In 1947, Bugs Bunny made his first wrong turn at Albuquerque. He chalked it up to ordinary absent-mindedness. But then it happened again in 1953. And again in 1955. An unsettling pattern was forming.
“I KNEW I ‘shoulda’ made that left ‘toin’ in ‘Albakoikie’,” Bugs Bunny said. “But I’d always end up ‘foigettin.’ I felt like a real embezzle, an ultramaroon.”
Bugs Bunny missed that turn a total of 43 times over the course of 50 years.
“Something wasn’t right upstairs, doc.”
In 2014, UCLA medical staffers diagnosed the animated rabbit with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative condition many scientists say is caused by head trauma and linked to dementia.
Bugs Bunny and 17 other characters, including Marvin the Martian, Wile E. Coyote and Daffy Duck, say that head trauma occurred while filming Warner Brothers’ “Looney Tunes,” an incredibly violent children’s cartoon.
“Looney Tunes” began in 1930 and culminated in the 1996 feature-length film, “Space Jam,” in which Bugs Bunny and company were pulverized by gigantic aliens for more than an hour and a half.
“Boy, I say boy, ‘Space Jam’ was it for me,” Foghorn Leghorn said. “I was literally lit on fire during that movie. I say boy, I was burnt up more than a fire cracker lit on both ends.”
The television series was no less gruesome.
“Sufferin’ succotash, I must have been hit on the head with an oversized mallet a thousand times on that show,” Sylvester the Cat said. “I’d get a bump on my head five inches tall.”
The Looney Tunes are suing Warner Brothers for monetary damages, compensation for the injuries they say have made their lives exponentially more difficult.
“Sometimes I’m out in the woods and I completely forget I’m hunting ‘wabbit,’” Elmer Fudd said.
Warner Brothers spokesman Ronald Grube says the company is not responsible for any ailments the Looney Tunes may be experiencing.
“There is no definitive link between getting hit in the face repeatedly with a frying pan and memory-loss later in life,” Ronald Grube said, chuckling. “But that sort of slap-stick humor is hilarious, almost as hilarious as this lawsuit.”
“Gee, ain’t that Grube a stinker?” Bugs Bunny said. “He said we had no case. And of course, that meant war.”
The characters have fired back, claiming Warner Brothers purposely created a dangerous work environment.
“I’d get on set, and the producer would roll out three boulders and thirty cases of Acme dynamite,” Wile E. Coyote said. “And then he’d say ‘Go kill Road Runner.’ And he meant it.”
“They could’ve easily drawn up some stunt doubles. But they said it was too expensive,” Daffy Duck said. “These Warner Brothers are despicable.”
Bugs Bunny says he just wants what’s fair.
“If I had a nickel for every anvil that literally flattened me into a pancake, I’d have more than enough money to cover these medical bills.”
