Headscratchers / The Raccoons

• So, how did Ranger Dan never see Cyril Sneer's giant mansion on the top of a hill?
  • Maybe he did and Cyril kills him to keep the masquerade. Notice that we never see him or his family after Season 1.
  • The meta reason is Early-Installment Weirdness. The idea that they were more like secret Civilized Animals in Woodland and humans shared the same universe becomes incompatible with the show’s plots once it grow the beard and became more mature thus changing completely into the World of Funny Animals and disregarding the human characters like if they never existed. No explanation for the change is ever given but, if the especial The Raccoons and the Lost Star is canon and if I’m remembering correctly, is established there that the ranger and his children live in some sort of parallel universe from the anthropomorphic animal universe the Raccoons live.
    • Actually, LS, where the Raccoons and Sneers, et al, live on a totally different planet, was pretty much an It Was All A Dream story, so it's a moot point. As for an explanation, there is indeed none. But maybe it's The Multiverse? (Seasons 0-1 = humans and animals share the forest, and then somehow from Season 2 up, we switch to the universe where the world is only populated by anthropomorphic animals)
• In the episode "Family Secrets!" when Cedric thinks he's adopted and he feels bad about it, at first, and says "I know I'm not a real Sneer" and it turns out that is actually Cyril the one that was adopted and he seems release, doesn't that still means that he is not a real Sneer anyway?
  • It is possible that Cyril married a distant relative, like a second cousin, which is not uncommon among wealthy families and wouldn’t mind as he’s adopted anyway, and would make sense from Cyril’s parents’ point of view as in that way they make sure the family fortune would always be in hands of a Sneer by blood. So Cedric might still be a Sneer from his mother’s side.
• Why is Cyril Sneer less evil in the TV series? The special "Raccoons and the Lost Star" portrayed him more like a Hitler type villain. That version would go as far as to commit murder and enslave the human race. In the TV series, he comes off more like a jerk father with a heart of gold.
  • A combination of Villain Decay and Redemption Demotion, same with Rataxes in Babar and Shere Khan in Talespin (compare with their movie counterpart), it was a thing in the late 80s/early 90s to make villains less unidimensional. Besides it's hard to keep the father of one of the main heroes a homicidal maniac for long.
  • Schaeffer is the only character from the main Raccoons series that actually appears in "Lost Star." The rest are all Expies — notice how Schaeffer recognizes them, but none of them recognize him. YMMV on whether the story takes place on a planet with Inexplicable Cultural Ties, in a Parallel Universe, or not at all. (From a Doylist viewpoint, it's just a different continuity.)
• In "The Evergreen Express!", Cyril borrows one million dollars from Mr. Knox, and puts up Sneer Mansion as collateral should he be unable to pay Knox back in time. Cyril tries to raise the money, but he ultimately fails to meet the deadline. Thing is, Cyril already has a vault that's filled with tons of gold, so why was he unable to pay Knox?
  • Maybe by then he was actually in zeros. I mean, before that chapter he already had a number of business schemes that didn't go well in the end.