Breaking The Fourth Wall / Looney Tunes

• One of the most famous No Fourth Wall lines in Looney Tunes history was introduced in the 1941 Bob Clampett Bugs Bunny short Wabbit Twouble. When Elmer Fudd, his face covered in soap, reaches for a towel, Bugs leads him around with the towel on the end of a branch. He tells the viewer, "I do this kind of stuff to him all through the picture."
  • Cecil Turtle says that earlier in Tortoise Beats Hare.
  • A variant of this line also turns up in Tex Avery's first Droopy short for MGM, Dumb-Hounded.
• "Hare Tonic" has Bugs convincing Elmer Fudd (who had brought him home to make into stew) that he was infected with the highly deadly and infections disease Rabbititis. In the last scene, he points to the audience and goes nuts, telling Fudd that everyone out there had Rabbititis. After Fudd runs off, he assures the viewers that if they actually had Rabbititis, they'd see red and yellow spots before their eyes (spots appear on the screen), and then they'd start swirling around (the spots on the screen do so), and then, everything'd go BLACK! (the screen blacks out).
• Another famous example involving Bugs is in ''What's Opera, Doc?. At the end, after Elmer kills Bugs, then goes into a What Have I Done mode and mournfully carries Bugs' body away, Bugs comes back to life briefly to tell the audience, "Well, what did you expect from an opera? A happy ending?"
• In one of the Bugs/Daffy cartoons with the Abominable Snowman, Daffy leads the snowman to Bugs and, sneaking off while the snowman is hugging Bugs, he turns to the camera and says "sure, I know I'm a louse. But I'm a LIVE louse." - on a host segment of the Bugs Bunny television show, a dopey sheepdog says (Looking for Bugs) "Where's the little bunny rabbit I saw on TV last week? I have to catch him. (Looking at us) Actually I'm a sheepdog by trade, but this is my day off."
• A Porky Pig short called Porky in Wackyland was about Porky trying to catch the elusive dodo bird and gets sent into an insane reality world where said dodo bird would torment him in a Roadrunner-esque way, albeit more insane. One way he annoys Porky is by riding up from the horizon in the Warner Bros. logo (complete with the "boing" sound effect) slaps Porky, and zooms back into the horizon, with the WB "boing" sound effect playing in reverse.
• An early Porky cartoon The Case of the Stuttering Pig had the villain warning the audience not to try and help the heroes - he especially singles out "that guy in the third row." At the end, the guy in the third row helps subdue the villain.
• In "Tick Tock Tuckered", another short featuring Porky Pig and Daffy Duck, they are trying to get to sleep to wake up early in the morning, so they are not fired for being late to work. Of course, this causes many things to plague them and prevent them from getting to sleep. One of them is the moonlight shining through the window and keeping Porky awake. The problem is resolved when Daffy shoots at the moon, causing it to fall and disappear over the horizon. In response to the unexpected outcome, Daffy looks at the audience, and expresses his disbelief ("Unbelievable, isn't it?").
• And then there were the shorts whose films "broke" near the end, leaving the screen a white void. After a brief pause, one of the characters from the cartoon in question steps out into the void and addresses the audience, "Ladies and gentlemen, due to circumstances beyond our control, we are unable to continue with this picture."
• Foghorn Leghorn did this often. Speaking to the foil du jour: "It was, I say, it was a joke, son!" Then turning to the camera: "Nice boy, but about as sharp as a sack o' wet mice."
• In Rabbit Hood Little John tells Bugs over and over that Robin Hood will "be here soon". Near the end Bugs says to him: "You said that all through the picture. Where is he?" Turns out Robin Hood does indeed arrive, but in Stock Footage from The Adventures of Robin Hood.
• The entirety of Chuck Jones' Daffy Duck short Duck Amuck is devoted to this very idea, with Daffy being tormented throughout by a mystery director. Daffy spends the entire short talking to the director who is constantly changing the scenery, props, and even Daffy himself with the use of a paintbrush, pencil, and eraser. And in the end, the director turns out to be Bugs Bunny!
  • Bugs gets the same treatment from Elmer Fudd in Rabbit Rampage.
• Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid:
  • Bosko does this in the pilot, looking at the camera and asking Rudy Ising "Whose all 'dem folks out dere in the dark?" Rudy of course informs him that its the audience, and challenges him to make them laugh, propelling the pilot shorts antics forward.
  • "Bosko In Person" plays with this trope; the cartoon is clearly meant to be the substitute for a live stage session, which Bosko is playing for the audience, which is clearly meant to be us in real life. At one moment, Honey even waves off to us to join in on the fun!
  • Honey does this early in "Bosko The Speed King"; ecstatic over Bosko racing, she looks to the camera and tells us "Ain't he grand?"
  • Wilbur the Cat does this late in "Bosko at the Beach", asking the audience "Is there a boy scout in the audience?! Help!" while drowning.
  • Taken to the utmost extreme in "Ride Him, Bosko!". Just as Bosko is hot on of the trail of the kidnapped Honey, the film goes to Rudy Ising and his animators get up and leave without resolving the Cliffhanger, obliterating the fourth wall in a way that hints at later Warner Bros. more than contemporaneous Disney.
• In the end of Rabbit Transit, Cecil says this to the audience after Bugs gets arrested:
  Cecil: Ain't I a stinker?
• One of the most famous examples of this trope in history is the beginning of "Tortoise Beats Hare". There, Bugs Bunny walks in front of the title card and notices it. He reads the credits, then reads the title. He gets angry, rips off the title card, and looks for the turtle.
• The now-censored cartoon Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips has Bugs disguised as Hideki Tojo but gives himself away to the Japanese soldier by eating a carrot:
  Soldier: (to us) Honolable a-haaa! That no Japanese general...that Bugs Bunny! I see him in Warner Bros./Reon Schresinger/Mellie Merodies cartoon picture! Oh, he no fool me!
• In "Ain't That Ducky", while running from a Victor Moore caricature, Daffy stops running to point out that someone forgot to put a barrel on the scene for him to hide in, pulling out his copy of the script as proof, resulting in an offscreen animator drawing in a barrel.
  Daffy: Say, what's the idea? What's the idea? There's supposed to be a barrel here for me to hide in! It says so right here in the script! Somebody's been laying down on the job! JL ^note Jack Warner will hear of this! (a hand draws a barrel next to him) That's more like it!