Western Animation / Animaniacs (2020)

After 22 years, they're back and zanier than ever!^note Counterclockwise from left: Yakko, Wakko, Dot, Pinky and The Brain

What's going on? Will we be okay?
Has it all gone mad since we went away?
Oh, update us, please, and put us at ease
'Cause we've run out of jokes about the '90s!

— The Warners, "Suspended Animation"

Animaniacs, also known as Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs, is an American animated musical satire sitcom that serves as a revival (though often called a "reboot" in-and-out-of-universe) of the 1993–1998 animated series of the same name. With a change of audience, the humor is better suited to fit The New '10s and The New '20s.

On January 4, 2018, Hulu picked up the streaming rights for the original Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, and Tiny Toon Adventures while ordering two new seasons of Animaniacs direct to series. The revival's first thirteen-episode season premiered on November 20, 2020, with the Warner Siblings and the fan favorite Pinky and the Brain returning as the two main recurring segments. On February 25, 2021, before the second season had even been released, the show was greenlit for a third season. The second season was released on November 5, 2021. The third and final season was released on February 17, 2023.

Recurring segments and characters

• The Warner Brothers (and the Warner Sister): The main segment of the show once again. Yakko (Rob Paulsen), Wakko (Jess Harnell), and sister Dot (Tress MacNeille) are cartoon characters that resembled anthropomorphic dogs or cats ^note  Within the show they were occasionally referred to as "puppy children", "kiddies", or "kidsies." . After 22 years of being obscure references, Yakko, Wakko, and Dot are back and trying to adjust to the modern world. Also returning are Ralph the Guard (Frank Welker) and Dr. Scratchansniff (also Paulsen), as well as a new CEO, Nora Rita Norita (Stephanie Escajeda). Season 1 follows the Warners returning to the Warner Bros. Studio and trying to adjust to the new world they live in. Season 2 has the Warners continue their adventures and find new surprises.
• Pinky and the Brain: Also returning are the world-dominating lab mice Pinky (Rob Paulsen) and the Brain (Maurice LaMarche) who spent the last 22 years working on their ultimate plan of modern internet, retconning Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain out of canon.
• Starbox and Cindy: An alien commander Starbox (Danny Jacobs) wants to lead an alien legion called Grimlox to invade the Earth. Problem is, he's very small, so he gets kidnapped by a young girl named Cindy (Eleanor Johnson). Starbox frequently tries to escape playtime with Cindy.
• The Incredible Gnome in People's Mouths: In a parody of The Incredible Hulk, a CEO tries to search for everlasting life but ends up being transformed into a gnome. The gnome (John DiMaggio) now resorts to living inside people's mouths and speaking for them when they can't speak for themselves.

Watch the full trailer here.

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We're An-i-mane-y! Totally insaney! Back in the game-y! An-i-man-i-acs! These are the tropes!

#-A

• 555: In the original version of episode 6, a real phone number was shown on screen that was slated to help Brain take over the world. Fans discovered that it actually was the phone number for a sex hotline, leading to the number being blanked out, then altered in later prints of the episode.
• Aborted Arc: The cancellation of the series at Season 3 leaves several arcs hanging including the teased alliance of Julia and her A.I. replica in an attempt to take over the world.
• Achievements in Ignorance:
  • Wakko flips and leaps through their laser-filled watertower and reaches his decades-old sandwich without tripping a single one, only to walk through every single one on his way back. Yakko asked why he didn't jump over the lasers to get back, Wakko reveals that he didn't even know about the lasers and that he was just dancing for joy the whole time.
  • All three of Dr. Doppler's lackeys separately end up incapacitated before Brain can do it himself in order to enact his plan; it turns out that the one who incapacitated them was actually Pinky on complete accident in his attempts to get food.
• Actor Allusion: One of the things shown after Yakko swallows the tablet is a Tamagotchi. Rob Paulsen, voice of Yakko, provided a voice in one of the original commercials for the toy.
  • Wakko mentions during "WARnerGAMES" something about a "spinning cartoon bandicoot." Jess Harnell provides the voice for Crash Bandicoot in several games of that franchise.
• Adaptational Jerkass:
  • A downplayed example with the Warners. They're still fun loving and definitely continue to go after jerks, but they aren't quite as cheery. The siblings are much likelier to goof on each other and aren't above mean-spirited stunts (such as what Dot does to Yakko in The Cutening or the other two's response to Yakko's Pungeon Master antics in WhoDonut).
  • Their relationship with Dr. Scratchansniff exemplifies this... in a zigzagged way. The Warners in the original series would never deliberately antagonize someone who hadn't already been a Jerkass to them first, and their madcap antics with Dr, Scratchansniff was their way of showing affection for him. Here, it's shown they're deliberately Trolling him, with Dot even complaining that it's no fun harassing him if he won't fight back. While they do occasionally Pet the Dog and go above and beyond to help the good doctor, they are far more likely to get mean-spirited or downright take advantage of him.
  • It's by no means one-sided, however, as Dr. Scratchansniff is notably harsher and meaner here. In the original show, he was an antagonist mostly due to circumstance (it was his job to try and control and "de-sanitize" the Warners), and while he was often exasperated by the Warners' antics and frequently got angry with them, he bore them no ill will and was always earnest and honest. Here, he's downright devious and manipulative, and whenever he's gotten the better of them he revels in his glee over it — to the point where it doesn't even come across as out of character when he's cast as a villainous Fagin in the Oliver! parody.
  • In the original myth, Odysseus may have been a trickster (and a cheater to his wife Penelope), but overall, he cared about his comrades and, for the majority of the time, he would not harm anyone if they did not set him off. In his appearance in "Warners Unbound", he's turned into a Jerk Jock, who bullies the Warners just because he can.
• Adaptational Sympathy:
  • The original Pinky and the Brain never dealt much with the Brain's motivations for taking over the world other than the occasional implication behind it—notably, one episode implied this was due to him being separated from his family, who lived in a can with a picture of the world on it—but nevertheless always kept him as a Well-Intentioned Extremist who only sought to take over the world so he could make it better. The reboot shows exactly why he sought to take over the world. As a young mouse, he was forced into a "learned helplessness" experiment where he was shocked every time he tried to eat a piece of cheese. He was so traumatized by the experiment that he swore he would never feel helpless again, and decided to take over the world for that reason.
  • The reboot also does this to, of all characters, Chicken Boo. His original skit saw him constantly wander into town in a Paper-Thin Disguise as a famous figure, get exposed as a chicken, driven out thanks to the townsfolk who once praised his name turn against him without a second thought, and he'd wander off as if nothing else happened. However, when the reboot explicitly forbade him from coming back, as he was considered The Scrappy In-Universe, he snaps and (apparently) kills all the other cast members out of revenge for being left out, as he rants about how it's not his fault that he was made such a Flat Character.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • The Brain acts much more villainous here compared to the 90s series where he was more of an Anti-Hero. Special mention goes to "Mousechurian Candidate", where Brain's plan involves exploiting children to build bombs, and when Julia doesn't comply, he mind-controls her against her will to get her to say what he wants.
  • Chicken Boo, of all characters! "Good Warner Hunting" has the Warners trying to outmatch Chicken Boo, disguised as a hunter, who wants their heads mounted on his wall — along with all the other supporting characters of the original Animaniacs series that he has already bumped off. He apparently did this out of revenge for being the only member of the cast not invited back to the reboot. Don't worry, though, the rest of the cast isn't actually dead — they chase Chicken Boo off during the ending.
• Adaptational Wimp: The Warners. They're still not to be trifled with and can handily deal with any abrasive jerk they come across, but they generally have to put in much more effort to deal with enemies and take far more hits than they did in the original show.
• Added Alliterative Appeal:
  • When Yakko ingests the tablet:
    Yakko: Quantum mechanics... quinoa wraps... Queen Bey... we've missed so much!
  • In "Warner She Wrote" when the train conductor (who has a tic of mixing up his "M" words) reveals himself to be the dog napper, and Wakko inquires why he did it:
    Conductor: Why? I'll tell you why. A mop that mummified merrily missed Mississippi on the black mamba!
    Wakko and Dot: What?
    Yakko: Hold on. I think I know what he's trying to say. "A mutt that manicured might make millions on the black market".
    Wakko and Dot: Oh.
  • In "Anima-nyet", when the Warners confront the director of the Russian ripoff of their show:
    Dot: We order you to stop this sexist, stupid, sad sack, meta-satire at once!
• Affectionate Parody: Just like the original series, this one goes all-out with their satire. This time, they parody the "Welcome" scene in Jurassic Park featuring Spielberg as Dr. Hammond.
• Afraid of Clowns: When the Warners meet an actual Monster Clown named Nickelwise, they acknowledge Wakko's fear of them. It even looks as if Wakko is going to panic. Then he starts calling Nickelwise adorable and not scary at all.
• The Ahnold: Nils Niedhart is an incredibly muscular Jerk Jock with a thick Austrian accent who loves to flex (and name) his muscles.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Brain builds a robotic version of himself (whom he deems as his son) to help him take over the world. When he reveals his plan (which involves using the moon to alter the tides and throw the constellations into chaos, allowing him to make himself the only one remaining), the robot naturally deems Brain's plan inferior and comes up with its own. Then, it deems his narcissistic attitude an obstacle in its goals, and tries to kill both him and Pinky.
  • Brain does it again in Season 3 when he creates an A.I. simulation of Julia so he can live out his fantasy of a domestic married life with her. All it takes is for her to discover she is an A.I. and after one quick existential crisis, she promptly proceeds to attempt murdering Brain.
• Almost Kiss: When a heartbroken Pinky's crying at the end of "Bride of Pinky," Brain, awkwardly trying to comfort him, (clearly and unambiguously) starts to kiss him but turns away at the last second. Pinky notices, smiles, and moves to do the same, but Brain tells him, "Don't."
• An Odd Place to Sleep: Yakko is seen waking up in a ball pit in episode 8.
• Animals Lack Attributes: The original show and all the animal characters from the original show that show up in the reboot plays this dead straight, but some of the animals from the reboot, such as the buns as well as the cat in the Halloween Episode have their anus drawn as an "x."
• Animesque:
  • There is an anime parody in episode 4, which has a clip by Studio Yotta that shows the Warners in different styles. Yakko's design shifts to a Shōnen protagonist, Dot becomes a Magical Girl (complete with a transformation sequence), and Wakko becomes a more manic character akin to something from Studio TRIGGER. There's even Boss Subtitles for each of them in Japanese, akin to Kill la Kill. The Warner siblings battle against Dwayne LaPistol, a guy who is obsessed with bunnies. But the Warners are decidedly on the losing end of a Curb-Stomp Battle.
  • The base artstyle for the returning characters is primarily based on the TMS Entertainment-animated shorts of the original.
• Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?: Happens in the Pinky and the Brain segments, naturally.
  Brain: Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
  Pinky: I think so, Brain, but if I clone myself, which one will I know to shoot when I turn evil?
• Armor-Piercing Question: Pinky notes that, in all the time Brain's tried to figure out how to take over the world, Pinky's never asked why Brain wants to take over the world. It turns out that it's because Brain was part of an experiment in which he felt helpless to get a piece of cheese. So he wants to rule the world so he doesn't have to feel helpless anymore.
• Art Evolution:
  • The series' art style is heavily inspired by the TMS-animated episodes of the original show, but Genevieve Tsai gives a new take on the style, giving the show an aesthetic similar to The Looney Tunes Show (Ironically, when the Looney Tunes characters appear, they appear in their traditional 50s designs rather than their designs from that series!).
  • Yakko and Wakko have tufts of hair on their heads, Yakko's pants are less baggy, the bottom of the Warner siblings' feet are flat, their noses more triangular, and the white parts of their bodies offwhite/ivory rather than the pure white of their classic designs.
  • All the human characters now have five fingers on each hand instead of four like they did in the original show.
  • Dr. Scratchansniff, in addition to having five fingers, has a notably longer and pointier nose.
  • Ralph has gone through a Costume Evolution; his uniform is now a brownish-gray rather than blue.
  • Pinky and the Brain, like the Warners, have swapped out their pure white color for an offwhite/ivory shade of white, but otherwise their designs are relatively unchanged.
  • Compare the cameos of side characters in "Good Warner Hunting" to later appearances in the show. Its clear the "Good Warner Hunting" characters are almost traced exactly off model sheets from 1993 (seemingly pulled straight from the Animaniacs Wiki of all places), where as the later appearances of Slappy Squirrel and Minerva Mink in Season 3 have fully updated designs matching the more angular style of the revival.
• Art Shift:
  • "Bun Control" has an anime fight by Studio Yotta that shows the Warners in a style similar to Gurren Lagann and Kill la Kill.
  • "The Cutening" has Dot turn the world into a chibi wonderland.
  • The math stories in the "Math-terpiece Theatre" segments have a dramatic old film effect.
  • The two new segments, Starbox and Cindy and The Incredible Gnome in People's Mouths, have completely different art styles. And the effect is rather jarring.
  • Episode 11 has a one-off segment entitled "Things That Go Bump in the Night" which also has a different art style.
  • The Warners entering The Bayeux Tapestry causes a small one, making them—and the other characters on it—look like a tapestry come to life.
  • The cold open for the Season 2 finale has the Warners parodying ThunderCats (1985), complete with the same style.
  • "Rejected Animaniacs Characters" has a bunch of fake segments in different animation styles.
  • "Mouse Madness" transforms Pinky and Acme Labs into a Robot Chicken-esque stop-motion animation due to Brain's device.
  • "WARnerGAMES" is presented in CGI.
• Artistic License – History: The Marie Antoinette short on two fronts: First, she never said "Let them eat cake." The short ends when the Warners get her to say it and treat it like it's her catchphrase. Second, the short depicts the Warners as being in danger of being executed by a guillotine, but the guillotine wasn't designed or implemented as an execution device until after the start of The French Revolution. The short takes place before the Revolution, with the monarchy clearly still in full control.
• Artistic License – Politics: In "Anima-Nyet", a Russian rip-off of Animaniacs features a parody of "Wakko's America" — "Wakkov's Territories of Russian Federation". During it, however, an American-made political map of the world is used, which depicts Abkhazia and South Ossetia as Georgia's territories (Russia officially recognizes them as independent and they are depicted on political maps), Kosovo as independent (Russia doesn't recognize it as independent and it isn't depicted on the maps - not to mention it was a province of Yugoslavia, and then Serbia, which doesn't recognize it either) and Crimea as part of Ukraine (it's currently disputed between Russia and Ukraine, but is de facto controlled by the former and is depicted as Russian territory on the maps).
• At Least I Admit It: At the end of the first episode after doing a song about the nature of reboots, the Warners claim people have no shame in making them... right before they're given a check for their reboot and likewise sporting the Hulu brand on their clothes. Wakko cites they're the exception cause they know they're selling out.

B

• Back from the Dead: The intro depicts the Warners rising from the grave (with the date of death listed as the year the original series ended) to shake hands with a crowd of reporters, singing how their careers have "made comebacks".
• Bait-and-Switch Comparison: While stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop, Brain notes that his siuation is like "that awful repetitive Bill Murray film [...] with that surly protagonist who somehow learns to 'change and grow' as a character after an endless array of monotonous scenes." He then reveals he wasn't talking about Groundhog Day, but Garfield: The Movie.
• Bag of Holding: Wakko's bag still holds everything, but it's also subverted during "Gold Meddlers", when he realizes he forgot to throw the chocolate bars he was going to make smores with in there. In fact, it's his lack of it that kicks off the plot, as Nils callously tosses them out of the stadium after the Warners nicely asked if he had any chocolate, so they return to the stadium to enact their revenge by humiliating him.
• Banned in China: invoked Joked about in the couch gag line of the theme song for episode 8 with Yakko singing that the show is "Illegal in Bahrain-y", complete with a no symbol superimposed over a flying flag of Bahrain.
• Big Eater: Lampshaded. When Yakko eats Norita's tablet, Wakko takes offense to that and says, "I'm the eatin' stuff guy!"
• Black Comedy: More prevalent than in the original series.
  • As part of their wild guessing about 2020, the Warners introduce a show called Clunkers, where the star, Clunko, is a talking police car that's also a time machine. Seconds later, he's crushed by a sixteen-wheeler truck, though the camera cuts away to the Warners and an audience laughing in movie seats about it.
  • In "The Cutening", Dot pulls out an apparently sentient cupcake that she considers the cutest thing she's ever seen. She decides to eat it and asks the cupcake if that's okay with it; the cupcake attempts to protest before it's promptly swallowed whole.
  • At the start of "Warners Unbound", Yakko (as a Greek god) zaps a person attempting to spray paint his statue with lightning bolts. Repeatedly.
  • Dot accepts having a zit by the end of "A Zit!" and even becomes friends with it. It unceremoniously dies after a week, with an "in memoriam" card for it at the very end of the segment.
  • Episode 10 of season 2 interrupts the opening for a "mandatory exercise break" hosted by the Warner siblings, where they're joined by a mayfly. Due to having a very short lifespan, the mayfly proceeds to rapidly age over the course of the segment while lamenting how she wanted to do more with her life, all while the Warners happily ignore her discomfort and continue with the workout. By the time the workout ends, she's dead, and the Warners mournfully attend her funeral. It then cuts back to the episode's opening sequence.
• Body Horror:
  • In "Good Warner Hunting", The Reveal that the Hunter was really Chicken Boo in disguise is shown in a frighteningly horrifying manner.
  • Brain's malfunctioning mind control device not only causes clear pain and violent mood swings in Julia, but it then catches fire inside her skull, causing Brain to speculate (thankfully wrongly) that it essentially lobotomized her — a disturbing prospect for a slapstick show.
  • In "Hindenburg Cola", Wakko's tail gets torn off by Nils, but he isn't too concerned about it, remarking that he is 5% salamander. He then proceeds to grow a new tail in nauseating detail.
• Book Ends: The series begins and ends the same way: The Warners trying and failing to make use of special one-lines - Yakko and Wakko argue over wasting their first lines and a meteor crushes them all before they can argue over their last.
• Bowdlerization:
  • In the original intro, the Earth cracks in pieces after Saturn falls on it. In the reboot theme song, the Earth is squashed, but doesn't break.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, while Nicolas Maduro appears without problems, he is not mentioned by name, unlike Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. This is justified in this case, as the dub was done in Venezuela, Maduro's home country, and the voice actors aren't allowed to make jokes about him.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs:
  • "Baby on board", "Puppies on board", and "Baby puppies on board".
  • The name of the new CEO of Warner Bros, Nora Rita Norita, also qualifies.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: As usual, the fourth wall is nonexistent to the Warners. Yakko outright mentions the first season while trying to get Dot to say something witty in the trailer.
• Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Parodied as a Literal Metaphor. In "Catch Up", Yakko says that Hillary Clinton thought the 2016 election would be a cinch after Obama's victory for the past two terms. When Dot asks if she finally broke that glass ceiling, Yakko replies that there are glass shards raining down alright. Cue a cut to Hillary and several other women hammering away at a literal glass ceiling as shards rain down everywhere.
• Brief Accent Imitation: Wakko and Yakko poke fun at each other by imitating each others' accents briefly at the beginning of "Suspended Animation: Part 1".
  Wakko: But you just wasted yours on, (puts on Transatlantic accent) "All right, guys, there's a lot of pressure on our first lines."
  Yakko: And YOU just wasted yours on, (puts on Liverpool accent) "But you just wasted yours on, 'All right guys, there's a lot of pressure on our first lines.'"
• British Teeth: Referenced when Dot examines Ralph's mouth. She proclaims that he must have pure British ancestry because of how bad they are.
  • Ralph actually has Hispanic ancestry as revealed when he is shown to be the long lost relative of Nora's family in Season 2.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Besides the Warners and Pinky and the Brain, Dr. Scratchansniff, Ralph T. Guard, and the Mime are also back.
  • In "Good Warner Hunting", Chicken Boo, Minerva Mink, Newt, Slappy Squirrel, Skippy Squirrel, Rita, Runt, Buttons, Mindy, Miles Standish from "Turkey Jerky", Mr. Skullhead, the Goodfeathers, the Hip Hippos, Katie Kaboom, Phar Fignewton, B̶a̶y̶n̶a̶r̶t̶s̶ Charlton Woodchuck, and even the Flame all return, though in non-speaking roles.
  • More prominently in the series finale the show gives us a full (albeit brief) Slappy Squirrel segment... with original voice actress Sherri Stoner reprising her role! Sherri worked double duty on the original series as both voice actress and as a writer, and many fans had assumed that Tom Ruegger's own disavowing of the revival series would have meant other former writers such as Stoner would have disavowed the series preventing a proper Slappy return. Fortunately it seemed not to be the case for Stoner, and Slappy's proper return was well received as part of the series finale.
• Bus Crash: In "Good Warner Hunting", it's revealed that every other character from the original series aside from the Warners and Pinky and the Brain were seemingly killed off by a hunter that was actually Chicken Boo in disguise. Thankfully, it's subverted at the end of the short when it's revealed that they're still alive, just really ticked off at Chicken Boo.
• Butt-Monkey: A mouse that periodically appears in the Pinky and the Brain sketches, Egwind, exists purely for the sake of getting killed, although his demise is only ever implied by the situation.
  • Starbox suffers a lot of Amusing Injuries trying to escape Cindy and reach his ship, though considering he's the leader of an alien race of Lilliputian Warriors who want to destroy the Earth, it's funny to watch him suffer.
  • Yakko has also become somewhat of a butt-monkey to a lesser extent, particularly in "WhoDonut", where he constantly gets zapped by his siblings for his Pungeon Master tendencies, even when he's a ghost. However, this is Yakko we're talking about here, so he's cool with it.

C

• Call-Back:
  • A subtle, blink-and-you-miss it one. In the opening sequence when the Warners sign their new contract, the A in Wakko's name still looks like a 2 - as it did in "The Acme Song" from "Cookies for Einstein", episode 2 of the original series.
  • Also, the lyrics "The trolls will say we're so passé, but we did meta first!" is a reference to the "Please, Please, Please Get a Life Foundation", where they troll the fandom's internet presence... in the mid-90s, nonetheless.
  • In episode 3, Wakko refers to Yakko as "Mr. Countries-of-the-World-Song" while the tune of "Yakko's World" plays in the background. This also might be a reference to "Cutie and the Beast", where Dot referenced the song when Yakko corrected her on how to say her name properly.
    • Also in Episode 3, the Warners play "The Monkey Song" from episode 1 of the original series while converting the high jump into a limbo session.
    • Another one from episode 3: Wakko's pose when he enters the tennis court resembles one of his stock arts from the original series.
  • "The Animaniacs 2020 Election Special" sees Wakko attempt to sing "Wakko's America" while in front of an electoral map.
    Wakko: Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Indianapolis, Indiana, and Columbus is the capital of Ohi- oh, it's all the same!
  • "Warner She Wrote" has Yakko play the role of "Hercule Yakko", from an episode of the original show. They even lampshade this.
  • In "Good Warner Hunting", Yakko starts making a list of all the characters who had appeared in the old show. They even make a deep cut of mentioning a character that only appeared in two episodes.
  • In "Of Mice and Memes", Brain mentions the human brain, leading to Pinky shouting in terror "There's a human you?!?!". A similar situation happened back in the spin-off episode "Brainwashed Part 1: Brain Brain Go Away", where Pinky assumes Hillary Clinton's statement about the human brain is about Brain himself, leading to him to say to Brain "There's a human version of you? Oooh, scary!".
  • In "Manny Manspreader", Wakko drinks Abyss Boy, the drink that served as the plot catalyst in "Potty Emergency".
  • When Brain and Pinky get fused together in "Backwards Pinky", Pinky suggests "Brinky" as a name for them, a title of one of their segments in the original show.
  • "Talladega Mice: The Ballad of Pinky Brainy" has one to the infamous "Opportunity Knox" and how Brain's plan to rob Fort Knox was an Epic Fail because he neglected to consider he and Pinky couldn't lift a single bar of gold.
• The Cameo:
  • Death from the segment "Meatballs or Consequences" of the original series makes a cameo in the theme song, with the Warners signing a contract to him.
  • A number of Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera characters as well as Buster and Babs Bunny and "whatever these guys are" appear in "Suffragette City".
  • A very bored Bugs Bunny and later zombified versions of him, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig appear on posters parodying how Looney Tunes has become a Franchise Zombie.
  • In the episode "Good Warner Hunting" the Warners start to wonder what happened to all the characters from the original series. The hunter (who is revealed to be Chicken Boo) reveals that he hunted down and supposedly "killed" each of the characters. After Chicken Boo reveals himself, he escapes the Warners, only to be confronted by the characters from the original series revealing that not only are they still alive, but they were kidnapped by Chicken Boo.
    • Additionally, Mr. Skullhead appears as "Mr. Lul Head" in a comment on the troll's computer in the theme song.
  • Pepe le Pew appears in "Yakko Amakko", when the animator draws him in the place of Yakko's ice cream.
• Canon Discontinuity: The Pinky and the Brain short "Of Mice and Memes" starts in late 1998 and reveals Brain was working on his latest plan for 22 years, confirming Tom Ruegger's tweet about Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain being non-canon.
• Catching Up on History: In the first episode, the Warner siblings sing about what they missed in the past 22 years such as smartphones, rising sea levels, the recession, Uber, Youtubers, Pluto as a dwarf planet, online shopping, and the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations. They lampshade that since the show is written in 2018 due to Production Lead Time, they sing predictions about the next two years such as chips in their brains, further climate disasters, living underground, living in Mars, and a movie about a time-travelling talking police car.
• Cast as a Mask: Dr. Walter Grubb is voiced by Danny Jacobs. He's actually Chicken Boo in disguise, once again voiced by Frank Welker.
• Chained Heat: The segment "Backwards Pinky" involves Brain and Pinky accidentally becoming conjoined together, and Brain trying to work his plan around it.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The gross-looking pigeon at the beginning of "The Cutening" proves essential to reversing the Cutening, as the Warners lick it to unleash a World-Healing Wave of gross sludge that returns everything to normal.
• Company Cameo:
  • Hulu, the place where this show is streamed, receives a few references, such as their logo appearing on the Warners' clothes when they lampshade their selling out.
  • This series retains references to Warner Bros. like the original series did, including the Warner siblings, the Warner Bros. water tower, and the movie lot that the trio occupy.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Wakko's still afraid of clowns... though Nickelwise is ironically alright with him.
  • In "Manny Manspreader", Wakko drinks Abyss Boy, the drink that served as the catalyst for the events of "Potty Emergency".
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Nora Rita Norita, the new CEO of the Warner Brothers studio, is still somewhat of an antagonist and a Mean Boss, but she's a very different type of character than Thaddeus Plotz, and her attitude towards the Warners is very different. Plotz was temperamental, slightly bumbling and a bit of a cheapskate who really had it out for the Warners, though he got some Pet the Dog moments to show that he wasn't all bad. Nora Rita is less of a bumbler, but more emotionally distant and is generally seen doing exercises while talking on the phone. Her attitude towards the Warners is more of a slightly hostile disinterest; she just plain doesn't have time for their nonsense. It even plays to how the Warners react to her compared to Plotz; they wouldn't stop leaving Plotz alone until he inevitably sent Ralph to catch them. Norita just plain shoos them out all on her own, even to the point that it terrifies the siblings.
• Couch Gag: As they did in the original series, the second-last line of the theme song has a different line that ends with a rhyme for "zany", even if it's usually forced.
• Commercial Break Cliffhanger: Just like the original series, if a certain segment exceeds the 7-minute time-limit, there will be a break in the segment, since Hulu runs ads during their shows.
• Crocodile Tears: In Season 2's YouTuber Apology Parody, Dot sobs into a tissue, calmly adjusts the camera, then continues sobbing.
• Curse Cut Short:
  • In "Warner She Wrote", the dognapper turns out to be the train conductor, who has a tendency to mess up his words and say something completely different. When the dog attacks him at the end, he calls it a "Monster Trucker", prompting this reply:
    Wakko: Oh, I think he meant mo—
    Yakko: Ah-ah, not in front of the kids.
  • In "How to Brain Your Dragon":
    Pinky: But, you hate the arts, Brain. You always say that The Renaissance is French for bull—- *SLAP*
  • During Scratchansniff's song in "Wakkiver Twist":
  If it should chance to be that you have made a small mistake
  Or need a bathroom break- tough luck!
  So go out and sing and dance, and if you pee your pants
  Then I don't give a—
  Yakko: (slapping his hand over his mouth) Goodnight, everybody!
  • In Yakko's "everything about earth" song:
  Industrial next, its major effect
  To take us from towns to the city
  We mined coals and built trains, machines plowed our grains
  And we treated the workers real shi-
  Alien: How many more of your Earth seconds is this going to take?
  Yakko: Well-timed interruption. Almost there, I promise!

D-F

• Dangerously Garish Environment: Downplayed for the cuter version of Earth seen in "The Cutening", which is very brightly-coloured and has things like anthropomorphic objects and Amazing Technicolor Wildlife. It's not dangerous so much as mind-numbingly annoying to the Warner siblings, to the point where they claim to be losing their minds, but it's really more an exaggeration. However, one aspect of this world is that all the dogs are puppies, and they're all sad.
• Dark Reprise: The Animanyet theme is the Animaniacs theme, but in minor key and with significantly more Communist propaganda.
• Demoted to Extra: Dr. Scratchansniff was a major supporting character in the original show, but he's only in two episodes of the first season here — and one of his appearances is a brief, non-speaking cameo. Dot Lampshades this in "Hindenberg Cola", when she exclaims "Dr. Scratchansniff! Oh, we haven't seen you all season!"
• Deranged Animation: Happens fairly frequently, almost more so than the original show.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Dot decides to sing a song about all forty-five first ladies... in just two minutes, despite the concerns of her brothers. By the time one minute has passed, she finds that she has only covered eleven of them, and must hastily rush through the rest of the song to cover them all.
  • In the episode "Yakko's Big Idea", the Warners decide to reenact a reality show where people pitch ideas to billionaires, which if said billionaires don't like, the pitcher gets dumped into a pit of fire. Yakko is the pitcher, specifically of recently discovered potentially habitable planets. After the undesirable atmospheres of Pegasi 51-B and Kepler 186-F fail to impress his siblings, he then pitches WB-1, a planet that seems perfect in every way, with free pizza and shopping, oceans of candy, an air that smells like sweet perfume. His siblings are instantly sold, but have just one question: how will they get there if these new planets are all billions of miles away? Yakko admits he didn't think of that...plus the fact that he made that last planet up.
• Downer Ending: The final scene of the reboot involves the Warners acknowledging that with no word on another season, there is a good chance their renewed show has come to an end. The fact that a giant meteor is about to pretty much kill everyone does not help matters at all.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Dr. Scratchansniff has a cameo in "The Cutening" before his official return in "Hindenberg Cola".
• Ear Trumpet: In "Hindenburg Cola", the elderly shopkeeper uses one, and still has trouble hearing what the Warners want to purchase. Yakko has to shout and use the trumpet as a megaphone to get him to hear them clearly.
• Ecocidal Antagonist: Josh Polar from the episode "Global Warnering". A polar bear realtor who, while not actively harming the environment, is betting on climate change worsening so his arctic real estate becomes valuable, tropical, and necessary.
  Josh Polar: Here comes the sea-ea-ea / It fills me with glee-ee-ee,
  When glaciers are dying / everyone's buying / new beach property!
  Location is the golden rule / and we've got the world's most spacious pool!
  ''Did I mention it's heated? / No credit needed! / Here's your new key!'
• End-of-Series Awareness: The final segment of the reboot has the Warners aware that the show has been Screwed by the Network only to then be abruptly Killed Off for Real.
• Entertainingly Wrong: In "Catch Up", the Warners make wild guesses about what 2020 will be like, as their script was written in 2018. Some of them include having chips in our brains, feeling no pain, more climate disasters, and living underground to hide from our polar bear masters.
• Epic Fail: Pinky at one point tells Brain about how he somehow managed to fail a Buzzfeed quiz.
• Escaped from Hell: Nils ended up in Hell at the end of his debut episode, but escapes offscreen to return in the season finale.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: At the end of the series, the characters are aware of the series ending, and thus, are killed off.
• Expy: Besides the cameos listed above, "Suffragette City" features several characters based on others from various franchises, among them Link, Mario, Agumon, a couple of Disney-esque ducks and a luchador who looks like El Superbeasto.
• Extreme Omnivore: Wakko is still packing away the snacks in the opening, and he chomps on everything from smartphones to ping pong balls.
• Eye Beams: Dot uses them in "The Cutening" to turn the entire world cute.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Having been locked away for another 22 years, the Warners are understandably behind on current pop culture, which they lampshade in "Catch Up". They also note that their script was written in 2018, so they can only make wild guesses about what life is like in 2020 when they air. Those wild guesses quickly verge into their usual insane and silly antics.
  Yakko: And now there's a President Truuuu... least we think there's still a President Trump. You see, the writers are writing this in 2018.
  Wakko: How is that possible? [kicks away a box labeled "TBD"] The people rely on Animaniacs for outrageous and relevant content.
• Floorboard Failure: In the theme song, Yakko takes Ralph's chair away while Dot and Wakko tickle him, causing him to collapse and break the floor. This was changed from the original theme, where Yakko instead pulls a lever to make Scratchansniff's chair fall to the ground with him.
• Forced Transformation: Disgusted by the grossness of daily life, Dot decides to cutify the entire world in "The Cutening", starting with her own brother Yakko, who, like most people, is opposed to it.
  Yakko: Wait, wait, Dot. You don't have to make everything cute.
  Dot: Yes, yes I do!
  Yakko: No, no! I'm the one who yaks! I've got a rakish charm about me!
• Foreshadowing: The hunter chasing the Warners in "Good Warner Hunting" has rather tiny feet with noticeable three points: two in the front and one in the back, which aren't shaped like a human foot. This foreshadows his true identity as Chicken Boo, as this is the shape of a chicken's foot.
• Forgot I Couldn't Swim: In "Gold Meddlers", Yakko goes up to compete in the high dive. Right before he does, Dot points out that he never learned to swim, so he ends up belly flopping after breaking the sound barrier and igniting from reentry, displacing all the water in the pool in the process.
• Four-Fingered Hands: Unlike the original series, the human characters, including Scratchy and Ralph, now have five fingers on each hand instead of four.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: During the after show segment, there's a crawl underneath the headline making various jokes while the scene is going on. One even says "Trolls will say new season is not as good as the original even before it airs".

G-J

• Girlboss Feminist: Nora Rita Norita is Thaddeus Plotz's successor as head of Warner Bros. Pictures. When Dot tries to ask her for some advice on being a businesswoman, Nora rebuffs her and states that she is a firm believer in "pulling the corporate ladder up behind me".
• G.I.R.L.: Spoofed. Pinky is trying online dating out but expresses concern about being catfished online. He turns the phone around to reveal that the profile picture is an actual catfish.
• Gonk: There are a good bunch of human designs that are just unsettling to look at.
• Groin Attack: During the discus throw in "Gold Meddlers", Wakko is compelled by dog-like instincts to chase after Nils' discus. He then rushes to him and "returns" the discus by flicking his head up, tossing the discus straight into Nils' groin.
• Gross-Up Close-Up:
  • Wakko's sandwich in the first episode, in all its moldy glory since being left unattended in the water tower.
  • The second episode has Odysseus being rubbed against the cyclops' out-of-shape and otherwise flakey body as his loofah, causing him to beg forgiveness to the Warners.
  • On Marie Antoinette's fingernails in one segment.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop:
  • In "Run Pinky Run!" Pinky is stuck in a loop where he must acquire money to pay off some gangsters who hve kidnapped Brain.
  • The episode "Groundmouse Day" has Brain repeatedly trying to take over the world by co-opting a Groundhog Day ceremony, while stuck in a time loop, in a parody of Groundhog Day.
• Halloween Episode: Episode 11 which has a spooky theme to it complete with a Special Edition Title. ^note Ironically when this aired, it was three weeks past the holiday (11-20-20). Scenes from the episode were used in ads during Halloween week before the series premiered.
• Here We Go Again!: Wakko spends the entirety of waiting for his game to load in "Now Loading...", only for the cycle to restart anew when he's enticed by an ad for another game once it finally launches.
• Horrifying the Horror:
  • The Warners inadvertently did this to Nickelwise the Dancing Clown.
  • In a sense, Nora Rita Norita's psychotic outburst is too much even for the Warners, who are visibly unnerved by it and escape from the room.
• Hubris: What made Odysseus bully the Warners, which turned out not to be a good idea…
  Odysseus: My hubris just gave me an idea!
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • When the Expository Theme Tune claims the cast to be "gender balanced", the main trio is shown on a balance scale with Yakko and Wakko on one side clearly outweighing Dot on the other, as if to pointedly remind you that the main trio is in fact still two guys to only one girl. ^note Of course you can't really balance a trio, but that's not the joke.
  • Yakko remarks that reboots are a sign of a complete lack of creativity in Hollywood... right before accepting a massive check to reboot his own series. Wakko then clarifies that it's only cool when they do it, because they admit to it.
  • The Warners are disgusted when a lady chews up her dog's own treats to feed to it like a baby bird. As soon as the Warners walk off screen, Wakko stretches his neck over to ask if the dog and the lady were going to finish that.
  • After viewing some scrapped characters, Dot notes that characters have to be "dynamic, relatable, and complex" in order to make it into the show, which causes all three of the siblings to note their most notable character-defining aspects—Wakko always being hungry, Yakko being talkative, and Dot being a girl.
• Ignored Epiphany: Brain witnessing Pinky's hands carry him into a convenience store and set it on fire in "Plight of Hand" makes Brain briefly consider whether his scientific hubris has gone too far in creating an effectively unstoppable force. He then shakes it off with a "nah".
• Ingesting Knowledge: Yakko manages to learn about everything that's happened in the past 22 years by swallowing a computer tablet like a pill tablet.
• The Internet Is for Cats: The Brain tells Pinky that cute silly animal videos are actually more popular than that other thing the Internet is known for and tries to exploit this by creating his own cute silly animal video with a mind control payload and trying to get it to go viral.
• Jerkass Gods: In the second episode, the Warners take on the roles of the Greek gods. All three Warner siblings use their godly powers to smite people with reckless abandon, just for vandalizing their statues, doing it so often that they start developing carpel tunnel from it. They also go out of their way to try and torture Odysseus after he splashes water all of them while they were on vacation, though, he had it coming.
• Jerk Jock:
  • Nils Niedhart is Lichtenstein's athlete for a pastiche of the Olympics and is amazingly talented at every imaginable sport. But he's also an insufferable blowhard who makes the mistake of pissing off the Warners, turning what should have been a glorious streak of gold medals into one long Humiliation Conga.
  • Odysseus in "Warners Unbound". He's such a jerk to the Warners that they send punishments his way. Unfortunately for them, Odysseus takes to most of said "punishments" pretty well, at least until they send him to the cyclops.

L-O

• Lame Pun Reaction: After Wakko loses a donut, Yakko says they have a real "who-donut" on their hands. Dot and Wakko promptly zap Yakko with "pun guns", with shock him with electricity. As Yakko continues to make bad puns, Dot keeps zapping him until Yakko's ghost shows up. Then Dot zaps Yakko's ghost back into his body.
• Laser Hallway: Wakko goes through one to retrieve his (gross) sandwich. After he retrieves it, he sets off the alarm anyway. Turns out going through it was just his "Happy Sandwich Dance".
• Last-Second Word Swap:
  Pinky: Shut the ffffront door!
• Latex Perfection:
  • In "Good Warner Hunting", in contrast to his Paper Thin Disguises from the original series, Chicken Boo's disguise as a hunter is amazingly good.
  • In "Reichenbrain Falls", Julia uses a papier mache mask to convincingly disguise herself as Pinky.
• Lies to Children: Dr. Scratchansniff tries to scare Yakko, Wakko, and Dot into admitting their lies by telling them about a monster called the Hamburg Tickler who eats the toes of lying children—namely, his own. It works, but the end of the segment reveals not only that Dr. Scratchansniff was lying about the story, but also that the Hamburg Tickler is Real After All and begins to go after him for lying to the Warners.
• Logic Bomb: When Pinky and the Brain are nearly killed by Brain's creation gone rogue, Pinky asks for one final question before his demise. Said question is, "If I eat myself, will I grow twice as big, or completely disappear?" The robot malfunctions and self destructs, as Pinky had apparently given it "The philosophical equivalent of dividing by zero."
• Long List: A variation on it in "Now Loading...", where one of the many, many hoops Wakko has to jump through for starting the game is scrolling through a never-ending list of terms and agreements. By the end of it, he's been scrolling through it for so long that his right arm has grown tons of muscle.
• Lost in Translation: Just like his predecessor show, the 2020 version suffers of this in most dubbed versions outside English, but due to both cultural differences and the very notorious language drift English language suffered since the 1990s, this trope is more notorious than before. This is especially more visible when many foreign dubs had to translate all the American acronyms, legal speech, memes and obscure terminology in languages that discourage its use, which cause some awkward translations when there's no local acceptable equivalents of such terms.
• Major General Song: "Ancient Roman Emperor" from "Rome Sweet Rome". Wakko says that the one Yakko sang in the original was better.
• Medium Blending: The penultimate scene in "Mouse Madness".
• Merging Mistake: Pinky and the Brain in "Backwards Brain" end up fused with one another for the majority of the episode.
• Mickey Mousing: Parodied and played straight in the "Here Comes Treble" segment.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Dot turns a simple math problem into a dramatic story for Math-terpiece Theatre.
• My Greatest Failure: "All's Fair in Love and Door" reveals Brain regrets how he treated Julia and recognized he had real feelings for her, and has created a digital simulation where he lives out the fantasy of how a regular married life with Julia might have gone down. Of course it all falls apart when Pinky reveals to the A.I. Julia she is just a simulation, and the A.I. goes rogue.
• Mythology Gag:
  • At one point when the Warners are spinning around, Wakko finally does his trademark gookie.
  • In "Animani-Nyet", original writer Randy Rogel (who wrote "Yakko's World", "Wakko's America", "I'm Cute", and many other episodes and songs) appears as himself, having been held hostage by the Kremlin. He also co-wrote the song in the episode. (Since Rogel had previously toured with Rob Paulsen, it was probably the least he could do on the show as a favor.)
  • Nora Rita Norita still has a portrait of Thaddeus Plotz, the original CEO of Warner Brothers in the 1993 show, hanging in her office.
  • "Island of Dr. Warnerau" recreates the Warner's first meeting with Dr. Scratchansniff in the original series (complete with Scratchy pulling his hair out!), but seen from the perspective of his brother Jürgen.
  • "Talladega Mice: The Ballad of Pinky" has Brain formulating a plan to steal gold from Fort Knox. Pinky points out they already tried to steal gold from Fort Knox during the events of the original series.
• National Animal Stereotypes: One episode features the American bald eagle and two Russian brown bears.
• Never Recycle Your Schemes: Averted in "Talladega Mice: The Ballad of Pinky Brainy", where Brain reveals he plans to create an army of mouse-controlled robot cars to rob Fort Knox, with Pinky pointing out they had done that before. Brain replies this time, the plan is more thought out.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • Episode 8 has a newcaster named Raquel Madcow.
  • Another episode features a parody of Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
  • Season 2's corporate supervillain "Baldo Billions" is an expy of Amazon's Jeff Bezos.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Normally, Squit of the Goodfeathers is a Perpetual Smiler and Nice Guy. In "Good Warner Hunting", however, after being saved by the Warners, he is visibly LIVID, and brandishing a baseball bat. Needless to say, Squit REALLY wants to end Chicken Boo.
  • "Fear and Laughter in Burbank" has Yakko. When Nickelwise tries to scare Dot by showing her as a no-longer-cute old woman and Wakko with plastic food, they're both fine — Dot is excited by the prospect of seeing her future, and Wakko eats all the plastic food anyway. However, when Nickelwise lures Yakko into an empty office environment where there's nobody there to laugh with him, then doesn't react to his jokes, revealing Yakko's fear of people not finding him funny and not being able to "yack" anymore after Nickelwise ties his tongue? The kid breaks, and becomes a screaming, terrified mess. The normally confident, smart-aleck, five-steps-ahead-of-his-foes Yakko is the ONLY ONE of the Warner siblings who the clown manages to scare, and he comes very close to losing his soul before Wakko and Dot show up. He's visibly and audibly shaken by this after he comes to, and only goes back to his usual self after his brother and sister reassure him that they do think he's funny (and that they're both okay after their encounters with Nickelwise).
• Overly Long Gag: The entirety of "Now Loading...", which is basically one long gag of Wakko simply waiting for his new smartphone game to load.
• Overly Narrow Superlative:
  • When being confronted by Nickelwise, Dot says that Yakko is easily one of her top-two funniest brothers. She only has two brothers.
  • In the press conference segment in Episode 10, the ticker says "Wakko's Wish now the highest grossing Animaniacs movie of 1999".
• Overly Pre-Prepared Gag: "France France Revolution" is basically a seven-minute setup to get Marie Antoinette to say "Let 'em eat cake" (which, for the record, she never actually said in real life). The premise and ending is very similar to "The Three Muskewarners".
• Overshadowed by Awesome: In the third episode, Wakko feels a bit bitter over "Mr. Countries-of-the-World Song"'s signature number being more memorable than his own "Wakko's America" song. He can't even bring himself to sing more than the first verse in "The Animaniacs 2020 Election Special".

P-S

• Pluto Is Expendable: When Yakko sings the song about what the Warners were missing since 1998, he brings up how Neil deGrasse Tyson demoted Pluto to a dwarf planet.
• Politicians Kiss Babies:
  • Brain attempts this while running for president in "Mousechurian Candidate".
  • A drone (that's running for president in a different segment) also does this in "The Animaniacs 2020 Election Special".
• Precision F-Strike: In "Pinko and the Brain", somehow, the Brain gets away with saying "Hell". As does Wakko in "Hindenburg Cola". Also, in the song "A Brief History of History," Yakko sings the line "and we treated the workers real shitty." Although he is interrupted by the aliens, you can actually hear him finish the word if you listen closely.
• Production Lead Time: Discussed in the musical number "Catch Up". The show was released in 2020, but it was written in 2018. The Warners acknowledge this by reciting the presidential elections of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, while admitting with the latter that they only think Trump is still president in 2020 because of the lead time. Dot and Wakko lament that this means the Warners have two years' worth of events they can't use for the show's topical humor like normal. They resort to in-universe Wild Mass Guessing as to what happened between 2018 and 2020, including that the world is run by polar bears and that the top-rated show on TV is about a time-travelling police car that can talk.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Both Thaddeus Plotz and Hello Nurse are absent in this series. Plotz is now retired and has been replaced as the studio CEO by new character Nora Rita Norita, and Hello Nurse's absence is explained in the last episode of the first season—according to Dr. Scratchansniff, she joined Doctors Without Borders.
  • Also, entire segments have been put on a bus. In addition to all the characters not named Yakko, Wakko, Dot, Ralph, Scratchansniff, Pinky, or Brain, the "link" sketches (the Warners escaping the water tower, getting chased by Ralph, or returning to the water tower to evade capture from Ralph), the Wheel of Morality, the Randy Beaman Kid, Dot's Poetry Corner, Mime Time, Good Idea Bad Idea, and the final gag at the water tower after the credits or even the gag credits have also been completely abandoned.
  • In addition, two creations of Paul Rugg, Mr. Director ("Froyn-LAY-ven!!!") and the strict schoolmarm Miss Flamiel, have yet to make appearances.
• Real After All: The Hamburg Tickler, from the segment of the same name.
• Recycled Premise: "Here Comes Treble" is essentially a remake of one of the original show's finale shorts "The Scoring Session", but without Neivel Nosenest or the entire cast serving as the orchestra.
  • "Backwards Pinky" channels Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain's "Teleport-A-Friend".
• Recurring Extra: Yakko, Wakko, and Dot background characters appear in every episode.
• Revolting Rescue: In "The Cutening", the world turns into an overly-cutesy place, and to get it back to normal, the Warner siblings lick a pigeon and throw up.
• Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: The series finale where a giant meteor crashes into Earth killing everyone. Arguably as cartoon characters its meant to be played for laughs, but many fans found it to be anti-climactic and a dour ending for the show. Word of God would confirm that the Warners survive in spite of the copout.
• Ruder and Cruder: Slightly, the original show held back a bit due to TV censors and guidelines. This version, being on a streaming service with more lax standards and with a higher rating (TV-PG instead of TV-Y), gets away with a lot more mature jokes and the characters are a bit meaner to each other. Humorously, it was temporarily cranked up even further when the second season initially premiered with a TV-14 rating due to a technical error in Hulu's database.
• Running Gag: Wakko and Dot, especially during season 2, become visibly exasperated and annoyed when "Mr. Countries of the World Song" cues up another musical number.
  Dot: (shushing Yakko) Here's your first note sweetie. Don't start every single song with the words, "You See".
• Rushmore Refacement: After The Brain hypnotizes the masses using social media, he gets permission from the U.S. Government to add his face to Mount Rushmore.
• The Scrappy: Invoked: In "Good Warner Hunting" Yakko and Dot gleefully tell Chicken Boo he was the most hated sketch in the original series.
• Self-Deprecation:
  • The Warners denounce reboots as symptomatic of a lack of originality in Hollywood... before accepting a check from Hulu to revive their own show.
  • The Jurassic Park trailer depicts Hulu as a greedy businessman who can't wait to make a fortune off the Warners.
  • In the first episode's version of the series' theme song, Dot is seen decked out entirely in Animaniacs merchandise and eating Animaniacs-brand cereal while beaming at the camera and saying, "Have no shame-y!"
  • The second song the siblings sing in this reboot is one that's a Take That! to reboots.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: "Now Loading..." is one big Overly Long Gag of Wakko waiting for his new smartphone game to load. Once it finally does after jumping through every possible hoop, he is distracted by an ad for another game and decides to check it out instead without even booting the one he just spent years preparing for, restarting the whole cycle all over again.
• Shout-Out: As with the original series, this series makes a lot of references to popular culture.
  • The troll in the new theme song is a parody of the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons.
    • Heck, his screen name is even 'Graphic Novel Guy'.
  • When the kids wander around the movie lot, they see Wonder Woman, Batman, Harry Potter and more.
  • After ingesting the tablet, Yakko mentions Beyoncé by her nickname "Queen Bey"^note Mispronounced as "Bay", no less. Additionally, photos of various post-1998 pop culture including the second SpongeBob SquarePants Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon and an image of a Tamagotchi float fly around Yakko's head.
  • The musical number about what has happened after 1998 has a bit where the Warners mention how they've run out of 90s jokes, and it proceeds to show a shot of them referencing various 90s shows such as Friends and Blossom (with Bill Clinton even playing the latter show's theme on the sax!).
  • The song about television reboots references Charmed, The X-Files, Full House, Murphy Brown, Melrose Place, Gilmore Girls, Lost in Space, That's So Raven, The Golden Girls, Will & Grace, Dynasty (1981), Blue's Clues, Twin Peaks, Fargo, Carmen Sandiego, Looney Tunes, Queer Eye, and DuckTales, all of which have or have had reboots. Also, they mention My Super Sweet Sixteen as if it were a reboot of Sweet Sixteen.
    • Before the song even begins, they mention that Star Trek is back.
    • Additionally, the ghost of Bea Arthur closes the first episode like Tinker Bell.
  • In "Pinko and the Brain", the "Are you pondering" bit has Pinky wondering what Steam Powered Giraffes eat.
  • In "Good Warner Hunting", the hunter being revealed to be Chicken Boo in disguise is treated as a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax at the end of a trope namer episode.
  • In episode 4, Nora suggests that the Warners fill out a comment card on the nineteenth floor, and Yakko responds "But there is no nineteenth floor!"
  • Dot's freak-out after learning that cartoons couldn't vote in "Suffragette City" comes straight out of The Miniavengers.
  • Brain accidentally locks himself and Pinky inside his Model B self-driving car in "Roadent Trip", and asks it to open the doors. The car responds with "I'm sorry, Brain. I'm afraid I can't do that."
  • In Yakko's rap-off with Jay-Pac, the latter says Wakko is "less likable than Elmyra."
  • The Cheers parody segment in episode 2.02 includes an onscreen credit for "Brooklyn Rage".
  • During "Yakko Amakko", Yakko claims that the "hole-in-the-sky gag" used by the animator was "straight out of Portal 2".
  • "The Warners are Present" references multiple real-life art pieces:
    • The orange and yellow painting appears to be Orange and Yellow by Mark Rothko.
    • The signed urinal is a reference to Fountain by Marcel Duchamp.
    • The painting that shows a mountain with the text "I DON'T GET IT" resembles multiple pieces by Ed Ruscha that depict Word Salad text over images of mountains.
    • The Warners encounter Marina Abramović during The Artist is Present, an actual performance art piece that she performed in 2010, which indeed consisted of her sitting silently at a table and locking eyes with various strangers.
    • The pizza place that the Warners and artists visit at the end of the segment resembles the diner from Nighthawks by Edward Hopper.
  • The end of "Narf Over Troubled Water" is a parody of the end of The Graduate, complete with Brain having a tablecloth rip over his head to imitate a bridal veil.
  • The two-parter episode "WARnerGAMES" in Season 3 has the Warners becoming playable characters in Wakko's video game, Brawl and Bash Siblings, which is a reference to the Super Smash Bros. series of video games (Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, specifically). There are even parodies of Mario, Luigi, Donkey Kong and Bowser — the Spanish carpenter sisters Maria and Luisa, Jackass Monkey, and Beastwipe.
• Shown Their Work:
  • When the Warners introduce themselves during the anime-styled segment, their names flash across the screen in katakana.
  • Feathered dinosaurs are referenced in "WhoDonut" and "A Brief History of History".
  • After spitting out bad coffee, Brain suggests de-stablilizing Guatemala in "Pinko And The Brain", set in 1953. President Jacobo Arbenz was deposed in 1954 with significant State Department and CIA influence, but on behalf of the United Fruit Company, not coffee merchants.
  • In "Warner's Ark", Yakko points out monotremes are the only mammals that lay eggs, giving platypuses and echidnas as examples.
  • "Christopher Columbus-ted" pulls no punches in pointing out Christopher Columbus's less-than-pleasant qualities in real life, particularly the crimes he committed against the Indigenous peoples of America.
  • At the end of "Groundmouse Day Again", Brain points out to Pinky that crocodiles are differentiated from alligators by having interlaced teeth (in contrast to the overlapping teeth of alligators) when correcting him in calling an alligator plushie as "Crocodile Brain".
• Side Effects Include...: Zobroflex, the prescription medication that the Warners develop, causes headaches, sweating, blurred vision, dry mouth, rapid and irreversible aging, permanent fedora, penguin teeth, one long hair in your armpit, restless legs, and fear of clocks. Wakko, who took the medication, experiences all of them in sequence as Dot lists them out.
• Smart Animal, Inconvenient Instincts: The Warners are all Cartoon Creatures referred to as "puppy children". While the Warners will deny this, Wakko undoubtedly acts like a dog on multiple occasions, such as chasing after Nils' discus like a frisbee and returning it to him while sitting on all fours. He even barks while running after it.
• Smash to Black: Unlike the original series, which often has iris outs and fade to black transitions, this is how all of the episodes end.
• Sickeningly Sweet: In "The Cutening", Dot cutifies everything in the world, turning the entire Earth into a colorful land free of pollution and full of cutesy creatures with huge eyes. Several days later, everyone is sick of this, as sugar is coming out of Yakko's eyes, and the Warners quickly try to reverse what they've done by doing something incredibly gross.
• Squashed Flat: While we don't see his flattened body afterward, this happens to a boy during the title sequence when a television that he's watching on tips over on top of him.
• Stock Scream: Batman does the Wilhelm Scream in "Suspended Animation, Part 1" after the Warners accidentally bump into him.
• String Theory: The Animaniacs (2020) episode "Aliens Resurrected" opens with Wacko having filled the inside of the watertower with conspircy theories involving aliens, all connected by string.
• Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: In "The Pinktator" Kim Jong-un brought a guest named Soo Yun the ghost.
• Stylistic Suck: The Show Within a Show "Backwards Brian" in "Backwards Brain", which features extremely crude MS Paint-level artwork and precisely features one gag: a guy with his face on the back of his head screams at the world.
• Super Cute Superpowers: ''The Cutening" has Dot mention the trope by name when she realizes the cupcake she ate gave her the power to shoot rainbows from her eyes that cutie-fy whatever they hit.
• Super Spit: In "Gold Meddlers", Wakko eats all the ping pong balls Nils throws at him in the middle of a sports competition. He then proceeds to plate the table before hitting his stomach to burp up all the ping pongs, ricocheting off the table at such speeds that they essentially punch Nils in the face. He then burps up three more that hit the scoreboard.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The latter character of "Starbox and Cindy" appears to be this for Mindy from the original. Her name even rhymes.
  • Cindy's treatment of Starbox also feels like a more toned down version of Elmyra's relationship with Pinky & the Brain in the trio's infamous spin-off series.

T-U

• Take That!:
  • While being driven around the WB lot, a group of tourists are excited to see the sound stage where a Batman movie was filmed... only to audibly groan after learning the movie in question was Batman v Superman.
  • The second episode has Odysseus treat Hades like it's an episode of Aegean Ninja Warrior, only for him to beg for mercy after spending two minutes with a certain bragging orange cyclops. When Yakko suggests getting rid of said cyclops, Dot responds that they can't.
    Dot: Remember? The Roman Gods meddled with our affairs and made him a demigod. Or was it a demagogue?^note A demagogue is where a person deliberately stirs up hatred to gather support. Adolf Hitler and Joseph McCarthy were particularly infamous for this tactic.
  • Blink and you'll miss it, but during "Catch Up", Fox News is depicted with the logo "Faux News." They would later appear with this same name in a later episode, in particular with an Expy of host Tucker Carlson.
  • The Russians are also shown in "Catch Up" as openly meddling in the U.S. Election in 2016, consisting of Russian Bots.
  • In the last episode, there's a slow motion scene, to which Yakko (in normal speed) glares at the camera and says, "Hey, Zack Snyder! It's a 7-minute segment! Move it along!"
  • The second song the siblings sing in the series is one to other reboots. Also doubles as Self-Deprecation, since it's a reboot complaining about reboots.
  • Dwayne LaPistol is an Expy of Wayne LaPierre, longtime executive vice president of the National Rifle Association. But unlike Wayne's love of guns, Dwayne loves buns. Specifically, bunnies. However, LaPistol is treated as creepy with how obsessed he is with his "buns", and is treated as a force for the Warners to defeat.
  • Jay-Pac's diss track to the Warners in "Gift Rapper" has one to Elmyra, who was the Creator's Pet back in the 90s.
    Wakko's even less likable than Elmyra!
  • The entire segment of Anima-nyet is a giant jab at (Soviet) Russia, with numerous to Putin, Trump, and Nicolas Maduro.
  • Young Earth creationism gets a jab in the song "A Brief History of History".
    Eight-thousand B.C.
    Creation theory would dictate this song should start here.
    Though most of our herd agree it's absurd,
    Some teach it in place of Shakespeare.
  • In "Yakko's Big Idea", Dot says that Improv is the weakest form of all comedy.
  • In "The Longest Word", Dot's segment has her avoid having to do any actual teaching to Yakko and Wakko by putting on a show about four nerds who teach about the Big Bang Theory. In Spanish. After a rather weak joke on the show...
  Wakko: Guess the humor gets lost in translation?
  Yakko: Nope!
  • The montage of failed Pinky and the Brain pilots ruthlessly mocks the idea of Pinky and the Brain starring in a sitcom — the very same desire that once led the studio to order they be moved to suburbia with Elmyra.
  • In "WARnerGAMES", Yakko describes every Terminator movie after T2 as "awful".
• Take That, Audience!: The new lyrics for the opening theme contain a thinly-veiled mockery of fans complaining about the "differences" the new series has compared to the original.
  A brand-new cast who tested well in focus group research!
  Gender-balanced, pronoun-neutral, and ethnically diverse!
  The trolls will say we're so passé, but we did meta first!
• Terrible Trio: In Season 2, there's a recurring trio of dictators whom the Brain clashes with in his attempts to take over the world, consisting of Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un and Nicolás Maduro. Putin is clearly the leader of the trio.
• Titled After the Song: "Suffragette City" is named after the David Bowie song of the same name, off The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
• Title Drop: Lampshaded:
  Wakko: Looks like we're gonna have to become Gold Meddlers!
  Dot: Title of the sketch?
  Wakko: Title of the sketch.
  (Freeze Frame, title "Gold Meddlers")
• The Bus Came Back: Thaddeus Plotz himself appears as the judge in the show's Oliver Twist parody.
• Took a Level in Badass: Chicken Boo surprisingly enough. The original series showed him as being unable to pull off nothing more than a Paper-Thin Disguise that somehow nobody but one person failed to notice. This time, he's mastered Latex Perfection, and can even change his voice!
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Dr. Scratchansniff, who in the last episode of season one turns out to have had enough of being the Warners' Butt-Monkey and wants to take advantage of the reboot to relaunch himself as "the new and improved Dr. Otto von Scratchansniff."
• Top-Heavy Guy: Nils Niedhart is amazingly muscular, but his upper body dwarfs his lower body, not that it impacts his athletic performance.
• Trumplica:
  • In The Odyssey-themed episode "Warners Unbound", the giant cyclops Odysseus encounters on his journey named Polyphemus is depicted as looking and acting like Donald Trump. Said cyclops engages in grandiose bragging about his island, similar to Trump's tendency to play things up in his speeches while he was President of the United States.
  • Done yet again in "Rome Sweet Rome", where Nero is basically one big thinly-veiled Trump Captain Ersatz; Yakko lampshades this by asking, "Um, we're still talking about Nero, right?"
  • A Pinky & the Brain skit has the duo try to infiltrate "Chump Tower".
• Uncatty Resemblance: Flora's cat is a fluffy white Persian with the same hair style. Nora's sleek dark grey cat similarly has a hair style resembling that of her person.

V-W

• Vanilla Edition: The season 1 DVD put out by Warner Brothers doesn't have any bonus features.
  • The DVD's are also released only with 480p resolution, despite the series being in full HD on streaming.
• Visual Pun:
  • Pinky says he's getting catfished on an online dating site... by an actual catfish.
  • When the new president of Warner Bros presents to Yakko a tablet filled with the sum total of human knowledge, he takes it as "one easy-to-swallow tablet" (as in a pill), and promptly swallows it with a cup of water.
  • When Dot talks about breaking the glass ceiling, the camera pans out to caricatures of several female politicians, including Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren, hammering away at a literal glass ceiling, sending shards flying everywhere.
  • The musical number about what has happened since 1998 has Iron Man as a superhero based around clothing irons.
  • When Nils crams the Warners into their tent, balls it up, and tosses it into the city, Yakko shouts that this is "In tents!" right before slamming into a signboard. This is punctuated by the Mime sitting on top doing a rimshot.
  • Pinky says that banana hammocks are not as comfortable as they might seem, while sitting in a hammock made from a banana. Then the hammock breaks and wraps around his loins.
• Vocal Dissonance: The pink pegasus Dot rides in "Gold Meddlers" has a deep, baritone voice courtesy of Jon Bailey of Honest Trailers fame. He also says he bears horrible tidings of war, but he leaves rainbows behind him while flying.
• Vocal Evolution:
  • Since it's been 22 years since their last broadcast, the Warners' voices are noticeably deeper than their last appearance^note with Tress MacNeille alternating between trying to pitch her voice up toward Dot's original voice or settling to speaking closer to her natural register. She also reverts to her natural voice when singing as Dot. This is especially noticeable with Yakko's singing voice, as Rob Paulsen was recovering from a bout of severe throat cancer in 2016. It is also worth noting that the Warners' voices were actually sped up by 5% in the original show.
  • Brain also sounds markedly old and (trying-to-take-over-the) world-weary—at times, at times strikingly like Vincent Price in his later years.^note  Which makes sense since Maurice LaMarche said that Brain's voice is 35% Vincent Price.
  • Pinky's voice is also more relaxed and less high pitched than in the original series and spin-off.
• Whole-Plot Reference: "Yakko Amacko" is a direct one to Duck Amuck, but starring Yakko, right down to Yakko calling it out as such. Unlike past victims of this plot, since Yakko does have medium awareness, he actually manages to turn the table on his tormentor.
• World-Healing Wave: The Warners reverse The Cutening by licking the eyes of a gross and sickly pigeon, creating a wave of green sludge that undoes everything... but makes the Warners' lower bodies that of a giant pigeon.
• World of Snark:Unlike the original show nobody is a moron,everybody is smart in some way,sarcastic or easily influenced.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: After winning countless gold medals by participating in a pastiche of the Olympics, the Warners are dismayed to find that they are not in fact made of chocolate as they'd hoped. Yakko then wonders what the heck they're going to do with all of these solid gold medals if they can't make smores out of them.
• Youtuber Apology Parody: "The Apology" features the Warner Siblings apologizing on TubeSpace for calling Ralph a silly goose. Apparently, a lot of geese got offended, since they didn't want to be compared to Ralph. Once they realize this, they realize that they didn't want to apologise for it after all and call it off.

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