* {{Adorkable}}: Pinky, due to his {{Keet}} attitude and his ideas that have nothing to do with the Brain's TakingOverTheWorld plans.
* AlternateAesopInterpretation: The well-written but nonetheless {{anvilicious}} episode "Inherit the Wheeze" focuses on the message "Smoking is bad." However, since the Brain only became addicted as a result of clearly painful experiments the lab forced him to go through, which he didn't enjoy one bit, the message "Experimenting on animals is cruel" comes across much more powerfully.
* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Sure, "[[GeniusDitz one is a genius]] and [[MadScientist the other's insane]]". But who is insane? The megalomaniac bent on [[TakeOverTheWorld world domination]] or the one who saves the world ''every night'' and seems to be a pretty happy guy? Never mind that Pinky is much more literate than Brain, or the few times Pinky has gotten much further than Brain in taking over the world, even becoming President of the United States once. In contrast, many of Brain's evil schemes run on InsaneTrollLogic, and even while some of them can be excused since they live in a crazed cartoon universe, the way he goes about achieving them is often stupid enough that FailureIsTheOnlyOption anyway. WordOfGod has confirmed that the theme song leaves it open to the viewers to decide...
* AluminumChristmasTrees: The opening to "Inherit the Wheeze" -- think strapping a mouse into what looks like a medieval torture device and forcing him to smoke cigarettes is a cartoonishly outlandish way of studying the effects of smoking that real scientists couldn't actually do? Well, that's actually ''exactly'' [[https://lifeorlunch.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/smoking-experiments-on-animals-peta-org/ how they do it]] -- all the animators did was alter the layout of the device, which in real life places the rats in tubes or in a cage with smoke piped in.
* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: The theme song, heard [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxRRAaTadTQ?t=12 here]].
* BrokenBase: There are those who prefer Pinky's [[VocalEvolution new voice]]; however, some fans did find his speech impediment early on to be endearing.
%% * DesignatedVillain: The Brain in the UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis and UsefulNotes/SuperNintendoEntertainmentSystem ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'' games (though the ending of the Genesis game does [[ThrowTheDogABone throw him a bone]]).
* EnsembleDarkhorse:
** Dark Pinky, a competent, superpowered, and evil version of Pinky from the [[ComicBookAdaptation first issue of the comic series.]] has ended up quite popular on tumblr.
** Romy, Pinky and Brain's TwoDonorClone, only appeared in one episode, but is quite popular among fans, especially those who see Pinky and Brain as a domestic couple.
* GeniusBonus:
%% ** Just about every other joke Brain makes.
** The episode where Pinky and the Brain create a papier-mache replica of the Earth, so that they can convince everyone to relocate and they can take over the real world. The background music during the montage of them building the thing? Dvorak's Symphony no 9 "From the New World."
* HarsherInHindsight:
** The mice made cameos in the two prime-time ''WesternAnimation/TinyToons'' specials, and both cameos had them in scenes prominently featuring Elmyra. Apparently, this must've been where they got the idea for the much-reviled ReTool ''WesternAnimation/PinkyElmyraAndTheBrain''.
** Similarly, the episode "Pinky and the Brain and Larry" became this after Elmyra became the third character in the ReTool. Particularly hard to swallow considering the whole point of said short was to protest the demands of the network executives to add a third character, which obviously fell on deaf ears.
* HilariousInHindsight:
** Now has [[HilariousInHindsight.PinkyAndTheBrain its own link]].
* MemeticMutation: It is difficult to say "What are we going to do tonight?" to someone who watched this show without getting "The same thing we do every night, try to take over the world!" as a response.
** This even got a reference in ''ComicBook/TheSupermanAdventures'' of all things.
** And, of course, "AreYouPonderingWhatImPondering."
*** "I think so Brain, but where are we going to find a duck and a hose at this hour?"
* MorePopularSpinOff: The series was (and still is) way more popular than ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'' and ''WesternAnimation/TinyToonAdventures'' will ever be. This is partially due to the fact that those other two shows based a lot of their jokes on pop culture references that passed over the heads of most of the audience, and untranslatable {{pun}}s.
* TheyChangedItNowItSucks:
** ''WesternAnimation/PinkyElmyraAndTheBrain''. Not only do the fans hate the series, but also the writer; Peter Hastings not only wrote an episode of the original series predicting the series' downfall because of the executives' demands ("You'll Never Eat Food Pellets in This Town Again"), but later left Warner Bros.
** To a lesser, yet still reviled, extent, when the show was rerun on Nickelodeon, the channel superimposed their logo onto various objects in every single shot of the intro. Nobody liked it.
* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: [[http://io9.gizmodo.com/every-single-pinky-and-the-brain-plan-to-take-over-the-1778890186 This ranking]] of the world takeover plans mentions how a few don't get exploited enough due to the B-plot\resource gathering.
* ValuesDissonance: Brainania has a touch of this. This is partially from the portrayal of South Pacific Islanders as naive and easy to dupe, and partially because foreign aid is nowadays seen as favorable.
* ValuesResonance: While it results from a bizarre situation, "Brinky" shows a two-father family in a relatively fair light for the 1990s, with most humor coming from Pinky and Brain's clashing parenting styles rather than them both being men. When they appear on ''The Rikki Lake Show,'' nobody seems to mind that they're two men (or mice, for that matter), and Romy's quip about having two dads is more a segue into a ''Series/FullHouse'' joke than something homophobic.
* TheWoobie: Both mice are examples in their own ways.
** Pinky, despite his cheerful personality, gets hit with BreakTheCutie quite a bit (like when he was crying in "The Family That Poits Together, Narfs Together" when he remembers being taken away from his family), and he could really use a hug at times in the Christmas and Halloween special episodes.
** Brain tirelessly works to achieve his ambition, but is constantly thwarted by various means. It may be that his gene-splicing experience has deprived him of much of his emotional sensitivity, hence his cold and jerkish tendancies. He slips into JerkassWoobie territory on several occasions when he realizes how badly he treats Pinky and [[TearsOfRemorse gets upset about it]]. It also doesn't hurt that he's capable of pulling off some serious PuppyDogEyes -- and does so in the opening theme.
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