Behind Me]]: Happens to Bugs in "Devil May Hare" when he insults Taz, who happens to be standing right behind him.

* [[Road Sign Reversal]]

* [[Romantic Comedy]]: The Pepé LePew shorts, of course. Though, in this PC age, some people would put them more in the [[Black Comedy Rape]] category. In fact, for some, it's funnier to think of it this way.

* [[Shadow of Impending Doom]]: Usually immediately followed by [[Anvil on Head|an anvil or some other object to the head]]

* [[Shout-Out]]: As early as 1938's "Daffy Duck In Hollywood," in which he skywrites "Warner Bros." with the movie director's cigarette.

** 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.

** 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''."

* [[Split Personality]]: Daffy pretends to have one in "The Prize Pest", in order to repeatedly scare Porky in his "alter ego" state.

* [[The Sponsor]]: In the "Birds Anonymous" short, Sylvester joins the titular group to kick the bird-eating habit, and his sponsor is there to make sure he doesn't try to eat Tweety in a moment of weakness. {{spoiler|However, the sponsor himself falls [[Off the Wagon]] and goes after Tweety, while Sylvester tries to stop him.}}

* [[Stalker with a Crush]]: Though a lot of major and minor Looney Tunes characters have been this on occasion, Pepé Le Pew is possibly (nay, undisputedly) the only character whose schtick is this (along with [[Handsome Lech]], [[Mad Love]], [[Chivalrous Pervert]], [[Abhorrent Admirer]] [for both sexes], [[The Masochism Tango]] [1953's "Wild Over You"], [[Black Comedy Rape]] [if you believe Dave Chappelle and those uptight [[Moral Guardians]]], a pinch of [[No Guy Wants to Be Chased]], some [[The Hunter Becomes the Hunted]] for taste, and a nice helping of [[Double Entendre]])

* [[Stock Audio Clip]]: The Roadrunner's "Meep Meep".

* [[Suddenly Voiced]]: In the cartoons where Wile E. Coyote goes after Bugs Bunny, Wile E. speaks in a pretentious, intellectual voice (though there is one exception: "Hare-Breadth Hurry," where Bugs is recast as the Roadrunner. In that cartoon, as in the usual Road Runner cartoon, Wile E. Coyote didn't speak at all).

** His first lines of dialogue, to Bugs in "Operation: Rabbit":

** Wile E. does speak in ''The Adventures Of The Road Runner'', a two-reeler intended as the pilot for TV series (which would come about in 1966), in which he answers a child's question on why he wants to catch the Road Runner, and then using film to examine his shortcomings. This feature was edited for TV into two separate shorts, "Zip Zip Hooray" and "Road Runner-A-Go-Go."

** The cat from "A Fractured Leghorn" is a mute until the very end of the short, when he tells Foghorn to "[[Big "Shut Up!"|shaddap]]".

** In "Hobo Bobo", the one shot character Bobo the elephant says his first and only line ending the cartoon:

** In "Joe Glow the Firefly", the firefly shouts "GOOD NIGHT!" after being silent beforehand.

* [[Super Speed]]: Road Runner and Speedy Gonzales

* [[Talking with Signs]]: Seen a lot in the Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner cartoons.

** Sylvester does this in ''Peck Up Your Troubles" as he is trying to catch a woodpecker:

'''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.

* [[Telegraph Gag STOP]]:

** Used ''[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.

** ''The Hardship of Miles Standish'' has a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsFMKMUvFxo#t=3m40s singing telegram] punctuated by STOPs.

* [[Ten Paces and Turn]]: "Mississippi Hare" and "Hare Trimmed."

** "Drip-Along Daffy": Nasty Canasta is felled by a tiny wind-up soldier... whose rifle packs a mighty wallop.

* [[This Is Sparta]]: From Friz Freleng's "Hare-less Wolf" (1958):

* [[This Means War]]: Originally used by Groucho Marx, but has come to be associated with Bugs Bunny.

* [[Those Wacky Nazis]]: In such World War II cartoons as "Herr Meets Hare," "Russian Rhapsody," and "Daffy the Commando"

* [[Throw the Pin]]

* [[Time Travel]]: From 1946's "Mouse Menace"--in less than a second, Porky zips into town and returns with a pet carrier (with a cat inside).

** Also seen in "The Pest That Came To Dinner", after Porky calls the exterminator on the phone to come over to rid his house of the termite, after which the exterminator shows up not a few seconds later.

* [[Title Drop]]: In "What's Up, Doc?", Bugs sings, what else, "What's Up, Doc?".

** Also in "Scaredy Cat", Porky title drops the name of the cartoon to Sylvester when trying to convince him nothing's in the kitchen after trying to drag Sylvester in the kitchen once again.

** A [[Running Gag]] involves characters like Wile E. Coyote getting seriously injured and then being perfectly fine in the next scene with no explanation as to how they recovered from their injuries.

** Hugo, the [[Of Mice and Men|Lennie]] [[Expy]] [[Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti|abominable snowman]] Bugs and Daffy met once in ''The Abominable Snow Rabbit'' (1961), ended up ''melting into a puddle'' ("He melted! [[Visual Pun|He really was a snowman!]]") in his first appearance. He ended up inexplicably coming back in all his yeti-like glory in ''Spaced Out Bunny'' (1980) and was last seen on the moon, recruiting Marvin the Martian as his new "George".

'''[[Bugs Bunny]]''': (''straining'') [[Call Back|...Oh no--Not again...]] }}

* [[Unintentional Period Piece]]: Surprisingly frequently.

* [[Unrobotic Reveal]]: In one short, Wile E. Coyote consults a computer to find ways of capturing Bugs Bunny, all of which fail. At the end the computer opens up and out comes...

 

 

** [[Daffy Duck]] is the resident villain protagonist of the Looney Tunes, as he is usually [[Spotlight-Stealing Squad|the focus of the shorts he's in]], and post [[Flanderization]], he is a frequent antagonist.

* [[Villainous Breakdown]]: Daffy suffers one in "Duck! Rabbit, Duck!" after being shot by Elmer one too many times.

** Elmer breaks down in this way in "What's Opera, Doc?" after being duped by Bugs disguised as Brunhilde. He then unleashes [[Disproportionate Retribution|his fury and the elements on Bugs]]:

* [[Visual Pun]]: A staple. Usually in the form of a character turning into a lollipop with the word "Sucker" emblazoned across it, a donkey with the word "Jackass" on it, or a heel with the words "First Class Heel" on it (in those days, a "heel" is what we would call these days a "jerk," "bastard," "asshole," or "douchebag").

* [[Vomit Discretion Shot]]: Despite being seasick many times in "Tweety's S.O.S.", we never actually see Sylvester vomit.