"I'm just a hairy banana! A big stinkin’ hairy banana!
In the episode "Hothead", Eustace goes into a building to help him grow hair. One of the questions the person on the speaker asks Eustace is "What's 414 divided by 6?" The answer is never given in the episode but when one does put it in a calculator, they will get... 69.
Eustace. He's either a Jerkass Woobie who's only grouchy because of his rotten childhood or an outright Jerkass who doesn't deserve any sympathy. There are also fans who think he's kind of funny (at least, the funniest of the main trio), but others find him irrationally cruel to his dog well past the point of humor.
Muriel as well. She's either a genuinely kind and caring old lady or she's a complete idiot who's way too oblivious to the danger around her. There are also those who think she's way too passive to Eustace's abusive treatment of Courage, while others argue that she mostly puts a stop to it whenever she's around.
A flying dragon coming out of absolutely nowhere (pun not intended) and eating Eustace in the last five seconds of an episode.
At the end of the episode "Human Habitrail", the boat chase between Courage and Doc Gerbil is completely silent aside from a One-Woman Wail that comes out of nowhere.
Most of Courage's nightmares from the last episode, especially that blue thing. It really has no importance to the rest of the episode except to scare you straight and it really isn't seen or mentioned again in those other nightmares.
"Snowman's Revenge" has Snowman breaking out into a So Bad, It's Good musical number about... a chilly love story?
"Courage Meets The Mummy" opens with an archaeologist dusting off a gem inside the Mayan temple, which then shoots out a beam of light which gets reflected off some things and causes a disco ball to come out of the ceiling while some music plays for a brief moment. Afterwards, the archeologist just shrugs it off and continues dusting off the gemstone.
In "The Magic Tree of Nowhere," Courage digs a moat around the tree and adds Instant Eel to the water. Thatmakes sense in context. The eel then singing "Danny Boy"...not so much.
Immediately after King Ramses summons a horde of locusts, Muriel rushes into her kitchen in order to prepare food until she becomes exhausted. There is absolutely no reason for her to do this and nor does this even correlate with the rest of the episode. The only reason one would assume she does so is to prevent it from getting eaten by the locusts, but even then...
The decision to reduce Courage's English from season two onward. Some fans agree with the decision due to Courage's screams and babbling made him funnier than your run-of-the-mill Talking Animal while others preferred when Courage talked more.
Season 4's "Ball of Revenge" is one of the most controversial episodes of the entire series:
On one hand, fans enjoyed seeing many of the villains (including Katz, Le Quack, and the Cajun Fox among others) return towards the series' end to seek their revenge, and consider it one of the best simply for being one of the darkest episodes of the series. On the other hand, many other fans considered it to be a huge missed opportunity by leaving out so many other villains that were all still alive last time they were seen and had lingering grudges against Courage and his family (like Tarantella or Shwick). Plus there's the fact that Eustace was the one leading them which many fans thought was far too cruel and straight up evil of him to actually want to kill Courage over something as minor as a blanket (which, of course, isn't helped by the fact that Eustace doesn't receive a more severe punishment for that egregious stunt). Finally, several of the villains returning make no sense in context considering that some of them actually tried to harm Eustace specifically in the past (the Queen of the Black Puddle), were just mindless animals with no motivations (the Weremole), or had no possible way of being there in the first place (The Clutching Foot was Eustace's foot fungus that took over his body).
The conclusion of the episode is a base-breaker as well: Courage screaming at the top of his lungs for almost a straight minute to defeat the villains is either awesome because he takes them out all at once in a way probably no one expected, or it sucks because it's so out-of-character for Courage to use his screaming as a weapon rather than outsmarting the villains like he usually does.note Courage did defeat the evil veterinarian in "Remembrance of Courage Past" in a similar fashion, but at least that time he was doing it into a stethoscope, which is basically yelling into a megaphone pointed at someone's ears.
The Cruel Veterinarian getting his just desserts from the hands of the dogs he sent out to space against their will (including Courage's own parents, no less).
For the longest time, everyone thought that Ringo Starr voiced the titular Duck Brothers in the episode of the same name. In reality, it was veteran voice actor Will Ryan doing an impression of Starr. Similarly, it was erroneously believed for a long time that Tim Curry voiced the Goose God when it was actually series regular Paul Schoeffler.
The instrument in the last episode is a bugle, not a trumpet, as it's commonly assumed. It's even referred to as a bugle.
The monster in the first nightmare in "Perfect" is supposed to be a mutation of the aforementioned bugle, yet many fans have thought of it to be a deformed fetus.
Katz, Courage's most recurring foe, is a ruthless and sadistic Serial Killer. While his motives tend to change, each episode he appears in generally has him using some sort of illegitimate business as a front for committing murders, and his list of past victims is strongly implied to be quite long. In his first appearance, he ran a Hell Hotel where he fed all his guests to spiders. Other episodes have seen Katz transforming the guests of his health spa into machines and forcing them to fight to the death for his entertainment; attempting to turn Muriel into candy as revenge for her always beating him in a candy-making competition; and trying to blow up a submarine full of people to drive a rival vacation submarine company out of business. Not content with simply killing Courage, Katz sometimes challenges him to some sort of game solely so that he can inflict more physical pain and drag out the dog's suffering for as long as he can.
"Queen of the Black Puddle": The Black Puddle Queen is a man-eating siren who uses bodies of water to travel from her underwater kingdom and hunt for humans. With her Compelling Voice and sultry appearance, the Queen hypnotizes men into following her to her castle, where she performs a ritualistic ceremony before eating them alive. The Queen has filled her kingdom with the skeletal remains of her hundreds—if not thousands—of victims, and she tries to subject Eustace and Courage to the same fates. She later joins a villainous alliance to take Muriel hostage and destroy Courage in a slow, painful way out of nothing but annoyance that Courage thwarted the Queen's last scheme.
"The Great Fusilli": The Great Fusilli himself is a traveling stage magician who lured people onto his stage under the guise of making them famous actors. He would then have them perform for an imaginary audience, in order to use enchanted puppet strings to convert them into lifeless puppets, which he would then play with for his own amusement. Once Courage finds a room filled with the dozens of people he's converted into marionettes, Fusilli turns his owners Muriel and Eustace into puppets—an act not reversed by the end of the episode, causing Courage to suffer Sanity Slippage—while at the same time attempting to dispose of Courage.
"The Quilt Club": The Stitch Sisters, Eliza and Elisa, are the owners of an antique quilt shop and reclusive quilting club who make Muriel work day and night to pass the standards they use to admit those into their club. The club itself is a front; since the dawn of humanity the Sisters have walked the Earth, ensnaring the souls of women to prolong their own youth and binding them forever to their quilt. The souls of their victims are kept within the quilt for centuries on end, forever ripped of everything that once made them unique.
Cry for the Devil: Come on, who didn't want to give Dr. Zalost a hug after lamenting his inability to be happy?
Cult Classic: Courage was never widely promoted, but it remains widely beloved two decades after it ended for its sheer weirdness, imaginative stories, quirky humor and truckloads of pure, concentrated Nightmare Fuel, and is often considered one of Cartoon Network's best original series.
As noted above in Alternative Character Interpretation, a popular theory is that everything is seen from Courage's perspective which means that every horror aspect are just delusions from Courage's easily scared mind.
Freaky Fred. He's easily one of the most harmless villains in the show but he makes up for it by being one of the most... memorable.
"NAAAAUUUUUUUGHTY".
The Hunchback is one of the most beloved characters for being a genuinely Nice Guy and one of the very few people willing to stand up to Eustace and his bullying behavior.
King Ramses is one of the most memorable villains due to his unnerving design and catchy song.
Mad Dog, who stands out from even the scariest monsters of the other episodes by how disturbinglyrealistic he is.
The Starmaker is one of the most well remembered non-evil creatures in the series because of how poignant and heartbreaking her episode was.
Shirley the Medium has appeared in only 6 episodes of the series' 52 (the last of the episodes she appeared in merely being a brief cameo), but has a sizeable number of fans for being a helpful ally to Courage in his times of need and making hilarious remarks about Eustace's stubborn shortsightedness.
The computer, thanks to how much of a Deadpan Snarker it can be when Courage comes to it for help. It proved so popular that it got some episodes focusing on it.
The fish from "Perfect". He does come literally out of nowhere, but his advice to Courage is so heartfelt and inspiring, fans have grown to love him for that, even wishing he could show up in their own bathtubs to help inspire them.
The "Perfect Trumpet Thingy" or "Eustace's Trumpet" for the blue thing in the first of Courage's nightmares in "Perfect" and "Violin Girl" for the Demon Head in "Courage in the Big Stinkin' City".
Courage, Muriel, and Eustace together as a group are usually called "the Bagges" or "the Bagge family" by fans.
Gateway Series: As a family cartoon that wears its affection for the genre on its sleeve, this was many younger audiences' introduction to the world of horror fiction.
The difference between the words "bravery" and "courage" is that a brave man isn't afraid to start with, while the courageous man is afraid but does what has to be done in spite of his fear. That's Courage the Cowardly Dog in a nutshell. And it's why he's awesome.
Courage's last lesson in "Perfect" is to draw a perfect six. Six seems like an arbitrary number, until you realize it was chosen because six is a perfect number.
Assuming that King Ramses is Ramses II the Great, the most famous pharaoh of that name, this show is one of the few pieces of media to accurately depict him with red hair. It's either a Genius Bonus or Accidentally-Correct Writing.
Girl-Show Ghetto: While far from a girly show, according to the creator, part of the reason the show got cancelled was because it was hard to market toys of a pink dog to boys.
Harsher in Hindsight: The moment where Courage gets a sudden heart attack in Night of the Weremole ends up not quite as funny after Marty Grabstein actually had a stroke in 2024. Fortunately, it was mild and Grabstein is on the way to recovery.
The Mission To The Sun became some sort of prediction to Sunshine due to both of their premises being on a mission to rekindle the sun while being sabotaged by another person (Pinbacker for Sunshine and the worm for Courage).
Courage is named "Leone" (lion) in Italy, because of his courage. He lives in the middle of the desert, he rarely talks (if ever) and is extremely loyal to his owners. Then a certain cartoon comes in, where the protagonist meets a pink lion in a desert who never says anything and is extremely loyal to his owner.
One of the characters in the series had a house that's literally alive and jealously overprotective of its owner. Then came Monster House a film that took the exact same premise and ran with it.
The whole premise of So in Louvre are we two is almost exactly like Night at the Museum.
The plot of "Feast of the Bullfrogs" would later be done by American Dad! in the episode "The Three F's".
Ho Yay: Eustace and his appreciation for Velvet Vic can easily be interpreted as a fan with a celebrity crush.
The titular Courage is the perpetually fearful protector of the Bagge residence. Abandoned as a pup after his parents were sent to outer space, Courage had since devoted himself to keeping Muriel safe. Despite his fears, Courage constantly puts himself in harm's way whether it be getting beaten within an inch of his life in a game of dodge ball, or taking grievous injuries. In the end, Courage lives up to his name in spite of being afraid.
The Hunchback of Nowhere is a man of unsightly appearance. Constantly shunned for his looks, the Hunchback finds kindness in the form of Muriel and Courage, playing shadow games and bell ringing for the latter, and staging a live performance for the former. When Eustace tries to demean him for his psyche, the Hunchback retaliates by calling him bald. He also stands up in Courage's defense by making Eustace realize that he was ugly on the inside.
Kitty is the best friend of the Bunny appearing in the two-parter "The Mask." Developing a deep hatred towards dogs because of Bunny's boyfriend, Kitty arrives at the Bagge residence, and viciously beats Courage for no other reason than because he's a dog. When Courage successfully saves Bunny, Kitty learns the error of her ways and genuinely expresses her gratitude towards Courage.
Freaky Fred. He may be a little sympathetic, but he's still let his shaving obsession upset others with absolutely no remorse.
Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Eustace is the biggest Base-Breaking Character of the show, since he always mistreats and abuses Courage, despite being his owner (his backstory, where he is endlessly compared to his older and being unsuccessful in nearly everything he did, falling flat as that doesn't justify his behavior). Compare Katz, an evil Serial Killer who is very popular with fans and is universally considered a Worthy Opponent to Courage. The same applies to other villains, though not all of them (it's pretty hard to find anyone who likes the evil veterinarian or Mad Dog), since they are often supernatural beings, while Eustace comes off as a terrible person in a realistic way.
Karmic Overkill: While most agree that Eustace often deserves whatever over-the-top punishment is given to him, there are a few times where his comeuppance can feel a little harsh, especially whenever he hasn't really done anything too bad to deserve it, such as getting possessed by a demon in "The Demon in the Mattress" after he genuinely tried to save Muriel, or getting dragged (and beaten) all over the world by Courage in "Le Quack Balloon" because he was upset he couldn't find his glasses.
Katz is undoubtedly the most popular villain in the show because of just how cruel, frightening, and downright evil he is.
Di Lung is an obnoxious Jerkass who's arguably a bigger jerk than even Eustace, but people absolutely love hating the guy due to him being so Laughably Evil.
Shirley the Medium is a Fortune Teller who wields magical abilities that she uses to make money, as well as put gypsy curses on those who cross her, yet always leaves a loophole for her victims to get put of it or will undo the curse herself when she feels they have learned the error of their ways. Among the main characters, Eustace is her primary target putting a curse on him in several episodes such as having a rainstorm follow him wherever he goes until he finds the generosity in his heart and in another episode she sets him up against his wife until he learns to be more empathetic towards her. Becoming a helpful ally to Courage, the two manipulate Muriel into speaking by unleashing a spirit of destruction in the form of a starfish monster on their farm.
"The Snowman Cometh" & "Snowman's Revenge": The Snowman is a Mad Scientist with his base of operations in the North Pole. Having lost his beloved girlfriend Ivana and his friends due to the rip in the Ozone Layer, the Snowman resolves to escape the same fate. To this end, he kidnaps Muriel and Eustace—successfully extracting the anti-melting gene from the latter—before getting thwarted by Courage. With the North Pole completely melting, the Snowman invades Nowhere with his creation the Cold Finger, transforming the farm into a winter wonderland and blocking out the sun to make all of Nowhere into the "West Pole". Making the family his servants, the Snowman dubs them his honorary snow-people and gladly ceases being a villain when the Ozone Layer is fixed and his friends are resurrected.
"McPhearson Phantom": The McPhearson Phantom seeks revenge upon Muriel under the belief her great-great aunt fed the Phantom's husband to the Loch Ness Monster long ago. Seeking to ruin Muriel's marriage like hers was, the Phantom plants a series of increasingly deadly traps for Eustace while framing Muriel for them to drive them apart. When Eustace's mother arrives to offer her terrible therapy, the Phantom plays off her greed to turn into an ally and uses her to try and sabotage the much more successful marriage counseling offered by Courage. When Ma Bagge unwittingly reveals it was her great-great aunt all along, the Phantom decides to leave the innocent Muriel be and focus her revenge on the much more deserving Ma.
"Muriel Meets Her Match": Maria and Mano Ladrones are a criminal couple who seek to use Maria's resemblance to Muriel to con her into being a patsy for their next heist. Maria plays the two off as friendly new neighbors for the Bagges and worms her way into Muriel's trust by complementing her looks and fashion, all the while Mano, a sentient hand, cuts the farmhouse's cable to lure away Eustace to watch TV in their RV. Getting her hair dyed and some clothes from Muriel, Maria becomes her doppelganger while Mano sneaks in at night and steals her documentation to plant at their next heist. Successfully framing Muriel, the pair would have escaped with their loot if a last ditch chase by Courage and Muriel hadn't caused them to crash and be arrested.
Misaimed Fandom: There are fans who ship Courage and Katz in spite of the fact that Katz is a remorseless fiend who has attempted to kill Courage and/or the Bagges in all of his appearances.
Never Live It Down: Eustace has always been a Jerkass, but fans love to bring up how horrible he was to Courage in the episode "Ball Of Revenge", where, in an incredibly Out-of-Character Moment, he recruits many of the monsters that terrorized them both in the past and convinces them to kill the poor dog.
The Spirit of the Harvest Moon can look pretty creepy... until one realizes it looks similar to certain meme faces on the internet (even then though, it is still somewhat creepy).
King Ramses is generally considered one of the scarier characters on the show, but the "Oh come ooonnn..." line kind of humanizes him in an odd way. And then there's his second curse...
Paranoia Fuel: Kitty could see Eustace and Muriel doing things in secret (sneaking cake, not fixing things) when they couldn't tell.
Popular with Furries: The series boasts a lot of animal characters, a few of them being anthropomorphic. Naturally this has lead to a lot of furries being a fan of the show, some most likely having grown up with the show. While Courage himself has a few fans, there's also a few fans for Katz because of his voice and character, Shirley the medium for being a recurring Chihuahua*(that is also given a dosage of Self-Fanservice when she sometimes pops up), Bunny and Kitty because their heavy Homoerotic Subtext (thus it overlaps with LGBT Fanbase).
Realism-Induced Horror: In a show filled with all kinds of fantastical and sci-fi threats, the villains who could exist in real life are widely agreed to be the scariest.
Freaky's Fred's shaving obsession is shown to be mostly harmless, but he's still someone who let his obsession take over his life until he was no longer able to properly function in society, not unlike a serial killer or sex offender. As absurd as a hair-cutting fetish might seem, it's still a perfectly believable obsession that someone could have.
Mad Dog. Apart from being anthropomorphic dog, there's absolutely nothing exaggerated or absurd about him from any real life domestic abuser. Most of what he does to Bunny, such as keeping her from her friends, threatening her with violence and gaslighting her, are fairly mundane controlling tactics used by real-life abusive partners, and it's that lack of exaggeration that makes him so much more uncomfortable to watch than any of the monsters or creatures Courage usually goes up against.
Leaving aside their dark magic, the Stitch Sisters and their Quilt Club are a hauntingly accurate depiction of a cult; preying on Muriel's desire for friends and acceptance, they made their club seem so irresistible that she runs herself ragged to please them, isolating herself from her family in the process. Her mental and physical health sharply declines, and she's so obsessed with joining the club that she forgets who her husband is. Now that they know they have her hooked, the Stitch Sisters let Muriel into the Quilt Club, where they intend to keep her trapped, completely cut off from the outside world, and forced against her will to serve their illicit purposes, powerless to stop it due to her physical exhaustion and because she's convinced herself that it's for the best.
The Cruel Veterinarian from "Remembrance of Courage Past" turns out to be the man primarily responsible for Courage's fear and anxiety. When Courage was just a baby, the Veterinarian kidnapped Courage's parents and put them on a rocket to a different planet as part of an experiment, separating the young pup from his parents for the rest of their lives. While people (probably) aren't still shooting dogs into space anymore, animal experimentation is still a very real problem.
"Muriel Meets Her Match" is about a criminal couple targeting the Bagges, with the wife explicitly "befriending" Muriel in order to steal her identity and have her take the fall for the couple's crimes. The only thing unrealistic about the couple's portrayal is that the husband is a disembodied hand.
"The Tower of Dr. Zalost" has the titular doctor, who is clearly clinically depressed, turn his condition into projectiles in order to make everyone around him as miserable as he is. Needless to say, this does a lot more harm than good.
"Stormy Weather": Take away the fact that the Storm Goddess is...well, a storm goddess...and the plot of the episode is basically a strange woman demanding that Muriel give her Courage because Courage just happens to resemble the woman's missing dog. You can't really blame Muriel for getting upset.
"Angry Nasty People": Benton Tarentella creates a popular reality show out of Mr. Nasty (a clone of Eustace with his abusive side turned Up To Eleven) verbally abusing Eustace and Muriel. While Eustace us unfazed by the insults, Muriel is very much not. Now think about how many reality shows exist where the main draw is playing on the stars' insecurities, much to the delight of the shows' "fans."
Seasonal Rot: Although it's still considered alright, Season 3 isn't held in as high of regard as Seasons 1, 2, and 4, mainly due to the nightmarish elements being considerably toned down while not carrying the same emotional weight that Season 4 put in its place, resulting in episodes feeling rather formulaic. There are still episodes from Season 3 considered by fans to be classics, such as "Katz Under the Sea" and "The Quilt Club", but they aren't nearly as plentiful as they were both before and after it.
Self-Fanservice: A lot of fan art of Shirley the Medium, depicted in the show as short and wearing a conservative dress, has her drawn taller and more curvaceous.
Ships That Pass in the Night: Despite the two only sharing one episode together with "Ball of Revenge", Katz x Cajun Fox is a surprisingly common ship amongst the fanbase.
Shocking Moments: "Shadow of Courage" (one of the very first episodes) features a nasty old rich guy dying just off-screen, feebly calling out for his butler... who just walks away whistling jauntily and leaves the old guy to die. Sure, the guy had just fired the butler for no good reason, but that's pretty cold for a kids' show.
The ending of the title sequence "“Stupid dog! You made me look bad! OOGA BOOGA BOOGA!") is iconic in its own right.
The first appearance of King Rameses.
Freaky Fred's debut.
The terrifying Jump Scare of the girl with a demonic face in "Courage in the Big, Stinkin' City". It ended up selected for the Nightmare Fuel page for Western Animation on this site (until it was replaced with another image from another work and moved to the show's page).
Courage defeating the Legion of Doom that Eustace assembled to kill him in "Ball of Revenge".
From the penultimate episode, The Reveal of what happened to Courage's parents and how he was found by Muriel.
Two moments from the final episode: the deeply unnerving "you're not perfect" nightmare, and the motivational speech given to Courage later in the episode.
The titular flan in "King of Flan" gets eaten by Courage twice in the big confrontation with the villain, and then vomited right out back onto him both times with no Vomit Discretion Shot. Even worse, some of it visibly got into the King of Flan's mouth the second time, and there's definitely green bits not part of the food in there...
Superlative Dubbing: In the Japanese dub, lots of puns and jokes are added to dialogues and titles, which makes them sound even funnier than the original. Courage himself became more talkative too, constantly uttering ad-libs.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Eustace's brother Horst who, is shown to be everything Eustace isn't: charismatic, handsome, successful, etc. He's already dead by the start of the series, but it'd have been interesting to explore the dynamic between him and Eustace further than the one flashback we got which shows him as a Big Brother Bully.
The Hunchback Of Nowhere. He's hideous In-Universe, but he also has a few traditionally cute elements, like his eyes (and of course, his personality). Heck, most characters qualify as being hideous and adorable at the same time due to the art style.
Courage himself. He has really over-the-top wild takes and horrid-looking teeth, but he is really charming in terms of personality and bouts of bravery.
Unintentionally Sympathetic: The Alien in "Car Broke, Phone Yes" after he gets splashed with Muriel's kindness. This causes him to have Heel–Face Turn and release Courage and Muriel. Despite this, Courage still decides to blow him up, when usually when this happens to villains, they get a good ending. In fairness, it was a good idea to kill the boss alien, who was going to conquer the galaxy and wasn't moved by Muriel's kindness, instead using it as an example of what not to be. Courage could of still swiped the smaller alien and left him with bomb, though.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Muriel is usually a very sympathetic character, but some episodes put this into question, especially when she's oblivious about the Monster of the Week, despite the obvious red flags that they're not trustable in the slightest.
Muted Muriel involves her giving the silent treatment to both Courage and Eustace after the latter refuses to do work. It's completely understandable why she's doing that on Eustace, but Courage had done nothing to warrant it and it forces Courage to go to Shirley and unleash a monster onto the world.
What does she do when she sees Courage being beaten up black and blue in The Mask? Invite his beater into the house.
Values Dissonance: Arguably, Dr. Vindaloo and Di Lung. Both characters are comedic ethnic stereotypes of Indian and Chinese people respectively, being portrayed with heavy accents and cultural mannerisms that are played for laughs. In today's cultural environment, it's likely that characters like them would be considered a little too offensive or politically incorrect to appear in a children's cartoon.
Visual Effects of Awesome: The show's frequent usage of Medium Blending, combining 2D animation with live-action, claymation, and CGI, not only made it stand out among it's peers, but perfectly complimented its uneasy tone.
What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Technically, it's for older kids (ie, adolescents), but it's still infamous for being one of the few shows meant for a young audience that can be categorized as horror, with plenty of terrify supernatural villains and characters being put in imminent danger. And even disregarding that, we still have episodes like "The Mask," an outright gangland drama. There's also the fact that one of the main characters is a man who regularly abused both his wife and dog. That said, every episode has a happy ending with the villain getting their deserved comeuppance, taking off a bit of the edge.
Courage takes a lot of crap. Basically, he watched his parents be dognapped and launched into space despite his best efforts to save them. After he was lucky enough to be taken in by Muriel, he still has to deal with the threat of losing his new owners regularly.
The Hunchback of Nowhere. Everybody always turns their backs on him just because he's ugly. Despite this, he manages to be keep his spirits up and be a Nice Guy.
In direct contrast to most "villains", Freaky Fred is a perfectly kind individual whose shaving... thing lost him his pet, his girlfriend, his job, and landed him in a mental institution.
The female Starmaker of the eponymous episode loses her mate when he sacrifices himself to protect her and their unborn offspring. Upon crash landing in Nowhere, Kansas, the Starmaker is experimented on by the military, its body slowly withering as its bodily fluids are drained. After its offspring hatch, she crawls out of the lab and becomes a garden upon her death.
Bunny is the best friend and plausible lover of Kitty trapped in an abusive relationship to Mad Dog. Mad Dog threatens her and Kitty if she dared to come within arms' length of her as a means of keeping her under his paw. He even goes as far as to bury Bunny up to her neck in dirt. When Courage arrives to rescue her, she is nearly mowed down by her vengeful boyfriend's car before being reunited with Kitty.
WTH, Casting Agency?: Wallace Shawn as Eustace in 2014 short The Fog of Courage. While most agree that Wallace is a good actor and did the best he could, he sounds absolutely nothing like Eustace. And Eustace's second actor Arthur Anderson was still alive at the time (though Anderson was 93 when he died in 2016, so he was apparently too old and/or ill to reprise the role).
. The preceding food fight is already weird enough, but this whole scene doesn't really seem to have any purpose.