Lions And Tigers And Humans Oh My / Western Animation

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Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My! in Western Animation.

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• Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog is an excellent example. Humans (both with regular skin colours and odd ones), anthropomorphic animals, regular animals, aliens, and robots all exist in Mobius, and there seems to be no problem. For example, in one episode an anthropomorphic rabbit is reading a newspaper and is holding a normal dog by the leash. Just seconds later, an anthropomorphic dog comes into the shot! Weird stuff.
• Adventure Time: Although when you have a world populated by dragons, vampires, fluffy people, candy people, why-wolves, elementals, gem people, undead, rainicorns, plant creatures, hot dog people, gods and a sentient game console, talking animals such as Jake the dog are the least strange thing in the Land of OOO. However, Finn is the only human seen in the series (with the exception of the mutant human tribe he meets in one episode), and his species is considered endangered according to the Adventure Time wiki page. Most of the inhabitants that resemble humans in OOO are classified as humanoid or mutant.
  • The "Islands" mini-series in Season 8 confirms the existence of humans outside of Ooo. It also confirms that one recurring character, Susan Strong, was human all along.
• In Albert Asks: What is Life?, Albert and Zora routinely interact with humans from both history and present day, who never at all find it odd seeing a hamster-bird hybrid and a talking turtle wandering around.
• Played with in Alfred J. Kwak. While a human does show up he's in fact the least human of any creature; he's a beastlike caveman shown for entertainment to the talking animals in circus shows, and presumably zoos.
• The Amazing World of Gumball takes place in the City of Elmore, where all the animals and every single object is capable of thought and speech, with some of them living like humans, forming the town's "population". However, humans—live-action humans— have frequently been shown on the TV and internet without comment. This, along with the photographic backgrounds, imply the world outside of Elmore is mostly the same as real life and populated by regular humans. And then there's "The Sweaters", which shows Elmore has some animated humans, but the way they look, how they act, and the places they hang around are leagues more bizarre than any of the nonhumans in the show.
• The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas: Bears and humans exist in the same world but unlike other examples of this trope, they live separately in their own societies with no evidence that they regularly interact with each other.
• Betty Boop: The classic cartoons are populated mostly by Funny Animals with Betty Boop and Koko the Clown usually being the only humans onscreen. The reason for this is that Betty Boop was originally conceived as a Funny Animal character.
• Big Blue: The setting features humans living underwater alongside anthropomorphic versions of various sea creatures, like fish, turtles, crustaceans, cephalopods, and marine mammals.
• Biker Mice from Mars has a similar setup to Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series (which it predates by three years), as Intelligent Gerbils from another world wind up fighting their enemies in an American city (in this case, Chicago).
• BoJack Horseman takes place in a world much like our own, except that humans coexist with Funny Animals (and there are a lot of different kinds of animals featured; even insects are anthropomorphic in this world!). Interspecies Romances are quite common, and some real-life celebrities have Fictional Counterparts who are animals, such as Quentin Tarantulino and Ethan Hawke (who's literally a hawk). There's also pretty much every variation of the Species Surname trope: Bojack Horseman is indeed a horse (or a horseman if you will), Vanessa Gecko is human, Maggot Gyllenhaal has her species as her first name, Matthew Fox and Scott Wolf appear together and have each others species' as surnames, Vincent Adultman is a human male but not an adult (but it's not his real name anyway), Officer Meow Meow Fuzzyface sure sounds like a cat name, Neal McBeal's name rhymes with his species but it's unclear whether he's just a seal who's in the navy or an actual Navy S.E.A.L. and then there are tons of characters with completely normal names.
• CatDog: A couple of episodes showed the existence of humans, including one particularly disturbing incident in the episode "CatDogPig", involving an experiment in democracy. Tired of being unable to agree on anything with Dog, Cat started strapping other animals (all of different species, to prevent their new combined name from repeating itself) to his and Dog's conjoined body in repeated unsuccessful attempts to increase votes for his side and become the majority. In the scene that shows the logical conclusion, a bat is recruited into the resulting conglomeration... by a naked bald human.
  • There was also a minor character who appeared periodically named Mr. Sunshine. He looked like a small green humanoid with a pig's tail. None of the characters know exactly what species he is. However, Word of God revealed that he was originally intended to be a monkey.
  • Another episode had a human training a dog in a Dog Park (which was also populated by animal people walking non-anthropomorphic dogs, including another two legged, clothed dog).
• Catscratch: Humans, Funny Animals, and regular animals all coexist. Cats, dogs, and mice talk and act relatively human, although cats and dogs are still kept as pets and mice are still regularly chased (and presumably eaten) by the cats. Rabbits and newts are also kept as pets, but they have no human traits. Bears and even a woolly mammoth have also appeared, but they didn't talk either. No one, not even the show's humans, considers any of this unusual. And Kraken are magical aliens.
• The Chipmunks: Songwriter finds (abducts?) some (freakishly large) talking chipmunks in the forest, puts them in co-ordinated clothing and makes them sing pop songs. And they befriend three giant female talking chipmunks owned/parented by some wealthy dowager. Nothing weird about that. Nothing at all. Interestingly, there is an episode where Alvin finds another chipmunk in the park, also his size and intelligent with Harry, a schemer and their mom Vinny the same way. Also the Thanksgiving special showed their relatives as well. It seems as though in the universe of the show, chipmunks just look like that... An Easter special also revealed that various other anthropomorphic rodents and rabbits exist in the Chipmunks universe.
• Chowder is all over the place with this. Its world is populated by humans, Talking Animals, Funny Animals, Mix-and-Match Critters, mythological creatures, and extinct animals.
  • To wit: Chowder and Panini are bear/cat/rabbit mash-ups, Mung Daal is a blue human, Truffles is a fairy, Schnitzel is a rock monster, Gazpacho is a woolly mammoth, and Endive is an orange human (or possibly an ogre). Random townspeople are everything else.
  • In fact, the only confirmed humans we ever see are expies of the Super Mario Bros..
    • And the weirdos that come out during a blackout.
• Classical Baby: The HBO series features anthropomorphic animals, normal-looking animals, everything inbetween, and humans side-by-side with no issue.
• Classic Disney Shorts:
  • There were several shorts that featured humans with funny animals vein, especially Donald Duck and Humphrey the Bear shorts, the latter of which had a main human character, Adubon Woodlore.
    • In the Wartime Cartoon "Der Fuehrer's Face", every character except Donald and the rooster are human. "Trick or Treat" had a Token Human character, Witch Hazel, alongside Huey, Dewey, and Louie.
  • A few of the "How to" and "George Geef" Goofy shorts had humans alongside Dogfaces or Inexplicably Identical Individuals Goofs.
    • "How to Dance" had the human "Firehouse Five Plus Two" featured alongside Inexplicably Identical Individuals Goofs. "Father's Day Off" had Goofy (George G. Geef in this cartoon) carry a human baby around in part of the cartoon as well as some human extras along with the usual Dogfaces.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog is another show with a human-Talking Animal-Funny Animal trifecta. While Courage is an ordinary dog, a few recurring characters (such as the psychotic Katz and Shirley the Medium, who appeared to be a Chihuahua) were Funny Animals. Ironically, not a goddamn thing about Katz was funny.
• Cupcake & Dino: General Services: The show's setting is populated by anthropomorphic versions of, well, pretty much anything you can imagine. Alongside humans (depicted in the show's artstyle as The Noseless), we have animals both living and extinct, monsters and mythical creatures, and a wide variety of Animate Inanimate Objects and Anthropomorphic Food. Notably, their isn't necessarily any biological barriers to how any can be related, as the eponymous characters as a cupcake and a dinosaur (duh) with a steak for a grandmother and a human for an uncle.
• Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, an animated spinoff of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood has Daniel Tiger and several funny animals as his friends and family, but also several human characters.
• Disney has used this idea in several animated series:
  • Bonkers had "toons" and realistically drawn humans in the same world. Not surprising since Bonkers was a Captain Ersatz of Roger Rabbit.
  • In Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series, the titular heroes and their evil reptilian overlords bring their conflict to Another Dimension—namely Anaheim, California.
  • In Quack Pack, Donald Duck, Daisy and the nephews are the only Funny Animals in an all-human world. No explanation is given.
    • The Quack Pack one is especially strange, as one of the nephews has a one episode crush/flirtation thing with a female human.
    • For some reason, there was at least one episode in the series that featured "dog-nosed" supporting characters; the one where Donald has to serve one more day in the navy.
  • Legend of the Three Caballeros has a variant: mortals are all Funny Animals, but the gods (Xandra, Goddess of Adventure; the Roman pantheon; and the Mexican God of the Dead) all take human form.
• Duckman has ducks and pigs and chickens and teddy bears and humans and weird hybrids and plenty of other animals.
• Family Guy takes the idea and goes into some weird places. Brian, the Griffin's dog, walks and talks the same as the human cast. For the first few episodes he was treated as a dog who just happened to talk, but in later seasons he starts dating and having sex with humans (who don't even seem to be that concerned that he is a dog), almost has an affair with Lois, and even has an illegitimate human child who is (somehow) six years older than him.
  • Lampshaded in one episode where Brian hits on a human woman, her response "You're a dog..." and walks away in disgust. By reading this, one could assume it was a play on words because "dog" is a insult in the real world. Except in the episode she said it as a matter-of-fact, not as an insult.
  • Not to mention the episode where he was arrested for drinking at a humans-only water fountain.
  • He also has a gay cousin named Jasper, who has a human boyfriend. Yet his mother was an ordinary, non-sapient dog, and apparently so were his brothers and sisters. The owner of the puppy mill Brian was born in didn't recognize him until Brian reminded him "I was the one who could talk."
  • In the Spin-Off The Cleveland Show, one of Cleveland's neighbors is a bear who works for the cable company.
    Cleveland: Aaah, a bear!
    Tim the Bear: Aaah, a black man! Aaah! You see? It don't feel so good, does it? It's very reductive.
  • Contrast American Dad! where the only animals that can talk are those who've had human minds implanted into them, and people still find that barely worth commenting on. Klaus occasionally has a social life and Stan doesn't even try to keep him secret from the public like he does Roger. Reginald the Koala is shown to hold down a public job and date humans.
• The 1950s Felix the Cat TV series.
• Flip the Frog: Practically every human, Funny Animal, Nearly Normal Animal, Intellectual Animal, and even Animate Inanimate Object interacts with each other on regular basis.
• The Frog Show also known as Frog et Fou Furet in French. Not only it stars a yellow ferret and a frog, but it also features a group of other humans including a princess and her knight, and a witch.
• Get Muggsy! (a spin-off from a kids' club founded by the now-defunct shopping mall company Mills Corporation) has a beaver, raccoon, opossum and spider all interacting with humans repeatedly.
• Quite a few Hanna-Barbera cartoons had this. While a lot of HB 'toons featured run-of-the-mill Talking Animals, there were also shows such as Top Cat, Yogi Bear, and Hong Kong Phooey. In Hong Kong Phooey, Penry is the only anthropomorphic animal in the series... which is probably supposed to make even more ridiculous the fact that nobody thinks a lowly police janitor could be Hong Kong Phooey.
• Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law is especially guilty of this. Although most of the animal characters are anthropomorphic (being Hanna-Barbera characters), such as Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound. However, are also non-anthropomorphic characters as well, such as Birdman's eagle (who's his legal secretary) and a bear that works for Birdman's law firm that randomly pops in each episode. In one episode, Mentok the Mind Taker switches the brains of an attorney with an ordinary, non-sentient dog and in another, Phil Ken Sebben tries to house train Augie Doggie and break him among a group of ordinary dogs after Mentok sentences him to aggressiveness training after being accused of baring his teeth at the judge during a trial case for biting someone.
• The Hillbilly Bears: The Beary Funny Rugg and Hopper families seem to be the only Funny Animals around. Everyone else is either human on a regular animal.
• The Houndcats: The 1972 series is a mash-up of Mission: Impossible, The Wild Wild West and the short-lived Bearcats!. As with Quack Pack, the titular heroes are the only Talking Animals in their world (in this case, the American Southwest circa World War I).
• Jason And The Heroes Of Mount Olympus has both humans and anthropomorphic animals interacting freely with each other, and portraying gods and goddesses in Greek mythology. Two of the main characters are Mercury and Venus, respectively a rabbit and a squirrel.
• Jellystone!: Since this is a mass crossover among Hanna-Barbera characters, humans and anthropomorphic animals coexist in this world.
• Johnny Bravo is composed mainly of humans, yet the main character often has run-ins with Talking Animals. One episode has him going on a blind date with an antelope; as if that wasn't enough, at dinner his food (a crab) turns out to be his date's ex! Check, Please!. In another episode, he went on a date with a girl who turned out to be a werewolf. Oddly enough in seasons 2 and 3, the animals are more realistic and they do not talk, otherwise why would Johnny wish to a Genie for a talking monkey when talking monkeys already existed in season 1? But when the show made it to season 4, the animals started talking again. No explanation is ever given for this. Even more uncannily, there was even an episode where a Mad Scientist had tried to create a race of anthropomorphic animals from humans, and that the foolish casanova ended up becoming a part of his experiments; one punchline in that particular episode involves Johnny making one of his usual pick-up lines about a foxy lady receptionist for the scientist, only for the "camera" to pan over and reveal that the woman is literally a furry fox-woman.
• Johnny Test: Dukey the dog is an Uplifted Animal experiment created by Susan and Mary, specifically as a friend for Johnny.
• JoJo's Circus: The stop-motion animated series on Playhouse Disney had human characters (clowns) going to school with anthro characters along various stages of the Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism and the main character having a "pet lion," though he too attended school and could talk.
• The Lionhearts has a literal example, with the title lions in a world otherwise populated by humans.
• Little Bear: The books (and TV show) has Funny Animals (Little Bear and his family), Talking Animals (most of Little Bear's friends), Little Bear's friend Emily and her grandmother (who are both humans), and Emily's non-anthropomorphic, non-talking dog, Tutu.
• Most Looney Tunes, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Animaniacs animal characters, depending on the episode or short.
  • Taz-Mania is set in a fictive land with Tasmanian devils and other animals... and few humans as well.
  • The Looney Tunes Show is even more-so this than the original Looney Tunes, as its premise involves Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and other equally anthropomorphic animal characters from the Looney Tunes Show living their day-to-day lives amongst an otherwise human populace, without either sort ever batting an eye at the differences between each other when put into direct confrontation. A little different from the original Looney Tunes, as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck's human-like behaviors were often implied to be outside of the norm for animals in their world, and characters like Sylvester and Tweety seemed to communicate with their master in the same way that Tom and Jerry did.
• Mickey Mouse Funhouse has Mickey Mouse and his friends interacting with humans, mostly in the world the gang visits. They also coexist with the dognose characters.
• My Gym Partner's a Monkey has this as part of the premise, where the human Adam Lyon is enrolled into a school of nothing but Funny Animals.
• My Little Pony 'n Friends is the only My Little Pony series to feature realistic human characters. Some of the humans are from another world and regularly travel to Ponyland from there, while others are legitimately from the pony world.
• Oggy and the Cockroaches, which has the titular Oggy living in an otherwise human world.
• The Problem Solverz has Alfe, who is part human, part dog, and part anteater, working alongside the human Horace and half-robot Roba. Then there's Tux Dog, a tall, wealthy, and well-dressed canine whose enemy is Bad Cat, a giant cat with an even bigger casino. Nobody questions any of this, but given the show's unusual world...
• Razzberry Jazzberry Jam plays host to a truly bizarre example- any named, important, individual character will be a sentient musical instrument or occasionally another kind of object, but the Jazzberries’ audience consists of human silhouettes (who are always silhouettes, despite the lighting), and there are other indications that humans exist in the show’s world, such as Louis’s Bandleader Of The Year trophy being shaped like a human conductor.
• Regular Show: In a show whose cast includes a talking gumball dispenser, an Abominable Snowman, a troll, a ghost and a lollipop man, a six-foot blue jay and a talking raccoon are the most ordinary characters. In fact, the majority of certifiably human characters in the show are enemy characters or clueless friends of Muscle Man.
• In the various incarnations of Rupert (also a bear), both humans and animals lived in Rupert's world. Most of the citizens of Rupert's hometown were animal, though several of Rupert's friends, The Professor and Tiger Lily, were human, as were residents of several nearby towns like Appleton. Nutwood Forest is also populated by sentient but otherwise "normal" Talking Animals!
• Samurai Jack: The world of Earth in the distant future has a considerably diverse population. There are of course humans (though their numbers have been reduced greatly due to genocidal massacres by Aku), anthropomorphic animals (including a group of dogs who worked as archaeologists for a living), extraterrestrials (large numbers of aliens immigrated from other planets, especially those conquered by Aku), robots (an absurdly large amount of them, some of whom superficially resemble organic creatures), and various magical beings (including demons, ogres, fairies, spirits, gods, etc).
• Scooby-Doo, Depending on the Writer.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: The world is populated by anthropomorphic sea life (and one squirrel), with humans only appearing when they are seen abovewater. However, there is Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, who are ordinary-looking humans (and, contrary to the name, not merpeople at all). The same thing applies to most of their Rogues Gallery, partucularly Man-Ray. King Neptune and his daughter Mindy in The Movie are full-on merpeople, as was the alternate version of Neptune seen in the episode "Neptune's Spatula".
• Used very strangely in the Timon & Pumbaa TV series. While in the original The Lion King film and other sequels no humans are seen or ever mentioned, in the series the eponymous duo frequently meet and interact casually with humans, who never once find it a tad bit odd that there is a talking warthog and meerkat walking around. This in addition to them understanding, using, and keeping human stuff. Bizarre, to say the least.
• Tuca & Bertie: Being from the same artist and creative team of BoJack Horseman, the show also features human characters coexisting with animals (mostly Bird People including the title characters).
• In the Christmas Special 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, the humans and the humanoid sapient mice of Junctionville openly interact on at least a professional basis, i.e. a clockmaker has a mouse assistant and the human mail carriers have mice counterparts who ride on their bags to deal with the mouse population's mail.
• We Bare Bears: Humans don't seem to find talking bears walking around the city too unusual; they do get stares from their lack of manners, but they are usually treated roughly the same way that a human would be in the same situation. There are a few other animals that can speak, such as recurring character Nom Nom the koala, and even the ones that don't exhibit Intellectual Animal tendencies.

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