Animaniacs Great Big Universe
Jan Dominquez
Animaniacs is an American animated comedy musical television series created by Tom Ruegger for Fox's Fox Kids block in 1993, before moving to The WB in 1995, as part of its Kids' WB afternoon programming block, until the series ended on November 14, 1998.[1] It is the second animated series produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment in association with Warner Bros. Animation, after Tiny Toon Adventures. It initially ran a total of 99 episodes, along with a feature-length film, Wakko's Wish. Reruns later aired on Cartoon Network from 1997 to 2001, Nickelodeon from 2001 to 2003, Nicktoons from 2003 to 2005, and Discovery Family (known as The Hub Network at the time) from 2012 to 2014.
Animaniacs is a variety show, with short skits featuring a large cast of characters. While the show had no set format, the majority of episodes were composed of three short mini-episodes, each starring a different set of characters, and bridging segments. Hallmarks of the series included its music, satirical social commentary, pop culture references, character catchphrases, and innuendo directed at an adult audience.
A revival of the series was announced in January 2018, with a two-season order, to be produced in conjunction with Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation, with producer Steven Spielberg, songwriter Randy Rogel, and many of the main voice actors returning. It premiered on November 20, 2020, on Hulu, with a second season premiering on November 5, 2021,[2] and a third and final season premiering on February 17, 2023.[3]
The Warner siblings live in the Warner Bros. Water Tower on the Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank, California.[4] However, characters from the series had episodes in various places and periods of time. In their zany hijinks, the Animaniacs characters interacted with famous people and creators of the past and present, as well as mythological characters and characters from contemporary pop culture and television. Andrea Romano, the casting and recording director of Animaniacs, said that the Warner siblings functioned to "tie the show together," by appearing in and introducing other characters' segments.[5]
Each Animaniacs episode usually consisted of two or three cartoon shorts.[6] Animaniacs segments ranged in time, from bridging segments less than a minute long to episodes spanning the entire show's length; writer Peter Hastings said that the varying episode lengths gave the show a "sketch comedy" atmosphere.[7]
Animaniacs had a large cast of characters, separated into individual segments, with each pair or set of characters acting in its own plot. The Warner siblings, Yakko, Wakko, and Dot, are three 1930s cartoon stars of an unknown species (one Tom Ruegger named "Cartoonus characterus") that were locked away in the WB Tower until the 1990s, when they escaped.[4] After their escape, they often interacted with other Warner Bros. studio workers, including Ralph the Security Guard; Dr. Otto Scratchansniff, the studio psychiatrist; and his assistant, Hello Nurse. Pinky and the Brain are two genetically altered anthropomorphic laboratory mice who continuously plot and attempt to take over the world.[8] Slappy Squirrel is an octogenarian anthropomorphic cartoon star who can easily outwit antagonists and uses her wiles to educate her nephew, Skippy Squirrel, about cartoon techniques.[9] Additional principal characters included three anthropomorphic Italian-American pigeons known as The Goodfeathers, Buttons and Mindy, Chicken Boo, Flavio and Marita (The Hip Hippos) and Katie Ka-Boom. Exclusive to the first season, Rita and Runt, two strays that get into massive trouble and adventures, and Minerva Mink, a young attractive anthropomorphic mink, starred in their own segments.[10] The Pinky and the Brain segment was the only segment, aside from the Warners themselves, to get in the reboot, excluding the episode "Good Warner Hunting", in which all the original characters appeared at the end of the episode, excluding Pinky and the Brain.
Prior to Animaniacs, Warner Bros. had been working to get Steven Spielberg to make an animated film for the studio. To help court Spielberg's favor, the head of Warner Bros. Animation Jean MacCurdy brought director Tom Ruegger, who had successfully led A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, to help develop the concept with Spielberg. Ruegger pitched the idea to Spielberg of using younger versions of the Looney Tunes characters while capturing the same wackiness of those cartoons, eventually leading into Tiny Toon Adventures.[11] Tiny Toon Adventures was considered a success, winning a number of Daytime Emmy awards and a Primetime Emmy award and revived the Warner Bros. Animation department.[11]
With Tiny Toon Adventures's success, Spielberg and MacCurdy pushed on Ruegger for the next idea for a series, with Spielberg emphasizing the need for something with a marquee name.[11] Spielberg was involved in approving or rejecting concepts produced by Ruegger, with Buttons and Mindy being approved by Spielberg's kids for instance according to Ruegger in 2007.[12] Ruegger had already envisioned pulling three characters that he had created for his student film The Premiere of Platypus Duck while attending Dartmouth College, a trio of platypuses for this new series, and made a connection to Warner Bros. after walking around the studio lot and seeing its signature water tower.[11] He came up with making this trio the Warner Brothers and their sister Dot (the latter representing the period in the "Warner Bros." name),[13] tying the characters directly to the studio with their approval.[11][12] Along with reviving the character designs, Ruegger drew characterization for the Warner siblings from his three sons who could be troublemakers at the time.[11][14] Because the Warners were portrayed as cartoon stars from the early 1930s, Ruegger and other artists for Animaniacs made the images of the Warners similar to cartoon characters of the early 1930s.[14] Rita and Runt were originally conceptualized as hosts of the show akin to the Abbott and Costello comedy duo before Ruegger scrapped the idea because he felt that it did not align with the idea of the show's "energy."[12]
Steven Spielberg served as executive producer, under his Amblin Entertainment label. Showrunner and senior producer Tom Ruegger lead the overall production and writer's room. Ruegger initially brought in Sherri Stoner, who had also contributed to Tiny Toons Adventures, to help expand the series' concept. Producers Peter Hastings, Sherri Stoner, Rusty Mills, and Rich Arons contributed scripts for many of the episodes and had an active role during group discussions in the writer's room as well. Stoner helped to recruit most of the remaining writing staff, which included Liz Holzman, Paul Rugg, Deanna Oliver, John McCann, Nicholas Hollander, Charlie Howell, Gordon Bressack, Jeff Kwitny, Earl Kress, Tom Minton, and Randy Rogel.[11] Hastings, Rugg, Stoner, McCann, Howell, and Bressack were involved in writing sketch comedy[7] while others, including Kress, Minton, and Rogel, came from cartoon backgrounds.[6][7]
The writers and animators of Animaniacs used the experience gained from the previous series to create new characters cast in the mold of Chuck Jones and Tex Avery's creations, following on the back-and-forth of many of the pairings from their classic shorts.[15] The Marx Brothers, particularly with their breaking of the fourth wall, also played heavily into the comic styling they wanted for the show.[11]
While the Warner siblings served as the central point of the show, the writing staff worked out developing other pairings or trios so as to make the cartoon more like a variety show with sketch comedy. Executive producer Steven Spielberg said that the irreverence in Looney Tunes cartoons inspired the Animaniacs cast.[15] Just as Ruegger wrote the Warner siblings based on his own sons, other pairings or trios were based on similar personal relations the writing staff had. Ruegger created Pinky and the Brain after being inspired by the personalities of two of his Tiny Toon Adventures colleagues, Eddie Fitzgerald and Tom Minton, who worked in the same office. Ruegger thought of the premise for Pinky and the Brain when wondering what would happen if Minton and Fitzgerald tried to take over the world, and cemented the idea after he modified a caricature of the pair drawn by animator Bruce Timm by adding mice ears and noses.[11][16] Deanna Oliver contributed The Goodfeathers scripts and the character Chicken Boo,[7] while Nicholas Hollander based Katie Ka-Boom on his teenage daughter.[7] Stoner created Slappy the Squirrel when another writer and friend of Stoner, John McCann, made fun of Stoner's career in TV movies playing troubled teenagers. When McCann joked that Sherri would be playing troubled teenagers when she was 50 years old, the latter developed the idea of Slappy's characteristics as an older person acting like a teenager.[7] Stoner liked the idea of an aged cartoon character because an aged cartoon star would know the secrets of other cartoons and "have the dirt on [them]".[5] Several additional sets of characters were also created and vetted by Spielberg for inclusion in the show. Among those that were kept included The Hip Hippos, Rita and Runt, Minerva Mink and Buttons and Mindy, the latter of which due to Spielberg's daughter.[12]
Made-up stories did not exclusively comprise Animaniacs writing, as Hastings remarked: "We weren't really there to tell compelling stories ... [As a writer] you could do a real story, you could recite the Star-Spangled Banner, or you could parody a commercial ... you could do all these kinds of things, and we had this tremendous freedom and a talent to back it up."[7] Writers for the series wrote into Animaniacs stories that happened to them; the episodes "Ups and Downs," "Survey Ladies," and "I Got Yer Can" were episodes based on true stories that happened to Rugg,[12] Deanna Oliver, and Stoner,[7] respectively. Another episode, "Bumbie's Mom," both parodied the film Bambi and was based on Stoner's childhood reaction to the film.[5]
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