The films from 7–2 are the best of all categories. They were chosen based on their awards, popularity, and significance, but also on their degree of wrongness, wackiness, and how much individual scenes, quotes, or gags have permeated pop culture. The list includes a lot of firsts (first appearances, first pairings, etc.) as well as the famed Hunter Trilogy, and Chow Hound, the most quoted and remembered short without reoccurring characters (one-off).

Wild Hare 3.2 or 4.1 Special Features
1940 directed by Tex Avery
Featuring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd

Awards

• Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film

Various directors at the Warner Bros. cartoon studio had been experimenting with cartoons focused on a hunter pursuing a rabbit in 1939 with varied approaches to the characters of both rabbit and hunter, but A Wild Hare is considered the first official Bugs Bunny cartoon. The title is a play on wild hair, the first of many puns between hare and hair that would appear in Bugs Bunny titles. The pun is carried further by a bar of I'm Just Wild About Harry playing in the underscore of the opening credits. A Wild Hare is also noteworthy for settling on the classic voice and appearance of Elmer Fudd. Although the animators continued to experiment with Elmer's design for a few more years, his look here proved the basis for his finalized design. The design and character of Bugs Bunny would continue to be refined over the subsequent years, but the general appearance, voice, and personality of the character were established in this cartoon. The rabbit is unnamed in this film, but would be christened Bugs Bunny in his very next short, Elmer's Pet Rabbit, directed by Chuck Jones. The plot is simple; Elmer Fudd hopelessly hunts the much smarter Bugs. This would serve as a template for many subsequent cartoons.

Trivia

• The opening lines of both characters, "Be vewy, vewy quiet, I'm hunting wabbits" for Elmer, and "Eh, what's up Doc?" for the Bugs were first used in this short and would become catchphrases throughout their subsequent films.
• Bugsy's nonchalant carrot-chewing stance comes from the movie It Happened One Night, from a hitch-hiking scene where the Clark Gable character is leaning against a fence eating carrots more quickly than he is swallowing (as Bugs would later often do), giving instructions with his mouth full to the Claudette Colbert character. This scene was so famous at the time that most people immediately got the connection.
• The line "What's up, Doc?" was added by director Tex Avery. Avery explained that it was a common expression in Texas where he was from, and he didn't think much of it at the time. But when this short was screened in theaters, the scene of Bugs calmly chewing a carrot, followed by the nonchalant "What's Up, Doc?" went against any 1940s audience's expectation of how a rabbit might react to a hunter and caused complete pandemonium in the audience, bringing down the house in every theater. Because of the overwhelming reaction, Bugs eats a carrot and utters some version of the phrase in almost every one of his cartoons, sometimes entirely out of context as compared to the original use.
• Also notable is Bugs' first use of faking his death to elicit remorse or sympathy from his pursuer.

 

Draftee Daffy 3.4
1945 directed by Bob Clampett
Featuring Daffy Duck

Having read about the U.S. fighting forces pushing the Nazi troops back during World War II, Daffy is in a patriotic mood. However, his mood quickly changes to fear when he gets a call that the little man from the draft board wants to see him. The little man chases Daffy all over the house, attempting to hand him a telegram, presumably with Daffy's conscription order. Daffy continues to try and outrun the man from the draft board, who seems to be everywhere.

Trivia

• The popular catchphrase "Well, now, I wouldn't say" that is from the Richard Q. Peavey character from a radio show called The Great Gildersleeve, which is noted as being the first spin off series in broadcasting.
• Daffy had already been depicted as serving in the armed forces in two earlier cartoons, Daffy the Commando and Plane Daffy.
  

 

Bye Bye Bluebeard 3.3
1949 directed by Arthur Davis
Featuring Porky Pig

Bluebeard the killer is at large. In Porky Pig's home, a crafty mouse disguises himself as Bluebeard to scare Porky into providing him with a generous serving of food. Just as Porky realizes the mouse is too tiny to be Bluebeard, the real Bluebeard appears and Porky may be his next victim. But the mouse may have something to say about that.
Trivia

• The title and character of Bluebeard is a reference to a fairy tale involving a violent nobleman named Bluebeard.
• The guillotine scene is often cut for TV broadcasts.
  

Earworms

• Mmmm popovers!

 

Porky in Wackyland 2.3 Dough for the Dodo 1.2
1938 directed by Robert Clampett
Featuring Porky Pig

Awards

• #8 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time as chosen by members of the animation field.
• US Library of Congress deems it culturally significant and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
  

Porky Pig goes hunting through a surreal Salvador Dali-esque landscape to find the Do-Do Bird for a very large bounty. A newspaper shows Porky traveling to Africa to hunt the rare dodo bird, worth four sextillion dollars. Porky uses his airplane to go to Dark Africa, then Darker Africa, and finally lands in Darkest Africa (per the route shown in the cartoon, somewhere in the vicinity of the Sudan). When Porky lands, a sign tells him that he's in Wackyland.

Trivia

• Clampett’s physics in his cartoons are easily the most rubbery and wacky of all the WB animators and Dali’s influence on him is most apparent in this film.
• The Do-Do character is much like the very early Daffy Duck in voice and mannerisms.
• The three-heaeded man is a parady of the three stooges.
• A color remake of Porky in Wackyland was supervised by Friz Freleng. Re-titled as Dough for the Do-Do, the remake was released in 1949. The films were nearly identical, in many cases appearing to match frame-by-frame.
• When this cartoon was distributed for TV by Guild Films in the 1950s, the scene of the Do-Do popping into frame on the WB shield and sling-shotting Porky into the ground was cut. This was done because Warner Bros. did not want to be associated with television at that time.
  

 

Falling Hare 3.4
1943 directed by Bob Clampett
Featuring Bugs Bunny

Bugs is found reclining on a piece of ordnance, idly reading Victory Through Hare Power and laughing uproariously at the book's claim that gremlins wreck American planes with diabolical sabotage. He immediately encounters one of the creatures, who is experimentally striking a bomb with a mallet. The gremlin tricks bugs into doing the same and the two go head to head, eventually going airborne in a WWII bomber.

Trivia

• This cartoon opens with an extended series of establishing shots of an Army Air Force
• base, to the brassy strains of "We’re In To Win."
• The book Bugs reads, Victory Through Hare Power, is a parody of the book Victory Through Air Power by Alexander P. de Seversky. The book was extremely influential during WWII and beyond.
• When Bugs' heart is pounding, with 4F labeled on it, the term refers to a military draftee rejected for being physically unfit.
• When Bugs refers to the "A" card, it references rationing classifications. "A" was the least generous of the classifications, limiting the bearer to minimal gasoline purchases.
• Within the cartoon are several contemporary pop culture references, including Wendell Willkie, John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men and the folk songs "Yankee Doodle", "I've Been Working on the Railroad", and the Russian folk song "Dark Eyes.
• The Gremlin holds the distinction, along with Cecil Turtle, the unnamed mouse from Rhapsody Rabbit and the fly from Baton Bunny, of being one of the few antagonists to actually outsmart and rattle Bugs.
  

 

Tweety Pie 2.3
1947 directed by Friz Freleng
Featuring Tweety and Sylvester

Awards

• Academy Award For Best Animated Short Film

Sylvester captures Tweety, whom he finds cold outside in the snow. The cat's owner saves the bird from being eaten. Various attempts to get the bird result in Sylvester being beaten and eventually thrown out by his owner.

Trivia

• First pairing of Tweety and Sylvester
• When Tweety's creator, Bob Clampett, left the Warner Bros. studio in 1946, he was working on a fourth film starring Tweety, whom he would pair with Friz Freleng’s Sylvester. Freleng adopted the Tweety project and merged it with a project he was working on, Peck Up Your Troubles, featuring Sylvester in pursuit of a witty woodpecker. When Freleng decided to replace the woodpecker with Tweety, producer Eddie Selzer objected, and Freleng threatened to quit. Selzer allowed Tweety to be used, and the resulting film went on to win WB's first Academy Award for Best Short Subject. Ironically, Selzer accepted the award. After Selzer's death, the Oscar was passed on to Freleng.
• The success of the short would prompt the studio to always pair Tweety with Sylvester from that point on (However, Sylvester continued to appear in films without Tweety).

 

Bad Ol' Putty Tat 2.3
1949 directed by Friz Freleng
Featuring Tweety Bird and Sylvester

Sylvester pursues Tweety so that he can eat him for a snack. Sylvester has already been thwarted in his attempts to reach Tweety's house high up on a pole, but he has other plans, all of which seem like good ideas at the time.

 

Birds Anonymous 3.4
1957 directed by Friz Freleng
Featuring Tweety Bird and Sylvester

Awards

• Academy Award For Best Animated Short Film

Sylvester catches tweety but before he can eat Tweety, he is interrupted by a cat who tells him that his constant cravings for Tweety are a sign of profound personal weakness, and that the only way for him to overcome this weakness is to kick the habit for good. Believing that he is in need of help, Sylvester proudly joins Birds Anonymous, a group of cats who have banded together to overcome their addictions to birds. But living with Tweety is too much temptation to bear and he struggles to be good.

Trivia

• The film is a parody of 1950s melodramas about substance abuse and drug recovery groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous.
• Mel Blanc said that this was his favorite cartoon to do voices for, especially when it came to Sylvester.
  

 

To Beep or Not to Beep 3.4
1963 directed by Chuck Jones
Featuring Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner

The Coyote tries to catch the road runner. Six attempts to use a catapult are made.

Trivia

• Almost all of the footage was originally made as part of a television pilot named Adventures of the Road-Runner. The pilot never sold, and several gags from the short were rearranged into this cartoon.
• The title is a reference William Shakespeare's play Hamlet.
• This film marked the first time that no faux Latin biologigal terms are used to indicate each character.

 

Zoom and Bored 2.2
1957 directed by Chuck Jones
Featuring Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner

The Coyote tries to catch the Road Runner using ACME products.

Trivia

• This short has some of the best desert scenery of any Road Runner cartoon.

 

Operation Rabbit 4.1
1952 directed by Chuck Jones
Featuring Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote

Wile E. Coyote runs up to Bugs Bunny's rabbit hole and constructs a door. He knocks on the door and Bugs answers. The Coyote proclaims that he is a genius, as well as being faster and stronger than Bugs, and he intends to eat him. Bugs is unimpressed. The Coyote attempts to prove his genius and ensnare the rabbit, but Bugs has his number every time.

Trivia

• This is the first time the Coyote speaks and the first time he is identified by his full name.