Western Animation / Pigs Is Pigs (1937)

Feed me!

"Hungry, my little man?"

— The scientist

"Pigs Is Pigs" is a 1937 Looney Tunes short, directed by Friz Freleng. It is a loose sequel to At Your Service Madame that stars a cute little piglet named Piggy, who was one of the main characters of that short but is now the star. Piggy loves food so much that he steals it off the table and never gets full. However, the little fellow bites off more than he can chew when outside the safety of his mother's home, he is invited into the home of a Mad Scientist. Here, he gets more food than he could've ever dreamed...

Noted as one of the most (in)famous Looney Tunes shorts of all time, particularly for both its horror and marvelous originality with the feeding sequence, "Pigs Is Pigs" has often been parodied in pop culture, including a Shout-Out in the fourth Treehouse of Horror in The Simpsons (Matt Groening even said the feeding sequence was his favorite animated sequence in history). "Pigs Is Pigs" is also the last short to feature Piggy and the Hamhock family as a whole.

No relation to the oneshot Disney short of the same name.

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"Pigs Is Pigs" provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc: This short was meant to be the first of a series revolving around the Hamhock family piglets, with each of them representing one of the Seven Deadly Sins. However, the higher-ups disliked the idea, and this ended up being the last appearance of the family as a whole.
• Aesop Amnesia: Despite having been abducted and force fed until he's an unrecognizable blob of a piglet, Piggy completely forgets about his predicament when he sees more food ready for him to eat. Out of pure gluttony, he takes a hearty chomp out of a leg of turkey and dies. Not even having a nightmare about exploding from too much food will stop Piggy from overeating.
• Alcohol Hic: The scientist has a bad case of hiccups that don't seem to dampen his evil glee at all, giving this impression.
• All Just a Dream: The ending reveals that Piggy only dreamed he was fattened up and blew up from too much food. Of course, he immediately forgets his dream and goes right back to eating like there's no tomorrow.
• The Aloner: Piggy never interacts with his siblings in the short, instead dreaming about food and stealing it from his family when he can.
• Art Evolution: Thanks to technological advances in the year since "At Your Service, Madame", the animation and colors are far more vibrant and colorful, and the audio has improved as well. Several shots use Stock Footage from the previous short, but are considerably better looking.
• Art-Style Dissonance: The short has very vibrant, pretty colors and very adorable designs for its anthropomorphic animal characters, with the piglets in particular looking absolutely adorable and having high, squeaky voices. Thus it becomes surprising that the main protagonist is one of these adorable piglets but is a selfish glutton who is put through a karmic hell where he's cruelly fattened up to death in a nightmare, and shows he refuses to change his ways. The short has a very cynical, cruel edge even before it gets to the iconic force-feeding sequence.
• Ascended Extra: Though he was still ultimately The Hero of "At Your Service, Madame", Piggy takes the definitive spotlight here.
• Aside Glance: Piggy smirks at the camera during the family prayer to show the audience he doesn't care about it and is only interested in feeding himself. At the end of the short he also gives a pained Oh, Crap! face to the camera as he explodes, and then a smirk once he wakes up from his nightmare to show he hasn't learned his lesson.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The scientist has whipped up some truly astounding machines to force feed Piggy, but instead of having to operate them by hand for a full day, he really could've just locked Piggy in a room full of all the food he's prepared for him, and the job would've been done a lot easier. Then again, considering the implication that the dream was an attempt by Piggy's subconscious to scare him into ending his gluttony the hard way…
• Balloon Belly: Piggy is massive once the scientist is done feeding him. It's not just his belly, either, as his entire body is bloated up from all the food.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Piggy spends the first part of the short pining for food to eat all for himself, only to end up force-fed with endless amounts of it and doesn't enjoy the experience until possibly after it's over.
  • Early on, he tries eating both of his mother's pies without leaving any for the rest of his family. During grace, he simply prays that they have lots of ice cream for dessert. He gets force fed both pies and ice cream and he does not enjoy the experience, even having an Oh, Crap! face when he's taken to the pies in particular as he recognizes he's on the receiving end of this trope.
  • Piggy can't reach the table by himself due to being too little when he first arrives at the scientist's house. After he's been fattened up, he's now much taller than the table and now he's able to actually grab food off the table for himself without any help. Unfortunately being able to grab food is what allows him to grab the last bite of turkey that kills him.
• Big Bad: The scientist is seemingly the main antagonist of the short as he's the one who captures Piggy and force-feeds him to provide him some karmic punishment, endangering his life and well-being in the process. However, not only is he a figment of Piggy's nightmare, but it's arguable that Piggy is the main antagonist given it's his own actions that get him into his predicament in the first place.
• Big Eater: Piggy, obviously. He eats a whole pie in moments and tries to eat another before his mother rescues it from him; and eats the dinner meant for himself and half of his family in one fell swoop. Even after his belly swells far beyond any natural size, he still wants to eat more. Not even being fed to the brink of death stops him from eating more. This kid never gets full.
• Big "NO!": After his dream ends in him dying a brutal, horrific death after being tortured by the thing he loves most, Piggy wakes up screaming.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Piggy may look like an adorable little piglet, but he's incredibly selfish and greedy for such a little guy.
• Black Humor: One of the earliest cartoons to massively use this form of humor.
• Black Sheep: Piggy's siblings are all seemingly perfectly sweet, kind children who love each other and their mother and do as she says. Piggy on the other hand is a mischievous, selfish glutton who doesn't care if they go hungry if it means getting more to eat for himself. Piggy notably isn't shunned by his siblings either, he deliberately stays away from them because he's more interested in daydreaming about food and finding it wherever he can.
• Bloodless Carnage: Piggy's death, while graphic in that chunks of his body can be seen getting blown to pieces, features no guts or blood, thankfully.
• Body Horror: Piggy is fattened up to be an orb with little tiny legs, and has immense difficulty trying to waddle away. Then his stomach explodes like a balloon being popped for taking one more bite from a turkey leg. There's no blood, but we see chunks of his body go flying as Piggy gapes in horror.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Piggy is a young child and is so short he can't even reach the contents on top of a table without using a chair to sit in, but he makes up for it with an awful personality. He doesn't play with his siblings and steals food from them if it means he eats well, he doesn't respect his mother, and is enraged when his mother chews him out for the crime of stealing everyone's dinner out from under their nose. The end of the short strongly implies that he does remember his horrible nightmare where he got his karmic death, but he shoots a shit-eating grin at the camera as he goes back to his normal eating habits.
• Brick Joke: When Piggy first sees the banquet table, he's so short that he can just barely see a little bit of its' contents by getting on his tiptoes and tugging at the edge of it, and has to get in the chair to be a bit more level with it. After he's fattened up, Piggy is now over twice as tall as the table thanks to his massive widening and can now casually take food off the table without any help.

• Catapult Nightmare: Piggy is left squealing in terror and jumps up under his covers when he wakes up from his nightmare.
• Cathartic Exhalation: Piggy does one of these once he wakes up and realizes he is in fact not dead from overeating.
• Cerebus Call-Back: Piggy stealing a pie and spinning it on his thumb to eat it rapid-fire, and later praying for ice cream for dessert is pretty funny. During his feeding, Piggy is forced to eat countless spinning pies in the exact same fashion, and also is forced to eat ice cream at another station. Whereas Piggy was enjoying chomping the pie and grinned at the thought of dessert, he's clearly in pain and distress when he's being forced to chew the pies at a rapid pace and when he's forced to open up to take the ice cream. He has an Oh, Crap! face at both stations showing he recognizes the bitter irony.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The short starts out with cute colors and little piglets enjoying their day, and while Piggy is portrayed as wrong for stealing pie, it's more comical especially given his only negative reaction to being scolded is to daydream about food again. The next extended sequence shows that Piggy is so selfish he'd starve his own family if it meant filling his belly and he reacts much more harshly to his reprimands. It then becomes the unrelenting, cruel nightmare and a quite literal one at that once Piggy goes to the scientist who tricks Piggy using his gluttony to manipulate him into his clutches, culminating in a very disturbing climax where we see the end result of Piggy's vice.
• Cheerful Child: Piggy's siblings are all shown to be perfectly sweet, innocent children who have a good time playing outside until dinner is ready. When dinner is served, they dutifully participate in saying grace and are later shown sleeping peacefully. This is all in contrast to Piggy, who’s completely miserable the entire afternoon because he's desperate for food to glut on.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Subverted. The scientist force-feeding Piggy was clearly intended to be this, as he forcibly feeds him for the better part of an entire day, and Piggy is very clearly in distress and failing to resist. However, after being fattened up, Piggy is in a state of euphoria, having enjoyed all the food despite his predicament. Nevertheless, he does look to be in some sort of pain as he can barely waddle to the door and seems to be having a lot of trouble breathing.
• Comically Cross-Eyed: When Piggy plops the last turkey leg into his mouth, his eyes become cross-eyed to show how absolutely mindless this continued gluttony has become by this point.
• Crosscast Role: Piggy, a little boy piglet, is voiced by a woman.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: While Piggy's actual demise in his dream is quick since he instantly explodes from trying to eat again, the whole affair is drawn out over the course of a whole day and is notable for how twisted it is. It starts with Piggy being tricked by the promise of a whole banquet to himself and having that hope ripped away from him, and he's then forcibly fed massive amounts of food for an entire day in ways that are plainly uncomfortable and seemingly downright painful at times. Piggy is then left as an obese blob that can barely walk or speak, and is then further tormented by the prospect of even more food. He falls for it and is killed with the very thing he loves most.
• Darker and Edgier: Much more so than "At Your Service, Madame". Lots of Nightmare Fuel and an unsympathetic protagonist dies a horrible death in his nightmare because of it.
• Dark Reprise: Piggy steals his mother's pie, putting one on his index finger, and spinning it like a frisbee, and chomps it until there's only a small piece from the center left. His mother catches him and saves her remaining pie, and berates him. Later, during his feeding, Piggy is brought to a machine that also spins pies like frisbees, only this time, he's forced to eat them again and again and again to the point he's visibly fearing for his life.
• Death by Gluttony: Inside the dream Piggy's gluttony ultimately kills him when his body is simply too full of food, and he explodes.
• Death by Irony: Piggy is uncontrollably gluttonous and wants to eat everything he possibly can without sharing with anyone. The scientist fattens him up with obscene amounts of food for a full day until even Piggy claims he's had enough, and Piggy dies in his nightmare when he just can't resist continuing to eat. Piggy is killed by what he loves most, eating too much food.
• Death Glare: Played for Laughs when Mrs. Hamhock prevents Piggy from eating dinner without his siblings. After a good smack on his hands with a ruler, Mrs. Hamhock marches to the other side of the table, glaring him down to also make sure he doesn't try eating again before his siblings arrive.
• Death of a Child: Piggy suffers a sudden, violent death when he explodes from too much food in his nightmare.
• Delicious Daydream: Piggy spends his time when he's not eating imagining food for him to eat. Even after he eats his family's dinner for himself, he can't sleep due to imagining further feasts just for him.
• Devil in Plain Sight: The audience can tell the scientist is malicious and has bad intentions for Piggy the moment they see him, but while Piggy is initially wary, his concerns evaporate when the scientist offers him a feast to himself. By the end of the short, after being forcibly fed all day for an unknown nefarious purpose, Piggy does recognize the scientist as a threat and tries to flee the moment he gets a chance... it's just he's too gluttonous to resist the scientist's final temptation of more food.
• Downer Ending: Piggy's dream ends when he dies after eating too much. Didn't scare him all that much, though: as soon as his mother calls him down for food he gleefully starts stuffing his face. Which makes it a bad ending for the short as a whole as it shows the main character having learned nothing and incapable of improving himself.
• Dramatic Stutter: After being fattened up, Piggy can barely stutter "y-y-y-yes, sir!" in response to the scientist asking if he's had enough food. It's either from the sheer pain of the aftermath of his force-feeding, the shock of his ordeal, or euphoria from having eaten so much - or a combination of the three.
• Egocentrically Religious: Played for Laughs. When his mother leads the family in saying grace before dinner, Piggy pleads to have ice cream for dessert with a sarcastic expression, showing he doesn't really care for the Hamhock family's faith.
• Enfant Terrible: Piggy is just as adorable as his siblings but he's selfish, greedy, gluttonous, and arrogant. He even puts his hands behind his back when the scientist is offering him food in a pose that suggests he knows how to act as innocent as possible to try to swindle somebody into giving him what he wants.
• Establishing Character Moment: The Hamhock piglets are introduced all playing with each other happily and enjoying each other's company. Piggy is then introduced walking by himself, sadly longing for food, and looking completely miserable. When he's caught and reprimanded for stealing one of his mother's pies, he completely ignores her and keeps dreaming about food. It establishes that Piggy is a selfish, greedy glutton who couldn't care less about his family.
• Everyone Has Standards: Piggy recognizes from the get-go that being strapped to a chair by force by a cackling madman is bad news and is appropriately terrified, and as he's carted around to different stations, he's distressed due to not wanting to be force fed like this. Despite having more than likely enjoyed his feeding, Piggy does remember that he's in danger in the scientist's house and tries to escape from him.
• Evil Laugh: The scientist has a piercing cackle provided by his actor Billy Bletcher.
• Fatal Flaw: Piggy's gluttony and greed, which makes him helpless to resist more food and results in him eating a bite too many at the end that causes him to explode.
• Fat and Proud: Downplayed. Before his feeding, when he is presented with the feast to himself he always wanted, Piggy shamelessly rubs his small, round belly while licking his chops in ecstasy over the meal he's about to enjoy, showing he has no qualms about the gluttony he's about to engage in. After the feeding, he gives a brief look at himself after he's been freed and has something of a smile on his face, suggesting that he truly doesn't mind having grown so fat and is simply more interested in escaping a man he can tell has negative intentions for him.
• Fat Bastard: Piggy does qualify for the bastard part given his selfish gluttony, but he's only a little plump being a young child, downplaying this trope. However, judging by the girth of Mrs. Hamhock and the pictures of adult pigs in the house, Piggy will likely end up becoming this in full when he is grown since by the end he shows no signs of ending his gluttony. There's no indication he even felt any different about screwing over his family after waking up from his dream.
• Fattening the Victim: Whether it's for some perverse pleasure or to later eat him, the scientist does this to Piggy once he's captured and strapped down. Subverted when it was All Just a Dream; it's implied that the whole nightmare was Piggy's subconscious trying to warn him about the consequences of eating so much. Not that he pays any heed to it, mind you.
• The Final Temptation: Piggy gets an opportunity to escape after being fattened up when the scientist releases him from his chair, and now realizing the scientist is evil, Piggy tries to flee. But the scientist has one last trick, having laid out another banquet for him. Before he can take the last step needed to exit the house, Piggy finally spots the food, and all sense of self-preservation fails him as he greedily tries to eat more. He fails the last test, and ends the dream exploding to death.
• Flanderization: An intentional one, actually. In the previous short, Piggy was more of a Mr. Vice Guy, who was a very unrepentant glutton, but still rose to the occasion to save his mother and family, and was actually pretty crafty. Here, his gluttony is his main character trait, besides his total disregard for his mother and family, and his wiliness goes completely out the window at the prospect of food. Had the Hamhock family continued to appear in shorts, each of the other six piglets of Mrs. Hamhock would've similarly had a character trait overblown, since the piglets were meant to represent the Seven Deadly Sins.
• For the Evulz: The scientist's motives aren't explained beyond his desire to give Piggy ironic punishment with food to fatten him up, cruelly laughing as he watches the now morbidly obese piglet try to escape. As he's a figment of Piggy's imagination, it makes sense why he's as cruel as possible.
• Force Feeding: One of the earliest trope codifiers. Piggy is strapped into a chair so metal contraptions can forcibly feed him food for hours on end. Even a rampant glutton like Piggy clearly is not enjoying it, constantly squirming to try to get out of his restraints and visibly looking terrified and in pain from the ordeal.
• Foreshadowing: Piggy's mother, when ripping into her son for eating the family's dinner and making them go hungry, angrily asks if Piggy wants to burst.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: A bottle of gastritis pills and ulcer tablets are seen on a table in the scientist's house, presumably to help Piggy eat all that food. Once Piggy explodes, there are three frames of his horrified expression.
• Gluttony Montage: Downplayed. While Piggy is a glutton who spends a whole montage being fed a bunch of food, he's not doing it of his free will, even if it's strongly implied afterwards he ultimately did enjoy himself.
• Good Parents: Mrs. Hamhock is a sweet, kindly woman who dearly loves her children - and constantly reprimands Piggy for his misbehaving without ever missing a beat.
• Grand Finale: Of the Hamhock family series, though Mrs. Hamhock would later appear one more time, albeit with Porky Pig cast as her only child.
• Grin of Audacity: As Piggy hatches the scheme to steal his family's dinner for himself, he starts grinning mischievously, his grin growing bigger with each passing moment until he looks absolutely delighted at what he's doing right before he goes back to his seat. He has the sense to put on a fake look of polite subservience when saying "amen", but then he goes back to grinning as he waits for his mother to finally give them permission to eat.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: The scientist obviously intends to fatten Piggy up with endless amounts of food, and even when Piggy insists he's finally full, the scientist laughs and taunts him that he's not even half-full yet. Why he wants to fatten him up isn't explained because it's just a nightmare.
• Hidden Depths: Piggy's nightmare suggests that he truly does, deep down, have concerns about the consequences of his gluttony and maybe even feels bad about how he stole food to make his family go hungry. But his Ignored Epiphany shows that for the indefinite future, he's unwilling to actually do anything about it.
• Hope Spot:
  • In-Universe, Piggy is absolutely elated when the scientist presents him with a buffet and begins licking his lips and rubbing his belly in happy anticipation. It seems like he's finally going to get a massive feast all to himself without needing to share like he's always wanted. Then the scientist shoves away the food and straps him down.
  • Despite being grotesquely overfed to massive proportions, Piggy quickly begins to struggle out of the scientist's house to escape back to his mother. He's literally at the doorway to leave when he notices the food still on the table and eagerly decides to keep eating anyway and explodes.
  • When Piggy's mother calls him down for breakfast, Piggy has a look of concern as he processes what his mother just told him. As he's just woken up from his nightmare of being overfed to death, it looks like he might finally slow down his eating. But he then grins and runs down to breakfast to start packing it in, proving he won't change.
• Ignored Epiphany:
  • After being released from his chair, Piggy actually does try to leave, not even noticing the banquet table still full of food due to being afraid for his life. But when he does notice the banquet, he forgets everything and goes for more food.
  • For a moment, Piggy looks terrified at the prospect of food after dreaming of being blown up like a balloon from too much food. Then he smiles at the camera briefly and runs down to breakfast to start pigging out again.
• Irony: Piggy getting tortured for an entire day by force-feeding is this considering how gluttonous he is, but in particular is the manner in which he's fed the spinning pies after he had previously eaten one of his mother's pies by spinning it on his finger. He's also hauled to an ice cream machine after he had prayed to God for ice cream for dessert.
• It Has Only Just Begun: When Piggy finally says he's full and having been transformed into a round ball of fat, the scientist only laughs and says Piggy isn't half-full.
• It's All About Me: Piggy is as selfish as he is greedy, not giving a damn that his family loses their supper to him and is completely shocked and angry when Mrs. Hamhock gets onto his case.
• Jerkass: Piggy himself. Not only does he simply pray for ice cream, the kid is willing to eat his family's entire dinner while they say grace just to get more food and shows no remorse over it, and then has the nerve to be annoyed by his mother's scolding.
• Karma Houdini: Piggy is never seen being explicitly punished by his mother, only told off, when he clearly isn't listening. By the short's end, he hasn't learned a thing about overeating and likely won't stop anytime soon.
• Karmic Death: Food is about the only thing that matters to Piggy. In his dream, Piggy is force fed until he's morbidly obese and can barely walk, and then dies by exploding once he finally eats just too much.
• Kick the Dog: Piggy underhandedly eating the entire dinner meant to feed his family certainly counts. According to urban legend, a remake of this film featured Piggy becoming even fatter after the feeding, but as he tries to escape, the scientist cruelly kicks him in the belly, severely hurting the overfed piglet. Even then, the scientist cruelly laughs as he watches Piggy haphazardly waddle as he tries to run for his life, clearly waiting for Piggy to try to take one more bite.
• Lack of Empathy: Piggy's appetite puts him dangerously close to this territory: he scarfs down his family's dinner and goes right to wondering what's next on the menu.
• Lean and Mean: The scientist is as thin as a rail and outright kills Piggy in his dream with what he loves most.
• Leitmotif: The scientist gets a sinister, quiet theme when he first brings Piggy into his house, and as he watches in amusement as the fattened Piggy desperately tries to waddle away.
• Logical Extreme: Piggy shows exactly who he is when after being torturously fattened up to a colossal blob and being in obvious agony from just trying to walk afterwards, he sees more food and gluttonously tears into it so he can keep eating, which causes him to explode and die, at least in his dream, showing exactly how far he's willing to take his gluttony.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Despite being a round ball of pork by this point, Piggy excitedly grabs a turkey leg and happily devours it. Boom.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • We go from a peaceful, quiet scene with the piglets sleeping at night to the horrific nightmare for which the short is so well known.
  • In-Universe with Piggy. When he's presented with a buffet, he's absolutely ecstatic and rubs his belly happily. Then the scientist captures him, and he's shocked and frightened for his life.
  • At the end of the short, Piggy suffers another In-Universe example when he tries to flee from the scientist after being released, in clear distress and pain after being forcibly fattened up. He notices the food on the table and excitedly licks his chops before greedily tearing into a turkey leg. His last expressions are of pleasure before he pops, with a frame by frame analysis showing him reacting in horror as he explodes.
• Never My Fault: Piggy shows no contrition whenever his mother reprimands him for eating food he's not supposed to eat. When Mrs. Hamhock stops him from eating the food on the table before the other Hamhock children arrive, Piggy looks at her in hurt confusion, not understanding why she did it and scared of her doing it again. When he eats everyone's dinner, he's completely shocked for a moment to be getting chewed out by his mother and scowls furiously as he is forced to endure it.
• Nightmare Sequence: The last two-thirds of the short are this, showing the events inside the mad scientist's house are just Piggy's nightmare.
• No Indoor Voice: The scientist once he reveals his true colors.
• Obsessed with Food: Piggy spends every moment of his time longing for food to eat.
• Obviously Evil: Piggy was too excited by the prospect of food to tell that the mad scientist was this. He does seem suspicious and wary, but once the scientist offers him food, his worries go out the window.
• Oh, Crap!: Piggy, in rapid succession:
  • He has a comedic one when he's smacked on his hands by his mother with a ruler to stop him from eating before his siblings arrive for dinner. He's particularly hurt by the smack and sheepishly cowers before her as she stomps to her seat, watching him.
  • Piggy gets a bigger one when he's surprised by the scientist suddenly opening his door, squealing and even jumping off the ground. This is the last one that's played for comedy.
  • He then has a massive one when the scientist shoots him a malicious evil grin, finally realizing he's in danger, and has them throughout the feeding sequence as he's whisked around to more stations. He has a particularly distressed one when he's brought to the pie station, recognizing he's getting exactly what he wanted at the beginning of the short.
  • His nightmare ends when he explodes from eating too much, and there's a few brief frames of him having a massive Oh, Crap! as he realizes the consequences of his actions too late.
• "Pop!" Goes the Human: Pig variant. After eating way too much and then some, Piggy suddenly and violently explodes, ending his nightmare.
• The Quiet One: Piggy, despite being the protagonist of the short. He only has three lines of dialogue;
  • "And please, can we have lots of ice cream tonight?"
  • "Amen!"
  • "Y-yes sir!"
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Piggy's mother rips him a new one after he callously eats the family's dinner.
• Running Gag: This short has the first appearance of the "Hold the onions!" gag.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: At the end of his feeding, Piggy is morbidly obese and can barely walk, and really enjoyed his feeding deep down; nevertheless, he desperately tries to escape and go home the moment the scientist frees him from his restraints.
• Seven Deadly Sins: The short was originally planned to be the first of a series about the Hamhock family's children wherein each piglet would represent a sin, with Piggy obviously embodying gluttony. Though the concept was abandoned, Piggy manages to represent all of the sins by himself.
  • Sloth: While his other siblings are out playing and enjoying themselves, Piggy mostly sits around desperately pining for food to eat, and he clearly only wants to spend his time at a meal table.
  • Envy: He decides that he should get the food laid out for his family and thus goes as far as to steal it from them for himself.
  • Pride: He's very happy with himself whenever he succeeds in swiping food for himself, and later seems almost pleased with himself after finally admitting he's full after getting fattened up. He also is angry when his mother scolds him for eating everyone's food as if he thinks he doesn't deserve it.
  • Wrath: Piggy has a very hateful reaction when his mother gets onto him for eating everyone's dinner, showing he doesn't give a damn about them.
  • Greed and Lust: Piggy lusts for being able to eat anything even when he is in agonizing pain from eating too much, and is greedy for more without end even when he's gotten a fair share.
  • And of course, 'Gluttony: Piggy is so gluttonous that he embodies the sin perfectly, never getting enough to eat and always wanting more for his own personal pleasure.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: The first half of the short prominently features Piggy's happy-go-lucky, innocent siblings who are there to look cute to contrast with Piggy's selfishness and gluttony, but they don't appear afterwards as the short becomes dark once Piggy arrives at the scientist's house.
• Skewed Priorities: Piggy only cares about stuffing himself and has no regard for his mother or family. During grace, while the others are giving thanks for their meal and each other, Piggy just prays to get ice cream for dessert. Later, Piggy is nervous and concerned when he is shoved inside the scientist's house, but any concern he has is gone the instant the scientist offers him food. Then his gluttony gets him again when he has the chance to escape the house, but seeing food once again overrides his common sense and he prioritizes eating over escaping the malevolent man.
• Smug Snake: Piggy grins mischievously the entire time he ties together his family's spaghetti, and when he returns to his seat to pretend to have participated in the prayer, he says "amen" in a singsong voice with a shit-eating smirk since he knows what he's about to get. At the end of the short he also smirks at the turkey he makes to eat, completely oblivious to the further peril he's putting himself in.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Piggy's graphic death and subsequent waking up from his nightmare, screaming for his life, is set to an upbeat, jazzy tune.
• Status Quo Is God: By the end of the short and after a horrific nightmare of being killed by his greed for food, Piggy is still an unrepentant glutton who hasn't learned a thing.
• Stock Footage: Several shots from the previous short, "At Your Service, Madame", are recycled and refurbished for this short.
  • The shot of the piglets snoozing, though here the scene takes place at night whereas the original scene was at daybreak.
  • Piggy racing downstairs to breakfast is reused at the very end, though here, the extra scene of him changing out of his pajamas and pretending to brush his teeth is excised. Additionally, instead of sitting down at the table happily with utensils ready to eat, Piggy begins glutting on his breakfast.
  • The animation of the piglets happily taking their seats at the table is reused, though at dinner time rather than breakfast. They are in the exact same poses before the scene cuts to Mrs. Hamhock.
  • The final leg of the feeding sequence loops the previous feeding scenes.
• Sudden Downer Ending: The short seems like it's going to end with Piggy realizing the consequences of his overeating after realizing his horrible death was just a dream. But then he hears his mother calling him to breakfast, and Piggy grins at the camera and runs downstairs to start glutting again. Even though Piggy is alive, the ending shows he hasn't learned his lesson and is incapable of changing.
• Suddenly Speaking: Piggy actually speaks here, as he was silent in "At Your Service, Madame" aside from some inaudible whispers.
• Sweet Tooth: Downplayed. Piggy is shown growing particularly excited to smell his mother's fresh pies and tries to eat both on the spot, and prays to God for lots of ice cream for dessert. But the rest of the short makes plain he isn't just a sweet-tooth as he gorges himself on a spaghetti dinner meant for his family, fantasizes about all kinds of foods, and taking another heaping bite of turkey is what kills him in his dream.
• Tempting Fate: Piggy decides it couldn't hurt to keep eating, even though he's clearly in pain from trying to waddle away from an obviously evil man with bad intentions for him. It costs him his life in his dream.
• Token Evil Teammate: It's a bit of a stretch to call Piggy 'evil', but his uncontrolled appetite definitely puts him in 'jerk' territory. He's notably the only member of his family to act this way, as his mother is a sweet, loving parent to her children, and his siblings all seem like innocent, happy ones who are all good friends with each other.
• Too Dumb to Live: Even in his dream, Piggy should've realized just how dangerous it was for him to be so stuffed and obese, especially after facing a grueling challenge just walking the length of a banquet table. Alas, at the sight of food, he lights up like a Roman candle, excitedly licks his chops, and rips off a turkey leg and plops it in his mouth. After two seconds of chewing and one swallow, he dies.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: In "At Your Service, Madame", Piggy saw right through the swindler's façade and put a stop to it. Here, in his dream, his gluttony renders him so senseless that he can't tell the scientist is Obviously Evil.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Piggy, compared to the previous short starring his family, "At Your Service, Madame", is far less sympathetic a character here. In the previous short, it was clear he loved his mother and siblings and actively led an attempt to protect his family, and while his gluttony was present, he was portrayed as more of a Mr. Vice Guy since it wasn't his entire character. Here, he couldn't care less about his family, is usually by himself thinking of food, and happily lets them go hungry after he eats all of their food.
• Too Kinky to Torture: Judging by the smile on Piggy's face once he's released by the scientist, he really enjoyed all the food he was just force-fed despite the horror of his predicament.
• Villainous Glutton: Piggy, considering the below.
• Villain Protagonist: Piggy, considering it's his gluttony that is always getting him into trouble and ultimately kills him, at least in his dreams.
• Vocal Dissonance: In the beginning, Piggy's adorably high, squeaky little voice obviously makes sense considering he's a little boy, but as selfish and monstrous as he can be, the voice of the swindler from "At Your Service, Madame" would fit much better at least in terms of character. Later, after being fattened up, Piggy's voice sounds strange coming from the grotesquely overfed hog that Piggy has become.
• Vocal Evolution: Mrs. Hamhock now has a German accent.
• Weight Taller: After being fattened up, Piggy is much, much taller to accommodate his massive weight gain. He goes from just barely being able to peek up at what's on the banquet table to being over twice as tall as it.
• Weight Woe: After the feeding, Piggy is morbidly obese, appears to be having trouble breathing, and his attempt to run away consists of taking very slow, wide waddles that make clear he's in danger of tipping over with every step.

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