Tom And Jerry / Tropes N to Z

Tropes A to M | Tropes N To Z

N

• Name and Name: Its title is "Tom and Jerry" and they're both the central characters.
• Narrative Shapeshifting: In "Of Feline Bondage", Jerry uses this trope to tell his fairy godmother about his cat troubles.
• Naturally Huskless Coconuts: When characters end up in tropical settings and be near a palm tree, except coconuts to be without a husk.
• Near-Death Experience:
  • Depending on the interpretation, in "Snowbody Loves Me". Tom throws Jerry out into the cold and shortly sees Jerry's ghost floating past. He goes out, brings a frozen Jerry in, and revives him with super-strong alcohol. It could be that Tom was just imagining the ghost, but the point is never made clear.
  • Most of "The Cat and the Mermouse" is this for Tom. After falling into the sea, he struggles, goes still, then reawakens. In the end, when he's stuck in a shipwreck and being tugged by an octopus, it fades to Jerry resuscitating him with Holger-Nielsen.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between:
  • Jerry (nice)
  • Tom (mean)
  • Spike (in-between)
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: One of Tom's love interests◊ was a caricature of Lana Turner.
• No-Harm Requirement:
  • The cartoon "The Missing Mouse" has Tom hear on the radio that a white mouse has escaped from a laboratory after ingesting an experimental Hair-Trigger Explosive. Jerry also hears this news flash and exploits this by painting himself white and making Tom bust his back to protect the mouse from self-created harm.
  • "The Million Dollar Cat" has Tom inherit a fortune, with the caveat that he will lose it all if he harms another living thing, "EVEN A MOUSE". Jerry, again, uses this to his advantage and lives off Tom's fortune, producing the telegram with the "EVEN A MOUSE" warning in bold letters to remind Tom not to hurt him. Tom eventually decides money can't buy happiness.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
  • Tom delivers one to Jerry at the end of "The Million Dollar Cat". Counts as Laser-Guided Karma, too, because of how Jerry had annoyed Tom to no end throughout the episode.
  • Jerry delivers one to Tom at the end of "The Milky Waif" after the latter hit Nibbles with a flyswatter.
  • In "Mouse Trouble" when Tom corners Jerry, he reads in the guidebook that a corned mouse won't fight back, so Tom goes in for the kill, and there are sounds of a beating off-screen. Tom comes out battered and bruised, and says to the audience "and don't you believe it."
  • In "Little School Mouse," Jerry tries to teach Nibbles how to pluck a whisker from a cat, but rather than plucking a whisker, the younger mouse brings back a sleeping Tom, who is none too happy to be woken up like that, and the mice make a break for it, where Nibbles locks himself inside Jerry's mouse-hole. As Jerry frantically knocks to be let in, the camera switches to inside Jerry's home, where Nibbles listens to the sounds a brutal thrashing outside. When Nibbles opens the front door, a battered and bruised Jerry collapses on the floor.
• Non-Fatal Explosions: Mostly played straight, but averted at the end of Mouse Trouble, in which Tom dies and... goes to Heaven? Huh.
• No OSHA Compliance: If an episode takes place in a factory or a construction site, you can bet this trope will be in full effect.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Tom for the large part plays the bumbling antagonist of the two. There are several times, however, he manages to get the upper hand over Jerry or even win on rare occasions. If pushed far enough he can even outdo Spike, who he usually cowers before (eg. "Pet Peeve", "Dog Trouble").

O

• Obfuscating Disability: In "Love Me, Love My Mouse", Jerry fakes being defenseless to make Toots care for him.
• Off-into-the-Distance Ending: "Texas Tom" ends with Jerry Mouse riding upon Tom Cat's back into the distance, keeping Tom at a feline gallop with spurs to the cat's flanks. It's a complete inversion of how the two began the cartoon.
  • "Tee For Two" ends with Tom running off into the distance after being scared by bees, only to be knocked out cold by a golf ball.
• Off with His Head!: Presumably happens to Tom at the end of "The Two Mouseketeers".
  Nibbles: (he and Jerry gulp hard) Pauvre, pauvre pussy cat...
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Tom gets an epic one when he's trapped in a locked room with a lit stick of dynamite in "Cruise Cat".
  • Jerry at times as well, perhaps his most elaborate in "Quiet Please", after Tom drugs Spike to sleep.
  • In "The Million Dollar Cat", Jerry spends the whole episode smugly putting Tom through the works after an inheritance clause prevents him from harming a single animal ("Not even a mouse"). Tom finally blows a gasket, at which point Jerry, now more meek, points out the contract again... which Tom tears to shreds in front of him...
  • Tom again in "Love That Pup", specifically near the end when he believes he's trapped Jerry in a barrel and starts pummeling it with a shovel. Spike notices and threatens to skin him alive if it's his son. Tom at first smugly and confidently decides to lift it, only to find Jerry waving at him from a nearby fence. Cue the double gulping "Oh Crap" moment when Tom realizes who is under the barrel.
  • The cats, namely Butch, in "Smarty Cat". They spend the entire short watching old movies (actually past shorts) of Tom humiliating Spike. Jerry, having been kicked out of the house repeatedly because they don't want him watching, has had enough and pushes Spike to the window to see what they're doing. After finishing the last movie, Butch unknowingly leans onto Spike, who just entered the room, and mocks Spike's barking. A few seconds later, his smile drops and his barks become more high pitched when he realizes whom he's actually leaning against. Then all four cats panic and run with Spike chasing them.
  • Quacker towards the end of "That's My Mommy". He offers to help his "mommy" (Tom) cook a recipe for stewed duck. He then asks Tom where they'll get a duck, because they don't have one. Cue the Oh, Crap! in mid-sentence: "We don't have a—a—a—a—a— DUCK?!", and he remembers the book Jerry had showed him earlier with a lookalike of him in it under the word "Duck", and he gulps as he realizes he is the duck in the recipe that Tom wants to cook.
• Old-Timey Bathing Suit: Tom wears one whenever he goes to the beach, the setting of shorts like "Salt Water Tabby" and "Muscle Beach Tom".
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Even if Tom will team up with other cats to catch Jerry, he will not let them eat him. And god help you if you're a cat that tries to catch Jerry and Tom sees you doing it.
• Only Six Faces: All of the characters use the exact same design, but with species-specific traits and proportions applied to them. Don't believe this? Well, compare all of the characters to the seal from the short "The Little Runaway" which is basically what Tom and Jerry and the others would look like when you take away their species-specific traits.
• Overly Polite Pals: Tom, Jerry, and Spike the dog do the routine in the 1948 short, "The Truce Hurts."

P

• Packed Hero: At the start of "Cannery Rodent", Tom is chasing Jerry through a fish packing plant and both get packed into cans of tuna, which inexplicably has a picture of each of their faces on the packaging. Near the end of the same cartoon, a shark that has been pestering Tom for the majority of the cartoon is sent through the same packaging machine and canned in a similar fashion.
• Pan and Scan: The CinemaScope shorts are shown in pan-and-scan for TV broadcasts. This is justified for everything from "That's My Mommy" to "Tot Watchers" but the CinemaScope shorts that came before had Academy versions made but are still aired in pan-and-scan.
  • Because "Matinee Mouse" was made in Academy format, clips from "The Flying Sorceress" had to suffer this.
  • Subverted with the Turner broadcasts of "Pup on a Picnic" which are shown in the secondary Academy version.
  • Cartoon Network still airs the pan-and-scan versions despite having an HD feed since 2007.
• Papa Wolf:
  • Harm, or even touch Tyke, and his daddy Spike will skin you alive!
  • Jerry is this to Nibbles. Special note goes to "The Milky Waif"; when Tom spanks Nibbles with a flyswatter, Jerry snaps and shows him how much pain he can deliver when angered enough.
• Pain-Powered Leap: Frequently, when Tom gets his butt pricked with a pin by Jerry or has something heavy fall on his tail.
• Pet Heir: Tom in The Million-Dollar Cat (until he throws it away by violating the 'no harming animals' clause), Toodles in Casanova Cat.
• Phoneaholic Teenager: In "Busy Buddies" and "Tot Watchers", the baby sitter left in charge at Tom's house goes straight to the phone right after the husband and wife leave, only leaving the phone to punish Tom for bothering the baby (when in fact he was returning the baby after it wandered off).
• Pie in the Face: In "Quiet Please!", Tom catches Jerry on the kitchen counter. Jerry asks for a moment to draw up a last will and testament, in which he leaves a custard pie "to Tom, my favorite cat". Reading this, Tom eagerly tells him to "Lemme have it!"
  • In "Solid Serenade", Jerry hits him with two pies... or more accurately, a pie and then a cake. The pie holds a steam iron hidden inside of it.
  • Tom pelts Jerry with one at the end of "Jerry's Diary", after being angered by what he read in said diary.
  • In "Fit To Be Tied", this is one of the things Tom does to silence Spike's attempt at biting him after smacking him while tied.
• Porky Pig Pronunciation: Jerry's Uncle Pecos has a stutter bad enough to rival the Trope Namer.
• Powder Trail: Occurs from time to time.
• The Prankster: Whenever Jerry's character starts to really lean toward this, it's usually an episode where Tom wins. A good example is "Million Dollar Cat", where Tom inherits a fortune but loses it if he harms another living creature; Jerry uses this as a pretext to harass and injure Tom, then waves the telegram in his face to protect himself from reprisal. An enraged Tom, after finally realizing it isn't worth the abuse, finally takes the telegram, and shoves it down Jerry's throat.
• Prematurely Marked Grave: In one short, Tom applies to be a witch's cat. On his first time on the broomstick, the witch shows him a row of graves ending with an unoccupied one, warning him that he'll end up there if he doesn't hang on tight.
• Press-Ganged: A Captain Ahab type takes Tom in the Gene Deitch short "Dickey Moe".
• Public Domain Soundtrack
  • Averted in "Solid Serenade", where the song that Tom sings to Tootles is "Is you is or Is you ain't my baby", which is a borrowed Louis Jordan song.
• Puddle-Covering Chivalry:
  • In "The Truce Hurts", where Spike, Tom and Jerry are trying to be friends, Spike removes his fur and covers a mud puddle for Tom and Jerry. All three of them get splashed in mud and end up in blackface (in the uncut version; the Cartoon Network version quickly cuts to the next scene before viewers can see the aftermath).
  • In "Touche, Pussycat", after Jerry falls face-first into a puddle, his protege Tuffy uses Jerry's cape to allow a passing lady mouse dry passage using the cape and Jerry's body.
• Pulling the Rug Out: In "Mouse Cleaning", Tom is trying desperately to keep the house tidy while his owner is out. At one point, Jerry juggles lots of eggs, then throws them; Tom catches and juggles them himself, but Jerry has also started spinning a pie plate on a fork. Tom manages to take that over, too, but then Jerry pulls the rug out (literally). Tom catches the eggs in a carton, but the pie hits him.
• Pun-Based Title: Taken to new heights (or lows, depending on how humorous you find puns) with the Chuck Jones-era shorts.
• Put on the Bus:
  • The Maid, Tom's original owner, was fazed out of the series by the early 1950s, with more politically correct replacements taking her role instead.
  • Basically all of the supporting cast suffered this when Hanna Barbera left the series, with both Gene Deitch and Chuck Jones favouring pairing their own original characters with the title duo. Most revivals afterwards favour utilising the Hanna Barbera characters.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Tom technically wins against Jerry in "O Solar Meow" when he ejects him from the spaceship into the moon. Unfortunately, Tom doesn't get to enjoy it for long as he's careless with his ray gun and damages the ship, and the next scene shows the captain ordering Tom to repair the damage he did. Jerry, meanwhile, is enjoying himself on the moon, as it's shown to contain more than enough cheese to make a mouse happy.

R

• Rage Breaking Point: In "The Million Dollar Cat", after Tom inherits a million dollars and the will states he will lose it all if he harms any living thing, even a mouse, Jerry does everything he can to make Tom's life hell. Tom eventually reaches this, his blood boils and steam shoots out of his ears in his anger. Needless to say, Jerry gets an Oh, Crap! at this point.
• Random Events Plot: "The Tom & Jerry Cartoon Kit" started with Tom and Jerry in a box along with an assortment of other items, including a watermelon. A narrator talks about how to make your own cartoon, starting by setting Jerry on a table and handing him the watermelon. After he spits seeds around for a bit, Tom forces him to swallow several, turning Jerry's belly into a temporary maraca. Cue dancing! Until Jerry spits the seeds out and then finds a book that teaches mice how to use Judo...
• Recursive Canon:
  • In "Mouse In Manhattan", a theater in the background has Tom and Jerry given billing on it.
  • "Cruise Cat", a short taking place on a cruise ship, also has a sequence where Tom and Jerry run into a small theater room showing their own short "Texas Tom", whereupon they stop their current feud for a minute to laugh at each other's expense before resuming their chase.
  • The Chuck Jones-era cartoon "Matinee Mouse" has a plot revolving entirely around Tom and Jerry going to watch their own shorts in a theater. It actually gets lampshaded when the pair hand their tickets to the ticket-master, who suddenly realizes who just walked in and looks back and forth between them and a Tom and Jerry movie poster in confusion before shrugging.
• Recycled In Space: Once by Gene Deitch — who produced a short ("Mouse Into Space") that was bizarre and incomprehensible even by the standards of his Tom and Jerry cartoons — and about four by Chuck Jones, which are somewhat better, but still not really very good.
  • And the less literal interpretation of this trope was applied all through the series, with episodes in the Middle Ages, on a farm, out west, etc. And it was employed even more often on Tom And Jerry Tales.
• Real Joke Name: Doctor Quack.
• Red Live Lobster: "Salt Water Tabby" has Tom and Jerry duo visit a public beach. There, they encounter a vivid red antagonistic crab that tends to pinch Tom, and nearly snips Jerry in two.
• The Remake: A few examples:
  • 1949's "Hatch Up Your Troubles" and 1956's "The Egg and Jerry" are virtually identical, save for modified character designs, backgrounds, and widescreen framing.
  • The same goes for 1957's "Tops With Pops", which is a Shot-for-Shot Remake of 1949's "Love That Pup".
  • The same also goes for 1957's "Feedin' the Kiddie", a remake of 1949's "The Little Orphan".
• Repetitive Audio Glitch: From Hanna-Barbera's The Tom And Jerry Show episode "Cosmic Cat And Meteor Mouse", Tom and Jerry both disguise themselves as the titular superheroes and visit the bulldog whose beauty sleep is being interrupted by their watching the titular show, with both characters lip-syncing to a record playing out the voices of the superheroes. The bulldog catches on that he's being duped when the record player hidden behind Tom's back skips on "Cosmic Zinger", and so he decides to fix them by having the record player speed up so that Tom and Jerry are lip-syncing faster and at a higher pitch.
• Resourceful Rodent: Jerry uses household items as tools and dollhouse parts as furniture. These items range from a tin can being used as a mailbox, to a spoon being used as an oar, and to a teacup being used as a boat. Jerry is famous for outsmarting and humiliating his frenemy Tom.
• Rewind, Replay, Repeat: The 1967 Clip Show short "Shutter Bugged Cat" features Tom re-watching footage of his chases with Jerry to figure out where he can improve. The footage is rewound at one point.
• Rich Suitor, Poor Suitor: "Blue Cat Blues" portrayed Tom as the poor suitor and Butch as the rich one. Seeing the girl eventually married to Butch drove Tom to suicide.
• Ring Around the Collar: This was the whole reason Jerry was given a bowtie in the 1970's adaptation, making him cheaper to animate.
• Road Runner vs. Coyote: The common plot.
• Roger Rabbit Effect: The characters' appearances in the live-action features Anchors Aweigh and Dangerous When Wet.
• Rotten Robotic Replacement: One episode has Tom being replaced with a robotic mouse-hunting cat in order to better hunt Jerry, and at first it's shown to be efficient. However, later, Jerry discovers and exploits its weakness: toy mice that heavily distract said robot, causing it to go crazy and wreck the house while trying to hunt them, causing the owner to replace it back with Tom.
• Rube Goldberg Device: Tom builds one in "Designs on Jerry". Sadly, due to Jerry's unnoticed alteration, the safe that was supposed to hit Jerry... well, take a wild guess what happened.
  • These appeared fairly often, including a recobbled episode where Tom watched several failed attempts to brainstorm ideas... for the same trap that failed before.
  • A smaller-scale one appears in "Year of the Mouse", where Tom traps Jerry and another mouse in a bottle, corks it and then ties a string to the cork that's attached to the trigger of a gun aimed at the bottle.
• Rule of Funny: Tom has human-like screams and occasionally speaks in English. This is since if Tom acted like a real cat, it wouldn't be funny. Just the opposite, it would be disturbing.
• Rump Roast: The page image, where Tom mistakes his tail for a candle, comes from "The Mouse Comes to Dinner."

S

• Sassy Black Woman: The Maid.
• Scare Chord: The track which originally plays after Jerry first turns into a super-mouse in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse" has multiple dramatic chords.
• Scary Stinging Swarm: In "Tee for Two", Tom gets hurled headfirst into a beehive and then gets attacked by bees. To escape them, he dives underwater, using the pipe to breathe, but Jerry reveals Tom's position and then uses the funnel to direct the swarm directly into Tom's mouth.
• Scheherezade Gambit: In their version of The Nutcracker Suite.
• Scenery Porn: If Mouse in Manhattan doesn't give you an itching to visit New York City, nothing will.
  • Scenery Gorn: Then there's the back alleys and the hundreds of mangy alley cats.
• Screams Like a Little Girl:
  • Played for Laughs, but heaven forbid you listen to Jerry's high-pitched scream in "Baby Puss" with headphones.
  • Especially compared to many of his other screams, Tom's scream in "Tall in the Trap" when his tail gets stuck in his own Mouse Trap sounds high-pitched.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Nibbles at the end of "Tom & Cherie".
  • In "Hic-cup Pup", after hearing Spike approving all of Tom's future actions - including chasing mice, Jerry grabs his stuff and ran, leaving a sign that says "Gone South for Sake of Health".
• Second-Face Smoke: It happens on more than one occasion — but Jerry wises up at one point and comes out of the mousehole in a gas mask, while Tom has turned green from blowing so much smoke.
• Sentimental Drunk: Played with in "Part Time Pal". Tom starts it as his typical, not-so-nice self and he chases Jerry (granted, it was to prevent him from stealing grub)... but then he gets drunk and starts being nice to the mouse! The maid, however, wasn't so lucky...
• Shout-Out: When Jerry and the kitten walk off together in the ending of "Professor Tom", composer Scott Bradley throws in an instrumental of "We're Off to See The Wizard!". "The Truce Hurts" also uses an instrumental of the song when Tom, Jerry and Butch are walking together and are about to step into a muddy puddle on the road.
  • In one episode where Jerry hid a stick of dynamite on Spike and Tom failed to take away the bomb, Spike sets off his arms revealing his muscular arms and anchor tattoo and runs to smack Tom hardly, a homage to Popeye.
  • Between the heavenly escalator and St. Peter as a train conductor "Heavenly Puss" borrows heavily from Here Comes Mr. Jordan.
  • The nowadays infamous Don't... you... believe it! line Tom utters in a few shorts is actually a reference to the radio show of the same name which busted urban legends that were widely accepted as fact.
• Shrunk in the Wash: The episode The Zoot Cat ends with Jerry dipping Tom (and thus his suit) in a fishbowl that instantly shrinks it down to mouse size. The last shot we see is Jerry jumping in it and casually dancing off.
• Silent Bob: Both characters are able to convey their thoughts and feelings very well without having to say a word and, like the Trope Namer himself, rarely speak.
• Simpleton Voice: Tom at the end of both "Trap Happy" ("C... A... T... cat.") and "The Million Dollar Cat" ("Gee, I'm throwing away a million dollars.").
  • BUT I'M HAPPY!!!
• The Singing Mute: The titular characters of Tom and Jerry appear to sing with mass crowds even though they usually never talk. Although it's not made clear if they're actually mute or just prefer not to talk.
• Sitting Sexy on a Piano: Toots from "The Zoot Cat" while Tom is serenading her.
• Slap Stick: Tom and Jerry are the kings of this.
• Slasher Smile: Tom gets one in "The Vanishing Duck". Cue Laser-Guided Karma.
• Smug Snake: Both characters at their most antagonistic, but Tom most frequently.
• Soap Punishment: Jerry does this to Tom after he lies about being sick to his owner (when in reality he just didn't want to go outside on a rainy day).
• Soda Can Shakeup:
  • In The Little Orphan, Nibbles pops open a champagne bottle, and the carbonated blast propels it toward Tom and sends him flying into the china cabinet.
  • In Mouse in Manhattan, Jerry accidentally gets stuck in a bottle of champagne, and the resulting pressure sending him flying into a dark alley.
  • In Salt Water Tabby, Jerry gets stuck in the neck of a bottle of soda. Tom shakes it up, aims it out to sea, and fires him off like an artillery shell.
  • In High Steaks, Jerry shakes up a bottle of soda to hit Tom with the deluge, but he ducks and it instead ruins his master's steaks. Believing Tom's at fault, the master shakes up another bottle and shoves it down his throat, the resulting explosion leaving his body bottle-shaped.
• Sound Effects Bleep: Heard in "Hic-cup Pup".
  Spike: *hic* Now he's got ME doing it! *hic* I'll murder that *hic* cat!
  • "Designs on Jerry" ends with Tom's Rube Goldberg machine backfiring on him at the last moment due to an altered measurement, causing a safe to land on him instead of Jerry. Once Tom gets out (now squished into a cube shape), he starts cursing but is unintelligible over a trumpet that is playing.
• The Speechless: Jerry. Even in shorts where Tom speaks, such as "The Million Dollar Cat", Jerry rarely even speaks. There have been a few close calls, however:
  • The narration in "Blue Cat Blues" is supposedly from Jerry, but Jerry himself never speaks in the actual cartoon.
  • In "Cat and Dupli-Cat", following Tom's operatic entrance of piloting a gondola while singing "Santa Lucia", Jerry can be seen and heard imitating him in a tea cup but Speaking Simlish.
  • Most infamously, "The Lonesome Mouse" actually DOES have Jerry speak, on a couple occasions. After experiencing loneliness from not having Tom around, he explains his plan to Tom:
  Jerry: Hey... you wanna get back in the house, dont'cha?
  • And at the end of that same episode, after paying Tom back for keeping the pie (Which he was rewarded for "killing" Jerry) all to himself...
  Jerry: Why, that dirty, double-crossin', good-for-nothin', two-timin'...!
  • In "The Zoot Cat", Tom puts Jerry in a box in an attempt to impress Toots. As Toots opens the box up, Jerry is seen posing seductively...
  Jerry: Ahh, what's cookin', Toots?
• Spelling for Emphasis: In the first episode ("Puss Gets the Boot"), The Maid tells Tom she won't tolerate any more destruction he causes.
  The Maid: If you breaks one more thing, you is goin' out... O-W-T, out!
• Spinoff Babies: Tom and Jerry Kids.
• Squashed Flat: There are Amusing Injuries inflicted from characters getting squashed. Though occasionally they're squashed into other shapes.
• Standard Snippet: Similar to Warner Bros., MGM had a music library to promote, so a few cartoons were peppered with songs such as "Is You Is or Is You Ain't...", "Over the Rainbow", and "You Were Meant for Me".
• Stairway to Heaven: In "Heavenly Puss", after being killed by a piano, Tom rides an endless golden escalator to heaven.
• Stealth Pun: At the end of "Baby Puss", Tom is forcefully fed castor oil by his young mistress and runs to the window to throw up. Jerry laughs at Tom's misfortune, only to accidentally drinks the castor oil himself (due to the opened bottle spilling out into Jerry's mouth) and joins Tom to follow suit. Get it?! Jerry got a taste of his own medicine.
• Steel Drums and Sunshine: In the Gene Deitch short "Calypso Cat", the titular duo and Tom's love interest for the episode arrive via cruise to a Carribean island, where a musician cat plays a funky beat on the steel drum. Unfortunately for Tom, his girlfriend falls in love with the Calypso cat and leaves Tom for him.
• Stock Animal Diet: Cheese is a favorite for Jerry, and mice, birds, and milk for Tom (though he only ever gets milk out of those three). However, both Tom and Jerry will still eat almost anything.
• Stock Scream: "OOO-ooo-OOO Hooo Hooo Hoo HOO!!!"
  • "AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!"
  • Tom is also one to let out a gasping "OoWAAAHH!!" on the numerous occasions when he realizes he's about to be in big trouble.
  • Also, Jerry's nervous gulp.
• Stop, or I Shoot Myself!: In the Tom and Jerry short "The Missing Mouse", Tom hears news of an escaped white lab mouse who has swallowed a powerful explosive. Jerry, who has been painted white when shoe polish fell on him, pretends to be the mouse, trying to hurt himself and forcing Tom to stop him. Eventually, Tom figures it out, and that's when the real lab mouse appears...
• Stopped Reading Too Soon: A telegram delivered to Tom Cat in the cartoon "Million Dollar Cat" states that Tom has been bequeathed one million dollars. This news leaves Tom overjoyed, and he flings roses around the room and kisses a goldfish. Jerry Mouse reads the telegram in its entirety, and smugly points out the last line: "Payment stops if the cat brings harm to any living thing, even a mouse." Jerry goes into complete Jerkass mode, confident that he can torment Tom with impunity. Tom ends up choosing happiness over money.
• Suddenly Speaking:
  • Throughout The Movie, but also applied to the original shorts as well, though it's only done for about a line or two, and generally Played for Laughs. In fact, the short with the most dialogue between the two is "The Lonesome Mouse" (which doesn't get much airtime because of the racist caricature The Maid playing a large part in it).
  • Tom has lots of dialogue in "Zoot Cat", but Jerry only has one line.
  • Tom and Jerry speak regularly in the comic book adaptations, which had been around for decades by the time the movie was made.
  • Jerry is voiced in his and Tom's cameo in Anchors Aweigh by Sara Berner.
• Supermodel Strut: Invoked in "Flirty Bird". While going Disguised in Drag to take back Jerry from a horny male hawk, Tom shakes his hips back and forth, apparently to make himself come off as more "appealing".
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: Episode 43, "The Cat and the Mermouse". At least half the episode takes place underwater. Subverted at the end when it turns out to be a dream/hallucination as a result of Tom having nearly drowned, and Jerry is resuscitating Tom.
• Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: In "Push-Button Kitty", Tom gets replaced by a super-powered robot cat. With an ax.
  • Same with Jerry, with rocket propulsion.
  • And then, in "Advance And Be Mechanized": The robot cat & mouse, controlled by Tom & Jerry throughout the cartoon, force the two to take over their jobs at the end.
• Super-Strength: Jerry's appropriately-named cousin Muscles is known for this.
  • In The Milky Waif, Jerry himself briefly gains this. He is enraged by Tom spanking Nibbles with a fly swatter, then goes Papa Wolf on him.
  • In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse, a potion had been created by Tom to get rid of Jerry. Unfortunately, it backfires - Jerry is able to throw Tom around without breaking a sweat.
• Sweeping Ashes: Mostly in the Chuck Jones shorts.
• Sweet Seal: One cartoon, "Little Runaway", features a young seal that escapes from a circus and hides out in a backyard pool. Jerry Mouse discovers him there, and the two hit it off immediately. Tom Cat, however, hears news that this seal has a reward on its head, and tries to lure the runaway into his clutches.
• Synchronized Swarming: The ants that invade Spike's picnic in "Pup on a Picnic" are quite organized, which helps them walk off with the entire food supply... and Spike's son.
  • The bees that attack Tom in "Tee for Two" are synchronized as well.

T

• Talking Animal: Dogs, ducks, other cats and mice; although neither Tom nor Jerry themselves usually spoke. Still, it depends — sometimes they're just as mute as the title characters.
• Talking with Signs: Happens occasionally. One memorable example is after Jerry stabs a box with several needles and saws it in half, with Tom inside. He looks inside the box and his eyes widen, and he quickly writes up a sign and displays it to the audience asking if there's a doctor in the house.
• "Take That!" Kiss: Multiple instances have Jerry smooch Tom to troll him. He also kisses Lightning in "Old Rockin' Chair Tom" as part of a trick him and Tom were playing on him.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: Attempted in "Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Mouse" when Tom tries making Jerry drink poisoned milk to kill him.
• Taught to Hate: There are numerous cartoons where Tom tries to teach a younger cat to hate and attack mice, often to his frustration when he finds them getting along immediately after the lesson. There are also various shorts where Spike, the bulldog, instructs his son on the fine art of cat hating and chasing.
• Tears of Fear: After realizing in "Landing Stripling" that Jerry and a woodpecker were going to launch him in a tub of boiling water, Tom starts scaredly crying.
• Team Rocket Wins: There are a dozen or so instances where Tom actually beats Jerry by the end of the short. Granted, these are usually karmic victories (though not always).
• There's No Place Like Home: The Aesop Jerry learns in "Mouse in Manhattan".
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: In "Jerry's Diary", Tom is prompted by the kindly radio host Uncle Dudley to be kind to Jerry. Tom does so by planning to give Jerry a box of candy and a pie. His attitude changes after reading Jerry's diary; he angrily kicks away the candy, presumably ruining it, and hits Jerry with the pie when the mouse finally arrives.
• Third-Party Peacekeeper: Spike has Tom and Jerry sign a peace agreement in the episode "The Truce Hurts". It actually does keep the peace...for a little while.
• This Is a Drill: The baby woodpecker's beak in "Hatch Up Your Troubles".
• Throat-Slitting Gesture: In the midst of telling Tom his plan to give Lightning his just desserts, Jerry slides his pointer finger alongside his neck in "Old Rockin' Chair Tom". It's complete with a "Kcch!"-like sound.
• Too Gruesome for Cartoon Physics: On more than one occasion.
• Toy Disguise: One episode has Jerry hiding among various tiny dolls that look just like him. Tom then proceeds to pull the tail of each doll, until he reaches Jerry, who shrieks in pain.
• Track Trouble: In "Kitty Foiled" Tom Cat fixes Jerry Mouse Chained to a Railway of a scale model railroad set, then rides atop the running train itself. Jerry's newest friend, a yellow canary, drops a bowling ball in Tom's path, which not only wrecks the tracks but powers a huge hole in the living room floor! It never occurs to that Too Dumb to Live cat to hop off the train.
• Traitor Shot: To further make it clear that Tom was planning on betraying Jerry in "The Bodyguard", he winks at the audience after shaking hands with him.
• Translation: "Yes": In "Little Runaway", the seal, through subtitles, explains his plight to Jerry and asks him for help. When Jerry agrees, the seal shakes his hand and launches to a flurry of barks. Once he's done, a subtitle comes up consisting only of the word, "Thanks!"
• Traveling-Pipe Bulge: Jerry escapes into a gutter; when Tom follows, there's a noticeable bulge.
• Truth in Television: In "The Cat and the Mermouse", as Tom is sinking he does the climb-the-ladder thing which drowning people who cannot swim really do.
• Twice-Told Tale: Tom and Jerry and The Wizard of Oz puts the cat and mouse into a condensed version of the 1939 film.

U

• Uncanny Family Resemblance: Save personality and costumes, both Tom's and Jerry's family look exactly like them.
  • Even Nibbles, who isn't technically related to Jerry, looks like a smaller gray version of him.
• Under the Mistletoe: In "The Night Before Christmas", Jerry stops Tom from chasing him by holding up the mistletoe and making a cute smoochy face at him. Tom then blushes and turns away shyly, only to have Jerry kick him in the rear. Truly one of the biggest Foe Romance Subtext moments in the series.
• Universal-Adaptor Cast: In most episodes, they are just in some random house (usually belonging to The Maid or a skinny, white housewife). But then there are times where they are in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the future...

V

• Villain Protagonist: Both the "villain" and "protagonist" parts alternate between both characters from short to short, depending on who initially starts the fight or why it started in the first place. There are different points you can root for them both.
• "The Villain Sucks" Song: Played with yet Played for Laughs with "Mamãe Eu Quero" in "Baby Puss" as the song isn't flat-out about Tom. However, Butch, Meathead, and Topsy sing it to him to infantilize him.
• Visible Invisibility
• Visual Pun: The opening credits of "Dicky Moe" starts out with a picture of Tom & Jerry in a tight spot, and the graphic "Tom and Jerry in...", then the camera pulls back to reveal they're in the titular whale's stomach.
  • A similar case could be made for the opening to "The Tom & Jerry Cartoon Kit".
• Vitriolic Best Buds:
  • Tom and Butch are usually friends or partners until something is on the line, like Jerry or a new home or, more often, a female cat.
  • Tom and Jerry themselves would find some common ground and work together. It doesn't always last long.
• Voice Clip Song: One of the comments from Tom's male owner ("Now what's wrong with that goofy cat?") was set to a beat in an oft-repeated Boomerang ad.
• The Voiceless: Almost all of the shorts have the titular characters not speaking at all. Few are subversions, especially if they sing. And all this well before the animated movie in 1993.

W

• Wait for Your Date: Averted and Played for Laughs in "Solid Serenade". Tom goes with a bass fiddle to pitch woo to a pretty female kitty. This kitty is seen in silhouette in her boudoir tweezing her eyebrows. However, once Tom starts his rendition of "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't," the kitty power-primps herself in less than five seconds and emerges ever-so-elegantly onto her balcony to be serenaded.
• Walk Into Camera Obstruction:
  • "Timid Tabby" when Tom and his cousin disguise themselves with two heads chasing Jerry out.
• Wartime Cartoon: "The Yankee Doodle Mouse" was the closest Tom and Jerry ever came to having a World War II-themed short. In it, Tom and Jerry fight a war-style battle in a basement, with plenty of WWII references.
• Water Is Air: Used in The Cat and the Mermouse, but justified in that it was All Just a Dream.
• Whale Egg: In Real Life, cats can't lay eggs. However, Tom seems to lay some eggs in "Flirty Birdy".
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Cats and mice understand everything humans say. In the episode "Heavenly Puss", when Tom is at the gate to heaven, there's a line of cats, and the kittens, the last ones to come in, were tied in a sack and drowned in a river.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Jerry dresses like a girl on a few occasions to escape Tom. For some reason, Tom's less likely to attack a girl mouse.
  • In a Chuck Jones short, Tom dresses as a female mouse, gets stuck in the suit, and ends up attracting a mob of male mice who chase him away.
  • In Flirty Birdy, Tom fights with a buzzard over Jerry and dresses as a female buzzard in order to take Jerry from the male buzzard.
• William Telling: Among one of the Kick the Dog opening scenes in which Tom is shown tormenting Jerry.
• Winged Soul Flies Off at Death: Tom has been known to have this happen nine times.
• World of Jerkass: It's easy to notice that most characters in this show are very mean, rude, violent and downright brutal.
• Worth Living For: "Downhearted Duckling", casting Little Quacker in a unique take on the Ugly Duckling story, sees the suicidal Quacker discover meaning in his life when a lady duck, Fifi, has a romantic interest in him.
  Fifi: You're cute!
  Quacker: Am I really?
  Fifi: Yeah! I'll say!
• Would Hurt a Child: In "The Milky Waif", Tom goes after Nibbles several times. At two points, he tries to suck him in through several straws and tries to shoot him with a gun, though these attempts are foiled due to Jerry's intervention in the former and his own stupidity in the latter. He finally crosses the line near the end of the short when he hits Nibbles with a flyswatter. Even after getting beaten up by a rageful Jerry, Tom still antagonizes Nibbles in subsequent shorts.

Y

• You Have Failed Me: Tom in The Two Mouseketeers.
  • This is almost repeated by the king in the second Mouseketeers short, though this time the duo takes pity on Tom and lulls the former to sleep before he can pull it off.

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