Western Animation / Dudley Do-Right

Always do right, Dudley Do-Right!

Originally a supporting character on Rocky and Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right was an endearingly (to the audience, at least) incompetent officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, spoofing silent-movie melodramas. Apparently the only officer in his regiment, Dudley took orders from Inspector Ray Fenwick while protecting the inspector's daughter, Nell, as well as the rest of Canada, from the schemes of the wicked Snidely Whiplash. Or so he thinks. Truth is, Dudley mostly saves the day by sheer luck or the competence of his horse, but he nevertheless takes credit just the same.

In the late 1960s, Dudley headlined his own half-hour Animated Anthology series on ABC, which repackaged the original Jay Ward-produced Dudley segments from Rocky and Bullwinkle along with additional cartoons from Total Television. In 1999, Universal released a live-action Dudley Do-Right movie directed by Hugh Wilson and starring Brendan Fraser, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Alfred Molina. That same year, the show went on to inspire a log flume attraction at Universal's Islands of Adventure, titled, Dudley Do-Right's Ripsaw Falls.

Dudley and Snidely later made guest appearances in the 2014 Rocky and Bullwinkle short, included in the Blu-ray 3D release of Mr. Peabody & Sherman as a bonus feature.

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Dudley Do-Right provides examples of the following tropes:

A-B

• Adults Dressed as Children: In "Mother Love", after Dudley, tricked into thinking Snidely was his little brother, quits his job to take care of him, the former makes the latter dress in a "Lord Fauntleroy suit".
• Agitated Item Stomping: After Nell and her father foil Snidely's plan to make a train go off a cliff, the latter, who impersonated the inspector, takes the hat stolen from him beforehand, throws it on the ground and jumps on it while grumbling, "Curses, curses, curses!"
• Agony of the Feet: Dudley accidentally steps on Inspector Fenwick's foot while tapping his own foot in "The Masked Ginny Lynne".
• All Animals Are Dogs: Snidely once trained an elephant named Spot to scratch behind his ears, and used Spot to win a dog-sled contest in Skagway.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Dudley likes Nell, but she only has eyes for his horse.
• All Part of the Show: "Lure of the Footlights" opens with Dudley chasing Snidely into a theater and they both get mistaken for performers when they run onto the stage. Later, when Nell takes in a show and sees Snidely abusing Dudley in their act, she rushes on stage to try to dissuade Dudley from performing with his archenemy, she gets applauded as well. Later still, when Inspector Fenwick sees that his daughter was performing on stage, he comes onto the stage to dissuade her, and he likewise gets applause for his "performance".
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Exactly why Snidely Whiplash has pea-green skin is never explained. He must be just that evil.
• Ambiguous Time Period: The show is vaguely set somewhere in the range of the 1890s to the 1920s or so. Some episodes get more specific, but such specifics are never maintained consistently from episode to episode due to the use of Negative Continuity. Either that or no one ever ages.
• Anachronism Stew: Too many to list. Perhaps most notably, the RCMP wasn't founded until 1920, so Dudley should be working for its predecessor, the NWMP, in episodes that are explicitly set pre-1920.
• Animation Bump: The few shorts done in the U.S. (usually animated by Gerard Baldwin) look better than the ones done in Mexico as usual. The most striking difference is that the mouth movements are more specific and fluid.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Inspector Fenwick instructed Dudley to get himself kicked out of the service in order to investigate Snidely Whiplash's fur-smuggling operation while in disguise. Dudley's attempts had initially backfired, as the building he burned down was condemned anyway and blowing up the dam solved an irrigation crisis. When instructed by Fenwick to not try, Dudley actually succeeded in the step by eating peas with a knife, something no Mountie should ever do.
• The Bad Guy Wins: In "Recruiting Campaign", Snidely Whiplash creates an ape-like monster named Finster. The episode ends with Finster having destroyed the RCMP fort and beaten Dudley so badly he's in a wheelchair.
• Badly Battered Babysitter: Dudley becomes one in "The Inspector's Nephew" when he mistakes the crook Nasty Noogle for the eponymous boy and gets subject to physical abuse while looking after him.
• Bait-and-Switch: When Dudley is searching for Stokey the Bear among a group of firemen, he comes upon the disguised bear and says, "This man—this man didn't shave this morning," and continues searching the line.
• Batman Gambit: In "Coming Out Party", Inspector Fenwick decides to give Nell a coming out party, despite the fact that she's thirty-seven, and invite Snidely Whiplash. The reason? Fenwick figures that Snidely won't be able to resist a good party. Then he'll check his top hat and cape, which will be replaced with a checked coat and a Bullwinkle hat: a beanie with moose antlers. Fenwick reasons that when Snidely tries to collect mortgages wearing a moose hat, he'll be laughed out of every home he tries to seize. The plan works, but then Dudley tries on Snidely's top hat and cape and goes berserk. He calls himself "Archvillain Dudley Do-Right" and ties at least twenty-seven old ladies to the railroad tracks.
  [Snidely, wearing the checked coat and the Bullwinkle hat, stands at the doorway of a house, showing a ragged woman and her son a mortgage deed.]
  Snidely: Either pay me the money, or out into the cold you go!
  [The mother and son both guffaw.]
  Mother: Look at that funny moose hat!
  Snidely: [tearfully] Oh, please pay me the mortgage! Please, will you?
  [The mother and son are still laughing.]
  Mother: Such a funny hat!
  [Snidely, shoulders slumped in despair, turns and walks out.]
• Borrowed Catchphrase: In "Railroad Tracks", after being tricked by Whiplash for the second time in at least two minutes, Dudley dismally says "Curses, foiled again".
  Snidely: Hey, That's My Line!
• Bound and Gagged: Happens to Nell a lot, naturally.
  • A group of bank robbers do this to most of the Mounties, including Inspector Fenwick, in "Mountie Without a Horse".
• Brick Joke:
  • In "Elevenworth Prison", when Dudley brings the phone to Inspector Fenwick, the latter, who was in the bathtub, states that he was about to sink the Lusitaina (really a toy boat). At the end, Dudley finds the inspector in prison with him, Whiplash, Rollo and the warden of Elevenworth Prison. When asked why he was there, Fenwick reveals that he got ten years for sinking the Lusitaina.
  • In "Mountie Without a Horse", Snidely Whiplash poses as Colonel Crimcrammer and issues an order stating that all Mounties should ride rocking horses. Later, when the real colonel shows up and asks to make some changes to the camp, he sits on a rocking horse when he starts to discuss his ideas.
• Bride and Switch: One episode had Dudley pull this trick on Snidely Whiplash, who was trying to marry Nell, by replacing Nell with his horse. (It worked!)
• Brown Note: In "The Masked Ginny Lynne," Nell's singing voice puts anyone who hears it to sleep. Snidely uses this effect to loot her audiences. Dudley turns out to be immune.
• By-the-Book Cop: Exaggerated in "Saw Mill". Even though Nell's the damsel in distress, Dudley arrested her for mail fraud, because she put a Blue Chip stamp on the letter she sent to Dudley begging him to rescue her.

C-D

• Canadian Western: Contains elements of this.
• Card-Carrying Villain: In the film, Snidely decides as a child that he's going to grow up to be a bad guy.
• Chained to a Railway:
  • The very opening sequence of the show.
  • One episode portrayed it as an addiction for Snidely. He not only ties women to railroad tracks, but Nell, Horse, Inspector Fenwick, and even himself.
    Dudley: Snidley Whiplash?
  • "Niagara Falls" has Snidely tie Dudley to train tracks, only to become overcome with guilt and pull the switch to prevent the train from hitting Dudley.
  • "Snidely Arrested" once again addresses Snidely's addiction to the crime. He actually wants to kick the habit, and he actually seems happy when Inspector Fenwick and Dudley's trap locks him in a cage. However, Nell had been studying the law books and actually wants Snidely released. A trial is held later, and Dudley and the inspector try to prove Whiplash guilty with the help of witnesses, but Nell reveals how his obsession with tying people to railroad tracks stemmed from a childhood mania of tying things in knots, and Dudley, moved by her speech, lets Snidely go free.
  • One story's last panel features an insurance salesman trying to sell Snidely Whiplash a special villains' policy by saying it'll cover him if he's struck by a train while tying someone to a railroad track.
• Circling Birdies:
  • Just one of the hallucinations Dudley has after Snidely, in an attempt to kill him, flicks a boulder called Flicker Rock onto his head.
  • Birds also appear around Dudley after Snidely whacks him with a mallet during a comedy routine in "Lure of the Footlights".
• Clothes Make the Maniac: In "Coming Out Party", after the Mounties have seized Snidely Whiplash's top hat and cape, Dudley tries on said hat and cape and goes berserk. He calls himself "Archvillain Dudley Do-Right" and ties at least twenty-seven old ladies to the railroad tracks. Inspector Fenwick tells Snidely what's happened, then suggests that Snidely become a Mountie and apprehend Dudley. Once in uniform, Snidely feels heroic, and he easily brings Dudley to justice.
• Comedic Hero: Our hero blunders his way through life in the least adept way possible. Still, he somehow always saves the day.
• Comedic Underwear Exposure: Dudley and Snidely have both been victims of this a few times.
  • One notable example is at the end of "The Masked Ginny Lynne", when after, Nell's singing puts her father to sleep, Snidely and his accomplice steal the uniforms of both the inspector and Dudley right under their noses and sneak away.
• Company Cross References: There are a few references to Rocky and Bullwinkle in a few shorts.
• Continuity Snarl: Happens once in a while. For example, in "Matinee Idol", Dudley doesn't know what movies are, despite having been familiar with them in previous shorts.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: In the episode "Out of Uniform", Whiplash steals Do-Right's clothes (making him too ashamed to show his face, not because he's naked, but because he's out of uniform, which to him, is far worse), Do-Right comes up with a clever way of getting even later: He swipes Whiplash's clothes.
• Covered in Kisses: A female bear does this to Dudley against his will in "Mountie Bear".
• Crossover Cameo: Rocky and Bullwinkle are among the prisoners the eponymous bear arrests in "Mountie Bear".
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Defied in "Log Jam". Snidley, using a phony business called Mother Whiplash's Log Jam, causes a log jam that prevents all the timber in Canada from going down the river. He's dismayed to hear that his log jam is doing well in supermarkets, saying he doesn't want to be in the jelly business for real, as it's too legitimate.
• Damsel in Distress: Nell. Although frequently she has to save herself because Dudley would never manage it.
• Darker and Edgier: While the film was a box office failure, it somewhat retains the style of comedy we all know and love in Dudley Do-Right. However a chunk of the film focuses on Dudley being the bad guy in order to ruin Whiplash's reputation as the Bad Guy doing good. What does Dudley do as his first act of evil? He takes Snidely's best henchman and tortures him with a sawmill. It's really papier mache, but he didn't know that.
• Dastardly Whiplash: Partial Trope Namer.
• Disguised in Drag: Dudley and Snidely Whiplash both dress like Nell in "Railroad Tracks", and Inspector Fenwick mistakes the real Nell for Whiplash.
• Distinction Without a Difference: Snidely plans to do away with Dudley by flicking Flicker Rock onto him. Dudley seems unharmed at first but then begins having visual and audio hallucinations, including Circling Birdies. When Nell confronts Snidely about this...
  Snidely: But, Nell, I only meant to flatten him. I didn't mean him any real harm!
• A Dog Named "Dog":
  • Horse, Dudley's horse.
  • And as a once-removed example, Dudley's recurring pet wolf, Faithful Dog (named after... it's a long story).
• Do Wrong, Right: This line from Inspector Fenwick in "Top Secret" after he had to finish Dudley's dishwashing job to pay a restaurant check:
  Inspector Fenwick: Dudley, next time you can't pay your check, find a restaurant that has softer detergent!
• Dudley Do-Right Stops to Help: The Trope Namer, of course.
• Dumbass Has a Point:
  • In Foreclosing Mortgages, Dudley fails to make the payment on the Mountie Camp due to Nell using the money for clothes shopping. When Inspector Fenwick berates him, Dudley points out that he was the one who lost the camp to Snidely Whiplash due to gambling.
  • In "The Centaur", when Inspector Fenwick comments that Dudley's horse is essential to keep up the camp's morale as he's the only horse on the post, Dudley points out that it doesn't really make sense that the mounties only have one horse, but the Inspector cuts him off and disregards it.

E-L

• Eek, a Mouse!!: Parodied in "Flicker Rock" when Nell visits Dudley, who's been locked up as a lunatic.
  Nell: Dudley, what happened to you?
  Dudley: Why, nothing, Nell. I was just riding home by my usual route, and I felt a slight tingling sensation on my... [Has a hallucination of a growling polar bear.] Look out!
  [Nell jumps up and gives a little shriek.]
  Nell: Is it a mouse?
  Dudley: No, it was a sixteen-foot polar bear. Strange, polar bears this time of year? But it's all right, Nell. It walked on by.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • When Snidely tells Homer (his only named henchman) of his plan to do away with Dudley by flicking Flicker Rock onto him...
    Homer: [indignantly] Gee, Snidely, that's an unpleasant thing to do!
  • Snidely feels genuine remorse when he realizes he's given Dudley head trauma, and he and Homer become determined to cure him.
• Face Palm: Inspector Fenwick does this when Dudley mounts a rocking horse to chase after bank robbers in "Mountie Without a Horse".
• Fiery Redhead: Nell, particularly when she gets fed up with Dudley's (or another character's) stupidity.
• Foot Bath Treatment: In "Saw Mill," Nell gives Dudley this treatment after he tried to swim in a frozen river.
• Genre Savvy: The 1999 live-action film has this in spades. The characters are fully aware that they inhabit a formulaic melodrama, and they're quite comfortable with all the attendant absurdities. Any deviation from the fixed conventions of the genre, however, causes them deep existential anxiety and confusion.
• Giving Them the Strip: After Nell kills the marigolds on Snidely's clothes with crabgrass, he manages to escape Dudley cutting through the crabgrass by taking off his clothes unseen and flees the scene in his underwear.
• Godiva Hair: Dudley in one episode. Though in this case, it was a beard.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Played for laughs as Snidely kidnaps Dudley with the intent of replacing him with a robot duplicate. This backfires, as the robot is better at being a Mountie than Dudley!
• Good Is Dumb: Pretty much the series' entire hat.
• Hard Head: Subverted in "Flicker Rock" when Dudley initially seems unharmed by having a boulder dropped on his head but then begins having visual and audio hallucinations. Nell bringing him back to the scene of the crime fixes it, Easy Amnesia style.
• Here We Go Again!:
  • After Snidely Whiplash escapes from Dudley in "The Disloyal Canadians", Inspector Fenwick sends the latter to infiltrate the former's gang again.
  • After Dudley, who unknowingly dug into Inspector Fenwick's office and took two bags of money from the payroll thinking he struck gold, mistakes Snidely for the thief and arrests him, he tries digging for gold outside the camp, and unwittingly digs a tunnel into the Canadian National Bank.
• Hired to Hunt Yourself: Inspector Fenwick sends Dudley to find the thief stealing money from the post's payroll in "Finding Gold", neither of them knowing that Dudley himself had done it by mistake, thinking he struck gold. In the end, nobody's the wiser about the truth, as Snidely Whiplash is mistaken for the culprit when Dudley catches him with two bags of money in the inspector's office.
• Idiot Ball: Quite deliberately invoked. Both Fenwick and Snidely can be as stupid as Dudley if the comedy calls for it.
• Idiot Hero:
  • Yeah. One memorable incident involved Dudley discovering his commanding officer Bound and Gagged, but simply thinking he was bundled up against the cold, and deciding to throw another log on the fire. However...
    Narrator: In the dim light, that dim-wit threw in the fireplace not firewood but firearms!
  • Fortunately for them both, the fire cooked off the ammunition, which scared off the criminals that had taken over the post.
  • The Movie gives us an example when Dudley decides to test whether or not the woman at the door who claims to be Nell is a vampire (Snidely put the idea in his head that vampires were about) by asking her a question any true Canadian would know: What is Wayne Gretzky's middle name?^note  Douglas, if you're curious. Nell points out that she doesn't know and then asks if he knows. Dudley realizes he doesn't, and then realizes something worse:
    Dudley: I am a vampire!
• If I Can't Have You…: Snidely Whiplash decides to kill Nell at a sawmill when she spurns his affection. He even says the trope name before finishing with "then neither can Do-Right!"
• Insignia Rip-Off Ritual: Spoofed in "The Disloyal Canadians." In order to infiltrate Snidely Whiplash's crew and expose him as a fur smuggler, Inspector Fenwick ordered Dudley to dirty his own record and get kicked out of the Mounties. After two failures at getting thrown out, Dudley stopped trying and ate peas with a knife, something no Mountie would ever do, and got drummed out, allowing phase 2 of his mission to go through.
• Interactive Narrator: Happens on occasion.
  Snidely: [previously introduced in a title card as "Played by Larry Sabu"] So they're short on Mounties, eh? Well, I'll fill their ranks or my name isn't Larry Sabu!
  Narrator: I beg your pardon, Mr. Sabu, but in this picture you're playing Snidely Whiplash.
  Snidely: [emerging from behind a tree and wearing tennis togs] You play Snidely Whiplash. I played him yesterday and he beat me, six love!
• Interspecies Romance: Nell and Horse.
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: Dudley's is so exaggerated it actually looks... phallic.
• Lawful Stupid: Dudley. In one notable episode, Snidely kidnaps Nell at her wedding to Dudley. A couple days later, Dudley receives a letter from his abducted bride delivered from Snidely's sawmill. He refuses to open it because it isn't stamped. So he rides to the sawmill, gets Nell (who is tied to a log being fed into the sawblades) to stamp the letter, then rides back to the Mountie post before opening it. An hour and a half later, after finally receiving coherent orders to rescue Nell (Inspector Fenwick flubbed a line), he rides back to the sawmill (thankfully, the sawmill was seriously in need of maintenance or else Nell would have been in pieces by this point). After saving Nell, he then proceeds to arrest her for mail fraud since what she put on the envelope wasn't a legal stamp.
• Long Lost Sibling: "Mother Love" has Snidely Whiplash print a fake newspaper article claiming that he's Dudley's long-lost younger brother. Dudley falls for it and quits the force to look after Snidely, who gets embarrassed about being treated like a child. So he has Homer print a retraction of the first story, which reveals the truth to Dudley.
• Luminescent Blush: Nell's face turns red in "Marigolds" when she realizes she forgot to water the crabgrass she planted on Snidely's marigold suit.

M-R

• Malevolent Mugshot: Snidely seems to frequently get his photo taken while actually committing a crime.
• Mistaken for Bad Vision: When he sees that most of the Mounties have spot-covered faces in "Miracle Drug", Inspector Fenwick initially thinks he needs to clean his glasses.
• The Movie: A Live-Action Adaptation
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Not only did Snidely Whiplash fit this Trope when the show aired, but as the Dastardly Whiplash Trope proves, his name has become synonymous with villains like him in modern culture.
• Narrator: Paul Frees narrates the TV series and Corey Burton narrates the 1999 film.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Dudley is (to some extent, at least) a caricature of Nelson Eddy's Mountie character in Rudolf Friml's Rose-Marie, and has a tendency to break into Eddy's signature melody, "Shortnin' Bread."
• Non-Fatal Explosions: Lots of Stuff Blowing Up, but since it wouldn't be light-hearted comedy if anyone actually got hurt...
• Plot Allergy: When Snidely Whiplash finds out that Dudley's allergic to marigolds, the former plants marigolds on his clothes so the latter can't get near him without sneezing. When Dudley tells Nell what happened, she plants crabgrass on Snidely's suit to kill the marigolds.
• Poke the Poodle: In the movie, Dudley's first act of law-breaking after he undergoes a Role Reversal with Snidely is TPing Snidely's miniature golf course. And Snidely also cheats at said golf course by giving the other players exploding golf balls.
• Robot Me: "Mechanical Dudley" has Snidley Whiplash create a robotic double of Dudley Do-Right with the intention to replace the real Dudley. For its' voice, it plays a record of Dudley's voice saying only three lines: "Yes sir, Inspector Fenwick!", "Hello, Nell!" and "It's tommy this and tommy that and shuck him out the brute. But it's savior of his country when the guns begin to shoot!" Of course in true Jay Ward fashion, Hilarity Ensues when the robot Dudley turns out to be a better Mountie than the REAL Dudley!
• Rock Beats Laser: In The Movie, at one point, in order to combat Snidely's encroaching army, Dudley and his gang of natives start an avalanche.
  Snidely: That's not fair! They've got giant rocks—all we've got are these machine guns!

S-W

• Seduction as One-Upmanship: Snidely & Dudley are always competing to win Nell's heart. The film has Snidely creating an oil painting of Nell at his nouveau-riche party when the Hell-Bent for Leather Dudley bursts in on a motorbike and challenges Snidely by trimming a shrub into a figure of Nell using his mentor's chainsaw, humiliating Snidely as Nell falls for Dudley all over again.
• Setting Update: The cartoon takes place sometime around the turn of the 20th century, as befitting the fact that it's a spoof of silent melodramas. However, the 1999 live-action film is set in the Present Day.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: In one episode, Dudley is tasked with stopping Snidely from interfering with a top-secret project on a mountain overlooking the RCMP camp. He is successful, but the project turns out to be a giant carving of Snidley's face in the mountain.
• Showing Up Chauvinists: In one episode, Dudley and Nell switch places, with Dudley keeping house while Nell becomes a Mountie. Nell ends up managing to capture every criminal and lowlife in Canada, to the dismay of Dudley and Inspector Fenwick, who fear this could lead to women's suffrage.
• Show Some Leg: In "Trading Places", Nell captures Snidely's gang by stripping down to her undergarments to distract them.
• Simple Solution Won't Work: In "Log Jam", when Snidley, using a phony business called Mother Whiplash's Log Jam, causes a log jam that prevents all the timber in Canada from going down the river, Dudley asks Inspector Fenwick why they don't just arrest him. The Inspector replies that his alias of Mother Whiplash would provoke every mother in Canada.
• Singing Mountie: The 1999 live-action film shows Dudley and Nell singing the romantic duet "When I'm Calling You," in the style of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald in the musical film Rose Marie.
• Skewed Priorities: In "Trap Bait", when Whiplash captures Dudley's horse, Nell, Inspector Fenwick, and the other Mounties and sends Dudley a message saying he'd blow them all up unless he came to the sawmill, Dudley is mainly upset that his horse is in danger.
• Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace: In "Saw Mill", Dudley and Nell are about to be married, and the minister says this, prompting Snidely Whiplash to object and kidnap Nell.
  Snidely: I don't know what that means, but I object!
• Strange Minds Think Alike: In "Finding Gold", both Dudley and Snidely each say "Y-reka!" when they find money bags and think they've struck gold.
• This Is Your Brain on Evil: When Dudley catches Whiplash tying a woman to the eponymous "Railroad Tracks" for the second time, the villain claims that he's addicted to the crime and wants to quit, through it's really a ruse in order to tie Dudley's finger to the rope again. The page quote for this trope comes from this short.
• True Blue Femininity: Nell wears a blue dress and a blue ribbon in her hair, probably because pink would clash with Dudley's red uniform.
• Two Men, One Dress: Snidely and Bruno wear a two-man mare costume to lure Horse into a trap in "The Centaur". After it succeeds, Snidely can't take off the front half because the zipper's stuck.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: After Dudley accidentally releases the giant blade that destroys the "Saw Mill", Snidely is last seen running from the sawblade.
• Villains Out Shopping: Snidely Whiplash isn't up to any evil plans when Dudley shadows him in "Top Secret", but instead gets a haircut, eats out at a restaurant and enjoys himself at a carnival.
• Work Off the Debt: In "Top Secret", Dudley shadows Whiplash at a restaurant, but can't keep following him after the latter leaves because Dudley can't pay his check. Seeing as how Dudley has no money, the manager puts him to work as a dishwasher. Inspector Fenwick finds Dudley and sends him back on the mission, but soon the inspector has to finish Dudley's work.

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