"Shhhh! Be vewwy, vewwy quiet. I'm hunting wabbits! Hahahaha!"
Elmer Fudd is a major character of the Looney Tunes franchise, and one of only three humans in the regular cast (the others being Yosemite Sam & Tweety's owner Granny).
The Butt-Monkey, often Too Dumb to Live. An avid hunter, thus Chuck Jones' favorite adversary for both Bugs Bunny & Daffy Duck, reaching a peak in the iconic "Hunting Trilogy". Less popular with the other directors, who found him too weak. He also had an earlier, less distinctive prototype named Egghead, who was sometimes referred to as Elmer.
Elmer Fudd was one of very few characters in the classic Looney Tunes era that was not voiced by the immortal Mel Blanc. For almost all of the character's appearances, he was voiced by Arthur Q. Bryan, a prolific character actor who did most of his work in radio. After Bryan died in 1959, Hal Smith voiced Elmer in two shorts, but the character was soon retired. Mel Blanc did voice Elmer for a few later appearances after the Warner Brothers animation studio closed in 1969 (most notably for the short "Portrait of the Artist As a Young Bunny" in 1980), but Blanc himself said he never got the voice right.
On a side note, he didn't appear as often as most people think—in fact, he only appeared in about 36 (out of 167) of the original Bugs Bunny cartoons, although he did star in many other character shorts, along with several of his own solo appearances, amounting to 62 classic shorts total (75 If you count the Egghead shorts).
Go here for his self-demonstrating page.
Filmogwaphy
1937
- Egghead Rides Again (1937): Debut of Egghead.
- Little Red Walking Hood (1937)
1938
- Daffy Duck and Egghead (1938): Daffy Duck's first appearance in color.
- The Isle of Pingo Pongo (1938): One of the Censored Eleven.
- Cinderella Meets Fella (1938)
- A-Lad-In Bagdad (1938)
- A Feud There Was (1938): First appearance of the name Elmer Fudd.
- Johnny Smith and Poker-Huntas' (1938)
- Count Me Out (1938)
1939
- Hamatuer Night (1939)
- A Day at the Zoo (1939)
- Believe It or Else (1939)
- Hare-um Scare-um (1939): Egghead's last classic appearance, as "John Sourpuss", and the first pairing with what would become Bugs Bunny, who appears with grey fur for the first time.
1940
- Elmer's Candid Camera: Elmer's official debut, paired with the last appearance of the proto-Bugsnote .
- Confederate Honey
- The Hardship of Miles Standish
- A Wild Hare: Official debut of Bugs Bunny in his classic form.
- Good Night Elmer
1941
- Elmer's Pet Rabbit: First on-screen appearance of Bugs's name, though both characters show elements of their prototypes, such as Elmer wearing the Egghead suit.
- Wabbit Twouble: First appearance of a short-lived design where Elmer was made decidedly portly to resemble his voice actor, Arthur Q. Bryan.
1942
- The Wabbit Who Came to Supper
- Any Bonds Today?
- The Wacky Wabbit: The final use of the portly design.
- Nutty News (only voice is heard, never seen)
- Fresh Hare
- The Hare-Brained Hypnotist
1943
- To Duck or Not To Duck (LT) First official pairing of Daffy and Elmer.
- A Corny Concerto: One of the exceedingly few times Elmer isn’t an antagonist.
- An Itch in Time (MM)
1944
- The Stupid Cupid (LT)-Co-starring Daffy Duck
- Stage Door Cartoon (MM)
1945
- The Unruly Hare (MM)
- Hare Tonic (LT)
1946
- Hare Remover (MM)
1947
- Easter Yeggs (LT)
- A Pest in the House -Co-starring Daffy Duck
- Slick Hare (MM)
1948
- What Makes Daffy Duck? (LT)
- Back Alley Oproar (First pairing with Sylvester) (MM)
- Kit for Cat (with Sylvester) (MM)
1949
- Wise Quackers - Starring Daffy (LT)
- Hare Do - Starring Bugs (MM)
- Each Dawn I Crow (MM)
1950
- What's Up, Doc? (LT)
- Rabbit of Seville
- The Scarlet Pumpernickel: Cameo appearance.
1951
1952
1953
- Upswept Hare (MM)
- Ant Pasted (LT)
- Duck! Rabbit! Duck! (MM) - Starring Daffy
- Robot Rabbit (LT)
1954
- Design for Leaving (LT)
- Quack Shot (MM)
1955
- Pests for Guests (MM)
- Beanstalk Bunny (MM)
- Hare Brush (MM)
- This Is a Life? (MM)
- Heir-Conditioned - Starring Sylvester (LT)
- Rabbit Rampage (cameo appearance)
1956
- Bugs' Bonnets (MM)
- A Star Is Bored - Starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Yosemite Sam (LT)
- Yankee Dood It -Final pairing of Sylvester and Elmer (LT)
- Wideo Wabbit (MM)
1957
- What's Opera, Doc?
- Rabbit Romeo (MM)
1958
- Don't Axe Me - Starring Daffy (MM)
- Pre-Hysterical Hare - voiced by Dave Barry (LT)
1959
- A Mutt in a Rut (LT)
1960
- Person to Bunny (MM)
- Dog Gone People (MM)
1961
- What's My Lion?
1962
- Crows' Feat
1972
1974
- 'Twas the Night Before Christmas
1980
- Bugs Bunny's Bustin' Out All Over: "Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Bunny" (segment of TV special)
1988
- Daffy Duck's Quackbusters: Egghead makes a cameo appearance near the end.
1990
- Box-Office Bunny
- Tiny Toon Adventures (as a Recurring Character)
1991
1992
1996
2001
- Toon Marooned - Non speaking appearance
- The Matwix
- Judge Granny
- Mysterious Phenomena of the Unexplained
2002
2003
2011
2012
- Daffy's Rhapsody
2015
2020
2021
2023
I'm hunting twopes:
- Adaptational Badass: The Batman/Elmer Fudd Special has Elmer going toe-to-toe with Gotham's protector himself, but rather than a pathetic, slow-witted schlub, he's an accomplished hunter and a former professional killer who handles a mean shotgun. As such, during their brief encounter, he puts up more of a fight than most of the goons Batman runs into.
- Affably Evil: Generally a nice guy when not trying to blast (not-so-) innocent animals with his shotgun.
- Anti-Villain: Sure, he's trying to kill Bugs on a regular basis, but he's just a hunter practicing his sport and at worst a pitiful fool — it would be a huge stretch to call him evil. Friz Freleng cited this as a reason why he disliked using the character, feeling he was too pitiful to be a real threat to Bugs compared to Yosemite Sam.
- Arch-Enemy: Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.
- A Taste of Their Own Medicine: In “Ant Pasted”, he deliberately throws lit firecrackers at an ant nest because their complaints amused him and starting a war against them when they retaliate. At the end, the ants blow him up with his own fireworks (which are leaking and creating a trail), which is implied to have killed him.
- Bald of Evil: There’s not a single strand of hair under that hat.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: It's not uncommon for him to face the audience, shush them and say his catchphrase.
- Butt-Monkey: Even outside antagonist roles his abuse never ends.
- Card-Carrying Villain: In Looney Tunes: Back in Action, he admits that he's secretly evil.
- Character Catchphrase: "Shhh! Be vewy, vewy quiet. I'm hunting wabbits."
- The Chessmaster: If one is to believe the theory that he faked insanity so he wouldn't get arrested for tax evasion in "Hare Brush". His final line to the audience supports this: "I may be a scwewy wabbit, but I'm not going to Alcatwaz!"Bugs: "I am Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht."
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: After the death of Arthur Q. Bryan in 1959, a replacement wasn't readily available (Hal Smith sounded too different and Mel Blanc wasn't comfortable with doing the voice). As a result, Elmer's appearances only got three more appearances until he was completely phased out in 1962 after Crows' Feat,
where he has no lines. - Depending on the Writer: His Evil Vegetarian entry is undermined by how many other shorts have him hunting Bugs because he's eager for some "fwesh wabbit stew". Whether he's looking to eat Bugs or just bag him for sport pretty much depends on what the writer thought would make for better gags in a given short.
- Determinator: He is dead-on point to hunt down Bugs or Daffy. At least he tries.
- The Ditz: Easily fooled by his adversaries, especially Bugs.
- Divergent Character Evolution: Egghead started off as something of a proto Elmer, but the two are officially considered separate characters. Egghead even got his own story in a Looney Tunes comic, and he made a cameo appearance to Daffy in one of the Looney Tunes compilation features.
- Dumb Blonde: According to Baby Looney Tunes and the Looney Tunes Cartoons episode "Hare Restoration", he is a blonde, though as an adult he is completely bald. He's more "foolish" than outright ignorant.
- Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: Twope Namuh.
- Early Installment Character-Design Difference: His early Egghead look, plus his very brief change into a very obese design, before they settled into his standard look. In his sole outing for Tex Avery, he has a small red nose; this design would eventually be used in Looney Tunes Cartoons.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: In "Fresh Hare", one of his earlier appearances, he's an RCMP constable, and is chasing Bugs. At the end, he catches Bugs, who is then tried for several serious crimes and sentenced to death. Elmer asks Bugs what he wants, and he says "I wish..." and the entire scene turns into a blackfaced minstrel of "I Wish I Was in Dixie". Though not part of the "Censored Eleven," the ending is often censored in syndication.
- The Everyman: Seemed to replace Porky in this role in the fifties and sixties shorts. This is despite him being less than identifiable in brains to the average person, he is still nonetheless the most conventionally-living compared to the rest of the cast: he calls home an actual house (often located in the suburbs), has a job and at times even a wife.
- Evil Vegetarian: He mentions he's a vegetarian and hunts for sport when hunting more than one prey in Rabbit Fire and Rabbit Seasoning. It makes his hobby even less forgivable since nourishment isn't even part of his reasoning... and conveniently one escape route less for Bugs and Daffy.
- Hidden Depths: Who would have guessed that the same Elmer Fudd that seemingly can't tell the difference between an actual woman and Bugs Bunny in a dress was an expert in economics
? In Tiny Toon Adventures, outside of being a teacher at Acme Looniversity he also shows up in a several episodes as Mr. Exposition including, in one case, an expert in seismology. - Idiot Ball: Granted, he is not a very bright character to begin with, but he reaches his peak in the "Rabbit Season" trilogy where he is a complete airhead, for example mistaking a rabbit with a fake mustache and ill-fitting uniform for a game warden (not to mention the usual Bugs in drag shenanigans).
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: But of course. He's so pathetic, that not only can he not top a wiseacre rabbit, he's had shorts where ants and even a living candle have gotten the better of him!
- Ink-Suit Actor: The brief 1941-42 "Fat Elmer" design, instigated by Tex Avery, was based on Arthur Q. Bryan's hefty build, because Avery thought Bryan was entertaining to watch when he recorded his lines, and thought it might translate well onto the screen. It didn't really, and they slimmed Elmer back down after five cartoons (Wabbit Twouble, The Wabbit Who Came to Supper, The Wacky Wabbit, Fresh Hare, Any Bonds Today?). Oddly, this turned out to be a case of Short-Lived, Big Impact some seven decades later, because the brief gag in Wabbit Twouble where Bugs is drawn to look like Fat Elmer would give rise to the Big Chungus meme.
- Jerkass Ball: In some cartoons, especially those under Friz Freleng's direction. Examples include "Ant Pasted," "Quack Shot," "Hare Brush" and "This Is A Life?" Allegedly this was because Freleng and some other creative members thought Elmer's default character was too sympathetic to give the runaround.
- Karma Houdini: In "Hare Brush" (mentioned above), he spends the whole cartoon disguised as Bugs Bunny to get out of paying a massive IRS debt. At the end of the cartoon, Bugs is the one thrown in prison for tax evasionnote , with Elmer left completely unscathed. This is one of only two cartoons where Elmer actually gets the best of Bugs (the other being "Rabbit Rampage").
- Manchild: He would throw fits up until The Stupid Cupid .
- Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: The feminine boy to Lola Bunny's masculine girl.
- My God, What Have I Done?: This is pretty much Elmer Fudd's reaction whenever he thinks he's finally killed Bugs. No matter how hard he's been trying throughout the episode to shoot Bugs he always breaks down in tears when he thinks he's finally done it, calling himself a murderer, which calls into question why he's a hunter in the first place. See "Manchild" above.
- Naked People Are Funny: As Cupid Elmer, though he wears a diaper.
- Not-So-Harmless Villain: Had occasional moments that took even Bugs by surprise. He's outrighted defeated him twice over. Heck, in "Quack Shot", he was actually on top of his game against nearly everything Daffy threw at him.
- Obfuscating Insanity: ''Hare Brush". Fudd, the millionaire head of a major corporation, is in a mental hospital because he thinks he's a rabbit. He lures Bugs into taking his place, who is put in hypnotherapy and starts to think he's Elmer. The cartoon ends with Bugs-as-Elmer being arrested for tax evasion, and Elmer says to the audience, "I may be a scwewy wabbit, but I'm not going to Alcatwaz!"
- Obfuscating Stupidity: In What's My Lion?, the last classic short Elmer has a speaking role in and the second to last short he appeared in at all, a Lion hides in Elmer's lodge during the hunting season, putting his head through the wall to pretend to be a trophy. Throughout the short, Elmer gets injuring it on the grounds that it's already dead and stuffed, but at the end, after Elmer gets a phone call and reveals that hunting season is over, the lion - along with all other animals that had posed as animal heads as well - leaves the lodge, only for Elmer to reveal that he knew all along and set a new record, with it taking only three hours to get all those animals out of there.
- Out of Focus: Following the death of his original actor, Arthur Q. Bryan, Elmer had noticeably less appearances, with only sporadic attempts to find a replacement (even Mel Blanc by his own admission didn't think he could replicate it). It was only after Blanc's own death in 1989, which necessitated recasting nearly all the Looney Tunes regulars anyway, that Elmer returned to his earlier prominence.
- Pushy Gun-Toting Villain: He may be dim and easy to fool, but he is still presented as a formidable threat to Bugs and Daffy because of how much shotgun-happy he is.
- Pyrrhic Victory: In "Good Night Elmer", he finally managed to extinguish a candle after numerous attempts at doing so, at the expense of destroying his bedroom. Worse still, he did not even enjoy a good night sleep since the sun rose shortly after he extinguished the candle.
- Rogues' Gallery Transplant: Most commonly Bugs' Arch-Enemy, though sometimes faced off against Daffy and Sylvester. Since both were more bungling and hubris driven than Bugs however, it tended to be less lop sided who came out on top, or even if Elmer was designated the "villain" between the two.
- Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Bugs' 2 most notable enemies, Sam's Manly Man and Elmer's Sensitive Guy. Clearly based on temperament.
- Signature Headgear: His hunting hat.
- Signature Laugh: "Huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuh".
- Smart Ball: He is oddly savvy in "Quack Shot", where he is ahead in Daffy's game several times.Daffy: Smartypants.
- Snobby Hobby: "Hare Brush" establishes that Elmer Fudd is a millionaire who owns a mansion and a yacht. He also enjoys hunting, as he's commonly seen trying to shoot Bugs Bunny and/or Daffy Duck.
- Speech Impediment: A textbook example of rhotacism.
- Team Rocket Wins: He was able to get his revenge on "that wascawy wabbit" in Rabbit Rampage and Hare Brush. And then there's What's Opera, Doc?, wherein he seemingly kills Bugs. He also outwitted Bugs in one of their Tang commercials. Besides all that, he tended to have a better success rate when his opponent was someone other than Bugs. His win/lose ratio against Daffy was pretty even, and in "Crows' Feat" he is more than a match for two nuisance crows. He also makes a meal out of a murderous rooster (albeit accidentally) in "Each Dawn I Crow".
- Throw the Dog a Bone: "Hare Brush," "To Duck or Not to Duck" and "Rabbit Rampage", to name a few.
- Too Dumb to Live: His aim is to hunt Bugs, but he usually ends up seriously injuring himself.
- Took a Level in Badass: During the mid-50's, became quite a bit more crafty and smart than before. For example, the cartoon Robot Robot notably has him rejoicing right after Bugs pretends to "kick the bucket".
- Trademark Favorite Food: He has a rather interesting relationship with grilled cheese.
- Villainous Underdog: A particularly infamous (and unintentional) case, since he was so meek and incompetent against Bugs Bunny that even some of the Warner Bros creative team started to think Bugs was coming across more as a petty bully than a defensive trickster. As such the series went through a long list of more challenging opponents to rectify this, though almost all of them still fit this trope, while Elmer started to drift into more incidental roles.
- The Voiceless: He doesn't speak in "Good Night Elmer", "Crows' Feat" and "Toon Marooned".
- Wealthy Yacht Owner: In the episode "Hare Brush" he is a millionaire who "owns a mansion and a yacht". This becomes a hypnotic mantra a psychologist has him repeat after he has a mental breakdown and thinks he's a rabbit.
