Screwball Squirrel

Rodents are the most common mammals on Earth, with some notable species having their own Animal Stereotypes. Rats are dirty and disgusting, mice are cute and nice, lemmings jump off of cliffs, beavers are hard-working, and so forth.

Squirrels (and their close relatives, chipmunks) are, however, mostly seen as hyperactive animals who either love to play pranks and mess around with people, are just off-the-walls crazy, or—in extreme cases— downright sadists. They will run around stealing nuts from people — and then drop these nuts on people's heads, driving them nuts. Squirrels also get obsessed with hiding a huge hoard of nuts for the winter. They also have the bad habit of crawling into people's clothing, and are among the arch-enemies of dogs, often because the dogs are fed up with their antics. The fact that they have a reputation for breaking into bird feeders and eating the seed inside doesn't help either.

Bonus points if they have very short attention spans, too, even in a Sadistic way. Truly evil squirrels are rare in fiction, but they are consistently depicted as troublemakers whose antics are annoying at best and infuriating at worst. Basically, they're seen as the trolls of the animal kingdom, causing chaos for its own sake and existing only to annoy others.

It's easy to see why these furry critters have such traits associated with them: squirrels and chipmunks are very jittery, skittish animals in real life, moving about in short, twitching movements and taking off to the nearest tree at the slightest sign of danger. Their signature chattering gives the impression of manic cackling, as if they just pulled another prank on some hapless bloke, and they tend to cache food before completely forgetting about it, which fuels the "short attention span" stereotype.

If the squirrel in question is a giant squirrel, prepare to be very afraid.

Note: Just because a character is a squirrel or chipmunk, it does not mean they automatically qualify for this trope. The example also needs to describe how the character is a troublemaker, a cloudcuckoolander and/or a sadist.

Subtrope of Animal Stereotypes. Compare Rascally Rabbit, another small, furry animal that's often a trickster and prankster, but tends to be shown in a more positive light. For other animals often seen as tricksters, see Rascally Raccoon and Mischief-Making Monkey. The Trope Namer is the Tex Avery cartoon Screwball Squirrel (1944). The trope formerly known as "Screwy Squirrel", about crazy, malicious prankster characters that are usually not squirrels, is now split between The Gadfly, Troll, The Prankster and Cloudcuckoolander.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Squirrels were always causing some havoc in people's homes to get hold of some Clusters cereal.
• The infamous PSP commercial with the deranged-looking squirrels. There are a few other ones involving different animals, but the squirrels are the one most people remember.

Anime & Manga

• Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl: Dawn's Pachirisu, an Electric-type Pokemon based on a squirrel, has a very playful and hyperactive personality, running around with boundless energy. Dawn had a difficult time controlling it at first.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering: Squirrels are one of the game's biggest Running Gags. They've become a recurring feature and symbol of the Self-Parody Un-sets, to the point where the wackiest cards (the ones that don't work in the normal rules) are currently identified by a symbol of an acorn.
  • Most of this is due to Mark Rosewater (Maro), the game's long-time head designer, who happens to be a big fan of squirrels. The one time he got to choose creature types for a set (Odyssey, released in 2001) it featured several squirrels, as well as the card Deranged Hermit which not only featured squirrels, but brought them into the spotlight by being a tournament-winning card. (It even helped Aaron Forsythe win a Pro Tour and get hired as a developer... he's currently Maro's boss!)
  • Afterwards, the creative team decided to stop putting squirrels in the regular sets, leading Maro to put the squirrel cards in the Un-sets instead, making them emblematic of the Lighter and Softer side of the game. Since about 2019, there's been a sing towards allowing a bit more silliness in the main sets, so squirrels have made a few more appearances, culminating in Modern Horizons 2 (2021) which has several powerful new squirrel cards forming the set's black-green archetype.
• "Mystical Medleys: A Vintage Cartoon Tarot": The two joke cards "Happy Squirrel" and "Sad Squirrel" are anthropomorphic squirrels in overalls.

Comic Books

• Squirrelly the Squirrel is a one-off character created by Robert Crumb whose relationship with his dog nemesis easily competes with Itchy and Scratchy for asymmetric sadism.
• Nutsy Squirrel was a DC Comics character in the Funny Animal comic book Funny Folks, and later his own title, whose complete detachment from reality drove his Straight Man, Robert Rabbit, to distraction.

Comic Strips

• Mutts: Bip and Bop are a duo of mischief-making squirrels who enjoy bonking people in the head with acorns.

Films — Animation

• Ice Age: Scrat is a prehistoric squirrel whose nuttiness mostly manifests in a single-minded obsession with an acorn that he keeps losing due to all sorts of crazy circumstances. Scratte, his Distaff Counterpart from Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, fits the "screwy" part of this trope better, flirting with Scrat just to screw him over and steal his acorn.
• Over the Hedge has the extremely hyperactive squirrel Hammy, who acts as a Cloud Cuckoolander Manchild and is obsessed with sugar. At one point, he becomes more hyperactive after simply drinking a soda.
• The Sword in the Stone: When Wart and Merlin temporarily transform themselves into squirrels, they encounter two extremely flirtatious and pushy females who just won't stop despite their protests. As Wart flees from the girl squirrel they wake up Archimedes, who derides them as "You screwy squirrels!"
• Bucky the squirrel from The Emperor's New Groove is initially cute and friendly, offering acorns to strangers, but if someone is rude to him, he resorts to Disproportionate Retribution, like how he responds to Kuzco telling him off by unleashing a pack of hungry jaguars on him.

Films — Live-Action

• Enchanted: Pip is a chipmunk with a big temper who serves as Giselle's Non-Human Sidekick. His Speech-Impaired Animal status in the real world, combined with his eagerness to communicate with humans, is the source of much comedy.

Literature

• Borgel: Inverted in one of Uncle Borgel's fables, "The Tale of the Moose and Squirrel". The fable features mischievous animals, but the story pulls a Stereotype Flip between this trope and Moose Are Idiots, thus the moose is The Trickster who tries to steal the squirrel's acorns, while the squirrel is a simple-minded Straight Man who doesn't want any trouble.

Live-Action TV

• A Running Gag in Series 2 of Trigger Happy TV is a gang of men in full-body squirrel outfits who run around beating people up and stealing nuts. One time, they even show up right after Dom has finished warning a woman in a phone booth about the squirrel gang and beat up the man in the neighbouring booth.

Music

• Alvin and the Chipmunks: The chipmunks often act like mischievous children, getting on the nerves of their manager / surrogate father Dave Seville. Alvin is their trouble-making leader, whereas the nerdy Simon and naïve Theodore usually only make trouble by following Alvin. In their original music act, they mess up the recording at the end by demanding to do the song again and quarreling with Dave and making a mess. The characterization is carried over to the various animated and live-action adaptations.

Myths and Legends

• Norse Mythology: Ratatosk. Seriously, this cosmic squirrel spends his spare time running up and down the World Tree Ygdrassil exchanging insults between Nidhogg, the dragon who dwells at Ygdrassil's root in Niflheim, and the eagle who dwells in Ygdrassil's higher branches, just to watch them rage at one another. Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu? at its finest, except being a cosmic squirrel, he's just as much an Animalistic Abomination as they are.

Theme Parks

• Universal Studios Orlando has the seasonal character of Earl the Squirrel, inspired by an incident where a squirrel was discovered in the park's main giant Christmas Tree that had sabotaged the lights. He's since become the subject of Christmas merch depicting him as the goofy owner of a Christmas Tree Lot.

Video Games

• Pippa from AFK Arena is a scatterbrained squirrel mage who thinks "differently", known among her peers for being a Walking Disaster Area. She's even a screwball in gameplay in the form of her moveset consisting of Random Effect Spells.
• The Battle Cats has the Squire Rel line of mooks. Squire Rel herself speaks in an unintelligible language that vaguely resembles English, while all of them rush quickly forwards to bite cats, with their attack animations showing their mouths opening to halfway down their bodies.
• Conker's Bad Fur Day: Conker himself zigzags this trope. He's alcoholic, greedy and violent, but he's also the Only Sane Man in his own game, which kinda downplays the notion that his troublesome personality comes from the fact that's he's a squirrel (instead of a natural result of dealing with a Crapsack World).
• Dragon Quest: The tenth game of the series introduces the Red Squirrel monster family from the start of Version 2 onwards, causing trouble to enemy parties with Sultry Dance, Decelratle, and other skills and spells like Kafuddle and Kasnooze.
• Pokémon
  • If Emolga's Pokédex in Pokémon Sun and Moon is to be believed, they tend to cause trouble when fighting with other Flying-type Pokémon for food, making this a flying squirrel version of this trope.
  • Pokémon Sword and Shield: Skwovet and Greedent are a line of greedy squirrels who make trouble by stealing and hoarding food and berries. There's a minor sidequest in the game with a Skwovet making trouble in a hotel.

Web Animation

• Happy Tree Friends:
  • Nutty the bright green squirrel is pretty much as insane as you'd expect with a name like that, further accentuated by his hyperactiveness, a Mad Eye, and a vocabulary consisting entirely of manic laughter. His signature trait is his love for anything made out of sugar, which he sometimes outright places before common sense (resulting in gruesome Cruel and Unusual Deaths... plural).
  • Averted with Giggles the chipmunk, who doesn't display any of the defining traits of this trope, and is more of a girly rose-furred sweetie.
• According to the Weebl song "Flying Squirrels", the eponymous rodents engage in such activities as bombing beagles and stealing nuts from budgies.

Web Comics

• Sequential Art: Among the main cast of characters is Scarlet, an anthropomorphic red squirrel with a Cloudcuckoolander demeanor, an extremely short attention span, and a surprising talent for gadgetry. Her sisters aren't that much different, either.
• Achewood has Todd T. Squirrel, an obnoxious stuttering cokehead given to really bad ideas.
• xkcd somewhat frequently uses squirrel-related gags.
  • "Squirrel Plan" where a group of squirrels attempt to fly a balloon to the Sun planning to chew a hole in it and get to the acorns they think are inside. The Alt Text implies they chew a hole in the balloon halfway there looking for acorns.
  • "DARK MATTER ISN'T SQUIRRELS!" Cue Ball got Sidetracked by the Analogy when Megan explained that the Earth has approximately one squirrel's mass of dark matter in it at any given time.
  • A couple of times Randall's companion pop-science blog What If? posts a picture of a squirrel in place of something unpleasant, such as a man vomiting up blood because of severe alcohol poisoning.

Western Animation

• Animaniacs: Slappy Squirrel is a grouchy, elderly squirrel who whacks people with her purse. In her youth, she was a gender-flipped Expy of Screwy Squirrel, a hyperactive prankster (and quite a looker at the time). Age might have slowed her down, but she never lost her cunning and her mean streak. Her nephew Skippy is the exact opposite, hyperactive but naive and innocent.
• Big Buck Bunny has a trio of squirrels who start playing mean-spirited pranks on the eponymous Gentle Giant rabbit and then get their comeuppance when said rabbit gets dangerous.
• Classic Disney Shorts: Chip 'n Dale are a duo of chipmunks who often get into an Escalating War with Donald Duck. Who starts the fight depends on the cartoon: sometimes they respond to Donald's jerkass behavior, but sometimes they just start messing with him for no apparent reason. Averted with their Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers version, who are crime-fighting heroes.
• Harvey Beaks has Les Squirrels, a gang of French squirrels who serve as recurring antagonists within the cartoon.
• Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: The Treasure Squirrels are incredibly absent-minded Mute treasure hunters who tend to take what they perceive as treasure, hide it somewhere, then almost instantly forget about it. They cause some trouble by stealing Kipo's Prahm float with people hiding inside.
• Molly of Denali: In "The Night Manager," a flying squirrel makes its way inside the bunkhouse bathroom and wreaks quite a bit of havoc before Molly and the Sassy Ladies are able to shoo it out.
• The Red Squirrel from The Penguins of Madagascar is a flat-out villain, trying to Take Over the World but fails at it due to his lack of mooks.
• Phineas and Ferb: In the episode "Comet Kermillian", Suzy Johnson throws a nut into Candace's pants, grabbing the attention of two hungry squirrels. As Candace jumps around to get rid of the squirrels in her pants, she creates an Accidental Dance Craze that is the Trope Namer for Squirrels in My Pants.
• Ready Jet Go!: Floyd the squirrel. He likes to be naughty and cause trouble sometimes, such as when he eats the jellybeans in "Earth Camping". Although, on occasion, he helps the kids out.
• Two heroic inversions of this were Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Secret Squirrel.
• Screwy Squirrel is a recurring character in Tex Avery MGM Cartoons introduced in the Trope Namer cartoon, Screwball Squirrel (1944). He's a prankster who messes with innocent people for no good reason.

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