Animaniacs / Tropes A to I

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#-A

• 555: In "Moby or Not Moby", Captain Ahab has a "Have You Seen This Whale?" sign asking people to call 555-harpoon.
• Absent Animal Companion: A Running Gag is Dot keeping a monster in a box as a pet, but she has a different pet each time.
• Absurd Brand Name:
  • Sam & Ella's Coffee Shop (Salmonella), furthered by the last part of their jingle "Then the only thing that's left to do is head to the potty and spew spew spew! Sam & Ella's!"
  • Smelloggs breakfast cereals. (Including tie-in product Branimaniacs)
  • Discussed in one Pinky and the Brain segment, "I think so, Brain, but if they called them 'Sad Meals', kids wouldn't buy them."
• Absurdly-Long Limousine: At Slappy Squirrel's "Lifetime Achievement" award ceremony, Slappy and Skippy arrive in one.
  Slappy: Oh. The bowling-in-a-limo gag? (turns to the camera) We're stretchin' for the comedy here, folks.
• Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Slappy only wears a hat (and also a scarf in Wakko's Wish).
• Acronyms Are Easy as Aybeecee: When Yakko tells Pablo Picasso that "P.P." is on his shirt, Dot thinks he said "pee-pee" and responds, "Disgusting!"
• Actor Allusion:
  • The short "Sir Yaksalot" has a segment that parodies Godzilla movies and Kaiju films in general, where the Warner siblings attempt to get help against the dragon from a council used to dealing with giant monsters, complete with their voices being (poorly) overdubbed. Perry Mason is among them, referencing Raymond Burr's role in the localized versions of some of the Godzilla movies.
  • Minerva's personality is that of a Valley Girl - which her voice actress Julie Brown was known for mocking in her stand-up routines.
  • In the Japanese dub, Satomi Koorogi's role as Mindy could be an allusion to her role as Hima, another toddler; Likewise, Kenichi Ogata (Brain), previously dubbed another character named Brain, and from a film owned by Warner Bros., no less.
• Adam Westing: Adam West voiced the Caped Crusader in the "Boo Wonder" sketch. It has to be noted that DC Comics has belonged to Warner Bros. since 1967, which is why there was minimum Writing Around Trademarks in the entire sketch.^note Except for the use of a substitute for The Joker, almost everything else is lifted directly off Batman itself
• Adaptational Alternate Ending: The Casey at the Bat spoof "Mighty Wakko at Bat" initially follows the poem's premise with its own words, though Wakko is jeered instead of cheered because he's not strong enough to hold the bat. He hits the ball and the outfielders being too Distracted by the Sexy courtesy of Minerva Mink and Hello Nurse keeps them from catching it. But the ball is caught at home plate before Wakko can get there, and he is initially declared out during the last stanza ("Oh, somewhere in this favoured land...") until he pops up from the large dirt pile under home plate and is declared safe.
• Adaptational Heroism: The Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach lookalikes in the sketch "The Good, The Boo And The Ugly" are recast as a pair of ordinary law-abiding citizens, very much unlike their outlaw counterparts.
• Affectionate Parody: Quite a few shorts were done in the style of the cutesy, musical cartoons of the 1930s.
• Afraid of Clowns: Wakko Warner and Thaddeus Plotz are revealed to be terrified of clowns in one episode. Hilarity Ensues when Plotz sends a clown over to the Warners for Wakko's birthday, only learning of his fear after doing so.
• All Men Are Perverts: Hello Nurse gets attention from almost all the male characters; Minerva's cartoons are built entirely around the premise.
• All Psychology Is Freudian: Dr. Scratchansniff.
• All Women Are Lustful: Although Dot would roll her eyes at the boys going gaga over hot ladies, she would be proved Not So Above It All as soon as an attractive man was in view (especially Mel Gibson). Minerva Mink as well turned into just as big a pervert as her own admirers when confronted with her best friend's cousin.
• Alter Kocker: Walter Wolf.
• Alternative Number System: Done subtly. Snow White imprisons Dot for being too cute, and Dot counts the time in hashmarks that only have four strokes each.
• Ambiguously Bi: In Raging Bird, Squit admits to thinking Prettyboy Robin is cute, and also attempts to kiss Pesto in celebration of Bobby's victory.
• Ambiguously Jewish:
  • Yakko, who is obviously modeled on Groucho Marx, especially the voice and the eyebrows. And, of course, Yakov is the Yiddish version of Jacob, which was the real first name of studio co-founder Jack Warner. Interestingly, Yakko's sister Dot came off as only very vaguely Jewish (she was reportedly inspired by the Jewish actress Fanny Brice), while little brother Wakko had no identifiably Jewish traits at all (his voice actor based the middle Warner's voice on a younger version of Ringo Starr). However, the cartoons "'Twas the Day Before Christmas," "Little Drummer Warners" and "Noel" reveal that the kids celebrate Christmas.
  • Slappy Squirrel, with her New York accent, use of Yiddish as a Second Language, and occasional jokes about menorahs and bat mitzvahs – though like the Warners, she and Skippy also celebrate Christmas. Meanwhile, her archenemy Walter Wolf is a full-blown Yiddish-accented Alter Kocker.
• And Starring: In the episodes with Rita and Runt segments, the cast list would say at the end "And Bernadette Peters as Rita". (Hey, she won a Tony®, so she deserves a special place.)
• Animated Actors: The Warners are an unusual example of actors playing actors. In other words, they are actors who live on the Warner Studio Lot and perform skits, in-universe. But even this premise about them living in the tower, tormenting Dr. Scratchansniff, etc. is scripted, as the theme song makes clear. On top of that, they know they are cartoons.
  • The theme song also, however, mentions that "the writers flipped/we have no script/why bother to rehearse?", so whether or not anything is scripted at all within the confines of the show itself is debatable. It is still all an act, though.
  • Slappy Squirrel takes the gag a bit further — as a retired animated actor, she calls in favors with her old coworkers, reminisces about when cartoons used to be 'good,' etc.
• Animated Anthology: An extremely good example.
• Animation Bump: Out of the eight studios that worked on the show, TMS Entertainment, StarToons, and Wang Film Productions tended to yield the most fluid results.
  • "I'm Mad" has the most fluid animation out of any episode, since it was originally a theatrical short (played before Thumbelina (1994))
• Animated Outtakes: In the episode "Cutie and the Beast", Dot keeps blowing her opening line. We see take after take being shot until she gets it right, and they have to skip ahead to later in the script because they took up too much time.
• Animated World Hypotheses:
  • The Warner siblings are aware that they're cartoons. In fact, they once sang a parody of the Major General Song called "I am the Very Model of a Cartoon Individual".
  • Slappy is also aware that she and the others are cartoon characters. In "Bumbie's Mom," after seeing a parody of Bambi, she reassures a sad Skippy that the deer's mother didn't really die, since cartoon characters never do. She demonstrates this by blowing a passerby up, only for him to survive.
• Answer to Prayers: When candy shop owner Flaxseed refuses to offer a donation of candy to an orphanage, the head nun leaves, but returns with her sister nuns to try and persuade him, only to find him menacing the Warner's. Flaxseed reminds the angry nuns that they're not allowed to use physical violence, which the head nun acknowledges. Instead, she calls for prayer, and the Notre Dame football team shows up to do violence on their behalf.
• Annoyingly Repetitive Child:
  • In "I'm Mad", Scratchandsniff is frustrated while driving the Warner siblings to the circus. While most of what's bugging him is Yakko and Dot's arguing, he's also annoyed by Wakko (who's eleven) complaining over and over that he's tired, hungry, squirmy, has a runny nose, and needs to use the "potty", and asking how far it is.
  • In the Buttons and Mindy episodes, after people tell Mindy (a toddler) what they're doing after she asks them, Mindy repeats, "Why?", causing them to over-explain to her until she starts chasing something, the people can't provide further explanation, and/or they get annoyed.
  • In "Bumbie's Mom", Skippy, a young squirrel, watches a parody of Bambi titled Bumbie, which makes him cry. When Slappy cheers him up, it's more out of annoyance at his crying whenever he mentions the eponymous fawn's Missing Mom's death than out of actual sympathy, and at the end when he cries again while watching another sad movie, she says, "Uh-oh" but again in more of an annoyed than a sad tone.
  • Subverted in one episode, in which Wakko is playing the same two notes on an accordion over and over. Scratchandsniff initially finds this annoying, but grows to appreciate the "song".
• Anvil on Head: It even has a theme song.
• Appeal to Obscurity: Combined with Who's on First? in "Piano Rag":
  Yakko: Very Pete Townshend-esque.
  Dot: Who?
  Wakko: Exactly.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Played for laughs in the "Wally Llama" episode. The Warners climb up the Himalayas to seek the all-knowing, all-seeing Wally Llama and ask him a very important question, but the Llama is really tired and does not want to answer more questions. Eventually, the Warners manage to pull a Batman Gambit by having Wally put his reputation on the line, and finally ask their question: "Why do hot dogs come in packages of ten, and hot dog buns come in packages of eight?" Wally doesn't know why, which means he doesn't know everything as he claims. This instantly drives Wally into insanity, Painting the Medium by grabbing the film strip and descending into maddened gibberish while throwing flowers and dancing like a ballerina.
• Art Shift: The entire episode "Back in Style" is full of this: The Warners keep being inserted into various Saturday morning cartoons throughout the '60s-80s, so we get visual parodies of Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo, Underdog, and Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, none of which are drawn or animated in the usual Animaniacs style.
• Art Evolution: The animation quality got better and better as the series went on.
• Artistic License – Geography: "Puttin on the Blitz" is guilty of this way too many times.
  • At the end of "Puttin on the Blitz", set in Poland, as the train to Paris departs from Warsaw, there are some tall mountains (presumably Tatras) in the background. The thing is, the real Tatras (and any Polish mountains, for that matter) are impossible to be seen from Warsaw, no matter how one tries.
  • Also, the country's outline in the beginning is the modern one, not the correct, Interwar outline.
  • The map also has Ukraine separate from the USSR.
  • Germany on the map has its modern borders, without Pomerania, Silesia and East Prussia.
  • Finally, taking a train to Paris amid World War II isn't exactly the smartest thing to do when the Nazis are invading Europe and want your race exterminated. The Polish girl and her father would need to travel through Axis territory.
  • The "Yakko's World" song omits several countries, such as Wales, names Asia (which is a continent), and refers to Korea as a single country when it's actually two separate countries, officially known as the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and more commonly known as North Korea and South Korea (although both nations consider the other to be illegitimate, so this is mistake is legally correct in both Koreas). It makes the same mistake with Ireland, referring to simply "Ireland" when Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are two different countries. The show lampshaded the mistake in "Please, Please, Please Get a Life Foundation," with an Internet user pointing out that "Technically Tibet was not a country." Of course the entire segment was pointing out that people obsessing over minor mistakes in cartoons should stop worrying about it and just get a life... wait a minute.
• Artistic License – History: During the Presidents episode, Woodrow Wilson's section has the main characters marching in military uniforms past various World War 1 campaigns, such as Gallipoli, the Somme, and Verdun. The United States didn't take part in any of these battles, and only entered the war in 1917. Particularly confusing as the US did participate in several famous battles late-war, such as the Spring Offensive, Aisne, Hamel, and the Hundred Days.
• Artistic License – Religion: In the episode "Home on De-Nile", Rita runs the risk of being sacrificed in Ancient Egypt. People offered sacrifices to cats; cats weren't offered as sacrifices. Killing a cat incurred the death penalty.
  • Surprisingly averted. During the Hellenistic Period cats were systematically bred for the express purpose of mummification and sacrifice to the gods.
• As Himself: Former figure skater and now commentator Dick Button appeared in Episode 74 to commentate, alongside Dot, Yakko's attempt to sing all the words in the English language.
• Aside Glance: Yakko and Slappy are prone to giving aside glances (when they don't just start snarking to the audience directly.)
• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: The army from the cover of A Few Good Men wind up doing this against the T-Rex from the cover of Jurassic Park during "Video Revue".
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Quite a few characters, but Pinky gets special points.
  Pinky: (distracted by a parody of Jeopardy!) What is "Narf"? What is "Poit"?
  Brain: What is "inordinately short attention span", Alex?
• Awesome, but Impractical: Subverted by "Wakko's Gizmo," which seems pretty pointless at first but turns out to be successful in helping Wakko order a pizza. Then double-subverted when it's revealed that ordering the pizza was just another step in the process, and that the real objective of Wakko's machine is to cause an action figure to sit on a whoopee cushion, making a farting noise and causing Wakko to laugh hysterically.
  Yakko: You should see how he brushes he teeth!

B

• Badly Battered Babysitter: Buttons the dog, to Butt-Monkey levels most of the time.
• Balloonacy: This is shown happening to Buttons and Mindy in "The Monkey Song": first as a Funny Background Event before returning as a Brick Joke.
• Barefoot Cartoon Animal: Minerva Mink and Howard Stern parody Howie Tern. The Warners themselves can cross between this and Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal.
• Baseball Episode: The episode "Mighty Wakko at the Bat"
• Based on a True Story: Buddy's backstory in the "The Warner 65th Anniversary Special" is actually based on a real thing and a real character. Buddy's first shorts were considered so dull and bland that Warner Bros refused to accept his first two cartoons, which got the original director fired. They had to bring Friz Freleng in to re-edit and condense them into a single short.
• Basement-Dweller: The "examples" in the short about the "Please, Please, PLEASE Get a Life" Foundation. Thirty-something men? Check. Obsessing over the minutiae of the show? Check. Geek Physiques? Check. Interestingly, they're shown using the Internet to vent their rage; given that the show debuted in the mid-90's, this was new technology at the time.
• Bathos: The lyrics of the song that's Suspiciously Similar to "Circle of Life" playing in the background of "The Tiger Prince" are a great deliberate example.
  Ever since we could think for ourselves
  We wondered what will happen to us
  But it can't be foretold
  What the future will hold
  If you'll get rich or get hit by a bus
• Bathroom Control: In "Potty Emergency", a mean shopkeeper doesn't allow Wakko Warner to use his bathroom because Wakko has no money.
• Battle Discretion Shot: Slappy spends the entire episode "Bully for Skippy" circumventing Congress' new anti-animated violence bill by building a giant machine that maims a bully plaguing Skippy and a U.S. Senator off-screen, so as not to show any actual violence.
• Be as Unhelpful as Possible: This is seemingly the Warner's mission in life aside from simply keeping themselves entertained.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • "Dot's Quiet Time" sees the titular character traveling all over the world in an effort to find a silent, peaceful spot to do some reading. She finally finds one at the top of Mount Everest, sits down, turns a few pages... then realizes that it's too quiet. Dot promptly pulls out a boombox and starts blasting the theme song.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: The Warner Siblings:
  • Yakko — Brains; The quick-witted leader.
  • Wakko — Brawn; The most destructive one, and the most likely to use a mallet.
  • Dot — Beauty; The "cute" one.
• Berserk Button:
  • Say the word "cat" around Runt, and he'll suddenly be alert and exclaiming, "CAT?? WHERE'S THE CAT??" Despite the fact that his partner Rita is a cat to begin with. This usually leads to Dogs Are Dumb.
    • "A cat? Oh no, Rita is a dog, she's definitely a dog."
    • "Definitely, definitely a dog!"
  • Never give Wakko an "F." Or is it 'never write on Wakko's hat'?
  • Pesto's easily irritated by the entire universe, but particularly by Squit.
  • Never call Dot 'Dottie'. Call her Dottie and ya die.
    • But Yakko got away with this in "The Three Muska-Warners" and "The Big Wrap Party Tonight".
    • As well as the Bob Hope expy in the 65th Anniversary Special. Justified because Dot was asleep and didn't hear him.
  • Katie Ka-Boom's berserk button is... well... anything her parents do, say, imply... or fail to do, say or imply.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Played straight with the Warner sibs, but also played with: the sibs really can't bring themselves to harass genuinely nice people, even if they're naturally annoying - the sibs will endure the annoyingness while hoping the person will go away on their own. So, the sibs actually beware the nice (annoying) ones!
• Big Ball of Violence: A classic Looney Tunes gag adopted into Animaniacs. Pesto uses this every time his Berserk Button is pushed.
  Pesto: DAT'S IT!!!
• Big Brother Instinct: When Wakko dies after eating too many Swedish meatballs, you better believe Yakko literally goes to Hell and back to rescue him. (Dot, too, of course, but she's Wakko's little sister.)
• Big Eater: Guess who "packs away the snacks"? Wakko.
• Bilingual Bonus: "Taming of the Screwy" has one in Japanese. The following could refer to the overpopulation in Japan noted at the time, how Tokyo gets destroyed and rebuilt constantly throughout all media or a certain radioactive kaiju... no wonder the Japanese investors laugh at the end.
  Yakko: 東京はとても面白い所ですね。^note Tokyo wa totemo omoshiroi tokoro desu ne? (Tokyo is an very interesting place, isn't it?)
  Investor: ぜひいらっしてください。^note Zehi irasshite kudasai. (By all means, please visit!)
  Yakko: まだ行き場所があればね。^note Mada iki basho ga areba ne. (If there's still a place to go, eh?)
  • For Spanish/French, there's a few lines in the song Macadamia Nut. An example:
  Hola que pasa you grande sack o' grainia (Hello, what's up, you big sack o' grainia?)
  Qui a coupé le fromage, we abstainia (Who cut the cheese? We abstainia.)
  Lava tus manos, por favor, Macadamia. (Wash your hands, please, Macadamia.)
  • There was also one episode with a Buttons and Mindy short, as well as the theme song for that episode, done entirely in French.
• Bird-Poop Gag: Implied when the Goodfeathers claim they'll "dive-bomb" Mr. Plotz's new car and splatting is heard offscreen.
• Birthday Episode: Wakko's birthday in "Clown And Out".
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: Quite frequent during the earlier episodes on FOX.
  Miles Standish: Begone, pests, and give me the bird!
  Yakko: We'd love to, really, but the FOX censors won't allow it.
  Yakko: It's that time again.
  Dot: To make the Fox censors cry?
  • Another instance, blink and you'll miss it, but during "Phranken-Runt", we get a shot of Phrankenstein's brain-in-a-jar shelf. The jar which contained by far the smallest is labeled "TV Network Executive Brain."
    • Made even funnier by the fact that a few bars of We're In The Money can be heard when the camera lingers on it.
  • The most audacious example is in the opening credits, where they announce they have Pay-or-Play Contracts, a contract where they don't even need to work to get paid!
  • One of the "Wheel of Morality" segments had Wakko and Dot complain about it, only to go a complete 180 on their opinion when Yakko informs them that the Wheel of Morality was the network executives' idea.
  • The biting didn't stop once the show moved to Kids' WB!. In fact, one of the credit gags parodied the slogan at the time, "Big Kids Go First!", by saying "On The WB, Big Kids Go First - In Real Life, Big Kids Sleep In". Another credit gag stated "Be The First Kid On Your Block - To Watch Kids' WB!".
  • In "This Pun for Hire", Yakko agrees to take on Hello Nurse's case on the condition that she never put their show on against 60 Minutes, because they'll "get creamed". This was a slight at the WB Network for putting this show and Pinky and the Brain in primetime on Sundays at 7pm against the more highly-rated CBS newsmagazine.
  • At the end of one episode, while the credits roll, the Warners essentially badmouth all the people listed, including their own voice actors. When Steven Spielberg's name appears, they can't pronounce it, so they just call him "Mr. Kate Capshaw".
• Bittersweet Ending: Nearly every Buttons and Mindy short ends with Buttons being chewed out by Mindy's parents for breaking a house rule as a result of keeping Mindy safe. However, Mindy does hug Buttons and assures him that she loves him afterwards.
• Black Comedy: "Good Idea, Bad Idea”, quite often.
• Boot Camp Episode: One of the Warner Siblings has them discovering boot camp (Dot thinks it has to do with fashionable footwear), which they mistake for summer camp. Hilarity Ensues. (No, this time in the usual ironic sense).
• Borrowing the Beatles: In "Back in Style", one of the older cartoon shows that the Warners appeared on was a show starring The Feebles, who sing a song that's Suspiciously Similar to "Day Tripper".
  She was a night traveler
  One way passport, yes!
  It took us quite long to get wise
  But we got wise!
• Bottle Episode: "Ups and Downs", featuring Wakko and Dr. Scratchansniff stuck in an elevator for the majority of the short.
• Bowdlerise:
  • Reruns of "Moon Over Minerva" edited Minerva's low-cut outfits to show less cleavage.
  • "Broadcast Nuisance" had a lot of content that didn't make it to the final airing; for instance, Dan Anchorman's name was originally Slam Fondlesome. Also, there was another minute worth of the Warners tormenting him, as well as several other altered lines (like calling him a "big fat dope"). Most of the latter edits were done to make the Warners seem less hostile. However, the edited version only airs in America, and the original uncut version still airs overseas.
  • Happened with one of the songs on the first soundtrack album. In the animated version, the song "Be Careful What You Eat," about the complex chemicals that go into most prepackaged foods, the song used Black Comedy at the end to hint at what could happen if you eat too much processed food. The soundtrack version threw out that last verse for something much more ordinary and Anvilicious.
  • The Presidents Song's original lyrics were changed from "John F. Kennedy, he gets shot/so Lyndon Johnson took his spot" to "John Kennedy had Camelot".
  • Nickelodeon were terrible with it, having a specific version of the titles, removing most of the individuality, and putting in several blatant references to Nickelodeon, including a 'special' re-edited version of the variable line gag, using "Nickelaney" instead of all the gags.
  • The Arabic dub of the show, The Laughers, censored a few scenes to comply with Arabian values:
    • In "Yakko's World", Palestine is mentioned twice because of the Arabian belief that Israel doesn't exist.
    • "One Flew Over the Cuckoo Clock" removed the scene where Slappy kicked the doctor in the groin after he hit her knee with a medical hammer.
    • The version of "Variety Speak" in "Hooray For North Hollywood" censored any scene showing the backup dancers due to their outfits, replacing those scenes with other clips from the same episode, such as a shot of Wakko reading Variety and a shot of a bus driving away (which was used twice).
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Exaggerated in "Survey Ladies," in which Yakko, Wakko, and Dot are accosted at the mall by two elderly women with Midwestern accents who are stopping random passersby to ask them poll questions("Wouldja like ta take a surr-vay?!" they keep asking.) The first question is "Do you like beans?" The second question is "Would you like to see a new movie starring George Wendt (the actor who played Norm Peterson on Cheers)?" And then after that come a seemingly infinite number of questions that all combine the themes of beans and George Wendt in various ways. ("Would you like to see George Wendt eating beans in a movie?" "How many beans do you eat at George Wendt bean-eating movies?" "Do you like to eat beans with George Wendt?", etc.) The poll-takers continue annoying the Warners - and various other characters - throughout the cartoon, and are still rattling off questions as the cartoon ends.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: "Good Idea, Bad Idea".
• Breaking the Fourth Wall. Well, more like Pulverizing The Fourth Wall.
  • Especially in the Warner shorts, in which one might say there are two missing/broken fourth walls, with one that fits the premise of the show (that they are children who live on the WB Studio and perform skits) and one that goes even beyond that (such as Dot's profanity-laden rant in Cutie and the Beast, or the cold ending, in which they plan to go out and get cappuccinos, in the same episode). Your mind will explode if you try to make too much sense of it.
• Bubble Pipe: Yakko "puffs" on a soap-bubble pipe while parodying highbrow intellectuals in "Disasterpiece Theater." He uses it again in "Broadcast Nuisance", "Go Fish", and "The Panama Canal."
• Burning with Anger: Katie Kaboom.
• Butt-Monkey: Scratchansniff, Rita, the Brain, Pinky, Runt, Buttons, The Mime, Mr. Skullhead, Chicken Boo, the Goodfeathers, Charlton Woodchuck, Walter Wolf, Sid the Squid, Beanie the Bison, just about any non-main character... in other words, most of them, not surprising given that this is a WB cartoon.
  • There's also a good deal of Iron Butt Monkey, since these characters are, for all intents and purposes, immortal (although we learn in "Meatballs or Consequences" that the Warners do have souls).
  • The most common formula for the Warner shorts involved them finding and latching onto 'a Special Friend,' which pretty much meant that some Jerkass was in for six minutes of hilarious torment.
• Butt Sticker: Twice:
  • "The Boids" with the director, Alfred Hitchcock, sitting on the Goodfeathers. Then they're shown stuck to his butt.
  • "Pitter Patter of Little Feet" During the night when the Brain tries to escape, he falls on the floor. And when the hippos go to look for him, Flavio slips and the Brain is found on his butt.

C

• Call-Back:
  • The Package conversation from "The Sound of Warners" contains one to Potty Emergency:
    Dr. Scratchansniff: As you know, when nature calls, you have to pick up the phone and say "Hello, I got your message. I've got a package for you."
    Wakko: "I've got a package for you"? Excuse me?
    Dr. Scratchansniff: Oh, look who's talking, Mr. Potty Emergency.
  • "Yakko's World" ends with Yakko mentioning Sudan; when Yakko sang every word in the English language, he ended with Zaire.
  • When Dot can't say her full name in "Cutie and The Beast", Yakko says it, prompting another reference to "Yakko's World".
    Dot: Oh thank you, Mr United States-Canada-Mexico-Panama.
  • In "Bingo", Wakko hands Dr. Scratchansniff a soda when he mishears him saying "I-30!" as "I'm thirsty!". The soda in question? Abyss Boy, the catalyst to Wakko's Potty Emergency.
• Calling Your Nausea: In "Bumbie's Mom", Slappy and Skippy are on a plane when Skippy announces he's airsick. When he feels the need to vomit, Slappy advances the episode to the next scene with them on a bus, canceling out his nausea.
• Calling Me a Logarithm: Pesto routinely misunderstands Squit, resulting in a Big Ball of Violence.
• The Cameo:
  • Taz showed up twice at the end of "Draculee, Draculaa" and a more major role in "Cutie and The Beast".
  • Private Snafu gets his head shaved in "Boot Camping".
  • Also: Fifi La Fume, Hamton J. Pig, Babs and Buster Bunny (no relation), Plucky Duck, Shirley the Loon and Dizzy Devil from Tiny Toon Adventures occasionally appeared as well.
  • Elmer Fudd makes an appearance in "Turkey Jerky".
  • Elmyra cameos once or twice, and has a full guest appearance in "Lookit the Fuzzy Heads".
  • The Dover Boys are the smart-alack chorus in "Frontier Slappy" and "Magic Time.
  • Used quite often In-Universe where shorts dedicated to one set of characters would find another set of the cast (typically the Warners) running through) - often ending in BLAMs.
  • Bugs, Daffy, Tweety, Porky, Yosemite Sam and Foghorn Leghorn show up in "The Warners 65th Anniversary Special".
  • Sylvester and Tweety appeared in "The Big Wrap Party".
  • Batman and Robin make a very quick cameo at the end of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" to rescue Yakko, Wakko, and Dot from Queen Titania.
  • Freakazoid! once wandered in looking for his set.
  • The homeless father toward the end of "The Gift of Gold" was the poor construction worker who first found Michigan J. Frog.
  • During Dot's constant journey for some quiet time to read her novel, she tries to do so in Scotland. But then gets disturbed by bagpipes played by the very same bagpiper that challenged Bugs Bunny to a game of golf.
  • Bugs, Daffy and both baby and regular Plucky appear in "Video Review".
  • Fowlmouth makes a voice-only appearance in "Meet Minerva".
• Cannot Tell a Joke: One time, okay see, one time there was a character in Animaniacs who was a small boy who told stories about stuff that had happened to his friend Randy Beaman and the stories were always told in a near-monotone and in one long run-on sentence and at the end he'd recite the punchline in the same way and you wouldn't be sure if he'd reached it or not. Okay, bye.
• Captain Ersatz/Expy: The Warners are based heavily on the Marx Brothers, with bits and pieces from other characters: Dot shows roots from Gilda Radner, and Wakko shows influences from Ringo Starr.
  • Slappy's jerkass behavior in her old cartoons (which she gleefully indulges any time she meets her old nemeses) gives her an uncanny resemblance to Screwy Squirrel. She also appears to have Barbra Streisand's interpretation of Fanny Brice in her ancestry.
  • The Brain bears some pretty clear similarities to Orson Welles, most notably the voice, which actor Maurice LaMarche describes as "65% Orson Welles, 35% Vincent Price".
  • In "One Flew Over the Cuckoo Clock", there are basically elderly versions of Tom and Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, Wally Walrus, Mighty Mouse, Goofy, Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck at the retirement home Slappy is staying at.
  • The stork in "Pitter Patter of Little Feet" has the same voice and mannerisms as Concord Condor.
• Captain Obvious: The Japanese dub turns "Citizen Kaney" into "This is a sled."
• Cardboard Pal: The Warner Brothers (and Dot) create nodding dummies of themselves to allow them to sneak off a boring chat show that they are hosting.
• Cardboard Prison: The WB Water Tower for the Warners.
• Cartoon Creature: Yakko, Wakko, and Dot.
• Cartoony Tail: The Brain has a tail like a real mouse, except it is kinked in a way that it looks like stair steps. Truth in Television to an extent; in labs where many mice are handled on a frequent basis, kinks occasionally occur due to careless handling.
• Cassandra Truth: Every Chicken Boo short has a naysayer that sees through Boo's disguise and points out that he's a giant chicken. The naysayer is rarely believed until Chicken Boo ends up blowing his cover, which prompts the naysayer to show up and say "I told you that guy was a chicken!"
• The Cat Came Back: The Warners did this to practically everybody they tormented. This was inverted in "Survey Ladies" and "Chairman of the Bored," in which they are tormented by ubiquitous characters.
• Cats Are Superior: Rita and Runt, a cats-rule-dogs-drool Odd Friendship.
• Changing Chorus:
  • In "The Monkey Song", the only consistent line in the chorus is "I don't know what to say! The monkeys won't do!", and even that gets changed to "We don't know what to say! The Warners won't do!" at the end.
  • In "Shnitzelbank", each chorus is a list of items pointed out in the previous verse, followed by "O de schone, o de schone, o de schone schnitzelbank."
• Chaotic Car Ride:
  • The premise of the song "I'm Mad," which features Dr. Scratchnsniff trying to take the Warners on a day trip in his car. Unfortunately Yakko and Dot are apparently at each other's throats while Wakko has a litany of complaints that combine to make Scratchy lose his mind. All set to a fun song that was probably the bane of parents from the 90s to the early 2000s.
  • In "The Carpool", the Warners annoy the man in the back seat so much, he has them trade seats, including him sitting in a bagel and cream cheese, and getting pummelled by the seat in front severely reclining. Wakko gets carsick, but it's ok, he won't throw up in the car... because he already did. Eventually they reach the transit center, and it's revealed the Warners didn't need to get anywhere, and only carpooled to get perks at the studio.
• Character Catchphrase: There were several.
  • Yakko and Wakko had "Hello, Nurse!" and its variants.
  • Yakko had "Goodnight, everybody!"
  • Yakko also had "Of course you know, this means Warners.", though his siblings joined in on at least one occasion.
  • Less often, when another character would provoke the siblings or anyone in general, Yakko would point them out as their "new best friend," implying the same thing as the above.
  • Dot had variations on "I can't help it if I'm cute," as well as "Wanna see my pet?"
  • Wakko had "Faboo!"
  • Slappy had "You remind me of..." (See below.)
  • Skippy had "Spew!!" as an Unusual Euphemism.
  • Mindy had "OK-I-love-you-bye-bye."
  • The Brain had the running gags that started with "Are you pondering what I'm pondering?" as well as a Cassandra Truth: "We are two lab mice engaged in the early stages of a plot to conquer the world." Also: "Stop that, or I shall have to hurt you."
  • Pinky's catch phrases were largely of the Verbal Tic variety, most notably "Narf!"
  • Pesto's usual one was the running gag (and homage to Goodfellas) that started with "What are you saying?" or "What do you mean by that?"
• Chess with Death: In "Meatballs or Consequences", an parody of The Seventh Seal, the Animaniacs play checkers (as Dot and Yakko say that chess is unknown to them) for Wakko's life with Death. (The Warners win, but they blatantly cheat, and for some reason, Death fails to notice). They play to stay together, which Death interprets as taking all three, but Death finds them too annoying to keep dead.
• The Chew Toy: Squit. Even Bobby usually laughs at Pesto's abuse towards him.
• Childish Older Sibling: The middle Warner sibling, Wakko, is much more of a ditzy goofball than his younger sister, Dot.
• Children Do the Housework: In "One Flew Over the Cuckoo Clock", Skippy Squirrel takes care of his aunt Slappy after she gets driven insane from watching too many talk shows, forcing him to take care of all the housework. This leaves him exhausted to the point of falling Asleep in Class, which causes his teacher to worry about him.
• Christmas Carolers: One of the "Good Idea, Bad Idea":
  Good Idea: Singing Christmas carols to your neighbors.
  Bad Idea: Singing Christmas carols to your neighbors...on the Fourth of July. (said carolers are blown up with dynamite)
  "The End."
• Christmas Episode: There were three.
• Circus Episode: "I'm Mad" combines this with Road Trip Plot. Dr. Scratchansniff takes the Warners on a long car trip, only to struggle greatly because the Warners are fighting and arguing like bratty little kids the whole way. When they reach their destination, which turns out to be a circus, the Warners finally stop fighting and brighten up. We then skip to the end of the day, with the Warners and Dr. Scratchansniff returning to the car, and the Warners talk about how much they enjoyed their time at the circus. But then, the moment they start to drive away, the Warners start fighting again.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Wakko, on more than one occasion.
  • Pinky as well, especially after Brain says "Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?"
  • Runt has his moments, too.
• City People Eat Sushi: Alluded to in the episode "Hooray for North Hollywood", where sushi is portrayed as the go-to lunch for all the power brokers of Tinseltown.
• Clip-Art Animation: "The Presidents Song" utilized this in an intentional Terry Gilliam-esque manner, "animating" old portraits and photographs of the past presidents.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Dot drops an intentionally unintelligible one (complete with bleeps) during the Beauty and the Beast parody, after screwing up her Overly Long Name gag one too many times.
  Yakko: That's my cute little sister who said that! (blows a kiss) Goodnight everybody!
• Cold Open: Before the theme song, most episodes start with "Newsreel of the Stars" which explains the origins of Yakko, Wakko, and Dot. When it retired, it mainly started with short sketches or a wraparound segment that is a framing device.
• The Comedy Drop: Yakko has instructed his sister Dot to "dust for prints". She returns a moment later saying "I found Prince". Yakko admonishes her. "No, no, no. Finger prints!" Dot looks at Prince, who gives her a huge grin. Dot declares, "I don't think so." and chucks the musician out of the nearest porthole.
• Comical Overreacting: The Katie Kaboom and Minerva Mink shorts both relied on comical overreaction.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • A common gag. Wakko and Pinky are particularly prone to it.
    Wakko (aboard a plane): Hey, Mister! What's this?
    Passenger: It's a vomit bag.
    Wakko (opening it): Ah, phoo! I got gypped! There's none in here!
  • In the "Chicken Boo" segments, the person wise to Chicken Boo's disguise often insists "He's a chicken, I tell you! A giant chicken!" Occasionally, the people who disbelieve this claim are implied to assume that the person meant "chicken" as in "coward".
• The Comically Serious: Principally the Brain and the Narrator of "Good Idea, Bad Idea," although any character playing the 'straight man' would generally qualify as well.
• Company Cameo: The show as a whole centers around various animated characters who are employed by Warner Bros. and work on their movie lot, but none moreso than Yakko, Wakko, and Dot, who regularly introduce themselves as the Warner Brothers (and the Warner Sister). This also results in the company's logo appearing in various locations, most prominently on the water tower that the Warner siblings make their home, which appears at the beginning of the show's theme song.
• Company Cross References:
  • One of the lyrics in "I Am The Very Model Of A Cartoon Individual" mentions several other Warner Brothers cartoon characters: Tweety Bird, Daffy Duck and Babs and Buster Bunny.
  • In "Potty Emergency", a poster of Gossamer from Looney Tunes is seen outside the movie theater. In the coloring book adapting the same episode, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are seen as posters.
  • In the episode "Take My Siblings, Please", Wakko sings the theme to Tiny Toon Adventures, which is also a Warner Brothers cartoon.
  • The cast of Tiny Toon Adventures show up in "The Big Wrap Party Tonight".
• Compliment Backfire: The Goodfeathers Running Gag is that Pesto always takes Squit's compliments as insults and proceeds to beat him up afterwards.
• The Con: In "Garage Sale Of The Century", Papa Bear is obviously scamming his neighbors and others out of their money by overcharging for crappy and broken items, and refusing to give them refunds. They all end up reporting Papa Bear to the police in order to get their money back.
• Conforming OOC Moment: During some crowd scenes such as the theme song, the Mime (who never speaks due to his occupation, besides an occasion when he said, "Le ow...") can be seen singing along with the others. His voice can't be heard, though.
• Continuity Nod: In the Continuity Snarl entry below, it mentions a cartoon where old vaudeville actors reminisce about the Warners. One of them mentions that 'once they pantsed 'Jimmy Cagney' something had to be done. James Cagney expy aside, later on in the 65th Anniversary episode, Foghorn Leghorn notes that the Warners seemed to favor bothering Jimmy, and it turns out they did in fact pants him.
• Continuity Porn: "Big Wrap Party Tonight".
• Continuity Snarl: The original explanation that the kids have been locked in a water tower for 63 years is contradicted in a later episode showing various older Hollywood stars reminiscing about spending nights on the town with them - and these photos are in black and white, meaning those nighttime adventures almost surely took place before 1993. Did the Warners actually escape many times, but the studio succeed in covering up their existence until the '90s? If so, how was that accomplished? Did they massively bribe all the people in those nightclubs?
  • The 65th Anniversary Special gives it a retcon—the tower had to be cleaned/repaired every few years or so, letting the Warners out for a single day for the work (they just didn't stay in the studio—Plotz says he has no clue where they went and we're later shown them at a disco club, the Berlin Wall, and so on).
• Conveyor Belt o' Doom: The accidental version happens to Mindy and Buttons in "Up the Crazy River", where Mindy, oblivious as usual, sidesteps out of the way at the last possible second. As always, Buttons comes off the worst for it.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: In one episode, Satan threatens to torture the captive Warner siblings by forcing them to listen to "whiny protest songs from The Sixties." They scream in terror.
• Cool Old Lady: Slappy Squirrel.
• Corny Nebraska: A short starring Runt and Rita has the two wind up in Nebraska, much to Rita's dismay but Runt's delight. The following song has Rita express all of the things she desires that aren't in Nebraska, while Runt continues going on and on about the corn.
  Rita : [singing] Just to be fair, I wanna ask ya: What's so great about Nebraska?
  Runt : It's... da... [stops singing] Corn! Definitely da corn!
• Couch Gag:
  • The second to last line of the opening song is interchangeable with several other lines, all of which rhyme with "Animani—". ^note For re-runs on Nickelodeon, the line was changed to "Nickel-ayni!" for every episode, while The Hub just used the generic "Here's the show's namey" for most episodes.
  • The closing credits would also have various credits gags that changed from episode to episode, plus the occasional closing joke after the credits finish. Episode 65 deserves special mention for the sheer number of credits gags.

• Credits Gag: During the first two seasons, Kathryn Page would be listed under an obviously-fake role of some kind. In the final three seasons, this was replaced with a more general credits joke that would just have a quick one-liner.
• Crossover: Within itself, and with Tiny Toon Adventures, Freakazoid! and Pinky and the Brain when they ran concurrently. One episode in particular was dedicated to this: every segment featured characters from different shorts going through the typical plots of their own cartoons. Mindy was paired with Brain, who attempted to create a revolting stink bomb while babysitting her; Rita and Pinky shared a (very brief) short wherein the cat, quite logically, ate the mouse; Pesto and Runt tried to find themselves a decent home, only to be doomed by the pigeon's short temper; Katie Ka-Boom brought her new boyfriend "C.B."—that is, Chicken Boo—over for a date, and became furious when her family pointed out that he was a chicken; Dot briefly took over Slappy's tree and blew up the audience with a bomb for calling her Dottie; and Slappy herself (along with Flavio the Hip Hippo in a cameo as Skippy) joined the Warners in their own cartoon, where she lost all patience for their zany antics and wordplay and ended up using her traditional arsenal of bombs.
• Cuckoo Clock Gag:
  • The short "No Time for Love" is about a cuckoo bird who tries to woo a canary in a nearby cage, which is hard for him to do because he's attached to his base, always has to go back into his clock after the bell tolls, and has to wait a whole hour to come out again.
  • Zigzagged in the episode "One Flew Over the Cuckoo Clock". While Slappy's titular cuckoo clock is for the most part relevant to the plot of the episode, there are a few gags associated with it, such as it going off the second time to signify that Slappy has lost her marbles from watching too many talk shows, and the clock falling on one of the rest home's patients' heads, making the bird pop out of their mouth.
• Cultural Translation: The German dub changes from Hello Nurse playing Chopin without rehearsing, to playing Brahms, to fit the rhythm of the song about her better.
• Curse Cut Short:
  • In the song "I'm Cute":
    Yakko and Wakko: She's becoming a pain in the-
    Dot: -but I'm also real nice...
  • Also the Dot song in Cutie and the Beast:
    Man: This song makes me want to curse! (hits his finger with a hammer) F-
    Yakko: (grabs man's mouth) Please move on to the next verse!
• Cut the Juice: Dot tries this in "Our Final Space Cartoon, We Promise", but it doesn't work.
• Cuteness Proximity: Dot has used this to her advantage on more than one occasion.

D

• Damned By a Fool's Praise: Slappy tells Skippy that all that junk food has rotted his brain, and adds "No wonder you like that Bonkers show."
• A Day in the Limelight: "The Warner 65th Anniversary Special" features the comeback of one of the original Looney Tunes stars, "Buddy"—as a villain, no less! And voiced by Jim Cummings!
• Deadpan Snarker: All the Warner siblings, The Brain, Slappy Squirrel, Rita, Bobby...
• Department of Redundancy Department: In the sketch "Mobster Mash", the Warners pretend to be waiters and harass the Godfather Don Pepperoni. Part of this is saying the things on the menu two different ways. "What'll it be? Calamari or the squid? Pasta or the noodles? Red sauce or marinara? Zucchini or squash? Ham or prosciutto? Drink or beverage?"
• Depending on the Artist: The show had a passel of different animation studios working on it, often leading to examples of this trope. One of the most blatant examples was the short "Be Careful What You Eat". It was animated by StarToons but the first minute looks nothing like the studio's usual style (in fact, it looks more like something AKOM would put out). According to Jon McClenahan, this minute was animated by somebody on the west coast that the studio didn't usually employ and to this day, he refuses to say who it is out of respect.
• Deranged Animation: When Katie Ka-Boom becomes a monster, it gets pretty freaky.
• Detective Drama: "This Pun for Hire" and "Hercule Yakko".
• Died on Their Birthday: A "Good Idea, Bad Idea" segment features the bad idea of throwing a surprise birthday party for your grandfather... who dies from shock.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: In "Take My Sibling, Please", Wakko sings the Tiny Toon Adventures theme before getting tired of it, and instead sings his show's theme on the way over the troll bridge.
• Disgusting Public Toilet: The cartoon "Potty Emergency" has Wakko desperate for a place to relieve himself. He tries a gas station, where the owner says he hasn't cleaned the restroom in a year (and gives an Evil Laugh). Despite his desperation, Wakko still finds that too gross to use.
• Disproportionate Retribution: In "I Got Yer Can", Slappy drives Candie the chipmunk insane via psychological warfare because Candie wouldn't let Slappy put her soda can in Candie's trash can.
  • In a Christmas edition of the "Good Idea, Bad Idea" segments:
    Good Idea: Singing Christmas carols to your neighbors. [shot of carolers singing in front of a house in the snow]
    Bad Idea: Singing Christmas carols to your neighbors... on the Fourth of July. [residents of said house use dynamite to blow up the carolers]
  • Another holiday-themed "Good Idea, Bad Idea":
    Good Idea: Going trick-or-treating on Halloween. [Mr. Skullhead and kids receive candy from a neighbor]
    Bad Idea: Going trick-or-treating on St. Patrick's Day. [A man dressed in stereotypical leprechaun attire emerges and punches Mr. Skullhead across the yard]
• Distracted by the Sexy: Happens to Newt in when he try to catch Minerva Mink and is victim of her beauty. To his credit which would make him a Determinator as well?.
• The Ditz: Runt and the Studio Guard Ralph are the recurring examples. They even had the same voice.
• DIY Dentistry: In a "Good Idea Bad Idea" segment, Mr. Skullhead demonstrates why serving as your own dentist is a bad idea, especially if it involves drilling.
• Dogs Are Dumb: Runt. He even thinks Rita is a dog herself. Occasionally subverted in that Runt will sometimes see the danger before Rita, such as when Cleopatra was going to drop her into a bonfire as a ritual sacrifice.
• Dogs Hate Squirrels: In the episode, "Slappy Goes Walnuts", one of Slappy Squirrel's archenemies is Doug the Dog, a bulldog who guards a walnut tree, which Slappy wants to collect walnuts from for her walnut fig-dough.
• Dogs Love Fire Hydrants: In "Potty Emergency", Wakko sees a dog trying to use a fire hydrant.
• Don't Look Down:
  • Invoked in "The Big Candy Store" when Flaxseed climbs an impossibly high shelf.
    Dot: Don't look down! [[You might fall and hit your head and die]] and your brains would leak out aaaaaall over!
  • Also in Wakko's Wish.
    Yakko: Whoa! Just don't look down!
    Wakko: Do you get vertigo?
    Yakko: No.
    Wakko: Me neither.
    Yakko: Yeah, I've seen that movie three times, and I still don't get it.
• Downer Ending: "The Ballad of Magellan", which is to be expected, considering the real Magellan did not survive the journey.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: One appears in "Boot Camping".
• Drive-In Theater: The setting for "Drive Insane".
• Driving Up a Wall: In the Animaniacs stew segment "Mindy and The Brain", Brain finds himself chased by a lawnmower and attempts to escape it by climbing up a tree. The lawnmower ends up following him up to his surprise.
  Brain: This is most unexpected.
• Due to the Dead: Played for Laughs and Hypocritical Humor in a Slappy Squirrel skit where Walter Wolf fakes his death. Skippy's watching Slappy's old cartoons and laughing at Walter's Amusing Injuries, but when he hears the news he does an about-face and verbally attacks Slappy for tormenting him in those toons.

E-F

• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • Most of the regular characters have cameos in the first episode, even though all the cartoons in that episode star the Warner siblings and the others wouldn't get their first full-length cartoons until at least an episode or two later.
  • A young Walter Wolf appears as Slappy's co-star in the old cartoon she watches at the beginning of her debut, "Slappy Goes Walnuts," and she also mentions Sid the Squid and Beanie the Bison. They wouldn't appear in the "present" until "Hooray For Slappy" in Episode 16.
• Ears as Hair: Dot.
• Easy Evangelism: Spoofed in "A Very, Very, Very, Very Special Show."
• Edible Ammunition: Shows up now and then.
• Educational Song: Lots, including songs for all the U.S. presidents up to Bill Clinton (who was president at the time), the 50 states and their capitals, and of course, the famous Nations of the World song. See also the Edutainment Show entry below.
• Edutainment Show: Despite Yakko's claim that the Wheel of Morality was the only thing that "adds boring educational content to what would otherwise be an entertaining program!" Animaniacs regularly took a moment to teach its audience. They have been used as teaching material, and there is even testimony of them aiding history students as far as college-level.
  • How many normal kids' cartoons would bother to do a surprisingly accurate and funny translation from Late 16th Century English to Modern English of the Yorick speech from Hamlet when they could easily make a nonsensical version?
  • They had songs relating from everything to the solar system to every President of the United States at the time of production (ending with Hillary - uh, Bill Clinton^note  This is one of a very small number of times where Steven Spielberg personally intervened to change a cartoon. The lyrics originally had "Clinton, first name Hillary" for the Clinton entry; Spielberg, a friend of the Clintons, forced them to change it to "the Clintons, Bill and Hillary" because he didn't like jokes implying that Hillary was really running things, a common trope at the time ).
  • Parodied outrageously in "A Very, Very, Very, Very Special Show", where virtually every line is Yakko, Wakko, or Dot giving a soapbox on various issues (the dangers of second-hand smoke, walking instead of driving, not littering, not treating women as sex objects, not being violent, practicing a healthy diet and exercise). They were shamelessly shilling to win the lucrative "Humanitarian Animation" award but lost anyway, at which point they immediately did all the things they rallied against.
  • United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, Peru.... It's a shame that "Yakko's World" missed a few.
    • It's worth noting that the map in "Yakko's World" had the Soviet Union on it, simply referred to by Yakko as "Russia," even though the Soviet Union had officially disbanded in 1991.
• Eldritch Abomination: Dot's "pet".
• Elvis Lives: A favorite Running Gag. He turns up in "Space Probed," hanging out with Bigfoot and Amelia Earhart; is standing in a long cafeteria line in "Windsor Hassle"; and is pulled out of Wakko's gag bag while Wakko is rummaging through it in "Potty Emergency."
  • One of the stingers saw the Warner Trio saying goodnight to one another, offscreen. It ended with:
  Yakko: Good night, Elvis.
  Elvis: Thank you very much, but I don't want anyone to know I'm here.
  • And from The Wheel of Morality: "Elvis lives on in our hearts, in his music, and in a trailer park outside Milwaukee."
  • In "Wakko's America", Wakko tells us that Elvis hung out a lot in Nashville.
• Emergency Taxi: One of the ways Dali Llama tries to escape the Warner siblings is hailing a cab (keeping in mind he lives in the mountains of India). However, the Warners were also in the cab with Dot driving.
• Enlightenment Superpowers: Wally Llama, a Dalai Lama Expy, attempts to get away from the Warners by meditating, transporting himself up among the clouds with the mantra "Llama, llama, llama..." Unfortunately for him, the Warners reached Enlightenment too.
• Episode Title Card
• Equippable Ally: One scene features Dot using Wakko as a gatling gun to shoot malted milk balls at a candy store owner.
• Everyone Hates Fruitcakes: Fruitcakes being given to Mr. Plotz is a running gag in the episode "A Christmas Plotz," which he rejects because he hates fruitcake (and has an whole office full of fruitcakes that were given to him). It gets to the point where he thinks that Dot, who is disguised as a gift box when she enters as the Ghost of Christmas Present, is probably another fruitcake, which she is insulted by ("fruitcake" being a term for an insane person). At the end of the story, after he has reformed, instead of sending a turkey to Ralph's house, Plotz tells the Warners to buy the biggest fruitcake they can find and send it to Ralph's house. They bring a gigantic fruitcake the size of Ralph's trailer house using a helicopter and drop it, where it lands on top of Plotz. Listening to Plotz's screams underneath the fruitcake, Wakko replies that "We'll have you out of there by Easter." The trope is possibly subverted given that the Warners don't seem to mind the task of eating the giant fruitcake (although Wakko is an Extreme Omnivore so saying he doesn't mind fruitcake isn't saying much).
• Evil Laugh Turned Coughing Fit: Slappy Squirrel's rivals, Walter Wolf, Sid the Squid, and Beanie the Braindead Bison, would often laugh maniacally together only for them to cough at the end.
• Exact Words: A favorite gag of the Warners is interpreting things to the word of a statement rather than the spirit.
  • Plotz accidentally hires the Warners as his temporary secretaries and tells Dot to file a stack of documents. Once left to their own devices, Dot pulls out a giant nail file and begins to file down the stack of paper.
  • When Wakko is visiting a dollar store, he asks the cashier what every little thing is worth. The cashier eventually blows up and yells that everything in the store is a dollar. Wakko thanks him and proceeds to load everything in the store into a shopping cart while leaving a dollar at the cash register.
• Expository Theme Tune:
  • Both the main Animaniacs theme and the introductory tunes for the "Rita and Runt" and "Pinky and the Brain" shorts qualify.
  • "Baloney & Kids" parodies the Real Life Barney & Friends theme.
    Baloney is our friendly friend
    That we made up ourselves
    He likes to play and sing all day
    That we made our ourselves
• The Faceless: The Nazis are this in Puttin On the Blitz. We see their bodies and hear them speak however.
• Fairest of Them All: Snow White was no better than her Wicked Stepmother. She had the dwarfs abduct Dot for being the cutest of the all. In the end, after Snow is defeated, Dot had the Magic Mirror covered so it'd be no longer able to have anyone Driven by Envy.
• The Fake Cutie: Dot takes pride in being "the cute one", but she's hardly the innocent type.
• Fan Disservice: The very first thing shown in the "Macadamia Nut" video is Ralph the Guard dancing suggestively with his fat gut hanging out of his shirt.
• Fanservice: Provided mainly by Hello Nurse and, in her few appearances, Minerva Mink.
• Fanservice Extra: Some women that are not the two above-mentioned. Special mention to Yakko's Chorus Girls that he summon in two episodes.
  "I love cartoons!"
• Fantastic Racism: Pretty much the whole point of Chicken Boo cartoons is everyone turning against the title character when it turns out that he is indeed a chicken.
• Female Feline, Male Mutt: Rita and Runt.
• Fighting Back Is Wrong: In one Slappy Squirrel episode, Skippy is constantly being picked on by a school bully. Slappy suggests fighting back, but Skippy refuses because of his counselor telling that is the wrong thing to do and instead tries everything his counselor suggests to him. When nothing the counselor suggests works, Skippy gives up and gets Aunt Slappy to help him get back at the bully, and the end result not only stops the bullying, but the bully also becomes Skippy's friend. When the chairman of the FTA and Skippy's counselor arrive to lecture Slappy, she deals with them too.
• Fire and Brimstone Hell: "Hot, Bothered, and Bedeviled".
• Fluffy the Terrible: Most of Dot's "Pets" when she does the "Wanna See My Pet?"
• Follow the Bouncing Ball: The two sing-along VHS tapes (Animaniacs Sing-Along: Yakko's World and Animaniacs Sing-Along: Mostly in Toon) were yet another example of sing-along collections with the lyrics written on screen. Some songs used the trope's name, while others would highlight the words as they were sung, and some even used a mixture of both methods. In some pretty unusual cases, "Yakko's World" and "All the Words in the English Language" had the words crawl upwards one at a time (due to both being List Songs), and "Wakko's America" and "The Presidents" used neither "bouncing ball" method, instead opting to highlight the state and capital or the president names, respectively.
• Food Songs Are Funny: "Be Careful What You Eat"
• Formula-Breaking Episode:
  • Some of the sketches featured none of the usual cast. One notable example is "The Flame", a mostly-serious cartoon entirely about a candle flame watching Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence.
  • Even the "regular" cast can do this, such as the Rita and Runt segment "Puttin' on the Blitz", set in World War II Poland, and "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena," a straight-up music video of the song's original recording with Slappy in the titular role.
• Four-Fingered Hands: The entire cast.
  • Though hands have been seen to turn five-fingered on a close-up, or sometimes a character will grow a pinky while counting.
  • There's also a really weird instance where a judge points as the Warners and asks, "What is the meaning of this?" Yakko replies, "That's a finger. You have five of them on each hand." In that instant, the judge has five fingers, but is seen to revert to being four fingered afterward.
  • Averted with King Salazar, who is always shown with five-fingered hands.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In "Garage Sale of the Century", a large crowd of people charge Papa Bear's lawn to get their refunds. Among (and on top of) them are Babs and Buster Bunny, Dizzy Devil, and Batman.
• The Friends Who Never Hang: Zig Zagged. During the Fox Kids era, it was rare that all the characters appeared in the same room together interacting with each other, with there only being a select handful of episodes featuring the entire cast. However, once the series moved to Kids! WB, while still focusing on individual segments/characters, episodes featuring the whole cast became more prominent (such as "Gunga Dot", "Mighty Wakko at the Bat", Dot - The Macadamia Nut", etc).
• Funny Background Event: In other character sketches you can see Yakko, Wakko and Dot being chased by Ralph as a brief (*ahem*) Running Gag.
  • Also, in the background of the song "The Ballad of Magellan" when they reach Argentina, there's a sign that says: "Coming soon: Evita".
  • In the Quake Song when Buttons is saving Mindy from a collapsing wall; Wakko and Dot can be seen behind it with crowbars and hammers.
• Fun with Foreign Languages: One episode was French-themed, including a rendition of the opening theme in French and a subtitled "Buttons and Mindy" segment. While the "Rita and Runt" segment was in English, it was their parody of Les Misérables, which of course took place in The French Revolution.
• Fun with Subtitles: The short "Space Probed" has the Warners kidnapped by an alien, who talks in an alien language with subtitles, which the Warners are fully aware of and can even manipulate (such as turning "THESE ARE TYPICAL EARTH CREATURES" into "ARE THESE TYPICAL EARTH CREATURES?").

G

• Gag Nose: In the episode "Back In Style", the Warners are on a parody of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids called "Obese Orson" that has a literal example of this trope. One of the characters is "Hooknosed Harold" who has a running gag of his nose hanging so low that it keeps getting in his mouth.
• Game Show Appearance:
  • Downplayed in "Wakko's America". Their teacher organizes a Jeopardy!-style quiz in-class, where he sings the 50 U.S. states and their capitals. He loses because he doesn't sing it in the form of a question.
  • In another episode, the Warners ended up on a quiz show, and were constantly guessing "Isaac Newton" for the answers...except for the questions actually about Isaac Newton.
  • They once hosted a game show that parodied You Bet Your Life in one short skit.
  • The Jeopardy!-style show Gyp-Parody! also figured in the Brain's very first attempt in-series to take over the world.
  "Go ahead, Brian." "That's Brain."
• Gasshole: Wakko, especially in the Great Wakkoroti shorts, where he basically plays the role of a concert vocalist using nothing but belches.
  • A single installment had Wakko nearly lose his voice and "perform" by squeezing together his hands to make fart noises. Except for the last note.
• Genre Throwback: To the slapstick and goofball comic stylings of Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies, minus the fourth wall.
  • Which is really saying something, considering how often those classic shorts broke the fourth wall themselves.
• "Getting Ready for Bed" Plot: The skit "Nighty-Night Toons" has a rhyming narrator, parodying Goodnight Moon, and is about the whole cast getting ready to go to bed.
• Gigantic Gulp: Wakko drinks from a huge cup of soda labelled Abyss Boy at the movie theater, then promptly has a Potty Emergency. The same drink also appears again in "Bingo" when Wakko mishears Dr. Scratchansniff say "I-30" as "I'm thirsty!".
• Glasses of Aging: Walter Wolf doesn't wear glasses in Slappy Squirrel's old cartoons, but his older self in the present does. The same applies to Vina Walleen, the actress who played Bumbie's mother in the movie "Bumbie the Dearest Deer" from the episode "Bumbie's Mom".
• Gleeful and Grumpy Pairing:
  • The Warners are annoyingly cheerful, while Dr. Scratchensniff is a Nervous Wreck who has to put up with them, much to his frustration.
  • Pinky is cheerful and carefree, Brain is grumpy and irritable. They are still this in their own show, Pinky and the Brain.
  • Slappy Squirrel is a sarcastic and resourceful old lady while her nephew, Skippy, is a nice and happy young boy (even if he does adopt some of his aunt's mannerisms as the series progresses).
  • Runt is a happy-go-lucky Kindhearted Simpleton, Rita is aloof and sarcastic.
  • Out of the Goodfeathers, we have the cheerful and naive Squit and the cranky, short-tempered Pesto. The latter always beats up the former.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Wally Llama snaps when he realises that he doesn't know why hot dogs and hot dog buns are sold in different quantities. Of course, he'd just spent seven minutes in the company of the Warners with their deliberately annoying meter running at 100%, which could not have helped.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Used in "Valuable Lesson" when Attila the Hun attacks the two censors that have spent the entire short nagging the Warners about the violence in their cartoons. The carnage happens entirely off-screen, but Yakko's remark that the censors came in handy after all indicates that the censors didn't survive.
• Grand Finale: Wakko's Wish.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: A spoof of the "Macarena" (Macadamia Nuts) contained the phrases "Donde Kielbasa Nintendo," "qui a coupe le fromage," and "Lava tus manos por favor."
• Groupie Brigade: Lampshaded in an episode, where the Warner Brothers and the Warner Sister Dot are in the middle of a parody of A Hard Day's Night, and sing "We are running from our fans".

H

• Hair-Trigger Sound Effect: One episode has the Warner siblings facing a terrifying troll, whose very mention is always accompanied by an organ sting.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Pesto, for obvious reasons. Katie Kaboom, too.
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Most of the furry characters.
• Hammerspace: Wakko uses his most often.
• Hammerspace Hideaway: Dot had a special box in which she keeps a gigantic monster. The Warner brothers themselves can pop out of incredibly small places as well.
• Hammerspace Police Force: In the Slappy Squirrel short "Little Old Slappy from Pasadena", Slappy Squirrel races through town in her car at great speed and causes indirect harm to passersby. At the end of the short, she returns home only to be surrounded by police ready to turn her in for exceeding the speed limit and being a public nuisance.
• Handbag of Hurt:
  • From the intro: "Goodfeathers flock together, Slappy whacks 'em with her purse.”
• Harmless Liquefaction: In one of the "Animator's Alley" segments in episode 42, all three of the Warners melt from the sheer boredom of Cappy Capbarnhouse's long-winded tangents.
• Heart Beats out of Chest: Yakko and Wakko got through this when they see Hello Nurse for the first time. In "Moon Over Minerva," the titular Mink goes through an interesting variant; Each beat causes her head to expand, until it detaches from her body, nearly floating away before she pulls it back down.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Hello Nurse, the source of the former Trope Namer (it is her actual name), and Minerva Mink cause this reaction to men. However Yakko and Wakko generally have this reaction to every beautiful woman. Minerva Mink is also a prime example of the variant in which the one guy who has the same effect on her that she has on men is completely uninterested.
• Here We Go Again!:
  • "Bumbie's Mom" ends with a sendup of Old Yeller.
    Slappy: (Aside Glance) Fade out already, we got the joke!
  • The ending of "Sound of Warners".
  • At the end of "Roll Over, Beethoven", with said composer having forcibly ejected the chimney sweeping Warner siblings from his house (though they have just given him the melody for his famous Symphony No.5), they look at their list of clients to see whose chimney they're due to clean next - Vincent van Gogh. Wakko picks a nearby sunflower in the hope that it might cheer the guy up a bit.
  • The end of the repeated "Yakko sings all the words in the English Language" scenes is Dot announcing that next week, Yakko will sing all of the numbers, starting with one. Yakko, who only barely got through the English dictionary, promptly faints upon hearing this.
• Heroic BSoD: Wally Llama in his self-titled short, after insisting he knows the answer to EVERY question, goes nuts when he doesn't know the Warners' question of why hot dogs come in packages of eight and their buns come in ten.
• Herr Doktor: Dr. Scratchansniff is a psychiatrist and he speaks in a vaguely Austrian accent.
• Hiccup Hijinks: The main plot of two shorts, one revolving around Squit, the other around Wakko.
• Hide and No Seek: Yakko and Dot hide on Wakko's birthday. He meant to seek them out, but got distracted by the Jerry Lewis-like clown who came to visit the water tower.
• Hidden Backup Prince: Yakko.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Mindy is smack-dab in the middle of growing up under some extremely neglectful conditions, though being a toddler, she's blissfully unaware of it so far. Buttons is the one who takes most of the physical and verbal abuse, though.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": The constant exclamation of "Hello Nurse!" whenever she appears onscreen became so ingrained in her character that by the end of the series, her first name is literally "Hello" and her last name is literally "Nurse."
• Historical In-Joke: The Warners often interact with figures like Ludwig van Beethoven and Albert Einstein and become the inspiration for some of their famous works. (E=MC^2 is ACME backwards with Wakko's skewed penmanship of the letter A.)
• Hollywood Board Games: In "No Pain, No Painting", the Warners engage in a game of Pictionary with a stuck-up, Eccentric Artist Pablo Picasso. The siblings start drawing in the yet-unknown cubist style, which ironically gets them criticized by Picasso for their lack of artistic aptitude. Meanwhile, they have no problem figuring out what Picasso's drawings are illustrating because he is, well, an accomplished artist nonetheless. Seeing that he's losing, Picasso decides to draw in a more realistic fashion, stopping the Warners in their tracks. After the game, Picasso decides to adopt the siblings' funny style as his own, discovering at last the art style he's been pursuing the whole episode.
• Hollywood California: The water tower and the surrounding area are a nod to Burbank.
• Honesty Aesop: In "We're Not Pigeons", the Goodfeathers are hunted down by a young Owl who is trying to hunt pigeons. To avoid being hunted, Pesto and Bobby tell the Owl they're macaroni birds and that pigeons look different from them. Squit warns Bobby and Pesto that lying to the Owl will get them in trouble, but Bobby and Pesto don't listen to him. After the Owl catches Pepé Le Pew, a Sewer Gator, and an elephant, the Goodfeathers confess that they're pigeons, but learn from the Owl that the Owls have made a deal with the Godpigeon not to hunt the Goodfeathers. Unfortunately for them, the Owl captures them anyway, believing that since they lied to him about being macaroni birds, they're probably lying to him about being the Goodfeathers.
• House Amnesia: Happens to Einstein during a heated argument with the Warners in "Cookies for Einstein".
• Humanlike Hand Anatomy: Any animal character in Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain except Runt and Buttons (two "non-anthro" dogs), Pharfignewton (a "non-anthro" horse) and Minerva Mink (a mink [obviously] with somewhat human-like feet). The Goodfeathers, Godpigeon, Girlfeathers, and Chicken Boo have Feather Fingers instead.
• Humiliation Conga: Downplayed:
  (to Ralph) We're so sad we have no time together
  Just to drop an anvil on your head
  And stuff your pockets full of dynamite...
  Then tie you to a rhino's head!
  • This was the Warners' general shtick, probably best seen in The Monkey Song.
• Hurricane of Puns: Mostly, in the Warners and the Slappy segments, but taken up to eleven in "This Pun for Hire".
• Hyperspace Arsenal: By all of the Warners quite often, but it's pointed out specifically in "I Am the Very Model of a Cartoon Individual":
  Yakko: From this bag here, why, I can pull most anything imaginable,
  like office desks and lava lights and Bert who is a cannibal.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • Yakko and Wakko's "Hello, Nurse!" is often followed with a disparaging "Boys - go fig." from Dot. And then comes a muscular man...
  • Also:
    Yakko: (aside) The stuff they're getting away with on kids' shows these days...
  • In the Please Please Please Get A Life Foundation skit, they talk about people obsessing over miniscule background details that have been inserted into cartoon shows (specifically their own), talking about how they need to get a life... details that they themselves put into the show in the first place. They even lampshade their inclusion of such trivial details within the short, encouraging people to "call us before you rewind to see what was in the room in the opening shot!"

I

• I Am Not Shazam:
  • The three main characters are actually called "the Warner Brothers (and the Warner Sister"), not "Animaniacs." A first-time viewer might be a little confused because the opening theme song has them repeatedly shouting "We're Animaniacs!" However, this is really just a descriptive term (kind of like a bunch of people shouting "We're human beings!") and applies to all the show's characters, not just the Warners.
  • There's an arguable in-universe one in "The Panama Canal" (sung to the tune of "The Erie Canal.") Yakko is a ship captain crossing from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and he mentions that his ship is named "Hal" (to rhyme with "Canal," of course). After the ship makes it safely through the canal, the sailors shout "Thank you, Hal!" - and Yakko takes the credit, implying that "Hal" is his name. So either Yakko believes that he and his ship are somehow psychically connected, or he is playing a character named Hal in-universe and named the ship after himself.
• "I Want" Song: Every time Rita sings a song, it's about how much she wants a home or thinks she's found one.
• Improvised Parachute: In "Operation: Lollipop", Buttons uses a mailbag as a parachute.
• In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: The show is sometimes called "Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs".
• Incessant Chorus: The national anthem of Anvilania, which is such a boring dirge that it is used as a weapon later on.
• Inflating Body Gag: One episode began with Wakko drinking a huge root beer float, expanding, and floating back onto his seat afterwards... then he got hiccups. He also inflated with air in the first episode.
• Informed Ability: Played with (for laughs) by Chicken Boo, who has a different one every time he appears. He's a karate champ! He's a master strategist! He's a great ballet dancer! He's the sexiest man in Hollywood! (He did turn out to be a two-fisted dealer of frontier justice, though.)
• Ink Blot Test: The series pokes fun at this often enough given that Dr. Scratchansniff fits into the role of the stereotypical psychologist. The first episode "De-Zanitized" has him giving Dot the test. When Dr. Scratchansniff gives the test to Yakko, every picture looks like "girls". (Except the last one, a completely black page that reminds him of "The next cartoon!")
  Scratchansniff: YOU ARE OBSESSED WITH GIRLS!
  Yakko: Hey, you're the one showing me all the sexy pictures.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Pip Pumphandle, based directly off his voice actor Ben Stein.
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet: Yakko's Universe, which seems to be a Homage to the Universe Song from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.
• Insistent Terminology: Whenever someone addresses the Warner brothers, Dot (or someone) will pipe in, "And the Warner sister."
  • Also, "Call me 'Dottie', and you die."
• Interspecies Romance:
  • The Warner Brothers and Sister, from an ambiguous species, keep getting lustful for other species, especially humans.
  • In the Minerva Mink segments, animals from many different species and anthropomorphic levels get the hots for her, and in the comics even humans, while Minerva gets the hots for hunky males no matter the species.
  • Rita's song lyrics and body language seem to indicate that she has romantic feelings for Runt. Runt, naturally, is completely oblivious.
  • In the short West Side Pigeons, Squit (pidgeon) falls in love with Carloota (sparrow).
  • In the short Wings Take Heart, there's a romance between a male moth and a female butterfly.
  • In the short Katie Ka-Boo, Katie (human girl) gets a new boyfriend, but it's Chicken Boo disguised.
• Is This Thing Still On?: An episode from 1996 ends with the Warners badmouthing the people in the end credits, not realizing until the very end that we've just heard them saying all that.
  • Especially amusing in that some of the people they badmouth are their own voice actors.
• It's What I Do: Stinkbomb D. Bassett (one of Slappy's enemies) explains why dogs chase squirrels:
  Stinkbomb: It's our sworn duty to chase 'em, catch 'em and shake 'em like rag dolls!
  Grandson: Why?
  Stinkbomb: I dunno. It's what we do.