Cartoon Conspiracy Theories, Rated – Part 3
Donald Duck, Tom and Jerry, Courage the Cowardly Dog and the Animaniacs. We've gone too deep.
Parts 1 and 2 were the warm-up. I know how silly these sound. My job today is to make them sound as believable as possible, then tell you the truth.
REAL: it happened, and you can look it up.
RUMOR: fans say it, but the evidence is thin.
ANARCHY: I made it up because it's funny.
1. Donald Duck is a retired secret agent
The theory: He has a terrible temper. He knows how to fly planes. He's been around since the 1930s and hasn't aged a day. He wears a sailor suit, which is exactly what a spy would wear to look harmless. Donald isn't grumpy. Donald is a sleeper agent who was never told the mission ended.
REAL, and this is the wild part: Donald really did serve in World War II, on screen. Disney made dozens of wartime shorts, and Donald starred in many, including Donald Gets Drafted (1942). One of them, Der Fuehrer's Face (1943), won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short.
ANARCHY: Scrooge McDuck is his handler. The money bin is a cover.
Plausibility: 8 out of 10. If Donald ever shows up in a trench coat, run.
2. Tom and Jerry are stuck in a time loop
The theory: Tom gets flattened, frozen and launched out of windows, and he's fine by the next scene. Nothing ever changes. The chase never ends. What if they're trapped in a loop, like the Greek myth of Sisyphus, the guy forced to push a boulder up a hill forever?
RUMOR, but the "loop" is real in a different way. REAL: Tom and Jerry were created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera at MGM in 1940. Their shorts won seven Academy Awards, mostly with the exact same setup: cat chases mouse, mouse wins. They found a formula and polished it for years.
ANARCHY: The only way to free them is to stop watching. We will never stop watching.
Plausibility: 7 out of 10. How bad I now feel for Tom: completely.
3. Courage's farm is in a pocket dimension
The theory: Muriel and Eustace live in the middle of nowhere. Every week, aliens, ghosts or a cursed mattress show up. They never move. They never call for help. What if they can't leave? What if the farm is a pocket of reality where every scary story comes to visit?
RUMOR, but look at the address. REAL: the town is literally called Nowhere, Kansas. Creator John R. Dilworth built the whole show around the idea of a scared little dog who protects his family anyway. Being scared and doing the brave thing anyway is the point of the show.
Plausibility: 9 out of 10. My fear of long country roads: way up.
4. The Animaniacs were never supposed to get out
The theory: The Warner siblings, Yakko, Wakko and Dot, were locked in the studio water tower because they were too wild to control. Then they escaped. Now nothing can contain them.
REAL, and that is the actual premise of the show. Animaniacs (1993) opens by explaining that the siblings were created in the 1930s, locked in the Warner Bros. water tower for being too zany, and finally escaped. The conspiracy theory is just the plot.
ANARCHY: Yakko is reading this right now.
Plausibility: 10 out of 10, because it's canon.
What these theories teach us
Two of today's "theories" turned out to be true: Donald really went to war, and the Animaniacs really were locked in a tower. Cartoons hide wild true stories in plain sight. That's why we question the legend and then go find out what really happened.
Your turn
Which one did you already know? Which one surprised you? Tell me in the comments. Part 4 is next, and it gets worse. In a fun way.
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