Poll of the Day > What's something from a cartoon that you later found out was true?

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In the cartoon French Rarebit, the French chef Francois is trying to cook Bugs Bunny, who says, "Of course, if you really want to make something good, nothing beats a good old Louisiana Back-bay Bayou Bunny Bordelaise, a la Antoine."


Francois replies, "A la Antoine? You mean ZE Antoine of New Orleans?"


"I don't mean Antoine of Flatbush!"

I always thought this was just a joke, a Louisiana French sounding name that somebody picked at random for the cartoon. Then recently I was looking through A Treasury of Great Recipes by Vincent Price when this cartoon came on, and low and behold, there's a chapter on Antoine's of New Orleans!



Don't see any rabbit on the menu, though. Dig those crazy prices! You can't even buy a Big Mac these days for the price of a faison sous cloche (pheasant under glass).

Have you ever seen something in a cartoon or other kids program that you thought was a gag but then you later found out that it was a real thing?

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There's a TON of stuff in old Looney Tunes (and Merrie Melodies) that kids today (or kids back in the 80s) never really realized was based on real stuff.

This might actually be the absolute peak of it, though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOFG_qmoH8I

How many kids can name even some of those people?

Even as an adult in my 40s with a passing knowledge of old Hollywood, I can't tell who more than half those people are. And it's not because the impressions are bad (they're phenomenal), I just don't know the people being parodied.
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For fun, can anyone guess which Looney Tunes character was based on... this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6-JddDUnyY
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

There's a TON of stuff in old Looney Tunes (and Merrie Melodies) that kids today (or kids back in the 80s) never really realized was based on real stuff.

This might actually be the absolute peak of it, though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOFG_qmoH8I

How many kids can name even some of those people?

Even as an adult in my 40s with a passing knowledge of old Hollywood, I can't tell who more than half those people are. And it's not because the impressions are bad (they're phenomenal), I just don't know the people being parodied.

I was going to say this, there are a ton of real people/places/things mentioned in the original Looney Tunes that I didn't recognize until I was older.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

There's a TON of stuff in old Looney Tunes (and Merrie Melodies) that kids today (or kids back in the 80s) never really realized was based on real stuff.

This might actually be the absolute peak of it, though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOFG_qmoH8I

How many kids can name even some of those people?

Even as an adult in my 40s with a passing knowledge of old Hollywood, I can't tell who more than half those people are. And it's not because the impressions are bad (they're phenomenal), I just don't know the people being parodied.

Cartoons used to have more highbrow elements, but that's true of a lot of things. There was a gradual, probably unintentional shift from that (although, to some extent, even the stuff then had pop culture references as noted)

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Zeus posted...

Cartoons used to have more highbrow elements

It's mostly because cartoons were originally for adults.

Then, after they went through the ghetto of CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT through the 60s-70s, a lot of that was mostly stripped away. By the time people started going "Hey, wait, we can make cartoons for adults, too!", it was mostly only the lower-brow humor that got its foot in the door. And kind of stayed there.









...but back on the subject of older cartoons making references to things later kids would never get, how long did it take most people to figure out that The Flintstones is basically just The Honeymooners? And how many will/did never figure it out?
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