Informed Species / Western Animation

Informed Species in Western Animation.

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• 3-2-1 Penguins!: The Bandicoot King looks less like a bandicoot and more like a cross between a dog and a kangaroo.
• Alvin and the Chipmunks and The Chipettes in the animated TV shows and movies look nothing like chipmunks (to say nothing of their size). Averted in the three live-action movies and earliest official art though.
• In the Alvin and the Chipmunks special “The Easter Chipmunk” at one point during the trial Alvin sets up, he calls a badger to the stand, said badger looks more like a weasel, because for one thing he lacks the black facial markings badgers have.
• The Amazing World of Gumball:
  • Word of God stated Larry is a rock-man, but looks more like he's made of origami.
  • Ocho doesn't look much like a spider: he only has two human-like eyes, a single body segment, and four legs. Justified as he's originally a video game character in-universe.
  • Penny is a shelled peanut with antlers, but her first season design only has one chamber, making her look more like a coconut or walnut. Her design from the second season on has two chambers. Subverted, as she is eventually revealed to be a fairy who wears a peanut shell as a disguise.
  • Molly is supposed to be a sauropod, but she looks more like some sort of Cartoon Creature.
  • Jamie is a cow, but aside from the horns and tail, she barely looks like one, especially with her button nose and hair that covers her eyes.^note Her eyes were visible in the first two seasons She might actually be a minotaur or something similar, as in "The Words" Darwin insults her by calling her "half-cow, half-troglodyte".
  • The first few seasons were a little unclear on what species Miss Simian was exactly, but in "The Pest" it is confirmed that she is supposed to be a Homo erectus who somehow survived into the present day. She looks like a bipedal chimpanzee with a tail, whereas real life Homo erectuses probably looked much more human-like.
  • Recurring background character Gary Hedges is supposed to be a moose, but his antlers are the only thing giving it away.
• Amphibia Zigzags this a little. Every sapient character who’s from Amphibia is supposed to be an amphibian, but the degree on how much they look like amphibians varies from character to character. Characters like Hop Pop and Mrs. Croaker actually look like Funny Animal frogs, and Grime looks like a Funny Animal toad. However, characters like Sprig, Ivy, and Maddie are supposed to be frogs, but they instead look like technicolor cartoon humanoids. A one-off gag◊ implies that their appearances are Stylized for the Viewer, and they actually look a lot more like real frogs.
• The Angry Beavers
  • Flat tails and buck teeth aside, Daggett and Norbert don't look an awful lot like beavers, looking more like some sort of porcupine/hedgehog hybrid due to their fur being somewhat spiky-looking and having pointy long snouts. This is constantly pointed out in the show, as most people assume that they are weasels.
  • "Bug-A-Boo" had a cricket that looks nothing like a cricket and looks more like a beetle with a proboscis.
• Animaniacs:
  • Who Who the ring tailed lemur from the episode, "Back In Style" hardly looks like a real ring tailed lemur and looks more like either a red panda or a maskless coatimundi instead.
  • Calhoun Capybara from the same episode actually looks more like a bear than an actual capybara. Fitting, considering he is a parody of Yogi Bear.
  • Howie Tern, a Funny Animal No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Howard Stern, looks more like a stork, if anything, than a tern.
  • The Minnie Mouse parody in "One Flew Over a Cuckoo Clock," with fur on her ears, really short snout, and nose shape, looks more like a koala than a mouse.
  • The "turkey on a roll" that Yakko briefly takes out of the basket in "Broadcast Nuisance" doesn't look much like a turkey, since it has big feet and an upper beak that curves a little bit upwards. Notable as Mr. Gobble the Turkey in the Thanksgiving episode of the same show looks much more like a turkey.
  • Minerva Mink looks less like a mink and more like a wolf or a squirrel with white fur and blond hair. This is especially bizarre here, because one of the characters who wants to date her, Wilford Wolf, is an actual wolf.
  • The yak from the opening ("And Yakko yaks.") looks more like a light furred ox than a yak. Averted in the 2020 revival, where the yak looks much more accurate.
• Granted, his resemblance to the real-life animal is actually somewhat there as opposed to Arthur, but the titular Aardvark from The Ant and the Aardvark doesn't look very much like an aardvark, having blue fur, a long snout more like that of an anteater's than an actual aardvark's, and long angular bent ears. Even more so in Pink Panther and Pals. This time the Aardvark's snout is curved upwards like an elephant's and his tail is shortened. Interestingly enough, in the Latin American Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese dubs, he is outright named an anteater instead.
• Arthur: The majority of the characters, with exceptions such as Buster and Mr. Ratburn, do not resemble the species they are supposed to be.
  • Arthur Read and his relatives are aardvarks, but aren't readily identifiable as such. Real aardvarks have snouts that stick out and long pointed ears. Arthur, D.W., and other Reads have nostrils and rounded ears. Because of this, they have mostly been mistaken to be gerbils, hamsters, bears of some kind, among other species. In the first book, Arthur's nose was longer but he still looked more like a brown tapir (or a giant anteater, without the stripes or the plumes of hair on the tail) than an aardvark, which have medium-sized pig-like snouts. There are two episodes ("D.W. Tale Spins" and "The Cave") which establish that cavemen aardvarks used to more closely resemble the actual animal, implying that the current aardvarks have evolved from what they originally looked like.
  • Brain and the Tibble Twins are supposed to be bear cubs, but Brain looks more like a gopher or a mouse than an actual bear and the Tibble Twins look like grey-skinned humanoids with bear ears. This is because in the books, they were humans, and were changed to bears for the cartoon.
  • Prunella is either supposed to be a rat like Mr. Ratburn as suggested by her pointed snout or a poodle with her ears. Due to Flip-Flop of God it's unclear though. She may actually be a poodle, since Marc Brown Studios' Facebook page says she is. Oddly enough, she looks more like a rat in Brown's books, sporting a pair of sharp teeth that disappeared when she made the transition to television. The official Arthur website says she's a rat. It seems all we can say for sure is that Prunella looks confusing.
  • Muffy and Francine are monkeys/apes but they look like humanoids with large muzzles. In the early books they had lighter-colored muzzles, but in the cartoon their fur is one tone all over. Muffy also had two buck teeth in the early episodes, which made her look more like a hippo than a monkey, which is possibly why they were later removed.
  • Binky is supposed to be a bulldog. He looks more like a hippopotamus with a human nose and dog-like ears.
  • George's mother is supposed to be a moose like him, but she looks more like a reindeer with a dog-like nose. She even has antlers like a female reindeer.
  • This tendency of the show is lampshaded in an episode where the kids are watching a show very similar to Arthur and Arthur can't tell what species the main character is supposed to be.
  • Also lampshaded in the very last episode, in which Arthur checks out a book at the library about how to draw animals and is shocked by how long the aardvark's nose is.
• Austin from The Backyardigans is a kangaroo, but looks more like he's half wallaby and half cat.
• Back at the Barnyard: While he is supposed to be a ferret, Freddy looks more like a mongoose or a wallaby instead. This could be a reference to the unaired pilot, where he actually was a mongoose.
• In the Beany and Cecil episode Dragon Train, Popgun the old prospector gives the audience a tour of the desert, one scene features a mongoose taking the diamonds off the back of a diamondback rattlesnake, said mongoose looks more like a mouse or rat.
• The Berenstain Bears:
  • Weasel McGreed and his henchmen from the 80's Animated Adaptation don't look much like weasels, having doglike faces and catlike tails.
  • The hedgehog from the prequel Thanksgiving special "Meet Bigpaw" looks more like a porcupine than a real hedgehog. Conversely, Mr. Porcupine from the episode "Raid on Fort Grizzly" looks more like a hedgehog than a porcupine.
• In the Bobby's World episode “Harry Takes A Powder” Bobby has to look after Harry the class hamster, however he looks more like a rat or gerbil with his long tail which hamsters don’t have, in universe he is referred to multiple times by the other characters as a rat.
• Bonkers: A number of animal characters qualify, though given that they're considered cartoon characters even in-universe, as opposed to actual animals, they may not fully count.
  • The titular character Bonkers D. Bobcat hardly looks like a real bobcat; his tail is long rather than a stub, his snout is longer than that of an actual bobcat's, and his ears are so thin and long they're almost like antennae. At least he has downward-facing cheek tufts.
  • Winston Prickly, a one-shot antagonist from the episode "Love Stuck", is said to be a porcupine, but he's purple and just looks a hairy monster.
• SwaySway and Buhdeuce from Bread Winners are identified as ducks but they look like frogs with noodle arms and orange mouths.
• Yehudi the chameleon in the 1944 Wartime Cartoon "Camouflage," looks more like a generic green and white lizard than any chameleon.
• Camp Lazlo:
  • Although Clam is supposed to be an albino pygmy rhinoceros, he looks more like a dinosaur.
  • Chip and Skip are supposed to be dung beetles, but they lack any insectoid features. They look more like purple sausages instead.
  • Samson is supposed to be a guinea pig, but he doesn't look like one at all - for one thing, he doesn't have visible ears. He looks more like a porcupine or a hedgehog, but not by much.
  • Ping-Pong and Dave are supposed to be loons, but they look more like ostriches with snouts.
  • For some reason, the Lemming brothers look more like green frogs with ears than well....lemmings.
  • Patsy is said to be a mongoose, but she doesn't have black rings around her eyes, plus her tail and large feet make her look more like a kangaroo.
• CatDog:
  • Winslow is supposed to be a mouse, but other than the ears and the fact that he lives in a hole in the wall (with a door, mind), it's not obvious. Many might assume he's just a tiny blue man.
  • Similar enough, Dunglap is said to be a weasel, but looks a lot more like a rat instead.
• The protagonists of Catscratch are cats, but while Gordon gets a pass due to having the most cat-like shape out of the three despite his lack of a nose, Mr. Blik and Waffle barely resemble cats due to their long, thin (and in Waffle's case, floppy) ears.
• Charlie And Mimmo: The main cast are indeed penguins, but one might be skeptical considering how round and cartoony they look◊. To put it further, their "beaks" are too round and look more like noses, not to mention the fact that they have visible mouths beneath them.
• Chip 'n Dale only vaguely resemble chipmunks since they have dog-like noses and short, deer-like tails.
• Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers:
  • Zipper is supposed to be a housefly, but the only indications of this is that he has wings and makes buzzing sounds.
• Chop Socky Chooks:
  • The main trio are supposed to be chickens, but they don't look much like chickens.
  • Big Bad Wasabi is supposed to be a piranha, but looks more like a frog.
  • Oni/Deadeye is supposed to be an anthropomorphic viper, but has very similar features to Chick P, one of the Chop Socky Chooks.
• Spot from The Christmas Dinosaur is supposed to be a Quetzalcoatlus, but he looks more like a Pteranodon. It doesn't help that he mainly eats fish like a Pteranodon (Quetzalcoatlus was a predator of small land animals).
• Courage the Cowardly Dog:
  • The titular canine is identified by some sources as a beagle, but barely resembles one due to his pink fur and the way he's drawn.
  • Dr. Gerbil looks absolutely nothing like a gerbil, exacerbated by his short, stubby tail which looks nothing like a real gerbil's long tail.
  • Kitty is obviously a cat due to her name. Her fluffy tail and red coat make her look more similar to a fox though.
  • Katz is also a cat with a red coat and fox-like muzzle. This makes him look like a red fox with purple back stripes and a thin, whiplike tail.
• Smiley, the chameleon from the The Cramp Twins episode "Chameleon Chaos" looks more like a generic lizard than the animal it's supposed to be. Chameleons also don't become completely invisible like the show implies.
• An episode of Cyberchase involved The Hacker using a giant hamster in an exercise wheel as part of one of his evil plans to undermine the Mother Board and take over Cyberspace. However, for some reason the aforementioned hamster looked more like a capybara than an actual hamster.
  • The birds don’t really look like birds, having beaks that act like mouths and sometimes teeth. The show's character designer, Larry Jacobs, was also the creator of Birdz, another show with teeth and beak mouths.
• Sully from Danger Rangers is supposed to be a seal. However, since he's fully anthropomorphic, he has normal legs instead of tail-fins, thus making him look more like a tailless otter.
• A rather confusing example comes from Dave the Barbarian. A Running Gag in the show is that Fang (who is human and looks like one) is often mistaken for a monkey (NOT A MONKEY!). In the aptly titled "Not a Monkey", a doctor diagnoses Fang with a disease that only monkeys get, and while searching for the cure, she encounters a group of monkeys◊ that do bear a striking resemblance to her. Monkeys with ponytails? Why not?
• In The Devil and Daniel Mouse the devil's associate Weez Weezel looks more like a wolf or coyote than a weasel.
• Dino Ranch:
  • Blitz is supposed to be a Velociraptor, but besides lacking feathers other than on his head, he lacks the raised second toe with the killing claw and his head is much too short and rounded. These features make him look more like a generic carnivorous theropod instead.
  • Clover is supposed to be a Brontosaurus, but his domed head, shorter tail, and more upright posture make him look more like a Brachiosaurus.
• Dinosaucers:
  • Bonehead is not easily recognizable as a Pachycephalosaurus since he lacks spikes or knobs.
  • Ankylo has a face that looks more like a cross between a warthog and a bull than a real Ankylosaurus. His snorting Verbal Tic didn't help, either.
  • Plesio is supposed to be a Plesiosaurus, but his long tail, the fact that he has hands and feet instead of flippers, and the tendrils trailing off his scalp mean that he isn't readily identifiable as one.
  • Terrible Dactyl is yet another example of a cartoony pterosaur, having a Pteranodon crest along with teeth and a Rhamphorhynchus-like tail.
  • The giant sauropod from the episode "Adventures in Dinosaur Valley" is stated to be a Seismosaurus (now synonymous with Diplodocus), but it looks more like a sharp-toothed Brachiosaurus.
• Dinosaur Train has an In-Universe example during the "Classic in the Jurassic" arc. Effie Effigia looks so much like a theropod dinosaur that Remy doesn't believe she's a crocodile.
• Dino Squad:
  • Rodger's dinosaur form is supposed to be a Styracosaurus. While he has the distinctive long spikes protruding from his frill, he also has long brow horns and a shorter one on his nose like a Triceratops.
  • Buzz's Pteranodon form barely looks like the real animal; he has a slightly longer tail, dog-like hindlimbs, two small wing-claws instead of three (though he sometimes has three claws in some scenes), a notch in the underside of the crest, and a saw-edged bill that's hooked at the tip.
  • And let's not get started with the Velociraptors Victor Veloci and Ms. Moynihan, whose designs are basically copied off from Jurassic Park.
  • The first episode had a shark mutating into what was identified as a megalodon, but it looked nothing like a giant shark and was more like a mosasaur instead.
  • One episode had a primate which is identified as a baby gorilla, which gets mutated into a "gorilla-saurus". Said baby gorilla is drawn with a tail, making it look like a monkey instead.
  • Another episode had hedgehogs which looked more like yellow echidnas. Living in Maine, for that matter.
• Dora the Explorer: Tico doesn't look very squirrel-like. He is very chubby, has purple fur, limbs that look like stumps without fingers or toes and a fox-like tail. At least he has the buck teeth.
• DuckTales (2017):
  • Greek goddess of the moon Selene is supposed to be an ibis. However, her bill is much too short, making her resemble a dove or a random white feathered bird.
  • Violet Sabrewing is supposed to be a hummingbird, and her name reflects this as an instance of Genius Bonus (the violet sabrewing is a species of hummingbird). However, due to the show's art style, her resemblance to a hummingbird is vague at best— she mostly just looks like a purple feathered raven.
• Just like in the video game, Evil the Cat from Earthworm Jim hardly looks like a cat at all; he looks like a white rat with pointed ears.
• The Fairly OddParents!: The badgers seen at the end of "Timmy Turnip" look more like weasels.
• Subverted with the titular dog from Family Dog, at least in the original, more lavishly-drawn Amazing Stories episode. If you just looked at a still image of it, you'd think it was a rat, but its animation is distinctly dog-like.
• In the Family Guy episode "Brian Wallows and Peter's Swallows", Peter becomes the unwilling foster parent to three birds that are identified as white-rumped swallows. That's a real species of bird, but it looks nothing like the one in the show. It also isn't found in Rhode Island.
• The eponymous Fat Dog Mendoza doesn't look very dog-like. He's orange, with a spherical body, four stubby legs, a long flexible tail and a vaguely human face that covers half the front of his body.
• All of the fish from Fish Hooks look like finger puppets with a few fins.
• By as early as the short "The New Car", Flip the Frog was using two distinct designs between his piano-playing introduction and the character acting in the show proper, the latter barely resembling a frog. Later shorts which changed the intro to match the new design just made his species more ambiguous.
• Louis from Foofur is supposed to be a bulldog, but while his face and ears are like those of a real bulldog, his big bulky body would suggest otherwise.
• In an episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Eduardo got fleas that looked more like mosquitoes than fleas. Justified in that they are imaginary fleas.
• In the British theatrical cartoon Fowl Play (1950), the fox antagonist of the short looks more like a cat, because of his short snout and his movements are more cat like than that of a fox.
• Futurama:
  • "A Clockwork Origin" had an illustration of a Darwinius that looked more like a modern ape than the real animal, which resembled a modern ruffed lemur.
  • "31st Century Fox" has a white chicken that is identified as a Rhode Island Red.
  • "Fry and Leela's Big Fling" showed gazelles which looked more like deer with horns. The same episode also has a bizarre primate which looks like a Barbary macaque with a proboscis monkey's face.
  • The ichthyosaur that appeared briefly in "The Thief of Baghead" looked more like an early-to-mid 20th century depiction of a mosasaur than a real ichthyosaur.
  • In "Fry and the Slurm Factory", the worms working at the titular factory on planet Wormulon look more like slugs than anything else. Possibly justified, since they're aliens.
  • In "Parasites Regained", the "pygmy hyena-moles" look more like six-limbed rats than hyenas or moles.
• Big Mitch from the 2007 remake of George of the Jungle is supposed to be a marmoset, but strongly resembles a golden lion tamarin, which has yellow fur and a mane covering around its face, hence the name. However, this may be because golden lion tamarins are also known as golden marmosets.
• Belfry from Filmation's Ghostbusters is a bat, however he looks like a fanged pig with wings.
• Gigantosaurus:
  • Mazu is supposed to be an Ankylosaurus, but she looks more like a toad with a tail.
  • Bill is supposed to be a Brachiosaurus, but he doesn't have the high-crested skull that makes a Brachiosaurus easily recognizable.
  • Tiny is supposed to be a Triceratops, but she has only two horns, making her look like a Zuniceratops. Justified as her nose horn hasn't grown yet.
  • Archie is supposed to be an Archaeopteryx, but he looks more like a toothed Oviraptor without a crest.
  • Zig-zagged with Cror and Totor. They're still scaly and oversized, but they have also long snouts and slender builds like real Velociraptor.
• Goo from the Gumby cartoons barely looks like a mermaid (even less so in her 1960s appearances).
• Many of the characters from Happy Tree Friends do not look like their species. For example, Sniffles looks more like an aardvark than an anteater and the Mole and Cro-Marmot do not look like their respective species, rather looking sort of like bears.
• Most of the demons of Hazbin Hotel are ostensibly Animalistic Abominations, but for the most part, especially among the major characters, they simply resemble humans with demonic features and mild Animal Motifs, sometimes barely discernible without Word of God pointing them out.
  • Alastor is a deer. His only deer-like features are his prominent, alert-looking ears/hair — which, combined with his sharp-fanged smile, red color scheme, and sly personality, seem to suggest fox motifs instead — and a teeny-tiny pair of antlers, so much smaller than his ears as to be barely noticeable. He has shown hints of a One-Winged Angel form with much more prominent antlers.
  • Vaggie is a moth. Most of her features suggest a delicate, feathery texture and her long, flowing hair vaguely suggests a moth's wings, but she otherwise looks almost entirely human.
  • Niffty is a cockroach. These motifs are not even suggested by her appearance, residing entirely in her jittery, fastidiously clean mannerisms.
  • Angel Dust is a spider. Of all those in the main cast which are not immediately apparent, his motif is probably the easiest to spot: he has two pairs of arms (most of the time; his seldom-seen retractible third pair make him properly eight-limbed), and three dots under each of his eyes to suggest he is also eight-eyed. His body being covered in white fur prevents him looking as human as the others, but doesn't suggest a spider either.
  • The main protagonist Charlie is a goat, which wasn't even revealed until shortly before the series was released, five years after the pilot. She's the most human-looking character in the entire show, except for a black dot on her nose and Cute Little Fangs, which combined with her excitable personality suggested a dog motif. Like Alastor, her One-Winged Angel form, not yet seen in its full glory, clarifies the issue somewhat; when agitated she sprouts a pair of horns and her feet become more hoof-like.
  • In contrast, the other two main characters' motifs are quite clear, Husk being nothing less than an anthropomorphic cat while Sir Pentious (not indicated as a main character in the pilot, but becoming one a few episodes into the series) has unmissable cobra motifs.
  • Beyond the main characters we have the Overlords of Hell: Carmilla is stated to be a sea serpent; it's a vague motif at best. Two of the other Overlords have known animal motifs as well, Valentino being a moth and Zestial a spider; while much more apparent than the main cast members with those same motifs, they're still fairly vague and come across more like style choices than indicators of the Overlords' actual species.
• This might be due to Visual Pun or Non-Indicative Name, but the "bald eagles" from Hero: 108 (they're at first labeled just eagles and get this nickname after losing their feathers on their head and their neck in an accident) don't resemble the animals at all and look more like blue and purple vultures. Real-life bald eagles aren't bald at all, but again, this is just their nickname given by two cloudcuckoolanders, not their species.
• The Hobbit: The dwarves' mounts are referred to as ponies, they look more like mules, but they are heard to neigh.
• The Zuniceratops, Velociraptor, Eotyrannus, and Troodon from I'm a Dinosaur look more like Triceratops, Deinonychus, Albertosaurus, and Coelophysis respectively. Also, the Compsognathus episode had a Bavarisaurus which looked more like a feathered theropod, which it is identified as, instead of the lizard that it was in real life.
• Cerbee in Jimmy Two-Shoes. Everyone on the show calls him a dog, but he's clearly a small, horned, one-eyed monster who just acts like one.
• The sloths that appear in the Jungle Cubs episodes "The Five Bananas" and "The Elephant Who Couldn't Say No" look more like a hybrid between a bear and a monkey. Considering the series supposedly sets in Asia one wonders why they couldn't have used a slow loris instead.
• Bungo from Jungle Junction is said to be a "bunny", but his yellow fur and long racoon-like tail prevent him from looking like one, so at best he looks more like a bee-like mammal.
• Junie from Kung Fu Panda Legendsof Awesomeness is supposed to be a fox, but looks more similar to Shifu, who is a red panda.
• Let's Go Luna!:
  • Leo is supposed to be a wombat, but he looks more like a blue dog than a wombat since wombats don't have long snouts, let alone blue fur.
  • Carmen’s pet hamster Honey looks more like a ball of fur with a face and little sticks for legs.
• The Lion Guard:
  • Bunga is a honey badger, but he looks more like a cross between a skunk and a porcupine.
  • Fuli the cheetah of has rosettes, which would indicate she's a king cheetah. However, her rosettes are more similar to a jaguar's and her facial tear stripes are too short.
  • Shupavu and her skink group all have colorings that look nothing like on real African skinks.
• Sunil Nevla from Littlest Pet Shop (2012) is a mongoose, but you probably never would have guessed that if he wasn't called one. Even the Biskit twins have trouble identifying his species, as they've called him a rat, a weasel, a bear cub, and a "fur turtle".
• Looney Tunes:
  • The Tasmanian Devil and the Tasmanian She-Devil are brown-furred, bipedal, neckless monsters that look nothing like real Tasmanian devils, which have black fur and resemble just really big, stocky rats.
  • The Roadrunner also looks nothing like its real-world counterpart. Roadrunners tend to be brown, have a much shorter crown, a longer, black beak, and long tailfeathers.
  • Hippety Hopper, the baby kangaroo that Sylvester always mistakes him for a giant mouse. In Sylvester's defense Hippety does look far more like a giant mouse than an actual kangaroo.
  • Yoyo Dodo basically looks like a drinking bird covered in a grass tunic.
  • Tweety doesn't look much like a canary, especially that his feet are oversized.
  • Batty, the bat in the cartoon, "The Brave Little Bat," looks nothing like a bat, and looks like a mouse with wings instead.
  • To say nothing of his diminutive size, Henery Hawk doesn't look that much like a hawk, more like a brown feathered chicken.
  • The Minah Bird from the Inki shorts looks more like a naked Dumbo crow rather than an actual mynah bird.
  • Slam Tasmanian and Rev Runner from Loonatics Unleashed inherit the non-resemblance of Tasmanian Devil and Road Runner respectively.
  • The cat with the Jimmy Durante-esque voice in Hoppy Daze more closely resembles an otter than a cat.
  • Foxy and Roxy, two early Merrie Melodies characters, are supposed to be foxes. However, they look exactly like Mickey and Minnie Mouse (respectively) save for their bushy tails and pointed ears, which led to legal issues in real life. Their redesigns for Tiny Toon Adventures make them look more vulpine.
  • Wendell T. Wolf from Taz-Mania is supposed to be a Tasmanian wolf (more commonly called the Tasmanian tiger) with beige fur and a striped back and resembling a sort of kangaroo-dog hybrid with a wide mouth and small ears, but he looks more like a combination of Wile E. and Calamity Coyote.
  • From Tiny Toon Adventures:
    • Dizzy Devil (the purple Tasmanian devil), Little Beeper (the red roadrunner), and Gogo Dodo also inherit the non-resemblance of their forebears. Gogo looks more like a turtle, resembling Filburt from Rocko's Modern Life.
    • Shirley the Loon looks more like a white duck like those in Carl Barks' duck comics, save for a thicker bill, than like any loon.
    • The Flea family are tiny humanoids with almost no insect features except antennae.
    • Calamity Coyote looks pretty strange compared to the other coyotes in the Looney Tunes franchise. He has gray fur, a small tail (even more so than that of Wile E.'s), round long ears with no visible insides and a red nose.
• The emu from the Mickey Mouse short "Mickey Down Under" more closely resembles an African ostrich.
  • Although Jose Carioca of the The Three Caballeros does look like a parrot, Panchito Pistoles doesn’t look much like a rooster due to his lack of a wattle. If anything, he more closely resembles a woodpecker.
  • Pete the cat from the Classic Disney Shorts fell into this trope over time. In Steamboat Willie, the first time Pete was portrayed as a cat, he looked somewhat reasonably like a cat and had a tail. Since the mid 1930s, he lost his tail and fell into this trope, resembling moreso a Cane Corso with cropped features than a cat. It became so hard to identify him as a cat that Goof Troop, A Goofy Movie, and An Extremely Goofy Movie treat him like a Dogface instead.
  • Junior, Pete's son from the Donald Duck cartoon "Bellboy Donald" is a cat, but he's not readily identifiable as such and looked more like Mickey Mouse with cat ears instead.
  • P.J., Pete's son from Goof Troop, A Goofy Movie, and An Extremely Goofy Movie, is supposed to be a cat, but in all his appearances, he looked more like and was treated like a Dogface with pointy ears instead.
  • Horace Horsecollar is supposed to be a horse, but looks more like Goofy or Clarabelle Cow, who are a dog and cow, respectively.
  • The Goof Troop episode "Clan of the Cave Goof" had a dinosaur resembling an outdated tripod-stanced tyrannosaur which was referred to as a Brontosaurus by Pete. It didn't help it was shown eating meat, despite Goofy correctly pointing out Brontosaurus are herbivores. However, Pete may have called the creature a Brontosaurus out of his own ignorance.
  • Hal from Mickey Mouse Funhouse is supposed to be a Halszkaraptor. He looks more like an taller, more animalistic version of Donald Duck with sharp teeth, a long tail, and a mop of head-feathers, and he doesn't even have the long neck of the real Halskaraptor or the killing claws of dromaeosaurids (he shares Donald's webbed feet instead). In fact, Daisy mistook him for Donald before properly seeing him in his debut episode.
• On Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends, you really just have to take the show's word for it that Bounce is a bedbug. He only has two legs and basically looks like a giant blueberry of head on top of them with two antenna. An actual bedbug is a normal brownish insect with six legs.
• Mosh from My Dad the Rock Star is supposed to be a Komodo Dragon, but more closely resembles an iguana. The show page from Teletoon's old website also refers to him as one.
• My Gym Partner's a Monkey:
  • Phineas Porpoise looks more like a bottlenose dolphin, although he could be actually one and that's just his name.
  • Mr. Blowhole is apparently a killer whale, but he doesn't even have the white eyespots the species is known for.
  • Soupy Baskington looks more like a whale than a shark.
  • Superintendent Wolverine doesn’t look like a wolverine.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: From the 2017 movie, Grubber is said to be a hedgehog, but his coloration makes him look more like a badger.
• While most of the animal characters from Noah's Island resemble the species they supposed to resemble, they were exceptions:
  • Nab, despite being a male orangutan, compelety lacks the cheek flanges characteristic for his species' gender.
  • The three-toed sloths and the Spix’s macaws from “Born to Be Wild” don’t resemble their respective species in actuality, resembling bears and weird generic tropical birds, respectively.
  • The feral cat from "The Once Plentiful Bandicoot" resembles a small mountain lion than a typical domestic cat.
  • The kakapos from “Something to Squawk About” resemble lorikeets than the parrot species they’re supposed to resemble. Not mention, kakapos in actuality don’t fly.
  • The water buffalo from “The Butterfly House” resembles a brown Ankole-Watusi cow than the wild bovine she’s named after.
  • The dugongs from “Much Ado About Vultures” resemble seals more, despite them in actuality being more closely related to elephants than to pinnipeds.
  • The cobras from “A Mongoose in a Monsoon” have heads that resemble cats but without whiskers and pointed ears, with the lead green cobra being the only one with the species’ characteristic hood.
  • Goosy the mongoose from the same episode resembles a squirrel than an actual mongoose.
• The Nutshack: Horat is supposed to be a tarsier, a lemur-like primate, but he could easily be mistaken for some sort of giant rat (especially since the word “rat” is in his very name).
• Oggy and the Cockroaches:
  • The titular cockroaches hardly resemble the actual insects due to their needle-like noses, unnatural coloring on their heads and torsos, the lack of a third pair of legs and vertebrate-like skeletons.
    • Their country cousin from the episode, "Roachy Redneck", is even worse since he doesn't even have any wings nor antennae, the latter case being made obvious when his beret flies off from his head at one point here.
    • Lady K, likewise, looks so cartoonish and feminine that her resemblance to a cockroach may as well not be there at all.
  • Oggy's grumpy next-door neighbor, Bob, doesn't look much like a bulldog, especially due to the lack of jowls bulldogs always have.
• Oh Yeah! Cartoons: The titular cat in the short "Cat and Milkman" looks more like a monkey than a feline due to lacking pointy ears and whiskers.
• Dendy from OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes is supposed to be a kappa, but she looks more a green-skinned human with a triangle mouth. In fact, she wasn't revealed to be a kappa until "No More Power Cards".
• Peep, Chirp, and Quack from Peep and the Big Wide World don't really look like a chicken, a robin, and a duck respectively.
• PAW Patrol: In this show, the characters do look like dogs, but some of them don't look anything like their breed.
  • Chase is a purebred German Shepherd, but he looks nothing like one. He looks more like a mixed breed.
  • Skye looks nothing like your typical Cockapoo, but this is because she is a flat coated one. Flat coated Cockapoos and other doodle mixes do exist. This is due to a gene known as the improper coat gene. This prevents a doodle from having furnishings, AKA facial hair and prominent eye brows. Without this gene, a Cockapoo looks like a regular Cocker Spaniel.
    • This also applies to her long lost cousin, Coral, who is part of the the Aqua Pups subseries. She is also a Cockapoo.
  • Averted with Rocky. Given that he is a mixed breed, he could turn out to look like a Scottish Terrier, Schnauzer, Bull Terrier, Border Collie, Australian Cattle Dog, or any other breed he was mixed with.
    • Also averted with Marshall, Rubble, Zuma, Arrby, Rex, Liberty, and Claw who all look like their breeds (Dalmatian, English Bulldog, Labrador Retriever, Dachshund, Bernese Mountain Dog, and Doberman respectively. Both Arrby and Liberty are Dachshunds.).
  • Everest is a Husky, but her build makes her look more like an Alaskan Malamute. In addition, Huskies and Malamutes do not have lavender coats.
  • Tracker is a Chihuahua, but he is much larger than Skye. Fans have suggested that he is actually a Potcake dog, a mixed breed found in the Caribbean.
  • Sweetie is a West Highland White Terrier, but she looks more like a longhaired Chihuahua or Pomeranian mix due to being lankier and smaller than her actual breed.
  • Tuck and Ella are purebred Golden Retrievers, but they look more like Labrador Retriever mixes.
  • Al is a Basset Hound, but he looks like a Beagle. His comically long ears do help with the resemblance, though.
  • Moby, who is the villain in the Aqua Pups Subseries, is a Portuguese Water Dog. Before his breed reveal, fans thought he was a Border Collie or Australian Shepherd. Like Skye and Coral, he has an improper coat type.
  • Roxi, who will make her debut in the upcoming Rescue Wheels Subseries, is supposed to be a Samoyed. However, she lacks the fluff of the breed and is barely taller than Skye, who is one of the smaller pups of the team. Because of this, Roxi looks more like a teenage Chihuahua. Interestingly, she also bears a resemblance to Sweetie.
• Peppa Pig:
  • Madame Gazelle looks more like some kind of horned rodent than an actual gazelle.
  • Suzy Sheep doesn't look much like an actual sheep, rather looking more like a polar bear.
  • Danny Dog looks more like a cat.
  • Pedro Pony looks nothing like a horse, looking more like a hamster with a pig nose. Several people have noticed that he actually somewhat resembles Arthur.
  • Penny Polar Bear and her 2 mommys look like a cross between a polar bear and a mouse.
• Phineas and Ferb: The blind cave salamander from "Phineas and Ferb Save Summer" doesn't resemble any known species, instead looking more like a surface-world salamander with gills looking more like those of a fish. And while it is correctly described as lacking eyes, it is drawn as looking like it has Eyes Always Shut instead.
• Pingu:
  • The penguins including the titular character are supposedly emperor penguins, since they have a faint yellow color and the way the chicks are designed. However, their bills are completely orange (emperor penguins have a black upper bill, while only the lower bill is orange) and they lack the yellow ear patches.
  • The pinniped from the infamous "Pingu Dreams" episode. Some viewers assume it's a leopard seal while others think it's a walrus, but it hardly looks like one or the other. At best it looks like an earless sea lion with walrus-like whiskers.
• Alfe from The Problem Solverz is apparently supposed to be a bizarre mix of a human, a dog, and an anteater, although he doesn’t even remotely resemble any of them. Instead, he looks like a strange Cartoon Creature that is a large, brown Cephalothorax. If there had to be a real animal that he most closely resembles, it would probably be a gorilla, but even then, that’s a stretch.
• Quasi and Anita from the short “Quasi at the Quackadero” are identified as ducks, however they look like deformed yellow skinned humans with big lips.
• Cyril and Cedric Sneer and Sophia Tutu on The Raccoons are supposed to be aardvarks, but have pink fur and snouts that bend down. The show's creator did this on purpose so kids don't think that real aardvarks are greedy industrialists.
• The Real Ghostbusters:
  • Sammy K. Ferret from the episode "Stay Tooned" is supposedly a ferret, but he looks more like a wolf or coyote instead.
  • Another episode, "Play Them Ragtime Blues", had a megalodon which looked more like a mosasaur.
• Regular Show:
  • Margaret is supposedly a robin, but has a coloration and crest of a male cardinal. She looks like a red jay or even an pileated woodpecker.
  • Eileen is supposed to be a mole, but her round, flat tail and occasional buck teeth that stick out make her resemble a beaver more that a mole, not to mention her human-like nose. Her only mole-like trait is that her eyes beneath her glasses are very small.
  • Jeremy and Chad, the ostrich and possum in "Replaced", look more like a combless chicken and a stripeless numbat, respectively.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show:
  • The titular protagonists are not readily identifiable as a Chihuahua dog and cat, respectively. Ren looks like a cat (ironically) with rabbit ears and a rat's tail, while Stimpy looks like a cross between Barney Rubble and a pig.
  • Dr. Sloth from "Ren Needs Help!" looks more like a bear than a sloth.
  • The sea lamprey in "A Friend In Your Face" looks more like a sea cucumber.
• Lowly Worm from the World of Richard Scarry looks more like a snake than a worm.
• Several characters of Rocko's Modern Life don't exactly look like the animal they are supposed to be.
  • The Chameleon Brothers look more like some kind of theropod dinosaur than actual chameleons.
  • Heffer Wolfe doesn’t look too much like a steer.
  • Filbert barely looks like a turtle, resembling Gogo Dodo from Tiny Toons.
  • Dr. Bendova didn’t look like a rat or whatever he was supposed to be.
  • Rocko doesn't look all that much like a wallaby, instead resembling a dog with a weird tail; to the writers' credit, Rocko is often mistaken for other animals, and dogs are indeed one of those (there's even an episode where he's caught by a dog catcher).
  • Really Really Big Man is supposed to be a bug of some kind^note Joe Murray's website says he's a bug, but the only clue of that is his antennae. He resembles a buff blue human instead.
  • The Bigheads are cane toads according to Murray, but they're green as opposed to the brown color of real life cane toads. Rachel has a thin head and body, making her look more like a strange green humanoid instead.
• Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat: While Sagwa and her family are clearly Siamese cats, she, Mama and Sheegwa (who is the only Miao not to have the typical Siamese points) don't look perfectly like the breed, as they are stockier and have bushy tails, so at best they bear more resemblance to Himalayan cats than Siamese. On the other hand, Dongwa and Baba have more slender bodies that make them closer to Siamese cats.
• Scooby-Doo: Iwao Takamoto intentionally designed Scooby Doo to only vaguely resemble a Great Dane. He consulted a breeder of Great Danes and subverted many of the usual physical features for Rule of Funny.
• The Simpsons:
  • There are several genera of colobus monkeys, but they all have dark faces and distinct patterns of two or three fur colors around their bodies. The "colobus monkeys" in "Homer the Great" are generic cartoon monkeys with solid dark brown fur and lighter faces.
  • In "Worst Episode Ever", the radioactive ape Homer accidentally releases into Ned Flanders' house more closely resembles a baboon (a monkey) than any species of ape.
  • The hamsters seen in "Bart the Genius" are barely recognizable as such, having orange button noses, pinkish-purple fur, and more teddy bear-like ears.
  • Disco Stu is turned into a shrew in a Treehouse of Horror segment, but he looks more like a mouse.
• Smiling Friends: Mr. Frog doesn’t look anything like a frog. Instead, he just looks like a green, bipedal Cephalothorax with big lips.
• The Snorks episode "Whale's Tales" had what's obviously a baleen whale referred to as a killer whale. It gets odd in that it was actively pursuing and trying to eat a baby whale, something that an actual killer whale would do (but not baleen whales, since they don't even have teeth for it).
• Antoine from Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) is one of these. This was even called out in a reader's letter in the Archie comic. It was established a while ago that he's a coyote. But for years (pre-Internet), the same question was asked as to what species Sally was, until she was established as a squirrel-chipmunk hybrid. Or a ground squirrel. Or a ground squirrel/chipmunk hybrid. We think.
• Sonic Underground: Knuckles has a pet named Chomps who is said to be a dinosaur in some sources. However, Chomps doesn't resemble any known dinosaur; he is carnivorous, but quadrupedal rather than bipedal. In some shots, he is shown with his legs sticking out to the sides, making him look more like a lizard.
• SpongeBob SquarePants
  • SpongeBob looks more like a dish sponge than an actual sponge, even though he is supposed to be the latter. This is because Stephen Hillenburg couldn't do an appealing caricature of a real sea sponge, and he felt that a synthetic one worked better for the "squeaky clean" nerd look he was going for. It also implies that he's "a square peg trying to fit into a round hole." Much of his family funnily, do look more like actual sponges, being beige-brown and round rather than square and yellow. There have been several jokes throught the series that point this out. In fact, the reason why SpongeBob has "sponge" in his name is because Hillenburg feared that people would mistake him for a block of Cartoon Cheese (which is occasionally touched upon in-series).
  • Squidward is actually an octopus despite his name. He lacks two tentacles because it was seen as a burden to animate. Plus, Octoward isn't a very appealing name. Despite being an octopus with the word "squid" in his name, he doesn’t really look like either, looking more like some sort of alien.
  • The episode "Patrick SmartPants" featured brain coral that looked nothing like the actual coral, being cone-shaped rather than brain-shaped.
• Summer Camp Island:
  • Oscar is a Funny Animal elephant but this isn't very apparent without looking at his parents. His ears are downwards and he has a very short trunk. Oscar looks more like a weird looking dog, or a tapir, than an elephant calf.
  • As her name implies, Hedgehog is a hedgehog. However, she bears no resemblance to one. If anything she looks like a weasel.
  • Max is a bat who looks like a badger. This is likely because his original pilot design was a badger.
• Super Friends 1973-74 episode "Dr. Pelagian's War". The title character sends three marine creatures to attack Superman and Aquaman. Both characters call the creatures "whales" (and Superman says "killer whales") but it's blatantly obvious that they're actually large sharks.
• The Superman Theatrical Cartoons short "The Arctic Giant" features the titular giant, which is claimed in the narrative to be a Tyrannosaurus. To most viewers, it looks more like a Notzilla; even when one takes Science Marches On into account, it's far larger and stronger than any T. rex, was found in Siberia, and has back spines, snakelike fangs, and four-fingered hands.
• Although mutated from ordinary turtles into the crime-fighting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles they are today, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael have little to no resemblance towards any real world turtle species other than their nondescript shells, looking more like green-skinned humanoids with three-fingered hands. This despite the fact that most turtles (besides sea turtles) have five claws.^note Usually, if the turtles are identified as a specific species, it's either red-eared slider or box turtle.
  • Rise makes them all specific species, and averts this trope with Leo, Raph, and Mikey, who are a red-eared slider, snapping turtle, and box turtle respectively and look the part. Donnie is more complicated—he's a soft-shelled turtle who lacks the distinctive long snout, but a Flashback showed he had one pre-mutation, so that's likely more a result of the mutation than an actual error.^note Amusingly, the turtles were red-eared sliders in the original comics, but all of them lacked the distinctive Facial Markings, which Rise!Leo has—though see Animal Gender-Bender.
• The Tick owns a capybara named Speak (named because he once hallucinated it talking to him) who looks much more like some sort of mutant pug dog; in fact, the Tick was sure Speak was a dog until he took him to the vet.
• Sam the Sloth from the Timon & Pumbaa episode "Hakuna Matata U." looks more like a bear-monkey thing than a sloth.
• T.U.F.F. Puppy:
  • The Chief is supposed to be a flea, but he looks more a frog with two antennae.
  • Ollie is said to be an opossum, but he looks more like a weasel or a brown rat.
• Puppycorn from Unikitty! looks more like a one-horned Scottish Fold than a puppy because his muzzle is just as flat as Unikitty’s muzzle and his nose is triangular, which are coupled with folded ears.
• Preston from Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave is supposed to be a bulldog, but he is not identifiable as such. Although it may be justified in that he is a robot.
• The Wild Thornberrys:
  • "Kuality and Kuantity" had a lyrebird which looked nothing like a real lyrebird.
  • "Bogged Down" featured a stonefish which looked more like a lionfish.
• Woody Woodpecker is supposed to be an acorn woodpecker but has a prominent crown like a pileated one. Woodpeckers also have black, small beaks.
• Zig & Sharko:
  • Zig is a hyena, but doesn't particularly resemble one, lacking any obvious hyena traits apart from being brown. One could just as easily assume him to be some kind of dog.
  • Bernie is supposedly a hermit crab, but he is just a stone with tentacles and eyes.
  • In the episode "The Coach" featured an jaguar that looks more like an bobcat.
  • "Cold Snap" featured a group of puffins that looks more like toucans.
  • The lizard twins from the episode "King of the Animal World" looks more like bipedal dragons than actual lizards.

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