Tom And Jerry / Tropes A to M

Tropes A To M | Tropes N to Z

A

• Abhorrent Admirer: A rare same-sex version in Flirty Birdy, wherein Tom earns the unwanted attentions of a male eagle whilst disguised as a female.
• Absurdly-Long Limousine: The short, Blue Cat Blues, has Tom competing with a rich cat for a kitty's heart. He eventually pulls up to his love interest's house in an old, broken-down car, only to be driven over by his competitor's limousine. It takes nearly 10 seconds before the front half of the whole thing drives into view (the driver's seat is in the middle), and another 8 before the back half drives out of view.
• Accidental Kiss:
  • One of these kickstarts the whole plot of Dog Trouble, when Tom crashes into the sleeping bulldog and ends up locking lips. Needless to say, the dog is far from amused.
  • Jerry engineers one between Tom and the eagle in Flirty Birdy, courtesy of the elastic on Tom’s party blower beak. Whilst Tom is disgusted, the eagle enjoys it so much he ends up dropping Jerry in celebration.
• Accordion Man:
  • Happens to Tom in "Neapolitan Mouse" after the wolf sends him running into the wall. The wolf proceeds to pick him up and play him like an accordion.
  • In "Tom-ic Energy", the bulldog that's chasing Tom slams into a manhole cover and gets scrunched up. The bulldog ends up inching away like a caterpillar, making accordion sounds as it moves.
• Actually Pretty Funny: In the 1965 short "Of Feline Bondage", Jerry drinks an invisibility potion and spends most of the second half of the cartoon menacing Tom with a pair of scissors, ultimately cutting his fur to look like he's wearing a tank top and shorts. Jerry splits his sides laughing... unaware the potion has worn off, whereupon Tom gets revenge by grabbing Jerry and cutting his fur to look like he's wearing a bikini. Jerry sees his reflection in a mirror and is soon laughing along with Tom at how ridiculous he looks.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: "Professor Tom" has Tom teaching mousing to a kitten. When the kitten does a good job, he gets a pat on the head.
• Agony of the Feet:
  • All those times Jerry took a hammer to Tom's foot or lit matches beneath his feet when he wasn't paying attention.
  • Tom was handy at doing this to himself on occasion. If Tom drops something like a bowling ball or a brick just to snatch up Jerry, there's a good chance it'll find one of his feet.
• Alcohol Hic:
  • Tom often does this when inebriated. He spends nearly the whole of "Part Time Pal" quite drunk, for example — first on hard cider, than some errantly-spilled bay rum. The hiccups actually help him avoid the maid's swinging broom.
  • Happens to Tuffy in the 1954 cartoon "Touché, Pussy Cat!", after he breaks open a cask of wine to flood the street and stop Tom from catching him.
  • In the 1967 short "Cat and Dupli-Cat", Jerry falls into a vat of alcohol, and climbs out drunk. He stumbles through the last minute of the short, confounding Tom and a rival alleycat, before stumbling off into the Venice night muttering the song "Santa Lucia".
• All Just a Dream:
  • Double Subverted in "Heavenly Puss". When Tom gets sent back to his body, he's relieved, thinking it was only a dream... until he notices the "Certificate of Forgiveness" in his hand. Then all the drama happening in this short is revealed to be a dream in the end.
  • "The Cat and the Mermouse" was this, too; everything after Tom falls into the ocean is a hallucination Tom has while nearly drowning. Luckily, at the end, Tom wakes up to find that Jerry rescued him and is pumping the water out of his lungs.
• All Witches Have Cats: In one short, Tom answers an ad to be a companion for someone who turns out to be a witch.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: Japanese Tom and Jerry has a different opening theme.
• Always a Bigger Fish: A pretty literal instance happens in "Cannery Rodent", as not only is Tom chasing Jerry around the titular cannery, but a shark is lurking in the waters below, and understandably out for Tom's blood after he dropped an anchor on its head after it first attacked him.
• Amusing Injuries: Major aspect of the series, as it's not only the premise, but wouldn't work without it.
• And I Must Scream: At the end of "Mice Follies", Jerry freezes Tom in ice; only Tom's eyes could move.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: While it's rare when any characters feel sorry for Tom when he's subjected to one of the (many) misfortunes the series has set out for him, there are instances when at least one character^note usually Jerry react happily to it. Despite being downplayed, special note goes to when Nibbles/Tuffy and Jerry experience his execution. Yes, they originally are horrified,... only to soon walk away happily.
• Angry Guard Dog: Spike, Tom's nemesis.
• Animal Jingoism: Mouse vs. Cat, and occasionally Cat vs. Dog (though Spike wavered between neutral and universally threatening depending on the era).
• Animal Talk: Tom and Jerry rarely talk, but when they do, their words are incomprehensible to the viewers. None of the animal characters are able to talk to human characters.
• Animation Bump:
  • Averted with the original Hanna-Barbera shorts, with a combination of budget cuts during the late '40s and '50s (owing to changing theater operations and increased TV usage) and competition with studios such as UPA (which utilized a flatter, more stylized visual aesthetic with minimal character animation or motion of the type that the classic Tom and Jerry shorts had previously thrived on) eroding the quality of the shorts' visuals from the detailed, fluidly expressive work of The '40s to a flatter, choppier style (with a conspicuously more garish color palette) by the late '50s. Many fans agree that this played a pivotal role in the series' initial downfall.
  • Granted, any halfway competent studio could have produced much better animation than what Gene Deitch's team churned out, but Chuck Jones's efforts are light-years ahead of Deitch's work (and even the final few Hanna-Barbera theatrical shorts) in overall animation quality thanks to the involvement of veteran WB animators from Jones's former unit, such as Ben Washam and Ken Harris.
  • Within the Chuck Jones run, most of the cartoons made in his studio had a style very consistent with his usual, being more stylised and angular than the standard designs for Tom and Jerry. The clip-show shorts such as "Matinee Mouse" and "Shutter Bugged Cat" however, make a greater (but still not seamless) attempt to replicate the style of the Hanna Barbara cartoons, likely to keep them more uniform with the stock footage used.
  • For an inverted example, Deitch's first Tom and Jerry cartoon, "Switchin' Kitten", has noticeably better animation compared to his later efforts (which isn't really saying that much), due to the fact that Deitch produced that cartoon in the USA with the help of some of his former Terrytoons colleagues, before departing to Czechoslovakia to make the rest of his cartoons with a much less experienced animation team.
  • Tom and Jerry and the Wizard of Oz has this going for it compared to the other direct-to-video films.
• Ant Assault: In three shorts (Cat Napping, Pup on a Picnic and Barbecue Brawl), a marching swarm of ants (whose synchronized marching may cause dangerous vibrations) shows up to cause bother. In the first cartoon, they were used by Jerry to ruin Tom's nap by breaking the hammock with their vibrations, while in the latter two cartoons they show up to collect food from Spike and Tyke's picnics.
• Anthropomorphic Shift:
  • Tom undergoes this. He looked like a real cat in the first short, but over time the change was striking. He began to walk upright more and more often. Other characters underwent a similar transformation, though Jerry himself changed very little over the course of the series, having always been somewhat humanoid.
  • Depending on the Writer, occasionally cats wear clothes and live in houses with no humans in sight.
• Anti-Hero: Jerry has been known to have shades of this, depending on the cartoon, because he does tend to start the conflict. By contrast...
• Anti-Villain: Tom. There have been times where he does not start the conflict, only trying to protect the house, doing his job, or other things.
• Anvil on Head
• Arch-Enemy: Tom and Jerry.
• Art Evolution: Tom and Jerry looked far different in their first short (with Tom actually looking like a real cat), but over time their designs became far more slick and cartoonish. It then went through a de-evolution in the mid Fifties as the budget became smaller and Limited Animation was used, making them resemble Hanna-Barbera's later TV cartoons. Modern adaptations (and thus the way they're normally pictured these days) tend to give Tom and Jerry the look they had in the late Forties to early Fifties.
• Art Shift: The Tom and Jerry Show (2014) has the characters drawn without outlines and a little simpler. Beginning with season 2, the characters gained colored outlines.
• Artistic License – Biology: Tom and to the same extent other cats in the series are seen enjoying dairy products such as milk or cream. In reality, adult cats are lactose intolerant. In all fairness, this is a common misconception that also applies to most other fictional works.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: In "I'm Just Wild About Jerry", after Jerry saves Tom from getting run over by a third train, the former gets an Angelic Transformation for this selfless act by sprouting wings and a halo before flying off to the moonlight in the heavens above while Tom waves goodbye to him.
• Ash Face: The characters get these usually due to getting explosions to the face.
• Ass in a Lion Skin: Several times, the characters disguise themselves as other animals, such as when Tom disguises himself as a dog to find Jerry in a dog pound in "Puttin' on the Dog".

B

• Babysitting Episode: In the shorts "Busy Buddies" and "Tot Watchers", Tom and Jerry have to continuously chase down and rescue the baby from trouble because the actual babysitter spends her time gossiping on the telephone.
• The Bad Guy Wins:
  • Tom comes out on top in a few shorts, but since these tend to be ones where Jerry was the one harassing him, the "bad guy" part is up for debate.
  • In "Baby Butch", Butch manages to best Tom and Jerry in the end by swiping the ham that they had been keeping him from getting throughout the episode by making it look like he'll only take a small portion before getting the whole thing and eating it while holding the duo back.
• Badly Battered Babysitter:
  • The two occasionally end up trying to save a wandering baby, who's neglected by a bubble-headed teen babysitter.
  • This is also often the case for Jerry whenever Nibbles is around, and both Tom and Jerry are badly battered when Tom is forced to babysit for three bratty kittens in "Triplet Trouble".
• Ball Cannon: "Tennis Chumps" has the opponents Tom and Butch form an alliance against the subversive mouse, Jerry. One of Jerry's defenses is to activate a tennis ball cannon and set it on high, whereupon it buffets Tom repeatedly in the face.
• Balloon Belly: A number of these cartoon animals are pretty inflatable and malleable, what with Jerry swallowing cheese pieces whole as if he were a Yoshi with a shorter tongue.
• Beach Episode: "Salt Water Tabby" and "Muscle Beach Tom". In both cartoons, Tom has on an Old-Timey Bathing Suit.
• Beary Funny: The dancing bear from "Down Beat Bear", who dances to music when he hears the slightest bit of it — and usually picks Tom as his reluctant dance partner.
• Beast in the Building: Many Tom and Jerry cartoons have an animal escaped from the zoo or circus hiding in Tom's house with help from Jerry. They have included a lion ("Jerry and the Lion"), a baby elephant ("Jerry and Jumbo"), a seal pup ("Little Runaway"), and a trained bear ("Down Beat Bear").
• Bee-Bee Gun: "Tee for Two". Jerry directs a bee swarm straight to Tom via the bamboo breathing apparatus the cat is using while lying at the bottom of the lake.
• Berserk Button:
  • In "The Milky Waif", Tom goes after Jerry's adopted nephew Nibbles after trapping Jerry in a jar. When Tom is foolish enough to (sort of) spank Nibbles while he's cowering, an enraged Jerry breaks free with adrenaline-powered super strength, bellows like a bull and begins swinging Tom around by his tail.
  • Do NOT disturb Spike while he's sleeping. And DO NOT screw with his son.
  • In The Million Dollar Cat, Tom reaches his breaking point with Jerry by the episode's end after the mouse takes far too many liberties, knowing Tom can't retaliate without losing his fortune. Jerry is legitimately scared when Tom finally blows his top before tearing up the contract and forcing Jerry to literally eat his words.
• Better the Devil You Know: Jerry's attitude towards Tom.
• Big Eater:
  • Nibbles. The letter he was left with warned "He's always hungry!" He even eats an entire turkey before Tom or Jerry even get a bite.
  • Jerry himself can ingest food several times his size and keep eating. Same could be said of Tom whenever he actually gets to eat.
• Big "NO!": Tom exclaims "No!" right after saving Quackers from jumping into boiling water in "That's My Mommy".
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Tom has these.
• Big, Thin, Short Trio: Spike is big, Tom is thin, & Jerry is short.
• Bilingual Bonus: Anything Tuffy says in the Mouseketeer episodes.
  Tuffy: Pauvre, pauvre pussycat... C'est la guerre!^note Poor, poor pussycat... Such is war!
• Bizarre and Improbable Golf Game: Tee for Two.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: The Chuck Jones shorts generally have both Tom and Jerry at their worst cases of being The Bully and The Prankster, respectively.
• Black Comedy Animal Cruelty: The titular Tom, who's a cat, has been on the receiving end of this.
  • Whenever the maid beats him up (usually with a broomstick), it'll be Played for Laughs.
  • The Gene Deitch shorts have his master beat him up, grill his face, and deafening him with his gun.
• Black Face: Many shorts that still appear on DVDs and television, like "The Milky Waif" and "Yankee Doodle Mouse"^note The blackface gag has been reinstated since 2002, had blackface gags edited out, leaving the resulting cartoon very choppy. In the case of "The Milky Waif", we suddenly jump from Nibbles squirting milk in Tom's face to Tom suddenly being hit in the face with a frying pan. Also occurs in "The Mouse Came to Dinner" where they edit out the maid's intro... which means Tom is coming out of a potted plant at the start for no reason whatsoever ^note  though this is justified as Jerry roams around the table with an Indian headdress which is considered offensive, but then again, Tom spends nearly the entirety of "The Little Orphan" in one . It's rare to find unedited versions.
  • When the cartoons came on CBS, Chuck Jones, who was in control of the shorts at the time, and his team reanimated blackface scenes to make it look like nothing happened. In "The Little Orphan", for example, Tom kept his Indian headdress when he was burned by a candle instead of him turning into blackface and gaining pickaninny braids.
• Blind Alley
• Bloodless Carnage:
  • Despite the high levels of violence in the earlier shorts, there was never any blood. (Unless it's faked with ketchup.)
  • In "Touché, Pussy Cat!", when Jerry splits Tom in half with an axe, the two halves fall separate ways to the ground, and there's still no blood or gore.
• Blue Means Cold: In "Snowbody Loves Me", the snow has a blue tint and when Jerry is frozen in ice, the ice surrounding him is blue.
• Bowdlerized:
  • Tom's original owner, the maid, was considered racist during reruns, and occasionally episodes featuring her recolor her skin white and have a different person dub her voice. It's actually June Foray, speaking in an Irish accent!
    • Subverted on the versions that come on Cartoon Network and Boomerang. The original Mammy design is still there but her voice is redubbed by Thea Vidale to remove the stereotypical voice. As of 2011, they are mostly absent from regular rotation however.
  • Cartoon Network and Boomerang subvert this as they leave most of the violence in and keep a handful, though not all, blackface gags. They still edit most gags that are considered racist extending beyond blackface gags.
  • Less so on Boomerang in the UK, where the episodes are left as they were (though some episodes, like "Texas Tom" and "Tennis Chumps" are edited to remove characters smoking cigarettes and cigars).
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • A rare Show Within a Show version of this marks the end of the short with Jerry's country-singing uncle Pecos, whose guitar strings keep breaking and he plucks Tom's whiskers to replace them. For his big TV debut, the guitar string breaks yet again. Tom (watching it on TV) laughs out loud, only for Pecos to reach out of the TV to pluck one last whisker off his face.
  • The characters often look directly at the viewer during moments of realization.
  • In Neapolitan Mouse, the Italian mouse Topo recognizes Tom and Jerry for their cartoons.
• Break the Cutie: "Downhearted Duckling" is a huge one for Quacker after he reads the "Ugly Duckling". Since the duckling looks like him, Quacker thinks that he's ugly too.
• Break the Haughty: The first cartoon alone has Tom get outwitted and ridiculed by Jerry (who he toyed with) and kicked out by the maid.
• Breakout Character: Spike and Tyke, who even had their own brief role in solo shorts. Some of their later appearances in the Tom and Jerry series also seem to be focused primarily on them, with the title duo's war as more of a side story.
• Buffoonish Tomcat: There are TONS of cats prone to slapstick and comical foolery in the film series, the titular Tom is the most well known cat that was prone to this since he's The Chew Toy who can comically lack some common-sense in his clumsiness or his tomfoolery.
• Burning with Anger: After being pissed off enough by Jerry in "The Million Dollar Cat", steam exits Tom's ears.
• Butt-Monkey: Like his Arch-Enemy (albeit not as frequently as him), Jerry can be subject to Amusing Injuries.
• Buzzing the Deck: While Tom is joyriding on the witch's broom in "The Flying Sorceress", he flies past the window of the house where Jerry is contentedly eating a hunk of cheese. Tom's first buzz causes Jerry to blink, but dismiss the sight as an aberration. Tom's second buzz causes Jerry to discard his cheese as "bad."
• Buzzsaw Jaw: In "Fit To Be Tied", Tom uses this to carve a baseball bat from Spike's rapidly chomping mouth, only to knock him out to silence the chomping.

C

• Caffeine Failure: On one short, Tom is trying to not get caught sleeping, so he takes pot after pot of coffee. Eventually, he has a Balloon Belly slushing with gallons of coffee, yet is thoroughly exhausted and falls asleep shortly afterwards.
• The Cameo: In a lot of their more modern works (such as Tom and Jerry: The Movie and Tom and Jerry Tales), Droopy makes a guest appearance.
• Canon Immigrant:
  • Nibbles, aka Tuffy, who was first introduced in the Tom and Jerry comics before he ever appeared in the theatrical shorts.
  • Butch and Toodles Galore also originated from a separate 1941 MGM short "The Alley Cat" before crossing over to the Tom and Jerry series. A bulldog very similar to Spike also appears in this short.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': In the second cartoon, "The Midnight Snack", Jerry is beaten by Tom every time he tries to steal food, and Tom only starts losing once he starts stealing too.
• Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them: "The Night Before Christmas", "The Lonesome Mouse," "Snowbody Loves Me".
• Captain Ersatz:
  • Tom's owner in three Deitch shorts looked and sounded an awful lot like Clint Clobber, a character from Deitch's tenure at Terrytoons. However, unlike the mean, abusive character presented here, the Terrytoons character was a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
  • Another Deitch cartoon featured a lone sailor obsessed with bringing down an elusive whale. The name of the whale (and the episode)? "Dicky Moe".
• Captured by Cannibals: "His Mouse Friday". This short is often heavily edited when it's shown at all (even the Spotlight Collection contains some cropping out of offensive caricatures).
• Caretaking is Feminine: In "Tot Watchers", Tom's owner leaves her baby under the care of Jenny, a blonde teenager that seems nice and well-behaved. But, as soon as she finds herself alone with the baby, the first thing she does is to jump at the telephone, while the child slips from his stroller to wander around. Tom and Jerry - two male animals - stop picking on another to keep the baby from getting in danger for the rest of the episode, thus they are much more responsible and competent than Jennie in spite of their antics. She eventually realizes that the baby is not with her and calls the police just to lay the blame on Tom and Jerry, when they return with the baby safe and sound.
• Cartoon Conductor:
  • "Carmen Get It", directed by Gene Deitch, takes the "switching sheet music" gag to ridiculous extremes. As Tom tries to conduct an orchestra, he fails to realize that his sheet music is actually a blank page covered by an army of ants. As the ants repeatedly switch into different patterns, the orchestra correspondingly switches to a random song, causing Tom much confusion.
  • Tom first entered the concert in that cartoon as a musician trying to flush Jerry out of a hole so he can capture him, only to migrate to the conductor's stand later, much to the ire of the actual conductor. Tom actually was employed as a conductor in 1950's Tom And Jerry In The Hollywood Bowl.
  • At one point, Jerry crawls into the actual conductor's suit, making him dance around in a way vaguely resembling the Twist and causing the orchestra to play in an appropriate tempo.
• Cartoon Cheese: Possibly the Trope Codifier.
• Cartoony Eyes
• Cassandra Truth: In "Heavenly Puss", a deceased Tom is given a limited time alive to gain forgiveness from Jerry as a pass into heaven. He desperately pantomimes the situation to Jerry, who gives a very skeptical look.
• Cats Are Mean:
  • Tom by default, natch. Butch tends to be just as slimy, if even meaner.
  • Occasionally subverted, in the occasional short where Jerry is the instigator and Tom the hapless victim.
  • This is subverted in the short Heavenly Puss, every cat except Tom is allowed into Heaven.
• Caught in a Snare: In "Mouse Trouble", Tom gets caught in it (which was intended for Jerry) when Jerry switches the cheese used as bait for a bowl of cream. Also counts as Hoist by His Own Petard.
• Chained to a Railway: In "Kitty Foiled", with a model train set. Luckily, the canary acts fast and drops a bowling ball on the tracks moments before Tom is about to kill Jerry.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • Tuffy ends each of the Mouseketeer shorts with "C'est la guerre!" (That's War!), except in Tom and Cherie.
  • Once per Episode, Tuffy would stab Tom in the butt with a sword and say "Touché, pussycat!" (This was parodied by Quacker in "Happy Go Ducky", but this time the sword became a knife.)
  • Tom's 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA' scream. Created by recording one of the producers yelling, and chopping off the beginning and end. Ironically, Butch was the first to use this scream as a result being jabbed in the rear by a hat pin in Springtime for Thomas.
  • Tom's Charles Boyer impression got used more than once, as well.
  • Spike saying "That's my boy" to Tyke.
  • Whenever Spike delivers a threatening speech to Tom, it's always prefaced with "Listen, pussycat..."
• Character Focus: Spike and Tyke towards the late 50's, perhaps in order to sell the spinoff series Hanna-Barbara was trying to make with them.
• Characterization Marches On: In Spike's original appearances, he was more or less an non-anthropomorphic dog and even would attack Tom and Jerry without preference in his debut. Then, in "Quiet Please", the team developed the standard plot for Spike (telling Tom he would pound him if Tom did X, only for Jerry to spend the rest of the short framing Tom for X) and gave him an actual personality. His voice was quite different, too, being voiced by Billy Bletcher. Later on, they gave him his son and the characterization we all know now. In these cartoons, Spike was voiced by Daws Butler, who made Spike sound something like Jimmy Durante.
• Chase Scene: Pretty much the entire point of 99% of the shorts.
• Chased Off into the Sunset: This is a typical ending:
  • In "The Bodyguard," the dog catcher's truck drives away with Spike the bulldog penned inside. Jerry Mouse pursues the truck, hoping to free Spike a second time. Tom Cat pursues Jerry Mouse because that's what Tom does.
  • In "Part Time Pal," a drunken Tom Cat is chased under the moonlight by a vengeful maid.
  • In "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse", Jerry chases an ultra-miniaturized Tom around the house.
  • Played with in "Texas Tom," where Jerry Mouse rides Tom Cat like a bronco into the western sunset.
  • "The Vanishing Duck" ends with Jerry and Quacker chased away by an invisible Tom, who whacks each of them with a coal shovel alternatively.
  • In the banned short "Mouse Cleaning", Tom pretends to be a random African American passerby when the maid asks where Tom is, because his face is smeared with coal after Jerry floods the house with it. She chases him into the sunset throwing coal at him, and in the distance one hits him in the head and he goes down.
  • Similarly, "Tee for Two" ends with Tom being chased off the golf course by a swarm of bees towards the sunset, while Jerry whacks a golf ball hard enough to send it flying in Tom's direction. The ball catches up with Tom in the distance and hits him on the head, again knocking him out.
• Chekhov's Gun: Literal instance in "Year of the Mouse". Early in the short, Jerry and his nameless partner in crime place a gun in Tom's hand and make him think he's pulled the trigger on himself. At the short's climax, the gun reappears when Tom discovers and captures the mice, first holding them at gunpoint and then rigging a bottle trap so that they'll shoot themselves if they try to escape.
• The Chew Toy: Both titular characters (especially Tom) aren't immune to Amusing Injuries.
• Children Are Innocent:
  • In "Professor Tom", Tom is trying to teach a kitten how to chase mice. Though the kitten chases Jerry around, it's only because that's what he's told to do, and he responds eagerly to Jerry's offers of friendship. Jerry is noticeably much nicer to the kitten than he is to Tom, and gets very upset when he sees Tom spanking the kitten near the end of the short.
  • Also the plot of "The Unshrinkable Jerry Mouse", where Jerry defends a kitten newcomer from a very jealous Tom.
  • Reversed around in "The Little School Mouse" when Jerry tries to teach Nibbles how to outsmart a cat. Each of his demonstrations on Tom fail miserably, while Nibbles naively just asks Tom to comply to his requests, and actually succeeds.
  • The baby in "Tot Watchers" doesn't understand the laws of physics.
  • Inverted in regard to the three extremely naughty kittens in "Triplet Trouble", who make life miserable for both Tom and Jerry until the two team up to teach them a lesson.
• Christmas Episode: The early short "The Night Before Christmas", which takes place on Christmas Eve.
• Circling Birdies: One particularly notable example occurs in "The Flying Cat", where Tom uses a girdle tied to his limbs to fly. When he's first starting to get it, he crashes into a mailbox and gets circled by tiny flying Toms.
• Clip Show:
  • More so around the time the series began to decline in quality, though Hanna and Barbera managed to keep some of them genuinely entertaining. It required an Art Shift whenever Chuck Jones did one, so their look would match the clips. Tellingly, Tom and Jerry's Art Evolution made the differences between the clips and the Framing Device particularly jarring every time a Clip Show episode was done.
  • Noticeable in the two clip-show shorts made during the Jones era, Matinee Mouse and Shutter Bugged Cat, both directed by Tom Ray. The most discernible contrast between the new footage and the clips of the H-B shorts is the animation. The originals bristle with life and energy while Ray's looked lethargic by comparison — which isn't really surprising when you consider that Ray had to storyboard and animate the whole thing himself, as opposed to the full team of animators that H-B and Jones normally had.
• Cock Fight: Tom and Butch are often in competition over the affection of an attractive female cat.
• Come Back, My Pet!: Tom's owner gets annoyed that Tom never tries to catch Jerry anymore, so she replaces him with a robot mouse catcher and Tom is kicked out. Since Jerry can't live in the house due to the robot throwing him out, he and Tom work together, and eventually the robot goes wild and Tom rescues his owner.
• Concussions Get You High: In "Nit-Witty Kitty", Tom gets hit on the head and afterwards thinks he's a mouse. Has elements of Trauma-Induced Amnesia.
• Conspicuous Consumption: "Blue Cat Blues", where Tom keeps trying (and failing) to out-spend Butch in order to impress a female cat.
• Construction Zone Calamity: The short "Tot Watchers" has the duo try to protect a baby who wanders into a construction zone. A later Chuck Jones short, "Bad Day at Cat Rock", has Tom chasing Jerry through a construction zone.
• Convenient Cranny: Jerry tends to run at his mouse hole whenever Tom tries to get him. When Tom tries to reach his hand into the mouse hole, Jerry will usually exit through another way, or play a prank on Tom.
• Cooking the Live Meal:
  • In "That's My Mommy!", Tom exploits the naiveté of the duckling Quacker, who believes Tom to be his mother, by trying to cook him by successively tying him to a spit and roasting him on an open fire (which Quacker believes is meant to keep him warm), baking him as a pastry (by tucking him into a "bed" of dough), and by fattening him up and oven-roasting him as a "stuffed duckling" (which Quacker interprets as having dinner and then going to sleep in his bedroom). Each time Quacker is saved by Jerry, but runs back to his "mother", until finally Quacker learns the truth by reading Tom's cookbook while the latter is preparing to cook Quacker in a stew. When a heartbroken Quacker wants to jump into the bubbling pot to please his "mother", Tom has a change of heart and saves Quacker.
  • In "His Mouse Friday", Tom washes up on a tropical island as a castaway. Starved for food, he gets sight of Jerry and tricks him into stepping into his frying pan, turns him a few times by throwing him into the air like a pancake, then dons a napkin and grabs a fork and knife in apparent anticipation of the feast. Jerry however simply jumps out of the pan right onto the panhandle, catapulting the pan into Tom's face.
  • In "Jerry and the Goldfish", Tom gets an appetite to eat Jerry's new friend Goldie the goldfish and doggedly tries to cook her, first by stewing her in her own bowl by putting it on the stove like a pot, coating her in flour and frying her in a pan, tying her to a gridiron and roasting her in the fireplace, toasting her in a toaster and putting her between two slices of bread like a sandwich, finally stewing her in a pot with vegetables. Each time Tom is unable to complete the procedure thanks to Jerry's interference.
• Couldn't Find a Lighter: In "Texas Tom", Tom greets a female feline by rolling a cigarette, lighting it with his six-gun, and blowing "HOWDY" in one breath.
• Country Mouse: Both traditional and literal in "Mouse in Manhattan".
• Covers Always Lie: The usual title card, which is used on the main page, has Tom and Jerry smiling at each other as if they're getting along; in reality, the two are enemies. At least two title cards subvert this and have Tom scowling at Jerry.
• CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Tom has to be saved from drowning no fewer than three times in the classic MGM/Hanna-Barbera run, and is actually resuscitated twice:
  • At the end of "The Cat and the Mermouse", Jerry is giving Tom Holger-Nielsen resuscitation (essentially pushing on his back to get him to breathe) when Tom comes to from his Near-Death Experience.
  • In "Just Ducky", Tom starts drowning in a lake, and Quacker, who thinks he can't swim, initially doesn't help. When Tom goes down, Quacker jumps in, pulls him out, and he and Jerry work his tail like a well handle to get the water out of him. In the next scene, Jerry is helping Tom recover from pneumonia, while Quacker is (literally) swimming with his family.
  • He's also pulled from a river in "Puppy Tale", but his revival is far more comedic, coming from Jerry feeding him hot soup through a funnel and having the titular puppy lick Tom's face to wake him up.
• Credits Gag: In "Carmen Get It", the credits include "Music played by the Tom & Jerry Symphony Orchestra (100 men & a mouse)".
• Cry Laughing: Done by Tom at the end of "Is There a Doctor in the Mouse?" when he faces a giant Jerry.
• Cuckoo Clock Gag:
  • In "Jerry's Cousin", Muscles Mouse punches Tom across the room and into a cuckoo clock on the wall. This leaves Tom with the roof on his head, and he sticks his tongue in and out to reveal the bird.
  • In "Designs on Jerry", Tom uses a cuckoo clock as part of his "modern mousetrap". A knife is attached to the bird so it can cut an overhead rope carrying a safe and have it fall on Jerry.
  • In "A-Tom-inable Snowman", Jerry hides inside a cuckoo clock, and Tom winds the clock to the top of the hour so he can emerge and make cuckoo sounds. Tom does this a few times to taunt Jerry before devouring him, but when he finally goes for him, Jerry is gone and replaced with a stick of dynamite.
• Curb-Stomp Cushion: Compared to most cat and prey rivalries of the Golden Age, Jerry was marked for never quite having full control of the situation, and while Tom would usually end up getting the worst of the comic abuse, he would often still at least get in a blow or two against Jerry, often whenever the latter got too cocky or vindictive for his own good. In a few odd cases, Tom even got in the final blow.
• Cut a Slice, Take the Rest:
  • Used in a short, "The Truce Hurts", where Tom, Jerry, and Spike are trying to figure out how to divide a steak they've found, and can't come to an agreement, thereby ruining their truce.
  • In another short, "Baby Butch", Butch the alley cat cuts a small slice of ham for Tom and Jerry each, then takes the rest for himself.
  • Done yet another time in the later shorts where Tom and Spike belonged to a married couple; in this case, Tom was attempting to retrieve an incriminating photograph before his owners saw it.
• Cute Kitten:
  • Combined with Kittens Are Innocent in "Professor Tom".
  • Subverted in "Three Little Kittens", where the titular kittens do nothing but try to get in trouble.
  • The Chuck Jones-era "The Unshrinkable Jerry Mouse" has Tom attempting to eject a new kitten from the household, with Jerry running interference.

D

• Dagwood Sandwich: Tom eats these on occasion.
• Dangerous Backswing: In the short "The Truce Hurts", Tom, Jerry and Spike are having a three-way battle, in the course of which Tom repeatedly whacks Jerry with a frying pan after taking a pipe to the knee. Spike, who is standing behind Tom vainly trying to hit him with a baseball bat, gets hit on the head by Tom's frying pan with every of Tom's swings, without Tom even noticing. This repeats no less than seven times in a row.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • "Heavenly Puss" and "Blue Cat Blues" are way sadder and scarier than most shorts. At least the former is still Played for Laughs.
  • The shorts are already violent but the Gene Deitch era really increases the level of violence, how realistic it is, and adds a whole new level of sadism.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • Two 1957 shorts ("Give and Tyke" and "Scat Cats") focused on Spike and Tyke.
  • "Mouse in Manhattan" is virtually a solo Jerry short, with Tom limited to a brief appearance at the end.
• Death Is Cheap:
  • It's almost never given a sign of death or anything much related to it, since it's a slapstick comedy, but during a time-warp episode, "The Two Mouseketeers", Tom does (supposedly) get guillotined at the end of the episode, which didn't stop him from reappearing in the following shorts in the same setting.
  • In "Mouse Trouble", Tom's soul is explicitly shown floating up to heaven after he manages to blow up the house and himself along with it. He will be back in the next episode, of course.
  • In "Blue Cat Blues", both Tom and Jerry are implied to commit suicide by sitting on train tracks.
• Delayed Reaction: Happens often with Tom, which makes him realize too late that he's carrying a bomb, about to get hit, or that Jerry is right in front of him.
• Denser and Wackier: The scenarios and gags in the earlier shorts were more mundane compared to their later years.
• Depending on the Writer:
  • Chuck Jones and Gene Deitch had their own takes on the characters. In some shorts, Tom is a Jerkass; in others he's getting beat up over nothing he actually did (mostly Deitch's, thanks primarily to his owner). Most of the worst examples of Jerry being The Prankster come from the Chuck Jones shorts.
  • Sometimes, Tom is merely doing his "job" in chasing Jerry, sometimes he is actively tormenting the mouse, and in a few he actually means to eat him.
  • Sometimes Spike can talk and is pretty docile unless Tom antagonizes him; other times, he attacks Tom solely for being a cat and can only bark or growl.
  • Butch can be either Tom's rival/enemy or one of his buddies depending on the short.
• Deranged Animation: The Gene Deitch shorts.
• Determinator: Tom never stops trying to catch Jerry.
• Dinner Deformation: This happened a lot to Jerry and Nibbles when they ate something larger than themselves, though only occasionally to Tom (either from his Dagwood Sandwich or swallowing something large and inedible like an umbrella).
• Disguised in Drag: Tom dresses up like a female eagle to seduce a male eagle and steal Jerry from him. It works too well.
• Disney Death: In "Heavenly Puss", Tom gets hit by a piano and dies, ending up in heaven, but he won't be able to pass through the gates without Jerry's forgiveness. Tom is given a set amount of time to receive Jerry's signature on a certificate of forgiveness, but gets it seconds too late, and falls down to Hell, to the glee of a devilish Spike. It turns out to be All Just a Dream and Tom suddenly hugs a bewildered Jerry.
• Domestic Appliance Disaster: In the cartoon "Push Button Kitty", the maid purchases Mechano, the Cat of Tomorrow, to replace the ineffective Tom. Against a single mouse, Mechano jettisons Jerry with maximum efficiency and zero damage. However, when presented with a dozen wind-up mice, Mechano goes haywire, turning a row of commemorative plates into a shooting gallery and circular-sawing a mahogany coffee table in two, among other destructive efforts. The maid is screaming for Tom to return by the cartoon's end.
• Domestic-Only Cartoon: The Hanna Barbera and Chuck Jones shorts.
• Don't Do Anything I Wouldn't Do: "Fraidy Cat" haS Tom's chicken-hearted cousin visiting, and he's scared of mice. After several scenes of confusion, Tom and his cousin team up to fool Jerry. Tom's rear shows up behind a wall and Jerry is about to kick it when his cousin (whom Jerry thinks is Tom gone cowardly) shows up at the other end and says "I wouldn't kick me if I were you!"
• Doorstop Baby:
  • Nibbles was introduced as this.
  • Butch pretends to be one in one short, just so he can steal all the food in Tom's fridge.
• Downer Ending:
  • Would you believe there was a short (Blue Cat Blues, 1956) that ended with both Tom and Jerry sitting on a train track waiting to commit suicide by train? And just as it irises out, you hear the sound of a train whistle? Chilling.
  • "The Two Mouseketeers", ends with Tom's execution and Jerry and Tuffy seeing the guillotine come down...
  • While most episodes where Tom wins start out with Jerry initiating the conflict, the short Southbound Duckling, where Jerry is trying to help Quackers fly south whilst avoiding being eaten by Tom, ends with Tom sneaking up behind the pair as they relax at Miami beach, trapping them under a bucket, then giving an Evil Laugh to the camera. Whatever he does to them next is up to your imagination.
• Draw Aggro: Jerry is frequently left doing this to Tom to protect a smaller animal such as Nibbles or Quacker.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • In one episode, Quackers attempts suicide multiple times. His motives are disturbingly realistic, as he even says "I'm useless" and "Nobody loves me" as well as "I'm just ugly". However, once Quackers gets a girlfriend, all suicidal thoughts miraculously disappear!
  • "Blue Cat Blues" has an utterly heartbroken Tom calmly sitting on a railroad track, waiting for the inevitable train. If that wasn't bad enough, Jerry eventually joins him.
• Drowning His Sorrows: "Mouse Into Space" has Tom take alcohol due to him being miserable about the fact Jerry decided to leave into space.
• Drunk on Milk: In "Blue Cat Blues", Jerry's Inner Monologue describes that Tom 'started drinking'.
• Duck Season, Rabbit Season: Done in "The Yankee Doodle Mouse", when Tom and Jerry throw a stick of dynamite back and forth.
• Duel to the Death: Duel Personality runs on this.
• The Dulcinea Effect: Many episodes involve Jerry helping/protecting another animal from Tom. Examples include a goldfish, canary, puppy, elephant, kitten, duckling, lion, seal, and another mouse.

E

• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The early shorts had a strong Disney influence, undoubtedly a hold-over from Hugh Harman's influence on MGM's cartoon shorts. As such, the earlier shorts are very atmospheric and fluid in their animation, but to a point where it's self-conscious, and as such hampers the timing and pacing of the cartoons. Tom and Jerry also had more of a sibling rivalry than a true cat-eats-mouse rivalry. Once Tex Avery arrived at MGM, his influence started taking hold of the shorts (although he never directed anything on the series), resulting in more streamlined designs, sharper timing, crisper pacing, and the "sibling rivalry" aspect of Tom and Jerry's relationship was abandoned altogether.
  • Tom and Jerry are widely considered to be the greatest silent comedy duo in animation. Their two creators would go on to start an animation studio notorious for extremely dialogue-heavy cartoons.
• Eating Shoes: Tom eats his shoes and shoelaces in "His Mouse Friday".
• Eek, a Mouse!!: Numerous times. Invoked by Tom in "Trap Happy" when calling the mouse extermination service.
• Elephants Are Scared of Mice:
  • Played straight and then subverted in an episode where, during the usual chase, Jerry stumbles on a circus elephant weeping from a tack stuck under its foot. Jerry removes the tack and the elephant panics, afraid of Jerry, and desperately tries to hit him with Tom (who happened to be there at that moment). Jerry shows the elephant the tack and, in Androcles' Lion fashion, she hugs Jerry in appreciation. From then on, she treats Jerry like her own child, protecting him from a persistent Tom in addition to giving the cat a good beating.
  • The Gene Deitch short "Sorry Safari" has the elephant that's carrying Tom and his master getting frightened of Jerry when Tom sticks him in his trunk.
  • Averted in “Jerry and Jumbo”, where neither the baby elephant nor his mother show any fear of Jerry.
• Elongating Arm Gag:
  • A gag in "The Down Beat Bear" has Tom greatly extend his arm so he could grab a telephone.
  • The shorts "Busy Buddies" and "Tot Watchers" feature a gag where the babysitter stretches her arm across the room to clutch the phone and is then pulled towards it via Newton's second law.
• Enemy Mine: There are times Tom and Jerry are facing a common enemy. The 1975 version had them teamed up in almost every episode; only at least two episodes — a tennis episode and a bowling episode — had them against each other.
• Enemy to All Living Things: In episodes where Jerry befriends another animal, Tom usually ends up either provoking its rather violent wrath, or deciding he wants to eat it, depending on the species.
• Enormous Engagement Ring: In "Blue Cat Blues", Tom and an obscenely rich rival tom-cat are trying to impress their love, a lovely white cat lady. The ring from Tom's rival was so big and bright that you had to put on welder's glasses to look at it. For Tom's ring, however, you needed a magnifying glass. The kitty married Tom's rival.
• Epic Fail: Tom is more or less as likely to be hurt by his own hilariously inept attempts at catching Jerry as he is by Jerry. Trap Happy and Mouse Trouble, for instance, pretty much consist entirely of this.
• Escaped Animal Rampage:
  • The cartoon "Jerry and The Lion" has a lion escaping from the zoo and Jerry desperately trying to keep him hidden from Tom. In the end, he helps him get back on the boat to Africa.
  • In "The Little Runaway", a baby seal escapes from the circus and hides with Jerry, while Tom tries to catch him for the reward.
  • "Jerry and Jumbo" has a baby elephant falling off the circus train and ending up at Jerry and Tom's house. Jerry disguises him as a giant mouse to freak out Tom.
  • In "Down Beat Bear", it's a circus bear who dances whenever he hears music. Every time Tom tries to report him, Jerry plays music and the bear makes Tom his unwilling dance partner.
  • In "The Missing Mouse", a white lab mouse escapes after ingesting an experimental explosive. Jerry paints himself white and messes with Tom, but Tom eventually finds out... just as the real lab mouse appears.
• Everything Explodes Ending: "The Missing Mouse" has Tom scared by a lab mouse that swallowed a powerful explosive. By the end, a radio announcement declares that the mouse will not explode and Tom gives it a good kick. It explodes anyway.
• Evil Laugh:
  • In context, it's closer to one of Tom's "hero" moments, but anyway, "Timid Tabby" has Tom and his easily-frightened cousin George striking back as an eight-limbed, two-headed monster with a devil of a laugh.
  • "Solid Serenade" and "Jerry and the Lion" both have Tom laughing evilly when he thinks he's locked Jerry inside a doghouse/closet with himself, only to find out the hard way that there was something bigger and nastier in there. Special mention to the former, which has Spike leading Jerry out of his doghouse and then slinking back inside with a wicked laugh of his own.
  • At the end of "Southbound Duckling", Tom gives a pretty unsettling one after he traps Jerry and Quackers under a bucket.
  • "The Bodyguard" has Tom, thinking Spike has been distracted, holding Jerry while laugh evilly and proclaiming "IN ME POWER!". A few moments later Tom is distracted, and Spike goes back.
  • Jerry gets a devilish chuckle in "The Unshrinkable Jerry Mouse" when Tom manages to get himself trapped in a window, followed by Tom frantically saying his prayers.
• Explosive Stupidity: Tom and explosives do not mix. When he shows up with a dynamite stick, you can usually expect him to also be on the receiving end of it.
• Expressive Health Bar: The first video game for Game Boy has a picture of Jerry as the health meter. When Jerry is at full health, he is smiling. Each time he is hit with an obstacle, the smile gradually fades to that of a worried expression. By the time he is fully out of health, Jerry is completely petrified.
• Eye Scream:
  • In "Puss Gets the Boot", Jasper (Tom) gets punched right in the eye by Jinx (Jerry), and it's at this time that Jasper stops playing around.
  • There's a few moments where Jerry pretends to look at something in his hands while Tom is holding him. Jerry offers Tom to see it, leaving his eye wide open to get whacked.
• Eye Pop

F

• Face, Nod, Action: In "Tennis Chumps", Tom and Butch look at each other, exchange nods, and silently agree to set their differences aside and go after Jerry.
• The Faceless: The maid and some of the white housewives who replaced her don't get their faces revealed. Granted, the former's face is briefly shown in "Saturday Evening Puss".
• Fairy Sexy: Red Fairy in Giant Adventure. She's Red Hot Riding Hood as a fairy, with all the Fanservice that comes with her.
• Fake Brit: In "Robin Hoodwinked", Tuffy puts on a Cockney accent that would embarrass Dick van Dyke.
• Family-Unfriendly Violence: Some of Tom's injuries are surprisingly violent. These shorts have caught a lot of flack from Moral Guardians over the years for it (even moreso than the Looney Tunes). Ironic that they were on TV more consistently in the period before Looney Tunes was brought back onto Cartoon Network.
• Fashion Dissonance: The Zoot Cat, which also has so many references to 1940's pop culture it's an Unintentional Period Piece.
• Fatal Fireworks:
  • In the cartoon "Yankee Doodle Mouse", Tom and Jerry throw firecrackers at each other, and at one point Tom fires Roman candles at Jerry.
  • Also featured heavily in Safety Second.
• Feminine Leg Swish: Jeannie, a blonde-haired babysitter from the shorts "Busy Buddies" and "Tot Watchers", will quickly jump on the phone and prostrate herself on the sofa, or draped over chairs as she chats with friends, swishing her legs back and forth as both a sign of her youthful femininity and her immaturity, as she spends her whole time chatting on the phone while Tom and Jerry work together to protect the baby she is supposed to be watching from various hazards around the home.
• Filling the Silence: In Japanese dubs, Tom and Jerry are sometimes given voice actors along with a narrator.
• Finger in a Barrel: Seen in the short "Quiet, Please!". Jerry tries to wake up Spike by firing a shotgun, and Tom sticks his fingers down both barrels to stop it, leaving him with throbbing, swollen fingers.
• Flash Freezing Coolant: "Mice Follies" has Jerry and Nibbles turn on every tap in the kitchen until the overflow leaves an inch or more of water on the floor. They then reroute the freon pump of the refrigerator into the water, which freezes the water all the way back to the spouts. Tom dons a pair of ice skates in order to pursue the mischievous rodents, but they thwart him by switching the freon pump to "thaw," which reverts all the ice back into water. The mice conclude by switching the pump to "quick freeze," which instantly converts all the water back into ice, and turns poor Tom into a feline popsicle.
• Foe Romance Subtext
  • There's one episode in which Jerry actually kisses Tom. On the mouth.
  • In one of the earliest episodes of Tom And Jerry, which was a Christmas Episode, Jerry stops Tom from chasing him by holding up a mistletoe and making a cute smoochy face at him. Tom then blushes and turns away shyly, only to have Jerry kick him in the rear.
  • Not to mention that whenever one of them (usually Tom) finds a girl, the other seems to get really jealous that they stop paying attention to them (most blatant when Jerry sees Tom with a new girl after failing to get a reaction out of Tom, and his evil angel appears saying "You and him got a sweet thing going on! You gonna let some dame get in the way of that?" before helping Jerry to break them up).
  • And then there's the end of Heavenly Puss, when Tom (happy that he's still alive and he just had a bad dream) hugs and kisses a confused Jerry.
• Foot Bath Treatment: Several of the cat and mouse shorts end up with Tom having nearly drowned, and Jerry or someone else soaking his feet in hot water. In one Chuck Jones directed cartoon, the water is so hot that he launches like a rocket.
• Forcibly Formed Physique: One of the series' main calling cards, and almost exclusively happens to Tom as he pursues Jerry.
  • One notable example occurs in the short the short "Jerry and the Goldfish" (from which the trope illustration is taken). Tom forces himself through a mouse hole and a radiator, and in both cases comes out the wrong shape.
  • A single-part variation happens twice in "Kitty Foiled", where Tom shoves his muzzle into a mouse hole and finds it shaped like the entrance when he pulls back.
  • Another instance occurs in "Designs On Jerry." When Tom's Rube-Goldberg mousetrap drops a floor safe on Tom (not Jerry, who'd sabotaged the blueprints while Tom slept), the safe door opens, and Tom steps out. Tom is shaped exactly like the safe's interior.
  • Another short features a variation: Tom gets his muzzle snapped in a mousetrap, and after he pulls it off, it's flattened to the point that it snaps back into a roll like an old-fashioned window blind.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: Mouse in Manhattan (which focuses on Jerry going to New York rather than the usual cat and mouse antics) and Blue Cat Blues (told in flashback, very little slapstick — or comedy of any kind, and ends with Tom and Jerry sitting on a train track waiting to die after being heartbroken by the women in their lives).
• Foul Medicine: Near the end of "Baby Puss", Nancy is trying to give Tom some castor oil. He refuses to open his mouth until Jerry pinches his tail and causes him to yelp. The girl stuffs the spoonful into Tom's mouth, and he hates the taste so much that he pukes out the window. Jerry laughs at him, but the tipped-over bottle of oil drips into his mouth and he also rushes to the window to vomit.
• Frame-Up: Both titular characters do this in "The Framed Cat". After stealing some chicken, Tom frames Jerry for it. He responds via framing Tom for stealing Spike's bone.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In "Saturday Evening Puss", you get to see the maid's face very briefly as she charges down the road towards the camera.
• Friendly Enemies:
  • Tom and Jerry can actually get along quite well when they're not beating the crap out of each other. Best exemplified in the ending of "Tom-ic Energy", where Tom takes a moment to shake Jerry's hand for saving him from an angry bulldog while chasing him.
  • Butch is often Tom's rival, though when they aren't competing with each other, they seem to be pretty good friends. This also applies to Meathead and Lightning.
• Friend to All Living Things: Many shorts involve Jerry befriending a one-shot character (usually another stray animal).
• Fur Is Clothing:
  • Done on a few occasions, with Tom either being shaven or getting scared out of his fur, revealing Goofy Print Underwear. It happened particularly often in the later Chuck Jones shorts.
  • Similarly, when Tom runs over Mama Duck with a lawnmower in "Little Quacker", exposing her turquoise bra and bloomers, which she quickly covers with her now robe-like feathers.

G

• Gainax Ending: At the end of "I'm Just Wild About Jerry", after saving Tom's life, Jerry suddenly sprouts angel wings, gains a halo, and flies off. Two ways to interpret this ending: Either Jerry is being rewarded for his good deed, or the wings/halo are meant to symbolize Jerry's goodness. Either way, it's a strange way to end a Tom & Jerry cartoon.
  • "Guided Mouse-ille" ended with a short Stone Age skit involving Tom & Jerry after an explosion. Even The End is followed by question mark.
• Gaslighting: Jerry does this to Tom in "The Year of the Mouse".
• Girlish Pigtails: Red Fairy gives herself these before singing "Tell Me a Bedtime Story" in Giant Adventure.
• Glove Slap: In "Duel Personality", Jerry slaps Tom with a glove twice while issuing duel challenges. The first time, Tom accepts. The second time however, he snatches the glove out of Jerry's hand and hits him with it. Also, he begins chasing him with it.
• Glowing Gem: In "Blue Cat Blues", Tom's love interest has an enormous diamond (bought for her by her rich boyfriend) — it's about a metre across, and can only be safely viewed through welding goggles.
• Gory Discretion Shot:
  • The ending of "Two Mouseketeers" has Tom getting executed via guillotine, but the event is shown from a distance so that we see the guillotine fall, but we never see Tom.
  • The ending of "Blue Cat Blues" has Tom and Jerry sitting on train tracks, waiting for a train to kill them. Just as the episode irises out, the sounds of an approaching train can be heard...
  • The 2000s short "The Karate Guard" has Jerry calls for Momo-sumo (played by Spike) after Tom torments him. What Momo-sumo does is chop Tom's backside. Even though it cuts before we can see it, we can clearly hear something wet impling his insides were falling out. Even Jerry was surprised throughout this whole ordeal.
• Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks: In a Chuck Jones-era short where Jerry concocts a Super-Speed potion, in the background there are a bunch of flasks for aesthetic purposes.
• Gray-and-Grey Morality: Neither Tom nor Jerry are out-and-out innocent characters, and they can be rather vindictive in their feud; however, the shorts alternate with who is the most sympathetic, and they both at the very least have some justified motives (Jerry needs food, Tom — and usually his owner — wants a pest out of his house).
• Green Gators: The crocodile who tries to eat Tom in "Medieval Menace" is green.

H

• Half the Man He Used to Be: Played for Laughs. Being The Chew Toy, at least one short has Tom get split in half.
• Hammered into the Ground: In one episode, Tom had a nightmare about a giant bulldog pounding him into the ground like a nail.
• Hand Rubbing: Paw-equivalent; at least a couple times Tom has rubbed his paws together when in the villainous mood.
• Happy Dance: Likely Played for Laughs; a bird and Jerry start happily dancing after they think they defeated Tom.
• Have a Gay Old Time: In the Mousketeer short Tom and Cherie, just try listening to Tuffy call out "Pussy! Pussy pussy pussy!" with a straight face.
• He Went That Way: Done several times by Jerry to Tom while wearing a disguise, with a textbook example in Neapolitan Mouse where his "disguise" amounts to a mustache made of hair clippings. Tom always falls for it before doing a Double Take.
• Heart Beats out of Chest: Occurs twice in "Kitty Foiled" from June 1948. First, Tom Cat captures Jerry Mouse in a goblet. Cornered and facing certain doom, Jerry's heart beats out of the left side of his chest. After using his left hand to push his heart back into place, it begins beating out of the right side. Later, Tom captures a small yellow canary beneath a flower pot. He peers at his prize through the drainage hole in the bottom. The canary's heart beats out of his chest in fear. When the canary turns away from Tom's yellow bloodshot eye, his heart starts beating out of his butt.
• Heel–Face Turn: Tom in "That's My Mommy"; he starts the episode wanting to eat Quackers (who mistakenly believes that Tom is his mother), but just as Quackers walks up to jump into the pot of boiling water, Tom has a change of heart, rescues him, and accepts his role as his mother.
• The Hero: Jerry, at least nominally. Later Hanna-Barbera shorts did try to play this more straight, making Jerry more altruistic and often saving another animal friend from being victimized by Tom. The odd time he strayed from this, he was more likely to suffer Karma Houdini Warranty.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Jerry, Depending on the Writer.
• Hiccup Hijinks: "Hiccup Pup" is built on this trope when Tom inadvertently gives Tyke hiccups.
• High-Pressure Emotion: Steam emits from Tom's ears after he becomes fed up with Jerry pissing him off in "The Million Dollar Cat".
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Many of Tom's traps end up injuring him instead of their intended targets. All Jerry really needs to do is manipulate them & watch Tom fall for them.
• Hollywood Healing:
  • It takes about five seconds for Tom to grow his teeth back. And that's just one example among many.
  • Averted in "Mouse Trouble"; the various Amusing Injuries Tom suffers stick with him as a Running Gag. These include various bandages, a Dodgy Toupee after a shotgun blast takes the top of his scalp off, and a wind-up mechanical mouse still rattling around inside him. He's still sporting all of them when his final plot against Jerry results in him being blown up and ascending in angel form to Fluffy Cloud Heaven.
• Hollywood Magnetism: In the episode The Framed Cat, Jerry gets Tom to swallow a magnet and then drills a screw into Spike the bulldog's bone, so the bone flies at Tom from clear across the yard to make it look as if Tom's trying to steal it.
• Honorable Elephant: In "Jerry-Go-Round", an elephant loyally defends Jerry from Tom after Jerry pulls a nail from the elephant's foot.
• Honorary Uncle: Jerry becomes the adoptive Uncle of Nibbles Tuffy.
• Hot Potato: Only with bombs.
• Humanizing Tears: Despite usually being unpleasant, you gotta feel bad for Tom when he cries in "Down and Outing" due to his abusive owner being a Jerkass to him.
• Humans Are Bastards:
  • The extent of the maid's abusive treatment of Tom (and how justified it is due to the latter's antics) varied Depending on the Writer. Various alternate owners were paired with Tom throughout the franchise's run, their treatment of the cat ranging from lenient or justified to outright psychotic (the latter being Deitch's unnamed owner character).
  • In "Heavenly Puss", the feline St. Peter sadly shakes his head and mutters "What some people won't do..." when the next "person" in his line is a sack full of kittens who were apparently drowned.
  • The babysitter from both "Busy Buddies" and "Tot Watchers" takes the cake. She completely ignores the baby to talk on the phone instead. The only time she actually notices the kid is immediately after Tom has rescued the baby from killing itself, at which point she jumps to the conclusion that Tom is attacking the child and beats the stuffing out of him.
  • In "Baby Puss", there's the little girl who dresses Tom up as a baby and treats him as such, including putting him in a diaper and feeding him castor oil? The latter is particularly grating, since she walks into the room to discover Tom's "friends" mocking and humiliating him and her immediate response is to blame and punish him.
• Humanoid Female Animal: The cats that Tom usually lusts over.
• Human Knot:
  • Slightly inverted example (it's a small character pulling a Curb-Stomp Battle on a big one and tying him up into a pretzel): Jerry pulls this off on Tom in the Gene Deitch short "The Tom and Jerry Cartoon Kit" to show off his new "Judo for Mice" skills. To add more insult to injury, Jerry does it with just one hand.
  • In another cartoon, "Puttin' on the Dog", Tom Cat disguises himself as a dog to infiltrate a dog pound. When Tom is ultimately unmasked, he climbs to the top of a flagpole, and ties his own limbs into knots to keep himself anchored there, beyond the dogs' reach.
  • Another cartoon, "Sufferin' Cats!", has Jerry being chased by Tom and another cat; by running around both of them, Jerry managed to tie both of them into a knot.
• Humiliation Conga: For instance, Tom gets one in "Baby Puss". Nancy forcibly dresses him as a baby and he tries escaping her via running under a drawer. But she grabs him, puts him back in a bed, and commands him to stay there. Soon, Jerry catches him acting like a baby and he infantilizes him. When Tom tries chasing Jerry, the latter runs inside a doll house which the former is too big to enter. When he later tries lifting its roof, the brat returns, causing him to accidentally drop the roof on his neck. Subsequently, she forces him back in his bed and leaves again. His "friends" Butch, Topsy, and Meathead also soon catch him acting like a baby (courtesy of Jerry) again and they repeatedly infantilize him. Special note goes to when they start singing him "Mamãe Eu Quero" with Butch and Meathead using his body as a musical instrument during part of it... which is interrupted by the Bratty Half-Pint returning. While unknowingly getting Jerry's help, she "punishes" Tom via making him swallow some castor oil. This causes him to run to the window and start vomiting. His only saving grace (assuming he noticed it) is that Jerry joined him as he accidentally swallowed a bunch of the oil as it dripped in his mouth.
• The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: In the short "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse", near the end, Tom finally drinks his own power potion which Jerry had been using throughout the short. Instead of growing stronger, however, it backfires, and Tom shrinks until he's as tall to Jerry as Jerry normally is to him. The short ends with Jerry chasing after Tom with a fly swatter.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: At the end of "Trap Happy", after Butch has reached his limit with Tom's accidental sabotage of his attempts to exterminate Jerry switches his business to cat extermination, and starts chasing Tom down with a shotgun.
• Hurt Foot Hop: Happens with great regularity when Jerry hurts Tom's foot (usually drops something on it or smashes him with something) and Tom does the dance of pain, clutching his poor hurt paw. In one memorable instance, Tom is about to hit Jerry with a hammer when Jerry offers him a much bigger mallet. As Tom takes the mallet, Jerry picks up the first hammer and whacks Tom's foot with it. Cue Stock Scream from Tom and hopping.

I

• I Kiss Your Foot: Towards the end of one episode, Tom kisses Muscle Mouse's foot to kiss up to him. He also later does the same to Jerry, while he was disguised as Muscle Mouse.
• Inflating Body Gag:
  • In the short "Jerry's Cousin", said cousin, Muscles Mouse, inflates his fist to punch Tom across the room.
  • "Mouse into Space" has Jerry getting his blood pressure taken, and he inflates instead of the cuff.
  • In "The Brothers Carry-Mouse-Off", Tom gets Squashed Flat. Jerry offers to use fireplace bellows to restore him back to normal, and over-inflates him instead.
  • Similarly, in "Tom-ic Energy", Tom gets his foot smashed, and Jerry tries to use a bike pump to help him "regain his shape", then inflates him into a balloon.
• Injury Bookend: On one episode, Tom gets a Tap on the Head and thinks he's a mouse. Jerry tries getting him hit again to return him to normal, and eventually succeeds. Unfortunately, the maid has the same idea, and Tom is back as a mouse for the Iris Out.
• In the Style of: "The Karate Guard" was the first theatrical Tom & Jerry short in nearly 40 years, and it used opening & closing graphics from the MGM era... with one tweak: The Vanity Plate used by Warner Bros. was designed to look like the blue-background MGM intro, instead of their usual red-tunnel artwork.
• Indestructibility Montage: In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse, Tom's poison to kill Jerry ends up turning him into a super-strong mouse. As he menacingly advances toward Tom, the cat tries to harm with a fire iron and a phone book, but they do no good and he ends up running for his life.
• Instant Bandages
• Instantly Proven Wrong: At the end of "Tot Watchers", the police officer dismisses Tom and Jerry's account of them witnessing the baby Jeannie was supposed to care crawling away from the house, only to the police officer to be instantly proven wrong when they see the baby crawling past the police car, much to his shock.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • In "Filet Meow", Jerry and a female fish appear to have a thing going on. In the end, a shark is crushing on her.
  • At the end of Casonova Cat and a couple other shorts, Jerry runs off with the cat that Tom had been trying to woo all episode.
• In Vino Veritas: "Part Time Pal" has Tom actually befriending Jerry while drunk.
• Iris Out: The Trope Codifier; happens virtually Once an Episode.
• Iron Butt Monkey:
  • Tom is practically made of steel and survives everything Jerry throws at him.
  • Jerry gets it bad a few times as well. Usually when paired with haphazard allies like Little Quacker or Nibbles.
• It Amused Me: Tom and Jerry sometimes pick on one another for the sake of their own amusement.
• Intelligible Unintelligible: The seal pup in "Little Runaway".
• Intentional Mess Making:
  • The short "Mouse Cleaning" has Tom threatened with expulsion if he makes one more mess in the house, leading Jerry to attempt to create messes that Tom must clean up before the master gets back.
  • The cartoon "Slicked-Up Pup" from 1951 has Tyke's father Spike bathe his son. Then Tom comes along, fervently pursuing Jerry. After the cat accidentally pushes Tyke into a mud puddle. Spike seizes the cat, makes him clean the pup up and warns him to keep Tyke clean lest he beat him up. Jerry proceeds to mess up the pup in escalating ways, until Tom cannot hope to clean up the pup in time. Tom resorts to disguising the pup as a chicken, and pretends to keep it company. It backfires when Spike catches him trying to wash Tyke in a washing machine and punishes Tom by stuffing him in it.
• Invisibility Ink:
  • "The Invisible Mouse": Jerry hides in a bottle of invisible ink to avoid Tom. Once he jumps out, he sees his lower half gone. After being initially shocked, he realizes the effects of invisible ink and goes to apply more on the rest of his body.
  • "The Vanishing Duck": the aforementioned duck, along with Jerry, apply vanishing cream, making themselves invisible for most of the short. It ends with Tom having used that same cream on himself, making himself invisible so he can pursue them.

J

• Jerkass: Both characters have plenty of moments.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: The occasional moments where Tom is shown to be caring for Jerry and vice versa.
• Just Following Orders: In some episodes, Tom only goes after Jerry because his owner tells him to, yet he is still treated as a villain for wanting to get rid of the possibly disease-ridden mouse.
• Just Whistle: Spike makes this kind of an arrangement with Jerry in "The Bodyguard" and a couple later shorts.

K

• Karma Houdini:
  • Jerry sometimes gets away with things he shouldn't, specifically in shorts that involve Spike.
  • There were in fact also rare instances Tom won despite still being the clear instigator.
  • The babysitter Jeannie in Busy Buddies and Tot Watchers gets away with talking to her friends on the phone instead of looking after the baby. What's worse, in the latter episode, she lied to the cop that she took her off the baby for "one teensy minute" and along with the cops, believes that Tom and Jerry tried to kidnap the baby, even though they were clearly seen going to the house instead of running away from it whilst having the baby with them.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Although the titular Jerry can be a Karma Houdini, other times the plot'll deal him some kind of misfortune.
• Karmic Butt-Monkey: Tom's attempts to catch Jerry result in him getting hurt or beaten up in every short. The fact that he doesn't know when to quit doesn't help his case.
• Karmic Trickster: In most shorts, Jerry doesn't start trouble until Tom wrongs him in some way. In some shorts, he skews more towards The Prankster, who attacks Tom without being provoked, but usually Jerry is fighting for his survival, or at least unhappy with the unfair situation Tom is putting him in (i.e. using him as fish bait, dressing him in a bow and giving him to a girl cat as a present, using him as a paddleball, etc.).
• Killer Rabbit: Jerry may look adorable, but when threatened? Beware.
• Knife Outline
• Kung-Foley: Some of the most legendary foley work in animation history, in fact.

L

• Later-Installment Weirdness: They are most famous for the original shorts done by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera in the 40s and 50s. After they left MGM, the series was sent overseas to cartoonist Gene Deitch, whose often bizarre shorts bordered on Deranged Animation. Later on, Chuck Jones took over the series, giving the characters a redesign, and plot-wise making them more like his Roadrunner cartoons at Warner Bros. Every adaptation since then likely falls under this trope as well.
• Laughing Mad: After seeing Jumbo and his mommy disguise themselves as huge mice, Tom breaks down into unstable laughter.
• Laugh of Love: This occurs thrice in the cartoon "Smitten Kitten", namely:
  • Tom Cat is sitting beside a pretty kitty and whispers something in her ear. She giggles coyly.
  • Jerry Mouse marches toward Tom, intent on doing him mischief, when he sees a cute girl mouse sitting nearby. Jerry freezes in his tracks, then drops everything to stand beside her. She also giggles coyly.
  • Jerry's Good Angel and Bad Angel get in on the act, as the Bad Angel drools over the cute Good Angel. Cue more coy giggling. In every case, Love Makes You Dumb appears to be in force.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Spike's voice is based on that of crooner Jimmy "Schnozzler" Durante.
• Lazy Dragon: The Nutcracker feature film has a sequence where Tom finds himself in a cave inhabited by numerous sleeping dragons (whom he naturally wakes up to disastrous effect).
• Leitmotif:
  • Beginning with 1949's "Polka-dot Puss", every T&J short opened with one of these composed by Scott Bradley. In the shorts themselves, in the pre-Jones shorts, both Tom and Jerry had themes that would occasionally accompany then — in some shorts more prominently than others (they're both ubiquitous in "The Bowling Alley Cat," for instance).
  • In "Mouse in Manhattan", most of the music is just variations of a single melody, matched to fit the mood of whatever's currently happening. The Godfather would use some of the music from the short, however.
  • The Gene Deitch shorts gave a short leitmotif to Jerry, which played in most of the shorts.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: If Jerry pushes Tom a little too far, Tom will wear a disgusted, determined face, which usually means Jerry is in for a whole world of hurting. If Tom wears a devious, vengeful grin, Jerry's lost, such as when Tom discovers the Vanishing Creme.
• Lighter and Softer:
  • The later Hanna-Barbera shorts were leaning this direction somewhat. While the slapstick rivalry was still present, it was less brutal in execution and karma was more prevalent (which also worked in Tom's favour, he won far more often in this era fact). There were also more frequent instances of the duo being Friendly Enemies or having truces, or focusing on supporting characters who were less adversarial.
  • The violence level is decreased in the Chuck Jones era with there being very little episodes with real gun violence and there are several more episodes where both Tom and Jerry win.
• Like a Surgeon: In "Baby Puss", Tom is playing baby for a little girl when Butch and the other alley cats show up and decide to make fun of him. When they change Tom's diaper, they treat it as if it were surgery, with Butch as the surgeon and the smallest cat administering "anesthetic" with a mallet to the head.
• Limited Animation: The shorts produced by Gene Deitch and Chuck Jones, and both Hanna-Barbera (not Tom & Jerry Kids for the most part) and Filmation's TV series were filled with this. Coupled with heavy amounts of Deranged Animation for the Deitch-produced shorts.
• Literally Shattered Lives: A non-lethal example. Tom (an Iron Butt Monkey in a slapstick cartoon) gets shattered into many pieces in "The A-Tom-Inable Snowman".
• Logo Joke:
  • At the beginning of the Chuck Jones shorts, the lion in the MGM logo fades out, and an angrily meowing Tom replaces it.
  • At the end of the "Switchin' Kitten" episode, Jerry finds a mouse hole, which looks remarkably like the "Ars Gratia Artis" arch in the MGM logo, and roars like a lion in it.
• Long-Lost Relative:
  • Jerry's Uncle Pecos, a country singer that even Jerry can't stand, and Jerry's Cousin Muscles, who is identical to Jerry but super strong.
  • Tom's identical cousin in "Timid Tabby".
• Loud Gulp: Happens very often, usually during an Oh, Crap! situation.
• Lower-Deck Episode: "Mouse in Manhattan" is a Jerry solo short, with Tom only appearing in the opening and ending. The two shorts centered around Spike and Tyke also count.

M

• Made of Iron: Both the titular characters can be defined as this:
  • Tom will continue frequently pursue Jerry despite his various Amusing Injuries. In "Mouse Trouble", his injuries actually compound, showing him still bandaged from being cut in half, wearing a toupee, and also hiccuping from ingesting a decoy female moust.
  • Jerry can be amazingly tough at times. For instance, while chasing him, Tom repeatedly hits him with a fireplace poker and finds to his astonishment that not only does he make a exact outline of the mouse's body each time he hits him without apparently hurting him, but each impression has the mouse taunting him by sticking his tongue in the outline as well.
• Mama Bear:
  • In "Love Me, Love My Mouse", Tom offers Jerry to a female cat as a present, but Jerry invokes this trope by acting cute, causing her to treat him like her child. It only lasts until she gives him a kiss, at which point she realizes he tastes pretty good.
  • It's played straight in "Jerry-Go-Round", which features a female elephant taking care of Jerry for pulling out a nail, to the point of angrily repulsing Tom away, often beating him up.
  • "Jerry & Jumbo" has a mother elephant show up to retrieve her baby from the household where Tom is, again, thwarted.
• Matryoshka Object:
  • "The Yankee Doodle Mouse" has Tom cornered by a large firecracker. Instead of blowing up, it breaks apart to reveal a smaller firecracker, which then reveals a smaller firecracker, and so on until all that is left is a tiny firecracker. Tom holds it in his hand, laughs in amusement, and then it blows up in a huge explosion.
  • Similarly, this also happens in "Safety Second", but Tom puts the firework right on his nose before it explodes.
• Matchlight Danger Revelation: Happens to Tom in "Bad Day at Cat Rock".
• Mechanical Animals: "Push Button Kitty" had a robotic cat named Mechano, which was programmed to get rid of mice.
• Metronomic Man Mashing:
  • Jerry did this to Tom after gaining super-strength at one point.
  • Jerry did this to Tom once even when not strengthened up in any way, fueled purely by the rage against Tom for assaulting Nibbles.
• Mickey Mousing: Very widespread in Scott Bradley's scores for the Hanna-Barbera MGM shorts, where the music often provides more sound effects for characters' actions than the actual sound effects, especially when walking or running.
• Missing Mom: One wonders if Tyke even has a mother.
• Mime and Music-Only Cartoon: Most episodes.
• Mind Screw:
  • In "Timid Tabby", Tom and his cowardly identical cousin pull this on Jerry by switching around and eventually pretending Tom has turned into a two-headed, four-armed-and-legged monstrosity, sending Jerry running to the Home for Mice Suffering from Nervous Breakdowns.
  • In "Jerry and Jumbo", Jerry colours an elephant calf and its mother to look like him and drives Tom crazy. He breaks down when all three Jerrys jump ahead of him, starts laughing manically, runs through a brick wall, and disappears in the sunset.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • The 1956 cartoon "Blue Cat Blues" is rather depressing compared to the rest of the series, as it begins with Tom sitting on a railroad track preparing to commit suicide. Jerry tells us how Tom was driven to this state by a love affair gone sour, and the cartoon ends with Jerry realizing his girlfriend has been unfaithful and joining Tom on the tracks. Cue the sound of a train whistle, iris out.
  • In "Heavenly Puss", as seen in Cat Heaven, most cats died in a comedic way, but the last one has a dark twist. A wet sack rolls up to the gate and opens, and out come three kittens, gaily meowing as they bound into Heaven. Basically, three young kittens were drowned, and judging from the gatekeepers's unsurprised reaction, this isn't uncommon.
• Motive Decay: Tom originally wanted to eat Jerry. Now he just mostly harasses him.
• Mouse Hole: Sometimes Jerry's mouse hole even has a little door, or fancy decorations around it, as if the architects of the house Tom and Jerry are in specifically built the mouse hole into the wall.
• Mouse Trap: Used a lot.
• The Movie: Tom and Jerry: The Movie.
• Ms. Fanservice: Red from Tom and Jerry's Giant Adventure, Meet Sherlock Holmes and Robin Hood and His Merry Mouse. For her many Fanservice tropes, see her page.
• The Musical: Tom and Jerry: The Movie.
  • Two shorts that qualify on their own: "The Cat Concerto" (based on Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2), and "Cat and Dupli-Cat" (based on the classic Neapolitan song "Santa Lucia").
• Music Genre Dissonance: "Rock'n'Rodent" really should've been called "Jazzin' Jerry"; the music in the cartoon sounded closer to upbeat jazz than what rock & roll sounded like when the cartoon was released in 1967.
• Mustache Vandalism:
  • In "Touché, Pussy Cat!", Nibbles uses an artist brush to paint a caricature of Tom Cat on a wall. When Nibbles realizes that Tom is glaring at him, Nibbles paints spectacles and a mustache on Tom's face.
  • In "The Lonesome Mouse", Jerry draws a Hitler mustache and comb-over on a picture of Tom, and spits at it.