Line #226 WesternAnimation/MightyMouse


1	[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mighty_mouse_b_6843_2173.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:250:Here I come to save the day!]]
3
4	->''"Now I know why they call television a medium. Because nothing on it is rare or well done."''
5	-->-- ''Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures'', "Don't Touch That Dial"
6
7	A SuperHero anthropomorphic mouse saves the day, the world and his girlfriend, Pearl Pureheart. Originally one of the Creator/{{Terrytoons}} (yes, from the same fine company as WesternAnimation/HeckleAndJeckle and "[[WesternAnimation/TheThreeBears SOMEBODY TOUCHA MY SPAGHET!!!]]") from MediaNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfAnimation.
8
9	Remade by Creator/{{Filmation}} for television in the 1970's in a show starring Mighty Mouse and fellow Terrytoon characters Heckle and Jeckle in a show called The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle. This version lasted until the early 1980's and even spawned the movie ''Mighty Mouse and the Great Space Chase'' in 1982 (which was originally shown on the TV series in sixteen serialized chapters).
10
11	The series was remade again in the late 1980's by Creator/RalphBakshi under the title ''WesternAnimation/MightyMouseTheNewAdventures''. While the series is notable for pioneering the type of creator-driven cartoons that flourished in the 1990s, most casual viewers remember it for the controversy surrounding a scene in which Mighty Mouse sniffed some crushed flowers that looked like he was snorting cocaine (the creators claim that the resemblance to cocaine usage was completely unintentional).
12
13	Mighty Mouse was also featured in the unsuccessful pilot ''WesternAnimation/{{Curbside}}'', where his segment had him try to protect WesternAnimation/TomTerrific from a thug called the Creeper.
14
15	There have been various comic books from multiple publishers over the years. In 2017, Creator/DynamiteComics published a five-issue miniseries where Mighty Mouse [[RealWorldEpisode finds his way into the real world]] and befriends a bullied boy named Joey.
16	----
17	[[folder: Theatrical Cartoon Filmography]]
18
19	!1942
20
21	* The Mouse of Tomorrow
22	* Frankenstein's Cat
23
24	!1943
25
26	* He Dood It Again
27	* Pandora's Box
28	* Super Mouse Rides Again (AKA Mighty Mouse Rides Again)
29	* Down With Cats
30	* The Lion and the Mouse
31
32	!1944
33
34	* The Wreck of the Hesperus: First short where he is named Mighty Mouse.
35	* The Champion of Justice
36	* Mighty Mouse Meets Jekyll and Hyde Cat
37	* Eliza on the Ice
38	* Wolf! Wolf!
39	* The Green Line
40	* Mighty Mouse and the Two Barbers
41	* Sultan's Birthday
42	* Mighty Mouse at the Circus
43
44	!1945
45
46	* Mighty Mouse and the Pirates
47	* Port of Missing Mice
48	* Raiding the Raiders
49	* The Kilkenny Cats
50	* The Silver Streak
51	* Mighty Mouse and the Wolf
52	* WesternAnimation/GypsyLife -- the only Mighty Mouse cartoon to ever get an Oscar nomination for animated short film
53	* Mighty Mouse Meets Bad Bill Bunion
54	* Mighty Mouse in Krakatoa
55
56	!1946
57
58	* Svengali's Cat
59	* The Wicked Wolf
60	* My Old Kentucky Home
61	* Throwing the Bull
62	* The Johnstown Flood
63	* The Trojan Horse
64	* Winning the West
65	* The Electronic Mouse Trap
66	* The Jail Break
67	* The Crackpot King
68	* Mighty Mouse and the Hep Cat
69
70	!1947
71
72	* Crying Wolf
73	* The Dead End Cats
74	* Aladdin's Lamp
75	* The Sky is Falling
76	* Mighty Mouse Meets Deadeye Dick
77	* A Date for Dinner
78	* The First Snow
79	* A Fight to the Finish
80	* Swiss Cheese Family Robinson
81	* Lazy Little Beaver
82
83	!1948
84
85	* Mighty Mouse and the Magician
86	* The Feudin' Hillbillies
87	* The Witch's Cat
88	* Love's Labor Won
89	* Triple Trouble
90	* The Mysterious Stranger
91	* Magic Slipper
92
93	!1949
94
95	* Racket Buster
96	* A Cold Romance
97	* The Catnip Gang
98	* The Perils of Pearl Pureheart
99	* Stop, Look and Listen
100
101	!1950
102
103	* Anti-Cats
104	* Law and Order
105	* Beauty on the Beach
106	* Mother Goose's Birthday Party
107	* Comic Book Land: A Gandy Goose cartoon, but Mighty appears in the end.
108
109	!1951
110
111	* Sunny Italy
112	* Goons from the Moon
113	* Injun Trouble
114	* A Swiss Miss
115	* The Cat's Tale
116
117	!1952
118
119	* Prehistoric Perils
120	* Hansel and Gretel
121	* Happy Holland
122
123	!1953
124
125	* A Soapy Opera
126	* Hero for a Day
127	* Hot Rods
128	* When Mousehood Was In Flower
129
130	!1954
131
132	* Spare the Rod
133	* The Helpless Hippo
134	* Reformed Wolf
135
136	!1959
137
138	* Outer Space Visitor
139
140	!1961
141
142	* The Mysterious Package
143	* Cat Alarm
144
145	[[/folder]]
146	----
147	!!Tropes demonstrated include:
148
149	* AlienInvasion: "Goons from the Moon" has the Earth be invaded by a planet of alien [[MixAndMatchCritter bat-cats]] with bubble guns.
150	* AllMenArePerverts: Near the end of "Mighty Mouse and the Wolf", the Wolf phones for some more wolves to come and help him. All of them are seen ogling at women in swimsuits at the beach.
151	* AnimalSuperheroes: Mighty '''Mouse''', obviously.
152	* AnimatedAnthology: ''Mighty Mouse Playhouse'' is the TropeMaker.
153	* ArchEnemy: Mighty Mouse's main nemesis is Oil Can Harry.
154	* BankruptcyBarrel: In "The Magic Slipper", Prince Charming is left wearing a barrel after the wolf steals his clothes.
155	* BigDamnHeroes: In every cartoon, Mighty only appears around midway through, quickly reacting to a local or far off crisis that only he can resolve. His own catchphrase even calls himself this!
156	* BigThinShortTrio: Two shorts had Mighty Mouse fight a trio of cats known as the Catnip Gang, consisting of a large brute named Julius "Pinhead" Slovodka, a skinny cat named No Chin Charlie, and a short cat in a derby named Shorty the Runt being the brains of the outfit.
157	* BraggingThemeTune: The theme tune boasts that Mighty Mouse is always triumphant.
158	* BrattyHalfPint: "Spare the Rod" has Mighty Mouse tasked with disciplining a bunch of ill-behaving delinquent children.
159	* BrooklynRage: Oil Can Harry:
160	--> "Coises! Foiled again!"
161	* TheCameo:
162	** Mighty Mouse himself has a cameo in the Gandy Goose cartoon "Comic Book Land."
163	* CatsAreMean: The majority of villains are cats.
164	* TheCape: The superhero mouse even wears one.
165	* CaptainErsatz: Mighty Mouse, especially in his Super Mouse years, is an obvious parody of Franchise/{{Superman}}. Amusingly, the reason for his name chance was ''not'' because of legal threats from DC, but because one of Paul Terry's own employees left and made his own comic series named Super Mouse, and Terry wasn't interested in potential legal issues.
166	** The mouse donning the superhero suit in 1943's ''The Lion And The Mouse'' only bore the resemblance of Super Mouse of him in flight. Otherwise, this mouse had stubby legs, a paunch, and was pathetically inebriated.
167	* CardCarryingVillain: Oil Can Harry is shown to be very proud of his vile nature.
168	* CatchPhrase: ''"Heeeere I come to save the day!"''
169	* ChronicHeroSyndrome: Mighty Mouse will help anyone in need even if he has to drop whatever he's doing right now.
170	* ClipShow: The Filmation episode "Around The World In 80 Ways," which is ostensibly about Oil Can Harry trying to get into his own testimonial, has guest stars Heckle and Jeckle showing clips of some of Harry's failures.
171	* ColorfulContrails: Mighty Mouse leaves a red contrail in flight. Indeed, his most unusual power is the ability to manipulate that contrail like a flexible band of matter, usually to restrain an adversary.
172	* ComicBookAdaptation:
173	** Timely Comics (which would later become Marvel), St. John's (using Terry artists), Dell, Gold Key and Marvel would all publish Mighty Mouse comics. Marvel's 10-issue series was derived loosely from ''Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures''.
174	** Creator/DynamiteComics published a five-issue miniseries in 2017.
175	* CompilationMovie: The movie "The Great Space Chase" was edited together from a multi-part serial of ''The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse''.
176	* CoveredInKisses:
177	** "Svengali's Cat" ends with Mighty Mouse getting kissed by the mouse girl in gratitude for saving her, resulting in the rodent hero having lipstick marks all over his face.
178	** Mighty Mouse again ends up with a face covered with lipstick marks when some mouse women catch up to him and kiss him at the end of "The Trojan Horse".
179	* DastardlyWhiplash: Oil Can Harry resembles the typical kind of mustache-twirling villain seen in a 1920s serial, because as noted below, [[https://terrytoons.fandom.com/wiki/Oil_Can_Harry he originally was]].
180	* DeliveryStork: Played with in "Raiding of the Raiders". A stork delivers a sack of baby bunnies to a bunny couple, but there's also an owl doctor who shows up to help the dad get the baby bunnies out of the sack, the process being [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything treated like a birthing scene]].
181	* DidntThinkThisThrough: In "Cat Alarm," a gang of cats trick Mighty Mouse into issuing an emergency that the dam had burst in order to make the mice in Cheeseville evacuate and into their clutches. They didn't count on Mighty Mouse to rush to the dam only to find it still intact. Cue confrontation with the cats and subsequent beatdown.
182	* DoNotTauntCthulhu: A Filmation episode has an Egyptian high-priest (Harry) lose his cool with the being of evil he summoned. After getting pushy and insulting, he is still met with compliance but also with a warning that startles him quiet.
183	---> I'll get the queen and bring her back; in the mean time, Harry, CUT THE YAK!
184	* DoorstopBaby: According to the origin story given by the cat in "A Cat's Tale", Mighty Mouse was left in a basket on an old couple's doorstep when he was a baby and the old couple adopted him as their son.
185	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Mighty Mouse was originally called Super Mouse. He also had a fairly different appearance, with a different blue-and-red costume and noodle-like limbs. In "Frankenstein's Cat", he also had a brief speaking line with a different voice which paints him as uncharacteristically aggressive, whereas in his other cartoons, he only spoke when he was singing! Many of those early cartoons were clumsily redubbed to replace every mention of Super Mouse with Mighty Mouse, and given newer title sequences, so they're hard to find in their original "Super Mouse" form.
186	* FatAndSkinny: Used in the Creator/{{Filmation}} series ''The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse'', where Mighty Mouse's slender foe Oil Can Harry is given a dim-witted and overweight henchman named Swifty.
187	* FingerPokeOfDoom:
188	** In "Spare the Rod", the leader of a gang of delinquent mice dares Mighty Mouse (disguised as a boy scout) to knock the chip off his shoulder. Mighty instead knocks the kid from under the chip with one flick of his finger.
189	** Mighty Mouse casually flicks away alien cats with his finger without breaking so much as a sweat in "Goons From The Moon" (1951).
190	* FlyingBrick: Though how invulnerable Mighty Mouse is varies by episode. Machine-gun bullets are shown bouncing off his chest in many shorts, but in "The Swiss Miss" the DeathTrap is that he's on a conveyer belt about to be shot.
191	* FromBeyondTheFourthWall: A common joke
192	** The cartoon "Goons From The Moon" has alien cats abducting all the mice in Terrytown. The radio reporter (a mouse caricature of Walter Winchell) comments "there's only one mouse who can save this situation!" Cut to an animator's table where the animator's hand draws Mighty Mouse in flight atop a missile. (The artist stops drawing briefly, causing Mighty Mouse to chime in "Hurry up! I've got a job to do!")
193	** The cartoon "The Cat's Tale" has a mouse-traumatized cat telling the hero's origin and his subsequent battle against a giant cat. The cowardly cat then tells us how he'd show Mighty Mouse a thing or two, only for the animator to draw Mighty Mouse floating right behind him. The cat runs off in fright.
194	* FurIsClothing:
195	** The short "Mighty Mouse and the Wolf" at one point has the titular wolf force some sheep to remove their wool at gunpoint. The sheep strip out of their wool as if they were taking off jumpsuits, and one blushes before turning around after noticing that the audience is watching them disrobe.
196	** The cat in "A Date for Dinner" is shown to wear a union suit underneath his fur.
197	** In "Lazy Little Beaver", the wolf ends up knocked out his overalls as well as his fur and is left in a union suit.
198	* TheHighQueen: In the Filmation series, Pearl is queen of the interstellar federation in the space opera movie, and the episodes that it was split into.
199	* HumanoidFemaleAnimal: The female mice were usually far more humanoid than the male, and usually [[PantslessMalesFullyDressedFemales wore more clothes]]. There were exceptions (Pandora of "Pandora's Box", the unnamed female mouse of "Svengali's Cat" before her makeover, and all the female mice in early cartoon "He Dood It Again" only had TertiarySexualCharacteristics to distinguish them), but they were relatively rare.
200	* HypocriticalHumor: In "Goons from the Moon", the radio announcer at one point repeatedly stress that his audience shouldn't panic about the alien cats invading. While he says this, he's obviously frantic and is smoking multiple cigarettes at once.
201	* IJustWantToBeSpecial: The cartoon "Hero For A Day" has a doofus mouse trying to impress his girlfriend, who swoons over Mighty Mouse, by donning a costume suit of the hero. Some cats bully him and the mouse is knocked out cold. Just before the cats can pounce, Mighty Mouse himself shows up, beats the cats up and lets the little wannabe take credit for it.
202	* InvincibleHero: In some shorts, Mighty Mouse veered into this territory. A common problem with some of his shorts was that he was too overpowered. In earlier shorts, this was not a problem, as he was not as powerful.
203	* KidsAreCruel: In one episode, grade-school kids were causing mischief, havoc and smoking cigarettes. It's so out of control that parents and teachers asked Mighty Mouse to intervene.
204	* LargeHam: Mighty Mouse, himself. "Here I come to save the day!"
205	* MadeOfIron: Mighty Mouse, sure, but also Oil Can Harry. Harry just shrugs off all of the injuries that Pearl inflicts on him and even most of what Mighty Mouse inflicts. For example, in "Triple Trouble", she punches Harry into a wall, hits him with every piece of pottery in her apartment, drops a cast-iron stove on his head, and then throws an anchor at him to knock him off the edge of the building. ''Then'' a passing policeman shoots him in the butt with a machine-gun spray of bullets. All it does is annoy him (and the shooting merely propelled him into Pearl's window, which let him actually capture her after she'd been holding her own to that point).
206	* MagicSkirt: Pearl has this at the opening of "Sunny Italy," which shows her [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pearl_8767.jpg dangling upside down by one foot]] from the Leaning Tower of Pisa (at the whim of Oil Can Harry), and her microscopically short skirt flips over halfway, keeping her undies covered.
207	* {{Melodrama}}: The shorts with Oil Can Harry and the opera singing are an AffectionateParody of old school melodramas (a theatrical form which these days is [[DeadHorseTrope only remembered]] ''because'' of its many parodies)
208	* MixAndMatchCritter: The Cat-Bats from "Gypsy Life".
209	* MultipleChoicePast: Many shorts involved some sort of origin story, which varied widely. There was never any perceived need for a single established one until the 1980's TV series, where he was given a derivative version of Franchise/{{Superman}}'s origin.
210	* OfficialCouple: Mighty Mouse and Pearl. In many of the comics, Mighty Mouse has a dark-haired girlfriend named Mitzi.
211	* {{Opera}}: Many of the original Terrytoons shorts had all their dialogue ''sung,'' opera-style.
212	* PassedOverInheritance: "The Champion of Justice" featured a spendthrift man whose wealthy aunt and uncle left their fortune to the mice who lived at their mansion and he didn't get anything. His reaction to the judge's ruling when he contested the will was a clear example of SoreLoser.
213	* PintSizedPowerhouse: Mighty Mouse in his theatrical appearances.
214	* PokeThePoodle: The Creator/{{Filmation}} series ''The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse'' had this happen in the CompilationMovie "The Great Space Chase", where Queen Pearl Pureheart ends up switching brains with Harry the Heartless and is asked by Swifty to prove she's Harry by naming three of Harry's most vile deeds. The worst "crimes" Pearl can come up with are keeping an overdue library book and accidentally stepping on a petunia.
215	* PowerUpFood: In Mighty Mouse's first appearance (when he was called [[Franchise/{{Superman}} Super Mouse]]) he gained his powers after going into a [[StealthPun "Supermarket"]] and eating various Super-named foods. While he was shown eating super products to do this at least twice (in "The Mouse of Tomorrow" and "Frankenstein's Cat") it seemed to become permanent after that.
216	* PunchPunchPunchUhOh: Some of the earliest shorts has Mighty Mouse's enemies trying vainly to attack, but never able to do so, while he is able to beat them with ease.
217	* RealWorldEpisode: The premise of the five-issue miniseries by Creator/DynamiteComics, where Mighty Mouse finds his way into the real world and befriends a bullied boy named Joey, the two later working together to save both their worlds.
218	* RoguesGalleryTransplant: Oil Can Harry is better known as an enemy of Mighty Mouse, but actually originates from Terrytoons' older ''Fanny Zilch'' cartoons, where he was the enemy of J. Leffingwell Strongheart.
219	* {{Slapstick}}: Oil Can Harry falls victim to this almost as much as he does to Mighty Mouse's fists.
220	* SnapBack: There was a complete lack of continuity between shorts. Most notably in the Oil Can Harry shorts, since each one was presented as a different final chapter of a long-running serial, starting with resolving a cliffhanger (that was never set up) and ending with Mighty Mouse saving the day.
221	* SmugSuper: Mighty Mouse can come across as thinking he's better than everyone because of his powers, especially in the earlier shorts.
222	* SpaceOpera: The "Great Space Chase" segments of [[Creator/{{Filmation}} Filmation's]] series shifted into a sci-fi genre where Mighty Mouse had to stop Harry the Heartless from conquering the universe.
223	* StealthPun: Delivered by Pearl Pureheart in "A Fight to the Finish".
224	-->'''Narrator:''' Pearl will never give up hope. We hear her say...
225	-->'''Pearl:''' I will never give up hope. He's my favorite [[Creator/BobHope radio comedian!]]
226	* StrongAsTheyNeedToBe: Mighty Mouse was often presented as weaker and less invulnerable in the Oil Can Harry stories, in order to give the villain a sporting chance (or just for [[RuleOfFunny the sake of humor]]... or [[{{Padding}} the short's run time]]). Sometimes his strength varied from scene to scene within a single cartoon or even ''within a single scene''. For example, in "A Fight to the Finish", Mighty Mouse is tied to railroad tracks, and unable to break the perfectly-normal rope binding him; he can, however, stop the train from running over him with just his feet, and then the ''train'' breaks the ropes.
227	* SuperheroesInSpace: Again, Mighty Mouse in the SpaceOpera segments of the [[Creator/{{Filmation}} Filmation]] series.
228	* UnwillingSuspension: Happened to Pearl in "Prehistoric Perils" (hanging from a clothesline by her toes) "The Perils Of Pearl Pureheart" (dangling by one foot), "Sunny Italy" (ditto), "A Swiss Miss" (hanging by her waist), and "Happy Holland" (used as Harry's marionette).
229	* TheTelevisionTalksBack: Zig-zagged in "Cat Alarm" a member of a gang of cats trying to ingress Cheeseville goes into Mighty Mouse's TV with a mouse puppet to stage a fake emergency.
230	-->'''Mouse puppet!Cat:''' We interrupt Mighty Mouse's vacation to bring him this urgent newsflash...the Cheeseville Dam has burst!\
231	'''Mighty Mouse:''' The Cheeseville Dam?\
232	'''Mouse Puppet!Cat:''' Yes, the Cheeseville Dam has burst and millions of gallons of water are rushing toward the doomed city!
233	* TheVoiceless: Prior to Mighty Mouse Playhouse and everything else after, he was this--that is, unless he was singing.
234	** He ''did'' talk after Playhouse. In the three TV-budget shorts from 1959 and 1961, he was voiced by Tom Morrison, who also voiced him in the titles and bumpers for the TV show. The only other time he talked as opposed to sing was in 1942's ''Frankenstein's Cat,' where he interrogates the title monster who has swallowed a helpless bird:
235	-->'''Super Mouse:''' What didja do with da boid? (''slaps monster in the face'') So ya won't talk, eh?
236	** He spoke normally in the 1970's Filmation series, and (albeit very [[LargeHam resonantly]]) in the 1980's Bakshi series.
237	* WalletMoths: In "When Mousehood was in Flower", Pearl Pureheart's father opens his wallet to let out moths when he protests to Oil Can Harry that he's too poor to pay his taxes.
238	* WholesomeCrossdresser: Mighty Mouse disguises himself as a woman to deceive Deadeye Dick and his gang in "Mighty Mouse Meets Deadeye Dick".
239	* WilliamTelling: Done by Mighty Mouse in "Gypsy Life", apparently for no reason other than to [[RuleOfCool make a nice entrance.]]
240	* YourSizeMayVary: A non-giant variation: In "The Magic Slipper", Cinderella (a female mouse) and the prince (a male mouse who resembles [[Creator/MarxBrothers Harpo Marx]]) are about the same size as the humans at the ball, and both are shoulder-high to the wolf who serves as the villain. But Mighty Mouse is both almost the same height as Cinderella ''and'' is only as tall as the wolf's ''knee''.

Context WesternAnimation / MightyMouse