Rabbit Magician

Brandy: Mr. Whiskers, that is the most amazing thing I've ever seen! How did you do it?
Mr. Whiskers: Eh, I honestly do not know, I'm a rabbit. Magic just comes naturally.

— Brandy & Mr. Whiskers, "The Magic Hour"

The Pull a Rabbit out of My Hat trick is a popular magic trick where a magician takes off their hat, usually a top hat, and pulls out a live rabbit from inside it, almost as if they conjured it from thin air.

With the popularity of Beast Man and World of Funny Animals stories in pop culture, cuddly little bunny-rabbits will most definitely be used. For the sake of irony, the old Pull a Rabbit out of My Hat would be inverted in this case and instead of rabbits being used as props (unless a lovely assistant is needed), they themselves play the magicians. Now that is not to say that the rabbit has to be anthropomorphic to the point of opposable thumbs. After all they are magic, so thumbs are optional.

To fit this trope, they will usually be dressed in a uniform that reflects this, kind of like typical Stage Magician apparel — a black and white penguin tux with a top hat and a flower corsage and a black wand with white at the tip, many of their magic tricks coming across as the various misdirections associated with the act (card tricks, coin tricks, sawing women in half, etc.). Depending on how the setting works, they will either be very good at the typical smoke-and-mirrors misdirection that Stage Magicians are known for, they may know actual magic and use magician tricks as a means of focusing it or (if actual wizardry is commonplace) they convince people that their phony tricks are real.

Compare with Cats Are Magic and Rascally Rabbit. Subtrope of Animal Occupation Stereotypes.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Goku fights one of these guys early on in the original Dragon Ball. He's called Monster Carrot, and his primary magical power is to turn people he touches into carrots. He turns Bulma into a carrot and threatens to eat her until Yamcha, with the help of Puar, snatches her out of his grip, giving Goku the opening to kick his ass and force him to change her back before sending him to the moon.
• My Melody and Kuromi from Onegai My Melody are rabbit magicians.

Films — Animation

• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf - Moon Castle: The Space Adventure, Wandi is a Moon Rabbit who is practicing his magic skills. Among a few other magic powers, he can change his own appearance and use his hat to teleport himself and others to another location.
• In Presto (2008), Alec Azam the rabbit is shown to be just as capable at using his master Presto's magic hat as the magician himself is, when he uses it to get back at Presto for not feeding him before the show. This leads to Alec getting co-headliner billing by the end, after he saves Presto's life.

Live-Action TV

• The Vanity Plate for Hat Trick Productions shows a rabbit producing a man from a top hat.
• The Winnie the Pooh TV series Welcome to Pooh Corner often portrays Rabbit as this sort of magician.

Tabletop Games

• Bunnies & Burrows has two Character Classes built around this: the Empath, which use White Magic and Healing Hands; and the Seer, which develop Psychic Powers, Telepathy, and Emotion Bombs.
• The Delver's Guide to Beast World: Rabbit characters can cast Prestidigation as an innate spell regardless of class and one other illusion spell-like ability that varies based on their homeland. They share the homeland illusion with squirrels.
• Magic: The Gathering: There are a few examples; it'd be silly not to considering the name of the game:
  • Kwain is a time mage from an unspecified plane who is obsessed with speed. Given he's the nemesis of a turtle this is a clear Aesop's Fables reference.
  • In Kamigawa, a setting inspired by Japanese Mythology, the Soratami Moonfolk are an anthropomorphic race with lapine traits such as long ears, a mixture of the Moon Rabbit with The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. As the Blue (the color of knowledge and perfection) race they are pretty strongly in the role of classical wizards, and as of Neon Dynasty they're forefront in the technological department as well.
  • Preston, the Vanisher is a humanoid white rabbit with a magic wand who can create illusive copies of other creatures.

Video Games

• In the intro cutscene to Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time, the titular anthropomorphic rabbit shows off a magic trick where he spontaneously lights his finger on fire without injuring himself to Merlin Munroe. The trope is further invoked by Merlin during the game proper as he teaches Bugs various magical abilities to help him navigate the game's levels.
• ClayFighter 63⅓: In addition to the great physical strength from talking to his muscles and the cybernetic enhancements given to him, T-Hoppy is also an accomplished stage magician. This is seen in a couple of his Claytalities in which converts his opponent into a carrot (and then eat it) and in a clone of himself (with a heated chat that ended with the real T-Hoppy filling the clone with bullets).
• Cuphead: One of the members of King Dice's Court in "All Bets Are Off" is Hopus Pocus, a Killer Rabbit that attacks with cards and their symbols.
• Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] features a Dream Eater known as the "Majik Lapin", a bunny in a Robe and Wizard Hat that casts magic spells with its ears.
• The Night of the Rabbit: Marquis de Hoto, the titular rabbit, is one of a group of people called "Treewalkers," magicians who can jump between worlds. He takes on the human protagonist Jerry as an apprentice, to help Jerry fulfill his dream of becoming a magician himself.
• Moji from Paladins is an anthropomorphic rabbit who wears a Robe and Wizard Hat. Downplayed as her mount does most of the fighting, and the only spells she uses are her magic barrier and ultimate ability. Latter champion, Rei, is also of the same race as Moji, but she takes up a more humanoid form with just rabbit ears and tail, and is also more focused on spellcasting (mostly healing ones)
• Bianca the Rabbit from Spyro: Year of the Dragon was apprentice to the Sorceress before defecting out of a mix of Pet the Dog moments with Hunter and discovering that the Sorceress was planning on killing the baby dragons for their wings, becoming the Token Wizard among the heroes.

Visual Novels

• Downplayed with Stage Magician Bonny de Famme from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice. She is human but wears a Playboy Bunny costume on stage. Her twin sister Betty, who is also a Stage Magician, wears an identical costume.

Web Animation

• Danelda from Mighty Magiswords is an anthropomorphic top-hat-wearing rabbit with a magician-esque look, who uses a Levitation Magisword to make herself (and her enemies) levitate.

Web Comics

• Cucumber Quest primarily features a species of bunny people in a fantasy setting, and some of them have magical abilities. Most notable is Peridot, who has the outfit and spellcasting abilities of a Witch Classic.
• Faux Pas: Stu was a magician's rabbit before he wound up on the farm, he managed to pick up a few tricks that occasionally prove useful for evading hungry wild foxes.
• A bit character in Poppy O'Possum is a rabbit magician who dresses like a stage magician, with two scantily clad assistants, though he does have actual magic.

Western Animation

• Arthur:
  • There is a minor anthropomorphic rabbit character called "The Amazing Larry" who is implied to be a magician based on his stereotypical attire of a top hat and long overcoat. He already existed in the books the cartoon series was based on, but in them, he was human.
  • Buster Baxter the anthropomorphic bunny occasionally moonlights as a Stage Magician called "The Great Baxterini". One of his tricks has him pull a non-anthropomorphic rabbit out of his hat.
• In the Brandy & Mr. Whiskers episode "The Magic Hour", it is revealed that not only was Mr. Whiskers a Magician's rabbit, but that he was also a very accomplished magician before a mishap left his assistant's legs magically separated. When Brandy asks how he was able to accomplish his tricks (which border on legitimate sorcery), he just says that it came naturally to him since he is a bunny.
• Mertin the Magnificent in Krypto the Superdog is a magic-using Rascally Rabbit who wears a standard magician's outfit.
• Looney Tunes:
  • "Prest-O Change-O" features one of the earliest appearances of Happy Hare, the character that would eventually become Bugs Bunny. Here, he's a magician's rabbit who demonstrates Reality Warper powers as he bedevils two dogs who wander into the magician's home.
  • Bugs himself often does magic tricks, sometimes mentioning that he used to work for a magician. On at least two occasions ("Hot Crossed Bunny" and "The Case of the Missing Rabbit") he pulls himself out of a hat.
• The titular character of Rekkit Rabbit is a giant anthropomorphic rabbit with magic powers from a parallel world who ran away from his abusive owner, a magician named Yoshini.
• In Sadie Sparks, Sadie's magical tutor is Gilbert: an ancient 700-year-old grumpy rabbit.
• Teen Titans (2003): "Bunny Raven" has Raven, the group's magic user, turned into a rabbit by Mumbo Jumbo, a magician villain. This makes her powers nearly unusable, but she manages to save the day by using a mundane illusion.
• In the short, "Sleight of Hare" from the Tiny Toon Adventures episode, "You Asked For It", Buster gets a job as a rabbit for a magician who performs at Montana Max's birthday party. When Monty causes the magician to quit, Buster takes over for the magician and performs a magic act on Monty as revenge.

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