"Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers" is a 1992 Looney Tunes made-for-TV cartoon staring Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, and Daffy Duck, which led off the 1992 TV special Bugs Bunny's Creature Features.
Bugs Bunny's daily life consists of traveling across the country and tangling with Elmer, Sam, and Daffy. One day during his routine, he continuously notices strange-looking carrots around, but doesn't pay them any mind. The next day, however, he notices that his adversaries seem to have become badly-drawn, pale stereotypes of themselves, and want him to have one of the strange carrots. That night, while contemplating this oddity, a pale stereotype of himself emerges from the carrot he received. After a harrowing encounter with it, Bugs becomes determined to learn what's behind this.
"Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers" provides examples of:
- Animation Bump: Bugs and Daffy's first encounter contains far more fluid and bouncy animation compared to the rest of the short.
- Art Shift: The pale stereotype versions of the Looney Tunes characters are shoddily drawn.
- Biting-the-Hand Humor: The Looney Tunes are disappearing and being replaced by poorly-animated automatons without any of the wit or anarchy that made them so beloved in the first place. Yes, this was completely intentional on the filmmakers' part.
- Broken Record: The copies constantly repeat the same lines over and over, which are mostly the originals' Character Catchphrases. At one point, Bugs even says to the fake Elmer "Come over here, ya broken record!".
- The Cameo: Porky Pig, in his usual "Th-That's All Folks!" routine at the end. At first, a doppelganger had taken his place, but Bugs kicked it out and replaced it with the real Porky.
- Evil Twin: Bugs refers to his doppelganger as this.
- Fake-Out Fade-Out: After Bugs runs off screaming in terror after encountering his own doppelganger, the "That's All Folks!" card pops up, complete with the ending music...before Bugs appears in front of it, saying "Hold it! You didn't think I'd let it end like that, did you?" before the cartoon continues and he investigates where the doppelgangers came from.
- Kill and Replace: While it's not known where the real Elmer, Sam, and Daffy went when their doppelgangers appeared,note Bugs' doppelganger outright tries to kill him with an axe.
- Limited Animation: The copies are parodies of every bad TV animation cliché. Daffy even has Synchro-Vox superimposed live-action lips à la Clutch Cargo at one point. Also a minor case with the short overall, itself being made on a slightly larger than usual TV animation budget. This allows the animation to be full enough so that it stands out against deliberately bad parodies, but still comes off as a noticeable downgrade compared to the theatrical shorts with the odd shortcut showing up from time to time.
- Made in Country X: When Bugs inspects the imposters, he finds that each of them bears a label saying "Made on the Planet Nudnik".
- Mood Whiplash: Played for Laughs. After Bugs narrowly escapes being killed by his own doppelganger, he runs off screaming in terror... then pauses to turn to the audience and say "You know something, folks? This is the scariest part of the picture" and resumes running.
- Mythology Gag:
- Bugs does the "I dare you to step across this line" routine from Bugs Bunny Rides Again to Sam.
- The classic Duck Season, Rabbit Season routine from Rabbit Fire is recreated.
- Non-Standard Character Design: The copies are made to resemble simplistic, crudely animated cartoon characters from 50s and 60s television. Of course they look horrendously out of place when placed right next to the smoothly animated Bugs.
- Pie in the Face: At the end of his routine with Elmer, Bugs shoves a custard cream pie in his face.
- Punch-Clock Hero: "Hero" might be hyperbolic, but in the short, Bugs annoying Elmer, Sam, and Daffy is just his job, including lengthy commutes between the three locations.
- Rule of Three: As the short takes place in three locations, this comes up a lot, such as Bugs doing some less-than-subtle Foreshadowing.
- "Gee, what strange-looking carrots." (dramatic musical sting) "Oh, well."
- "Gee, what strange-looking wild cactus carrots." (taps foot impatiently, waiting for musical sting) "Oh, well."
- "Gee, what strange-looking... ahhh, you know."
- Shout-Out:
- After falling off a cliff, Sam says "I've fallen and I can't get up!", a line from a famous commercial for the Life Alert emergency bracelet.
- The bus Bugs rides in one scene is driven by Ralph Kramden.
- The pale stereotypes come from the Planet Nudnik. Nudnik was a cartoon character created by Gene Deitch in the 1960s.
- The rocket carrying the pale stereotypes almost hits Eliot and E.T..
- Porky's doppelganger is animated in the style of Terry Gilliam.
- Stylistic Suck: The copies of the Looney Tunes gang are badly animated on purpose.
- Synchro-Vox: The imposter Daffy has super-imposed live-action lips while saying "But now it's all over. It doesn't matter anymore."
- Take That!: The badly animated Looney Tunes copies are basically one big take that against The Dark Age of Animation, parodying its limited visuals and flat characterization. As stated above, the copies came from Planet Nudnik.
- Unexplained Recovery: Bugs' doppelgänger immediately attempting to kill him upon awakening suggests all the other doppelgängers did the same thing to Elmer, Daffy, and Sam. However, once Bugs disposes of the doppelgängers, the three appear back at their usual spots no worse for wear with no explanation.
- Visual Pun: A few of them as the Bugs, Elmer, Sam and Daffy imposters get sent into space. Namely, they pass through the Milky Way, which is made entirely of empty milk bottles, and Sirius, the "Dog Star", who sleeps in a doghouse and has a dog's face, as seen when it barks. The doghouse even has a sign next to it reading "Beware of Dog Star".
- We Want Our Jerk Back!: You would think Bugs would be happy with his various enemies replaced with harmless versions of themselves that don't want to harm him, but he actually misses them and their adversarial personalities. Indeed, their confrontations are presented here as their actual occupations.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The entire plot, and even the title, reference the classic film Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
