Pinky and the Brain
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Pinky and the Brain are cartoon characters from the animated television series Animaniacs. Later they starred in their own cartoon show called Pinky and the Brain and even later in Pinky, Elmyra and The Brain.
The two are genetically enhanced lab mice who reside in a cage in the Acme Labs research facility. Each week sees Brain come up with a new plan for the two (led by him) to take over the world, which ultimately ends in failure. In common with many other Animaniacs shorts, many episodes are in some way a parody of something else - usually a film.
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The Brain
The Brain bears a resemblance to Orson Welles, especially in voice (voiced by Maurice LaMarche). He is highly intelligent and develops Rube Goldbergian plans for global domination. His tail is bent, like a staircase, and his head is large and wide, supposedly housing his abnormally large brain. He is coldly unemotional and speaks in a deadpan manner. Nevertheless, Brain has a very subtle sense of humor, and has even fallen in love once, with Billie (voiced by Tress MacNeille), a rather dippy girl mouse with a Queens accent. Intellectually, Brain sees his inevitable rise to power as beneficial to the world rather than being pure egotism.
The characteristics of the Brain would lead one to believe that he is more suited to be an antagonist rather than a protagonist, but the series tends to present him as a quixotic fellow striving for greatness against the odds, evoking sympathy from the audience and causing viewers to like him, despite his seemingly evil plans for world domination. The absurdity of a normally insignificant creature hungering for world dominance adds to the comical effect, and one senses, despite the gravitas of his Wellesian diction, a Napoleon complex, highlighted when other characters inadvertently become as smart as or smarter than him. Unfortunately for the Brain, his schemes are always doomed to failure at the hands of one or more of several common mistakes: Pinky does something idiotic to ruin the plan, or Brain gravely under/overestimates the masses' intelligence.
The Brain's similarity to Orson Welles was emphasized in a famous episode entitled "Yes, Always" which was based upon a real-life out-take from one of Welles' television commercials, colloquially known as Frozen Peas, in which the actor-director ranted about the poor quality of the script.
Pinky
Pinky (voiced by Rob Paulsen) is another genetically modified mouse who shares the same cage at Acme Labs but is substantially less bright. He speaks with a heavy accent, possibly cockney English (the actor that voiced Pinky was a fan of Monty Python). He frequently says nonsensical interjections like "Narf", "Zort" and "Poit". Although also an albino lab mouse like the Brain, he has a straighter tail, a severe overbite and is taller than The Brain. Pinky is more open-minded than the Brain - perhaps excessively so given that his off-and-on again girlfriend is a horse named Pharfignewton and he thinks a spool of thread is his little sister - and generally friendlier. His parents are also nimrods; perhaps it's genetic. Pinky sometimes lapses into fits of extreme intelligence, or psychokinetic abilities for short periods of time.
The duo
The duo have also matched wits with Snowball, a hamster (voiced by Roddy McDowall) with similar genetic modifications and lust for power, but with less benevolent goals.
As the show's theme song directly states, "One is a genius, the other insane"; this is a simplistic, but mostly accurate, summary.
The catchphrase used at the start of almost every episode is: Template:Wikiquote
- PINKY: Gee, Brain, what are we going to do tonight?
- BRAIN: The same thing we do every night, Pinky. TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!
The catchphrase is similarly repeated at the end of every episode in a slightly modified form:
- BRAIN: [After his latest plan fails] Come, Pinky, we must prepare for tomorrow night.
- PINKY: Why, Brain? What are we going to do tomorrow night?
- BRAIN: The same thing we do every night, Pinky. TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!
There is also a running gag which is usually inserted into the episode somewhere. The Brain will ask Pinky "Are you pondering what I'm pondering?" (usually concerning the Brain's latest plot) and Pinky will respond with something that is rather inappropriate and completely divorced from what the Brain is thinking about (e.g., "Uh, I think so, Brain. But this time, you wear the tutu."). (The complete list of Pinky's responses to "Are you pondering what I'm pondering?" can be found here. (http://snowball.frogspace.net/labnotes/aypwips.html))
The series ran from 1995 to 1998, airing 65 episodes. When the WB Network first premiered in 1995, Pinky and the Brain was one of the first series to air on its prime-time schedule on Sunday nights–one of the few times an animated series intended for Saturday morning cartoons was scheduled for regular prime time viewing. A previous cartoon series to air in prime time was another Warner Bros. cartoon series, Batman: The Animated Series, which had aired on Sunday nights on the Fox Network in 1993. Pinky and the Brain aired in the same time slot as Batman had, opposite the continual ratings champ 60 Minutes–and, just as with Batman, the prime-time ratings for Pinky and the Brain were poor; the show was returned to Saturday mornings after one season.
Pinky, Elmyra, and the Brain
In its final season, the Pinky and the Brain series became Pinky, Elmyra, and the Brain, which took Pinky and the Brain out of their lab setting, and into the home of 8-year old Elmyra Duff. Elmyra was originally a character from Tiny Toon Adventures and had no previous role in the Pinky and the Brain series.
Pinky, Elmyra, and the Brain was not terribly popular among hardcore aficianados, who criticized its awkward and clunky premise, and cited it as superfluous and distracted from the simplicity of the original; see jumping the shark. Elmyra, a character who was never universally popular even in the Tiny Toon days, was seen as a poorly-conceived addition to the well-established "two man show" humor, dialogue, and the geographical/chronological ubiquity of Acme Labs Pinky and the Brain maintained.
Pop culture references
- The computer game Fallout 2 featured cameos by Pinky and the Brain.
- The professional wrestling management simulator EWR sometimes randomly featured Pinky and the Brain as rivals to your wrestling federation.de:Pinky & Brain