Airdate: September 23rd, 1995
Opening Line: "Penny Lane-y"- Wakko
A Hard Day's Warners: The Warners star in a parody of A Hard Day's Night, dodging crazed fans and dealing with the press at a convention.
Good Idea Bad Idea: Good Idea- Buying a pair of shoes on sale. Bad Idea- Buying a parachute on sale.
Gimme a Break: Slappy just wants to relax, but Skippy wants to visit the set of a movie that is being filmed.
Good Idea Bad Idea: Good Idea- climbing a mountain Bad Idea- Climbing a mountain lion
Please Please Please Get a Life Foundation: The Warners host a Parody Commercial for a society devoted to helping Animaniacs fans get over their addiction to listing trivia and continuity errors on the internet.
A Hard Day's Warners contains examples of:
- The Cameo:
- A not very subtle one - Elmyra Duff is among the Warners' crazed fans. She doesn't have any lines, but you see her multiple times.
- The Warners eventually decide to sic their fans on Pinky and the Brain.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The beginning of the short is in black and white (with the exception of the Warner's red noses, as usual) like the original film. It is not until the Warners arrive at the convention that it switches to color.
- Groupie Brigade: The Warners spend the whole episode dodging a massive horde of Animaniacs fans.
- Running Gag: Ralph the guard keeps getting trampled by the Warners' fans and shouting "Ow! You crazy fans!"
- Shout-Out:
- At the convention, there are also booths for Batman and Tiny Toon Adventures (complete with somebody dressed in a Buster Bunny costume). There's also a John Wilkes booth.
- The Warners, at one point, don masks a la those from The Mask.
- Whole-Plot Reference: To The Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night.
Gimme a Break contains examples of:
- Butt-Monkey: Boy howdy, does Slappy get put through the wringer in this cartoon.
- The Cameo: In the beginning, Skippy pulls Slappy out of her house so hard that the scenery is removed to reveal the Warners taking a bath. Dot screams at this invasion of privacy.Wakko: Uh-oh. I think I feel a bubble coming on.Slappy: Go away.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: There are a lot of celebrity caricatures - Bruce Willis, Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, William Shatner, Tom Hanks, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Steven Puttner all show up.
- Non Sequitur, *Thud*: Two from Slappy.
- After the bus crashes, Slappy's impaired vision causes her to see three Skippys and she says "Well, if it isn't Huey, Dewey, and Louie. I haven't seen you guys since Daisy Duck's Bat Mitzvah.".
- After the plane crashes:Skippy: Wow, another mega scene! That was grrreat!
Slappy: Tony the Tiger, is that you?
- Reference Overdosed: Among the movies parodied in this cartoon are Forrest Gump, Speed, and Jaws.
- Shout-Out: Slappy calls Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock "Nancy and Sluggo" at one point.
- Sarcasm-Blind: Slappy asks the airport receptionist (played by Hello Nurse) for a "vacation where nothing happens". In a repeat of a joke from "Bumbie's Mom":Hello Nurse: Huh? I don't get it.Slappy: No one expects you to.
- Slapstick: The majority of the episode's cartoon violence is directed towards Slappy.
- Take That!:
- Near the beginning, Slappy responds to Skippy's excitement by threatening to shoot herself if it has anything to do with Pogs.
- Forrest Gump gets blown up by an explosive piece of chocolate.
- When Keanu Reeves asks where to find a bomb, Slappy tells him to check out his performance in Dracula. Keanu's indignant reaction is priceless.
- Tempting Fate:
- Slappy, as soon as she gets on the bus, asks if it's the one heading to the airport. The moment she asks that, the driver guns it. Soon revealing that not only is it another movie being filmed, but that Sandra Bullock behind the wheel, announcing there's a bomb on the bus.
- Slappy asks the captain if the boat is named the Titanic or the Poseidon, and if the captain's name is Hook or Kirk. She celebrates prematurely by singing "I'm goin' on vacation... I'm goin' on vacation..." Sure enough, once she gets on the boat, it turns out she is on yet another movie set.
- Who Writes This Crap?!: After Bruce Willis provides a variation of "Yippie-ki-yay", Slappy turns to the camera and sarcastically remarks "Ooh, what dialogue."
Please Please Please Get a Life Foundation contains examples of:
- Amusing Injuries: The Please Please Please Get a Life Foundation likes to break nerds of their trivia-spouting habits by hitting them with mallets and/or dropping heavy things on them. The most severe cases get Baloney sicced on them.
- Geek Physiques: The nerd's physiques range from being overweight, skinny, balding, having a ponytail, buckteeth, and slouchy posture.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: A non-celebrity example: The "geeks" shown are composites of actual Usenet fans of the show (WBA held an open house for some of them in 1995), and most of the the nitpicks and random trivia were taken nearly verbatim from a fan-compiled document called the Cultural References Guide for Animaniacs
. - Parody Commercial: The short serves as an ad for the Foundation.
- Shout-Out:
- In addition to the Animaniacs merchandise that the fat guy at the beginning of the cartoon has, there's also Looney Tunes and Tiny Toon Adventures merchandise.
- When Baloney shows up, we of course get a reference to the Bad Vibrations scene from Jurassic Park.
- Sinister Silhouettes: When Baloney arrives onto the scene, all the audience sees of him is his shadow. Though even that's enough to indicate that things won't end well for the hapless nerd he encounters.
- The Stoic: The nerd in the green shirt has a monotone delivery that makes him sound bored to death as he spouts a bunch of trivia with a smile on his face.
- Take That, Audience!: Specifically, those in the audience that point out random trivia relating to the show and animation errors on the show on the internet.
Closing Tower Gag: Yakko, "I'm Yakko." Wakko, "I'm Wakko." Dot, "And I'm rabid!"
