What a way for Daffy and Speedy to go out...
"See Ya Later Gladiator" is a 1968 Looney Tunes animated short film starring Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales, who had been paired together in a series of cartoons from 1965 to 1968. This was their final theatrical pairing, as well as the final cartoon to star "classic" Warner Bros. characters. After this short, until the cartoon division closed in 1969, new characters like Cool Cat, Bunny and Claude, Merlin the Magic Mouse, and a few one-shot cartoons made up all of WB's output.
The plot concerns Daffy and Speedy accidentally being sent back in time via a time machine to Rome, 65 A.D., where Emperor Nero plans to feed them to the lions as entertainment in a gladiator arena. Daffy and Speedy work together to thwart the lions and manage to make it back to the present. However, Nero has accidentally returned with them, and joins Speedy's band by playing his fiddle.
Not to be confused with the Time Warp Trio book of the same name.
"See Ya Later Gladiator" provides examples of:
- Brutal Honesty: When Daffy tries to cover up his calling the centurion a fathead by trying to call Speedy the fathead, Speedy casually corrects Daffy, confirming that he was indeed calling the centurion the fathead.
- Close-Call Haircut: Daffy tries swinging his wooden sword at the lion, but ends up chopping off much of his mane. Despite being the antagonist of the fight, the lion is unimpressed.
- Disney Acid Sequence: Very brief, but when Daffy accidentally starts the time machine and transports him and Speedy to 65 A.D., weird shapes flash on a back background for a few seconds accompanied by discordant ringing sounds before cumulating in an explosion. It happens again when Daffy and Speedy are returned to the present.
- Disproportionate Retribution:
- Daffy and Speedy get sentenced to be eaten by lions, just because Daffy called a centurion “fathead” when he first arrived in Rome.
- Daffy and Speedy get vaulted into Nero and break his fiddle. Nero vows to make them pay by breaking their necks.
- Dolled-Up Installment: The cartoon's story apparently started out as a pitch for an animated series called Time Flies, which would have revolved around a pair of explorers who used a time machine to travel throughout history — and whose first episode would have had them travelling back to Rome and meeting Nero.
- End of an Age: The final original Looney Tunes cartoon to use any of the Golden Age characters. They would remain retired until Warner Bros started making revival featurettes from the 70s onward.
- Enemy Mine: Daffy and Speedy are forced to align when made Gladiators.
- Fire-Breathing Diner: This happens when Speedy Gonzales feeds chili peppers to the lion as an attempt to escape his clutches.
- Gladiator Games: When sent to 65 A.D., Daffy and Speedy are forced to fight against a lion in the Coliseum.
- Incessant Music Madness: Speedy's mariachi band playing music drives Daffy "bats" at the start of the short.
- "Just Joking" Justification: A rare example in which someone buys the justification. After throwing a broom in Speedy's trumpet (which he was playing at the time) and then angrily telling him plus his band to duck off, Daffy later lies to him that he was only joking. Also, Speedy believes it. Granted, Daffy was only claiming this as part of a scheme.
- Limited Sound Effects: The small minuscule of Hanna-Barbera Stock Sound Effects that Warner Bros. Animation had during this time gets very repetitive at times, as per standard of the Seven Arts era.
- Rearrange the Song: Bill Lava's strange atonal version of "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" theme music gets an even stranger variation used in this cartoon, notably with brass horns and a piano accompany the "swirling lines" effects. It also got used on the next cartoon, Cool Cat's 3 Ring Wing Ding, before reverting back to the standard Seven Arts-era version of the opening theme.note
- Recycled Animation / Stock Footage: The same animation of Daffy walking to the lab window is used twice, with Daffy holding a broom in the first and without in the second.
- Took a Level in Badass: One of the short's few remarkable qualities is briefly giving Daffy back his old trickster qualities when put in an Enemy Mine with Speedy.
- Took a Level in Dumbass: Speedy had almost invariably been shown as the smart one in his previous interactions with Daffy, but his common sense deserts him when Daffy nearly manages to smooth-talk his way out of trouble with the centurion by claiming that Speedy's name is "fathead". Instead of playing along, Speedy ruins the ploy by making it clear that Daffy was insulting the centurion, getting them both sent to the coliseum.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Whereas the previous two Daffy/Speedy cartoons had tried to pare back Daffy's jerkass qualities — in "Fiesta Fiasco" he only went after Speedy due to a misunderstanding and made up with him at the end of the short, while in "Skyscraper Caper" Daffy wasn't antagonistic at all — this cartoon turns them back up to eleven, making Daffy seem excessively bad-tempered and vindictive even compared to the prior shorts in this series.
- Traitor Shot: Although it's already obvious beforehand that Daffy was planning on trying to betray Speedy, it's made even clearer when he makes an evil smirk when the mouse isn't looking.
- Trapped in the Past: Daffy and Speedy can't get back to the 20th century on their own, as the time machine the professor has invented does not have such a feature. Lucky for Daffy and Speedy, the professor sees what was happening on the time machine's monitor and returns them to the present.
- Walk This Way: Sign example. Speedy and Daffy stop at an intersection with a "Don't Walk" signal. Nero arrives just in time for it to change to "Walk". All three of them literally walk across the street, and they each break into a sprint upon getting to the other side.
