YMMV / Red Hot Riding Hood

• Accidental Aesop: This episode makes it clear that sexual harassment isn't any more fun for men than it is for women. It's also a case of Values Resonance, since it averts Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male in a 1940s cartoon.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: It's a very funny cartoon for sure, but we all know the real reason why it's such a popular short.
• Fan Nickname: Red for the eponymous showgirl, both for her hairstyle and her red dress in this short. Many years later, the Tom and Jerry direct to video films that she stars in officially named her Red (though she was named "Miss VaVoom" on The Tom and Jerry Kids Show).
• Funny Moments:
  • Red yelling "NOOO!" after pretending to be flattered by the Wolf's promises.
  • The Wolf, listening to the Sickeningly Sweet narrator in the initially straight fairy tale, gives an Aside Glance of pure, fed-up disgust.
• Genius Bonus: Among the promised gifts that the Wolf uses to entice Red are a set of new whitewall tires. This was a nod to commentary on the rubber shortage during World War II, as it was originally a Wartime Cartoon.
• Harsher in Hindsight: At the end of the cartoon, the Wolf, after being through with women, commits suicide upon seeing Red again. Coincidentally, his voice actor, Frank Graham, ended his life years after the cartoon's release following his girlfriend breaking up with him.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The Wolf's exaggerated reaction to seeing Red Hot Riding Hood has been referenced constantly, from The Mask to The Critic.
  • Since 2020, the video has also become a meme on social media as a way of mocking "simps" and neckbeards (i.e. "(x group) when they see a gamer girl"). It eventually mutated into the Booba meme after crossing over with Pepe frogposting on 4chan. The "Booba" meme is, however, used as an unironical appreciation of sex appeal (most often the intentional kind) in contrast to the more ironic original.
• Values Resonance: Red, while obviously drawn to be a sex symbol, is shown to be capable of holding her own and gets away from the wolf on her own, and the wolf, while relatable to the kind of horndog men who enjoyed these cartoons in the 40s, ends up being the butt of the overall joke. Even the wolf's takeaway, that women are nothing but trouble, is presented as him being in the wrong and his blowing his brains out over seeing Red again is clearly meant to make him seem like an idiot. Grandma knows when to call it quits, but she is not spared by slapstick karma for her own harassment of the Wolf.

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