Looney Tunes

Merrily we roll along, Rubinoff and me
When he plays his fiddle I just go on a spree
It's a cinch that every time I go on the air
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)

Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies were two series of theatrical cartoon shorts running from 1930 to 1969. Initially produced by Leon Schlesinger for distribution by Warner Bros, in 1944 the studio took the unit over entirely.

Originally, as the names indicate, these cartoons were meant to rip off the sweet, sentimental musical shorts then in vogue: for instance, Disney's Silly Symphonies. That basing cartoons around popular public-domain songs—or, even better, ones the studio already owned—was a fast and relatively cheap way of producing them didn't hurt any, either.

The first set, Looney Tunes, was introduced with 1930's "Sinkin' in the Bathtub" featuring minstrel-like mascot Bosko the Talk Ink Kid, and for its first decade relied more heavily on recurring characters and thus lower budgets. Merrie Melodies, introduced in 1931's "Lady, Play Your Mandolin" featuring the (suspiciously Mickey Mouse-esque) character "Foxy", were initially intended as the music videos of their day, basically animated commercials for the Warners-owned sheet-music library.

When Looney Tunes switched to color in 1942, and the Merrie Melodies line ditched the music around the same time in favor of its own rising star—one Bugs Bunny—differences between the two were limited to their distinctive theme songs, until 1964 (when both series wound up using the same theme music as a result of using a modernized, and slightly bizarre, opening/closing sequence).

Over the course of their tenures at 'Termite Terrace', as the WB animation studio was informally known, the legendary directors Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, Frank Tashlin, and Robert McKimson—assisted by talented animators such as Art Davis, Ken Harris, Emery Hawkins, Bill Melendez, Virgil Ross, and Rod Scribner; brilliant writers like Warren Foster, Mike Maltese, and Tedd Pierce; ace musical arranger Carl Stalling; and sound effects whiz Treg Brown—created and refined a large and diverse cast of characters, the most famous of which include (listed in chronological order of introduction):

Looney Tunes Main Cast

  • 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 Hunting 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.
  • Bugs Bunny -- "A Wild Hare", 1940, various, notably Avery. A famous Karmic Trickster and cultural icon. For decades, always considered the "main character" and "star" of the core cast.
    • As with Elmer, there is some controversy over whether Bugs debuted earlier, with the prime suspects being four cartoons by Ben "Bugs" Hardaway and Jones, including "Elmer's Candid Camera". However, the rabbit in those cartoons is basically Daffy with rabbit ears, and "A Wild Hare" is the first cartoon featuring a rabbit that is recognizably Bugs.
      • In the third and fourth of the pre-"Wild Hare" cartoons, the formative rabbit was in fact advertised as Bugs Bunny by the studio; take that for what you will. (As for where the name came from, take your pick: the initial model sheet for the character, by Charles Thornson, was supposedly labeled "Bugs' bunny," ie. director Ben 'Bugs' Hardaway. Mel Blanc would later claim he came up with the name at the same time as the voice -- 'bugs' being Brooklyn slang for 'crazy'. Still another version has the name drawn from a hat by Leon Schlesinger's secretary. Tex Avery, meanwhile, just wanted to call him "Jack E. Rabbit".)
  • Tweety Bird -- "A Tale of Two Kitties", 1942, Clampett. "I tawt I taw a puddy tat!" In Bob Clampett's hands, Tweety was a pink, sadistic trickster who used his wits to get rid of cats. Under Friz Freleng, Tweety became yellow (the Hays Office balked because the pink made him look naked), found a recurring adversary in Sylvester, and often depended on an umbrella-wielding Granny or an angry bulldog to get rid of the "bad old puddy tat". Time has seen modern generations often mistake Tweety for a female (this doesn't happen in Spanish-speaking countries, as its local name, "Piolín", is unequivocally male).
  • Pepé LePew -- "Odor-Able Kitty", 1945, Jones. A Funny Foreigner and Handsome Lech, completely oblivious to his body odor problem... and thus to why all the pretty 'young ladiee skonks' keep running from him in disgust. Of course, the fact that they're nearly all actually cats, unaware that they've had white stripes painted on their backs, doesn't help either. Can at times be a Depraved Bisexual: Pepé has gone after a male cat who was painted up as a skunk in his first cartoon, a white-striped Sylvester at the end of 1954's "Dog Pounded", and accidentally made out with a man on a Tunnel of Love ride in 1951's "Scent-imental Romeo." Based in part on characters made famous by actor Charles Boyer.
  • Sylvester the Cat -- "Life With Feathers", 1945, Freleng. A cat with a speech impediment who usually tries to eat Tweety or Speedy Gonzales, with little success, making him a mild version of the Villain Protagonist. One of the most versatile of the ensemble, prone to neuroses and usually the star of the comic melodramas. In Robert McKimson's hands, slobby Sylvester has a hyper-articulate son named Sylvester, Jr., whom Dad tries to impress by chasing what turns out to be a baby kangaroo; when he retreats gibbering at the "giant mouse!" Junior is mortified.
  • Yosemite Sam -- "Hare Trigger", 1945, Freleng. A brash little outlaw with handlebar mustachios and a severe temper problem, introduced as 'a more worthy adversary' for Bugs than the meek Elmer. Said to be a caricature of his short, brash, redheaded creator. Introduced as a Wild West bandit, he eventually became the stock blowhard villain character: Civil War general, Viking, pirate, Black Knight (no Python references please), politician, Arab sheik, etc. Oddly enough, he wears his bandit mask no matter what role he plays.
  • Foghorn Leghorn -- "Walky Talky Hawky", 1946, McKimson. A loud, obnoxious rooster with a Southern accent, based on Kenny Delmar's 'Senator Claghorn' radio character. Considers himself the life of the party; demonstrates by tricking little Henery Hawk out of capturing him, abusing the barnyard dog by whomping his ass with a wooden board and painting his tongue green, or babysitting a genius chick named Eggbert in order to cozy up to his widow hen mother.
  • Marvin The Martian -- "Haredevil Hare", 1948, Jones. An Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain who wants to see an Earthshattering Kaboom, and is the Trope Namer thereof. Invariably foiled by Bugs. Like the Tasmanian Devil, he only appeared in a handful of shorts from the original shorts, but became popular enough to be featured in nearly every adaptation thereafter. His universe was expanded in the 2000s animated show Duck Dodgers. Will get his own CG movie in a few years!
  • Wile E Coyote and The Road Runner -- "Fast and Furry-ous", 1949, Jones. A speedy bird and the coyote who uses a variety of backfiring Acme Company traps and mail-order gadgets to try to catch him -- 'try' being the operative word. The coyote was named in his first face-off against Bugs (Operation: Rabbit), where he became "Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius". The Roadrunner remains mute to this day. Incidentaly, Time Warner Cable for a long time used them as the mascot for their "Roadrunner" internet service; no longer the case since the company was spun off as independent from Time Warner in 2009.
  • Speedy Gonzales -- "Cat-Tails for Two", 1953, McKimson. Another Funny Foreigner and good-natured Trickster who moves at Super Speed to help his poor Mexican mouse friends get cheese from "el gringo pussygato" (usually Sylvester). Has a lethargic cousin named (inevitably) "Slowpoke Rodriguez" who uses a gun to incapacitate cats instead. For obvious reasons, the Speedy shorts—particularly the late 1960s ones with Daffy as his antagonist—tend not to be received well by animation fans and historians. Ironically, despite being blacklisted for a while in the U.S. for stereotyping, he's the most popular Looney Tunes character in Mexico.
  • The Tasmanian Devil -- "Devil May Hare", 1954, McKimson. The destructive, hurricane-spinning, Extreme Omnivore who talks in Hulk Speak when he talks at all. Though he only appeared in five Golden Age-era cartoons, he is nowadays considered as popular as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, having been nicknamed Taz and often appearing in merchandise, comic book stories, and even his own TV spinoff (Taz-Mania).
  • Michigan J. Frog -- "One Froggy Evening": 1955, Jones. A frog from The Gay Nineties is discovered by a man in modern times. Unfortunately, the frog acts as his Not-So-Imaginary Friend. Listed here as an honorable mention, as he only ever appeared in two cartoons (one a direct sequel to the other) which he didn't share with any other iconic characters, and was never really iconic himself until he became the mascot for the WB Network in the 90's.

...along with dozens of lesser known and one-shot characters. Quite nearly all of these were voiced by Mel Blanc, the Man of a Thousand Voices; in fact, that was used as a gag in at least one short. Other WB voice artists included Stan Freberg, June Foray, Bea Benaderet, Arthur Q. Bryan (the voice of Elmer Fudd), and Robert C. Bruce (who narrated most of the "travelogue" and "newsreel" shorts of the '40s).

For more detailed information on the recurring cast, refer to the franchise's character sheet.

The cartoons starring this pantheon originated many of the classic Animation Tropes, co-opting or perfecting most of the rest. Being primarily character-driven comedy, with the various stars working and reworking their shticks solo or in combination, their comedic style is firmly rooted in vaudeville, early Broadway, and silent-film slapstick—an ancestry they cheerfully acknowledged: as in Robert McKimson's 1950 short "What's Up Doc?", an Animated Actors look at Bugs's rise to stardom by way of Elmer Fudd's vaudeville act.

The freewheeling house style was also heavily influenced by, well, the house movies. Answering accusations of excessive violence from parental action groups in later years, Jones noted that these shorts were originally intended to ride with such sweet, wholesome family fare as Little Caesar and The Public Enemy. "We didn't make them for kids," he explained. "We made them for ourselves."

Helping the anarchistic spirit along were a succession of humourless bosses that more or less invited open rebellion. Founder Schlesinger won unwitting immortality as the inspiration for Daffy Duck's trademark lisp: "You're dethpicable!". The Warner Bros. themselves really didn't know or care what was going on in their animation unit, leaving hands-on oversight to bean counter Eddie Selzer. Recounting the genesis of the classic "Bully For Bugs", Jones recalled the day Selzer showed up at his door as he and writer Mike Maltese were hashing out story ideas, and bellowed: "I don't want any pictures about bullfights! Bullfights aren't funny!" Then Selzer marched off, leaving his dumbfounded staff staring at each other. "Well," Maltese said, "Eddie's never been right yet..."

Warners ceased production of the classic series in 1963 and outsourced new cartoons to other entities in something of a Dork Age until 1969; a Revival of new production of the classic cartoons occurred during the 90s. Moving to television in 1960 with the original incarnation of the The Bugs Bunny Show, the Warners' shorts took a level in ubiquity. Various repackagings became staples of the American Saturday morning schedule for the next forty years, reintroducing themselves through the generations, until they had permanently entered the collective consciousness.

"Looney Tunes", the generic term by which all Warners animation is now known and sold, is a brand name more than anything nowadays, but is most heavily associated with the "classic" theatrical shorts and only begrudgingly to what's been done to the characters since, e.g. this, this, this, and most emphatically this. This one's okay though. As is this. The Tunes have been the mascots of the Six Flags theme parks for years.

The merchandising for Looney Tunes products ceased production when AOL ended its merger with Time Warner in order to save money (it did the complete opposite), and Cartoon Network hasn't been kind to the Tunes until November 2009, when they began running the classic shorts again. Cartoon Network is even producing a third new set of animated shorts featuring the original characters!

It is impossible to discuss the impact of animation on any culture in the world without mentioning these characters and their famous shorts. They have a global influence equaled only by a certain group of cartoons. Not only by dint of their quality and originality, but by the scope of their exposure, Looney Tunes have influenced every corner of the animated world. In the 1940's in particular, nearly everybody copied their antics—even Disney tried their hands at Warners-esque comedy from time to time!

For a complete filmography of the original cartoons, 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 here.

Not to be confused with the prolific Wiki contributor.

For tropes about Looney Tunes in comics, go here.

See also Noteworthy Looney Tunes Staff for info on the many people who contributed to this franchise.

Looney Tunes is the Trope Namer for:
Tropes used in Looney Tunes include:

A-B-C

  • Abhorrent Admirer: Pepé Le Pew in most (if not all) of the cartoons he was in (though there were times when the roles were reversed and Pepe became the hunted; and the only cartoon where he wasn't an Abhorrent Admirer was Arthur Davis's "Odor of the Day"); Daffy Duck in Frank Tashlin's "The Stupid Cupid"; the Mama Bear in "Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears"; and the portly Slavic-accented female bunny Millicent from "Rabbit Romeo."
    • Pepe and the cat are special cases; the cat freaks out at his interest mainly because he's a skunk, with all the attendant odor problems. When the tables are turned (often from Pepe either having his stench covered or removed), her attitude flips around as well and she becomes even more aggressive than Pepe was, intimidating the hell out of him.
  • Accordion Man: Some characters are subject to this.
  • Accidental Athlete: Happens to Cool Cat in Bugged by a Bee. Subverted in that the bee gets all the credit in the end and not Cool Cat.
  • Adipose Rex: A lot of the medieval-based Looney Tunes portray their kings as fat (and often Fat Bastards).
  • Affably Evil: Marvin the Martian most notably, who was intentionally created to be incredibly dangerous but very softspoken and polite.

"One mustn't be rude, even to one's breakfast."

  • 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, 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.
    • 1942's "Crazy Cruise" is uncredited; Tex Avery started it, but was fired after the "Heckling Hare Ending" incident. Robert Clampett finished it. Avery is also uncredited on the banned cartoon "All This And Rabbit Stew," which he directed.
    • Frank Tashlin goes uncredited in "Hare Remover" (1945). He went under "Frank Tash" and "Tish Tash" in his earlier cartoons.
    • 1934's "Those Were Wonderful Days" and "Pettin' in the Park" both credit then-regular musical director Bernard Brown as the actual director of the cartoons, which virtually everyone involved with the studio back then denies was even remotely the case. The most commonly accepted theory is that these were actually the first two cartoons directed by Frank Tashlin, but he had quit the studio (temporarily; he returned the following year) before they were released, resulting in Brown being credited for whatever reason.
  • 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".

Bugs: Run for the hills, folks, or you'll be up to your armpits in Martians!

  • 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 the goat and a group of nazis stranded at the top of his scrap heap.

"The next time you dream, INCLUDE US OUT!"

    • "A Cartoonist's Nightmare", as suggested by the title.
  • All Psychology Is Freudian
  • Amusing Injuries
  • Angrish: Yosemite Sam is the rackin-frackin' KING of this trope.
    • Bugs Bunny goes into an Angrish tirade in Rabbit Rampage before the unseen animator (Elmer) erases his head.
    • Daffy spouts some angrish in "Fast Buck Duck" after one of his failed attempts to enter the mansion's yard.
  • Animal Athlete Loophole: Bobo the Elephant in "Gone Batty", Bugs Bunny in "Baseball Bugs". The latter in particular had Bugs invoke Loophole Abuse everywhere.
    • Boulevardier From The Bronx (Freleng, 1937) is a baseball film, but the only athletes present are two roosters (Claude and Dizzy Dan) and a turtle as catcher who uses his shell as a chest protector.
      • The backs of Dan's outfield can be seen prior to the start of the game, a pig is Dan's first strikeout victim, and a dachshund scores an inside-the-park home run.
      • Claude from goes from zero to hero. The cocky and conceited Dizzy Dan, whose Giants team is leading 3-0, walks the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs just so he can get to Claude and strike him out. On an 0-2 pitch, Claude winds up going yard, winning the game for his team 4-3, and gets the last laugh at Dizzy Dan.
      • Somewhere a statistician should be fired: It was already 2-0 Giants when Claude gave up an inside-the-park homer to a dachshund on the Giants' team and a four-base error to Dizzy Dan. It should be 4-0 Giants, rendering the game tied with Claude's grand slam, but the score at the bottom of the ninth showed 3-0. See it here.
    • Somebody on the Freleng staff must have sucked at addition. In "Baseball Bugs", the Gas House Gorillas scored 10 runs in the first, 28 in the second, 16 in the third and 42 in the fourth before Bugs stepped in for the Tea Totallers. That gave the Gorillas 96 runs. But in the top of the ninth, the score reads Bugs Bunny 96, the Gorillas 95.
  • Animal Nemesis: The "Rabbit Season/Duck Season" cartoons (and some of the Bugs/Elmer cartoons that are basically a remake of "A Wild Hare") invariably contain variants on this.
  • Animated Actors: "You Ought To Be In Pictures," "Duck Amuck," "Rabbit Rampage," "This is a Life?", "A Star is Bored," and "Blooper Bunny"
  • 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. The cartoon ends with Sylvester and Wile E. Coyote crossing the finish line instead.
  • Anti-Sneeze Finger: In the Looney Tunes short "Frigid Hare", Bugs Bunny stiffles an Eskimo's sneeze this way to keep the ice ledge they're on from breaking. And then Bugs sneezes.
  • Anti-Villain: Elmer Fudd, Sylvester and Wile E. Coyote.
  • Anvil on Head: Pretty much an iconic feature of Looney Tunes.
  • Arch Enemy: Bugs and Elmer, Sylvester and Tweety, Coyote and 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 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 very Disney like shorts with his Sniffles cartoons, until he decided to drop the saccharine stuff and do funny cartoons-and while Bob and Tex had already abandoned most of the Disney-esque art by the 40's, Chuck Jones and Rob Mckimson's personal art styles wiped out any remaining trace of the original Disney influence that was clinging to the studio at that point.
    • 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.
  • Artifact Title: The Merrie Melodies series used to be reserved for the cartoons that were just animated musicals with thin, simplistic plots (in an attempt at copying the "Silly Symphonies" series from Disney). By the late '30s, Merrie Melodies began to feature cartoons that weren't centered around advertising a song from the WB music library. The name difference became even more meaningless in 1944, when Looney Tunes (originally a black and white series) fully switched to color, and recurring characters also began to be used in Merrie Melodies as well. By then, the only difference in the two series was the title and theme music. In fact, Friz Freleng outright commented on the fact that he never initially knew whether the short they'd be creating was a Merrie Melody or a Looney Tune, and it didn't matter anyway.
  • Artistic License History: Bugs's account of the American revolution to his nephew Clyde, in "Yankee Doodle Bugs".
    • Actually, a lot of historical-themed Looney Tunes shorts have this, but get away with it because of the Rule of Funny.
    • Many shorts relied on Hollywood History, or the overly-patriotic American history taught widely in schools at the time (i.e. giving Christopher Columbus a Historical Hero Upgrade, Native Americans a Historical Villain Upgrade, etc.)
      • In "Southern Fried Rabbit", Yosemite Sam claims to be holding the Mason Dixon Line, not letting any 'Yankees' across it. When Bugs tells him that the Civil War is long since over, Sam says he's no clock watcher. Later on, he catches some Yankees, but they're actually the New York Yankees—though they were in Chattanooga—so perhaps they were a Yankees minor league affiliate.
  • Art Shift: "Bartholomew versus the Wheel" isn't drawn in the typical style (looking more like something from Harold and the Purple Crayon).
    • Neither is "Senorella and the Glass Huarache," which seems to resemble a mid-60s or '70s De Patie-Freleng cartoons. (Not much of a surprise, as many De Patie-Freleng staff members worked on this short.)
    • 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 "Super Rabbit"
  • Ash Face: A regular gag whenever firearms or explosions are involved. Sometimes the basis for a blackface gag.
  • Aside Glance
  • As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Hitler's speech in "Russian Rhapsody," which includes bizarre references to Friz Freleng, Heinrich (German version of Henry) Binder (Henry Binder was one of the associate producers of WB cartoons when Leon Schlessinger was there), "What's Cooking, Doc?", someone named "Tim O'Shenko",[1] ordering sauerkraut from a delicatessen, and the Chattanooga Choo-Choo (a shout out to the classic big band tune from the 1940s).
  • Ass in a Lion Skin: Very common, with rabbits as ducks (and vice-versa), cats as skunks, pigs as eagles, dogs as chickens, coyotes as roadrunners...
  • Assumed Win:
    • The whole premise of the 1943 short "What's Cookin', Doc?". Bugs assumes he's going to win an Oscar, but it ends up going to James Cagney instead. Bugs tries to convince the Academy to give him the Oscar instead.
    • Also seen in the 1955 short "This is a Life?". Daffy assumes the program will be a retrospective about himself, when instead it's about Bugs.
  • 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-Firing Gun: Bugs causes guns to do this in a variety of implausible ways, once (in "Hillbilly Hare") by simply moving the stock to the other end of the barrel.
  • 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"
  • The Bad Guy Wins: "What's Opera Doc?", though granted Elmer is too remorseful to savour it, and Bugs isn't really dead.
    • "Fresh Airdale", big time.
    • "Little Red Riding Rabbit" sort of has one too, in which by the end of the short, even Bugs is getting tired of Red Riding Hood's constant interruptions. He then switches the Big Bad Wolf, who was about to fall onto red hot coals because of all the furniture Bugs threw on him, with Red. Bugs and the Wolf, arms around each other and sharing a carrot, watch proudly as Red soon gets what she deserves.
    • "Tortoise Beats Hare", "Tortoise Wins by a Hare", and "Rabbit Transit". Though Bugs could also be considered the bad guy, considering how much of a jerk he was to Cecil Turtle in the first place.
  • Balloonacy:
    • Bushy Hare
    • Hypo-Chondri-Cat
    • averted in Fastest with the Mostest
  • Battle Discretion Shot: Happens near the climatic end of the Bugs Bunny short "Knights Must Fall".
  • Being Watched: One of many fourth-wall breakers
  • Berserk Board Barricade: Expect to see all levels of barrier and then the villain standing right behind you
  • Berserker Tears: Playboy Penguin with his ice cube tears.
  • Big Ball of Violence
  • Big Eater: Occurs many times. One such example is the rival chicken in "Cock-a-Doodle Duel" downing dozens of hot dogs at once.
  • Big Little Man: One short inverts this. Beaky Buzzard finds a small reptile peeking through some rocks. Noting that the creature seems shorter than him, Beaky tries to grab it and take it home for dinner. Turns out "Shorty" is just the small head of a huge dragon.
  • Big No: A few shorts have this:
    • The Chuck Jones Warner Brothers cartoon Duck Amuck:

Daffy: All right. Let's get this picture started.
(iris out and THE END appears)
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.
      • It is reused in a similarly-themed cartoon "Captain Hareblower".
    • Also one near the end of the McKimson short "Sleepy Time Possum" in which Paw Possum, disguised as a dog, gets catapulted by his son
  • Big "Shut Up!": Usually phrased as "AAAAAAHHHHH, SHADDUP!"
  • Bizarre and Improbable Golf Game: "My Bunny Lies Over the Sea"
  • 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").

Sam: (gets angry, then demurely) Why did you pour ink on my head? (gets angry again)

    • 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.
  • Bowdlerization: When aired on television (and sometimes, home video—usually gray-market, public domain videos; the official release videos and DVDs try to make it as uncut as possible. If there are any missing scenes, it's because some of those scenes were lost long ago), a lot of the violent and politically-incorrect scenes and gags will be altered or cut. There's a website dedicated to tracking down what cartoons were edited and what channel edited them:
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: The damage done to it ranges from large cracks to pulverizing it to a fine powder. On more than one occasion, near the end of a cartoon, the film suddenly breaks, leaving the screen white. A character from the cartoon then steps out onto the white screen and says, "Ladies and gentlemen, due to circumstances beyond our control, we are unable to continue with this picture."
  • Breakout Character: THE WHOLE SERIES has lived and breathed this trope. It all started with Friz's Batman Gambit in 1935 to jump start Leon's ailing cartoon studio with several new cartoon characters in the short "I Haven't Got A Hat"-two pups named Ham and Ex, Kitty, Oliver Owl, Beans the Cat and Porky Pig. Porky was an instant hit with audiences, even though the studio thought for some reason that Beans would be the studio's next bankable star-but he too quickly faded into obscurity while Porky became the studio's star--THEN, two more stars broke out from Porky's cartoons-a little Daffy Duck from "Porky's Duck Hunt" and the Bugs Bunny prototype "Happy Hare/Bugs' Bunny" from "Porky's Hare Hunt", "Hare-Um Scare-Um" and "Presto-Change-O." Oh, and Bugs Bunny himself obviously.
    • 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:

Wolf: Hey, bud. Just a minute, bud. Just who the heck are you anyway??
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 Non Sequitur Scene and nothing else. That is until he ends up hooking up with the girl the heroes had been trying to save the entire cartoon.
  • Broken Record: Two instances: In 1933's "Bosko's Mechanical Man", when a record keeps skipping at "white as..." in "Mary Had a Little Lamb"; and 1961's "Daffy's Inn Trouble" when Daffy's record keeps skipping during "The Latin Quarter", which prompted the audience to throw fruits and vegetables at him in disgust.
  • Brother Chuck: Except for Daffy Duck, a lot of Porky's old sidekicks seem to have disappeared. Anyone remember Gabby the Goat? How about Beans the Cat, Ham and Ex, and/or Oliver Owl? Oh, and what the heck happened to Porky's love interest, Petunia Pig?
    • Throughout the 1930s and 40s, it seemed WB were experimenting with numerous new recurring characters and scenarios to use as a mainstream cast, as time passed the cast was narrowed down to a select few that were developed or renovated (e.g., Bugs, Daffy, Sylvester) while many other previous established characters got the shaft (e.g., Hubie and Bert, Charlie Dog). Others such as Henery Hawk and Porky himself also got taken Out of Focus somewhat, but still had minor roles on occasion.
    • In the 70s, Ralph Heimdahl and Al Stoffel revived Petunia for some occasional appearances in the Bugs Bunny newspaper comic strip. She was the sweet kid Robert Clampett reimagined her as, not the uppity diva Frank Tashlin created her as.
      • Petunia was a regular castmember in the old Gold Key and Whitman comics for decades, along with Porky's nephew, Cicero, and both appeared in all the Looney Tunes merchandise of the era (coloring books, toys, etc.). Another prominent Expanded Universe character that few remember these days is Bugs's girlfriend, Honey Bunny. Honey Bunny got displaced by Lola Bunny when Space Jam came out.
  • Call A Chicken A Shnook: "Loud mouthed, that is!"
  • The Cameo: Bugs Bunny at the end of "Porky Pig's Feat" (in his only black and white appearance, no less), "Crazy Cruise," "The Goofy Gophers" and "Duck Amuck." Foghorn Leghorn at the end of "False Hare." Daffy at the end of "Sahara Hare" and "Apes Of Wrath." Elmer at the end of "Rabbit Rampage." Tweety in "No Barking" and "Heir Conditioned." Pepe Le Pew in "Dog Pounded." Foghorn Leghorn in "False Hare."
  • Canis Latinicus: The Road Runner/Coyote shorts.
  • Captain Ersatz: Paramount/Famous Studio's Moe Hare, who was a Butt Monkey to the studio's Tommy Tortoise (their ersatz Cecil Turtle).
  • Cartoon Bomb
  • Cartoon Conductor: Seen in "Long-Haired Hare" and "Baton Bunny".
  • Casanova Wannabe: Pepé Le Pew (often mixed in with Handsome Lech). In a subversion, Pepe does succeed in catching his unwilling target, whether implied (as seen in the endings to "Wild Over You," "A Scent of the Matterhorn," "Touche and Go," "Heaven Scent," "Two Scents Worth," and "Louvre Come Back To Me") or directly stated/shown (as seen in "The Cat's Bah" and "Scent-imental Over You")
  • Casual Danger Dialogue: The narrator of "Each Dawn I Crow," sadistically insinuating to John Rooster that his goose is cooked.
  • Catapult Nightmare: The ending of "Smile, Darn Ya, Smile!".
  • Catapult to Glory: Coyote tried this a lot, most notably in the overly long ending gag in "To Beep or Not to Beep. Guess what happens.
  • The Cat Came Back
  • Catch Phrase:
    • "What's up, Doc?"
    • "Ain't I a stinka'?"
    • "Be vewwy, vewwy quiet. I'm huntin' wabbits."
    • "Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo!
    • "Wasscaly Wabbit"
    • "That's All Folks"
    • "I tawt I taw a puddy tat!"
    • "Sufferin' succotash!"
    • "That's a joke - ah say - that's a joke, son!"
    • "I'm only three-and-a-half years old."
    • "I like him, he's silly."
    • "I'M the rootinest, tootinest, fallootinest, shootinest hombre north, south, east AND WEST!!"
    • "Meep Meep!!"
    • ..."YOU'RE... deeeeeesthPICable!"
    • "Andale, andale! Arriba, arriba! Eeee-ha!"
    • "Duck Dodgers In the 24 1/2 Century"
    • 'turn out that light!!!'
    • And as a group: DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT!!, EAT AT JOES, and, of course, AAHHH, SHADDUP!
  • Catch That Pigeon: Or in this case, roadrunner, canary, rabbit, duck, white-striped black female cat, Mexican mouse...
  • Cat Stereotype: Sylvester is the codifier for the unsuccessful black and white cat stereotype.
  • The Chew Toy: Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Wile E. Coyote, Sylvester, Daffy Duck (the greedy narcissist, not the hyperactive screwball), etc.
    • Porky may exist as the only consistent example that rarely brings it upon himself.
  • Caught in a Snare: Foghorn Leghorn sees Henery building a snare trap and points out how a smart chicken like him would just jump over it... which is just what Henery wanted, as the spot Foghorn lands is where the trap door was.
  • Character Focus: Because he's a spotlight-stealer by nature (literally, in one case), most adaptations post-1960 are less about the whole Looney Tunes ensemble and more about Daffy Duck finding himself!
  • Christmas Episode: "Gift Wrapped".
  • 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-Lighting: In "Catty Cornered", Sylvester the Cat hides Tweety under an empty can. When the mobster Rocky finds Tweety under the can, he lights a firecracker with his cigarette and places under the can for Sylvester to find.
  • Circling Birdies: Often the result of falling anvils, falling boulders, mallet hits, falling pianos, fights covered up by 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.
  • Clip Show: "His Hare-Raising Tale", "This is a Life?", "Feather Bluster", "Tweet Dreams", "Hare-Abian Nights", and "Freudy Cat".
    • "Devil's Feud Cake" was probably the most blatant of all, as it contained very little original footage—it was actually a drastically cut down version of an episode of The Bugs Bunny Show.
  • Clothes Make the Superman: Subverted hard in "Fast and Furry-ous" (Wile E. Coyote wears a superhero outfit, only to learn the hard way that just because you wear it doesn't mean it grants you the ability to fly). Lampshaded in "Goofy Groceries," "Super Rabbit" and "Stupor Duck."
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Daffy, especially in the earlier shorts. Even later he isn't the most stable of beings at times.
    • The demented flying fish in the Porky Pig film "The Sour Puss" certainly qualifies.
    • And literally, with the Dodo.
    • Some non-Tweety cartoons had Sylvester showing signs of mischievous irrationality (Back Alley Oproar, Doggone Cats, Kitty Kornered).
  • 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.

Bugs: '"A few of my poor relations. They're always ready for a touch."

  • 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.

Off-stage voice: Shhh! Petunia, don't get excited, don't get excited...
Petunia: EXCITED?!? WHO'S EXCITED?!? I'M NOT EXCITED--!!!

  • Comic Trio: Chuck Jones' Three Bears shorts.
  • 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 the Abhorrent Admirer and eventually she has her way with him resulting in this trope.
    • 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.
    • The trope also happens at the end of Katnip Kollege during the iris out when Kitty Bright covers Johnny Cat with kisses leaving lipstick marks on him.
    • Pretty much every cat painted with stripes (Penelope Cat, Sylvester, etc.) experiences this when Pepe Le Pew encounters them smothering them with kisses.
  • Credits Gag: "Wabbit Twouble" featured the crew members' names written in Elmer Fudd speak.
    • Similarly, "A Scent of the Matterhorn" featured the crew members' names written in faux French.
    • "Nutty News" features upside down opening credits.
  • Cross-Dressing Voices: Sniffles the mouse is voiced by three female voice actors throughout all of Chuck Jones' Sniffles shorts: Gay Seabrook, Bernice Hansen, and Sara Berner. Bernice herself also voiced the three squirrels in the 1939 Jones short "Robin Hood Makes Good".
  • 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.
  • Cut a Slice, Take the Rest: frequently, with various characters, and often with cake.

D-E-F

  • Dastardly Whiplash: Dan Backslide—a very deliberate parody of this type—in "The Dover Boys"
  • Deadpan Snarker: Porky was often very verbal about the wacky cast around him, especially when paired with Daffy (particularly the pompous Daffy who was trying to be a star, not the wacky one who always got Porky in trouble); Bugs Bunny…pretty much all the time.
  • Death by Materialism: Daffy, often.
  • Deer in the Headlights: Whenever someone's about to get hit with something heavy from above, or a train, or anything like that, you can bet that this will be their reaction.
  • 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":

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"
  • Digital Destruction: The Golden Collection sets have gained some notoriety among some animation buffs for usage of the infamous DVNR process, resulting in oversaturated colors, oversharpened lines (which ruins the look of the cels) or even flat out erased artwork (particularly noticable in the restoration of "The Big Snooze" on Vol. 2), and fuzzy moire patterns.
  • Dinosaur Doggie Bone
  • Disney Acid Sequence: The drunken car chase in "You Don't Know What You're Doin'!".
    • Pretty much the entire dream sequence of Elmer Fudd's after Bugs Bunny invades it in "The Big Snooze" (Bob Clampett's very last short for Warner Bros., by the way).
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Bugs Bunny is reigning king of this trope. Some cartoons gave him a decent motivation (someone attempting to kill him, destroying his home, etc.), but far more often he would make someone's life a living Hell (or, very rarely, an actual dying Hell) just for annoying him.
    • Marvin the Martian is perfectly willing to kill billions of lives just because their planet was blocking his view of Venus.
  • The Ditz: Schulz, Private Snafu, Göring, Elmer Fudd on occasion, etc.
  • Double Entendre: The most notable is the "beavers damming a river" gag used first in "The Eager Beaver" (Jones, 1946) and "Unnatural History" (Levitow, 1959).
  • Downer Ending: The Tex Avery short "Circus Today" ends with the diver falling to his death leading the band to play "Taps".
  • Driven to Suicide: Occasionally used and played for laughs, though, thanks to Values Dissonance, a lot of the suicide gags (particularly the ones involving guns to the head and nooses) are not allowed to be shown on televised versions of these cartoons, lest some young, impressionable mind think its okay to commit such atrocity.
    • Best intact example? Cheese Chasers. Hubie and Bertie OD on cheese and decide to commit suicide. So they try to get Claude to eat them. Claude is pestered so badly, he gets turned off to eating mice and decides to commit suicide himself. He tries to antagonize Marc Antony to beat him to death. See Fridge Logic for the bulldog's response to all this. At least he doesn't decide to end it all, at least.
    • Not to mention Henry Bear trying to off himself in "Bear Feat", only for Junior to save him.
  • Dysfunctional Family: The Three Bears, with the oversized idiot cub Junyer constantly getting punched in the face by his short, hot-tempered father, and the mother bear being too passive to do anything about it. On the Chuck Jones documentary, Chuck Jones: Extremes and In-Betweens, Matt Groening (the guy behind The Simpsons and Futurama) stated that the Three Bear family was where he got the idea for Homer strangling Bart as a running gag on The Simpsons.
  • Early Installment Weirdness: The earliest shorts are very, very different from the Looney Tunes characters most of us are familiar with from childhood.
  • Ear Trumpet: "Now Hear This" is about an old man who finds a new ear trumpet in place of his old and worn-out one. He is overjoyed to have a new shiny trumpet, but it is, in fact, Satan's lost horn, and it turns the old man's world into a synesthetic, nightmarish acid trip sequence.
  • Edited for Syndication: Looney Tunes became notorious for being chopped up when shown on many networks, either edited to remove overly violent gags or "insensitive" racial stereotypes. Some shorts were merely edited for time to make room for more commercial breaks. As a result, there was much rejoicing when the Golden Collections presented the cartoons as they were originally seen in theaters. In many instances, it was like watching them for the first time.
    • The 1961 Bugs Bunny cartoon "Prince Violent" had its title changed to "Prince Varmint" for television in the 1980s.
    • Two cartoons had recent edits that were rather dubious, considering what goes on in today's cartoons. The Hasty Hare had footage of astronomer I. Frisby (caricature of Friz Freleng) writing his resignation removed, and Drip-Along Daffy had Porky's final line taken out—after Daffy, in janitor's outfit and clean-up barrel, says "I told you I was gonna clean up this one-horse town!", Porky says to us "Lucky for him this is a one-horse town!"
    • Surprisingly, a recent showing of part of "Bugs Bunny Bustin' Out All Over" let a butterfly calling Bugs a jackass slip by!
      • The epithet "jackass" has been used on W-B cartoons before. In 1945's A Tale Of Two Mice, Babbitt tells Catstello (both as mice) that if his plan to get the cheese doesn't work, "I'll...I'll be a jackass!" It doesn't, and Catstello hammers it in ("Jackass! Jackass!! Yer a jackass!! Hee-haw!"). 1950's Mississippi Hare has Col. Cornpone asking Bugs "If'n I had four legs and went 'hee-haw,' what would I be?" Bugs: "Why, you'd be a jackass." (Resulting in one of Bugs' perfectly timed duels.)
  • Edutainment Show: The three shorts, "By Word of Mouse," "Heir Conditioned," and "Yankee Dood It," commissioned by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation which educated the viewer on how the capitalist economy works and why it's a superior one. These shorts of course came about in the mid-fifties at the height of Red Scare, and it's easy to tell. In fairness, they did at least attempt to make these shorts interesting by throwing gags in between the edutainment, but in all, they pale in comparison to their regular output.
    • 1939's "Old Glory" is educational as well, though unlike the aforementioned Sloan shorts, it doesn't contain comedy at all. Rather, it's a history lesson on the Revolutionary War and the formation of the U.S., with Porky learning about it from Uncle Sam in the wraparounds.
  • Eek! A Mouse!
  • Epic Fail: Wile E. Coyote's specialty.
  • Era Specific Personality
  • Everything Explodes Ending: "Captain Hareblower" has Bugs Bunny blowing up Yosemite Sam's ship by throwing a lit match into the gunpowder room. Sam tries to get even by doing the same to Bugs' ship, but Bugs doesn't even try to stop him and Sam makes a hasty retreat. Turns out it was the other kind of powder room (the ladies bathroom), yet it explodes anyway, to Bugs' surprise.
  • Everything's Better with Chickens: The short "The Good Egg", as well as any short with Foghorn Leghorn.
  • Everything's Better With Pen-goo-ins: "Frigid Hare", "8 Ball Bunny", "The Penguin Parade."
  • Everything's Nuttier With Squirrels: "Much Ado About Nutting"
  • Evil Sounds Deep: The construction worker from "Homeless Hare" and the bulldog from "Chow Hound", both voiced by John T. Smith.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: "He can't outsmart me, 'cause I'm a moron!" (The giant from "Jack Wabbit And The Beanstalk")
  • Executive Meddling: Happened on occasion, especially when Leon Schlesinger was involved. In fact, meddling on the ending to The Heckling Hare caused Tex Avery to quit.
  • Expanded Universe: The old Gold Key Comics, which spilled over into children's books and merchandise of the period, and the Bugs Bunny newspaper strip. Largely forgotten today.
  • Exploding Closet: Daffy opens a closet door in "Daffy's Inn Trouble" and is buried in brooms.
  • Extreme Omni Goat
  • Eye Shock: Especially as an Unusual Euphemism for Something Else Also Rises.
  • Face Doodling: "Daffy Doodles"
  • Failure Is the Only Option: Just ask Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Wile E. Coyote, Sylvester, Daffy Duck (post-Flanderization), etc.
  • Family-Unfriendly Violence: Surprisingly and ironically, much less common than in other contemporaneous classic cartoon series, like 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-Snap Lighter: Seen in "Knight-Mare Hare"
  • 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]).
    • "The Three Little Bops" uses it to turn the Big Bad Wolf from an anti-heroic wannabe to a smooth player:

Pig #1: The Big bad Wolf, he learned the rule
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.
  • Flipping the Bird: If the Hays Office would only let Catstello, he'd give Babbitt the boid all right.
  • Fluffy Cloud Heaven: "Sunday Go To Meetin' Time," "Clean Pastures," "Daffy Duck And The Dinosaur," "Back Alley Oproar."
  • Foot Juggling: "Hippety Hopper", "Bear Feat" and "Outback Down Under" - a very overlooked trope involving a character spinning another character in circles with their legs, the term 'Look Ma! No Hands!' is very relevant here.
  • Force Feeding: "Pigs Is Pigs", "A Tale of Two Mice" and "Chow Hound"
  • 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:

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.

Bugs: Have you ever felt like there's something... watching you? Out there, in the audience."
Gossamer: People?! *screams and runs away 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!
  • Friendly Enemy: Ralph E. Wolf and Sam Sheepdog.
  • Funny Animal: Duh. All of them (including the human characters, like Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam)
  • Funny Foreigner: Pepé Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, and, to a lesser extent, Foghorn Leghorn (with his Southern accent) and Bugs Bunny (with his New York accent), for those who aren't originally from America.

G-H-I

  • Genre Killer: For a time, there were many Looney Tunes cartoons which consisted of inanimate objects coming to life when a store (usually a bookstore or a 1930s-style grocery store/pharmacy) closed up shop for the night ("Goofy Groceries", "Have You Got Any Castles", "Speaking of the Weather", etc.) The subgenre of cartoons, at least when it came to Looney Tunes, officially came to an end with 1946's "Book Revue" which, coincidentally, was also the last cartoon Bob Clampett got credit for. Though in a subversion, "Book Revue" is actually the best of this subgenre.
  • Girlish Pigtails: Petunia Pig in her later appearences.
  • Glove Slap: Seen in numerous cartoons when a character challenges another to a duel, but perhaps the most widely remembered one comes from "Hare Trimmed".
  • 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 Dark, Renaissance, and Millennium ages.
  • Gorgeous George: "Ravishing Ronald, the De-Natured Boy", from 1951's "Bunny Hugged".
  • 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-Trigger Avalanche: Demonstrated in "The Iceman Ducketh" when Daffy accidentally sets off an avalanche by shouting.
  • Hair-Trigger Temper: Yosemite Sam's shtick. He even rapped about it on The Looney Tunes Show.
  • Hammerspace
  • Handbag of Hurt: In "Boston Quackie", Quackie's girlfriend Mary clobbers the man in the green hat with her handbag. Of course, she is carrying an anvil in it...
  • Handcar Pursuit
  • 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":

Bugs: What a night! I'll never mix radish juice and carrot juice again...

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.
  • 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.

Granny: Que sera sera.

  • 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
  • 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. 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 The Hunting Trilogy) with Bugs and Daffy hunting Elmer after it's revealed that it's neither Rabbit Season nor Duck Season -- it's Elmer Season.
  • 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 Gone with the Wind.
  • 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
  • Hyperspace Mallet
  • Idea Bulb
  • Illogical Safe
  • Impossible Insurance: In "Fool Coverage", Daffy is an insurance salesman trying to sell Porky some life insurance. He promises the policy will pay Porky one million dollars for a black eye... provided it was the result of an elephant stampede happening in his house between 3:55 and 4:00 PM on July 4 during a hailstorm. At the end of the cartoon, that is exactly what happens! To try to save face, Daffy adds "and a baby zebra" to the clause. Cue baby zebra.
    • A variation of this occurs in "Boobs In The Woods." After asking Porky if he has a fishing license and a hunting license, Daffy asks if he has "a license to sell hair tonic...to bald eagles...in Omaha, Nebraska." Porky does, oddly enough.
  • Impossible Shadow Puppets: "One Meat Brawl" ends with what looks like a Shadow Discretion Shot of a big fight, but turns out to be the characters using shadow puppets. "That way, no one gets hurt."
  • Inconvenient Itch: In the short "An Itch In Time", Elmer's dog tries very hard not to scratch a flea bite lest he get the ultimate penalty: a bath!
  • Inconvenient Summons: "A lad in his lamp".
  • Induced Hypochondria: "Hare Tonic"; "The Hypo-Chondri-Cat"; "Dr. Devil and Mr. Hare"
  • 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:

"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: 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".
  • In Space
  • Instant Bandages
  • 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.

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 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.
    • 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.
    • Ballot Box Bunny (1951) has the iris close in as Bugs takes his turn at Russian Roulette. It opens back up on him to show he ducked out of the way of his shot, then another iris opens to show the shot hit Yosemite Sam.
  • Iron Butt Monkey: Where to start? Wile E. Coyote, Sylvester, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Adolf Hitler... and that's just the villains! Trope Codifier.

J-K-L

  • Jaw Drop
  • Jerkass: Michigan J. Frog, Daffy Duck (post-Flanderization), Foghorn Leghorn (Depending on the Writer), Yosemite Sam, Tweety (pre-Badass Decay), Bugs Bunny's prototype Happy Rabbit, Hubie and Bertie.
  • Juggling Loaded Guns: Elmer Fudd, for an avid hunter, ignores pretty much every rule of gun safety while out hunting wabbits. Also, there's the scene from Rabbit Fire, where Daffy looks down the barrel of Elmer's gun and finds out the hard way that there was One Buwwet Weft.
  • Jumping Out of a Cake: Bugs in "The Unmentionables". He was even dressed as a 20's flapper girl.
  • Kangaroo Pouch Ride: In "Daffy Duck Slept Here", Daffy claims that he has an invisible kangaroo named Hymie. Porky doesn't buy it, so Daffy climbs up on an invisible pouch and his disembodied floating head is seen bouncing all over the room. Even so, Porky still doesn't buy it.
  • Karma Houdini: "Fresh Airedale", full stop.
  • 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 in a few of his pairing with Speedy, notably in "Assault & Peppered" and "Well Worn Daffy".
  • 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)
  • Lazy Artist: It's extremely rare, but it's quite noticeable when it happens. Two occur in 1943's "Porky Pig's Feat": As Daffy issues a challenge to the hotel manager, a cel of Daffy is photographed painted side up in a frame (The redrawn version even renders that errant cel drawing!). At the end when Porky and Daffy discover Bugs Bunny in the adjacent room, Daffy's left arm is shown unpainted.
    • Lampshaded in "Invasion Of The Bunny Snatchers" (1992). Pod carrots from space replace Daffy, Yosemite Sam and Elmer with poorly drawn and animated duplicates.
  • Leitmotif: ' 'Like you wouldn't believe.' '
    • The opening jingle of "Stage Door Cartoon" was recycled in numerous late 40s/early 50s shorts as the theme for Bugs Bunny (and was later used as the tune for "What's Up Doc?").
    • Carl Stalling had a tendency to associate tunes with specific characters. Foghorn Leghorn sings or hums "The Camptown Races" in numerous shorts.
    • "I Cover the Waterfront" was often used during establishing shots of docks and harbors.
    • "Baby Face", "Oh, You Beautiful Doll", "It Had To Be You", "The Lady in Red", and "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby" were often used when a beautiful woman was on-screen.
    • "A Cup of Coffee, a Sandwich, and You" or "Shortnin' Bread" often played whenever a character was eating or preparing food.
    • "Trade Winds" often accompanied tropical settings. Conversely, "Winter" was used in snowy settings.
    • "Over the Waves" and "She Was an Acrobat's Daughter" were frequently used in acrobat/swinging sequences.
    • "Rock-a-Bye Baby" was used for baby-centric scenes, or characters trying to get another character to sleep.
    • "How Dry I Am" and "Little Brown Jug" were reserved for drunk characters.
    • "I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover" and "In My Merry Oldsmobile" were used in automobile/highway sequences.
    • "Blues in the Night" (aka "My mama done told me...") was often used whenever a character experienced bad luck or was down in the dumps.
    • "Frat" and "Freddie the Freshman" were almost always used in sports scenes.
    • "Me-ow" was a recurring cat-based theme.
    • "Der Erlkönig" was often used for Yosemite Sam, but was also heard in non-Sam shorts, usually accompanying evil characters.
    • "I've Been Working on the Railroad" was used for train and/or train tracks gags.
    • "We're in the Money" was used countless times when a character either received riches or was dreaming of it.
    • "Hooray For Hollywood" and/or "You Ought to Be in Pictures" played whenever Hollywood was involved.
    • "Pretty Baby" often played when babies were on-screen.
    • "You're in the Army Now", "We Did it Before (and We Can Do It Again)", and "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean" were used for war cartoons/gags.
    • "You're a Horse's Ass" was used whenever a character realized they fell for a prank or were insulted. Appropriately, it was also used as the main theme for Private Snafu.
    • "William Tell Overture" (Finale Movement) was usually used for horse-riding scenes. The Storm Movement was used, appropriately, for storm sequences. "Ranz des Vaches" was used for sunrise sequences.
    • "Sweet Dreams, Sweetheart", "Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral" and "Brahms's Lullaby" were used for sleeping gags/scenes. Occasionally, "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" was used if said scenes also involved the moon.
  • Limited Animation: Some of the best uses of this format in cartoon history.
    • Just to clarify: Most cartoons in the '30s and '40s utilized full animation just like Disney and other contemporaries. However, Chuck Jones experimented with limited animation in "The Dover Boys", liberally using quick smears and held poses. But limited animation (that is, less actual character movement) was never widespread until the mid '50s, when budgets got slimmer. Nevertheless, the various units worked around the limitations quite well, even if the animation wasn't as full as the previous two decades.
  • 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-shots.
  • 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 those starring Duck Dodgers). Usually featuring Porky as his Hypercompetent Sidekick.
  • Loser Gets the Girl: In "Muscle Tussle", Daffy loses his girlfriend to a big, white muscular duck at the beach.
  • Loveable Rogue: Charlie Dog (the dog who always harasses someone—usually Porky Pig—to be his master). Daffy sometimes played this role as well (especially under Robert McKimson's direction).

M-N-O

  • Made of Iron: Everyone.
  • Mad Love: Pepé Le Pew, though there are some examples of this from the Bugs Bunny cartoons.
  • Malaproper:
    • In "Thumb Fun", Daffy says he's going to get Porky slapped with a "habeas corpuscle".
    • 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):

Bugs: Like the Romans say, "E Pluribus Uranium!"

  • Meat-O-Vision
  • Mechanical Horse: Or something along those lines is used briefly in "One More Time".
  • Metronomic Man-Mashing: The adorable little Chicken Hawk does this to Foghorn Leghorn Once an Episode.
  • 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 Zip Zip Hooray or Road Runner a Go-Go (the only vocal is the Road Runner's "meep meep!")
    • 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.)
    • Double Chaser (1942)
    • Good Night Elmer (1940)
    • High Note (1960)
    • Holiday For Shoestrings (1946)
    • Much Ado About Nutting (1953)
    • Peck Up Your Troubles (1945)
    • The Bird Came C.O.D. (1942)
    • Baton Bunny (1959)
    • Rhapsody in Rivets (1941)
    • Joe Glow the Firefly (1941)- only vocal is "GOOD NIGHT!" at the end.
    • Rabbit Stew And Rabbits, Too (1969)
    • No Barking (1954) - save for Tweety's lines at the very end.
  • Minion with an F In Evil: "SCHULTZ!"
    • Also, K-9 could count as this to Marvin.
  • Mind Your Step
  • Minored in Asskicking: The professor in "By Word of Mouse"
  • Misplaced Wildlife: The Chinese roadrunner in "War and Pieces," Playboy the Penguin on "Frigid Hare"
  • Missing Episode: While there aren't any shorts missing, many of the original prints containing their original title cards are lost. There's also an ending scene from The Stupid Cupid that's currently lost.
  • Mister Muffykins: Petunia's dog in "Porky's Romance". The mean-spirited little beasty annoys Porky so much that 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 What's Opera, Doc?:

Bugs Bunny: Well, what did you expect from an opera? A happy ending?

Sam: "Whoa, dragon, WHOA!!"

  • Morally-Ambiguous Ducktorate: Daffy, of course.
  • 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.
  • Motor Mouth: Sniffles the Mouse, at least in his later shorts.
    • Foghorn Leghorn is a Motor Syrinx.
    • Not to mention long (and deservedly) forgotten Little Blabbermouse (cartoon of the same name and "Shop, Look, And Listen").
    • Shorty from "Rabbit's Kin". His voice is actually Mel Blanc's normal speaking voice, sped up to a high pitch and really fast speed.
  • The Movie: Quite a few, actually:
    • Bugs Bunny Superstar (1975), a Documentary narrated by Orson Welles and featuring nine '40s cartoons in their entirety along with interviews of Freleng, Avery, and (espeically) Clampett.
    • The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie (aka 'The Great American Chase) (1979), the first of several Compilation Movies combining footage from vintage shorts with newly-animated bridging material. This one, directed by Chuck Jones and featuring only his cartoons, is "hosted" by Bugs Bunny from his mansion as he expounds on the history of "the chase" in animation.
    • The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie (1981), directed by Friz Freleng and only featuring his work. It was broken into three separate stories (one was a remake of "Devil's Feud Cake", one was a crime drama parody, and the final was an awards ceremony), and was the first compilation to build a (more-or-less) coherent storyline by weaving old and new material together.
    • Bugs Bunny's Third Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales (1982), directed by Freleng and mostly made of his work, but also featuring material from some Jones shorts. Unlike the previous entry, it consisted of one long story: Daffy and Bugs competing to be the best salesman but constantly getting sidetracked on the way to their selling locations. It was the first of the compilation films to feature Robert McKimson's work (a brief clip of "Aqua Duck" is seen towards the end).
    • Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island (1983): The fan-favorite character combination of Daffy and Speedy also got a movie, built around a parody of Fantasy Island.
    • Daffy Duck's Quackbusters (1988), directed by Greg Ford and Terry Lennon, the last of the compilation movies and generally regarded as the best. It had the strongest plot (which was about Daffy opening a ghost-catching/exorcism company with Bugs and Porky) and the animators took care to imitate the old animators so the transition from bridging sequences to the classic cartoons was smoother. It's also the only Looney Tunes film to exclusively use Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn music for the bridging sequences. The rest used new music from a variety of composers.
    • Space Jam (1996): The first fully original Looney Tunes film, combining animation and live action. See its entry for more info.
    • Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003): Again, see its entry for more info. Of note, a planned series of new theatrical shorts being developed around this time was cancelled due to this film's lackluster box office performance.
  • Mr. Imagination: Ralph Phillips, in "From A to Z-Z-Z-Z" and "Boyhood Daze"
  • Multiple Demographic Appeal: Despite syndication packages in America and the rest of the world labeling the Looney Tunes as "kiddie fare," even going so far as to edit gags deemed too "adult." However, there are videos and DVDs, both official and unofficial, that preserve these "adult" gags uncut for all to see.
  • Mundane Wish: The genie in "A-Lad in His Lamp" tries to prevent Bugs from making one of these. But Bugs gets so irritated with his constant interruptions of his wishes that he tells the genie to cut it out. Ironically, Bugs ends up wishing for a carrot, which is pretty mundane.
  • Murder, Inc.: "Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs" has a scene of the Queen calling "Murder Inc." to "black out So White." Murder Inc.'s rates for killing people are: $1.00 for killing anyone, 50 cents (half-price) for killing midgets, and, since the cartoon premiered around the time that America was involved in World War II, free for killing Japs.
    • The rat-faced Mexican villain from 1938's "My Little Buckaroo" will put anybody on the spot for $2.75. Mothers-in-law: $2.50.
  • Musical Episode: "Swooner Crooner".
    • "Katnip Kollege".
  • My Card: Wile E. Coyote's "Super Genius" card. "Have brain, will travel"
    • Owl Jolson's, too, in "I Love to Singa".
  • My God, What Have I Done?: This is pretty much Elmer Fudd's reaction whenever he thinks he's finally killed Bugs. No matter how hard he's been trying throughout the episode to shoot Bugs he always breaks down in tears when he thinks he's finally done it, calling himself a murderer. Which calls into question why he's a hunter in the first place.
    • 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:

Bennie: Are ya gonna show me how to catch mouses in the warehouse, George? Are ya?
Sylvester: Okay, so we're gonna catch mouses in the warehouse. And stop callin' me George! My name is Sylvester.
Bennie: But I can't say Sylvester, George.
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: Of course if you really want something good, you can't beat a Louisiana back bay bayou bunny bordelaise...à la Antoine.
Chef Francoise: À la Antoine?! Not ze Antoine of New Orleans??
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.
  • Name's the Same: Hare Force pits Bugs Bunny against a dopey dog named Sylvester.
  • Neck Lift: Bruno the bear does it to Bugs Bunny in "Big Top Bunny". So does Gossamer (aka "Rudolph") in Hair-Raising Hare.
  • Negative Continuity: Completely. In many series, characters meet each other for the first time in every cartoon, and any "facts" given about a character in one cartoon (like Elmer being a vegetarian in "Rabbit Fire") are for that cartoon only and aren't intended to carry over into subsequent instalments.
  • Newspaper Dating: Elmer in "The Old, Gray Hare"
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Some Real Life Big Bads were humiliated—particularly around World War II, when all of their cartoons had the characters fighting against Hitler and his Nazi regime or Japanese soliders. In a more friendly fashion, Hollywood celebrities such as Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra, and Al Jolson were often lightly mocked.
    • Prior to Abbott & Costello being caricatured as cats (later mice) as "Babbitt & Catstello," Laurel and Hardy were caricatured as crows in pursuit of a grasshopper in A Hop, Skip And A Chump.
    • Bing Crosby tried to stop release of "Bingo Crosbyana" (1936, Freleng) because it depicted him as a vainglorious cowardly fly.
    • Friz Freleng is caricatured as the astronomer who loses his mind after seeing what he saw in his telescope in The Hasty Hare.
    • The Gremlins in Bob Clampett's Russian Rhapsody are caricatures of Warner cartoon staffers.
    • The tour guide character in "Little Blabbermouse" and "Shop Look and Listen" is a caricature of W.C. Fields.
    • The two castaways in "Waikiki Wabbit" (1943) were caricatures of animator Ken Harris and storyman Michael Maltese. The two even furnished the voices to their cartoon counterparts.
  • No Ending: Quite common - a lot of the shorts were just abruptly cut in the middle of the action.
    • In the case of "The Heckling Hare" it was Executive Meddling.
    • In Hare-Um Scare-Um (1939), hunter John Sourpuss tells proto-Bugs Bunny that "I can whip you and your whole family!" A bunch of bunnies arrive to take him up on the challenge—then the film cuts off. In the original ending, the looney rabbits beat Sourpuss up on-camera, eventually driving him looney himself. Though no hard evidence has been found, it's often speculated that the scene was deleted for being too similar to the ending of Daffy Duck And Egghead one year prior.
    • "Ride Him, Bosko!" is probably the standout example; the animators just up and leave without showing if Bosko rescues Honey or not.
    • Used as a gag in "Rabbit Punch". A train shows up to run over Bugs (in a boxing ring, might we add). The film suddenly cuts off, and Bugs stands up and announces the cartoon can't continue....followed by him revealing a pair of scissors.
  • No Fourth Wall: Duck Amuck is one of the most famous and insane examples ever made.
  • No Guy Wants to Be Chased: Is used quite often whenever a female Abhorrent Admirer goes after one of the male characters. Was also used in three Pepé Le Pew cartoons (1949's "For Scent-imental Reasons," 1952's "Little Beau Pepé ," and 1959's "Really Scent"), proving to modern audiences that, yeah, Pepé may be seen as a "rapist," but he's not a Karma Houdini (in those instances at least).
  • No More for Me: In "Who's Kitten Who?", Hippety Hopper hops by a man on the sidewalk. The man immediately drops a bottle of alcohol from his pocket and nervously walks away.
  • No OSHA Compliance: Ralph is a wolf who's job is to eat sheep. Sam is a guard dog, whose job is to prevent Ralph from eating sheep. They both use the same punch clock, but the activities usually involve Ralph being injured at the end of the shift. Not that this is the only example.
  • 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: And the lights went out, all over the world! ("Stupor Duck")
Daffy: Starkle starkle, little twink, up above the skating rink! ("Swing Ding Amigo")
Daffy: 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."
  • Not Rare Over There: In "The Bee-deviled Bruin", Papa Bear nearly gets himself killed trying to get honey from a hive in a tree outside his home. Eventually, he gives up and asks for a bottle of ketchup. Mama Bear goes to get it... from a cupboard filled to the brim with jars of honey.
  • Off-Model: Not uncommon, particularly in Bob Clampett's shorts, where he gave the animators leeway in deviating from the model sheets in favor of a specific action or expression. However, there was plenty of unintentional off model, such as one scene from "Hare Lift", where Yosemite Sam briefly turns into a robot when he is wearing his parachute!
    • Explanation: As Sam got smaller and smaller plummeting to the ground as the parachute opened, the animation of the automatic pilot, who abandoned the plane just moments before, was used.
  • Offscreen Teleportation: The minah bird is a master of this.
  • 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-Shot Character: Many, many examples. In fact, Merrie Melodies basically started as a revolving door of one-shot cartoons and characters. Here are just some examples:
    • Fresh Airedale
    • The Foxy Duckling
    • A Hick, a Slick, and a Chick
    • Bone Sweet Bone
    • Corn Plastered
    • Early to Bet (The Gambling Bug was only seen once)
    • Sleepy Time Possum
    • Rabbit's Kin (Pete Puma was only seen once in the original LT shorts)
    • Much Ado About Nutting
    • Wild Wife
    • Gone Batty
    • Goo Goo Goliath
    • Pizzicato Pussycat
    • The Hole Idea
    • One Froggy Evening (this one's debatable, since it got a sequel in 1995)
    • Mixed Master
    • Rockey-Bye Baby
    • Three Little Bops
    • A Waggily Tale
    • To Itch His Own
    • Mouse-Placed Kitten
    • The Mouse That Jack Built
    • High Note
    • The Mouse on 57th Street
    • Nelly's Folly
    • Martian Through Georgia
    • I Was a Teenage Thumb
    • Now Hear This
    • Bartholomew vs. The Wheel
    • Senorella and the Glass Huarache
    • Flying Circus
    • Rabbit Stew and Rabbits Too! (though it was intended to be a series)
  • Open Sesame: "Uh...open...sarsaparilla? Open Saskatchewan?"
    • Also, "Abracadabra," and "Hocus Pocus," which transformed one of Bugs' villains (vampire Count Bloodcount, from 1963's Transylvania 6-5000) into and out of his bat form, respectively. Bugs eventually found great joy in torturing the vampire with such linguistic madness as 'Abraca-pocus' and 'Hocus-cadabra', which (of course) caused the villain to transform into a half-bat, a half-man and various other combinations. "Newport News" turned him into Witch Hazel (Bugs: "Oh, brudder...I can do better than that!"), and "Walla Walla Washington" turned him into a two-headed vulture.
  • Or My Name Isn't: Subverted in "To Duck or Not to Duck": "There's something awfully screwy about this, or my name isn't Laddimore... and it isn't."
    • Yosemite Sam does this several times as well, such as in "Mutiny on the Bunny" ("I'm-a sailin' with the tide, or my name ain't Shanghai Sam... and it is.") and in "Big House Bunny" ("You'll do fifty years, or my name ain't Sam Schultz!").
  • The Other Darrin: Quite a few examples, actually:
    • The first example came after only three cartoons, when the original voice of Bosko, Max Maxwell was replaced by John Murray.
    • Mel Blanc replaced Joe Daugherty as the voice of Porky Pig starting in 1937.
    • June Foray replaced Bea Benaderet as the voice of many female characters, including Granny, starting around the mid-50s.
    • Julie Bennett replaced Bea Benaderet as the voice of Miss Prissy in 1961's "Strangled Eggs".
    • Dave Barry took over the role of Elmer Fudd for one cartoon (1958's "Pre-Hysterical Hare") after regular actor Arthur Q. Bryan joined in that year's musicians' strike and refused to work.
    • Hal Smith briefly replaced Arthur Q. Bryan (who passed away) as Elmer Fudd from 1960 to 1961, and in the '70s and '80s television specials and movies, Mel Blanc replaced Hal Smith in the role.
    • Larry Storch replaced 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-Gambitted: Daffy, Elmer, and Yosemite Sam always get caught in this trope.
  • Outlaw Couple: Bunny and Claude
  • Overly Polite Pals: Mac and Tosh, the Goofy Gophers.

P-Q-R

  • Packed Hero: In "I Gopher You", featuring the Goofy Gophers, one of the gophers gets canned on a tomato packing line, and the other opens every can, until he finds him in the last can. The first gopher tells his friend that he was in the first can and he started at the wrong end.
  • Pain-Powered Leap: A common source of humor; Looney Tunes is likely the Trope Codifier.
  • Panty Shot: Honey and Cookie in some of the black-and-white Looney Tunes shorts, Red Riding Hood in "The Trial Of Mr. Wolf," "Book Revue" and "Little Red Rabbit Hood," Agnes in "Nasty Quacks," the ice skater in "Land Of The Midnight Fun." Plus a rather unsettling one of Elmer in drag in "The Big Snooze" and even more eyesore from Witch Hazel in '"Bewitched Bunny" and "A Witch's Tangled Hare" and the Scotsman in "My Bunny Lies Over The Ocean."
    • Another one in "Uncle Tom's Bungalow."
  • Parody Episode: "The Mouse That Jack Built", The Honey-Mousers trilogy, "Boston Quackie", "Rocket Squad", "People Are Bunny", and "The D'Fightin' Ones" are all parodies of famous TV shows, movies, and serials.
    • Additionally, Tex Avery's "Thugs With Dirty Mugs", a parody of gangster movies.
  • Pepper Sneeze / Sneeze of Doom
  • Performance Anxiety: Seen in "Person to Bunny"; at first, Daffy is excited to be performing in front of the camera, until Bugs tells Daffy that millions of viewers will be watching. Upon hearing that, Daffy gets a sickly, deathly-scared look on his face.
  • Pink Elephants: A drunk is terrorized by a trio of pink elephants in "Calling Dr. Porky".
    • Also played with in "Punch Trunk"; a drunk stumbles out of a bar, notices the miniature elephant on the sidewalk, looks at his watch, and tells the elephant, "You're late!"
  • Pin-Pulling Teeth: Just about any time someone uses a grenade.
  • Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Tweety when he was under Bob Clampett's direction. Not so much when he was under Friz Freleng's direction, but he still had his moments. Chester the dog in "Tree for Two" and "Dr. Jerkyl's Hyde."
  • Plummet Perspective: When Wile E. Coyote falls.
  • Pooled Funds: In "Ali Baba Bunny" starting at 2:15.
  • Portable Hole: The premise of "The Hole Idea" concerns an inventor making a portable hole and it falling into criminal hands.
  • Portrait Painting Peephole
  • Powder Gag
  • Powder Trail
  • Precision F-Strike: 1940's The Hardships Of Miles Standish has a cockeyed Indian plunking a fellow Indian on the head with a bow and arrow. The hurt Indian turns and mouths "Goddamn son of a bitch!" It is rumored that the Indian actually voiced it but was silenced before the cartoon was released.
    • 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 turns to the camera and says "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. See it here.
    • Just averted in Blooper Bunny. Daffy's beak gets impaled by the loose plank Bugs noted earlier.

Bugs: Now can we cut?
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:

Bugs: (about to throttle Cecil's neck) Ooh, you blankety blank blank toitle!

    • 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.
  • Prehistoria: Most notably Caveman Inki, Prehysterical Hare, and especially Wild Wild World
  • 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 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.
  • 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
  • Pun-Based Title: Practically every WB short has one of these.
  • Punch Clock Hero: Sam the Sheepdog / Punch Clock Villain: Ralph the Wolf
  • Punny Name: Wile E. Coyote, Witch Hazel
  • Rage Against the Author: "Duck Amuck" and "Rabbit Rampage".
  • Rascally Rabbit: Bugs Bunny
  • 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.
  • Recycled Soundtrack: Ten of the eleven Road Runner cartoons directed by Rudy Larriva use the same music cues over and over.
  • 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".
    • 1938's "Porky in Wackyland" was remade in 1949 as "Dough For the Do-Do". Besides being in color, "Do-Do" had a completely new soundtrack, some vocal differences, and a brand new ending. Many of the gags are the same between both cartoons, though.
    • 1939's "Scalp Trouble" was remade in 1944 as "Slightly Daffy", with only a few differences in gags.
    • 1941's "Notes to You" was remade in 1948 as "Back Alley Oproar". Notably, the first short had Porky as the protagonist, while the remake replaced him with Elmer.
    • 1948's "Gorilla My Dreams" was remade in 1959 as "Apes of Wrath". Unlike "Slightly Daffy" and "Dough For the Do-Do", though, this one was pretty much its own entity, and the only similarities were in their premises.
    • 1946's "Baseball Bugs" was more or less remade in 1954 as "Gone Batty", with an elephant in Bugs's place.
    • An episode of "The Bugs Bunny Show" was remade as 1963's "Devil's Feud Cake". In fact, nearly all the animation was recycled into the new short. The major change was that the Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn soundtrack was replaced by an entirely new score by Bill Lava.
  • The Remnant: Yosemite Sam as a Confederate General in "Southern Fried Rabbit"
  • Rhyming List: 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.

Taz: Flattery'll get ya nowhere.

  • 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.
    • "Hare Splitter", which has Bugs and another rabbit fighting over the same girl.
  • Rube Goldberg Device
  • Rule of Three: "We're the Boys of Chorus" in "What's Up, Doc?". Also makes a fourth appearance at the end of the short.
  • Russian Roulette: The end of "Ballot Box Bunny," provided you've actually seen it uncut.
    • Cartoon Network screened the cartoon in its entirety on 9/26/11.

S-T-U

  • Satan: Appears in "Sunday Go To Meetin' Time," "Clean Pastures," "The Hole Idea," the Bugs Bunny short "Devil's Feud Cake", (a semi-remake of the Sylvester Cat short "Satan's Waitin'" only with Yosemite Sam) and "Now Hear This."
  • Saw A Duck In Half: "It's a good thing I have Blue Cross," from "Showbiz Bugs."
  • Say Your Prayers: Happens frequently when a character is about to be on the receiving end of a huge blow.
    • 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-Dooby Doors: Even before "Scooby Doo" was a show, Friz Freleng did this a lot.
  • Screwed by the Network: The constant editing for content of these cartoons on all major broadcast and cable networks, not to mention 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-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 lame puns in this cartoon short.
  • Seldom-Seen Species: Taz.
  • Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Porky and Daffy.
  • Shadow of Impending Doom: Usually immediately followed by 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.

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.
    • 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 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.
  • 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 or a Looney Tune; it was instead called a "Cartoon Special".
    • "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 they even glowed red. How that got past the Hays Office is anyone's guess.
  • Somewhere an Ornithologist Is Crying: Roadrunner, Daffy, Tweety, Hatta Mari [the 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.
    • The same could be said for "Freudy Cat", where Lava's music in the wraparounds clashes with the original Carl Stalling music heard in most of the old clips. Given that "Freudy Cat" centered on Sylvester going to a psychiatrist about his "giant mouse" problem, the schizophrenic (pardon the pun) music to fit the mood could have been done intentionally.
    • 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. For example:
    • 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 Offs: Taz-Mania, The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, and Duck Dodgers
  • Spiritual Successor: Tiny Toon Adventures, which featured many of the Looney Tunes in recurring roles, as well as its semi-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 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.
  • 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. However, the sponsor himself falls Off the Wagon and goes after Tweety, while Sylvester tries to stop him.

Tweety: Once a bad ol' putty tat, always a bad ol' putty tat!

  • 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".
  • Stock Footage: Abuses this enough to get a whole page tracking virtually every usage of this trope in the original shorts!
    • The first opening to The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show (i.e. the one without the new Darrell Van Citters animation) reuses the Bugs and Daffy song and dance animation from The Bugs Bunny Show's opening.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: To the point where they recycle the same explosion footage at almost every opportunity.
  • Submarine Pirates: The plot of Porky the Gob involves a hunt for a pirate sub, staffed by some outlandish characters, one of which has an outlandish uniform and an even more outlandish mustachio. Porky, left alone to guard his ship, manages to fend off an attack by the sub, capture it, and claim the reward.
  • Sudden Anatomy: During the "Rabbit of Seville" short, Bugs grows an extra finger on each hand when he plays Elmer Fudd's head like a piano, since the music couldn't be played using the four-fingers-per-hand he usually has.
    • The stripping lizard from "Cross Country Detours" (even though her "anatomy" was blocked with a Censor Box)
  • 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.: Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Coyote. Wile E. Coyote. I am not selling anything nor am I working my way through college. (Bugs tries to speak) So, let's get down to cases. You are a rabbit, and I am going to eat you for supper. (Bugs feigns fear) Now, don't try to get away. I am more muscular, more cunning, faster and larger than you, and I'm a genius. (Bugs now looking bored) While you could hardly pass the entrance examinations to kindergarten. (Bugs yawns) So I'll give you the customary two minutes to say your prayers.

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

Bobo: Batboy, smatboy! I'm still carrying logs!

    • In "Joe Glow the Firefly", the firefly shouts "GOOD NIGHT!" after being silent beforehand.
  • Super Speed: Road Runner and Speedy Gonzales
  • Surprise Jump: There's a series of shorts in which a puppy runs behind a cat and barks loudly, causing the cat to jump up in shock and hold on to the ceiling. When there isn't a ceiling, the cat ends up on a tree, a telephone pole, or even the wing of a passing airplane.
  • Suspiciously Similar Song: At the very end of "Hare Brush", Elmer does a victory dance to a tune that is very similar to the (then) recently-created "bunny hop" dance.
    • The beginning and end of "The Last Hungry Cat" feature a melodic parody of the theme to "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", aka "Funeral March of a Marionette" by Charles Gounod.
  • Sweeping Ashes
  • Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: The Sheriff in the "Bunny and Claude" cartoons.
  • 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 as he is trying to catch a woodpecker:

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 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 I Love To Singa. A receptionist receives a telegram from a sleazy deliveryman. She reads it and the camera pans away.

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]

  • Ten Paces and Turn: "Mississippi Hare" and "Hare Trimmed."
  • Tertiary Sexual Characteristics
  • That's All Folks: Trope Namer
    • Once the practice of "That's all Folks!" writing itself out at the end became the standard, there were quite a few cartoons that subverted and/or averted it:
      • The Major Lied Till Dawn (Tashlin, 1938—the elephant trying to remember something says it)
      • Porky's Duck Hunt (Avery, 1937—Everything already written out as Daffy jumps around on the letters)
      • Old Glory (Jones, 1939—it and the Merrie Melodies/Produced by Leon Schlesinger tags simply fade in over the waving American flag on the original print)
      • The Old Grey Hare (1944, Clampett—titles already in place; card shakes violently after the dynamite Elmer was holding at the iris out explodes)
      • Coal Black And De Sebben Dwarfs (1943, Clampett—all titles already displayed over animation of the grandmother and child from the beginning in a rocking chair)
      • A Ham In A Role (1949, McKimson) starts off with a dog taking a pie in the face and strumming his lips idiotically, followed by a static "That's all, Folks!" title card.
      • The Three Little Bops (Freleng, 1957—an iris out and a simple "The End" on the screen)
      • Lumber Jack Rabbit (Jones, 1954—all three title elements simply fade in as part of the 3-D effect in which the cartoon was made. At the opening, the W-B shield zooms so far in as if to leap into the audience.)
      • What's Opera, Doc? (Jones, 1958—already written out)
      • Two Crows From Tacos (Freleng, 1959—again a simple fade in)
      • Stop, Look, and Hasten (Jones, 1954—The Road Runner writes it out in desert dust before it dissolves into the concentric circles ending card)
      • Guided Muscle (Jones, 1955--"That's all, Folks!" is already written out as the humiliated coyote drags the ending card into shot)
      • Whoa, Be-Gone! (Jones, 1958—Same as Guided Muscle, but the Road Runner is the one pulling the ending card downwards via window shade as Wile E. encounters the mine field while endured in the tornado)
      • Nelly's Folly (Jones, 1962—everything except "That's all Folks" on the lower end of a black background)
      • Coyote Falls (O'Callaghan, 2010—The phrase is written on the back of a truck)
      • Fur of Flying (O'Callaghan, 2010—Wile E. Coyote says it in his own special way)
      • Rabid Rider (O'Callaghan, 2010—Written on the side of a mountain the Road Runner rides past)
      • Several Merrie Melodies films re-edited in the 40s as Blue Ribbon re-releases had "That's all, Folks!" replaced with "The End" in Lydian script over the concentric circles title cards.
      • The 1967 redrawn edition of The Village Smithy (1937, Avery) has the outline of "That's all folks!" against a red background; a white card is slowly pulled from left to right behind it to cheaply simulate writing itself out (the original print from 1937 has the title writing itself out against a black background). Virtually all other redrawn Looney Tunes either had the Warner-Bros.-Seven Arts closing titles or the spliced-in late 50s That's all Folks! Looney Tunes closing titles.
      • The first Looney Tune to use Porky in the drum was "Rover's Rival". Looney Tunes would go back to the self-writing That's all Folks! in 1946.
      • Completely averted in the "Dork Age" cartoons from 1964 to 1969, where the ending was the abstract WB logo then the Warner Bros.-Seven Arts logo followed by a self-printing "A Warner Bros. (-Seven Arts) cartoon, a Vitaphone release."
      • At the end of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Porky is one of two policemen with back to the camera dispersing the crowd saying "There's nothing to see here, that's all folks!" He turns to face the camera saying "Hey, I like that!" then assumes the classic pose as he repeats the line, sharing the iris-out with Walt Disney's Tinkerbell.
      • Invasion Of The Bunny Snatchers (1991, Ford, Lennon) has a premature "That's all Folks" which Bugs stops so the cartoon can continue. It ends with a very poor computer-animated Porky Pig attempting the drum ending tag—Bugs kicks it out and places the real Porky in the drum for the tag line.
      • Blooper Bunny (1992, Ford, Lennon) has a quick "That's all Folks!" title card after the Bugs Bunny "special", then at the end after Bugs' final line, we see "That's all Folks!" written by hand on the film tail.
      • Space Jam (1996) ends with Bugs starting out the phrase but interrupted by Porky, Daffy, the Nerdlucks, and Michael Jordan.
      • Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) ends with Porky's stuttering going on long enough to miss the cue, and then he just angrily mutters, "Go home, folks," after the studio lights shut off.
  • They Fight Crime: The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, also several original shorts pairing Daffy and Porky as crimefighters ("Rocket Squad," "Deduce, You Say", "Boston Quackie," Daffy solo in "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery", "The Super Snooper" and "Stupor Duck"). Let's not forget good ol' Bugs in "Super Rabbit."
  • The Thing That Would Not Leave: Charlie Dog's main schtick.
  • The Twelve Principles of Animation: Initially averted by the primitive, low budget animation of the early to mid 30's shorts, but gradually adopted by the animators in the late 30's and early 40's.
  • This Banana Is Armed: Used repeatedly.
    • "The Unmentionables": Bugs Bunny threatens mobster Rocky with a carrot. Rocky laughs it off, until the carrot fires on his face.
    • "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):

Bugs Bunny: Hey! Doc! What! Are! You! Chasing! Around! The! Tree?

  • 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"
  • Three Dimensional Episode: "Lumber Jack Rabbit", which was the only short produced in 3D.
  • Thriller on the Express: "Boston Quackie"
  • Through a Face Full of Fur: Warners was addicted to this trope; an outstanding example is Claude in "The Hypo-Chondri-Cat," who turns green, purple, and plaid.
  • 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).

Porky: (to us) A flat tire held me up, folks.

    • 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.

Exterminator: Got held up in traffic, sonny.

  • 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.
    • In both "I Taw a Putty Tat" and "Bad Ol' Putty Tat", Tweety Bird himself title drops both of them respectively not to mention they're also his catchphrases.
    • In "Rabbit Punch", Bugs title drops the name of the cartoon when heckling "The Champ" after the announcer counts down when Bugs is knocked out by "The Champ".
  • Title Montage: The first opening for The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show (i.e. the one without the new Darrell Van Citters animation) features clips from old cartoons, including "What's Up, Doc?", "Hot Cross Bunny", "Stupor Duck", "Person to Bunny", and "Long Haired Hare", among others.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Marvin The Martian, the Tasmanian Devil, Daffy Duck, in short, Bugs Bunny's enemies.
    • Oh, and did we mention Wile E. Coyote?
  • Too Kinky to Torture: Daffy Duck at the end of Bob Clampett's "The Wise Quacking Duck". after getting his feathers shot off and being put in a gas oven, Daffy is somehow alive and quips, "Say, now you're cooking with gas!" while drizzling jus all over himself
    • Pepé Le Pew on most occasions—the most infamous one being 1953's "Wild Over You," where Pepé goes after an escaped wildcat, despite the fact she keeps beating the tar out of him. (His ending line is proof that "Wild Over You" fits this trope: "If you have not tried eet, do not knock eet!")
  • Toothy Bird: Most of the birds are at least on occasion.
  • Traveling Pipe Bulge: In "Billboard Frolics", a cat traps a dog in a piece of pipe, which bulges where the dog thrashes around inside.
  • Train Job: How Yosemite Sam gets his introduction.
  • 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 DePatie-Freleng instead. In 1967, production resumed at Warner Bros. but only two years later, the cartoon division was shut down for good.
  • Uncle Tomfoolery: The reason why there's a collection of cartoons called 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:
    • 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 Lennie Expy abominable snowman Bugs and Daffy met once in The Abominable Snow Rabbit (1961), ended up melting into a puddle ("He melted! 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".

Hugo: (with Bugs in his grip) Oh boy, oh boy, at last my own little bunny rabbit.
Bugs Bunny: (straining) ...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...

Bugs Bunny: Of course, the real beauty of this machine is that it has only one moving part.

V-W-X-Y-Z

  • Verbal Tic: Fog- ah say, Foghorn Leghorn. Leghorn, that is.
  • Victory by Endurance: In "Gorilla My Dreams", Bugs Bunny is being chased by a gorilla. Just when things seem hopeless for Bugs, he finds that by the time the gorilla has caught him he was too tired to beat him up and falls over exhausted.
  • Villain Protagonist: Bugs in the early shorts. He was a completely unsympathetic character that would pick on people for the heck of it. He became more good natured later on, though due to the harmlessness of most of his foils, he was still a master of Disproportionate Retribution.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Daffy suffers one in "Duck! Rabbit, Duck!" after being shot by Elmer one too many times.

Daffy: (raving) Shoot me again! I enjoy it! I love the smell of burnt feathers! And gunpowder! And cordite! I'm an elk -- shoot me! Go on, it's elk season! I'm a fiddler crab -- why don'tcha shoot me?! It's fiddler crab season!

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

Elmer: I'LL KILL THE WABBIT!! AWISE, STORM! NORTH WINDS, BWOW! SOUTH WINDS, BWOW! TYPHOONS! HUWWICANES! EARTHQUAKES! SMOG!!!!

  • 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.
  • Vocal Evolution: There are many examples, but the one that stands out the most is how Mel Blanc portrays Bugs from proto-Bugs Bunny to the voice we all know and love.
    • 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.
    • The Acme Company is seen for the first time: in live-action form, curiously enough in Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Of course, since the head of the company is evil in this movie, Bugs and Daffy get everything they need from a conveniently placed Walmart instead.
  • 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, the organ grinder and the still-injured monkey return to exact their revenge on Sylvester. That never happened, leaving a very unfortunate implication that the monkey Sylvester clubbed in the head is dead and the organ grinder is oblivious to what transpired.
  • Whole-Episode Flashback: "Wild Wife", which concerns a frazzled housewife describing her hectic day to her skeptical husband.
  • Wholesome Crossdresser: Bugs
  • Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?: Porky frequently switches jobs, as does Daffy.
  • Wicked Witch: Witch Hazel
  • The Worst Seat in the House: "Porky's Baseball Broadcast"
    • Tex Avery's "Screwball Football" has a doozy. The gunshot everyone thinks means the end of the game turns out to be from a toddler who guns down the man next to him who has been sneaking licks of his ice cream cone.
  • Writer Revolt: Leon Scheslinger's replacement, Eddie Selzer, had a lot of issues with some of the cartoons being turned out in the late 1940s-early 1950s, citing some of the ideas as not being funny enough for a general audience—the ones Selzer really had issues with were the Pepé Le Pew cartoons and the idea of having Bugs square off against a bull during a bullfight ("Bully for Bugs"). "Bully for Bugs" has become one of many classic cartoon shorts Looney Tunes fans remember from beginning to end, and the 1949 Pepé Le Pew cartoon "For Scent-imental Reasons" won an Oscar [which—ironically, and rather hypocritically—Selzer accepted].
    • I remember seeing an interview with one of the main writers who said that it got to the point where if Selzer rejected an idea, they knew it was a good one.
      • 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."
  • YouTube Poop: The short Daffy Duck in Hollywood is the Trope Maker—in 1938, no less!
Th-th-th-that's all, folks!
  1. ↑ A pun on the name of the Soviet general Semyon Timoshenko, who was the "People's Commissar for The Defense of the Soviet Union" at the time of Hitler's invasion in 1941 (he was replaced early on by Joseph Stalin himself taking over)
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