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Duel Personality is a 1966 cartoon in the Tom and Jerry series of theatrical shorts, directed by the late Chuck Jones.

After being chased by Tom in a Victorian chateau, Jerry decides to settle the conflict between them with a duel, to which Tom accepts. However, everything that they do to try to defeat each other backfires spectacularly for both parties.


Tropes:

  • Disaster Dominoes: The final gag of the short. Tom and Jerry take ten paces and turn while wielding slingshots, but in the middle of their pacing, Jerry decides to cheat, plants his slingshot into some rocks and fires his rock at Tom before he is even finished. When Tom prepares to shoot his rock, Jerry's rock hits him and pushes him into a tree, causing him to release his rock. Tom's rock is then caught by Jerry's slingshot, pushes the mouse into another tree and flies back at Tom, who ducks at the last second. The rock is then caught by Tom's slingshot and hits him, flinging him into Jerry's slingshot and into Jerry himself, pushing the mouse back again. Finally, Tom is shot back and gets stuck in a tree.
  • Duel to the Death: The central theme of the short, which involves Tom and Jerry trying to settle their feud with a duel.
  • Epic Flail: Tom tries to hit Jerry with a ball attached to a rope at the beginning of the cartoon, and eventually slams it on a floorboard that propels the mouse into a drawer. He later uses it again near the end of the short when the last challenge of the duel fails.
  • Face Plant: Tom and Jerry face-plant into each other's faces when they are flying towards each other as a result of being shot by their bows.
  • Forcibly Formed Physique: The final challenge concludes with Tom getting shot into a tree branch. When he prepares to chase Jerry again, his body is contorted into the shape of said branch before it sprouts back into shape.
  • Glove Slap: Jerry hits Tom across the face with a glove from the drawer he landed in to instigate the duel. At the end of the short, he does it again to Tom and tries to initiate another duel, only for Tom to tear Jerry's card into pieces, take the glove and slap Jerry with it, chasing him down as he does so.
  • Hammered into the Ground: Happens to Jerry in the first two challenges, with a pistol ball in the former and Tom's sword in the latter. Both instances have him laughing at Tom's pain before karma kicks in.
  • Law of Inverse Recoil: In the fourth challenge, Tom and Jerry aim cannons at each other and light them. When they go off, they get blasted back along with their owners, leaving behind the cannonballs.
  • Off-into-the-Distance Ending: The short ends with Tom chasing Jerry down the mansion while attacking him with the same glove used by the latter.
  • Pain-Powered Leap: Happens to poor Tom courtesy of Jerry's bent sword.
  • Pain to the Ass: Tom is accidentally shot in the rear by Jerry's gun during the first challenge, and later suffers the same thing with the mouse's bent sword.
  • Sword Fight: The second challenge involves Tom and Jerry resorting to swords to defeat each other. However, Jerry bends his sword so hard that it gets stuck in the shape of a hook, and unsuccessfully tries to toss it at Tom... or so he thinks. Just as Tom is about to gain up on him, Jerry's sword comes back like a boomerang and strikes Tom in the rear, causing him to leap high into the air and drop his sword, which lands on a cackling Jerry and drives him into the dirt.
  • The Teaser: Tom is chasing Jerry down the hall, trying to flatten him with a mace. Eventually, he slams the ball down onto a floorboard that shoots Jerry up into the air and into a clothes drawer. Before Tom can dish out another hit with the mace, Jerry signals for him to stop, which he does. He then takes a glove from the drawer and slaps Tom across the face, then takes out a card signaling a duel. Tom reads the card and agrees to participate in the duel.
  • Ten Paces and Turn
    • The first challenge involves Tom and Jerry doing this. However, since Jerry is small in comparison to his normal-sized gun, he is unable to carry it properly and ends up shooting Tom in the rear before he can finish.
    • For the final challenge, they do the same with slingshots, but Jerry cheats and slingshots his rock at Tom before he can finish. Tom gets hit by the rock, releases his rock, and disaster breaks loose.
  • Throwing Your Sword Always Works: After Jerry accidentally bends his sword during the Sword Fight skit, he throws it. The angled sword then comes back like a boomerang and hits Tom in his rear.
  • We Are Not Going Through That Again: The cold opening of the cartoon repeats after the final unsuccessful challenge, but this time, Tom rejects the duel and gives Jerry a taste of his own medicine by assaulting him with the glove the mouse used to challenge him to the duel.
  • Written Sound Effect: Both instances of Tom getting hit with his own rock and Jerry getting hit by a flying Tom are accentuated with "BLAP!".

 
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Duel Personality

The first two challenges in the duel result in Jerry accidentally hurting Tom with a pistol and a sword, respectively. Both instances have him laughing at Tom's pain before he is driven into the ground by Tom's pistol ball and then his sword.

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5 (8 votes)

Example of:

Main / HammeredIntoTheGround

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