Headscratchers / Tiny Toon Adventures

Headscratchers in Tiny Toon Adventures.

• I have one and I still wonder about this, WHY WOULD BUGS BUNNY HIRE HIS ENEMIES ELMER FUDD AND YOSEMITE SAM AS TEACHERS AT ACME LOONIVERSITY!?! I mean those are his enemies and the worst part is that they carry guns and guns shouldn't be allowed in school in the first place. It would be like if Batman started a school and hired his very enemies to teach in it... at least the Scarecrow would be qualified for the job since his alter ego Professor Johnathan Crane was a College Professor before he started his life of crime as the Scarecrow.
  • The whole idea of the ACME University is that toons are more like colleagues (actors and actresses if you will) who do what they do for the sole purpose of entertainment. How they achieve this is of course dependent on the Theory of Narrative Causality, with each of them playing their respective roles. That's their life, that's what they were made for, and behind it all they are more like Worthy Opponents rather than enemies.
  • So the Looney Tunes are actors turned teachers huh? Well Would the idea of Batman having a school where his enemies work as teachers still work though? Some of them carry guns like Elmer and Sam as well.
    • Okay, wow, that's not even comparing apples to oranges. Batman and Looney Toons are not nearly close enough for that comparison to work. You're comparing apples to, I don't know, basketballs.
    • I declare this apples to basketballs metaphor a Funny Moment.
  • The premise implies that all of the Looney Tunes characters are actually actors. It's just that Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam always play either a villain or a foil to Bugs Bunny, and neither seem to mind. Bugs hired them because they were the best actors to play villains and foils that he knew.
  • This. It's no different than if Christian Bale asked Tom Hardy to help teach a workshop for would-be superhero movie actors.
  • The Looney Tunes being actors filming cartoons is canon in those cartoons. It is done explicitly in the short A Star Is Bored where Daffy in a rabbit costume is used as Bugs' stunt double. In one scene Bugs makes fun of Yosemite Sam, the director yells cut, Bugs and Daffy are swapped, and finally Sam shoots Daffy in the face. In another scene Bugs and Elmer are sitting on a tree branch and Bugs gives Elmer a friendly reminder to not cut all the way through the branch. In all cases, until the director yells action they just act casually like coworkers.
  • Also, who the heck said that Bugs is the one doing the hiring? Bugs is a teacher, and I don't recall any episode ever stating that he owns/runs the school.
  • As for the guns, they are cartoon guns, and they make sense in that context.

• Probably more suited for the 'just bugs me' page, but from what seen so far there doesn't seem to be an existing page for Tiny Toons. Anyways, why is it almost every site that has a Tiny Toons page says that Fifi consistently chases after Furrball because she mistakes him for a skunk, to the point were some even consider him the distaff counterpart to Penelope, despite the fact there was only one short where this happens? I mean, I would guess shipping has something to do with that, and I'm not bashing the ship in anyway, but I don't remember this ever happening to Furrball again, even in small cameo or continuity nods in other shorts. (Then again, it has been a while since I've seen any of the other Tiny Toon shorts outside of Fifi's...)

• This troper might be humor impaired but what was the deal with the running gag "Ralph? Who's Ralph?" That keeps appearing in the series (particularly "The Name Game" and "The Buster Bunny Bunch") And mind you this is not the same Ralph that eventually became Ralph the Guard from Animaniacs but somewhat of a caricature of rude cartoonist Ralph Bakshi even though this Ralph looks a little too much like the Nasty Canasta from the Bugs Bunny cartoon "Barbary Coast Bunny"
  • It's a bit of non-sequitur humor. Basically the joke is just that here's this random character that keeps showing up and not even the cartoons know why he's there. Non-sequitur comedy is always hit-and-miss. Some people will find it funny and others won't "get" it. So no harm being in either group.

• Throughout the series, we see the parents of most of the core cast (even if only from the neck down), but no parental figures appear to be attached to Elmyra, who is clearly the most in need of parental guidance. Where are her parents, and if they're still around in some form why the hell don't they keep that girl on a leash?
  • Elmyra's parents are shown in the spinoff with her and Pinkie & Brain. (Why this exists is the story of one of the oddest and worst Creator's Pet ideas ever.) They don't rein her in because they're idiots, like she is.
    • Not quite. They don't appear in Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain, but they do appear in the two "Elmyra's Family" episodes. Perhaps you've gotten the two confused?
• The show can be confusing. In some episodes, Busters and his friends are actors on a set, but in other episodes, they are "real" characters. I wish they make up their minds. They also do this in Taz-mania by having Taz as an actor in a few episodes.
  • To be fair this is carried over from the original Looney Tunes. In general it's best to assume they are actors "actors" playing "characters" who have the same names and personalities, etc. So just treat them as the characters and be prepared for the "actors" to break script from time to time.
• Something I could never understand: If characters are teenagers why do they look so kid-sized compared to their mentors?
  • I don't remember them stating that they we're teenagers, but... As far as media are concerned, teens are short.
    • Babs does say in the pilot that she's 14.
• In the episode "When You're Hot," why does Buster use a highly flammable wooden ladder, and even stranger, a highly flammable hose to try to deal with the flame? I believe this joke was also used in Looney Tunes, where it makes just as little sense as metal ladders were around back then, and hoses were made from (not flammable) rubber.
  • They learned fire fighting from the ridiculously incompetent Pete Puma. Who's to say he didn't suggest wooden ladders and flammable hoses during the Time Skip?
• Why not "Tiny Tune Adventures"? Was it too confusing to people who weren't clued in on the history of the Warner Bros. animation studio?
  • A better question is why not call the old shorts "Looney Toons"? There was really nothing wacky about the music. It makes sense to call them "Looney Toons" because of the eccentric characters back then, right?
    • I think it was meant as a reference to the old "Silly Symphonies" Disney shorts that would have been produced around the same time period, the same with "Merrie Melodies" as another title that often appeared before the old Warner Brothers cartoons.
  • The show was actually meant to be called "Tiny Tunes," but thanks to Who Framed Roger Rabbit (which of course directly led to Steven Spielberg's stint as a cartoon producer) the creation of this show) using and popularizing the word "Toons," they decided to use that word instead.
• the episode "Buster And Babs Go Hawaiian" had a brief visual gag involving Robin Williams as Peter Pan in Hook. The very next episode ("Henny Youngman Day") featured Robin's Funny Animal counterpart, Robin Killems... how does that work?
  • What do you mean, "how does that work?" Whatever gave you the sense that this show is supposed to have a finely tuned continuity?
    • The idea of a caricature of Robin Williams exists on the show as a human AND a Robin. And here I thought "The Fisher King" was confusing and he was in it!
    • Expy Coexistence.
• What's with the continuity in this show? In "The Loony Beginning", Buster and Babs are being drawn on paper. How the heck do they have parents if they were created by a human artist? Also in the same episode, Montana Max is already a villain when he first meets Buster and Babs. According to a flashback in "Citizen Max", Monty and Busters were once good friends before he was corrupted by money.
  • The continuity is kept deliberately loose because this show is a Spiritual Successor to the Looney Tunes shorts, which had no continuity. This means that the characters can have as many different pasts as they want, and what's canon to one episode isn't canon to another. If you really want a hard answer: Remember how in "A Looney Beginning," the characters were shown creating the show and writing the scripts? Not to mention, in the "Animaniacs" episode, where the characters are making their own cartoons, there is a "Citizen Max" poster on the wall in the animation room. Hence, the episode "Citizen Max" is essentially a story written and performed by the characters themselves, as an Affectionate Parody of Citizen Kane, possibly as one of their student projects.
  • Similar to Looney Tunes, there are effectively two (both very loose) continuities and two versions of each character (although they are mostly identical in personality, they differ in history.) There is the "actor" and the "character." So the Buster Bunny "actor" was drawn on paper, found Montana Max, and then helped get the show greenlit. He has no parents, unless you count his artist. Then there's the "character" Buster, who has parents, and has the backstory of growing up poor with Montana Max. Even these lines are blurry though, since they're going to a school on how to be a cartoon character. The "actor" and "character" difference most commonly comes into play when you have scenes where Buster breaks character, like complaining about his pay in the middle of a story about being a high school student.
• Why is Calamity Coyote worried about falling to his doom in "Piece of Mind" if he's practically a toon and thus can survive anything, including falling from a tremendous height?