Well I am finally going to start on my "Wile E. Coyote" post after having real life get in the way. I had a bunch of errands to run today after I got off work. I also am a glutton for punishment, I agreed to run either a BB or an Archery Range for a cub scout "loop-o-ree" tomorrow, what was I thinking..??. But anyway..that will kill my Saturday for me.
But I will start on my "Wile E Coyote: post...and the Minions go wild....
I have used "Wile E" image in a post before, I saw this pic when I was going through my prior blog pictures,
Wile E. is one of my favorite characters, what can I say..I am a kid at heart...that is why I don't look my age I guess.
I am crowding the half century mark...and no gray hairs...Yay..Go me!! Immaturity has its pluses I guess. But I was using the above image in a post when I did my frequent rants against the TSA. The skies are not as friendly partly because of them and also the lowered societal norms of behavior...but I digress.
Wile E. Coyote (also known simply as "The Coyote") and
The Road Runner are a duo of
characters from the
Looney Tunes and
Merrie Melodies series of
cartoons. In the cartoons, Coyote repeatedly attempts to catch and subsequently eat the Road Runner, a
fast-running ground bird, but is never successful. Coyote, instead of a
coyote's animal instincts, uses absurdly complex contraptions (sometimes in the manner of
Rube Goldberg) and elaborate plans to pursue his prey, which always comically backfire.
The characters were created by
animation director Chuck Jones in 1948 for
Warner Bros., while the template for their adventures was the work of writer
Michael Maltese.
The characters star in a long-running series of theatrical cartoon
shorts (the first 16 of which were written by Maltese) and occasional
made-for-television cartoons. It was originally meant to parody chase
cartoons like
Tom and Jerry, but became popular in its own right.
The Coyote appears separately as an occasional
antagonist of
Bugs Bunny in five shorts from 1952 to 1963:
Operation: Rabbit,
To Hare Is Human,
Rabbit's Feat,
Compressed Hare, and
Hare-Breadth Hurry.
While he is generally silent in the Coyote-Road Runner shorts, he
speaks with a refined accent in these solo outings (except for
Hare-Breadth Hurry), introducing himself as "Wile E. Coyote — super genius", voiced with an upper-class accent by
Mel Blanc.
The Road Runner vocalizes only with a signature sound, "
Beep, Beep", recorded by
Paul Julian, and an occasional "popping-cork" tongue noise.
"Fail vs Epic Fail"
To date, 48 cartoons have been made featuring these characters (including the three
CGI shorts), the majority by
Chuck Jones.
TV Guide included Wile E. Coyote in their 2013 list of The 60 Nastiest Villains of All Time.
Jones based the Coyote on
Mark Twain's book
Roughing It,
in which Twain described the coyote as "a long, slim, sick and
sorry-looking skeleton" that is "a living, breathing allegory of Want.
He is
always hungry." Jones said he created the Coyote-Road Runner cartoons as a
parody of traditional "cat and mouse" cartoons such as
MGM's
Tom and Jerry, which Jones would work on as a director later in his career.
Jones modelled the Coyote's appearance on fellow animator
Ken Harris.
The Coyote's name of Wile E. is a play on the word "wily." The "E"
was said to stand for Ethelbert in one issue of a Looney Tunes comic
book, but its writer had not intended it to be canon.
The Coyote's surname is routinely pronounced with a long "e" (
// ky-OH-tee), but in one cartoon short,
To Hare Is Human, Wile E. is heard pronouncing it with a
diphthong (
// ky-OH-tay). Early model sheets for the character prior to his initial appearance (in
Fast and Furry-ous) identified him as "Don Coyote", a play on
Don Quixote.
The desert scenery in the first two Road Runner cartoons,
Fast and Furry-ous (1949) and
Beep, Beep (mid-1950), was designed by
Robert Gribbroek and was quite realistic. In most later cartoons the scenery was designed by
Maurice Noble and was far more
abstract. Several different styles were used. In
The Wild Chase (1965), featuring a race between the Road Runner and
Speedy Gonzales, it is stated that the Road Runner is from
Texas,
insofar as the race announcer calls it the "Texas Road Burner." That
suggests that most of the Wile E. and Road Runner cartoons could take
place in Texas. However, in
To Beep or Not to Beep,
the catapult is constructed by the Road-Runner Manufacturing Company,
which has locations in Taos, Phoenix, Santa Fe, and Flagstaff,
suggesting that it takes place in or near the
Four Corners (
Arizona,
New Mexico,
Utah,
Colorado) region, specifically
Monument Valley.
In
Going! Going! Gosh! (late 1951) through
Guided Muscle
(late 1954) the scenery was "semi-realistic" with an offwhite sky
(possibly suggesting overcast/cloudy weather condition). Gravity-defying
rock formations appeared in
Ready, Set, Zoom! (early 1954). A bright yellow sky made its debut in
Gee Whiz-z-z-z-z-z-z (early 1955) but was not used consistently until
There They Go-Go-Go!, later in the same year.
Zoom and Bored
(late 1956) introduced a major change in background style. Sharp,
top-heavy rock formations became more prominent, and warm colors
(yellow, orange, and red) were favored. Bushes were crescent-shaped.
Except for
Whoa, Be-Gone! (early 1957), whose scenery design harked back to
Guided Muscle in certain aspects (such as off-white sky), this style of scenery was retained as far as
Fastest with the Mostest (early 1959).
Hopalong Casualty
(mid–1959) changed the color scheme, with the sky reverting to blue,
and some rocks becoming off-white, while the bright yellow desert sand
color is retained, along with the 'sharp' style of rock formations
pioneered by
Zoom and Bored. The crescent shapes used for bushes starting with
Zoom and Bored were retained, and also applied to clouds. In the last scene of
War and Pieces (1963), Wile E. Coyote's rocket blasts him through the center of the Earth to China, which is portrayed with abstract
Oriental backgrounds.
The
Format Films cartoons used a style of scenery similar to
Hopalong Casualty and its successors, albeit less detailed and with small puffy clouds rather than crescent-shaped ones.
Freeze Frame, a made-for-television short originally shown as part of the 1979 CBS special
Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales, depicts the Road Runner taking a turn that leads the chase into mountains and across a wintry landscape of ice and snow.
Wile E. Coyote often obtains complex and ludicrous devices from a mail-order company, the fictitious
Acme Corporation,
which he hopes will help him catch the Road Runner. The devices
invariably fail in improbable and spectacular ways. Whether this is
result of operator error or faulty merchandise is debatable. The coyote
usually ends up burnt to a crisp, squashed flat, or at the bottom of a
canyon
(some shorts show him suffering a combination of these fates).
Occasionally Acme products do work quite well (e.g. the Dehydrated
Boulders, Bat-Man Outfit, Rocket Sled, Jet Powered Roller Skates, or
Earthquake Pills). In this case their success often works against the
coyote. For example, the Dehydrated Boulder, upon hydration, becomes so
large that it crushes him, or the Coyote finds out that the Earthquake
Pills bottle label's fine print states that the pills aren’t effective
on road runners, right after he swallows the whole bottle, thinking
they're ineffective. Other times he uses items that are implausible,
such as a superhero outfit, thinking he could fly wearing it. (He
cannot.)
How the coyote acquires these products without money is not explained until the 2003 movie
Looney Tunes: Back in Action, in which he is shown to be an employee of Acme. In a
Tiny Toon Adventures episode, Wile E. makes mention of his protégé
Calamity Coyote possessing an unlimited Acme
credit card account, which might serve as another possible explanation. Wile E. being a "
beta tester"
for Acme has been another suggested explanation. Wile E. also uses war
equipment such as cannons, rocket launchers, grenades, and bayonets
which are "generic", not Acme products. In a
Cartoon Network
commercial promoting Looney Tunes, they ask the Coyote why he insists
on purchasing products from the Acme Corporation when all previous
contraptions have backfired on him, to which the Coyote responds with a
wooden sign (
right after another item blows up in his face): "Good line of Credit."
In
Whoa, Be-Gone!, after successfully avoiding being hit by his own rocket, the coyote is run over by an "ACME" truck emerging from a tunnel.
The company name was likely chosen for its
irony (
acme means
the highest point, as of achievement or development).
Also, a company named ACME would have shown up in the first part of a
telephone directory. Some people have said ACME comes from the common
expansion
A (or
American)
Company that Makes (or
Making)
Everything, a
backronym
of the word. The origin of the name might also be related to the Acme
company that built a fine line of animation stands and optical printers;
however, the most likely explanation is the Sears house brand called
Acme that appeared in their ubiquitous early 1900s mail-order
catalogues.
As in other cartoons, the Road Runner and the coyote follow the laws of
cartoon physics. For example, the Road Runner has the ability to enter the
painted image of a cave,
while the coyote cannot (unless there is an opening through which he
can fall). Sometimes, however, this is reversed, and the Road Runner can
burst through a painting of a broken bridge and continue on his way,
while the Coyote will instead enter the mirage painting and fall down
the precipice of the cliff where the bridge is out. Sometimes the coyote
is allowed to hang in midair until he realizes that he is about to
plummet into a chasm (a process occasionally referred to elsewhere as
Road-Runnering or a
Wile E. Coyote moment).
The coyote can overtake rocks (or cannons) which fall earlier than he
does, and end up being squashed by them. If a chase sequence runs over
the edge of a cliff, the Road Runner is not affected by gravity, whereas
the Coyote will realize his error eventually and fall to the ground
below. A chase sequence that happens upon railroad tracks will always
result in the Coyote being run over by a train. If the Coyote uses an
explosive (for instance, dynamite) that is triggered by a mechanism that
is supposed to force the explosive in a forward motion toward its
target, the actual mechanism itself will always shoot forward, leaving
the explosive behind to detonate in the Coyote's face. Similarly, a
complex apparatus that is supposed to propel an object like a boulder or
steel ball forward, or trigger a trap, will not work on the Road
Runner, but always will on the Coyote. For instance, the Road Runner can
jump up and down on the trigger of a large animal trap and eat bird
seed off from it, going completely unharmed and not setting off the
trap; when the Coyote places the tiniest droplet of oil on the trigger,
the trap snaps shut on him without fail. At certain times, the Coyote
may don an exquisite Acme costume or propulsion device that briefly
allows him to catch up to the Road Runner. This will always result in
him losing track of his proximity to large cliffs or walls, and the Road
Runner will dart around an extremely sharp turn on a cliff, but the
Coyote will rocket right over the edge and fall to the ground.
In his book
Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist,
Chuck Jones claimed that he and the artists behind the Road Runner and
Wile E. cartoons adhered to some simple but strict rules:
- The Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going "beep beep."
- No outside force can harm the Coyote — only his own ineptitude or
the failure of Acme products. Trains and trucks were the exception from
time to time.
- The Coyote could stop anytime — if he were not a fanatic. (Repeat: "A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim." — George Santayana).
- Dialogue must never be used, except "beep, beep" and yowling in pain. (This rule, however, was violated in some cartoons.)
- The Road Runner must stay on the road — for no other reason than that he's a roadrunner. This rule was broken in Beep, Beep, in a sequence where Wile E. chased the Road Runner into a cactus mine. And also in Fastest with the Mostest when Coyote lures Road Runner to the edge of a cliff.
- All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters — the southwest American desert.
- All (or at least almost all) tools, weapons, or mechanical
conveniences must be obtained from the Acme Corporation. There were
sometimes exceptions when the Coyote obtained other items from the
desert such as boulders to use in his attempts.
- Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote's greatest enemy (e.g., falling off a cliff).
- The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.
- The audience's sympathy must remain with the Coyote.
- The Coyote is not allowed to catch or eat the Road Runner, unless he
escapes from the grasp. (The robot that the Coyote created in The Solid Tin Coyote caught the Road Runner so this does not break this rule. The Coyote does catch the Road Runner in Soup or Sonic but is too small to eat him. There are also two CGI shorts on The Looney Tunes Show where he caught the bird, but was not able to eat him because the Road Runner got away in both shorts.
In an interview
years after the series was made, writer Michael Maltese said he had never heard of the "Rules."
Bugs Bunny and Wile E with a music video
Wile E. Coyote has also unsuccessfully attempted to catch and eat
Bugs Bunny
in another series of cartoons. In these cartoons, the coyote takes on
the guise of a self-described "super genius" and speaks with a smooth,
generic
upper-class accent provided by
Mel Blanc.
While he is incredibly intelligent, he is limited by technology and his
own short-sighted arrogance, and is thus often easily outsmarted, a
somewhat physical symbolism of "street smarts" besting "book smarts".
In one short (
Hare-Breadth Hurry, 1963), Bugs — with the help of "speed pills" — even stands in for Road Runner, who has "sprained a
giblet",
and carries out the duties of outsmarting the hungry scavenger. That is
the only Bugs Bunny/Wile E. Coyote short in which the coyote does not
speak, and to use the Wile E Coyote/Road Runner cartoon formula. As
usual Wile E. Coyote ends up falling down a canyon and fails to catch
and eat Bugs Bunny, much like how the coyote fails to catch and eat the
Road Runner.
In a later, made-for-TV short, which had a young
Elmer Fudd
chasing a young Bugs, Elmer also falls down a canyon. On the way down
he is overtaken by Wile E. Coyote who shows a sign telling Elmer to get
out of the way for someone who is more experienced in falling.
In the 1962 pilot for a proposed television series (but instead released as a theatrical featurrette titled
Adventures of the Road-Runner — when the project failed as TV pilot, it was reedited into
To Beep or Not to Beep by Chuck Jones with additional new music by Bill Lava. But few years later reedited again into
Zip Zip Hooray! and
Road Runner a Go-Go, by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises).
Chuck Jones' 1979
movie The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie
features Jones' characters, including Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner.
However, whereas most of the featured cartoons are single cartoons or
sometimes isolated clips, the footage of Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner
is taken from several different cartoons and compiled to run as one
extended sequence.
Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner have two cameo roles in
Robert Zemeckis'
Who Framed Roger Rabbit first silhouetted when the elevator maneuvered by
Droopy goes up, and then during the final scene in Marvin Acme's factory with several other Looney Tunes and other studio characters.
Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner appear as members of the Tune Squad team in
Space Jam.
There, Wile E. rigs one of the basketball hoops with dynamite to
prevent one of the Monstars from scoring a slam dunk. And during
practice before
Lola Bunny
shows up, Wile E. Coyote gets his hands on a basketball, but the Road
Runner steals the ball from him, and heads into a painted image. But
Wile E. doesn't know it's a painted image, and he runs right into it.
Wile E. Coyote appears as an employee of the Acme Corporation in
Looney Tunes: Back in Action. There, his role is similar to that of Mustafa from the Austin Powers movies.
Wile E. Coyote also makes a brief cameo in
Tweety's High-Flying Adventure, being held by the neck by the
Tasmanian Devil holding up a sign that says "Mother" before they both fall in the sea.
Wile E. is an employee at
Daffy Duck's store, in the film
Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas.
He is seen staring hungrily at a vending machine but Daffy does not
allow him to eat during work hours. The Road Runner also appears as an
employee as a delivery boy.
The two appeared in many different advertisements for
Shell,
Honey Nut Cheerios and Wile E. appears without the bird in adverts for the
Energizer Bunny.
In 2012, both Wile E Coyote and Road Runner appeared in a
GEICO
commercial, in which the wandering gecko is lost. While he is doing so,
he nearly gets crushed with an anvil, and then a piano. Just after this
happens, Road Runner runs up to him, says its trademark phrase, "Beep
beep!" and goes on his way. The gecko then gets confused about the Road
Runner's catchphrase by saying "Meep, meep." Suddenly, Wile E., chasing
the Road Runner, runs up, sees the gecko and imagines him as his dinner,
but while doing so, is driven into the ground by a falling Acme safe.
The commercial ends with the gecko concluding, "What a strange place."
The two also appeared in the
webtoons "Wild King Dumb", "Judge Granny: Case 2" and "Wile E. Coyote Ugly" on looneytunes.com.
Wile E. appears as a defendant on the show
Night Court
and is subjected to a stern lecture by Judge Harold T. Stone, who tells
him to "go to a restaurant, a supermarket, but leave that poor bird
alone!" and finds Wile E. guilty of harassment.
In another series of Warner Bros.
Looney Tunes cartoons,
Chuck Jones used the character design (model sheets and personality) of Wile E. Coyote as "
Ralph Wolf".
In this series, Ralph continually attempts to steal
sheep from a flock being guarded by the eternally vigilant Sam Sheepdog. As with the
Road Runner series, Ralph Wolf uses all sorts of wild inventions and schemes to steal the sheep, but he is continually foiled by the
sheepdog.
In a move seen by many as a self-referential gag, Ralph Wolf
continually tries to steal the sheep not because he is a fanatic (as
Wile E. Coyote was), but because it is his job. In every cartoon, he and
the sheepdog punch a timeclock, exchange pleasantries, go to work, take
a lunch break, and clock out to go home for the day, all according to a
factory-like blowing whistle. The most prominent difference between the
coyote and the
wolf, aside from their locales, is that Wile E. has a black nose and Ralph has a red nose.
Wile E. was called
Kelsey Coyote in his comic book debut, a
Henery Hawk story in
Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies
#91 (May 1949). He only made a couple of other appearances at this
time. The first appearance of the Road Runner in a comic book was in
Bugs Bunny Vacation Funnies #8 (August 1958) published by
Dell Comics.
The feature is titled "Beep Beep the Road Runner" and the story "Desert
Dessert". It presents itself as the first meeting between Beep Beep and
Wile E. (whose mailbox reads "Wile E. Coyote, Inventor and Genius"),
and introduces the Road Runner's wife, Matilda, and their three newly
hatched sons (though Matilda would soon disappear from the comics). This
story established the convention that the Road Runner family talked in
rhyme in the comics.
Dell initially published a dedicated "Beep Beep the Road Runner" comic as part of
Four Color Comics
#918, 1008, and 1046 before launching a separate series for the
character numbered #4–14 (1960–1962), with the three try-out issues
counted as the first three numbers. After a hiatus,
Gold Key Comics took over the character with issues #1–88 (1966–1984). During the 1960s, the artwork was done by
Pete Alvarado and
Phil DeLara;
from 1966–1969, the Gold Key issues consisted of Dell reprints.
Afterward, new stories began to appear, initially drawn by Alvarado and
De Lara before Jack Manning became the main artist for the title. New
and reprinted Beep Beep stories also appeared in
Golden Comics Digest and Gold Key's revival of
Looney Tunes in the 1970s. During this period, Wile E.'s middle name was revealed to be "Ethelbert"
in the story "The Greatest of E's" in issue #53 (cover-date September 1975) of
Gold Key Comics' licensed comic book,
Beep Beep the Road Runner.
The Road Runner and Wile E. also make appearances in the
DC Comics Looney Tunes title.
The Road Runner and the Coyote appeared on Saturday mornings as the stars of their own TV series,
The Road Runner Show, from September 1966 to September 1968, on
CBS. At this time it was merged with
The Bugs Bunny Show to become
The Bugs Bunny and Road Runner Show, running from 1968 to 1985. The show was later seen on
ABC until 2000, and on
Global until 2001. The theme song of the TV series went as follows:
If you're on a highway and Road Runner goes Meep-Meep,/
Just step aside or you might end up in a heap./
Road Runner, Road Runner runs on the road all day,/
Even the Coyote can't make him change his ways.
Chorus:
Road Runner,/
The Coyote's after you!/
Road Runner,/
If he catches you, you're through!
(repeat of chorus)
That Coyote is really a crazy clown;/
When will he learn that he never can mow him down?/
Poor little Road Runner never bothers anyone;/
Just running down the road's his idea of having fun!
(non-verbal chorus and repeat of chorus)
In the 1970s,
Chuck Jones directed some
Road Runner short films for the educational children's TV series
The Electric Company.
These short cartoons used the Coyote and the Road Runner to display
words for children to read, but the cartoons themselves are a refreshing
return to Jones' glory days.
In 1979,
Freeze Frame, in which Jones moved the chase from the desert to snow covered mountains, was seen as part of
Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales.
At the end of Bugs Bunny's
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Bunny (the initial sequence of
Chuck Jones' TV special,
Bugs Bunny's Bustin' Out All Over),
Bugs mentions to the audience that he and Elmer may have been the first
pair of characters to have chase scenes in these cartoons, but then a
pint-sized baby Wile E. Coyote (wearing a diaper and holding a small
knife and fork) runs right in front of Bugs, chasing a gold-colored,
mostly unhatched (except for the tail, which is sticking out) Road
Runner egg, which is running rapidly while some high-pitched "beep,
beep" noises can be heard. This was followed by the full-fledged
Runner/Coyote short,
Soup or Sonic.
Earlier in that story, while kid Elmer was falling from a cliff, Wile
E. Coyote's adult self tells him to move over and leave falling to
people who know how to do it and then he falls, followed by Elmer.
In the 1980s, ABC began showing many
Warner Bros.
shorts, but in highly edited form, because the unedited versions were
supposedly too violent. Many scenes integral to the stories were taken
out, including scenes in which Wile E. Coyote landed at the bottom of
the canyon after having fallen from a cliff, or had a boulder or anvil
actually make contact with him. In almost all WB animated features,
scenes where a character's face was burnt and black, resembling
blackface, were removed, as were animated characters smoking
cigarettes,
or even simulated cigarettes. Some cigar smoking scenes were left in.
The unedited versions of these shorts (with the exception of ones with
blackface) were not seen again until
Cartoon Network, and later
Boomerang, began showing them again in the 1990s and early 2000s. Since the release of the WB library of cartoons on
DVD, Boomerang has stopped showing the cartoons, presumably to increase sales of the DVDs.
Though Wile E. Coyote isn't seen in
Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue he is mentioned by Bugs Bunny saying that he borrowed his time machine.
Wile E. and the Road Runner later appeared in several episodes of
Tiny Toon Adventures. In this series, Wile E. (voiced in the
Jim Reardon episode "Piece of Mind" by
Joe Alaskey) was the
dean of
Acme Looniversity and the mentor of
Calamity Coyote. The Road Runner's protégé in this series was
Little Beeper. In the episode "Piece of Mind", Wile E. narrates the life story of Calamity while Calamity is falling from the top of a tall
skyscraper. In the direct-to-video movie
Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation, the Road Runner finally gets a taste of humiliation by getting run over by a mail truck that "brakes for coyotes."
The two were also seen in cameos in
Animaniacs. They were together in two "
Slappy Squirrel" cartoons: "Bumbie's Mom" and "Little Old Slappy from
Pasadena".
In the latter the Road Runner gets another taste of humiliation when he
is outrun by Slappy's car, and holds up a sign saying "I quit" —
immediately afterward,
Buttons, who was launched into the air during a previous gag, lands squarely on top of him. Wile E. appears without the bird in a
The Wizard of Oz parody, dressed in his
batsuit from one short, in a
twister (tornado) funnel in "Buttons in Ows". Also, in the beginning of one episode, an artist is seen drawing Road Runner.
In a
Cartoon Network TV ad about
The Acme Hour, Wile E. Coyote utilized a pair of jet roller skates to catch the Road Runner and (quite surprisingly)
didn't
fail. While he was cooking his prey, it was revealed that the roller
skates came from a generic brand. The ad said that other brand isn't the
same thing.
Wile E. and Road Runner appeared in their toddler versions in
Baby Looney Tunes,
only in songs. However, they both had made a cameo in the episode, "Are
We There Yet?", where Road Runner was seen out the window of Floyd's
car with Wile E. chasing him.
Wile E. Coyote had a cameo as the true identity of an alien hunter (a parody of
Predator) in the
Duck Dodgers episode "K-9 Quarry," voiced by
Dee Bradley Baker. In that episode, he was hunting Martian Commander X-2 and K-9.
In
Loonatics Unleashed, Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner's 28th century descendants are
Tech E. Coyote and
Rev Runner.
Tech E. Coyote was the tech expert of the Loonatics (influenced by the
past cartoons with many of the machines ordered by Wile E. from
Acme),
and has magnetic hands and the ability to molecularly regenerate
himself (influenced by the many times in which Wile E. painfully failed
to capture Roadrunner and then was shown to have miraculously
recovered). Tech E. Coyote speaks, but does not have a British accent as
Wile E. Coyote did. Rev Runner is also able to talk, though extremely
rapidly, and can fly without the use of
jet packs,
which are used by other members of the Loonatics. He also has super
speed, also a take off of Roadrunner. Ironically, the pair get on rather
well, despite the number of gadgets Tech designs in order to stop Rev
talking. Also they have their moments where they don't get along. When
friendship is shown it is often only from Rev to Tech, not the other way
around; this could however be attributed to the fact that Tech has only
the bare minimum of social skills. They are both portrayed as smart,
but Tech is the better inventor and at times Rev was shown doing stupid
things. References to ancestor's past are seen in the episode "Family
Business" where the other Runners are wary of Tech and Tech relives the
famous falling gags done in Coyote/Runner shorts.
Road Runner appears in an episode of the 1990 series
Taz-Mania
in which Taz grabs it by the leg & gets ready to eat it until the
two gators are ready to capture Taz so he lets Road Runner go. In
another episode of
Taz-Mania the Road Runner cartoons are
parodied with Taz dressed as Road Runner and the character Willy Wombat
dressed as Wile E. Coyote. Willy tries to catch Taz with Acme Roller
Skates but fails, and Taz even says "Beep, beep".
Road Runner and Wile E. feature in 3D computer animated cartoons or cartoon animation in
Cartoon Network's new TV series
The Looney Tunes Show.
The CGI shorts were only included in season one but Wile E. & Road
Runner will still appear throughout the series in 2D animation. Road
Runner and Coyote Will also appear in the upcoming TV series
Wabbit.
Several Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner-themed video games have been produced:
- Road Runner (arcade game by Atari, later ported to the Commodore 64, NES, Atari 2600, and several PC platforms)
- Electronic Road Runner (self-contained LCD game from Tiger Electronics released in 1990)
- Looney Tunes (Game Boy game by Sunsoft).
- The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle (NES/Game Boy game by Kemco)
- The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 2 (Game Boy game by Kemco)
- The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout (NES game by Kemco)
- Road Runner's Death Valley Rally (Super NES game by Sunsoft)
- Wile E Coyote's Revenge (Super NES game by Sunsoft)
- Desert Speedtrap (Sega Game Gear and Sega Master System game by Sega/Probe Software)
- Bugs Bunny: Crazy Castle 3 (Game Boy game by Kemco)
- Desert Demolition (Sega Mega Drive/Genesis game by Sega/BlueSky Software)
- Sheep, Dog, 'n' Wolf (for the original PlayStation and published by Infogrames, actually based on the Wolf and Sheepdog cartoons, but Road Runner does make two cameo appearances)
- Looney Tunes B-Ball (Wile E. is a playable character)
- Space Jam
- Looney Tunes Racing (Wile E. is a playable character. The Road Runner is also seen in the game.)
- Taz: Wanted (Wile E. appears)
- Looney Tunes: Back in Action (published by Electronic Arts)
- Looney Tunes Double Pack (published by Majesco Entertainment, developed by WayForward Technologies, where "Acme Antics" is the Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner half of the double pack)
- Looney Tunes: Space Race (Wile E. is a playable character.)
- Looney Tunes Acme Arsenal (Wile E. has his own level in the PS2 version.)
- Looney Tunes: Cartoon Conductor
In the film "The Shining",(1980), Danny And Wendy are watching the
Road Runner on television, in their hotel room. Later on , when Jack
chases Danny and Wendy through the hedges, Jack becomes the Coyote, who
fails, while Wendy and Danny become the Road Runner, who successfully
escapes to freedom.
Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner have been frequently referenced in popular culture.
The Villain (directed by
Hal Needham) is a parody of these animated shorts as well as being a spoof of westerns. In
The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie!, Road Runner gets run down and dies, after which Coyote commits suicide by shooting himself in the head with a prop gun.
In an episode of
Cheers, some bar patrons discuss the Road Runner cartoons. The discussion continues and builds in intensity as a minor
subplot
throughout the entire episode until at the end of the show some of the
bar patrons are boisterously declaring that the Coyote character is
meant to be symbolic of the
Antichrist. Wile E. Coyote appeared briefly in an episode of the live-action show
Night Court, where he was admonished by Judge Harry Stone for chasing a bird.
Wile E. Coyote has appeared two times in
Family Guy: his first episode,
I Never Met the Dead Man, depicts him riding in a car with
Peter Griffin; when Peter runs over the Road Runner and asks if he hit "that
ostrich", Wile E. tells him to keep going.
In
PTV,
Wile E. appears in a flashback when Peter offers a store credit when
Wile E. claims a refund for a giant sling shot that "slammed me into a
mountain".
Wile E. also appears on the DVD version of
Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy
in a segment called "Die, Sweet Roadrunner, Die". In the segment, Wile
E. finally manages to kill the Road Runner (by accident) and eats him
for dinner, and then he has no idea what to do with the rest of his life
because he has been "chasing that damn bird for almost 20 years". Wile
E. becomes an alcoholic and is fired from his job as a waiter after
having an outburst when he messes up an order. Wile E. almost commits
suicide by catapulting into a cliff, but has a revelation and decides to
be an evangelist.
The Road Runner made a cameo in
The Cleveland Show episode "
Pilot".
In the episode, Peter Griffin straps a rocket to his back in a parody
of Wile E., and tries to catch the Road Runner only so he can blow up
Cleveland Brown's house.
Wile E. made a cameo in
The Simpsons episode "
Smoke on the Daughter" on the
couch gag in which he paints a fake couch on the living room wall and leaves and the Simpsons then run into the wall as
Maggie zooms in and says the Road Runner's catchphrase "Beep, beep!"
The Simpsons has also referenced Wile E. and the Road Runner in several other episodes including "
The Scorpion's Tale", which showed a real coyote chasing a real roadrunner.
Wile E. appears in the
South Park episode "
Imaginationland Episode III"
in which he was rabid and marches among myriad other evil fictional
characters to battle against the surviving good characters. The
Looney Tunes characters who appeared with him included
Marvin the Martian and
Gossamer.
In a
Robot Chicken
segment, Wile E. pretends to commit suicide. The Road Runner goes to
Coyote's funeral and when the Coyote reveals he is not dead, he kills
the Road Runner with a blowtorch and then eats the bird.
101 Dalmatians: The Series included a parody of the cartoons in the episode
The Making Of..., where
Cruella De Vil takes the coyote's role, and Spot the Roadrunner's.
Guitarist
Mark Knopfler created a song called "Coyote" in homage to the cartoon shows of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, on the 2002 album
The Ragpicker's Dream. The
Tom Smith song "Operation Desert Storm", which won a
Pegasus award for Best Fool Song in 1999, is about the different crazy ways the Coyote's plans fail.
Humorist
Ian Frazier created the mock-legal prose piece "Coyote v. Acme",
which is included in a book of the same name. Karen Salmansohn wrote an article on
The Huffington Post centering on the characters.
In the
Cartoon Network TV series
Class of 3000,
a parody version Wile E. Coyote is seen constantly in one episode,
using rocket shoes and howling like a real life coyote. His Latin name
is "Jokis Callbackus".
In 2009, a group of
EMRTC engineers attempt to recreate Wile E. Coyote's failed contraptions on a
TruTV series
Man vs. Cartoon.
In the
What's New Scooby-Doo?
episode "New Mexico, Old Monster" Scooby-Doo sees both Road Runner and
Wile E. within their usual desert speed chase out the window of the
Mystery Machine. After the usual failure by Wile E., it left Scooby to
be saying "beep-beep". In the 2010 TV series Kick Buttowski Suburban
Daredevil episode Kyle E. Coyote Kick and his cousin Kyle do an
imitation of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote by using the type of
gags from the cartoons.
In the
Total Drama Island episode "Wawkanakwa Gone Wild" the duck Gwen meets parodies Roadrunner, such as the running and the tongue sticking.
Road Runner appeared in the
Mad
segment "Meep! My Dad Says" as a father. In the sketch "RiOa", Road
Runner finds a ring in his lunch and gets the power to fly as Wile E.
gets hit on the head by an anvil. In "Body of Pwoof", Road Runner is
dead and at a hospital and Elmer Fudd blames Wile E. for killing the
Road Runner. Road Runner is also seen in the sketch "Does Someone Have
to GOa?" In another
Mad segment, Road Runner gets arrested for speeding and Wile E. gets arrested for using an illegal rocket.
In a 2013 episode of
Saturday Night Live,
Weekend Update
reported on a proposed bounty for killing coyotes in Pennsylvania to
reduce the coyote population, and whimsically implied the legislation
was initiated by the Road Runner, whose comment was "Beep beep!"
The
Farscape
episode "Revenging Angel" has many small animated segments reminiscent
of Road Runner cartoons where D'Argo pursues John Crichton while using
ridiculous weapons and plans which, of course, always go wrong.
While not mentioned by name in the
Wild Kratts
episode entitled "Road Runner," there have been several allusions and
mentions of the cartoon duo throughout the episode. Especially when it
came to the actual fact that in reality, coyotes could catch road
runners.
In the
Lilo & Stitch: The Series episode "Slushy", when Lilo takes Slushy (Experiment 523) away from Gantu, Gantu falls off a cliff like Wile E. Coyote.
A couple more pics of Wile E
And Finally
