History LooneyTunes / TropesAToC

* CouchGag: Merrie Melodies had perhaps one of the first examples in animation. From "You Don't Know What You're Doin'!" (1931) through "We're in the Money" (1933), the title card had a one-shot character from the featured short posing alongside the Merrie Melodies logo. When the cartoon ended, the same character stood in front of a drum branded with "A Merrie Melody" and shouted "So long, folks!" to the audience. Beginning with "I've Got to Sing a Torch Song", the opening gag was retired, and the ending gag was modified to have the character standing on a stage next to the "Merrie Melodies" logo. This continued until "Those Beautiful Dames" where the one-shot was replaced by a jester.

* BellyDancer: In the 1935 short "Buddy of the Legion", a young boy named Buddy imagines himself leading a regiment of the French Legion. As they march through the Sahara Desert, a nearby village of Amazon women get ahold of the soldiers' presence, sending out a dancer to lure all the men into the village and make them into their personal working slaves.

* AgonyOfTheFeet: In "Cheese Chasers," Hubie and Bertie, hell-bent on ending their own lives after eating too much cheese, hit Claude's foot with a hammer, trying to provoke him into eating them.

* AgonyOfTheFeet: In "Cheese Chasers," Hubie and Bert, hell-bent on ending their own lives after eating too much cheese, hit Claude's foot with a hammer, trying to provoke him into eating them.

** There is also the crossover with JonahHex featuring Yosemite Sam and Foghorn Leghorn. It's one of the few cases where Looney Tunes is DarkerandEdgier

* AbsurdlyLongLimousine: Done in a lot of shorts. Often the gag would be further reinforced with a secretary or switchboard operator at the halfway point of the limousine.

* AllPsychologyIsFreudian

* AmusingInjuries: A huge part of the series' comedy falls into this category.

* {{Angrish}}: Yosemite Sam is the rackin-frackin' '''KING''' of this trope.

* AnimalAthleteLoophole: Bobo the Elephant in "Gone Batty", Bugs Bunny in "WesternAnimation/BaseballBugs". The latter in particular had Bugs invoke LoopholeAbuse everywhere.

** In the WesternAnimation/BugsBunny cartoon "The Greyhounded Hare", Bugs attends a dog race and falls in love with the mechanical rabbit, which is designed as a female. Seeing the dogs chase after "her", Bugs turns chivalrous and attacks them.

* AnimatedActors: "You Ought To Be In Pictures," "Duck Amuck," "Rabbit Rampage," "This is a Life?", "A Star is Bored," and "Blooper Bunny"

* CutASliceTakeTheRest: frequently, with various characters, and often with cake.

* CatchPhrase:

** And as a group: DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT!!, EAT AT JOES, and [[BigShutUp AAHHH, SHADDUP!]]
* CatStereotype: Sylvester is the codifier for the unsuccessful black and white cat stereotype.
* CatsAreMean: Ironically, Warner Bros. was much more egalitarian about this trope than other studios like [[WesternAnimation/ClassicDisneyShorts Disney]]. Outright subverted in shorts like "The Night Watchmen", "We, The Animals Squeak", "Fresh Airedale", "Chow Hound" and the Porky/Sylvester trilogy.
* CaughtInASnare: Foghorn Leghorn sees Henery building a snare trap and points out how a smart chicken like him would just jump over it... which is just what Henery wanted, as the spot Foghorn lands is where the trap door was.
* ChameleonCamouflage: A gag in "Unnatural History" involves a chameleon who proudly showcases his ability to change his color over any background. Then, he comes to plaid and [[HeroicBSOD breaks down.]]

** WesternAnimation/BugsBunny himself started out as a character known at the studio as Happy Hare, who was identical in personality to Daffy Duck. He was given a calmer demeanor in the cartoon "WesternAnimation/ElmersCandidCamera", but it wasn't until "WesternAnimation/AWildHare" that the character we now recognize as Bugs -- the unflappable, wisecracking KarmicTrickster -- started to gel. Specifically, it was the moment he steps up to the hunter and calmly and casually introduces himself with what would become his CatchPhrase, "What's up, Doc?"

* AnimationBump: Just about all of Creator/ChuckJones early shorts, which often have very tight, solid animation (especially shorts like ''WesternAnimation/OldGlory'') especially in contrast to the other directors. Creator/BobClampett shorts (once he was handed Creator/TexAvery's unit in the 40's) also had some of the most lavish animation in the studios history, and Creator/TexAvery's shorts were already undergoing this in the early 40's due to the increasing influence of both Bob McKimson and a newly-emerging Rod Scribner.
** Going in the opposite direction, the animation generally became less nuanced after the brief shutdown of the studio in 1953, due to tighter budgets. Bob [=McKimson's=] unit suffered the most; during the shutdown, nearly his entire animation staff, most of them inherited from the Clampett unit, jumped ship, leaving him with less experienced animators who would just inbetween [=McKimson's=] layout poses and leave it at that, rather than go the extra mile and push the actions further, as Clampett animators like Rod Scribner or Bill Melendez would.
* AntiClimax: "The Wild Chase" is about Speedy Gonzales and Road Runner racing each other. [[spoiler:The cartoon ends with Sylvester and Wile E. Coyote crossing the finish line instead.]]

* ArtEvolution: The earliest shorts had a '''very''' strong Disney influence in their animation (no surprise, considering the studio was founded by [[HarmanAndIsingHugh Harman and Rudolph Ising]], as well as Creator/FrizFreleng, all of who were former employees of Disney) but in the mid to late 30's Creator/TexAvery and Creator/BobClampett slowly but surely began trying to veer off into a less Disney like cartoon style. Creator/ChuckJones initially did VERY Disney like shorts with his Sniffles cartoons, until he decided to drop the saccharine stuff and do funny cartoons-and while Bob and Tex had already abandoned most of the Disney-esque art by the 40's, Creator/ChuckJones and Creator/RobertMcKimson personal art styles wiped out any remaining trace of the original Disney influence that was clinging to the studio at that point.

* AnimationBump: Just about all of Creator/ChuckJones early shorts, which often have very tight, solid animation (especially shorts like ''WesternAnimation/OldGlory'') especially in contrast to the other directors. Creator/BobClampett shorts (once he was handed Creator/TexAvery's unit in the 40's) also had some of the most lavish animation in the studios history, and Creator/TexAvery's shorts were already undergoing this in the early 40's.

* BuffoonishTomcat: Many male cats are shown to be bumbling buffoonish clowns, such as [[IneffectualSympatheticVillain Sylvester]], Claude Cat, [[TheBigGuy Pete Puma]], Babbott and Catstello ([[FatComicRelief Catstello]] [[FatIdiot most]] [[LovableCoward likely]]), the Lion from "Roman Legion Hare", Conrad Cat from "Conrad the Sailor", [[BigGuyLittleGuy Benny paired with George]], and [[DumbMuscle Heathcliff]] from "Cheese Chasers; Dough Ray Me-ow".

* CardCarryingVillain: In some of the 30's shorts, especially the ones with WesternAnimation/PorkyPig as the protagonist, the series tended to fall back on generic, one-note villains whose only purpose was to be complete menaces to anyone they encountered, including such punny cyphers as I. Killum ("Polar Pals") Nick O'Teen ("Wholly Smoke") Ali Mode ("Little Beau Porky"), Creator/BorisKarloff (a burlesque of Frankenstein's Monster and Boris Karloff in "Porky's Road Race") the legion of cartoon bad guys in "A Cartoonist's Nightmare", Mr. Viper from "Milk and Money", and so on. As the franchise progressed and characters more willing to dish out more than they took like WesternAnimation/BugsBunny came about, the use of such clear-cut villains was downplayed in favor of more shaded, but still arrogant, wrongheaded or just plain dimwitted villains just begging to get their just desserts, such as the momma's boy Killer/Beaky the Buzzard, ill-tempered man child Yosemite Sam, the sociopathic but oddly polite Marvin the Martian, or the haughty Giovanni Jones. Many shorts just dropped the idea of having villains at all and just had the characters in playful or ridiculous conflict with each other (i.e. many of the Foghorn Leghorn shorts, where Foggy and Barnyard Dawg's rivalry stems from the loudmouthed schnook's attempts to prove to the bratty Henery Hawk that the dog is a chicken and not him, Wile E. Coyote's and Sylvester's fanatic and ineffectual attempts to catch the Road Runner and Tweety, etc.).