Cartoon writers have the unenviable task of creating something a toddler will love, without it making mom or the babysitter want to blow their own brains out. So, the way they do this is by throwing in little racy jokes they know will go over the kids' heads.
But, as we've mentioned before, some of the stuff they slip past censors is pretty shocking ...
#5. Yosemite Sam Braces for Prison Rape
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. has been making Looney Tunes cartoons since 1934, back when they played before movies in the theater instead of on Saturday mornings on television and were routinely seen by way more adults than children (and because it was the 1930s, the cartoons contained way more Nazis). So it's pretty much always been standard practice for the writers and animators to throw in jokes aimed specifically at the grown-ups in the audience.
Warner Bros.This short was originally titled "Duck you, Hitler!"
The transition from movie theaters to children's television didn't compel Warner Bros. to stop sprinkling risque humor into the otherwise G-rated antics of Bugs Bunny, and we're not even talking about all the times that Bugs tricked Elmer Fudd into belching ruinous shotgun blasts into Daffy Duck's face.
For example, in the 1995 episode "Carrotblanca," Bugs manages to trick Yosemite Sam into locking himself in prison. As soon as Sam realizes his mistake, he turns around to discover that he is trapped in a cell with a Island of Dr. Moreau-era Marlon Brando lookalike wearing pink bunny slippers and a "nobody can hear you" grin.
Warner Bros."Yosemite? When we're done you're going to be Grand Canyon."
Yosemite Sam's cellmate is a bulbous commercial fisherman with an exposed midriff, a pink shower kit, and a singular desire to remind Yosemite Sam that there is but one bed in their shared dungeon. The scene lasts only for a second, but it isn't exactly bursting with subtlety -- Bugs Bunny has just sentenced Sam to be prison-raped by an impossibly beefy bunkmate for all eternity.
Warner Bros.I wish I could tell you that Yosemite fought the good fight, and the animators let him be.
I wish I could tell you that, but prison is no fairy-tale world.
There is no other way that gag could possibly be interpreted, although it does manage to provide some context for Sam's general antagonism towards Bugs Bunny. This is something of a running gag in the world of cartoons, by the way. There's another prison rape reference in an episode ofSpongeBob SquarePants. He shows his pet snail two bars of soap and with a wink warns him not to drop them:
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