What Does Your Favorite Looney Tunes Character Say About You? We’ve Got Some Theories.
We used real data science to find out which people love which Tunes characters most. Then we used some not-so-real psychoanalysis to explain what we found.
Photo: HBO Max
Looney Tunes proves that you don’t need a complex plot line to capture the human experience. There’s something about the kind of simple, elemental conflict we find everywhere in nature — between coyote and roadrunner, rooster and dog, rabbit and duck and dim-witted bald guy with a shotgun — that speaks to something deep inside all of us. The only question is, do you see yourself as the hunter or the hunted? Are you the hungry coyote seeking his next meal? Are you the trickster rabbit using his wiles to escape the hunter? Are you a pig wearing a bow tie?
To celebrate the latest incarnation of Looney Tunes on HBO Max, we’re taking a look at readers’ favorite characters from this iconic Warner Bros. cartoon. We at Ranker have the data to scientifically speculate which groups of people love which Looney Tunes characters the most, thanks to the 35,500 votes on our list of the Best Looney Tunes Characters. We also have the ability to very unscientifically speculate about what all that data means. Here are a few things we learned about people’s taste in Looney Tunes, and a few more things we completely made up for the fun of it to explain what we learned.
People Under 30 Love Wile E. Coyote
Photo: HBO Max
We know what you’re thinking — who doesn’t love Wile E. Coyote? But the fact that every other age group prefers Bugs Bunny suggests that millennials and Gen Z-ers have an especially strong affection for the Roadrunner’s most famous predator.
To us, that makes plenty of sense. Like the younger generation, Wile E. Coyote was promised that technology would bring him to new heights of comfort and ease, only to plummet from those heights when the ACME Co. rocket he was riding suddenly comes to a halt in mid-air. Despite all his smarts, every day is a struggle to feed himself. Unlike Generation X or Baby Boomers, millennials see themselves as tragic figures instead of comic heroes, victims of circumstances beyond their control that cause the dynamite they’re carrying to explode prematurely.
Of course, it all depends on your perspective. Others might say that Wile E. Coyote is a bit self-pitying (“You try chasing the world’s fastest flying bird while paying off student loan debt!”), or that he should set his sights on some more realistic goal like a mouse or a snake. But whether you sympathize with him or not, it’s clear that the Coyote’s struggle to secure his livelihood resonates with the only generation that had to take on four unpaid internships before job recruiters took them seriously.
Women Prefer Marvin the Martian
Men are more likely to pick Daffy Duck over any other character from the canon, but women have Marvin the Martian, who is #10 overall, at the top of their lists. The only thing we can possibly conclude from this is that Marvin the Martian is a sex icon. Women can’t get enough of this androgynous invader and his sexy voice. They would leave their partners in an instant if they had the chance to see the face under that big weird helmet. Like any man with a Tinder profile, he has a bunch of guns and a dog. And his sneaker game is on point.
Men, on the other hand, are threatened by the fact that he is comfortable enough in his masculinity to wear a skirt.
Photo: HBO Max
New York Loves Bugs, But New Jersey Likes Daffy
Photo: HBO Max
As Looney Tunes creator Chuck Jones put it, “you can dream about being Bugs, but when you look in the mirror in the morning, you see Daffy.” Everybody THINKS they’re Bugs Bunny (suave, clever, good at crossdressing), but at the end of the day, most of us are ACTUALLY Daffy Duck (irritable, hapless, frequently shoots self in the face). That is to say that a Bugs Bunny person is really just a Daffy Duck person with more self-esteem.
So it’s no wonder that New Yorkers, the country’s biggest producers of self-esteem, love Bugs Bunny most. New York City is the most important place on the planet, filled with the most important people in the world. How could they root for anyone but the hero of the story, the guy who wins every single time, the New York Yankees of cartoon characters? Who could lower themselves to the point of sympathizing with a loser like Daffy Duck?
The answer to that question, of course, is New Jersey. Where New York receives constant praise just because it has a weird green statue and a couple tall buildings, New Jersey suffers constant derision from people who have never bothered to visit it. Daffy Duck is just as funny as Bugs Bunny, but more relatable; similarly, New Jersey is just as good as New York, but there’s gambling there. The people of New Jersey aren’t too proud to acknowledge that they’ve been outsmarted by a rabbit, or that they might have something of a speech impediment. New Yorkers can only respect winners, while New Jersey citizens support a true duck of the people.
Louisiana Likes Sylvester the Cat — Georgia Prefers Sylvester Jr.
The people of Louisiana have made a questionable choice in backing Sylvester the cat, easily the least charismatic of all the major figures in the Looney Tunes canon. But Georgia has done something even more bizarre by naming Sylvester’s son, Sylvester Jr., as their favorite character. Most people would not even remember that Sylvester even has a son, let alone cite that son as the #1 best Looney Tunes character of all time.
The only reasonable conclusion we can draw from this is that Georgians see themselves as small children who need to be defended and cared for by father figures like the people of Louisiana. We had no idea the residents of these states had this kind of bizarre relationship, but that’s literally the only explanation for the data we’re seeing.
Photo: HBO Max