Awesome / Animaniacs

How awesome are the Animaniacs? Let's count the ways!

---

• Pinky and the Brain
• Wakko's Wish
• Animaniacs (2020)

---

The Warners

• Every escape from the water tower, and each return.
• Yakko's World.
  • And Yakko singing every word in the English language. (The viewer, sadly, only gets to hear three excerpts. Hey, it's a 22-minute show!)
  • Same goes for Wakko pulling the same thing with the U.S. (all fifty of them!) and their capitals. The only one unimpressed was Ms. Flaumiel who wanted it in the form of a question.
  • This was the very first song they recorded for the show, and was done in a single take.
  • As a Call-Back to that, Yakko flawlessly recites Dot's Overly Long Name when she keeps messing up her cue and tells him Let's See YOU Do Better! in "Cutie and the Beast": "Princess Angelina Contessa Louisa Francesca Banana Fana Fo Fesca the Third." She can only snark, "Well thank you, Mr. United States Canada Mexico Panama. Big whoop."
• Dot The Macadamia Nut. Another memorable and famous song of the franchise
  • Tress MacNeille, Rob Paulsen, and Jess Harnell's vocal performances are on point.
  • Even the music is flawless and groovy to listen.
  • Slappy's Take That! towards the end.
    Slappy Squirrel: I don't get it! What's the joke?!
• Yakko beating Howie Tern at Volleying Insults, making him explode.
• Wakko's Gizmo.
• In "Hot, Bothered, and Bedeviled", the Warners infuriating Satan so badly that he throws them out of Hell and into Heaven. Comes with Here We Go Again! ending.
  • A Big-Lipped Alligator Moment in the same episode where Dot recites her full name and then grows bigger than Satan while laughing evilly, then shrinks back down to normal and says "Just a little thing I do."
  • Not to mention that Satan in this episode was voiced by Ron Perlman himself!
• The Warners tricking the Grim Reaper into declaring them all dead, and then annoying him so much that he quickly declares them "not dead" and runs for it.
• Wakko going crazy angry (as in "volcano erupting from his head" crazy angry) on Ms. Flamiel.
• The Warners' defeating the dictator of Dunlikus in "King Yakko", even after their troops completely abandon them. He said he wanted anvils, and he sure gets them.
• Just about anytime the Warners enlist the help of other Animaniacs characters, such as Slappy in "The Sound of Warners" and Mindy in "Lookit the Fuzzy Heads".
  Overly Friendly Nanny: Oh, a little gray squirrel! (embraces Slappy against her will)
  Slappy (to the Warners): This one's on the house.
• Wakko's two-note song.
• Dot fools Snow White into falling off the tallest castle tower. After that, she finally gets the prince to put the wardrobe on top of the mirror, sensing that he causes the Apple of Discord by announcing who is and isn't the cutest in the land.
• The Warners pulling a serious Break the Haughty on Myles Standish because he tried to kill their turkey.
• The Warners get abducted by aliens who attempt to dissect them and proceed to mess with the alien who was leading the dissection, trap him on his own operating slab, and escape to drive the other aliens crazy.
• The Warners defeating the Giant in the Jack and the Beanstalk parody, by delaying him long enough for him to try the "golden eggs and meat" on land that can't hold the Giant's weight.
• In "Take My Siblings Please", Dot and Wakko get past the troll by getting him to eat their siblings, just like their billy goat gruff counterparts. But when Yakko gets to the bridge, he just smashes the troll with a mallet.
• In "Lookit the Fuzzy Heads", the Warners spend most of the short being tormented by Elmyra Duff. Near the end, they come across Buttons and Mindy. When Mindy wanders off into danger like she usually does, Buttons prepares for his usual routine, but the Warners stop him in his tracks so that Elmyra can chase Mindy instead. This results in Elmyra taking all the abuse that Buttons usually does. Buttons can't thank the Warners enough. This also counts as a great Take That, Scrappy! moment for those who dislike Elmyra.

Slappy and Skippy

• Slappy busting out of the hospital to save Skippy in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo Clock". That's incredibly hard to do in real life.
• Slappy flying in with Steven Spielberg on a giant UFO in "Three Tenors and You're Out" and beating the Three Tenors (who are heavily delaying the start of the baseball game Skippy had been looking forward to) at their own game.
• After peaceful methods to resolve conflict prove entirely useless, Skippy takes a leaf from his aunt's book and schools the schoolyard bully. And starts delivering an appropriate Hurricane of Puns and one Pre Ass Kicking One Liner after another while giving said bully Duke a Humiliation Conga.
  Skippy: Aunt Slappy, let's get ready to rumble!
  • Adding onto that, when Skippy's school counselor comes to tell off Slappy for encouraging violence, Slappy shoves her and a congressman into a machine that puts the cartoon violence off-screen, which forces them to change their minds.

The Goodfeathers

• The Goodfeathers blowing up a plane in "Dough Dough Boys" by tricking the pilot into flying into a war balloon.
• Bobby beating Pretty Boy Robin with one hit, just moments after the latter had subjected him to a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
• The Goodfeathers tricking Ralph into wrecking Plotz's car, all to "Ride of the Valkyries".
• The Godpigeon halting traffic just by casually stepping into the street.

Rita and Runt

• Rita beating up a Nazi dog in "Puttin' on the Blitz". Twice!
• Runt saving Rita and the other animals in "Les Miseranimals" where he gets a group of poodles to dig and defeats the villain in the process.
  • And the way he beats the villain's Right-Hand Attack Dog: while they circle around each other snarling, he simply maneuvers his enemy near a collapsing brick wall. Then cheerfully walks away, leaving his enemy to be confused for about two seconds.
• Runt saved Rita from being sacrificed in "Home on De-Nile", which shows he's not always gullible.
• Runt saving Rita from being drowned in "Witch One".

Others

• While in most cases Chicken Boo ends up being incompetent at what he's supposed to be doing or unmasked before he can even do anything, in the "The Good, the Boo, and the Ugly" he actually succeeds in disarming the outlaw he's sent to fight and defeats him in combat!
• "The Big Candy Store", during the climax. The nun, who was rather rudely kicked out by stingy tightwad Mr. Flaxseed, the store owner, for asking him for charity, returns to find Flaxseed in the middle of abusing Yakko, Wakko and Dot. This does NOT sit well with the nun, who calls for backup in the form of her justifiably angry convent, who begin bearing down on Flaxseed with rulers. Flaxseed tries to get out of it by interjecting with the fact that nuns can't resort to violence since they're religious figures. Stopped in their tracks, the lead nun stops the others. It then leads to this:
  Nun #1: He's right girls, let us pray.
  (The nuns huddle together and pray fervently)
  (Cut to outside Flaxseed's candy shop, where a bus for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish pulls outside and the entire team, including the cheerleaders, pile out to give Flaxseed one hell of a beatdown.)
  Nun #1: Our prayers have been answered! *blows whistle, beatdown ensues*
  • What's especially awesome about this part is how she announces herself when she sees Flaxseed grabbing Wakko and Dot by the scruff. The devious grins the two of them give right before pulling a Wounded Gazelle Gambit hammers it in.
    Nun #1: Stop right there! You put those children down, you beast!
• Buttons saving Mindy from a zombie horde by doing the Thriller dance.
  • He gets another one at the end of "Astro Buttons". After being scolded yet again by Mindy's mother, and after Mindy clones herself, he snaps, packs his things, and quits, effectively forcing the neglectful mother to shape up and be a proper parent to her cloned daughter(s).
• Katie Ka-Boom's dad showing at least some backbone in the face of his daughter transforming into a monster when he refused to budge on the issue of prom night, with (monster) Katie actually asking "please" in regards to her curfew and her father willing to budge a little. That episode probably had the least amount of damage done in any of the Katie Ka-Boom episodes, saved for a broken chandelier, and the use of stock footage of the house caving in during the end reprise.
• Props need to be given to security guard Ralph in that he knows that he can't win against the Warners despite being paid for it, and he goes after them anyway when they escape, Amusing Injuries and all.
• Any time the Dover Boys get an appearance. They're bound to get in some delicious snarking (in song!) towards the episode's antagonist.
• After having a disastrous appearance that resulted in her getting locked in the water tower, Ms. Flamiel returns to teach the Warners, and manages to adapt to their zany ways to educate them. See "Wakko's Fifty States" for the best example.
• The Survey Ladies of the episode of the same name. For context, they show up in the episode and ask people in particular the Warners to take an absurd survey and won't take no for an answer. Despite everyone's attempts to get rid of them they are absolutely everywhere to the point that the Warners go screaming and running in terror at the sight of them. This is one of the very few times in the series that the Warners get A Taste of Their Own Medicine.
• The series finale, The Animaniacs Suite, is the magnum opus for the late great Richard Stone, a brilliant arrangement of the most prominent themes heard in the series.

---