| 1 | Headscratchers for ''Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit''. |
| 2 | ---- |
| 3 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 4 | |
| 5 | [[folder:Non-reactive Cops]] |
| 6 | * Why does Judge Doom get to execute a Toon (the shoe) in front of cops when showing off the dip? |
| 7 | ** That shoe assaulted a police officer by kicking him square in the crotch. Physically assaulting an officer is a serious offense, especially since he didn't have a weapon drawn or anything (he had both hands full with Acme's gurney). I'm sure that if the shoe's freedom of squeak had been observed, he would have said he was just getting his kicks. Doom makes the point that since Toontown has been under his jurisdiction, his biggest obstacle is getting Toons to ''respect'' the law, which he does through intimidation. The implication being that Toons, being mostly indestructible, tend to "play rough" with more fragile humans. The Dip allows Doom something to wave in their faces, saying "You hit us with a mallet, and we ''boil you down to nothing''". Giving the death sentence for assaulting an officer is ridiculous, but you can bet those other shoes in the box had a lot to think about after seeing the fate of the condemned soul. Especially those goose-stepping jackboots. |
| 8 | *** And the shoe's mate. Depriving the shoe of its mate is not that different from depriving Eddie of his brother. |
| 9 | ** Don't forget that the Toons suffer from [[FantasticRacism discrimination.]] If one of them dies, nobody really cares. |
| 10 | ** Also, going back to the point that Doom has Toontown under his jurisdiction. That probably means he has legal power over anyone residing in there, including the poor shoe, since no toon is implied to live in the 'human side' of LA. Therefore, even if the cops were horrified by the poor toon's fate, they couldn't have done a thing: Doom had a reason to convict the shoe (assaulting an officer, as noted above), and since he had full power, none could have complained about the sentence, even if it was cruel and unfair. Of course, everyone (except Eddie) in their right mind seemed to be genuinely afraid of Doom. No-one had the guts to stand up against him, because it was quite clear that anyone who did would have shared the shoe's fate. |
| 11 | ** Judge Doom is also supposed to have a lot of social and political power behind him. Santino was sucking up to Judge Doom from the get-go. Even if the cops were afraid of what he was doing to the shoe, they were probably more afraid of him ruining their careers if they speak out. |
| 12 | ** It's also quite possible that murdering a toon is perfectly legal. Eddie had no idea what Dip was before it was explained to him (and he once specialized in Toon cases), so it's clearly a very recent invention. Before Dip was around, toons were unkillable, so why would there be any law against killing them? |
| 13 | ** The toon shoe had been stored in a box, as you would do with a prop accessory. When it and the other shoes escaped from the box, nobody made any attempt at communicating with them, instead chasing the toons as if they were kittens out of their basket. The toon shoe itself was apparently unable to talk, but could only squeak. It also didn't seem to understand the situation until it got close to the Dip. All the above elements are strong indication that some toons may not possess human-like intelligence, nor be considered people. |
| 14 | ** Before Doom before invented dip, killing a toon was believed to be impossible. Why would there be any laws on the books concerning murdering that which can't be killed? |
| 15 | *** Exactly. It'd be like writing a law against breaking the speed of light. As far as we know, such a thing is impossible. So why would we bother to make it illegal? |
| 16 | *** If you broke the speed of light, they could probably give you a speeding ticket. Just because there's no specific law prohibiting something doesn't mean that there aren't more general laws that cover it. |
| 17 | *** Right, but that's because the speed limit is far, far slow than the speed of light. It's the same law, just a lesser effect. As noted, nobody thought killing toons was even possible until the invention of dip (laughing to death is pretty much their own doing, you can't force somebody to do it). The only way for killing a toon to be covered under an existing law would be for there to be a law against assaulting a toon. Given how toons love to inflict slapstick in their daily lives, there is almost no chance of assaulting a toon to be covered under a law. |
| 18 | *** What's also weird is that there actually ''was'' a way to kill a toon, since the weasels were Doom's second choice for enforcers because his first choice (their "idiot hyena cousins") croaked from it: Making a toon die laughing. (Though it might have been entirely possible for the "soul" to return to the character some point later.) |
| 19 | *** The weasels that die laughing (and also the one who falls into the dip mobile's mechanism) release ghosts that are shown to be able to carry on influencing events post mortem. The same isn't true for Smart Ass, who falls into the dip. It's possible then that the other weasels aren't truly 'dead' but are acting in tandem with the dramatic foreshadowing of the "you'll die laughing" statements, as toons are apparently wont to do. Dip is maybe the only reliable method for wiping out a toon completely. |
| 20 | *** Several ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' and ''WesternAnimation/ClassicDisneyShorts'' end with a character as an angel on a cloud, only for that character to be perfectly fine the next time they appear. Toons might just come back from the dead after a certain period of time unless they die from being dipped. |
| 21 | ** WhatMeasureIsANonHuman; it's quite possible that by 1947 standards in the movie, Toons aren't 'human' by legal standards and therefore killing them is not considered murder. |
| 22 | ** Watch the scene again. Eddie and Santino are clearly disturbed and disgusted by it, but are powerless to do anything about it. |
| 23 | ** Maybe the shoe was some kind of non-sentient toon, like a pet. That was the Judge's KickTheDog moment and the reason there were no legal repercussions was it was viewed more like "putting it down" because it attacked someone. |
| 24 | ** There was a deleted scene where the shoe gets a show trial in a kangaroo court (with a jury of toon kangaroos that Doom carries in his briefcase) very like Roger's later in the film. Doom has the authority to try anyone he wants and issue the death sentence. |
| 25 | *** The most likely explanation comes from what an above troper already suggested; not all toons are considered equally sentient in a similar way how we don't consider humans at the same level of dogs and cats even when we all are mamals and probably not as different from a toon's perspective. The shoe is clearly a non-sentient toon, equivalent to a toon animal or plant, the other more advance toons may have more rights as the movie itself shows that Doom can not just kill Roger or Jessica without a good reason and has to comply with arrest them. The most correct analogy will be like why Doom was not prosecuted by some sort of animal cruelty laws, if they existed in the 40s. |
| 26 | ** Given that the shoe in question had previously been stored in a box among the merchandise at a warehouse, it seems very unlikely that it was an example of a recognized ''sentient'' toon. ''Talking'' toons are shown to work jobs for pay and are subject to the (however corrupt) legal system; it's extremely unlikely that they can be boxed up for sale. |
| 27 | ** Doom's a judge, Toontown is his jurisdiction, and it's a jurisdiction which is pretty much within a completely different dimension of reality. It can be safely assumed that the rules are slightly different there. Furthermore, since he "bought the election", presumably he's corruptly paid off all the people who might be in a position with sufficient power to object and prevent him from arbitrarily dipping a poor cartoon in front of the police without any kind of trial. |
| 28 | [[/folder]] |
| 29 | |
| 30 | [[folder:The Dip-Mobile stock]] |
| 31 | * The Dip-mobile had 5,000 gallons of Dip? How on earth did it run dry in ten minutes (remember that Eddie turned it off multiple times) with that output? Sure, he did knock open the main valve, but it too was quite small. |
| 32 | ** Along with this, what happened to the dip mobile after it was hit by that train? It was still giving off fumes, and still seemed to have some dip in it, so seems to have a good chance of damaging something else when it gets run over in Toontown. |
| 33 | ** It ''had'' been spraying dip at the wall the whole time, and Eddie only turned off the truck once. |
| 34 | ** Probably the toon train was severely damaged, but it looked like a non-sentient toon, so. |
| 35 | ** A toon train nevertheless, and running on toon tracks. Let's hope it has some trick to avoid a crash, like Benny the Cab, else it'll be a railroad disaster as soon as the remaining Dip eats the rails out from under it.... |
| 36 | ** If it ''is'' like Benny, don't worry about that: it'll probably rise up on its dip-scalded wheels and gingerly walk away from the tracks, in pain but alive and with its passengers unharmed. |
| 37 | ** The implication is that the toon train is smashing it away to be safely destroyed somewhere within the other dimension of reality |
| 38 | [[/folder]] |
| 39 | |
| 40 | [[folder:Hybrids?]] |
| 41 | * I have wondered one thing after seeing this movie: Where are all the Toon/Human hybrids? Given how good looking Jessica Rabbit is, it would be ignorant not to assume that humans wouldn't have humanoid toons as lovers. Since they are both following the rules of human anatomy and biology, what would prevent the woman from becoming pregnant and giving birth to a hybrid? Of course, Toons have 'patty-cake' as their own variation of love-making, but why would they then need reproductive organs? (Remember Baby Herman saying how he has a three-year-old dinky.) What would be the point of drawing everything that's below the waist? I'm sure Toons don't have the need to go to the bathroom. |
| 42 | ** Toons are not made by humans, they're an ethnic minority; Jessica's line about being "drawn that way" is a play on words. It may seem that Acme and Maroon "own" some of them, but in fact the Toons are under contract in the old Hollywood studio system (they ''are'' actors, after all.) |
| 43 | ** [[WildMassGuessing In the Roger Rabbit universe, the hybrids of toons and humans are what we in this universe call "CGI characters".]] |
| 44 | ** Assuming the above theory to be wrong, it might simply not be possible for anyone to be flesh and blood and ink and paint. |
| 45 | ** The odds are slim that a human would be genetically compatible with a toon, since toons have no genetics. You could just as well wonder where all the Human/Inflatable-Doll hybrids are in the real world. |
| 46 | *** Referring to an entirely separate fandom here, {{Music/Gorillaz}}'s 2D, in an "in-character" interview with a UK magazine, once claimed that paternity suits from non-animated women don't stick on him because he has no DNA. Maybe it's the same thing. |
| 47 | ** As Linkara and Marzgurl explained, the problem is the paper cuts. |
| 48 | *** [[ComicallyMissingThePoint But cartoons are painted on cells, not paper.]] |
| 49 | ** [[WildMassGuessing Perhaps Judge Doom is a toon/human hybrid]]. It would actually explain a few things. |
| 50 | ** When Judge Doom is melted, all that's left are his clothes and ''a latex mask'', and Mickey Mouse and others wonder "what he really looked like". He was clearly a Toon using a live-action disguise made up of accessories you could get at one of those Acme factories. He was by no means a Toon/live-action hybrid. |
| 51 | ** The book mentions toons that are able to pass as human, and lists Film/TheThreeStooges and Creator/BusterKeaton as examples. Maybe they're hybrids? |
| 52 | *** In the second book it's revealed that Eddie's sister married a Toon and had three children with him, though the text doesn't go into details on what their biology is like. |
| 53 | ** This was the original plot of ''Film/CoolWorld''. A cartoonist has sex with one of his creations (originally called Debby Dallas and intended to be played by Drew Barrymore), and she gives birth to a half human, half cartoon daughter, who eventually sets out to kill her father. [[ExecutiveMeddling This was changed overnight by everyone else involved, however.]] |
| 54 | ** That's like saying that since a sexy android looks human, then I should be able to breed with them. |
| 55 | [[/folder]] |
| 56 | |
| 57 | [[folder:''Harvey'']] |
| 58 | * This movie takes place in 1947. When Doom asks the bar patrons if they've seen a toon Rabbit, Angelo makes a reference to ''Film/{{Harvey}}'', despite that movie not being released until 1950. Granted, it was a stage play in 1943, but Angelo doesn't seem like the theater-going type to me. |
| 59 | ** He may have heard about it. |
| 60 | ** Maybe he [[StrangeMindsThinkAlike coincidentally made up the concept]]! |
| 61 | *** Even with the advent of movies, going to the theater to see a play was still fairly common, and "Harvey" was (and still is) a very popular comedic play. Back in the forties it was a very well known show (it even won a Pulitzer), and even those who might not have seen it firsthand would still know the basic story from word-of-mouth. PopCulturalOsmosis didn't start occurring only after it was given a page on Website/TVTropes, y'know... |
| 62 | ** While we're on the subject, Angelo also makes reference to WesternAnimation/ChillyWilly, who didn't exist in ''any'' form until 1953. Either this is a minor blooper or Angelo's psychic. |
| 63 | *** It is, of course, not outside the realm of possibility that Chilly Willy existed before 1953 in this universe, and didn't start making films until then...but it still raises the question of how Angelo knew about him. |
| 64 | *** We don't know what Angelo's own job is, so have no idea whom he might associate with when he's not at the bar. He might even make deliveries to the Ink and Paint Club, where Chilly Willy [[WaitingForABreak works as a waiter]] between auditions. |
| 65 | *** Whether or not he was referring to the specific character, the phrase and nickname "Chilly Willy" has been around for a long time. American radio operators in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII used to use it as a sort of "passcode" on the radios due to the Japanese difficulty with L's. He might have meant it as just a random goofy name he picked because of this. |
| 66 | ** This might be a {{Handwave}}, but the mere inclusion of animated characters alone already creates an AlternateHistory in the film's [[AlternateUniverse universe]]. While it's assumed the events of this world would closely parallel RealLife history (RedScare, UsefulNotes/TheSpaceRace, [[UsefulNotes/VietnamWar Vietnam]], [[DistancedFromCurrentEvents/SeptemberEleventh 9[=/=]11]], etc.) only with "live" cartoons existing, it's still possible that [[CloseEnoughTimeline minor things might've occurred differently]] such as Chilly Willy making an earlier appearance and ''Goofy Gymnastics'' releasing in 1947 instead of 1949. |
| 67 | [[/folder]] |
| 68 | |
| 69 | [[folder:Republishing]] |
| 70 | * Given the film's popularity, why aren't the original book and the book sequel to the film republished? |
| 71 | ** A case of FridgeBrilliance - people seek out the books when they feel underwhelmed by the screen adaptation. This troper only became interested in reading Literature/HisDarkMaterials only after seeing the [[AdaptationDecay movie]] and feeling that there's should be so much more. Roger Rabbit was so awesome that people didn't care about the original source. |
| 72 | *** Really? I, and most people I know, tend to seek out the source material if I particularly enjoyed a movie for a sense of completeness (is that a word?). I found it very annoying that it took me years (this was pre-internet) to find a copy of Who Censored Roger Rabbit. (Who P-P-Plugged Roger Rabbit still eludes me.) |
| 73 | ** ''Who Censored Roger Rabbit?'' is legally available online for free. |
| 74 | ** The original book is ''very'' dark, and very different from the movie. You may think this offended the author, but not at all, he loves the movie and he even retconned as one of Jessica´s nightmares and made the sequels more akin to the movie. |
| 75 | [[/folder]] |
| 76 | |
| 77 | [[folder:Different Effects from the Dip]] |
| 78 | * If dip is supposed to quickly kill all toons, why wasn't Benny the Cab affected other than sliding when Judge Doom spills a barrel of it into the road? |
| 79 | ** "Quickly" does not necessarily mean "instantly." Benny ''is'' affected; when he slides off the road you can hear a very loud hissing noise as the Dip is eating away at his wheels, and in subsequent shots you can see that all his tires are flat, because they've been partially melted (which is why he has to get behind the wheel of another car instead of driving himself when taking Roger to the Acme factory) -- but luckily for Benny, the only part of him that was actually in contact with the Dip was his wheels, and only for a few seconds at that. Since he was going so fast, he managed to skid off the road and out of the Dip puddle before he melted away. He seems to have gotten new tires at the end of the movie, so probably he went to a Toon mechanic or something. |
| 80 | ** Yeah, but Judge Doom was only touching by his feet and he still melted, Benny got far more exposed to the dip than he did. |
| 81 | *** No, Judge Doom was actually far more exposed than Benny was. Doom was hosed town by a torrent of Dip and then ended up standing in a huge puddle of it -- and ''remained standing in the Dip.'' Benny's skidding over the Dip was over in a couple of seconds, after which he was out of it and on dry land. Doom was soaked in the stuff, and stood still in the puddle while he melted. From his feet and up. And it took almost half a minute before he was completely gone. |
| 82 | ** Benny kept going under his own momentum ''after'' he skidded through the dip, so any residue on his tires probably got wiped off onto the road. |
| 83 | ** You also have the physics of hydroplaning. When a cars tires hit a liquid, typically water but it seems like Dip is less viscous like water compared to something like oil or honey, the water pressure and density forces the liquid under the tires, causing the vehicle to literally drive on water. This effect is heightened the smoother the tires are. If we look at Benny's tires, they're completely smooth, and since this scene took place in the real world, normal physics would affect him. He didn't get too hurt because he actually ''skimmed across the Dip'' instead of running through it. This idea is further implied since Benny loses control of his driving and can't brake, two symptoms of hydroplaning, as well as the fact that no Dip splashed up and onto his hood or into his eyes/headlights, indicating most of the Dip stayed down and under him. |
| 84 | [[/folder]] |
| 85 | |
| 86 | [[folder:Judge Doom's legal consequences]] |
| 87 | * Sure, toons might have SOME prejudice against them in the movie's world, but surely Judge Doom knew that genocide would get him in trouble with the law and couldn't exactly be covered up? |
| 88 | ** Toontown has its own set of laws, conveniently under Doom's jurisdiction. There's probably a law somewhere in their insane, toony lawbook that makes it all completely okay. |
| 89 | ** Also, it's more than just prejudice to the humans of the movie. Toons are nothing but studio property. |
| 90 | ** It might help that in RealLife the U.S. government was carrying out its own mini-genocide during the time period. Perhaps you've heard of the Eugenics Movement? |
| 91 | *** False. Some US states had compulsory sterilization laws, but there was never any federal-level eugenics program of any kind. |
| 92 | *** And sterilization is less brutal than abortion, so it's something of a stretch to call it "genocide." |
| 93 | *** Still fits [[http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html the official definition of genocide]], the purposeful intent to destroy a group in whole or in part. Genocide doesn't necessarily have to involve outright killing. |
| 94 | ** Doom was insane and so was his plan. |
| 95 | ** Easier explanation. There was no law about killing toons ''at all'' because Toons were supposedly unkillable before Dip was created, thus a law against killing them would be pointless because no one could kill one. And Doom makes the rules in Toontown. He invented Dip after he became the Judge of Toontown, thus he ''is'' the law in Toontown. There was no law against killing an unkillable toon before he created Dip and he stopped one from being created afterwards. Yes, a law ''could've'' been made afterwards, but you can't be tried for something you did before it became illegal. People might not have liked it, but there wasn't anything they could do about it. |
| 96 | *** ''but you can't be tried for something you did before it became illegal'' This can and has happened...''"An ex post facto law is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences (or status) of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed, before the enactment of the law. In criminal law, it may criminalize actions that were legal when committed..."'' |
| 97 | *** Ex post facto laws are ''specifically prohibited by the US Constitution''. |
| 98 | ** Acme's will suggests that Marvin Acme was the sole owner of all the real estate in Toontown, and Doom is the sole authority figure over the same territory. If Doom gets the will and doctors it to list him as sole beneficiary, then there is nothing to stop him from condemning every toon building, demolishing them, and writing off the casualties as "belligerent trespassers". None of the LA cops go in there, and unless Amnesty International spontaneously pops into existence 15 years early, who else really cares? |
| 99 | *** He doesn't even need to go that far, it seemed evident that without the will presenting itself Acme's estate (all of Toontown) would be forfeit to the current lawful governing authority (hence why Doom was trying to acquire the will, either to hide it or destroy it). So if the will was not present to name a beneficiary, it was government property under Doom's jurisdiction, he could do whatever he wanted there under the bounds of the law, and like it's been said above, there was no law about killing toons. |
| 100 | ** Doom still had to conceal what he was doing, not least because he'd murdered at least two ''humans'' as a part of his scheme and had intended to murder another (Eddie). Most likely he was counting on the Dip melting Toontown into a formless puddle of paint and Dip, then eliminating the witnesses at the warehouse. That way, nobody could ''prove'' where the Dip-tanker came from or positively identify the massacred Toons' remains, and the disaster would be written off as some kind of industrial accident. |
| 101 | [[/folder]] |
| 102 | |
| 103 | [[folder:Acme's body]] |
| 104 | * When Acme's corpse is being taken away, why is there a lump under the sheet where his head is, considering HE HAD A SAFE DROPPED ON IT? Shouldn't it be flat above the neck? |
| 105 | ** As dark as it was, it was still a PG movie, and that might have been a little too much. |
| 106 | ** IllogicalSafe? |
| 107 | ** If I recall correctly, only part of the head of the chalk outline was actually touching the safe, so the rest of it could have been okay. Come to think of it, there ought to have been more of a mess, given the mode of death... |
| 108 | ** I'm just watching that scene in the movie now, and there ''isn't'' a lump under the sheet where Acme's head is. That is very clearly a headless corpse, albeit covered by a sheet. |
| 109 | [[/folder]] |
| 110 | |
| 111 | [[folder:Teddy's death]] |
| 112 | * How did Teddy die and Eddie's arm get broken from having a piano dropped on them in Toontown? Shouldn't toon physics have spared them both any injury (see Eddie flattening in the elevator or surviving his SEVERAL stories' worth of falling)? Even if the piano itself was real, it being dropped in Toontown at the "little dive on Yockster Street" should have caused it to adhere to the local rules. |
| 113 | ** Not necessarily. He was flattened in a toon elevator, and landed on a toon street. In other words, the physics of Toontown seem to vest in the physical objects, not the town itself. I would assume that a real piano would be lethal simply because toon rules don't apply to it, and Judge Doom seems smart enough to know that. |
| 114 | ** The chase was proceeding in the human part of the city. The piano was a real human piano. |
| 115 | ** Eddie and his brother are not toons, and therefore are no less vulnerable than other humans. |
| 116 | ** Eddie survived the fall onto the toon street because he was caught by a toon. The elevator flattened him because that's what happens when toon-elevators move quickly upward--the toon-ness was working on him. Having a piano dropped on you, with no toon interference, would work normally. |
| 117 | *** I always thought it was a question of intent. Bugs and Mickey didn't mean to hurt Eddie when he was falling off the building, they just wanted to have fun. Doom set out to harm the Valiants. |
| 118 | *** Another possibility. RuleOfFunny. No, not being sarcastic, hear me out. The outlandish but non-fatal things that happen to Eddie throughout the movie are because the Toon in question finds it funny due to ToonPhysics. [[FridgeHorror Judge Doom thinks murdering people is funny.]] |
| 119 | ** The same reason Acme was killed by a safe being dropped on his head. |
| 120 | ** Not if it was an ''actual'' piano. |
| 121 | [[/folder]] |
| 122 | |
| 123 | [[folder:The Ink and Paint's budget]] |
| 124 | * How much does the Ink and Paint club have to pay to repair or replace the Pianos that the ducks shoot apart during their act? They did look like real pianos, although this does bring up another question of how much toon stuff costs to make. |
| 125 | ** Jessica Rabbit. Duh. |
| 126 | *** Explain, please. |
| 127 | *** Presumably, the poster above's point is that Jessica Rabbit draws a sufficiently large paying audience to enable the owners to cover the damages caused by other acts. |
| 128 | ** Plus, I'd bet that enough people go there specifically ''because'' they want to see a pair of bad-tempered ducks beat each other up. Wouldn't you? Marvin Acme even says that they never actually finish their act. |
| 129 | *** And it ''is'' an act, in all ways, and the destruction of the pianos are a part of it. In an earlier draft of the script, when Eddie sneaks in backstage, we see to piano movers coming in with a replacement piano, lamenting that "it makes me sick to think of these beautiful pianos gettin' chopped into match sticks every night by those screwy ducks." Clearly the Ink and Paint club can afford the pianos, or they wouldn't have had the act in the first place. |
| 130 | *** There's also an extra scene in that same draft with Donald and Daffy testing out the new piano, chatting quite amiably, reinforcing that their fight is part of the act. |
| 131 | --->'''Donald: '''Phooey! Out of tune again!\ |
| 132 | '''Daffy:''' Not to worry, Donald. We can fix that with my sledgehammer.\ |
| 133 | '''Donald:''' Never mind, Daffy. I've got an axe in my dressing room. |
| 134 | ** I re-watch the movie recently and the pianos do not get destroyed. The black piano gets a little damaged (mostly a big hole in the top) but are clearly both re-usable. |
| 135 | [[/folder]] |
| 136 | |
| 137 | [[folder:Patty Cake]] |
| 138 | * From the Pattycake sequence, it looked like Patty Cake was the toon equivalent of sex. How, then, does Baby Herman's "3-year old dinky" come into play? Or does Toon sex simply involve whichever activity best sets off the couple's RuleOfFunny? |
| 139 | ** BlueAndOrangeMorality comes into play here. |
| 140 | *** How so? And why would Marvin Acme want to be a SugarDaddy for Jessica Rabbit, as he was, if all he got out of it was the chance to literally play pattycake with her? |
| 141 | *** Maybe Marvin Acme ''is'' turned on by playing patty-cake. People will turn ''anything'' into a fetish... |
| 142 | ** Perhaps pattycake is a common form of foreplay amongst toons. |
| 143 | *** And "baking a carrot cake" means secks. |
| 144 | ** Perhaps Acme was really just that much a nut and literally liked patty cake. |
| 145 | ** As for the "three-year-old dinkie" comment, maybe Baby Herman was complaining that, because he ''looks'' like an infant, women are Squicked out by the notion of playing pattycake with him, euphemistically or otherwise. |
| 146 | ** I always thought that "Patty Cake" was 40's-era ''slang'' for sex, and the joke here is that Roger is naive enough that he really just has no idea what sex is, so he takes the term "Patty Cake" at its literal meaning (i.e. that particular hand-clapping game), and thus he and Jessica have made a habit of literally playing Patty Cake and treating it like it's a special thing for married couples (i.e. the equivalent of sex.) And Jessica just goes along with this, because she likes Roger's zaniness/innocence and she doesn't have a strong sex drive anyway (despite her sexy appearance). In other words, I thought that Patty Cake was just ''Roger's'' equivalent of sex, based on his own silly understanding of the concept. Baby Herman, in contrast, has a much more "mature" mindset, so his conception of sex is more "standard". Probably every toon has a different understanding, assuming they even think about the issue. Most of them are clearly drawn without "[[NonHumansLackAttributes attributes]]", so hey, perhaps the vast majority of toons are [[WildMassGuessing actually asexual]]... |
| 147 | *** The photographs Eddie takes of Jessica and Acme clearly show them playing pattycake (as in, the children's game), so it's presumably not just Roger. |
| 148 | *** Then again, Acme was already shown as being a man-childish weirdo, albeit a good-natured one. Who knows what kind of odd kiddy games he finds kinky? |
| 149 | ** RuleOfFunny. It's just a joke based on the fact that these are cartoon characters in a PG movie going through the motions of a noir mystery. A cartoon character viewing his wife playing a children's game with another man as akin to a sexual affair is funny, that's all it really is. |
| 150 | [[/folder]] |
| 151 | |
| 152 | [[folder:How did Judge Doom become Judge Doom?]] |
| 153 | * Before Judge Doom became Judge Doom, he was simply Doom. How he is supposed to look without inflatable human clothing? Maybe it's was too intense for young viewers, but still... |
| 154 | ** There is a theory floating around, based on a poster in Maroon's office, that Doom used to be a possum known as Pistol Packing Possum. Inspection of the poster reveals it has Doom's 'burning red eyes' and holds the same revolver Doom uses to kill Maroon and drops in Toontown. |
| 155 | ** According to the official comic-book sequel ''Roger Rabbit: The Resurrection of Doom'', Judge Doom was originally "Baron von Rotten," a highly versatile Toon actor specializing in villain roles, who had played several one-shot antagonist roles in various cartoons. We don't really know what he originally looked like because part of his Toon shtick was that he was a master of disguise and could look like anything. (Pistol Packing Possum could even have been one of the roles he played.) After a work-related accident he went off his hinges and began thinking he ''was'' the villain he portrayed on-screen. |
| 156 | ** The book is a whole different animal as the movie is very loosely base on it and the comics are non-canonical, the real answer is "no one really knows", the movie never explains. The only hint given is Jessica's line that she was drawn that way implying they are drawn. |
| 157 | [[/folder]] |
| 158 | |
| 159 | [[folder:Killing a Toon through non-Dip methods]] |
| 160 | * If toons can only be killed by dip, how does Eddie kill a bunch of the weasels with laughter at the film's climax? |
| 161 | ** This is an interesting question. But if you notice, the weasels who die laughing end up as ghosts. However Smart-Ass, the weasel who fell into the Dip, didn't get a ghost. So perhaps Dip is the only thing that can erase a toon from existance completely, mind, body ''and'' soul. |
| 162 | ** Dip is the only means by which fatal injuries can be inflicted upon a toon by another individual. That doesn't mean some of them can't kill ''themselves'' by their own laughter. The weasels' deaths were primarily their own fault, because they still wouldn't heed Doom's warnings about excessive laughing. Eddie only gave them something funny to watch; he didn't actually force them to ''listen''. |
| 163 | ** There must be plenty of undead toons, like [[WesternAnimation/CasperTheFriendlyGhost Casper]] or [[WesternAnimation/TheSkeletonDance dancing skeletons]]. Also, how many times have we seen [[WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes Sylvester's]] soul get separated from his body, only to later retrieve it? This is really just another of those visual gags that define toon nature. On the other hand, we have Teddy Valiant, Marvin Acme, a shoe, R.K Maroon, Smart-Ass and Doom, presumably all dead for real. |
| 164 | ** I figure that the weasels ''weren't'' killed by laughter. They were 'incapacitated'. Even in ghost form Psycho was still capable of turning on the Dip Machine. Possibly the ghost weasels could be brought back, if you reunited their ghost animations with their bodies, but Smart Ass, who was Dipped, would not be able to be brought back ever. |
| 165 | *** Odds are their bodies all got soaked in the Dip when the warehouse flooded, so none of them are likely to be coming back. [[AdorableEvilMinions Poor little guys.]] |
| 166 | *** Perhaps they would continue to exist as ghosts and not truly be dead. And even it they don't, they were complicit in attempted genocide of their own kind, so they weren't exactly innocent. |
| 167 | ** [[FridgeHorror Does that mean that little shoe Doom dipped didn't get to go to Heaven?!?]] |
| 168 | *** Of course it got to heaven. [[{{Pun}} All shoes have soles]]. |
| 169 | ** Maybe the Dip causes the Toons to AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence. That makes me feel a bit better about it. |
| 170 | ** On that note, shouldn't the weasels get red demons sinking into a fiery pit rather than angels floating to the sky? |
| 171 | *** Presumably, that happens when they get processed at the Pearly Gates. |
| 172 | [[/folder]] |
| 173 | |
| 174 | [[folder:Weasel's lack of concern]] |
| 175 | * The weasels are pretty scummy characters, but when they find out Doom plans to completely erase Toon Town from existence, along with every other toon, one would have thought they'd have something to say about it. Or that they would at least be shown as only doing it because they're scared. As it is, they don't even seem bothered. They don't seem anything like as crazy as Doom himself, so why don't they have a problem with Toon Town being erased? |
| 176 | ** Greasy, Wheezy and Smart-Ass may have been too greedy or cowardly to stand up to Doom, perhaps wishing to stay at the right hand of the devil rather than in his path, and reap the benefits afterward. Psycho was too AxCrazy to care, and Stupid was, well,...[[ShapedLikeItself too stupid]]. |
| 177 | ** It's also implied Doom promised to them a great percentual of the Freeway's profits once Toontown would have been destroyed. Anyway, what makes you think they're not deranged and sociopath like their boss ? It's quite possible they have the same personality as Doom: a toon who wants get rid of his own race for greed (and probably pure sadism as well). |
| 178 | ** With the ToonTown gone they'd be among the few remaining toons. Their value to producers would skyrocket! |
| 179 | ** Who's to say that Doom might not turn the Dip on them down the road? Considering they're betraying their own species Doom probably doesn't trust them and might just eliminate them once their usefulness to him is over. |
| 180 | *** Isn't that exactly what Doom himself is doing too, though? |
| 181 | ** It's never stated that L.A.'s Toontown is the ''only'' place in the country, or world, where Toons live. It's entirely possible that the Weasels expect to re-locate to some other city where animated films were produced in that era, like New York (Famous Studios) or somewhere in France or Argentina. |
| 182 | [[/folder]] |
| 183 | |
| 184 | [[folder:More Pattycake!]] |
| 185 | * If pattycake is a Toon equivalent of sex and/or foreplay, this really brings a huge level of {{Squick}} to various cartoons which show small children playing it. Ack. Then again, maybe it's only an equivalent specifically to Roger and Jessica - every couple's got their quirks. |
| 186 | ** Um...I don't think pattycake is the "equivalent" of sex and/or foreplay for toons. I think Roger was just bummed because Jessica was having fun without him. Like kids who cry because no one will play with them on the playground. |
| 187 | *** I don't know, they sounded very...into it. |
| 188 | *** It sounded more like Acme was either actually ''turned on'' by pattycake (people will turn anything into a fetish), or was just that big a nut and manchild that he was just into pattycake. |
| 189 | ** Really, I just thought the situation was absurd and ridiculous, which Toons are well-known for. Toons take silliness quite seriously. |
| 190 | ** Small human children playing pattycake may not be considered any different from the same small children playing "house", i.e. going through the motions of being married adults, without any intended sexual implications. |
| 191 | [[/folder]] |
| 192 | |
| 193 | [[folder:Where did Toons come from originally?]] |
| 194 | * It seemed implied that there were Toons, and then people started filming them (so they existed before animated movies). Did they exist in some alternate world (Toontown) that humanity never discovered until the early 1900s? Also, what would be the repercussions of Toons in regards to the first or second World War (or any wars)? Not all Toons are harmless, and if an army could field unkillable soldiers who deal with their own set of physics, then the result would be the humans dying off rather quickly, and the remaining Toon soldiers fighting endlessly. |
| 195 | ** Toons may be invulnerable, but they are not omniscient. We've seen plenty of cases in cartoons of characters (and groups of characters) conceding defeat to another, sometimes when sufficiently battered up (as what frequently happens to Daffy Duck) or when they've run out of options (as with Tom sometimes in ''WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry''). There are a LOT of questions about the rest of this world with toons and how they work. You could fill up this page to capacity with such questions. Of course, if toon warfare exists, they'll be using a lot more Dip soon. |
| 196 | ** According to Roger, it's against the nature of Toons to kill. Doom was an exception. |
| 197 | *** Adding on to this, doesn't Roger say the purpose of Toons is to make people laugh? They might play combat roles in their cartoons, but for the most part they seem opposed to true violence and conflict. |
| 198 | ** I assume they're Native Americans (Well, that might be too strong to say. They're more like 'native to America'), considering Toon Town is located in California. [[RuleOfFunny Just Imagine a bunch of Spanish Conquistadors discovering Toon Town and the Toons screwing with them]]. |
| 199 | *** They probably would've considered them demons. |
| 200 | ** I always thought that Toontown was supposed to be the equivalent of a Chinatown or other minority neighborhood. So, somewhere there is probably a country called Toon, and all the Toons are immigrants or descendants of immigrants. |
| 201 | ** I doubt toons existed before the existence of film. We see some old toons to be black and white, like WesternAnimation/BettyBoop and there's no reason for them to be black and white unless somehow they're connected to the film they came from. A WMG but probably in modern times there will be CGI toons running around. They're probably some sort of weird experiment from a MadScientist/Cinematographer that somehow make them alive and/or some sort of magical spell that affected films. If they existed before the invention of film then I guess they were the goblins, imps, spirits and other trickter entities of the different cultures. |
| 202 | *** The original toons could have looked like cave paintings, and evolved as humans developed new forms of visual art. |
| 203 | *** Or if mobility is a prerequisite for being "alive", they might've arisen from kinetoscope-clips or flip-books, some time before film's invention. |
| 204 | ** Maybe Toontown is actually an astral world and the toons maybe illusions created by the thoughts of the creators. |
| 205 | ** It's possible that all eras of cartoons existed at once. Toon Town is called that way because it's a place for old cartoon characters to hang out in, whereas the "modern" day cartoons (Steven Universe, Adventure Time, Regular Show etc.) all live somewhere else in the Toon world. We don't really know if the entire cartoon world is called Toon Town or not. |
| 206 | [[/folder]] |
| 207 | |
| 208 | [[folder:Hiding from the Toon Patrol]] |
| 209 | * So Eddie hides Roger from the Toon Patrol by submerging him in his sink filled with water. A paint-thinner-solvent mix can kill a Toon for real, but not water?! |
| 210 | ** Water-proof ink? |
| 211 | *** Yep, well sort of! For the period, animated characters were drawn/painted directly onto acetate. Water based inks/paints wouldn't have worked. Brushes plus mistakes, etc. had to be cleaned with acetone, turpentine or benzine! Modern water-based paints/inks can be waterproof once they are dry, and paint onto acetate, but I don't think anything similar was available at the time. |
| 212 | ** I don't think Toons are literally ''made'' of ink, the Dip just happens to kill them. And Toons being vulnerable to water would be too big of a WeaksauceWeakness, especially considering how there are plenty of cartoons made where they swim with no ill effects. |
| 213 | *** There does seem to be some sort of paint component to Toon matter, since one of the pieces of evidence against Roger is yellow paint from his gloves (which apparently actually belonged to Doom). |
| 214 | *** Yes, because Dip is glorified paint remover. It would have no effect whatsoever on a [[AllCGICartoon CGI Toon]], but of course, those characters are of a different time period. |
| 215 | [[/folder]] |
| 216 | |
| 217 | [[folder:Road Roller]] |
| 218 | * Why does a joke/prop factory have a road-roller? |
| 219 | ** Perhaps in case they need to film a cartoon where a character gets flattened. |
| 220 | ** [[InsaneTrollLogic To flatten the portable holes, of course]]. Alternately, it was part of the construction effort involved in installing the enormous dip machine, and they hadn't gotten around to sending it back to the construction garage. Alternately alternately, it was going to be used in one of Judge Doom's nefarious plots, a [[CrazyPrepared backup-backup-backup]] plan to get rid of Eddie (or whomever) in a way that's just as cartoonish as how his brother was killed if he somehow made it that far and defeated the weasel-minions. |
| 221 | ** Why, to fix the [[{{Pun}} plotholes]], naturally! |
| 222 | ** Perhaps Doom intended it to get rid of any tracks his Dip-tanker might leave behind it, to obscure where it came from. He doesn't want to leave any evidence that he destroyed a whole section of the city, after all. |
| 223 | [[/folder]] |
| 224 | |
| 225 | [[folder:Judge Doom, use your abilities!]] |
| 226 | * It would have probably spoiled TheReveal but why during the final battle, doesn't Judge Doom uses immediately his toon powers against Eddie but just his sword - cane and other Acme tools ? |
| 227 | ** I saw it as Doom not really caring to use his powers, he thought Valiant was beneath him. But it really doesn't matter, since his true personality is absolutely insane, I doubt logic even goes into the equation with it. |
| 228 | ** He may not have wanted to ruin his costume. LatexPerfection is bound to be expensive even when it's ''not'' having to fit the sort of caricature-style face that toons have. Indeed, he may have murdered whomever crafted his mask to protect his secret. |
| 229 | ** I have an idea. Judge Doom is a former Toon Actor who specialized in playing villains right? He may have simply still been "In-Character" as it were. |
| 230 | ** Toon abilities (minus passive ones like invulnerability)are only usable when it's funny. Doom either didn't have a way to kill him with toon powers in a humorous way or couldn't think of one in the moment. |
| 231 | [[/folder]] |
| 232 | |
| 233 | [[folder:Simoleons]] |
| 234 | * Speaking of spoiling TheReveal... Santino mentions Doom having bought his Judge-ship by "spreading around a lot of simoleons" in Toontown; Eddie later at the movie theater with Roger, explaining how his brother died, says the toon that killed him robbed a bank and "got away with a zillion simoleons". Of course, it turns out [[TheUnReveal that Doom is one that killed Teddy]], since he used that money to get his master plan under way. What bugs me is that Eddie didn't piece THAT together right then and there. I mean, I get that [[INeedADrink the liquor binges]] might have dulled his skills at least a bit, but COME ON, he's supposed to be a master detective, right? |
| 235 | ** On the other hand, the bank was known to have been robbed by a toon, Judge Doom was considered, to all obvious appearances, human, so the connection isn't immediately obvious. Eddie may have assumed the Judge had been paid off by a corrupt toon if he thought about it at all. This wouldn't be so uncommon in the noir films of the 40s. |
| 236 | ** "Simoleons" is just slang for "dollars". The fact that Santino and Eddie both use the same slang terms is hardly proof of anything. |
| 237 | *** Simoleons is slang for dollars in our world, but the fact that they very specifically use that slang when discussing Toon Town and the fact that Eddie doesn't seem to be exaggerating when he says that the toon that killed his brother stole a "zillion" of them, the obvious conclusion is that Toon Town has its own toon money and that it's called simoleons. Really this just makes sense, as toons would need to be able to flash around huge amounts of cash for jokes, and if they pulled that in human stores it would wind up crashing the economy. |
| 238 | ** Not to mention that there are both (a) a lot of rich people around and (b) a lot of robberies. The fact that a rich person bought an election is not necessarily directly connected to a bank robbery years before. |
| 239 | ** Eddie did mention his brother's killer to have a high, squeaky voice. Doom was a former Toon actor who was known to be able to change his appearance with grandiose, allowing him to (with the help of "real" costume props) assume the appearance of an elderly human judge. Being a highly versatile Toon was not among the traits Eddie remembered about his brother's killer. |
| 240 | ** Adding to the above, Eddie isn't actually portrayed as a "master" detective. He's more of a "perfectly ordinary" detective. We see that he's short on cash (can't pay for trolley fare), and there's no mention of him being the "best in the business" or solving some really important case at some point. |
| 241 | *** Actually, his office is full of accolades for solving countless Toon-related cases -- he once cleared Goofy of accusations of espionage, which would be a ''federal-level'' case. He ''is'' considered "the best in the business" -- "Everybody knows when a Toon's in trouble there's only one place to go. Valiant and Valiant." Of course, his entire business model was based on Toons being innocent. One murdering his brother drove him into the bottle. Eddie might have been the only guy who could have prevented the murder of Marvin Acme, but he was too drunk to notice until it fell in his lap. |
| 242 | [[/folder]] |
| 243 | |
| 244 | [[folder:Toon Bullets]] |
| 245 | * What exactly happens to the toon bullets after they're shot? Do they go on to living their own lives? |
| 246 | ** At a guess, I'd say they're reusable and eventually return to Eddie or Eddie's gun until the next time they're needed. |
| 247 | ** Certainly the way Eddie converses with them implies they've been in gunfights together before. |
| 248 | [[/folder]] |
| 249 | |
| 250 | [[folder:Use the stairs, Eddie!]] |
| 251 | * Why, in order to escape from Lena Hyena, didn't Eddie used the stairs of the flat instead of trying to exit out of the Men's Room (which also caused him to fall) ? One more thing, every time Eddie has someone pretty hideous and terrified in front of him like Toon Judge Doom it always takes four/five seconds before he finally run away. I personally would'have run like hell without even look at. |
| 252 | ** Lena is a woman. Eddie probably figured that, under Toon Logic, she is physically incapable of entering a Men's Room. He just wasn't counting on the RuleOfFunny conspiring against him to remove the floor and make him fall 200 stories. As for why Eddie didn't immediately run from Doom, he was obviously frozen with fear. |
| 253 | [[/folder]] |
| 254 | |
| 255 | [[folder:Eddie's perception of Lena]] |
| 256 | * In Toontown, how is Eddie, being a normal human, able to clearly see Lena's silhouette roughly 400 stories up the hotel? Are human senses enhanced while in Toontown? |
| 257 | ** That, and no doubt the building was warped. When you're looking up, Toon skyscrapers really will bend over a bit just to seem taller. |
| 258 | ** Toon Town seems to run on RuleOfFunny. |
| 259 | [[/folder]] |
| 260 | |
| 261 | [[folder:How'd Eddie know what floor Lena was on?]] |
| 262 | * When Eddie is in the Toon Hotel, he merely just presses the button for the elevator and then alerts Droopy to stop at some level. Wouldn't Eddie have checked with the hotel registry to verify if Jessica was indeed staying there as well as to know the floor and room number? It just seems like he saw Lena's half-silhouette (thinking it's Jessica), then just walked into the hotel, got on the elevator and stopped at a random floor that just happened to be the one Lena was on. Granted, yes, it's Toontown, where logic has no meaning and it runs on RuleOfFunny, however, that's still way too convenient even for a that kind of setting. Was it just to merely move the plot along? Did Eddie just know that he was going to get the right one? |
| 263 | ** Eddie probably counted the windows to see how many floors up she was. |
| 264 | [[/folder]] |
| 265 | |
| 266 | [[folder:The purpose of Toons]] |
| 267 | * It is a remarkable and rather confusing irony that a Toon's ultimate purpose is to be amusing in some way and yet it's suggested they themselves shouldn't laugh too much or else they'll "die". |
| 268 | ** Perhaps if the laughter is in small doses, a toon should be safe or maybe this somehow only applies to characters like the Weasels. |
| 269 | ** Jessica states one of the main reasons she loves Roger is because he ''makes her laugh'' and Roger is cracking up watching ''Goofy Gymnastics'' at the movies. Shouldn't they be well aware of this hazard concerning constant laughter? |
| 270 | *** It may be a hazard unique only to particularly stupid or mean toons. Or only if they start laughing without any sense of dignity or restraint at all. After all, the Weasels aren't shown just chortling and guffawing at Eddie, they're rolling around, slapping their bellies, ''howling'' with laughter. |
| 271 | *** Judge Doom told the weasels earlier in the film "one day you'll die laughing", therefor it was ironic that the weasels were killed by laughter, which makes sense since toons live by RuleOfFunny. This doesn't mean laughter is fatal to other toons. |
| 272 | ** Human beings can laugh themselves to death as well. A man once laughed himself to death watching an episode of ''Series/TheGoodies''. It's not exactly common, but it happens; the body just over-exerts and gives out. If it can happen to humans, why not cartoons? |
| 273 | ** I always thought that was only for the Weasels in particular, not for every toon in existence. Anyway, except in the case of Dip, no death seem permanent anyway. |
| 274 | ** The "die of laughing" only affects Hyenas and Weasels as it is said several times in the movie, by Doom and Greasy. Eddie seems surprised to hear about it so it's obviously not a common trait among toons. |
| 275 | ** Why should it be remarkable? Just about anything can be deadly if taken too far, even if it's normally beneficial, even necessary for survival. Humans require water, but ever heard of water intoxication? |
| 276 | [[/folder]] |
| 277 | |
| 278 | [[folder:Abrupt desertion of Toon Town]] |
| 279 | * When Eddie enters Toontown, the city is crawling with crazy, hyper, animated characters running all over the place, but later, after being chased by Lena Hyena, [[UnexpectedlyAbandoned the town is seemingly deserted]]. |
| 280 | ** Perhaps it was a budgetary constraint or just overly-tedious and unnecessary to have the rest of the Toons in there. |
| 281 | ** Or maybe all the ''male'' toons in the area packed up and left when they heard Lena Hyena was on the prowl. |
| 282 | ** Completely trivial, but did anyone notice how lavish and extravagant [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_QdHn8FT7SdY/S86pdWKBDVI/AAAAAAAAImI/tVzk_yknjIg/s1600/framed202.jpg Lena's hotel window]] is compared to the others? Was she staying in an upscale suite or something? In a way, this adds to how Eddie would confuse her for Jessica, since that's probably the type of room she could afford being married to an A-list Toon and all. |
| 283 | [[/folder]] |
| 284 | |
| 285 | [[folder:Judge Doom's eyes]] |
| 286 | * If Judge Doom's red Toon eyes were hidden behind fake eyeballs, how was he able to see out his mask? One could perhaps {{Handwave}} it to "Toon magic" (being able to see through them somehow or some BS like that), but still it just seems impossible. |
| 287 | ** And while we're on that, how were the fake eyeballs not smashed or destroyed by the steamroller at the Acme Factory? It's understandable how the rest of Doom's body was re-inflated by the oxygen tank, but not the eyeballs which were completely separate from him. |
| 288 | ** You'll notice that Doom's body isn't paper thin after being hit by the steamroller; it's maybe an inch thick. Seems like enough space for fake eyeballs to stay intact. As for how it would be possible to see while wearing them on your face, it's entirely possible that there are holes on the front and back, allowing the user to see through them like looking through the hole in a doughnut. |
| 289 | [[/folder]] |
| 290 | |
| 291 | [[folder:Raoul, get your priorities in order]] |
| 292 | * Is Raoul just, like, the most insanely anal-retentive OCD director ever? I know in the script it says stars but many times scripts say lots of things which for whatever reason can't be done during filming. Raoul scraps an entire take lasting several minutes, all because Roger sees birds and not stars. So what? Why are stars so important, Raoul? Will stars really make the fridge payoff that much better than birds? Are you a slave to the script, Raoul? If Roger can't do stars for whatever reason, use whatever he can do, like the birds. A good director would do that rather than constantly redo takes, wasting money and film and people's time. And on top of this, Raoul is a real jerk to Roger about it. This makes him a really poor director. |
| 293 | ** Either he's upset because Roger is messing with his "artistic vision" of what the cartoon should be, and for some reason thinks that stars will make or break the picture, or he for some reason has it in for Roger. Or you're right and he's just a JerkAss director -- but that's actually pretty realistic. Remember, this is the 1940s, which in the real world was some time of turbulence for the movie industry in general, with actors and animators alike were fighting for better pay and better treatment. Given the discrimination against Toons in the world of the movie, I doubt they are unionized, and so people like Raoul can treat them any way they like with no fear of repercussions. |
| 294 | ** Regarding Raoul being a jerk to Roger, well, there's a reason we have the PrimaDonnaDirector trope; movie directors acting like prissy, over-sensitive dickheads throwing a temper tantrum when they don't get their way or when their 'vision' is compromised and taking it out on others isn't exactly unheard of. |
| 295 | ** There could even be a practical reason. The best cartoon gags build on each other. What if the important closing gag of the short relies on Roger having generated stars a moment earlier? |
| 296 | ** Creator/StanleyKubrick was just like that. For example, he convinced George C Scott to do a ridiculous, over the top take in addition to a serious take while making ''Film/DoctorStrangelove'', and [[BlatantLies promised him only the serious one would be used]] (Scott swore never to work with Kubrick again, but was impressed with the results); tortured Creator/MalcolmMcDowell while making ''Film/AClockworkOrange'' by making his character have a pet snake because [=Mcdowell=] [[WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes was afraid of snakes]], despite it never coming up in the movie, mostly just ForTheLulz / ForTheEvulz (he also actually scratched his cornea during filming during the Ludovico Technique, and Kubrick wouldn't stop filming because of [=McDowell=]'s reactions); and emotionally abused/tortured Shelly Duvall and allegedly made Scatman Crothers cry from all the takes while making ''Film/TheShining'' (most of the scenes with Creator/JackNicholson are the twentieth takes, and he got tired while filming, so he amped up the insanity). He was a known perfectionist, which is why his decision to let Creator/RLeeErmey ad-lib pretty much all his lines in ''Film/FullMetalJacket'' is so impressive. |
| 297 | *** Although if there was one actor who would be quite unlikely to put up with any of Kubrick's shit in no uncertain terms, it would have to have been USMC Staff Sergeant R. Lee Ermey. |
| 298 | ** Not that you don't have a legitimate point, but they had done the take 23 times already, so he was likely fed up with doing the scene over and over again, anyone can get nasty when their patience has been stretched thin. Not to mention Baby Herman was hacked off at Roger as well, so it wasn't just Raoul. |
| 299 | *** Herman would have only been mad at Roger ''because'' he was making Raoul mad and causing them to redo the scene over and over again. I doubt he actually gives a damn about stars and birds. |
| 300 | [[/folder]] |
| 301 | |
| 302 | [[folder:Escape Lena]] |
| 303 | * So what exactly happens to someone if they don't manage to get away from Lena Hyena? In a crazy place like Toontown, Eddie couldn't have been the only one to have a run in with her. What would happen to others who found themselves in the same situation and didn't have Eddie's luck? |
| 304 | ** A slapstick escape plot? |
| 305 | ** I mean, the most logical answer is "Fade to black as they are dragged into her room, followed by leaving covered in kisses...which is likely all she ever does. She seems like the kinda toon who doesn't know what to DO if she wins. |
| 306 | ** Logically I'd say the outcome would be BlackComedyRape, but since this is a PG movie basing its humor on that of old cartoon shorts that were never explicit about sexual matters, about the worst we're likely to see on screen is something along the lines of the non-consensual kiss on the cheek Eddie receives. |
| 307 | ** I guess it depends on what would be the ‘funniest’ outcome. The Abhorrent Admirer gag can actually play out a number of ways, up to and including Eddie being forced to marry Lena and spending the rest of his life with her. So I guess he lucked out there. |
| 308 | [[/folder]] |
| 309 | [[folder: Eddie running into Lena Hyena]] |
| 310 | * Okay, so Eddie finds Jessica's car in Toontown, and happens to spot what he believes to be her in the window in a hotel room only to discover it is an ugly toon named Lena Hyena who happens to look like an uglier version of Jessica. That is too much of a coincidence. Did Jessica know Lena, and had her stay in the suite as a trap for someone if they were following her? Or did it belong to Jessica, and Lena snuck in to take her clothes and try to make herself look like Jessica? Or perhaps she was moving into the suite and Jessica had given her some of he clothes? |
| 311 | ** No, it's just RuleOfFunny, which is what Toontown pretty much runs on. |
| 312 | [[/folder]] |
| 313 | |
| 314 | [[folder:Shave and a Haircut]] |
| 315 | * So, when Doom and the weasels are looking for Roger, Doom uses 'Shave and a Haircut' to draw him out because no Toon can resist completing it .... except for some reason THE WEASELS THEMSELVES Or DOOM for that matter. Seriously ...? |
| 316 | ** It's probably not about finishing the rhythm ''per se,'' but about blowing your cover. Toons operate on RuleOfFunny, even (or especially) when this is a serious inconvenience to them, and so a Toon who is ''hiding'' won't be able to resist answering the "shave and a haircut" knock simply because it's funny that he'll thoughtlessly give himself away like that. Doom is simply exploiting this weakness -- there are probably other tricks he could have used, such as pretending to sneeze and compelling Roger to say "Gesundheit," but he went with the rhythm, possibly because [[RuleOfCool it looked cooler and more intimidating.]] |
| 317 | ** Or they just trained themselves to resist it. |
| 318 | ** The issue works with RuleOfFunny, won't be funny for the Weasels to complete it because they are in the open, it will be funny for any toon in hiding as it will blew up its cover (as it did). |
| 319 | ** Doom specifically said that no Toon could resist the "Shave And A Haircut" ''trick''. None of Doom's party were being "tricked", only Roger. |
| 320 | ** Toons operating on RuleOfFunny gives us another explanation: a lot of comedy bits involve a StraightManAndWiseGuy relationship. In this case, Doom (and by extension the Weasels since they're working with him) play the role of the serious Straight Man to Roger's wacky Wise Guy. |
| 321 | [[/folder]] |
| 322 | |
| 323 | [[folder:Jessica's wardrobe]] |
| 324 | * Doesn't Jessica Rabbit have any casual clothes? There's one photograph of her wearing a bathing suit, but for the whole rest of the movie she's wearing a strapless lounge dress (with or without sequins). |
| 325 | ** She's a Toon. Most Toons have a LimitedWardrobe thing going on. |
| 326 | ** That wasn't Jessica Rabbit in the photo. That was Dolores. |
| 327 | *** I think they're referring to one of the photos in Roger's wallet. |
| 328 | *** Holy shit, that [[FridgeLogic just made me realize]] that those photos were intended to show that Eddie and Roger were not so different. |
| 329 | ** The out of universe reason is that animating another model in a different outfit would add even more work to what was already quite a taxing film, and it was more convenient to have Jessica wearing one dress throughout the film (an image that only appears in photographs is easier to do). In-universe, she's aware that men are frequently DistractedByTheSexy, so she's possibly thinking of what she might be able to use her assets for in case there's trouble. |
| 330 | [[/folder]] |
| 331 | |
| 332 | [[folder:Capture Roger]] |
| 333 | * Doom has to catch Roger Rabbit in order to make his scheme working. Nevertheless when he captures Eddie and Jessica, it seems like he's totally forgotten about Roger and absolutely not worried that Roger could go to the police and tell everything. How come? He still needs to eliminate the first suspect of Acme's murder. |
| 334 | ** Doom doesn't need to catch him at all. Besides, ''Roger is the murder suspect''. Can you imagine him going to the police and saying that he's innocent (no, he doesn't have any proof), and it's the judge who's the real murderer? He'd be arrested on the spot and handed over to Doom. |
| 335 | *** Which is, of course, why he sent Benny to do it. |
| 336 | ** Doom doesn't need to find Roger. He's holding Roger's beloved wife at gun-and-dip-point; he can make Roger come to ''him''. As ends up happening. |
| 337 | [[/folder]] |
| 338 | |
| 339 | [[folder:The sustainability of being a non-comedic Toon]] |
| 340 | * If Toons are supposed to operate on RuleOfFunny as their lifeblood, how do non-comedic Toons sustain themselves? The most direct case is Judge Doom, who is a very serious (albeit crazy) individual. We then have characters like Snow White, who doesn't engage in anything outside of normal human behavior and movement; [[WesternAnimation/SupermanTheatricalCartoons Superman]], who at that point had already existed in animated works in a straight-up action/drama series; and from the 90s and onwards, there's been a proliferation of animated works that aren't comedic, or at least not primarily comedic. Wouldn't the cast of ''Manga/ShadowStar'' starve due to how so very depressing, and lacking in comedy even as solace, the series is? |
| 341 | ** Possibly, Toons as a rule are about ''entertaining,'' not just making people laugh -- so it could still work; more serious Toons would still be all about the performance and gaining a positive audience reaction but not necessarily making them laugh. As this is the 1940s, however, the comedic Toons are still the vast majority. |
| 342 | ** Other Toons would obviously operate on RuleOfDrama, RuleOfFunny, [[RuleOfIndex and so on]]. |
| 343 | ** Or, for horror, Judge Doom was funny to himself. No doubt he got a kick out of fooling everybody into thinking he was human. |
| 344 | ** Either that, or else he was fed up with Toons being considered as little more than mere comedians and decided to even the score. |
| 345 | ** Not all toons are about being funny, or even about being entertainers. Some of them have important jobs off-stage, like being elevator operators, cigarette girls, bouncers. Someone has to manufacture the parachutes, spare tires, and paint those lines on the roadway. |
| 346 | ** Since no non-comedic toons appear in the film, maybe non-comedic cartoons are just as fictional in-universe as in real life. |
| 347 | ** I pretty much doubt there's an animated version of Superman in this universe, and if anime exist, then they are probably living in their own version of Toon Town in Japan and have other rules. It's more likely that in-universe there is not such a thing as animated drama. |
| 348 | ** I think not all toons run on RuleOfFunny - only comedy toons do. Not even all toons are comedic in this film - probably Jessica Rabbit runs on RuleOfSexy, and Judge Doom runs on RuleOfScary. |
| 349 | ** The Toons ''that we see'' operate on RuleOfFunny, because that's the nature of those particular characters. There's likely others, we just don't see them because (a) they hadn't been created at the time the events of the movie were set, (b) Toon characters from different genres possibly tend not to hang around with characters from different genres / styles of animation, and / or (c) they live in different parts of Toon Town. For all we know there's a Toon version of Clark Kent[=/=]Superman who lives and does his thing in the Toon version of Metropolis, but we just don't see him because he doesn't happen to have anything to do with the plot unfolding. |
| 350 | *** Metropolis is likely just as real as the house at the beginning of the movie. |
| 351 | ** Perhaps the non-comedic characters - of which there ''are'' several cameos, even ones with roles as somber as the Great Prince from ''Bambi'' - survive, not by making people laugh overtly, but by making people ''happy'' in general. They're content to find their purpose in contributing to a story's emotional impact, and the resulting satisfaction gained by audiences. |
| 352 | ** At no point is it directly stated that Toons need laughter to survive. They make people laugh partly because the rules of their world run on storytelling and comedic tropes in a similar fashion to how the actual world runs on the laws of physics, and partly because, well, the ones we see just enjoy making people laugh. |
| 353 | [[/folder]] |
| 354 | |
| 355 | [[folder:Baby Herman's assistant]] |
| 356 | * What was up with Baby Herman's assistant wearing short shorts? Wouldn't that have been considered obscene to the public at the time? |
| 357 | ** Baby Herman is the Howard Stern of Toons. He does obscene things just because he can. |
| 358 | ** Not really. The '40s and '50s weren't as uptight as we might think of them today due to NostalgiaFilter. |
| 359 | ** Those kind of clothes were worn around the swimming pool or by dancers who were rehearsing, judging by photos and films of the era. Being in the movie business, she could have been doing either. |
| 360 | ** Don't let the glitz and glamour (and self-righteousness) fool you; Hollywood has always had a reputation of being a den of sin and vice, moreso than many places in America. Compared to some of the things going on in the town at the time, a girl walking around wearing shorty shorts is comparatively modest. |
| 361 | [[/folder]] |
| 362 | |
| 363 | [[folder:Stealing Acme's Handbuzzer]] |
| 364 | * Was Eddie trying to steal Acme's handbuzzer or was he just picking it up? Doom accuses him of it, and Santino explains that he was only picking it up after it fell off the gurney, but we never hear Eddie's side. |
| 365 | ** Most likely he was; he's a film noir detective, after all, and film noir detectives did that sort of thing all the time. Santino's just covering for an old buddy and Eddie is smart enough to pick his battles and not push his luck too much when he gets caught. |
| 366 | [[/folder]] |
| 367 | |
| 368 | [[folder:Judge Doom's vulnerability]] |
| 369 | * If Doom is a toon then why does he start to screech in panic when the steamroller runs him over ? |
| 370 | ** He's an over-the-top villain, that's what they do. Also to maximize Eddie's horror from TheReveal. |
| 371 | ** Plus, while it obviously wouldn't ''kill'' Doom, I'd assume the steamroller would still at least ''hurt'' him a bit. Or at least catch him off guard. |
| 372 | ** The same reason Wile E. Coyote screams whenever he realizes he's on fire. Or realizing his cover will be blown. |
| 373 | ** Moreover, the same reason Roger goes off like a steam whistle from the impact of alcohol. Roger could chug Draino without injury if he wanted, but he still ''reacts'' as if the whiskey is overwhelming him. |
| 374 | [[/folder]] |
| 375 | |
| 376 | [[folder:Computers]] |
| 377 | * If paint thinner kills toons created on cels, what kills toons created on a computer? |
| 378 | ** The delete button, perhaps? |
| 379 | *** Deleted computer files aren't completely wiped away; they're just marked as disk space that can be overwritten. Usually, deleted files are retrievable within the first 30 days. In order for files to be rendered irretrievable, that requires a process known as a "wipe" for magnetic media. For solid state devices, one would use the "Secure Erase" command in Linux. |
| 380 | ** I'm gonna say magnets, because magnets can destroy hard drives. |
| 381 | *** Magnets would affect magnetic media such as floppy disks, tape reels, cassettes and mechanical hard drives, but not solid state devices such as USB flash media or Solid State Disks. But those could be destroyed with an electromagnetic pulse, a good-old-fashioned shredder, an incinerator or just a sledgehammer to their flash chips. |
| 382 | *** Me and a friend used to joke about this all the time. The joke would go that a digitally-animated character would take a dip bath and be unharmed... only to then have their computer encounter a BlueScreenOfDeath. |
| 383 | [[/folder]] |
| 384 | |
| 385 | [[folder:Who knows Judge Doom's real identity]] |
| 386 | * Do you think the Weasels knew Doom was actually a toon in disguise? |
| 387 | ** It's possible. It's highly unlikely that they'd be working for him if he wasn't. After all, EvenEvilHasStandards. |
| 388 | ** Not really, when Roger comes out of the floor in the warehouse he says "Drop your weapons or I'll shot the judge" with a real gun in his hands and the Weasels obey, if they knew he was a toon they'll knew also that he can't be harm by bullets. |
| 389 | ** However they could have done it to protect their boss' identity. While the bullets wouldn't have killed Doom they would have blown his cover. Apparently until he gets rolled over by the streamroller this was Doom's highest priority. Notice that after that scene when he slips over the glass eyes he very carefully covers his left eye, having obviously lost his fake one. |
| 390 | ** Or maybe he was covering his eye precisely because he needed to conceal his true identity to the Weasels. He doesn't really need to conceal it to Roger and co. as he's planning to kill them anyway. |
| 391 | [[/folder]] |
| 392 | |
| 393 | [[folder:Destroy Toon Town...and then what?]] |
| 394 | * Let's say that what Judge Doom is doing (Destroying Toon Town to make way for a highway) is either legal, or by the time the courts could get to it it would be too late. Judge Doom wouldn't just be destroying Toon Town, but also killing off most of the Toons in the world (I imagine many of them would still be out of Toon Town for work). These toons also include '''Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse!''' Judge Doom would only own Marvin Acme's and R. K. Maroon's stuff, which might include Toon Town, but it certainly wouldn't own those two, or any of the other famous cartoon characters in town (Like Woody Woodpecker, Pinocchio, Betty Boop, Mr. Toad, and Droopy Dog to list a few), and Doom looked like he wanted to destroy Toon Town immediately. Even if Judge Doom could get away with the destruction of Toon Town, surely he would have gotten his pants sued off for destroying other studios' property? |
| 395 | ** Possible reasons: a) He's crazy a didn't care. b) Worst case scenario he takes away his human disguise and goes living incognito with another identity. c) He intended to destroy the place but he assumed that the residents may still escape (except for trees, buildings and the like) and, though homeless, the Toons be still alive. |
| 396 | ** The Toons are living beings. They aren't owned by studios, they're contracted actors. |
| 397 | |
| 398 | [[/folder]] |
| 399 | |
| 400 | [[folder:Eddie figuring Roger out]] |
| 401 | * How did Eddie figure out that Roger had Acme's will by the end? He hands it to him and says, "Hey, Roger? That letter you wrote to your wife at the Ink and Paint Club? Why don't you read it to her now?" As if he knew all along that Roger wrote his love letter to Jessica on Acme's will. Did he piece together the IronicEcho that Roger said he wrote his letter on a blank piece of paper, then later Jessica explaining to him that Acme gave her his will for safe keeping but only found a blank piece of paper inside, and we just didn't see it in the movie because it happened off-screen? Eddie held onto it after it fell out of Roger's pocket when they attempt to steal the Toon Patrol wagon - did he examine it at one point? Is there a detail missing from the movie that's in the book explaining how Eddie figured out Roger had Acme's will all along? |
| 402 | ** There is a deleted scene where Eddie finds the empty folder marked "Last Will And Testament - Marvin Acme" in Jessica's dressing room at the Ink and Paint Club. Even without that, there are enough clues. Eddie knows what the will looks like from the photos. He knows Jessica got the folder at the club. Jessica says the folder just had "a blank piece of paper". Roger found "a blank piece of paper" in Jessica's dressing room and wrote his love letter. Eddie learns about Disappearing-Reappearing Ink, and figures out how Marvin kept the will safe. |
| 403 | *** Brilliant! Taking the Disappearing-Reappearing Ink into consideration, it all makes sense! |
| 404 | *** OK, Let's explain this in terms that are how Eddie likely came up with the thought. |
| 405 | *** Eddie knows that the will exists. If we go by the deleted scene, he knows it was last in the dressing room, so assumes someone picked it up. He holds on to Roger's letter purely since the poor guy would probably go to pieces if he tore it up and tossed it in the bin. Hours later, he notices the ink stain, and finds out that Marvin Acme invented ink that would reappear after a time, and uses Toon Law to it's natural extent. Roger is the star, and he's got back his girl. Time for him to read the letter he wrote on a 'perfectly ordinary blank sheet of paper'. Roger finally hits his mark, says his lines and solves the mystery of the will. If he'd not got squirted by that pen, he'd STILL be carrying the will until he finally actually emptied out his pockets! |
| 406 | ** The book's plot is very different - there's no will in it. |
| 407 | [[/folder]] |
| 408 | |
| 409 | [[folder:Doom's obsession with Roger]] |
| 410 | * Why Doom is so obsessed on capturing Roger anyway ? It's not like if Roger menages to escape him his plan to destroy Toontown fails. |
| 411 | ** I guess because he thinks he has the last will of Marvin Acme. He wasn't to know HE DID have it! |
| 412 | ** Roger's also his patsy[=/=]fall-guy. The sooner Roger's dead, the sooner he can get on with the plan to destroy Toon Town without anyone rumbling his scheme. The longer Roger's running around freely doing his thing, the more chance that someone will discover what Doom's up to before it's too late. |
| 413 | ** He needed someone to blame for Acme's death. |
| 414 | [[/folder]] |
| 415 | |
| 416 | [[folder:Roger's love life]] |
| 417 | * About Roger's love life. At the start it's mentioned, his performance is bad, because of personal issues, but there is never any hint that he actually distrusts Jessica. Rather, when shown proof of her "infidelity", his first instinct is to try and win her back. On another note, why is Maroon actually showing Roger the photos? If he wants to blackmail Acme, it would be better, if nobody actually knew about them, especially not Roger, who is prone to make a scene and thus spill the beans, even if Acme agrees to Maroon's terms. Eddie most likely wouldn't have minded, if Maroon just took the photos, gave him his check and said "I'll handle the rest from here on." |
| 418 | ** What I took from the movie was that Maroon wanted to find out if Jessica was cheating on Roger or not, just to make Roger focus on his work. I guess he thought Roger would divorce Jessica and move on, and did not expect the reaction from Roger. And about Eddie, well he is not a bad guy deep inside even with a paycheck he might still consider ethically mandatory to inform Roger about it. |
| 419 | ** R.K. Maroon was trying to blackmail Marvin Acme with the photos and make him sign a deal with Cloverleaf. Apparently Acme didn't comply (and that's the reason he was murdered), so Maroon does what any normal blackmailer would do: he makes good his threats and shows the photos to Roger. Jessica states that the "patty-cake" was staged in order to frame Acme, who has a fetish for it. |
| 420 | *** The timeline does not make sense to me. They show Roger the pictures the same night,and it seems like Eddie brought the photos directly from his darkroom. How would Maroon have had time to show the pictures to Acme before confronting Roger? Unless you mean Maroon called Acme and made threats about the photos without showing proof. |
| 421 | *** Showing the pictures to ''Roger'' wasn't the threat, showing them to ''Acme's wife'' would've been. Using them to manipulate Roger was only Maroon's pretense, to keep Valiant from wondering why Maroon wanted photos of Acme with Jessica. |
| 422 | ** As for why Roger's performance was suffering, well, the newspapers were speculating about Jessica and Acme, so it's not unlikely he knew there were rumors. While he clearly didn't think Jessica would willingly be unfaithful to him, that doesn't mean he couldn't have been worried about her. After all, she could be in some kind of trouble and being forced to do things she didn't want to do (and really, that ''was'' exactly what was going on). Being worried about his wife could certainly affect his performance. |
| 423 | [[/folder]] |
| 424 | |
| 425 | [[folder:Patty Cake Part III]] |
| 426 | * Why are people so insistent that Patty Cake is the toon ''equivalent'' of sex? That was not my interpretation at all. Patty Cake could possibly be an internal thing between Roger and Jessica (kind of when a couple claim a song is theirs, because it reminds them of when they fell in love), and a trademark for their relationship. Seeing Jessica do such a personal and private thing with somebody else could be seen as a form of "cheating", but not of the sexual kind. Furthermore, one dialogue between Eddie and Jessica suggest they ''do'' have sex ("Better lover than a driver, huh?", "You better believe it, buster.") So it isn't a "human only" thing. Am I the only one who thinks this? |
| 427 | ** I think what they're getting at is that Roger was losing himself over the idea that a human could entertain Jessica in the same way that Roger specialized in. It's worth noting that Acme is strongly implied to be turned on by playing pattycake, female Toons, or [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs playing pattycake with female Toons]]; the way he and Jessica appeared in the pictures Eddie took, they appeared to be having the time of their lives. Even if playing pattycake isn't Toon-speak for sex, Roger's mindset was that he wouldn't be able to live up to Acme's way of making Jessica smile or laugh. |
| 428 | ** Toon sex does happens, there were lots of erotic and porn cartoons back in the 20s and 30s, actually some people think that the first ever pornographic material was animated as it was the only way it was allowed, making hentai OlderThanTelevision. |
| 429 | ** Even if it's not the toon equivalent of sex ''physically'', from Roger's reaction it certainly appears to be an equivalent ''emotionally''. |
| 430 | [[/folder]] |
| 431 | |
| 432 | [[folder:Overpopulation]] |
| 433 | * Do Toons have to worry about overpopulation? Since the only known way to kill a Toon was only recently discovered? |
| 434 | ** It is implied that toons do no reproduce sexually, they are drawn by humans and giving life in some unspecified way probably not under control from the artists, as Jessica herself put it: "I was drawn this way". So overpopulation is only a problem if the animators make too many of them. |
| 435 | ** Also, considering how toons are capable of bending space, Toontown is probably capable of expanding as much as needed to accommodate more residents, without interfering with the rest of the world. |
| 436 | ** Toontown isn't exactly a real physical location; it appears to be more of another dimension that happens to be accessible from the ordinary human world (as with most cartoons, the entrances appear to be painted on walls. Toontown is likely as limitless as the human imagination that created all those cartoons is. |
| 437 | [[/folder]] |
| 438 | |
| 439 | [[folder:Status of Toonhood]] |
| 440 | * What is the line for a fictional character to achieve Toonhood in-universe? It's shown that there isn't actually any animation being produced--it's all filmed with Toon actors, but presumably, comic book characters are just drawn images in books. Does it have to be an audio-visual medium? Can there be Toons of video game characters? Can there be Toons of VisualNovel characters? Can there be Toons of Flash/Animate animations made by one person on Newgrounds? Can there be Toons of characters created, in the real world, by the UsefulNotes/FurryFandom? (However, I'm pretty sure neither the books nor the movie accounted for, let alone have any hard guide on, the increased diversity of entertainment media by the 21st century compared to the stories' time period.) |
| 441 | ** It's hard to tell. On one hand we do see non-showbuz toons working around like the octopus bartender and the penguin waiters, or Eddie's bullets, so clearly not all toons are made for entertainment purposes. These could be cases of casually drawn toons or made just for a specific labor (like attending a bar). On the other hand it seems unlikely that anything drawn can come to life as then the amount of animated characters would be immense. The movie only provides three clues about toons' creation: 1- They are drawn and to some degree made of painting materials (Dip kills them as is made of paint remover and similar substances and Jessica says she was drawn, not born or birth) 2- They are --at least at that period of time-- considered properties (as Maroon says Dumbo was "lent" from Disney and the like) so their making is artificial and probably inside of an studio which would be the owner (of course, this is a metaphor for slavery and racial segregation). 3- They are to some degree connected to movies as Betty Boop is still black and white even in the real world which maybe means her existence begun inside a movie, otherwise there's no logic in her color. So, although we are close to WMG territory here, it can be speculated that the toons can’t be created easily and probably only studios have whatever is needed to do it, not common people. As how some toons get into the hands of common people (like Eddie’s bullets) well, your guess is as good as mine. |
| 442 | ** Personally I would dispute the idea that all of them are properties. Roger is said to have a contract with Maroon not to belong to him. Jessica have to be blackmailed into playing with Acme (and lets disregard if it was sexual or not); if she were a slave Maroon just had to command her. And Acme left in his will Toontown to the toons which means they can legally inherit. That mean they (or some of them) are considered still legal citizens (second class citizens, of course, but not properties). About Dumbo's lending maybe is just that he is not anthropomorphic enough and therefore is considered the toon equivalent of an animal, like a real life elephant is to a human. For the rest I agree. |
| 443 | ** Regarding comic books: in the book series, comic strips (and presumably comic books as well) are made by taking photographs of Toons, rather than being drawn. There's nothing in the movie that would make this impossible, so it'd be reasonable to think it's true there as well. As for other mediums, there might be ''some'' video game Toons, but they'd probably be more likely to act more as motion-capture actors. (Unless you decide to combine this universe with ''WesternAnimation/WreckItRalph''). Visual novels could plausibly be done with Toons much like comic strips are. |
| 444 | ** And in the original novel Jessica (who is a furry, she's a humanoid bunny) is actually the star of erotic comics. So the furry fandom would probably have their own celebrities much like our world's porn stars. |
| 445 | *** Jessica's not a humanoid bunny in the original novel. They make it clear that she is an attractive human toon just like in the movie. |
| 446 | ** After re-watch the movie Maroon does says that Disney lent him Dumbo and half of Fantasia cast, but he also says that "the good thing is they work for peanuts" so they do receive a salary [albeit in kind in some cases] and therefore are not properties/slaves, the "lending" part was probably showbuz slang. |
| 447 | *** Exactly. It's slang. What he's saying is that Dumbo is under a long-term ''contract'' with Disney, but Disney agreed to a deal where Dumbo would work for him for one or two projects before returning to Disney for the rest of his contract. Under the real-life Hollywood Studio System of the time, human actors were "lent" to other studios in the same way. |
| 448 | [[/folder]] |
| 449 | |
| 450 | [[folder:Jurisdiction of the cops]] |
| 451 | * Why would ''private'' investigators be investigating a bank robbery, like Eddie and Teddy were when Teddy was killed? That seems more like something the police (and these days the FBI) would do. Did the Valiants stay on the police force somehow while also being private investigators? |
| 452 | ** The robbery took place in Toontown; Los Angeles has its own police force, but those guys have no jurisdiction over the affairs of what goes on in Toontown. What's more, any kind of official law enforcement in Toontown is bound to be made up of Toons, who would almost certainly lack the competency to properly identify suspects in any kind of crimes. The Valiant brothers were likely one of a series of humans who worked as Toontown detectives to ensure that whatever law enforcement agencies existed in Toontown did their jobs properly. [[FridgeBrilliance This would also explain how Judge Doom's position as the head of authority of Toontown prevented anyone from taking Eddie's place after he quit working for Toons.]] Furthermore, the fact that Judge Doom had disguised himself as a human meant that Toontown was without a competent law enforcement regulator, meaning that Toontown was a disaster in the making as long as Judge Doom was in power. |
| 453 | ** Presumably the bank's owners didn't entirely trust whatever law enforcement might hold sway in Toontown to solve the case, or at least not quickly enough for their liking. Or possibly the owner of some property that was stolen along with the cash (e.g. jewelry in a safety deposit box) independently hired the Valiants to get it back for them. |
| 454 | ** FridgeBrilliance: Porky Pig appears as a police officer at the very end of the film. If he's an example of the caliber of cop that Toontown typically has on the job, then even before the Weasels became the main enforcers of authority in the neighborhood, it'd make sense for the bank's owners to want to call in outside help. |
| 455 | ** The movie is also a pastiche of 1940s pulp mystery novels where private investigators basically end up investigating murders and robberies despite that being a job for the police basically because of RuleOfCool. |
| 456 | [[/folder]] |
| 457 | |
| 458 | [[folder:Disappearing ink]] |
| 459 | * The fact that the ink Acme squirted on Valiant's shirt reappeared after Judge Doom was defeated suggests that Acme wrote his will just hours before he was murdered. Not only that, but he told Jessica when he gave her the will for safekeeping that Doom was out to get Toontown, which implies that he knew that he would likely be killed before the following dawn. What exactly was Acme trying to accomplish, seeing as he could've at least tried to prevent his own death but didn't? |
| 460 | ** We don't know if he tried as his death was off-camera, he might be escaping or trying to get help when he died. |
| 461 | [[/folder]] |
| 462 | |
| 463 | [[folder:Blackmail scheme]] |
| 464 | * If Maroon was trying to blackmail Acme, why did he show Roger the pictures that same night? Shouldn't he have waited and first shown Acme and then threaten to show Roger? I cannot figure out what benefits him if Roger knows before he gets Toontown from Acme. |
| 465 | ** That question was answered in the part that starts "About Roger's love life. ...". |
| 466 | [[/folder]] |
| 467 | |
| 468 | [[folder:Value of Humor]] |
| 469 | * Toons value humor, to the point that they wonder what Roger sees in Jessica rather than the other way around. In that case, shouldn't Lena Hyena be considered something of a catch, rather than the desperate-for-affection AbhorrentAdmirer she appears to be? Granted, we only see her pursuing Eddie, who as a human has different standards, but the scene implies she's a lonely, homely sort who can't get a man, which seems to contradict comments made about Roger and Jessica's relative attractiveness. |
| 470 | ** At the bar, Judge Doom hinted that he used to have hyenas as henchmen before the weasels, who were said to have laughed themselves to death. One could make the statement that Lena Hyena used to be at the same beauty standards as Jessica (hence why they appear the same at first) and that her appearance took a downturn after losing her husband, possibly a former [[{{Pun}} henchman of Doom]]. She ended up hiding from the outside world, so no one knew about her changed appearance. And when she decided to go looking for love after getting over her being a widow, she had reached the point of thinking she was supposed to chase down the objects of her affection. (In a similar vein to how Judge Doom was a Toon actor who played villainous roles until an accident left him thinking he truly was a villain.) |
| 471 | ** As for why other toons do not find her funny, well first because she might not be funny for them; just chasing around men might not be the kind of humor Toons like, who seem to be more into slapstick judging by what we see in-universe and second kind of a paradox, her RuleOfFunny is that [[AbhorrentAdmirer she chases men]] so if any toon actually find her attractive then the joke ends. |
| 472 | ** She's an AbhorrentAdmirer ''to a human male'', which is the whole point of her character. We never see her interacting with other toons. For all we know, as far as toons are concerned she could have her pick of the bunch. |
| 473 | ** I think it's wrong to say that Toons don't care about appearances at all... judging by supplementary material, male Toons ''very much'' find Jessica attractive, with lots of comedic reactions to her beauty. In fact, going by how 1940s cartoons portray women in general... female Toons, at least in this time period, seem to be valued for their looks rather than their comedy; women tend to be delegated to the role of "girlfriend" or "object of desire," or in some cases "nagging tyrannical housewife." There are a ''couple'' of exceptions, but for the most part the comedy comes from how the male characters react and relate to the female ones, not from the female characters themselves. There seems to be quite a bit of gender stereotyping going on in Toon society; guys have to be funny and girls have to be pretty. You kind of see it in Betty Boop's scene; she's out of work not because she wasn't funny, but because as a black and white Toon who couldn't afford getting colorized, the sex appeal that initially made her a popular character diminished. (Even though she's still got it, Eddie -- boop-boop-da-doop-''boop!'') It wasn't until more recent times that comedic female characters became more commonplace... you can sort of picture the female Toons doing protests and fighting for their right to be funny. |
| 474 | [[/folder]] |
| 475 | |
| 476 | [[folder:Is he a judge or a policeman?]] |
| 477 | * Forgive my ignorance on US law, but isn't Judge Doom ''way'' overreaching the boundaries of his office with his actions in the movie? He's supposed to be Toontown's judge but throughout the movie he acts more like he's Toontown's sheriff, commanding his own law enforcement squad and partaking in police investigations and fugitive manhunts. It's stated that Doom bribed his way to power in Toontown but it seems odd that even people who clearly don't like Doom never seem surprised by the fact that he's doing none of the things a judge is supposed to do and quite a few things that he ''isn't''. |
| 478 | ** I'm not American either but I always thought --based on several old movies of noir and westerns-- that certain kind of officials were call Judge in some jurisdictions but were by all effects sheriffs or some other kind of law enforcement. Not sure if is TruthInTelevision. |
| 479 | ** I ''am'' American, but I'm not aware of any real-life "judges" who had the sort of power that Doom has. The best I can say is that maybe the in-universe government is just horribly corrupt and all the normal rules have gone out the window. |
| 480 | ** Most likely Judge Doom is a Judge on the Toontown side of the wall and as such abides by the rules set in ToonTown. Given Cartoons invest a lot of extra powers in authority figures that would make his whole do everything Judge setup way more reasonable. Not only that but since he's a Judge in Toontown he's only beholden to the Toontown government, which is seperate from the LA government because obviously it would be with how completely incompatable human laws and Toon reality are. |
| 481 | [[/folder]] |
| 482 | |
| 483 | [[folder: Tinker Bell's AnachronismStew]] |
| 484 | * At the end of the movie Porky Pig closes the final scene along with Tinker Bell. How coherent is this? ''Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'' is set in 1947, but Tinker Bell first appeared in Disney's ''Peter Pan'', which premiered in 1953. It may be nitpicking but, was this consistent with other cartoon characters? Because should this be the case, then where are any other cartoon characters which made their debut after 1950 or 1960? Did any other character besides Tinker Bell appear in the film out of sync with their actual date of creation? Or should the AlternateUniverse be setting enough for a HandWave? |
| 485 | ** Well, saying is an alternate universe and thus everything goes is as much as saying AWizardDidIt, so no. But there's no indication in-universe that cartoons exist once the movies or shorts they're in premiere, like if they are given birth by that. In fact, we see a lot of toons that nor even work in acting; waiters, barman, Judge Doom's goons, bullets, a taxi driver, etc., so Tinker Bell doesn't need to be in a movie to exist, she might have just be born (whatever the way toons born) long before the movie was premiere and she just went into acting after she was discovered by Walt Disney and/or answer a casting add looking for a fairy and got the role. |
| 486 | ** It seems pretty clear that toons in this movie have an independent existence from the movies they appear in, so Tinkerbell was probably floating around for ages before she got her big "break", so to speak. |
| 487 | *** As pointed out on the Fridge page, Tinker Bell was first drawn as far back as 1941, as a model of her is shown in ''The Reluctant Dragon'' (a sorts-of hybrid film that combined live-action segments of the Disney animation studio in Burbank with animated short) and pre-production of ''Peter Pan'' is known to have begun as early as 1939. So while Tink may not have gotten her break yet at the time the movie is set in, she had existed for quite a while. |
| 488 | ** Maybe Tinkerbell was originally drawn in order to be a fourth Good Fairy in ''Snow White'', but got cut from the finished production. |
| 489 | *** You mean ''Sleeping Beauty'', which was released seven years after ''Peter Pan''. |
| 490 | ** The penguins from ''Film/MaryPoppins'' can be seen as waiters, and one of them serves Eddie. That film wasn't released until 1964, so the toons seem to exist outside of the movies. They're AnimatedActors who star in things, so Tinkerbell in-universe is a toon fairy that appears AsHerself in ''Peter Pan''. |
| 491 | ** Or if one wants to HandWave it, the ''Peter Pan'' play was first performed in 1904, and Disney had been hoping to make a film for years before they finally got to do it. So maybe Tinkerbell was just a performer who was lobbying very hard to play the role. There's somewhat of a historical precedent here - as an actress in the 1940s version of ''Literature/AnneOfGreenGables'' loved her role so much she changed her name to Anne Shirley. One can assume is that Tinkerbell was kept in work by becoming the mascot for Walt Disney, as she would be featured in the opening sequence for the TV series ''Walt Disney Presents''. |
| 492 | ** If you want to stick with Toons being created specifically by animators to star in films, it's possible that AlternateHistory is at play and some of these movies were released faster than they were in real life. Since they could be filmed on location with Toon actors instead of having to be hand-drawn frame-by-frame, a studio like Disney could theoretically produce animated films a lot faster and cheaper than did in the real world. |
| 493 | [[/folder]] |
| 494 | |
| 495 | [[folder: What about Benny?]] |
| 496 | * When Eddie, Jessica and Benny are exiting the Toontown tunnel, Doom dumps a drum of Dip on the road partially melting Benny's wheels and causing him to hit a lamp post flinging Eddie and Jessica outward on to the dirt. As soon the Toon Patrol arrives, Doom orders them to put Eddie and Jessica in the van and be taken to the ACME Factory...and then just suddenly forgets that Benny is still there possibly eavesdropping on where they're going. Wouldn't Doom have fully taken care of Benny to make sure he wouldn't alert the authorities? Did he think Benny was not going to recover in time or make an effort to do something? |
| 497 | ** If you see the scene carefully Benny fakes unconsciousness, he even carefully closes his eyes/lamps as the Doom Patrol is closer. They just assume he was indeed unconscious, thus nor even bother, especially because caring around a faded car (even a cartoon one) must not be easy. |
| 498 | ** Maybe Doom called for a police tow-truck to come apprehend Benny (he was still technically a fugitive due to that whole "driving on the sidewalk" thing), but Roger showed up and gave Benny a lift before they got there. |
| 499 | [[/folder]] |
| 500 | |
| 501 | [[folder: Toons are the Potential Answer to Many Problems]] |
| 502 | * Excluding the issue of [[StoryBreakerPower Story-Breaking Powers]], could the implied SuperpowerLottery Toons have actually resolve problems for the Human community? For example, you got terminally sick patients at hospitals? No problem, [[WesternAnimation/PeterPan Tinker Bell]] or even [[BenevolentGenie Genie]] from ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'' can whip up some magic and make them right as rain. Property damage? Just hire Toon contractors and they'll rapidly rebuild in seconds in a cartoon dust cloud. Armed forces need a superweapon? All they probably need to do is [[ArtInitiatesLife draw one up and have it come to life in Toontown somehow]] or perhaps "hire" an anthropomorphic Toon weapon. Need a ride? Benny is, essentially, the ultimate Uber. While the film deconstructs the concept of animated characters interacting with the real world as being insane and even dangerous, they're not ''always'' necessarily a nuisance. And then of course, Toons have their limitations (natural benevolence, RuleOfFunny, RuleOfDrama, The Dip, etc.), but what is the extent of their [[RealityWarper Reality Warping]] of a non-Toon environment? |
| 503 | ** In the movie they can't affect humans in any way nor they can affect the human environment, everything a toon does to a human or to non-toon objects reacts the same way such person/object would react to normal physical laws. Only in Toontown physical laws seem to be different and humans seems to change accoringly to be as invulnerable as toons are, but you can't fit the entire human population. I guess you could bring people with terminal disease that would become immortal as far as they are there, but again, probably there will be a problem of space at some point of who gets to go there. |
| 504 | ** I think the ways in which it is possible for toons to affect humans depends partly on intent, partly on storytelling. Doom was able to kill Teddy in Toontown, because he wanted him to really die, and also because it served Eddie's story for Teddy to die. Whereas Eddie survives stuff like being flattened to the ground in the elevator or falling off the skyscraper because none of the toons involved meant him any harm, and it's funnier if he survives. So it could be that toons ''could'' save people's lives through toon means if it would make a better story for them to live. |
| 505 | [[/folder]] |
| 506 | |
| 507 | [[folder:Why are the Weasels intimidated By Roger's gun?]] |
| 508 | * Why do the weasels drop their weapons when Roger threatens them with a gun? Don't they know nothing other than dip can kill a toon? |
| 509 | ** Toon psychology runs on the RuleOfFunny and (to a lesser extent) the RuleOfDrama and the RuleOfCool. If Roger points a gun at them, they have to act like it's a gun. The fact that this makes it harder for them to accomplish anything is entirely irrelevant from their perspective. |
| 510 | ** Roger is not threatening them actually, if you see the scene carefully he points the gun at Judge Doom and openly say "Drop your weapons or I kill the Judge". The Weasels at that point (if ever) do not know that Judge Doom is a toon in disguise, so they respond naturally, protecting their human boss who would be hurt by a bullet. Judge Doom on the other hand does not looks worry (the movie was very good at that, and Lloyd never breaks character) but probably doesn't want to break his disguise at that point. |
| 511 | [[/folder]] |
| 512 | |
| 513 | [[folder:Ageing in Toons]] |
| 514 | * So, Baby Herman has been 3 years old for 50 years. Makes sense, a toon's drawn some way, they stay that way. It certainly explains why toons like Mickey Mouse or Bug Bunny haven't changed over the decades. But then what about characters like Max Goof who appear to age across their appearances? Are they some kind of weird exception to the "timeless toons" rule? Or are there 4 different Maxes running around Toontown, each with a different age? |
| 515 | ** I would think it's basically the same deal as toons that change art style over the years. Some of them just change to look older. Though one would wonder if that would happen in a world where toons were real, known to humans, and ''known not to age''... |
| 516 | ** There is no indication that Max Goof exists in the Roger Rabbit movie universe. Obviously the meta reason is that the character was created like at least ten years after the movie premiered, but the movie basically works with all the classic toons from the early 20th century who always had the same age. If you want to place Max Goof in the same universe you'll have to retcon it but would be borderline fanfic, specially considering that there's no indication anywhere in the shows or movies Max Goof is that they interact with the real world in anyway. On the other hand you can HandWave it as that somehow among the almost 100 years between the timeline of the movie and the premiered of Goof Troop toons' biology evolve enough for characters to actually grow with time. |
| 517 | ** Or Max Goof just wears toon make-up to appear younger or older as his role demands. |
| 518 | ** It could also be that the version of Max from WesternAnimation/GoofTroop is the "real" Max and the older versions were just toons who happened to look like him that were cast as the role. |
| 519 | [[/folder]] |
| 520 | |
| 521 | [[folder:Missing: Judge Doom's Body]] |
| 522 | * Where did they kept Doom's dipped corpse after the events of this movie? |
| 523 | ** His body was completely dissolved, so there was nothing left to do anything with. Anything that may have been left would have been washed away when Eddie washed away the dip. |
| 524 | [[/folder]] |
| 525 | |
| 526 | [[folder:Why a freeway?]] |
| 527 | * Why would Doom simply destroy Toontown to make a freeway when he could probably enslave the toons to do his bidding (using the threat of the Dip as a means of controlling them) or bring in millions of tourists from all over the world to view them and charge admission? (One imagines that alone would bring in a lot more money than a simple freeway and a few gas stations.) |
| 528 | ** As Eddie Valiant said, it was a plan so crazy only a toon could come up with it. Doom probably wasn't the most rational toon ever created. And considering the ''other'' toons, that's saying something! |
| 529 | ** Why would Doom possibly think enslaving the toons would lead to anything useful? He could barely keep the weasels under his control. |
| 530 | ** Also we found Toontown fascinating because we live in a toonless world, in-universe they're just a discriminated minority, going into Toontown for them is like for us going to Harlem. |
| 531 | ** The freeway was planned by the city council, which Doom found out about. The freeway wasn't supposed to pass ''through'' Toontown, but ''past'' it. Judge Doom was planning to use the land that Toontown stood on as a place where people using the freeway would visit with everything that a motorist would need. That gives you a guaranteed source of income for ''decades'' if not more. One real-life example is the Ambassador bridge in Detroit that's owned by Matty Moroun, which turned him into a billionaire. Like Doom, he used his political and financial influence to eliminate or slow down competition and get every penny of revenue out of it. The only difference between him and Doom is that Moroun didn't commit murder or genocide to get what he wanted. |
| 532 | [[/folder]] |
| 533 | |
| 534 | [[folder:Where do toons come from?]] |
| 535 | * Who ''draws'' the toons and how do they get created? |
| 536 | ** Toons are '''not''' created by humans''. Toons come into being when a toon mommy and a toon daddy love each other very much. This is explicitly stated in the books (specifically ''[[Literature/WhoCensoredRogerRabbit Who Plugged Roger Rabbit?]]''), and cartoon characters being a real ethnic minority instead of doodles flipping quickly through the celluloid is the entire "gimmick" of the film anyway. In any case, leaving the question untouched in the film adds to its aura of "realism". |
| 537 | *** The Marvel comic book "Resurrection of Doom" has Doom (originally named Baron von Rotten) revived via animation cel. To make things more confusing, the weasels who schemed to bring him back first find an old model sheet. Next, they had a '''toon''' named Evil Aurel paint Doom's cel. Finally, they used a multi-plane camera (aided by [[LightningCanDoAnything lightning]]) to shoot the cel and revive Doom. So toons have to be animated (or drawn once in this case). However, the idea that some toons are capable of doing this is a scary one. |
| 538 | *** What is so scary about toons being able to create more toons like the humans can? |
| 539 | *** Because they're ''not'' creating more toons like humans do. They have a means of ''reviving their dead.'' |
| 540 | ** Since 'patty cake' is the equivalent of a toon having an affair, it's been suggested that for toons, kissing really can get you pregnant. |
| 541 | *** Hey if that were true, Eddie and Roger might be having a little bundle of joy soon. They did kiss twice, guys...so...twins? |
| 542 | *** Nah. Eddie's a human. It doesn't work that way. |
| 543 | ** The Roger Rabbit comic book apparently explains in detail where baby toons come from... a stork, of course. |
| 544 | *** Good thing for that. Toons are infinitely flexible, immune to conventional damage, able to pull things out of HammerSpace, and otherwise run by well established CartoonPhysics. Which leads straight to... [[PowerPerversionPotential there.]] |
| 545 | [[/folder]] |
| 546 | |
| 547 | [[folder:Colorization]] |
| 548 | * Regarding Betty Boop and the transition to color; is colorization an outpatient procedure, and do you need to catch a ride down to Tijuana to have it done? |
| 549 | ** My guess is that cameras used to only be able to film in black and white, so it didn't matter the color of toon. Once they went color, no one wanted to see black and white toons anymore, so they lost their jobs, because only colorful toons were filmed. |
| 550 | ** If we take the comic book series as canon, it apparently ''is'' possible for a black and white toon to switch to color, but it's really expensive and most black and white toons can't afford it. (One issue of the comic book dealt with a "back-alley colorizer" who cheated black and white toons by offering "colorizing jobs" that turned out to be temporary.) There's also a bit of stigma involved, since most black and white toons resent color toons for replacing them, and any black and white toon who goes color risks being seen as a turncoat. |
| 551 | ** ^ is very likely considering that Mickey Mouse was originally black and white and appears in the movie in color, thus he went through colorization. |
| 552 | ** I don't know if this is a separate thing, but this makes me wonder about different art styles, characterization, etc. Mickey Mouse was an adventurous troublemaker in his early cartoons, compared to the nice guy of later cartoons. Daffy Duck was smaller and insane, yelling "WOOHOO!!!" in the 30s and 40s, before becoming a bitter, short tempered schemer in the 1950s. Are they different "people" in the toon universe? Is it just makeup and scriptwriters? The characters all seem to act basically the same in real life as they do in their pictures. |
| 553 | [[/folder]] |
| 554 | |
| 555 | [[folder:Maroon's knowledge]] |
| 556 | * Did R. K. Maroon know beforehand what would happen if Roger was to consume alcohol? Because if he did, then there's likely a clue about his actions in the fact that he didn't take Roger out of the office to prevent the glass in the office from breaking, some of which were awards and trophies. |
| 557 | [[/folder]] |
| 558 | |
| 559 | [[folder:Where's Popeye?]] |
| 560 | * Apparently, Popeye was [[WhatCouldHaveBeen supposed to have a cameo]] but couldn't because of legal reasons. Yet Betty Boop was in this movie and I thought they were owned by the same company. Also, how could Disney not get the rights to Popeye when they themselves worked on the ''Film/{{Popeye}}'' movie? |
| 561 | ** Actually, if my (admittedly not exhaustive) research is correct, Betty Boop and Popeye appeared to be owned by different organizations; Betty Boop is/was owned by Paramount directly, while Popeye is/was owned by King Features Syndicate and was licensed to Paramount, who distributed the cartoons. So presumably Disney were unable to come to terms with Popeye's actual owners. |
| 562 | ** Popeye's debut was in fact officially a Betty Boop cartoon, but by the time the movie was made, they were owned by different companies. |
| 563 | [[/folder]] |
| 564 | |
| 565 | [[folder: How'd they miss the will?]] |
| 566 | * The newspaper claims that Marvin Acme didn't leave a will, yet the photograph of him and Jessica clearly shows the will in his coat pocket. How the heck could anyone overlook that!? |
| 567 | ** Eddie's a detective. He has a keen eye for noticing small details most people generally overlook. If you've seen Monster's Inc, you would notice that when Randall was looking at a newspaper, he noticed Mike in the background. |
| 568 | ** Also, it's fairly small print on a piece of paper in a guy's pocket in a far-from-HD-quality photograph of him playing pattycake with a buxom toon lady hours before his murder. They were concentrating on other things in the photo and had no real reason to look that closely at it. Eddie himself only notices it by accident. |
| 569 | [[/folder]] |
| 570 | |
| 571 | [[folder:How Judge Doom Became Evil?]] |
| 572 | Yeah, the movie doesn't explain how or why Doom became an insane judge bent on genocide on the toons and the comic sequel has his origins, but it's not canon. What did canonically drive this toon [[ThenLetMeBeEvil to]] [[StartOfDarkness become]] [[FreudianExcuse evil]] and disguising himself as a human judge in order to destroy the toon race? |
| 573 | * Your guess is as good as anybody’s at this point. Though this is likely deliberate as the creators probably wanna keep tropers in the dark indefinitely to maintain Doom's mystique – after all, NothingIsScarier. |
| 574 | ** There was, however, one [[WildMassGuessing WMG]] among fans akin to what the comic revealed saying that Doom was once a toon actor (likely the "Pistol Packin' Possum" seen in Maroon's office) specializing in dark, if not creepy BlackComedy. However, instead of recovering from an accident believing he was truly villainous like in the graphic novel, it was that animation studios decided to go LighterAndSofter[=/=]DenserAndWackier paving the way for {{slapstick}} toons such as WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes, WesternAnimation/WoodyWoodpecker, WesternAnimation/{{Goofy}} and the like. Being out of the job caused him to snap and plot revenge in utter contempt for those kind of toons and toonkind in general. He also might've pinned Acme’s murder on Roger Rabbit in particular for stealing his spotlight. Whether or not this theory was inspired by the graphic novel is unknown.\ |
| 575 | Some fans also theorize that, as a toon, Doom was an outlier as far as having a sense of humor. He found toon wackiness ridiculous and abhorrent, relating more with humans and thus aspired to be like them even going as far as parading around as one. It's also possible he was always an absolute bastard purely MadeOfEvil from the very beginning. Again, these are only [=WMGs=] and we'll likely never know the real in-universe canonical reason. |
| 576 | * There is actually a book called The Resurrection of Doom that states that he was originally known as Baron Von Rotten, and that he used to be a villain in many cartoons, but after a workplace accident, he started thinking he was a real villain. This book is non-canonical though, so I would take it with a grain of salt. |
| 577 | * There's nothing in the movie that makes us believe that toons are inherently good. They could be as good or evil as humans, in fact Judge Doom has a lot of toons (the Weasels) working for him, one of them openly molests Jessica. |
| 578 | * Cartoons have villains as well as heroes. Peter Pan, Aladdin, Superman, Maleficent, Captain Hook, Cruella De Ville, The Joker... |
| 579 | * It's likely he was created as a cartoon villian who was the foil to the wacky, funny cartoon characters who wasn't originally actually evil. He developed a mental illness that broke down his ability to tell real life from a role in his cartoons. |
| 580 | [[/folder]] |
| 581 | [[folder:Eddie's reaction to Doom being a toon]] |
| 582 | * What exactly did Eddie mean by, "That lame-brain freeway idea could only be cooked up by a toon." Why is that the case? |
| 583 | ** Because [[TakeThat the Los Angeles freeway system is so blatantly stupid that whoever thought of it HAD to be crazy]]. |
| 584 | [[/folder]] |
| 585 | [[folder:For a Good Time, Go To Toontown]] |
| 586 | * Here's another thought on Toontown: given there must be other sexy female toons like Jessica Rabbit, could Toontown have a thriving sex trade with both streetwalkers and bordellos? Think about it. There could be sailors or soldiers on leave, plenty of eager Los Angeles males or even a HormoneAddledTeenager who might pay a visit to Toontown for "pleasure". |
| 587 | ** It's certainly possible. Surely Marvin Acme isn't the only human man who'd [[UnusualEuphemism "dabble in watercolors"]]. |
| 588 | ** Assuming Japanese Anime exists there in addition to American cartoons, you'd better bet they would. |
| 589 | [[/folder]] |
| 590 | [[folder:Is Daffy and Donald's constant sabotaging of each other supposed to be genuine or part of their act?]] |
| 591 | I can't really tell, and both possibilities seem equally plausible to me. |
| 592 | * According to a deleted scene, it ''is'' indeed part of the act. |
| 593 | [[/folder]] |
| 594 | [[folder: What exactly was the intended use of that Singing Sword prop Eddie pulled out?]] |
| 595 | * I could see it being used in a WorldOfChaos sequence like WesternAnimation/DuckAmuck, but that's really it. |
| 596 | ** More likely, something akin to WesternAnimation/KnightyKnightBugs. |
| 597 | [[/folder]] |
| 598 | |
| 599 | [[folder:Judge Doom’s origin]] |
| 600 | * The comics reveal that Judge Doom was originally a famous toon actor called Baron Von Rotten, who was renown for his shapeshifting powers and frequently typecast as the villain. Then one day he got a concussion on-set that caused him to be LostInCharacter, hence his behavior in the movie. Two problems with this: 1)Toons can get shot point-blank with a canon and come back unscathed, but a TapOnTheHead still gives them permanent brain damage? 2)For the papers to have read "Detective murdered by Mystery Toon" rather than "Detective murdered by Von Rotten," He'd have to fake his own disappearance and construct a new identity for himself (admittedly a trivial matter for a shapeshifting actor). But then during the murder of his brother, shouldn't Eddie have noticed that that shadowy figure up there had the same eyes and voice as that famous actor who went missing a while back? But if not then, then he ''definitely'' should've made the connection during the movie's climactic battle, where his trademark shapeshifting powers were also on display (the crowd of toons not recognizing him could probably be excused since PaperThinDisguise might be in play for them). |
| 601 | ** Well... this is speculation, but... 1) Toons getting EasyAmnesia or a personality change from a TapOnTheHead is a common stock plot for cartoons, and in that case the amnesiac or personality-changed Toon can't change back to their normal selves before the cartoon is over. For Baron von Rotten that's a problem because his injury wasn't actually part of a cartoon, and so he just stayed a villain. 2) Baron von Rotten seems to never have gotten billing as himself, he was just a number of bit-part villains. His true self may not have been that well known. And the high-pitched scream probably wasn't his natural voice. If he could change his appearance so completely, he could easily change his voice as well. |
| 602 | ** The fact that Judge Doom ''doesn't'' have a high-pitched voice for most of the movie pretty much confirms that he could disguise his voice, and probably did so when he murdered Eddie's brother. It's worth mentioning that he took in a lungful of helium to fill himself back out in the process of revealing he was a toon. |
| 603 | [[/folder]] |
| 604 | |
| 605 | [[folder:Weasel humor]] |
| 606 | * Why aren't the weasels affected by the "shave and a haircut" bit? They're toons as well. |
| 607 | ** Because the weasels aren't hiding. The "shave and a haircut" routine is used to lure toons out of hiding, because [[RuleOfFunny it's funny they'll blow their cover for such a silly reason]]. |
| 608 | [[/folder]] |
| 609 | |
| 610 | [[folder:Toons can't drown]] |
| 611 | * While hiding with Eddie from the Toon Patrol, Roger almost reveals his hiding place by taking a breath while Eddie cleans his dishes in the kitchen's sink as the Toon Patrol checks the apartment. Why does Roger nearly expose himself? He can't drown, as the movie shows that toons can only be killed by laughter or by being dipped in the Dip. |
| 612 | ** Just because he can't really die doesn't mean he can't feel like he's drowning. Toons still feel the full impact of whatever happens to them, it's just that they can shake it off and be totally fine afterwards... but that doesn't mean the experience isn't horrible while it's happening. Besides, and this is really the main thing here... This is ''Roger Rabbit'' we're talking about. The same guy who, when wanted for murder, thought it was more important to put on a show for the people at the bar than it was to stay hidden. You ''really'' expect ''him'' to act in a cool, calm and rational way based on what's logical? |
| 613 | ** You can even make the argument that Roger HAD to almost expose himself at this moment because it would be funny for the audience to see the weasels just barely miss him like that. This would be comparable to the "Shave and a haircut" scene. |
| 614 | [[/folder]] |
| 615 | |
| 616 | [[folder:Psycho's death]] |
| 617 | * How exactly does Psycho die by falling into the spinning brush of the Dip Machine? He gets flattened by the brush but ToonPhysics should allow him to survive that. If the vehicle was carrying the Dip, then shouldn't the Dip have killed him permanently just like with Smartass? This issue is left unclear... |
| 618 | ** What probably occurred was that Psycho was about to DieLaughing just like the others (except Smartass) and his soul left the body the exact moment he fell onto the Dipmobile's rotating brush. While it amusingly looked like he was killed by the brush, it was likely from the constant laughter. |
| 619 | [[/folder]] |
| 620 | |
| 621 | [[folder:Judge Doom's suit protection]] |
| 622 | When Judge Doom first dips the shoe, he's wearing a glove that protects his hand from the dip. But in the climax, when he gets sprayed with the dip and stands in the middle of it, he melts despite being almost completely covered by his human disguise, with the only parts exposed being his eyes and hand. How did the dip affect his entire body? Surely the disguise would've protected at least most of him. |
| 623 | * Doom's head and neck were covered by his LatexPerfection mask and fedora whereas the rest of his toon body was just hidden under layers of clothing. His costume wasn't completely sealed as the Dip could've easily flowed through various openings especially since he was sprayed with a massive torrent from the Dipmobile's release valve and then standing ankle-deep in it. |
| 624 | [[/folder]] |
| 625 | |
| 626 | [[folder:Baby Herman's personality]] |
| 627 | Most of the toons behave exactly the same when not acting as they do on-camera. Roger in his shorts isn't that different personality-wise from how he is in real life, for instance. And this applies to all the cameo characters too. Mickey is still recognizably Mickey, Bugs is recognizably Bugs, etc. The one exception to this rule is Baby Herman. In the shorts, he's a typical innocent baby who talks entirely in babbling. But in real life, he's actually a crude and perverted fifty year-old man in the body of an infant. Why is Herman so different from the other toon characters in this regard? |
| 628 | * None of the other characters have to pretend to be an age that they aren't. Maybe once upon a time Herman really was a curious babbling little baby, but he "grew up". |
| 629 | ** Does this apply to the other "kid" toons, or just Herman? For instance, Dumbo didn't behave too differently from how he did in his film when he appeared at Maroon Studios. We see Pinocchio and Bambi in the crowd at the end...are they crude and foul-mouthed when the camera isn't rolling like Herman is? |
| 630 | ** Probably not. This is speculation, but I think most toons are character actors -- i.e. their screen persona is more or less like their real-life selves. In the case of Baby Herman, he either deliberately affected a "cute" persona for his cartoons, or the filmmakers realized that his real self (essentially a grown man in the body of a baby) wouldn't play well to the audience. The result is the same though: they teamed him up with Roger and had him as the cute innocent baby that Roger had to play BadlyBatteredBabysitter to, and he went on to be a star in a way he wouldn't have been if he'd played himself like most toons seem to. |
| 631 | [[/folder]] |
| 632 | |
| 633 | [[folder:Betty Boop]] |
| 634 | Betty blames her lack of recent work on cartoons going to colour, even though we see other toons in the movie who started off in black and white, like Mickey and Bugs, going around in full technicolor like it’s no big deal. |
| 635 | * Note that she doesn't say she hasn't tried going into colour (She did in 1934 with the short "Poor Cinderella") just that work "has been slow". With this, Betty might be misattributing her problems on the colour transition when her predicament could be much more complicated than that. Unlike cartoon stars like Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny, who are relatively timeless in their character concepts, Betty is very much a product of her time, as her character design and personality is based on various famous performance women (i.e. Esther Jones, Helen Kane etc.) who broke ground in the 1920's, along with being a feminist icon as it was rare at the time for female cartoon characters to take center stage. This is relevant because the film takes place in 1947, when that fad was pretty much over, which might be the true reason it's difficult for her to get any work. |
| 636 | [[/folder]] |
| 637 | |
| 638 | [[folder:The fate of future cartoons]] |
| 639 | * [[TheBadGuyWins If Judge Doom's plan of dissolving ToonTown and paving a freeway over it had succeeded]], what would have happened to toons created after the 40s events of the film, such as WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons, ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}, WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants, and Franchise/{{Shrek}}? Would they have never existed? |
| 640 | ** You answered your own question. |
| 641 | [[/folder]] |
| 642 | |
| 643 | [[folder:Roger Rabbit: Acme murder prime suspect…why?]] |
| 644 | * Given the fact that it was Marvin Acme who was fraternizing with his wife, Roger may have had the motive to inflict bodily harm upon him. However, also considering that he’s a goofball, both on camera and off, he just doesn’t seem like the type who would even dream of murder. Therefore, what reason (besides the aforementioned cheating) would the authorities have to suspect him of such a thing? |
| 645 | ** As incredible as it is to think a lovably goofy toon like Roger would even be put in the same ''sentence'' with murder, a human being's death at the hands of a toon does have precedent. Taking into account [[ADeadlyAffair the classic motive of infidelity]], so to speak; Roger’s recent HostilityOnTheSet; the rather {{slapstick}} MO in which Acme was killed (dropping a safe on his head); R.K.’s account of Roger’s rage the previous night, and the yellow paint found at the crime scene, it all gave the authorities who they thought was the only logical suspect no matter how seemingly absurd. Plus, there’s likely a discriminatory bias against toons automatically ruling out human foul play. |
| 646 | [[/folder]] |
| 647 | |
| 648 | [[folder:Cloverleaf]] |
| 649 | * Is it even possible for a publicly-traded stock to have a single owner, at least without drawing some raised eyebrows? |
| 650 | ** Since the exact nature of Cloverleaf's corporate and financial structure is not elaborated on, it's likely that Doom actually "owns" the company through various dummy corporations and fronts which avoid this kind of attention; he just refers to himself as "the sole stockholder" for purposes of simplification, since the end result is the same and he's expecting the people he's talking with to be dead in a few minutes anyway. |
| 651 | [[/folder]] |
| 652 |
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