A big reason The Animaniacs still holds up almost 30 years after its release (yes, really) is that the jokes are smart, and mostly aimed at adults, while not venturing into the then-unheard-of “adult animated TV show” territory.
While kids enjoy the Warner siblings’ pranks and goofy misadventures, almost every single episode has a parody or a pop culture reference that kids in the mid-’90s couldn’t possibly have had the context for. What makes the show great is that it works whether you know the references or not - but it only gets funnier when you do.
Mr. Director/Jerry Lewis
When the Warner siblings interrupt a Sound of Music parody rehearsal, they’re chased into open auditions for an unnamed movie. The director, though nameless, has the vocal patterns of (the now late) Jerry Lewis, the “King of Comedy”, and demands that the Warners be in his movie. He ends up finding that actually directing the siblings is no easy task, and accidentally dares Yakko to trade places. With references to The Fly (“Be afraid, be very afraid,” the siblings quote from the movie’s tagline), Indiana Jones (or, Illinois Smith and the Bowl of Surprise), and Old Yeller (aka Old Screamer), this episode is chock-full of quotes, references, and jokes that would’ve gone way over most kids’ head.
Les Miseranimals/Les Mis & Sweeney Todd
The original unabridged Les Miserables, in French, is almost 2,000 pages long. Both the Broadway version and the 2012 movie version run almost 3 hours. And yet, Animaniacs manages to cram the story (albeit loosely) into 15 minutes, all while rewriting the lyrics of the famous songs to match the animal stars. Runt Val Runt, instead of Jean Val Jean, stole a bone instead of bread, and is on the run from a mean dog named Camembert (instead of Javert). As if Les Mis wasn’t enough to work with, they name-drop Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, when the local baker tries to start using cats to fill his pies.
Rita sings of “a flat in gay Paree” instead of Little Cosette’s ‘castle on a cloud’, and they even get in the Animaniacs version of ‘Look Down’ as Runt Val Runt stages a prison break. He saves Rita and the other cats from that horrible fate.
West Side Pigeons/West Side Story
When Squit, the newest member of the Goodfeathers (whose very name is inspired by Goodfellas and The Godfather) wants to fall in love, the other Goodfeathers try to keep his mind focused on defending their turf (a statue of Martin Scorsese) from the other birds in town - the sparrows. Since this is a West Side Story skit, Squit falls in love with Carloota - the sister of one of the members of the sparrow gang they’re fighting with. When their brawl is interrupted by a police-cat known as Officer Krupkitty (get it?), Squit unites with Carloota. They nearly have a happy ending, but then Carloota’s boyfriend Johnny shows back up and sweeps her away to nest in Cleveland, leaving Squit burned on love...at least until another good looking bird parades by.
Yakko’s Universe/Galaxy Song from Monty Python
Aside from being a lot of kids’ very first existential crisis, Yakko’s song about our universe (which ‘extends to a place that never ends, which is maybe just inside a little jar’) is actually more than just an astronomy lesson set to a peppy beat. It’s a parody of Monty Python’s ‘Galaxy Song’, from Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life.
Yakko’s version accomplishes much the same goal as the original - to remind viewers (no matter their age) that when life gets hard, it’s sometimes helpful to remember we may be just ‘tiny little specks about the size of Mickey Rooney’, but ‘it’s a great big universe, and it’s ours’. It makes sense that the Warner siblings would spoof another comedy troupe known for their 4th wall breaks.
The Chicken Who Loved Me/James Bond
Kids may have thought that a chicken being a spy was funny enough, but there are tons of jokes here for the avid James Bond fan too - from Agent Grade Double-A 7 to P (instead of Q) saying ‘never say never again’, it just gets better and better (like the Bond franchise itself). Grade Double-A 7 drops hand gren-eggs on Dr. Not. Unfortunately, he ultimately fails to stop Dr. Not when everyone realizes Boo, James Boo is in fact a giant chicken. He’s strapped to Dr. Not’s rocket, but it doesn’t explode - instead, it drops Chicken Boo off on the moon... because where else would a spy chicken end up.
Buttons In Ows/Wizard of Oz
In another impressive instance of taking a classic and cramming it into 20 minutes, a sepia-colored Buttons and Mindy are whisked up into a twister when Mindy chases Dorothy’s dog Toto instead of getting into the storm cellar. On the ‘Ochre Brick Road’, they meet a scarecrow, a tinman, a not-so-cowardly lion, and an apple tree that’s almost as mean as the one in the original Wizard of Oz, and naturally, Buttons takes all the abuse while Mindy happily chases Toto. When the Wizard is revealed to be the Brain, the trio steal their getaway vehicle (a hot air balloon, of course), and make their way safely home. Buttons is naturally, scolded, but Mindy squeezes Buttons in a hug and tells him that Buttons is her favorite dog, which makes it all worth it. There’s no place like home, right?
Our Final Space Cartoon, We Promise/2001: A Space Odyssey
Who says cartoons can’t talk about politics? Animaniacs has ever been shy about it, and it goes a step further with this 2001: A Space Odyssey parody. Instead of HAL, the sentient AI that tries to kill the main characters in the original, the Warner siblings fight AL, who tries to get them back in their “suspended animation chambers” or else he’ll turn off life support. The trio do everything they can to stop AL, taking out his control boxes as well as unplugging him, but he’s only stopped when they realize that he’s not an evil artificial intelligence trying to kill them... but the “boring, unplugged” then-Vice President, Al Gore.
The Brain’s Apprentice/Fantasia
This skit is interesting for a few reasons - the first is that it’s the last Pinky and the Brain episode of the original series; it also has zero spoken lines, just like Fantasia, on which it’s based. Except instead of Mickey Mouse’s brooms, it’s tiny robots. Pinky, for once, isn’t the one to mess up the plan - in fact, he manages to almost pull it off, albeit accidentally.
This time, though, when the Brain returns, he ignores Pinky, and still thinks it’s another failure. The Brain ruins his own plan when he deactivates the bots - which was arguably the closest he would ever come to actually taking over the world.
Mighty Wakko At the Bat/Casey at the Bat
Animaniacs isn’t short on parodies of all kinds - movies, TV shows, books, other comedic skits, but this one’s unexpected even for this show. The episode references Casey At The Bat, a baseball poem written in 1888. True to form, though, it’s not a direct copy. Ralph the Guard seems to be filling the role of Casey... until he gets hit with a ball and knocked out. It’s undercounted Wakko who races around the plates after Skippy scores the tying run. Yakko narrates the last stanza almost exactly - there is no joy in Burbank - and it seems Wakko was tagged out, but when he pops out safely from the mountain of dirt his slide to home created, the Warners win after all, in a much happier ending than the original poem provides.
MacBeth/MacBeth
While it’s not the first time we see a ‘translation’ of Shakespeare from the Animaniacs, it is rare to see three of its female characters together. They’re costumed as the witches three from MacBeth, with Yakko providing commentary, such as translating ‘bubble bubble toil and trouble/fire burn and cauldron bubble’ as ‘abracadabra’. When Dot says ‘by the pricking of my thumbs, something scary this way comes’, it’s not MacBeth to learn about their prophecy. Instead, it summons Mr. Director, but the Warners are quick to banish him by way of mallet, dynamite, and a bomb for good measure, and the cauldron explodes through the cave ceiling. Having had enough of cooking for one day, the siblings decide they’re better off ordering pizza - and who can blame them!