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What's that, Lassie? You say Timmy fell down the well?
Family pet or other (usually domesticated) animal displays unusual intelligence or skill, usually in order to save one of the characters from danger. Parodied to the point of possibly being a Dead Horse Trope by now, let alone a Discredited Trope. Heck, just the above phrase is common sarcasm for when someone has no idea what is being non-verbally communicated. (And Timmy never did fall down a well, anyway.)
See also Speech Impaired Animal.
Actually a Truth In Television, but you knew that already.
Examples
Advertising
- Spoofed in a black-and-white TV spot for General Electric Security Services. Lassie and Timmy encounter a mountain lion, whereupon Lassie saves the day by showing off her incredible martial arts skills.
Anime
- In the Pokemon anime, this is done a bunch of times. Ash's Pikachu once led the gang to its teammate Bulbasaur using an advanced version of this—actually imitating the Pokemon that was kidnapped.
Comic Books
- Snowy from the Tintin comics does this a lot.
- In the French comic Les tuniques bleues (about two cavalrymen in the Union army during the American civil war), one of the cavalrymen, Blutch, has a horse that has saves his life on multiple occasions. Also, because he is a Dirty Coward, he has taught his horse to play dead whenever anyone signals a charge.
- Parodied in The Far Side, in which Lassie lands an airplane.
- Rex The Wonder Dog is probably the king (no pun intended) of this trope. Among other things, he can drive cars, become an award-winning photojournalist, be parachuted into enemy territory with a machine gun and proceed to use it, and beat up a T-Rex.
- He didn't beat up the T. Rex, he fucking nuked the thing. With an atomic bomb.
- Parodied many times in Garfield.
Film
- Double Subversion from the movie Good Burger: A dog runs up to Cloudcuckoolander Ed, who reads his barkings as "A bunch of clowns are stranded on the highway with a broken radiator". His partner tells him not to be stupid and that the dog's just hungry. At the end of the scene, Gilligan Cut to a bunch of clowns, standing by a broken car, wondering where the dog went.
- In The Wizard Of Oz (1939), Toto escapes from the Wicked Witch's castle, finds the other members of the group and starts barking at them. The Scarecrow says "Why, don't you see? He's come to take us to Dorothy!" Toto then does just that, arriving just in time to save Dorothy from death.
- Joe Dirt has a hilarious subversion. A man has his leg stuck between railroad rails and a train is coming so he sends the dog for help. The guy had been mean to the dog, so the dog walks away... and is next seen having, uh, relations, with a female dog. Later, the guy returns... missing one leg. And with a shotgun. It doesn't end well for the dog.
- In Toy Story 2, parodied when Woody watches the old ('60s) series where he was the star, and a few woodland creatures chirp what turns out to be an extremely complex and detailed account of what is going on in a distant mine, with two trapped characters, a stick of dynamite, and a impending explosion.
Rabbit: [incoherent chatter]
Woody: What's that? Jessie and Prospector are trapped in the old abandoned mine and Prospector just lit a stick of dynamite thinking it was a candle and now they're about to be blown to smithereens?
Rabbit: Uh huh.
Woody: Ride like the wind, Bullseye!
- Disney's Beauty And The Beast has Belle's father's horse, Phillipe, run back to get help when Maurice is imprisoned in the castle.
- Fido has a perfect example of this trope. It contains pretty much the exact same scene as Lassie, but the dog is replaced by the family's pet zombie.
- Parodied in Broken Lizard's Club Dread. Dave & Juan are cleaning up the Pac-Man maze, when they run into Putman (who is still in Banana costume) who is trying to tell them that he found Cliff's dead body, but is in such a state of shock that he can't speak. Says Dave, "Are you trying to tell us something boy? Is little Timmy trapped in a well?!"
- Stanley Ipkiss' dog Milo in The Mask. He finds car keys, tracks down and rescues his master from jail, can open car locks, and figures out how to activate the title artifact, among other tricks.
- Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy: Ron's dog is able to bark at him in both english and spanish (though, Ron mistakes English spoken with a mild Hispanic accent for actual Spanish later so there's some doubt.) He's also able to communicate with a bear later on, talking the bear into not attacking Ron.
Literature
- Spoofed on a few occasions in Discworld. In Guards! Guards!, the Librarian (a wizard-turned-orangutan) laments having to resort to charades to inform Constable Carrot that a book has been stolen when "so-called intelligent dogs, dolphins, and kangaroos" have an easier time alerting people to danger. In The Last Continent, a talking kangaroo named Scrappy (a Shout Out to the afforementioned Skippy) informs Rincewind that the kangaroo language has a gesture that means "come quick, someone's fallen down a deep hole".
- Also played with in Moving Pictures, where the main characters have been trapped in a cave and it's up to 'Laddie' (an incredibly stupid dog who plays a Lassie-esque movie character) to go for help. Despite doing nothing more than turn up in the pub, the genre-savvy trolls recognise the trope from the movies Laddie's been starring in and decide to follow him back, while completely ignoring the *real* intelligent talking dog who's trying to tell them what's going on in their own language.
- The original melodrama that spawned the Sweeney Todd mythos has the dog of one of the victims repeatedly lead people to and then make menacing noises at Sweeney's barber shop. The heroes don't especially take the hint.
- Used in exactly this way in American Gods when Shadow is lost in the woods and a talking bird gives him a message and then caws at him to follow - "You want me to follow you? Or has Timmy fallen down another well?" Only this isn't a cute woodland creature: it's an oversized and frankly scary raven which has just been "brunching on Bambi". (This is Neil Gaiman, after all.)
- Averted in Animorphs. Tobias (a red-tailed hawk) decides to screw the Animorphs' usual paranoia and just tells the father to follow him because he knows where the missing kid is. Being an unwanted orphan, Tobias is genuinely impressed when the dad doesn't freak out because a bird is talking to him. He just goes with it because he loves his son and wants him to come home safely.
- In John Dies At The End, Molly the dog drives a car into a burning building to save her owner.
- Done in David Weber's Mutineer's Moon series, with a set of dogs that have been genetically enhanced to near-human intelligence and then fitted with vocoders to translate their thoughts into speech. It goes into some depth about how they have simple sentence structure and don't have temporal verbs (speaking only in the present) but otherwise treats them as being pretty wise, if not always smart.
Live Action TV
- The trope is named for Lassie, who was always alerting the humans to any trouble in the area. Please note however, that the phrase is a Beam Me Up Scotty, as Timmy never actually fell into a well. He fell into a lot of things, but never a well. Here's a short list of things Timmy has done that Lassie has saved him from:
- let a rabid dog out of a cage ("Graduation")
- ate deadly nightshade berries ("Berrypickers")
- threatened by an escaped female circus elephant ("The Elephant")
- hides out in the treehouse when he has pneumonia ("Spartan")
- threatened by a mother wolf ("The Wolf Cub")
- falls into the lake ("Transition" and “The House Guest")
- develops a high fever from the measles ("The Crisis")
- is almost shot by Paul ("Hungry Deer")
- ignores severe stomach pains; he’s diagnosed with appendicitis ("Hospital")
- is trapped in an abandoned house with Boomer ("Trapped")
- wanders into a live mine field ("Junior G Is")
- is menaced by a bear ("Campout" and “The Renegade")
- is trapped in a mine ("Old Henry")
- gets a black eye playing football ("Growing Pains")
- nearly flies a home-made glider off a cliff ("Flying Machine")
- runs into a burning house to save a neighbor lady and passes out ("The Whopper")
- is endangered by dynamite picked up by an escaped lab chimp ("The Man from Mars")
- is locked in a shed with Lassie by an armed robber ("Star Reporter")
- runs away from home believing he and a friend killed someone ("Alias Jack and Joe")
- is exposed to radiation ("Space Traveler")
- gets trapped on a cliff with Rudy and Don ("Explorers")
- is trapped in a pipe ("Wrong Gift")
- is caught in quicksand ("The Fog")
- is trapped on a ledge ("The Rescue")
- is out in the woods hunting a dangerous tiger ("The Gentle Tiger")
- is tossed out of a little racing car and knocked out ("Big Race")
- is trapped in a mine with Cully ("Fool’s Gold")
- is threatened by a bull ("White-Faced Bull")
- is threatened by a rabid dog ("Mad Dog")
- freezes while on a narrow path at the Grand Canyon ("Lassie at the Grand Canyon")
- is threatened by a killer collie ("Mysterious Intruder")
- is trapped in a badger hole ("Badger Game")
- is knocked out ("Hike")
- is stalked by a presumably dangerous tiger ("Lassie and the Tiger")
- with Lassie, is carried off in a balloon, must survive in the wilderness, and almost drowns ("The Journey")
- almost drowns ("Disappearance" part 1)
- is caught in an earthquake and threatened by a dam spillover ("Moving Mountain")
- is struck by a hit and run driver ("Hit’n'Run")
- Flipper did this a lot too.
- London, the German Shepherd from The Littlest Hobo, was also prone to doing this.
- Skippy the Bush Kangaroo was an Australian series that did this with, you guessed it, a kangaroo.
- Parodied in Seinfeld, when Kramer suffers from chronic cough, and is sent by a random extra to nonverbally alert a pair of policeman about a violent Woman Scorned Elaine. Part of a Running Gag in the episode as Kramer had been taking the same medicine as a dog who had the same cough.
- Played straight on Lost: Vincent pulls the covering off paralyzed Nikki and Paolo, trying to alert the other Losties that they're not really dead. However, it doesn't work, and it's only upon reflection that the audience realizes what he was trying to do.
- Spoofed in a sketch on The Ben Stiller Show, in which Charles Manson took the place of Lassie. The wholesome farm family would interpret Manson's insane ranting with "What's that he's trying to tell us? Timmy's in trouble?"
Tabletop RPG
- Chaosium's Stormbringer (later Elric) supplement Stealer of Souls. The Kelos family dog Rover is a clear Shout Out to Lassie.
The Kelos family pet is a collie with an almost psychic awareness of trouble. When she senses danger she goes through elaborate pantomimes to warn her owners. Most of the family act as though they understand everything the collie tells them.
Theater
- Spoofed in Legally Blonde The Musical:
Margot: Bruiser, where is Elle?
Bruiser: (Yaps)
Margot: She doesn't have an engagement outfit?
Bruiser: (Yaps)
Margot: She's totally freaking out?!
Bruiser: (Yaps)
Margot: She's trapped in the Old Valley Mill?!
Bruiser: (Yaps)
Margot: Oh, whoops, sorry...the Old Valley Mall?!
Video Games
- Spoofed in Fallout 2, in one possible option:
Laddie: Woof! Woof! Woof!
Chosen One: What's the matter, boy, are you trying to tell me something?
Laddie: Woof! Woof! Woof!
Chosen One: Is Johnny someplace close by in Modoc?
Laddie: Woof!
Chosen One: He was playing cowboys and Indians when he accidentally fell down the well and you want me to use my rope and go down and rescue him. Okay, let's go! [Astounding!]
- Spoofed in Sonic Chronicles. An old man tells you that his son Timmy fell down the well and asks you to save him. Upon going down the well it turns out that "Timmy" is actually a grown man named Timothy, and he didn't actually need saving - his dad's just senile and thinks his son's still a small boy.
- In the MMORPG Ever Quest there is a quest called Timmi Fell Down the Well!. You need to follow the dog La`See to save Timmi.
Web Comics
Western Animation
- Parodied in Family Guy, when Brian, the talking dog tries to tell Peter something in English. Peter starts acting like a Lassie character, guessing (badly) what Brian is trying to say. He finally gets the message when Brian deadpans "Woof."
- Tiny Toon Adventures also did a similar parody, with a talking Lassie telling Elmyra that Montana Max has fallen off a cliff. Elmyra just barks.
- Played straight in Barbie And The Diamond Castle, with one of the heroines' puppies going for help after the girls fall/are pushed over a cliff, and the other picking up and dropping a necklace over the side to the girls.
- In a flashback episode of Futurama, Fry's dog leads the family to the cryogenic unit he's in, but they don't notice him there and are instead worried about the weird way the dog is acting.
- Jonny Quest TOS episode "Skull and Double Crossbones". After the Quests are taken hostage by pirates, Bandit goes for help and brings back the police to save the day.
- Tagg, Gulliver's dog in Hanna-Barbera's The Adventures of Gulliver
 cartoon. He was highly intelligent (for a dog) and often acted on his own initiative to warn Gulliver and the Lilliputians of danger (and sometimes save them from it).
- Bart Simpson, with the use of a walkie-talkie, convinces the people of Springfield that a boy named Timmy O'Toole is trapped in a well (which had never been seen before and was never seen again). When Lisa reminds him that he had labelled the walkie-talkie as "Property of Bart Simpson" he gets stuck in the well in an attempt to retrieve it.
Web Original
- Parodied in AH Dot Com The Series "The Gates of Dawn", in which Doctor What's cat Mynx meows at him and he interprets her sounds perfectly as an ongoing recount of events, until at one point the non sequitur "and then Timmy fell in a well?" comes up, upon which Mynx hisses angrily at him and Doc realises "he conjugated the verb wrongly".
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