The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
The Cat Returned.

A modern day take on the classic Felix the Cat series, albeit an attempt to return the series back to its roots after decades of using the 1950s flanderized portrayal of Felix.

The series is very kooky, surreal and fast paced-as a whole, the series owes a lot to cartoons from The Silent Age of Animation and The Golden Age of Animation, especially the surreal works of Max and Dave Fleischer.

Unfortunately the series was Too Good to Last (only 36 episodes...) and only a few of the series episodes have been released on VHS and DVD. Originally aired from 1995-1997.

Oh, and did we mention this series has Lexington, and then Chicken, doing the voice of Felix?

Tropes used in The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat include:

"I robbed twenty-seven banks and thirty-two gas stations."
"I stole seventy-three cars and ninety-one million dollars in gold and jewels."
"Uh, I made a pun."

Felix: We need to get a better genius.

  • Carnivore Confusion: During the "Meat Song" in "Guardian Idiot", the demon butcher is seen serving pork to a family of pigs.
  • Catch Phrase:
    • "Ratzenheimmer!"
    • (acknowledging the increasing surreality of the situationl) "This is too stupid!"
  • Classically-Trained Extra: The two worms that Felix is trying to catch and feed to Slimo in "Shell Shock".

"We're not worms, I tell you! We're actors!"

Felix: Computer animation. Big deal!

  • Chaotic Stupid: The Bermuda Triangle.
  • Creator Backlash: Despite efforts to shift to script written episodes in Season 2, it was even more of a ratings disaster than the first season, and it was seen as a disaster in the eyes of everyone involved with it, according to Milton Knight.
  • Crying Indian: Appears alongside with Woodsy Owl and Smokey the Bear in the Green Aesop parody.
  • Deranged Animation: Oh yeah.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: In "The Punderground", Felix is thrown in a dungeon on a sentence of a thousand years because he made a pun.
  • The Ditz: Roscoe.
    • The Bermuda Triangle in "Manhattan Triangle".
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: When the magic bag gets stolen in "Viva Lost Wages", Felix acts as if he's lost his wife. (Complete with angst about having to sleep alone, a wallet full of romantic photos of Felix and the bag together, and the line, "I never should have taken it for granted!")
  • Double Take: Felix does this in "Black Magic Bag" after Roscoe flies by with his hand stuck in a knockoff magic bag and they casually say "hi" to each other.
  • Dream Sequence: Felix deliberately initiates one in "The Maltese Milkshake" by looking for a way to get knocked out, in a probable Shout-Out to The Great Piggy Bank Robbery.
  • Dream Weaver: Jeepers Creepers (a parody of Freddie Krueger). Actually, according to this universe's physics, pretty much everyone has this ability--just jump into the thought balloon of a dreaming person (or out of your own dream balloon and into theirs).
  • Easily Forgiven: In "Shocking Story", a worn-out lightning bolt low on power stays in Felix's house and eats all of Felix's (sentient) appliances, except for the TV, while Felix is out shopping. When Felix gets back, he simply hits the lightning bolt until it coughs everything up. Felix's TV is less than thrilled.

"That's all he's gonna get is a whooping? TENANT MEETING! RIGHT NOW!"

Poindexter: It appears, Mr Felix, that an extraterrestrial expedition has designated our planetary body as a locale for jettisonable waste materials…Mr. Felix?
Felix: (playing a video game on Poindexter's computer) Huh?
Poindexter: Aliens are using Earth as a trash can!

  • Fantastic Aesop: "Black Magic Bag" ends with Felix delivering a PSA-style announcement to the audience to "make sure this never happens again":

"So remember, kids, if someone offers you a magic bag, just tell 'em, 'No, thanks! I'm savin' up my money for an edible wig!' And that's one to grow on!"

  • For the Evulz: Peeking Duck.
  • The Gambling Addict: Felix meets one named Billy in the Twisted Tales. Billy lost his luck because of this, since Felix is a black cat that crossed his path. Billy even begged Felix to "uncross" his path. Which Felix did. Felix, however, kept crossing Billy's path, eventually sending him to the poorhouse. Later on, Billy steals Felix's magic bag, hoping it'll restore his luck. Billy has been winning bets since then, which made him the (probably) only person who managed to steal the bag and use it. Felix eventually confronted Billy, who had a security guard throw Felix away. Felix then challenged Billy for a bet with the bag at stake. Felix then picked two dice and told Billy he could get any number he wants from them. Billy then called "13". Felix protested the biggest number he could get was "12" but Billy insisted with "13". Felix soon had an idea: he got the dot from the exclamation mark that came with the idea and added it to the six-dot face of one of the die, turning it into a seven-dot face and then threw the dice, obtaining "13". As soon as Billy lost the bag, he lost his new fortune.
  • Genre Savvy: As always, Felix frequently uses the surreality of his animated universe to his advantage. In one episode, he uses a remote to go back in time by rewinding the episode to a point when he could have watched a CGI version of the cartoon he's in and seen the ending, thus understanding how to get out of his difficulty. (If you had a hard time following that, you're clearly not savvy enough to inhabit this particular universe.)
  • George Lucas Throwback: The series as a whole is one big love letter after the next to classic cartoons.
  • Gesundheit: In "Felix in Psychedelicland":

Sheba: Whoa. Escher!
Felix: Gesundheit.

  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: Standard as it's a 1990s cartoon, but the scene in "Star Trash" of the Mr. Spock expy checking out his computer comes across as...off. Very, very off. Here's the clip (it's at :19)
    • In "Phony Felix", Felix is tied up in a building that ends up flooding. No problem--he leaps out of an overflowing window, salmon-style:

"I feel like spawning!"

  • G-Rated Mental Illness: The Talkative Loon asylum-escapee frog.
  • Group Hug: Felix with Slimo the Slug and the two worms at the end of "Shell Shock". And note that it's a really weird place for a group hug, since Slimo is about to eat the worms.

Felix: Aww! Hugs all around, ya slobs!

  • Hall of Mirrors: Peking Duck and his sumo chicken sidekicks chase Felix through one of these in "Step Right Up".
  • Hurricane of Euphemisms: A noticeable tic in Shamus H. Gold's speech pattern. And then there's this:

Duck: Step right up! See human oddities! The unusually inclined! The normality...challenged!
Felix: Oh boy, freaks!

Felix: What a woman! Eyes like pies...

  • The Prima Donna: Natasha Slinky.
  • Private Eye Monologue: A trademark of Shamus Crow, also used by Felix in "The Maltese Milkshake".
  • The Other Darrin: Felix had two voice actors in this series: Thom Adcox Hernandez (credited as Thomas Adcox at the time of the show's airing) and Charlie Adler.
  • Random Events Plot
  • Scooby-Dooby Doors
  • Serenade Your Lover: In "Viva Lost Wages", Felix looks at photos of himself and his bag in various romantic-looking scenes, one of which is the bag on a balcony and Felix beneath, playing a mandolin.
  • Sexophone: Accompanies Natasha Slinky.
  • Shoddy Knockoff Product: The black magic bags mass-produced in "The Black Magic Bag". When some of the materials indentified as being part of the original bag, they were replaced with cheap ones under the belief the customers would never know. To replace non-identified materials, they used cheap ones under the belief nobody cared.
  • Shout-Out: The episode Phoney Phelix has the Felix impostor singing a small verse of the 1950s Felix theme song.
    • In the same episode, in the fake Felix's flashback, one of the studios he is booted out of is called "Scumco". Also, in order to learn how to be a cartoon character, fake Felix attended an academy named Fleischer.
      • In a TV ad for the Fleischer school, a character is shown plummeting off a cliff, Wile E. Coyote-style.
    • In the two-part episode "The Fuzzy Bunny Show", Felix was mistaken for Garfield once per part.
    • The episode "Nightmare on Oak Street features a villain who goes after victims in their dreams and Roscoe drinking tons of coffee to avoid him.
    • "The Maltese Milkshake has certain similarities with "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery", including a bit where Felix realizes he has a dream sequence coming up and searches for a way to get knocked out.
    • The episode "Background Details", in which Felix and Roscoe search for a new background, is very reminiscent of "Duck Amuck".
    • The smiling moon used in the series strongly resembles the one in Krazy Kat.
  • Sidekick: In one episode, Roscoe is referred to as such to Felix.
  • Simpleton Voice: Roscoe; the Bermuda Triangle; Oscar.
  • Souvenir Land: Played with. The carnival Felix goes to in "Step Right Up" is a pretty simple standard carnival, but it does contain a parody of the "Small World" ride.
  • Spaghetti Kiss: Among the romantic photos of Felix and his bag in "Viva Lost Wages".
  • Spoof Green Aesop: "Star Trash".

Felix: Poindexter, this is horrible! We're prisoners in a cartoon with a moral to it!

Poindexter: Are you from a planet where people don't have any emotions?
Mr. Gleep: No, I'm just a bad actor.

  • Thirty Minutes or It's Free: One episode had Felix charged with delivering a meatball in 5 minutes or it was free, complete with a continually running timer in the corner of the screen. When he just barely makes it in time, the customer's wife expresses her desire for a meatball of her own, and the countdown clock gives a nasty chuckle as it starts without even letting Felix get back to retrieve the meatball.
  • Toon Physics
  • Totally Radical: The surfer movie in "Felix in Nightdrop Land".
  • Trapped in TV Land: "Now Playing Felix" and "Felix in Nightdrop Land".
  • Troubled Production: Milton Knight, an animator and director on the series, claimed that a major problem during production was that they couldn't make up their mind what kind of cartoon this was supposed to be--there was one group who wanted a Felix like the Otto Messmer shorts, one group who wanted Max Fleischer surreality, Don Oriolo who wanted the Trans-Lux Felix, one group who wanted the show to be Ren and Stimpy-esque, and one director who wanted a Robert Crumb influence! This resulted in the show being completely different between the two seasons--the first season was storyboarded and was absurdly surreal in its premises and animation, whearas the second season was more scripted and focused more on one-liners, provided by the writer of Garfield & Friends.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Weirdness is so common in this world that nobody bats an eyelid.
  • Villain Song: Jeepers Creepers gets one in "Nightmare on Oak Street".
  • Visual Pun: In "Black Magic Bag", we see the designer of the knockoff bags literally laughing all the way to the bank.
  • Waxing Lyrical: In "The Maltese Milkshake" Felix answers the phone by (unenthusiastically) saying, "Felix the cat, the wonderful wonderful cat..." Five minutes later, a dame struts into his office and the Private Eye Monologue states "My heart went pit-a-pat!"
  • Weirdness Magnet: Felix. Not that he finds any of it really weird.
  • Widget Series
  • Word, Schmord: A hotel called the "Hotel Shmotel".
  • Worst News Judgement Ever: In "News Blues", Felix reads a paper with the front page headline "MAN FINDS LOST SHOE!"
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