D-de-d-de-d-de-d-de-d-des... talk about Porky Pig here.

Porky Pig was the first true star character to be adorned on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies franchises^note Bosko fans in the back, please sit down, and an icon of animation. This lovable swine has earned recognition for his cute looks, his legendary stutter, and his many escapades with fellow screwball Daffy Duck. He has starred in the second most cartoons in the two franchises, with 159 appearances in the original theatrical cartoons, second only to Bugs Bunny's 168 short lineup and ahead of Daffy Duck's 129 short lineup (although he shared 42 shorts with Daffy).

Porky Pig as a character was instrumental in saving the Warner Bros. cartoon studio from going under — by 1935, the studio had been in the doldrums after studio founders Harman and Ising left, taking early star character Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid with them to MGM, leaving them with four things — the names "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies", "That's All, Folks!", and a worthless, hastily cooked up Expy for Bosko, the incredibly bland Buddy. Suffice to say, the studio was in serious need of a kick in the pants, so in an effort to save the studio, Friz Freleng cooked up a batch of Funny Animal characters based on the Our Gang series of shorts, as well as his childhood memories, who all made their debut in the Merrie Melodies cartoon "I Haven't Got a Hat": the troublemaking Beans the Cat, cute little Kitty the Cat, Ham and Ex the twin puppies, Oliver Owl the bookworm, and a pudgy little piglet with an uncontrollable stutter, intended as the sidekick for Beans.

While he barely had over a minute of screentime in said short, Porky was an immediate hit with audiences – the first real star character the studio had. However, the studio seemed to think that Beans the Cat was going to be their next big character, so they tried a second cartoon, "Gold Diggers Of '49", with young director Tex Avery at the directing helms, starring Beans and a heavily redesigned Porky as his sidekick. Once again, the pig won out as the next big thing, thus establishing him as the official mascot of the studio, while Beans and the rest of the "Our Gang" -derivative ensemble quickly faded away. He even replaced Bosko's farewell to the audience at the end of the proper Looney Tunes series and immortalized "Th-th-th-th-th-that's all, Folks!". His line remains famous to the 21st century.

However, Porky's popularity was not to last—for another star stole his thunder two years later, in one of Porky's most beloved cartoons: "Porky's Duck Hunt". The star in question was a crazy darnfool Daffy Duck.

Around the late 30's, Porky would start becoming a more fleshed out character, especially in the hands of Bob Clampett, who made him a more peppy, youthful individual who frequently went on adventures across the world, resulting in some very interesting trips, especially his journey to the home of the fabled Do-Do bird in "Porky in Wackyland". Frank Tashlin would also make several shorts with Porky, portraying him as having an innocent every-man type personality.

While Daffy foreshadowed Porky's downfall in popularity, when Bugs Bunny arrived in 1940, it became clear that Porky's days as a major star were coming to an end. Fortunately, he still managed to appear in plenty of his own shorts, and eventually became the tagalong of Daffy Duck, starring in classics like Robin Hood Daffy and Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century. He'd later appear in the TV series based on the Aforementioned cartoon, Duck Dodgers, as well as appearing in The Looney Tunes Show, Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production, Looney Tunes Cartoons and Bugs Bunny Builders. Porky would then get his first major role in years in the film The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, in which him, Daffy and Petunia Pig save the world from an alien invasion.

Here's a bit of interesting trivia for you: there are only THREE (or depending on how you feel about "Porky's Hare Hunt" and "Dumb Patrol", five) of the original theatrical cartoons that have starred Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny together – "A Corny Concerto", "Porky Pig's Feat", and Any Bonds Today?.

On a side note, Harman and Ising had already cooked up their own pig character in the early 30's as an Expy for their Mickey Mouse wannabe Foxy. This character was called "Piggy", although he was just another non-descript run of the mill Mickey Mouse clone, with nothing in common with Porky.

Joe Dougherty (a man with a real stutter) was his original voice. The role was quickly taken over by Mel Blanc, who has said his version of the stutter suggested the grunting of actual pigs. Unlike the rest of his co-stars, who have had various actors voice them depending on the director and producer, Porky has the unparalleled distinction of almost always being voiced by Bob Bergen, and has been for decades.

Tropes R-re-r-rel-re-re-rel-re-re-pertaining to the Character:

• Accidental Bid: Happens in the 1939 short "Porky And Teabiscuit." He answers a codger's question about what time it is, almost 11:00. The codger asks again and Porky intones "11" even louder. A fair's auctioneer mistakes it as Porky's bid and takes the $11 Porky made at the fair as payment for what turns out to be a broken down nag.
• Adhesive Bow Tie: His usual attire aside from his blue jacket (and in his earlier appearances, his white gloves) includes a red bow tie attached to his chest.
• Alliterative Name: As with many of Warner Bros.' animated characters including Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.
• Art Evolution: By the time Bob Clampett directed the Porky Pig shorts, he was considerably slimmed down from his earlier appearances.
• The Artifact:
  • Though Porky's name obviously still works as a general reference to pigs, it started from the fact that he debuted as a costar to Beans the Cat—that is to say, it's a joke on pork and beans. Though groomed as a potential new mascot, Beans never caught on and was shelved in favor of more Porky cartoons, leaving the joke no longer apparent.
  • The iconic “That's all, folks!” started out as a line said at the end of cartoons by the cartoon's star. When Porky Pig became the Series Mascot in the 30s, he featured so frequently that it essentially became his catchphrase (aided by his signature stutter making his rendition of it stick out), and so it became customary to have him say it in every cartoon, even those he didn't appear in. This tradition continued long after Porky was no longer the star character until the Looney Tunes shorts reverted to having the name be written out onscreen in 1946.
  • Porky himself started showing signs of this in the late 30s and 40s. The studio's top brass (mainly Leon Schlesinger) was slow to adapt to the fact that Porky had been displaced by Daffy and later Bugs, in the eyes of both the public and the directors, and mandated he show up in as many cartoons as possible. This resulted in a lot of cartoons where Porky's role is as a sidekick at best and an Advertised Extra at worst. This abated by the 50s, at which point most directors no longer used Porky at all (Chuck Jones was the big exception, due to being fond of Porky's dynamic with Daffy).
• Badass Adorable: Porky's not really the fighting type, but on rare occasions where push comes to shove, he can and will fight back. "Porky's Poultry Plant" is one occasion where Porky not only doesn't cower in fear, but actually takes the initiative to save his hens from a flock of vultures—by chasing them down in an airplane, equipped with machine guns! And he wins. "Little Beau Porky" is another shining hour, where Porky singlehandedly and successfully defends his French Foreign Legion post from Ali Mode and his thieves. "Porky the Gob" has him singlehandedly defending his battleship from an enemy submarine.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Generally a nice guy and has a long fuse, but set that temper off, and you better get clear. "The Ducksters" is the clearest example: even before he wins his prize money, Porky is enraged enough to be ready to punch out Daffy when he is threatened and when Porky does win, he immediately buys out the radio company and gets his sweet revenge with all the sadism he suffered now being lashed out in return.
  • Another example occurs in The Looney Tunes Show episode "The Float". Here, Daffy screws Porky out of $375,000 in order to buy a yacht (though the duck told Porky it was for a kidney transplant). A suspicious Bugs Bunny climbs aboard the yacht and asks Daffy how his kidney is feeling. When Daffy reveals that he lied to Porky so he could get the money for the yacht, the eavesdropping, enraged pig proceeds to beat the living tar out of the greedy duck.
• Big Eater: In his early appearances, his appetite was often his defining characteristic. As he was converted into The Straight Man however, this trait mostly vanished from the cartoons. It was still one of Porky's traits in some comic book stories.
• Brainy Pig: He's often shown to be very intelligent, especially when paired with Daffy Duck.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Porky's nephew in "Porky's Naughty Nephew". He constantly messes with his uncle for kicks, such as swatting him with a toy shovel (and unwittingly smacking him with a real shovel), pretending to drown in shallow water and then laughing at Porky when he falls for his trick, and then dumping a truckload of sand on top of him. That said, he does help his uncle win a swimming race by tricking him into thinking his toy sailboat is a shark fin and then reveals his charade after he won—or rather, tries to, as it turns out to the horror of both of them that there really was a shark in the water.
• Breakout Character: Porky hardly had any screen time and a small role in "I Haven't Got a Hat", and he was meant to be a sidekick to Beans. However, his likable Straight Man role and distinct voice made it clear who the real star was.
• Bring the Anchor Along: In "Porky's Tire Trouble", Porky's dog Flat Foot Flookie follows him to the tire factory where he works. Since dogs are not allowed inside, Porky ties Flookie to the bumper of a car. Flookie then burrows his way inside, dragging the entire car along with him.
• Butt-Monkey: Porky wound up as this often, especially in his later cartoons. This got toned down as his co-stars started to gain their own luckless streak. He played The Fool when paired with Sylvester and became Daffy Duck's Hyper-Competent Sidekick after the former evolved into a luckless Small Name, Big Ego. In comparison to these two, Porky generally took very few lumps in his later years. Until The Looney Tunes Show and Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production where he reverts to being a Butt Monkey.
• Casting Gag: In both Japanese and Mexican Spanish dubs, Porky's respective voice actors (Naoki Tatsuta and Ernesto Lezama) are also the voice of Oolong, another talking pig.
• Catchphrase: "Tha-th-th-tha-th-th...go home, folks."
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Most of the supporting characters created for Porky, such as Beans the Cat, Gabby Goat, and Petunia Pig, met this fate. Daffy averted this by doing the complete opposite.
• Coin-on-a-String Trick: In the cartoon "The Film Fan", one of the newsreels shows a skinflint attempting to cheat a claw machine with this trick, only for the claw to grab him and shake him down.
• The Comically Serious: Specially when he interacts with Daffy.
• Crazy-Prepared: Along with a fishing license and a dog license, he also has a license to sell hair tonic to bald eagles in Omaha, Nebraska and a license to use Daffy Duck as a motor.
• Criminal Doppelgänger: Killer, in "Porky's Double Trouble". This premis is somewhat reused in "The Looney Tunes Show" episode "The Muh Muh Murder, in which Daffy mistakes Porky for a murderer while staying at his house due to a news report mentioning a killer that matched Porkey's description".
• The Cutie: Next to Tweety, probably the most traditionally "cute" of Looney Tunes' classic stars. Of course, this being Looney Tunes, this usually makes him the butt of jokes or abuse.
• Deadpan Snarker: Especially when paired with Daffy.
• Demoted to Extra: As noted above, he was the first big star to emerge from the Warner stable and headlined a number of shorts. Even after Daffy Duck first appeared, he was still a star, but his leading roles began to decrease by 1942. While he had a long successful partnership with Daffy, 1943's "Porky Pig's Feat" was the last short to give him top billing over the duck. Much of his mid-40s and onward work consisted of Porky playing sidekick to zanier characters, with his own series limping to an end in 1951. In The '60s, he only appeared in three more shorts of the classic era (and one of them was just recycled footage from Robin Hood Daffy). Even into the 21st Century, his screentime is severely trumped by the other characters. Animator Mike Fontanelli (who works for Warner Bros.) claims that Porky's current downplaying is a result of an unexplained dislike of the character by many Warner Bros. executives.
• Depending on the Writer:
  • Though often placed as The Everyman of the franchise, many shorts placed Porky with some distinctive traits, ranging anywhere from a rather naive and somewhat doormat-ish figure to a neurotic and occasionally violent-tempered fuddy duddy. Both extremes were often provoked by his co-stars. Which persona was used usually depended on how sympathetic the writers wanted them to be in comparison, especially when Porky was paired with Daffy.
  • In the 1930s shorts, Porky Pig appeared variously as a young child or as a grown-up.
• Determinator: In "Duck Soup To Nuts", he uses a pail to bail out an entire pond in pursuit of Daffy.
• Dr. Psych Patient: In the short "Patient Porky", Porky goes into a hospital for eating too much cake. A mental patient there pretends to be a doctor and puts him on the X-ray machine, showing a whole birthday cake (complete with candles) inside Porky's stomach. He then sends him to the OR to "operate" and get the cake out.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference:
  • Those of you who are used to watching his cartoons of The '40s and The '50s cartoons may be quite surprised to see how different Porky was in his cartoons of The '30s cartoons, He was a little kid, as well as morbidly obese in his early appearances. In Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production he is noticeably a bit tubbier, similar to his original design from 1935.
  • This could also apply to the first version of the That's All, Folks! drum ending, where his design is radically different, especially when you compare that version to the newer, streamlined version used from late-1939 to 1946.
• Every Episode Ending: Porky Pig's catchphrase at the end of many Looney Tunes shorts is "T-T-T-That's all, folks!", though it wasn't always him who said it. In the early days it was said (minus stutter) by various characters, like Bosko or Buddy. For the early Merrie Melodies, it was a nameless jester character. There are even a few cartoons that end with Bugs Bunny saying, "And that's the end!"
• The Everyman: In contrast to his prankster co-stars Bugs and Daffy, Porky's an everyday average Joe sort of character. This ultimately came to bite him, as he became increasingly perceived as "the dull one" by comparison.
• Exposed to the Elements: In various Looney Tunes shorts, Porky never wears pants outside in the snow.
• The Finicky One: Certain cartoons, particularly in his later years, portray him more like this, as a way to make him funnier but still evoke his original status as The Everyman.
• The Fool: When paired with Sylvester in Chuck Jones' shorts. The two were paired in three Horror Comedy shorts. In each of them, Porky is completely oblivious to the dangers surrounding them, while a scared Sylvester tries to get them out of the dangerous areas.
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: He wears an open jacket and a bow tie, but is otherwise naked. Gets played for humor in a Looney Tunes Cartoons short, where he claims someone has stolen his pants (he looks exactly the same as ever).
• Hero Antagonist: As Daffy became more and more the star of the series, Porky started to take on this role in their rivalry. This is particularly evident in shorts where he is an authority figure who is just trying to stop Daffy causing trouble (eg. "Daffy Doodles", Riff Raffy Daffy"). Depending on the level of Daffy's lunacy however, there's sometimes a shade of He Who Fights Monsters.
• High-Dive Hijinks: The "high dive into a glass" gag was one of the acts auditioning for Porky in "Curtain Razor".
• Human Mail: In two cartoons, Porky tries to get rid of Charlie Dog this way. Charlie always gets sent back.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: To Daffy Duck in some of Chuck Jones' later shorts (somewhat in contrast to his other appearances, especially alongside Sylvester by the same director).
• Inn of No Return: "Claws for Alarm", part of the Porky & Sylvester horror trilogy, involves them visiting a run-down inn that's infested with murderous mice, who try their hardest to kill any visitors.
• Irony: Despite creating the character, Friz didn't direct many Porky Pig cartoons in his career- the bulk of them were from the early '40s. His last Porky cartoon in the original theatrical shorts was from 1952, even though both Chuck Jones and Robert McKimson used the character into the late '50s and early '60s.
• Last-Second Word Swap: Played with in "Breakdowns of 1939", a gag reel made by the Warner Bros. animators for their 1938 Christmas party. It features several takes of Porky Pig hitting his thumb with a hammer, and on the last one he says the following:

  Porky: Oh, son of a bi-bi-bit, son of a bi-bi-bit, son of a bi-bi-bi-gun! [to the audience] Ha ha ha! You thought I was gonna say "s-suh-son of a bitch", didn't ya?

• Later-Installment Weirdness: As his co-stars began to take over the Butt-Monkey role, Porky took on a more passive, hyper competent personality. In "Daffy's Inn Trouble" for example, since Porky has the advantage over Daffy the whole time- the Running Gag of the short is that Daffy keeps bungling his efforts to drive business away from Porky's hotel. Even more so in "Robin Hood Daffy" which is almost a full-on role reversal of their earlier dynamic, with Porky now heckling a luckless and frustrated Daffy. Also, his trademark stutter got toned down severely, with none of the "swapping words" jokes that were featured in many of his '40s shorts.
• Law of Inverse Recoil: Seen in various shorts; one example comes from Porky's Phoney Express, where Porky is fighting Indians on horseback, and every time he fires his gun, he's knocked offscreen until the seemingly elastic reins pull him back into his saddle.
• Leaving Audience: In "Porky's Cartoon", Porky features a cartoon hand-doodled by himself. At the end of the episode, however, only one member of the audience is remaining: a skunk. Whether the others left because of the cartoon's animation or were driven out by the skunk's stench is left ambiguous.
• Mocky Mouse: While less overt overall than Warner's more blatant Mickey ersatz (Foxy), Porky still draws several parallels with Disney's mascot. He's a Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal with a similar naming structure and boyish everyman personality. He was created when the studio lost the rights to their original star (Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid in their case), has a Distaff Counterpart Love Interest in the form of Petunia Pig, and frequently co-stars alongside Daffy Duck, a well-known Alternate Company Equivalent to Donald Duck. While it did seem at first that Porky would become Warner Bros. prime star to directly rival Mickey, that would change as Bugs Bunny rose to prominence, though Porky would settle into the Straight Man role among his peers.
• Motor Mouth: In his early cartoons, where his stutter was played up considerably.
• Move Along, Nothing to See Here:
• Nice Guy: Generally, Porky tends to play the kind, even-tempered Straight Man to his fellow toons' wackier personalities.
• No-Respect Guy: A Running Gag in his cartoons is how little respect just about everybody gives him.
• Not This One, That One: In Porky And Teabiscuit (1938), Porky thinks he's won a magnificent racing pony in a county fair auction. Turns out he actually won a broken-down nag.
• Picnic Episode: In the short "Porky's Picnic". Porky, his girlfriend Petunia and baby nephew Pinky go on a picnic. They don't actually get to eat anything because Pinky wanders off to the zoo and gets in trouble.
• A Pig Named "Porkchop": He is a very well-known example, as he is Porky Pig. He provides the page image.
• Police Pig: Porky is frequently depicted as a police officer in short films.
• Porky Pig Pronunciation: His characteristic and iconic stutter makes him the Trope Namer.
• Precision F-Strike: Says "son of a bitch" after hammering his thumb in a short clip not intended for general audiences.
  You thought I was gonna say "s-suh-son of a bitch", didn't ya? Heh heh.
• The Protagonist: Until Bugs Bunny arrived in 1940.
• Pro Wrestling Episode: Porky became an unwitting grappler in 1936's "Porky the Wrestler".
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: More so in his early appearances.
• Rough Overalls: Wears them in a few shorts where he works at a farm or as a carpenter, such as in the mini-short where he says "son of a bitch" after hitting his thumb with his hammer while doing carpentry work.
• Running Gag: Anytime he stumb-b-b-b, uh, stumb-b-b-b, er, stumb-b-b-b...has trouble with a word and uses a similar word (or phrase) instead; in many cases, the substitute is a bigger mouthful than what he was originally trying to say.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Sensitive Guy to Daffy's Manly Man.
• Shark Fin of Doom: In an early short, Porky Pig and his cat are out fishing when a flying fish decides to have some fun and sticks its side fin out to look like a shark's fin. The cat catches on and grabs the fin, but that time the shark was real.
• Shout-Out: In "Porky in Egypt", the camel's nervous breakdown was inspired by the film The Lost Patrol. In the same scene, the camel references Rudyard Kipling's poem "Boots". The scene where he's bathing in an oasis mirage has the camel imitate Hugh Herbert's laugh.
• The Smart Guy: As a secondary character, this is usually his prominent trait. It's especially prominent in his many, many stints as Daffy's sidekick, where he tends to be the smarter, saner member of the duo and thus is exempt from the slapstick.
• Species Surname: Just like the other two big stars of the Looney Tunes, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, he follows this theme be being called Porky Pig.
• The Straight Man: While Porky was the first Warner Bros. character to actually have a distinctive personality, he was usually portrayed as a meek straight man, which made him a rather inflexible lead character for the directors. They usually had to rely on secondary characters to make his cartoons truly interesting, which eventually led to Porky becoming a secondary character himself once characters like Daffy Duck became the headlining star of the studio.
• That's All, Folks!: Trope Namer Trope Codifier, as Bosko is technically the Trope Namer, since he said the lines first. When Porky first became the star of the Looney Tunes, Joe Dougherty had such a hard time saying Porky's lines that this tag had to be replaced with the words being written onto the screen. When Mel Blanc took over as Porky, he took over saying the lines.
• Too Dumb to Live: In the Porky/Sylvester "horror trinity" of "Scaredy Cat", "Claws For Alarm" and "Jumpin' Jupiter", Porky's status as The Straight Man is amped up to the point that he refuses to believe anything weird or dangerous is going on, slowly Flanderizing into borderline I Reject Your Reality levels by the final installment. This actually gets increasingly creepier; in "Scaredy Cat", he is forced to admit that Sylvester was right and Sylvester saves him (only to be knocked out by one last mouse whilst Porky's thanking him), but in "Claws for Alarm", he's never clued into the danger but manages to get away safely (The Stinger that some of the killer mice have stowed away with them besides). Finally, in "Jumpin' Jupiter", he winds up getting himself and Sylvester stranded on an alien planet because he never figured out he was being abducted by an alien, even insisting after seeing it face to face it could be nothing more than a "friendly Nava-Joe".
• Took a Level in Badass: There are rare occasions where Porky will man up and fight his foe toe to toe, even managing to come out on top. "Porky's Poultry Plant" and "Little Beau Porky" are two such examples.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In many of his starring roles from The '40s to the early 50s, especially in Chuck Jones and Robert McKimson's shorts, Porky would usually be rather curmudgeonly and sarcastic. He was even prone to acts of extreme violence, including physical abuse, to get whatever he wanted (whether it be his hunting target, peace and civility, or some other goal), yet somehow never crossed the villain territory that Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam were in. Granted how justified he is in this behavior varies, since he was paired with pranksters.
• Tritagonist: Ever since Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny showed up.
• Vague Age: In his earlier cartoons, Porky's age was all over the place. Some cartoons, including his debut, I Haven't Got a Hat, depict him as a child. In others, he's an adult (in one of which, he even had an adult daughter). Later cartoons seemed to settle on him being an adult.
• Villain of the Week: The early Porky shorts occasionally had one-shot bad guys for Porky to deal with, such as the Streamline Train driver from "Porky's Railroad", the vultures from "Porky's Poultry Plant", Ali Mode from "Little Beau Porky", Sub Zero from "Porky the Gob", and so on.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Daffy. When paired, they often antagonize or insult each other. But they have variously been depicted as pals, business partners, co-workers, or roommates.
• Vocal Evolution: His voice also sounded different in his initial '30s cartoons, where his stutter was more apparent. This is because his original voice actor, Joe Dougherty, had an actual stutter problem. Mel Blanc initially replicated Dougherty when he first took the role, though started adding his own comedic pacing by the 40s. Also, Blanc's voice for Porky started out thinner and slightly deeper, before gradually becoming thicker and squeakier by the color cartoons during the early 40s.
• Weirdness Magnet: Seems to attract all sorts of demented characters, much to his dismay.
• White Gloves: Usually wears these, though there have been occasions where his hands have been bare.