An iconic series of Looney Tunes Zany Cartoon short subjects made by Chuck Jones during The Golden Age of Animation.

Basically, this is what happens if Tom and Jerry was set in the desert, and replaced the cat and mouse with a coyote and a roadrunner.^note Yes, a real-life bird species (essentially a type of cuckoo) of the Southwestern US and Mexico. And with even less successful results for the chaser.

The Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner shorts are centered around the titular desert-dwelling duo, as the clever but destructively obsessive Coyote does everything within his power (and employs every item in the ACME product catalog) to capture, or at the very least, kill the elusive Road Runner for dinner. But every attempt backfires on him in increasingly ridiculous and impossibly unrealistic ways. The elastic launcher to fling him at the ground cuckoo? Comes unanchored and hurls him into a jumping cholla cactus. The dart bombs? Go after him and thwart his subsequent attempts on Beep Beep. The metal plate to block the road? Doesn't pop up until several tries later, when it's the Coyote running past. A springy block of pavement serving as an ejector? Comes loose when the bird stops by and squashes the Coyote. Jones explicitly modelled the Coyote's seemingly inexplicable persistence on philosopher George Santayana's self-definition of a fanatic: someone who "redoubles his efforts when he has forgotten his aim." And it doesn't help him one bit that the Road Runner is apparently aware of this and more than happy to exploit it to his own, cheerfully sadistic ends.

Despite their surreally minimalist production design — very unlike the traditional Looney Tunes style — and penchant for formula gags, the Coyote/Road Runner cartoons have remained hugely popular right up to the present day. Forty shorts were produced in the classic era, and newer ones have been occasionally created for theaters in the decades since. Jones went on to cast a Coyote expy in the Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog series, while Wile E. himself was set against none other than Bugs Bunny for a few shorts, in which the self-described "super genius" proved to be just as unsuccessful at capturing Bugs as he did the Road Runner.

Between the mid-60's to the early-80's, the duo appeared in a series of comic books published by Gold Key Comics that ran for 105 issues. In those comics, the Road Runner was given the name Beep Beep (yes, seriously) and had a family consisting of a wife named Matilda and three unnamed identical sons. Both coyote and roadrunner also talked more often than they did in the theatrical cartoons, with the latter in particular speaking in Dr. Seuss-esque rhyme, which also applies to his sons and Matilda. Other than that, the premise of Wile E. trying to catch the roadrunners (and failing, as always) remained.

The duo have made a comeback via CGI in The Looney Tunes Show.

Wile E. is also set to star in the Dave Green-directed live-action/animated hybrid film from Warner Bros. Pictures Animation and DNEG Animation called Coyote vs. ACME, which was announced back in 2018, and to say it's had quite a rough journey is an understatement. It was originally set for release on July 21, 2023 before being taken off the schedule and replaced by Barbie. In November 2023, it was shelved by Warner Bros. for a $30 million tax write-off, only to later be shopped around to other distributors such as Prime Video, Netflix and Paramount, and even had a screenshot unveiled on Twitter / X by Eric Bauza... that is, until the movie was re-cancelled on February 9th, 2024, after Warner rejected all offers to purchase it... at first. Deadline confirmed in mid-March of 2025 that Ketchup Entertainment, the distributor of WB's other nearly-written-off Looney Tunes feature film The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie was in negotiations to release the film. Finally, it was announced on March 31, 2025 that Ketchup Entertainment had successfully acquired the rights to the film for 50 million dollars, effectively saving it, and are planning a full theatrical release of the film in 2026.

Their character sheets can be found here.

See also the video games Road Runner, Road Runner's Death Valley Rally, Desert Speedtrap, and Desert Demolition.

These cartoons provide examples of:

• Accordion Man:
  • This is sometimes Wile E.'s fate after a long fall or being Squashed Flat by boulders, steamrollers, trains and so on. Sometimes he sounds like an accordion as well.
  • In one instance Wile E. gets turned into a "Spring Man" (well, Spring Coyote) when he gets crushed by a boulder while inside a spring (while his head is just Squashed Flat).
• Achievements in Ignorance: In Fastest with the Mostest, the Coyote corners the Road Runner near the edge of a cliff. Of course, the cliff itself collapses, while the piece the Road Runner stands on inexplicably floats in the air. The coyote laments how the Road Runner keeps breaking the law of gravity, only for the Road Runner to respond he never studied said law. This implies his ability to defy the laws of nature comes from his complete ignorance of them.
• ACME Products: Of course, it's a mystery how Wile E. can pay for all the stuff he orders from them, and a bigger mystery why he continues to do so, seeing as nine times out of ten, their products are the reason he fails. One Cartoon Network ad hints that he's the QA tester for the company, but another one has him sue the company over all the malfunctioning equipment, gaining a prime-time slot as a settlement.) When the ACME products do work as intended, they'll end up working on the coyote. A magazine article where the Coyote files a lawsuit against Acme is the basis of a Warner Bros. film having been made (saved by Ketchup Entertainment) titled Coyote Vs. Acme. Former pro wrestler John Cena has the role of Acme's lawyer, while the company is headed by fellow Looney Tune Foghorn Leghorn.
• Affectionate Parody: The first short was made as a deliberately over-the-top parody of typical "cat chases mouse" type cartoons (and nature documentaries; the pseudo-Latin names are a direct callback to those), but audiences took it at face value and thought it was just something new. The rest is history.
• Agitated Item Stomping: Coyote does this sometimes either because he was trying to get one of his gadgets to work, or because said gadgets failed on him...
• Always Need What You Gave Up: This happens in more than one cartoon. For example, in "Hairied And Hurried," Wile. E attempts to catch the Roadrunner by jumping off the cliff above him, complete with skydiving equipment. However, upon jumping off, he ends up in a miniature tornado that was passing. Once tossed out of the tornado, a dizzy Wile. E discards the skydiving equipment and marches off in disgust... right over the edge of a cliff. He tries to head back to retrieve his pack, but winds up with nothing but air beneath him... and another date with gravity.
• Amusing Injuries: Coyote suffers a multitude in every short. Sometimes a combination of these in a short span.
• Anti-Villain: Wile E. Coyote is basically of one these, since all he wants is a square meal. Too bad he's so bad at getting it.
• Anvil on Head: A Looney Tunes staple, reproduced faithfully multiple times.
• Arch-Enemy: Wile E. and the Road Runner have been going at it for more than 75 years!
• Art Evolution: The designs of the two characters did change a bit over the years, but this trope was more evident in the background designs. The first three shorts used scenic but fairly bland-looking backgrounds, which gave way to more abstract designs starting with Maurice Noble's arrival. They gradually got more and more unusual, eventually leading to some flat-out weird scenery in Gee Whiz-z-z-z-z-z-z before settling down into a more consistent style from 1957 onwards.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • Coyotes are nearly twice as fast as roadrunners and actually prey on them in reality. The roadrunner's best line of defense is camouflage and stealth, as he wouldn't be able to outrun Wile E. on open ground.
  • Roadrunners are actually predators in their own right, and wouldn't touch a big pile of commercial birdseed.
  • Road Runner, the character, is depicted as flightless. In reality, roadrunners can fly, and will do so to avoid predators.
• Ash Face: Wile E. sometimes gets these when his contraptions blow up in his face.
• Aside Glance: In Hip Hip-Hurry!, Wile E. feeds a mouse a drink that allows him to move at Super-Speed. As the mouse is speeding across the landscape, he turns and looks at the camera.
• Attack Backfire: This is how Wile E. Coyote gets his comeuppance nine times out of ten. His traps for the Roadrunner always end up getting him instead, even if it goes against the laws of physics. The Roadrunner rarely does anything to counter the attack; it mostly doesn't have to.
• Badass Adorable: The Road Runner has his rare moments, like in Fast and Furry-ous, where he holds out a metal lid for the Coyote to slam into in one scene, and tosses a boomerang at him in the other.
• Barely Missed Cushion: In one of the cartoons, Wile E. decides to be Crazy-Prepared and put a trampoline at the bottom of a cliff so that he lands safely when he falls. Sometimes he misses. Sometimes he hits the trampoline but simply rips through the canvas and hits the ground. Sometimes the canvas separates from the frame and wraps around him. Once, the trampoline worked perfectly, only for him to hit his head on an overhang, fall on the ground next to the trampoline, then get hit again when the dislodged overhang fell on him.
• Bear Trap: One of the many maligned ACME products. Coyote has tried these to catch the Roadrunner. Many times, they end up biting him in the ass — literally.
• Beyond the Impossible: In "To Beep or Not to Beep", the catapult he's using somehow completely flips over in the air to land on him while he's standing behind it, which even by cartoon standards is completely bonkers.
• Big Bad: Wile E. Coyote is ultimately the main antagonist of the shorts, serving as the only threat to Roadrunner.
• Binomium ridiculus: Trope Codifier for the use of fake species names as parody.
  • In the opening scenes of several of them, the action suddenly pauses as a freeze frame showing either the Roadrunner or Wile E. Coyote in a pose reminiscent of a museum diorama, with the Roadrunner given names such as Speedius birdius or Speedometrus Rapidus, and the Coyote ones like Ravenus catchineatum or Famishus Famishus. One cartoon even gave the Roadrunner's "beep, beep" a scientific name ("beepus-beepus").
  • Subverted in 2003's "Whizzard of Ow" in which the actual binomial names were used: Canis latrans for the Coyote (barking dog — ironic when you realize Wile E. almost never speaks^note Well, he doesn't when he's paired with the Roadrunner. When he's up against Bugs Bunny in his "Suuuuper Genius" mode, he's actually quite articulate) and Geococcyx californianus for the Road-runner (Californian cuckoo that runs on land).
  • And in "Stop! Look! And Hasten!" Wile E.'s Burmese Tiger Trap catches a Burmese Tiger, Surprisibus! Surprisibus!
  • Even Wile E. Coyote gets in on the action when he refers to the common western rabbit (e.g. Bugs Bunny) as Rabbitus idioticus delicious in "Rabbit's Feat". Unfortunately, Bugs is far from being an idiot, something that Wile E. finds out — the hard way.
  • This even extends beyond the animated shorts themselves: in a commercial for Energizer batteries featuring Wile E. Coyote, he is introduced as "Pursuis Rabbitus Energizus", and the Energizer battery that powers the Energizer Bunny is introduced as "Powerus Never Stopus".
• Blowing a Raspberry: The Road Runner does this to taunt the Coyote, and it sounds... rather peculiar to say the least, sounding like a series of fingers being pulled out of bottles in rapid succession.
• Bomb Whistle: Everything that falls, including boulders, anvils, and Wile E. himself, makes this sound.
• Boomerang Comeback: Wile E. gets hit in the back of his head by his own boomerang (naturally) in "The Fast and the Furry-ous".
• Born in the Theatre: At the end of one short, Wile E. pulled a standing sign onto the set. "Wanted: One gullible coyote. Apply to manager of this theatre."
• Born Lucky: Nothing ever goes wrong for Road Runner. Sometimes the laws of physics and even reality bend over for him, such as when Wile E. painted a cliff wall to look like a road, and Road Runner proceeds to run right into the painted road and disappears into the horizon. And no surprise, Wile E. tries to follow and crashes into the wall. When Wile E. tried a painting of a chasm to hide an actual road, Wile E. is the one who runs right into the painted chasm. The most extreme example of this is in Stop! Look! and Hasten! when Wile E. stops Road Runner on a bridge with birdseed and tries cutting a hole out from underneath him. The entire bridge and the rock formations the bridge is attached to collapse, leaving Road Runner standing on a floating wooden disc.
• Born Unlucky: No matter how hard the Coyote tries, his plans to catch that Roadrunner end up backfiring on him spectacularly, including the devices he orders from ACME. He is also the epitome of the Butt-Monkey in Western animation. One of the laws of the cartoons is that "the audience's sympathy must remain with the Coyote." For a coyote to want to eat a roadrunner is perfectly natural in the order of things and to top it all off, he is regularly portrayed as skinny and starving. Furthermore, if a device does work as advertised, he takes the bait. That said, one of the rules that Chuck Jones created said that "No outside force can harm the Coyote - only his own ineptitude or the failure of the ACME products", so he’s a downplayed example of this.
• Box-and-Stick Trap: Coyote often tries the deadfall trap on the Roadrunner, and at least once on Bugs. You can probably guess how those turn out.
• Brick Joke: In some cartoons, an ACME contraption would fail early on and be ignored, until the Coyote comes back across it and does something foolish to trigger it.
• Butt-Monkey: Wile E. himself; in fact he never gets to be anything but (not even in his appearances with Bugs Bunny).
• Cactus Cushion: A common hazard, given the setting take place in the southwestern US desert where saguaros are native.
  • "To Beep or Not to Beep" had Wile E. fall off a cliff as usual, only for a cactus to also fall off after him, leading to him flying back UP the cliff while howling in pain.
  • "Highway Runnery" has him standing behind a cactus as he prepares to dash off, only for the Road Runner's speed to bend the cactus so it hits his behind. Bonus: we get to hear a real coyote yowl as he does another Pain-Powered Leap.
  • "Chariots of Fur" has Wile E. test out a cactus costume, feeling visibly uncomfortable as he puts it on. He mistimes his attempt to grab the Road Runner and ends up wrapping his arms around himself with painful results, and promptly decides that the costume isn't worth the trouble.
• Camera Tricks: In one of the Coyote's few speaking appearances in the Road Runner shorts, he mentions these when talking about how he keeps a "record of [his] 'activities'".
• Canis Latinicus: Both parties receive a new genus/species name in this style before each short ("To Beep or Not to Beep" being the exception). In one short ("Soup or Sonic"), even the Roadrunner's beeps get a scientific name: "beepus-beepus". Though "The Whizzard of Ow" showed the actual scientific names, Geococcyx californianus (greater roadrunner) and Canis latrans (coyote). "Stop! Look! and Hasten!" also features a cameo by a Burmese Tiger (Surprisibus! Surprisibus!)
• Cartoon Physics: But it's so side-splittingly funny in all cases that it doesn't matter.
• Cartoon Suction Cups: In "Shot and Bothered," the Coyote uses a pair of these to walk up the outer frame of a tunnel. Unfortunately for him, the individual blocks on which the cups stand come loose. Everything goes downhill after that.
• Catching Your Doom: This trope is just one of the many ways the Coyote fails, usually catching explosives he throws at the Road Runner after they are launched back at him by things like electric wires or cacti.
• Cerebus Retcon: According to Little Go Beep, the reason why Wile E. is The Voiceless is because it's a family honor that coyotes are not allowed to speak until they successfully catch a roadrunner.
• Catchphrase: Road Runner's Beep Beep!
• Characterization Marches On: The Roadrunner originally was depicted as somewhat a Karmic Trickster in 'Fast and Furry-ous (1949) being clearly aware of Coyote's hunting the whole time, a trait that would be mostly dropped in later Chuck Jones shorts since the Coyote gets Hoist By His Own Petards anyways. The Road Runner's characterisation would slip back in and out with efforts from other directors however.
• Chekhov's Gag: Many cartoons use this occasionally, always to poor Wile E. Coyote's detriment.
  • One notable example has a steel wall not release properly from a slot in the ground, but when Wile E. Coyote goes to check it, it doesn't spring up on him right away. Instead, it waits until the end of the cartoon to pop up and stop Wile E. while he's chasing the Road Runner.
  • A common gag is that when Wile E. sets up one of his traps, it goes off on him several times wrong before he gives up, so he goes for something else — whereupon the original trap goes off on him, then the combination of his next scheme and the attack is his downfall. Then he almost gets the Road Runner, but the trap gets him again.
  • Wile E. once rigs up a "Free Glass of Water" with a match attached to the glass on top of a box containing TNT. Pulling the glass up will cause the match to light the fuse. The Road Runner ignores it and holds up a sign stating that Road Runners can't read and don't drink. Later on, Wile E. is crawling on the ground exhausted after another failed attempt and grabs the rigged glass, only realizing his mistake right before the TNT goes off.
  • Wile E. once affixes glider wings to sticks of dynamite and tries to launch them at the Road Runner. Not only does it not work, but every few minutes through the rest of the cartoon, a dynamite glider drifts into the scene and blows him up.
• Clothes Make the Superman: Coyote buys a superhero costume and tries to fly off a cliff. He doesn't.
  • Another costume does work for flight, but it's specifically designed with rigid "wings" that fold out from under the arms. It's not much of a spoiler to note that Wile E. still ends up managing to plummet to the ground.
  • The Batman outfit also works (even though Superman can fly and Batman can't), but Wile E. does a smug Aside Glance while flying and rams into the side of a cliff.
  • And another set of wings gets destroyed in an explosion, resulting in no flight but in another date with gravity.
• Colossus Climb: Averted. At the end of "Soup or Sonic", Wile E. finally catches the Road Runner. The episode's running gag involving size changing pipes leaves the Road Runner normal sized, but unfortunately for the Coyote he has become tiny, very tiny. He doesn't bother trying to scale the huge bird (even he can appreciate he's massively outgunned) and instead asks the audience what is he supposed to do now.
• Comically Lopsided Rivalry: A series of shorts where the coyote schemes and uses increasingly over the top gadgets (either of his own creation or mail to order) to repeatedly fail to catch the super speedy Road Runner. One of the few, if only, times he catches the Road Runner is when Wile. E. Coyote is shrunk to an inch tall at that. Once he realizes the size difference, he looks at the fourth wall and indignantly holds up signs reading, "Okay, wise guys - You always wanted me to catch him - Now what do I do?"
• Conspicuously Light Patch: Subverted (perhaps unintentionally) in cartoon, where Wile E. cuts a suspension bridge that's clearly drawn on a cel, but the fully painted cliff he's standing on falls instead.
• Conspicuous Trenchcoat: When Wile E. gets hold off a Spy Kit in "Sugar and Spies", he starts wearing a black trenchcoat and hat. In the middle of the desert.
• Crossover:
  • Two, on a technicality. "Hare-breadth Hurry" has Bugs Bunny filling in for a sidelined Road Runner, while "The Wild Chase" has a cannonball race between the Road Runner and Speedy Gonzales, with the Coyote and Sylvester in pursuit.
  • Wile E. also crossed into a few Bugs Bunny cartoons as well. These are where the "Wile E. Coyote, Super-Genius" persona comes from.
• Cruel Coyotes: Wile E. subverts this for the most part, as all of his schemes and traps fail to catch the Road Runner as intended, and even the audience sympathizes with him^note something which was even made into a rule by Chuck Jones. However, the Beep Beep the Road Runner comic books published by Gold Key Comics make him much meaner and more malicious than he is in the animated shorts, as he is also willing to try and catch the Road Runner's three unnamed children alongside their father.
• Deadly Delivery: In the cartoon "Sugar and Spies," the Coyote sends a time bomb wrapped in a package to the Road Runner. But the package is returned to the Coyote for insufficient postage and is exploded in the Coyote's midst before he can retrieve a stamp for it.
• Death by Looking Up: Played with in all the various things that fell on Wile E. Coyote's head over the years. He's looked up and then opened a comically tiny umbrella to protect him; looked up, looked to the camera, pointed up and gulped; looked up, seen the rock, stepped just out of the shadow on the ground and been hit anyway... you name it.
• Deconstruction: The series is this to “Cat and Mouse Chase cartoons”, although it can considered an Internal Deconstruction since Looney Tunes has some series in this category. The coyote fails, not because the roadrunner cleverly fights back but because the universe itself has it out for him and the roadrunner is so unnaturally lucky that he becomes nothing more than a Living Prop.
• Decoy Protagonist: Despite often being referred to as "Roadrunner cartoons", Roadrunner himself is never actually at the forefront of the plot. The stories always follow the Coyote and his failed attempts at killing his Arch-Enemy.
• Deer in the Headlights: Happens regularly to Wile E. Coyote, who is often too flabbergasted or exhausted to move out of the way when his plans backfire on him badly. That little umbrella he often pulls out as a shield doesn't help things at all.
• Delayed Explosion: Given Coyote's propensity for dynamite, the detonation is always timed to what will embarrass Coyote the most. If he intends to roll it down a long flume, it will blow up in his face the instant his match touches the fuse. If he ties it to the end of a rope to throw, it will give Roadrunner a few seconds to make his detour. A stick in Ready, Set, Zoom! politely adheres to Coyote's hands and feet (due to fast-acting glue) for 35 seconds so he can hobble on his haunches to the river, only to blow the moment before he hits the water. The dart bombs of Lickety Splat last long enough to sabotage all his subsequent traps.
• Delayed Reaction: Wile usually realizes very late that he's walking on thin air. Once he does, he falls down.
• Depending on the Writer:
  • While Wile E. is consistently unable to catch Road Runner, exactly how fast he is depends heavily on the short. In some, he is only barely slower than him, to the point he ends up frustratingly running a few feet behind his prey without actually reaching it, but in others, he is much less athletic and gets gassed out with relatively small efforts.
  • The Road Runner is variably either a wild creature going simply about its life and just naturally avoids getting caught without trying or a more standard cartoon trickster who deliberately sabotages the Coyote's plans and heckles his failures.
• Detrimental Determination: Wile E. Coyote always tries to capture and eat the Road Runner, and not only does he never succeed, but he constantly gets comically injured in his efforts. It's even been said by Chuck Jones himself that he could easily "stop at any time" and potentially eat something else,^note If anything, the money he spends on ACME products could amply afford ordering food instead. but his fanaticism prevents him from ever giving up on trying to get the Road Runner, meaning his pain is self-inflicted to some degree. In one special cartoon, Wile E. claims to justify it by saying Road Runner is the best kind of meal to a coyote.
• Didn't Think This Through: Typically the reason why Wile E.’s plans never work, unless logic itself is thwarting him.
  • About 90 per cent of the time Wile E. builds a rocket, a speed boost device, a vehicle or whatever to catch up with the Roadrunner, he forgets to make the thing able to take turns (or ACME forgot to do so), which invariably causes him to fall off cliff roads.
  • When a trap fails, Wile E. will usually try to figure out what went wrong, and in turn get caught in the trap himself. It never occurs to him that he should just let it be and move on.
• Disaster Dominoes: The usual finale of the cartoons' formula brings back various devices or tactics, generally introduced by the coyote himself, in order to inflict even bigger Amusing Injuries.
• Disney Villain Death: Even though he's a Warner Bros. villain instead of a Disney one, Wile E. is frequently prone to suffering his latest defeat by falling into a canyon. Of course, since he is a Warner Bros. villain, he always survives each fall and is back in the next short for another go at the Road Runner.
• Ditzy Genius: Wile E. Coyote, especially on the occasions when he goes after Bugs Bunny.
• Dub Species Change: Early Italian dubs referred to the Roadrunner as either a fictional "Beep beep bird" or an ostrich. Later redubs rectified this and changed "Beep Beep" into the Roadrunner's given name. Similarly, in Polish the Road Runner is officially known as "Struś Pędziwiatr" ("Ostrich Run-like-the-wind").
• Eat Dirt, Cheap: In one short, Wile E. Coyote bakes a clay chicken and tries to eat it — and then bakes a clay trash can and dumps it.
• Eat the Camera: Occurs in "To Beep or Not to Beep". As the Coyote falls off one side of the cliff – where a bridge stood only a few seconds earlier – one of the uprooted cactus plants on the other side fails to clear the bridge and falls after him. It catches him on his rear end and causes him to leap into the air, screaming into the lens. A Fade Out follows.
• Ejection Seat: When Wile E. Coyote builds a Weaponized Car to catch the Roadrunner in "Sugar and Spies", it includes an ejection seat. You can probably guess how useful this proves to him.
• Elevator Gag: Wile E. Coyote builds his own elevator booth to get into Bugs' burrow.
• Epic Fail:
  • Cutting the branch hanging off a cliffside that the Roadrunner's on — and the cliff collapses.
  • Anything involving catapults will end in misfires that break physics.
• "Eureka!" Moment: A lot of the cartoons start with Wile E. failing to catch The Roadrunner on foot, thinks for a second and then is striken with one of his brilliant ideas.
• Everyone Has Standards: But of course! Near the end of "Zoom and Bored", Wile E. takes a massive tumble, falling down several cliffs, sucked through pipes, over waterfalls, is hit by a truck, and then by a train, before finally coming to a stop at the top of a cliff, breathing hard and clutching his chest. The coyote is crying by this point. The Road Runner runs up behind him and has a chance to scare him off the cliff like he usually does, but at this point he's apparently as sympathetic as the viewers, holds a sign up that says "I just don't have the heart", and runs off again.
• Evil Virtues: The Coyote has a Determination that puts Sisyphus to shame. Nothing can make him give up on catching that roadrunner.
• Exact Words:
  • The book "How to Build a Burmese Tiger Trap" instructs you on how to construct a very effective trap... if you are trying to catch a Burmese Tiger.
  • Similarly, the gigantic sheet of fly paper is labelled "ACME Giant Fly Paper" and works perfectly... at catching a giant fly. The fly even gives a nasty Slasher Smile before wrapping the coyote in the flypaper.
  • Another very similar scheme has Wile using a gigantic spring mousetrap labelled "ACME Giant Mouse Trap." It works fine... at catching a giant rat.
  • Chronologically, the first time something like this happened was when Wile E. and Roadrunner were babies. The baby coyote uses a badger trap, on which he crossed out the word "badger" and wrote "roadrunner", which succeeds...at catching a badger.
• Exorcist Head: At the beginning of "Ready, Set, Zoom!", the Road Runner is seen rotating his head a full 360 degrees as he looks around his surroundings.
• Expository Theme Tune: The Road Runner Show has one.
  If you're on the highway and Road Runner goes "Beep beep!",
  Just step aside or you might end up in a heap.
  Road Runner, Road Runner runs on the road all day,
  Even the Coyote can't make him change his ways.
  
  Road Runner, the Coyote's after you,
  Road Runner, if he catches you, you're through!
  Road Runner, the Coyote's after you,
  Road Runner, if he catches you, you're through!
  
  That Coyote's really a crazy clown,
  When will he learn that he never can mow him down?
  Poor little Road Runner never bothers anyone,
  Just running down the road's his idea of having fun!
• Extendo Boxing Glove: Wile E. Coyote tried to stun the Road Runner with this in the cartoon, "Beep-Beep".... with predictable results.
• Extreme Omnivore: Stop! Look! And Hasten! opens with a famished Wile E. resorting to eating a fly, a bug, and an empty tin can... the latter of which he quickly discards once the Road Runner passes by and sets off his Meat-O-Vision.
• Fade to Black: The show sometimes treats the black screen as a stage curtain that can be lifted or peered around. An entire cartoon was made up of "blackout gags"; brief, self-sustained skits that fade out after the punchline and fade into the next. The term originated in Vaudeville, where the lights were turned off after each joke to punctuate the humor and give the audience a pause for laughing.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Enforced. With at least one rare exception, no amount of genius, instinct, or gadget will ever allow Wile E. to obtain his speedy prey.
• Falling Tree of Doom: In the short "Guided Muscle", Coyote tries to hit the Roadrunner with a wrecking ball, but the bird whizzes past and the ball hits a tree trunk instead, which then falls over and pounds Coyote into the ground.
• Feathered Fiend: Downplayed for the Road Runner. While he often makes fun of Wile E.'s failures and even scares him off of cliffs, he is in no way genuinely cruel and has even helped him out on a few rare occasions, like giving him a lit match in "Hip Hip-Hurry!" and saving him from a fall down a cliff with a spring coil in "Fastest with the Mostest"; the Coyote even shows gratitude with a "Thanks" sign in the latter case.
• Fictional Document: Wile E. sometimes consults these while constructing his traps, such as the book "How to Build a Burmese Tiger Trap" in Stop! Look! And Hasten! And it works just as announced.
• Flat Character: The Road Runner is deliberately this, to focus our attention on the Villain Protagonist. He rarely does anything except run, eat, and say "beep beep!", and even his facial expression never changes in any of the Jones cartoons and most of the ones that followed.
• Friendly Enemy: Despite being fully aware that Wile E. is trying to catch/kill and eat him, the Road Runner has no grudge towards him and in some occasion he even helps him like in "Hip Hip-Hurry!". And in Who Framed Roger Rabbit they are seen dancing together at the end, indicating that they're simply two toons who do a show together.
• Freeze-Frame Introduction: Wile E. and the Road Runner are always introduced with a freeze frame, with their name and a fake scientific name appearing next to them.
• Gone Horribly Right:
  • The Coyote disguised himself as a female roadrunner to attract the Road Runner. The disguise actually did a good job... at deceiving other coyotes, a horde of which chase him to eat. Unsurprisingly, these coyotes never appeared again.
  • Typically, whenever one of the ACME Products does work as advertised, their success manages to work against Wile E. For example, a Dehydrated Boulder, upon hydration, becomes so large that it squashes him, the Burmese tiger trap catches an actual Burmese tiger, or he finds out that the Earthquake Pills bottle label's fine print states that the pills aren’t effective on road runners... right after he swallows the whole bottle thinking they don't work.
• Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: The Trope Codifier in the public mind, since about half the gags involved Wile E. falling off a cliff as the result of his latest failure. Wile E. is also the current Trope Image.
• Hammered into the Ground: Happens to Wile E. more than once, even as a result of his own inventions backfiring, or when boulders are involved.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Coyote invests obsessive energy into mechanical engineering, ACME-based ballistics study, and convoluted contraption plans, only to be systematically humiliated by the Road Runner’s natural speed, zero-effort instinct, situational wit, and improbable good fortune.
• Harmless Freezing: "War and Pieces" has Wile E. using a machine that sprays ice on an object. He stands in front of it looking out for the Road Runner, but it turns on by itself, covering the Coyote in ice. He manages to take a magnifying glass to reflect the sun and melt the ice, but it melts him too.
• Hero Antagonist: The Road Runner can be considered the hero of this short, being hunted after by a hungry predator. However his character is kept deliberately flat and Out of Focus in each short so that the intended audience sympathy is instead with Wile E Coyote. In fact, according to the laws of Roadrunner cartoons, the only harm the bird can do to the coyote is give him a Jump Scare.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Seriously, it happens to him so often that the Trope could practically be called "Wile E. Coyote Syndrome".
• Hollywood Magnetism:
  • Wile E. Coyote got bitten by this once... very hard. In his attempt to catch Bugs Bunny with an iron carrot, his super-magnet ended up attracting not just said carrot (due to Bugs not eating it), but all sorts of metallic stuff alongside it, including the Eiffel Tower, an ocean liner and finally a ballistic missile, which blew him to kingdom come.
    Bugs Bunny: "One thing's for sure, we're the first country to get a coyote into orbit."
  • He also got the Road Runner to eat some iron pellets disguised as birdseed, then tried to capture him with a giant magnet. The magnet attracted a giant barrel of TNT instead.
  • He again gets the Road Runner to eat iron pellets disguised as birdseed, sets up the bait with a "FREE LUNCH!" sign, skates over behind a rock, and straps on a big magnet. As the magnet follows potential prey, so does Wile E. as the skates provide transportation. Just as the Road Runner approaches a bridge, he suddenly runs off as Wile E. ends up onto the Railroad Tracks of Doom, where he's flattened by an oncoming train. Somehow, the magnet remains upright.
• Homing Boulders: No matter how carefully the Coyote tries to avoid them, you have an Epic Fail.
• Hope Spot:
  • Villainous example with "The Solid Tin Coyote", which the Road Runner shows visible fear towards and is captured by Coyote's Humongous Mecha. It doesn't work out.
  • In another short, Wile E. sends a boulder towards the Road Runner, who’s coming from the opposite direction, and for a good minute or so, it appears that it’s on a collision course with him… Then at the last second it suddenly goes down another path and runs over Wile. E instead.
  • Wile E. finds himself covered in glue and his arms and legs glued to a stick of dynamite he can't extinguish. He moves all the way to a river using his butt and jumps in it... only to explode mid-air just before he reaches the water.
  • In another short, the missile he intended to launch at the Roadrunner lands right next to him. He manages to unscrew the top off and to take out the timer mechanism, only for it to somehow start up again and cause the missile to go off.
  • In "Fur of Flying", a heat-guided missile that's going after Roadrunner is headed straight for Coyote. He manages to start up his custom made helicopter helmet, only for it to fly off his head, leaving him to get hit by the missile.
• How Is That Even Possible?: In a cartoon, Wile E. Coyote falls off a cliff while in pursuit of the Road Runner who, it turns out, is standing on a chunk of rock in mid-air. The bedraggled Coyote looks up from the bottom of the canyon at the Road Runner and holds up a sign commenting that what the Road Runner is doing defies the laws of gravity. The Road Runner responds by holding up his own sign saying it doesn't matter because he's never studied law.
• Human Cannonball: Much like Daffy Duck did once, Wile E. has attempted to fire himself out of a cannon multiple times in his never-ending quest to catch the Road Runner. What he has achieved is multiple new ways to injure himself.
• Humiliation Conga: Frequently happens to the Coyote. More often than not, he'll suffer a combination of being burnt to a crisp from explosions, Squashed Flat, or fall into an abyss in his Sisyphean quest to catch the Road Runner.
• Humongous Mecha: The eponymous giant robot from "The Solid Tin Coyote".
• Hyperfixation-Induced Error: If Wile E. Coyote's device fails to work, he will often become more fixated on getting it to work than on the Roadrunner or his own safety. Naturally, it will finally work at the worst possible time.
• Hypnotism Reversal: Wile E. Coyote plans to hypnotize the Road Runner into walking off a cliff and successfully tests the process on a fly. But when he tries it on the Road Runner, the latter holds up a mirror, causing Wile E. to hypnotize himself into walking off a cliff.
• Illogical Safe: In "Soup or Sonic," the coyote is Squashed Flat by a safe after he falls into the abyss.
• Impact Silhouette: Often left by Wile E. after one of his plans fails. The Roadrunner also leaves one on occasion, like the time he went through a sheet of metal... which was in front of Wile E. at the time.
• Impossibly Delicious Food: As Wile E. explains to two viewers in one episode, this is why he "devotes his valuable time chasing this ridiculous road runner", claiming that "the Roadrunner is to the taste buds of a coyote, what caviar, champagne, filet mignon and chocolate fudge are to the taste buds of a man." He then pulls out a chart explaining that every part of the Roadrunner comes "In a dazzling array of flavors." From banana to sponge cake to candied yam to pistachio.
• Incompetence, Inc.: The only thing we ever see of Acme Corporation most of the time is their output. What we do see, though, certainly doesn't give a good impression of them (though Wile E. Coyote does seem to hold one, given his impressive brand loyalty). About half of the Coyote's failures come from an Acme product malfunctioning in some fashion, either failing completely or overperforming to absurdity. Supposedly, it's based on various shady, mediocre companies that chose their name with the intention of being first in the phonebook.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Wile E. Coyote. One of the laws of the Road Runner cartoons is "The audience's sympathy must remain with the Coyote." For a coyote to want to eat a roadrunner is perfectly natural in the order of things, and to top it all off, he was regularly portrayed at the beginning of an episode as rib-thin and starving.
• Informed Species: Neither Wile E. nor the Roadrunner resemble their species.
  • Wile E. Coyote's resemblance to an actual coyote is vague. He almost looks like Bugs Bunny with more canine-like features, a longer snout, brown fur, wider cheeks, a heftier body and a bushier tail. And he is almost identical to Ralph the Wolf, with the only differences being eye and nose color.
  • On the other hand, the Road Runner's resemblance to a greater roadrunner is completely nonexistent, and as such he looks more like a cross between a chicken and an ostrich or a cassowary (actual roadrunners are only two feet long and look like this).
• Inflating Body Gag: In "Fastest with the Mostest", Wile E. Coyote tries to blow into a balloon for his latest plan, only for the air to shoot back and inflate him. He desperately grabs the nearest object—a bomb—to stop himself from drifting away, but just winds up carrying the bomb as he floats up. Then he deflates and finds himself high in the air, still holding a bomb. Whoops.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • The noise Road Runner makes is always transcribed as "beep beep", even though it sounds like "meep meep".
  • His name is always spelled as two words, "Road Runner", despite being a roadrunner.
• Instant Home Delivery: This happens with any product Wile E. Coyote orders in the cartoons. Acme's distribution system is second to none.
• Instant-Win Condition: Wile E. setting up TNT to blow up by a manual detonator and catching the Road Runner off-guard with it would essentially lead to him winning instantly. However, the fact that reality itself works against him prevents that from happening each time he makes that setup, where the detonator itself goes inactive through some unknown means.
• Insufferable Genius: The times Wile E. speaks is with an eloquent voice as he declares himself a genius (or super genius), believing he is far superior to the likes Road Runner or Bugs Bunny. As such, this sets him up to be mercilessly humbled, either by his foes or his own hubris (or the often faulty ACME gadgets).
  Wile E. Coyote: Now, don't try to get away! I am more muscular, more cunning, faster, and larger than you are, and I am a genius. Why you could hardly pass the entrance examinations to kindergarten.
• Invincible Hero: Unlike most other recurring Looney Tunes heroes, who usually had at least the odd moment of defeat, the Road Runner never "lost", or was even remotely hurt or humiliated throughout any cartoon. Though he was hampered on more than one occasion. The only exceptions seemed to be Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation, where he gets run over by a truck in one scene; the Animaniacs segment, "Little Old Slappy from Pasadena", where Slappy outruns him in her car and runs over Wile E. Coyote, and as he holds up an "I quit" sign with his foot, Buttons (who had been launched into the air in an earlier gag) lands on top of him with Mindy unharmed as usual; and the Taz-Mania episode, "Instant Replay", where Taz easily catches him and prepares to eat him, but releases him when Bull Gator and Axel show up.
• Iron Butt-Monkey: Even for a Warner Bros. cartoon, it's amazing what the Coyote goes through - and then gets up and goes right back in.
• I Want My Mommy!: Coyote's failed attempt at riding a rocking horse while wielding a lasso results in him standing tied up on some railroad tracks with a train incoming. He promptly holds up a tiny sign that reads: "mommy".
• Joker Immunity: As a Looney Tunes villain, Wile E. survives every injury he receives, from having his inventions literally blow up in his face to being crushed by a boulder.
• Jump Scare: One of the few actively malicious acts the Road-Runner will do to Wile E. is to suddenly beep while right behind him, causing him to leap up or forwards in fright. One of the worst cases of this trope happening was in "Fastest with the Mostest" - after Wile E. falls off a cliff, he climbs back up despite him being afraid of heights. Coyote starts sobbing after his terrifying experience... only for the Road Runner to scare him off the cliff again. This particular scene would be referenced at the end of Road Runner's Death Valley Rally once you beat the game's final boss.
• Just Eat Him: Wile E. orders his aforementioned mecha to do this after capturing the Road Runner, which is strange considering that Wile E. himself should be the one trying to eat him.^note Specifically, he tells the robot to "Eat, stupid"... but that results in the giant Coyote eating Wile E., not the Roadrunner!
• Kitchen Sink Included: Not only anvils fall on poor Wile E Coyote's head... also a kitchen sink.
• Large Ham: Wile E. Coyote, ironically enough, when he goes after Bugs Bunny, where he introduces himself as "Wile E. Coyote, Genius." He later considers changing his title to "Super Genius" at the end of Operation: Rabbit... at least until a train runs into the explosives shed he was hiding in.
  Wile E. Coyote: "Wile E. Coyote: Super Genius. I like the way that rolls out! Wile E. Coyote: SUUUUUPEEERRR GEEEENIUS!!"
• Later-Installment Weirdness:
  • The cartoons are generally considered the oddball of Chuck Jones's work. Soon after Warner Bros. closed their animation studio, they subcontracted new cartoons including Road Runner titles, mostly directed by Rudy Larriva, which were sluggish, ill-timed, unfunny hack jobs only vaguely resembling the originals. Most revival cartoons not directed by Jones, while varying in actual quality, have a similar irregularity to them.
  • The shorts standard "rules" and formula were broken more regularly as well. Certain shorts had a running plot rather than interchangeable blackout gags, the Road Runner was sometimes more proactive and expressive, and some of Wile's traps became more surreal.
• Law of Inverse Recoil: Whenever Coyote tries to fire a cannon, it's more than likely that the cannon will take off in reverse (with poor Wile E. in tow) while the cannonball remains in place.
• Leitmotif: Try listening to Dance of the Comedians without going "Beep Beep!".
• Limited Animation: The Rudy Larriva shorts, and to a lesser extent, the two Robert McKimson shorts.
• Made of Iron: If there's a way to get busted up, it's probably happened to Coyote, but he's always back the next scene, good as new.
• Matchlight Danger Revelation: In "Beep, Beep", Wile E. loses his way underground, lights a match and learns he's in a tunnel crammed full of high explosives.
• Mean Character, Nice Actor: Implied In-Universe. This intro to the Looney Tunes show (no relation) and their cameo’s in Who Framed Rodger Rabbit imply that, as Animated Actors, Wile is actually friendly with the roadrunner off camera.
• Minimalist Cast: Just two characters, Wile E. and Road Runner. That's it. No one else is even visible.
• Misplaced Wildlife: As noted, in Stop! Look! and Hasten! Wile E.'s Burmese Tiger Trap proves to be a little too effective.
• Motive Decay: Early on, it seems that Wile E. wants to eat the Road Runner. Typical predator/prey relationship. But, some of the things Wile E. plans (poisoning, exploding, etc.) would make the Road Runner inedible had they worked. At some point, his motivation seems to go from eating the Road Runner to just wanting him dead. Chuck Jones would often quote George Santayana's definition of a fanatic - "someone who doubles his efforts while forgetting his aim" - in describing Wile E. and intentionally made most of the humor come from the fact that even though gravity is clearly against him at times, he never gets the message and gives up/chases some other animal.
• Mr. Exposition: Wile E. becomes this in one cartoon where two kids watching the cartoon on television wonder why he wants to eat the Road Runner. He explains in detail - with visual aids - just why road runners are considered such a delicacy to coyotes.
• Mysterious Middle Initial: Subverted. One comic revealed that Wile E.'s middle name is “Ethelbert”.
• Near-Villain Victory: Some schemes from Villain Protagonist Wile E. would end in his victory if he wasn't Born Unlucky and the laws of reality didn't bend to the Road Runner's will instead of his.
• Negative Continuity: As is typical for theatrical shorts, but taken a step further in that there's rarely even continuity between individual gags, with the Coyote immediately bouncing back between each one. If there is continuity, it’s usually to bring back something the Coyote tried previously to hurt him again. One notable element is that most cartoons begin with the Coyote trying to catch the Road Runner by chasing him down on foot, and being clearly surprised that he can't keep up—suggesting he has no memory of their prior encounters.
• Never Recycle Your Schemes: Averted in "Road Runner-A-Go-Go"; after his first attempt to catch the Roadrunner fails, we then cut to Wile E., Suddenly Voiced like in his cartoons with Bugs, in his cave watching the previous attempt on film captured from cameras he's set up throughout the desert while listing the mistakes he made during it (launching his scheme on too short a cliff, causing him to fall off from the backlash of his failed attempt to wrangle the Roadrunner; the rope used in said wrangling attempt being too long to prevent him from crashing into the ground when he tried to use it to stop his descent; directly pulling on the rope to pick himself up after crashing, causing the boulder he lassoed with the rope to fall down and crush him) and re-does the scheme with the appropriate corrections...only for his next lasso attempt's target to not be the Roadrunner, but a truck, dragging the Coyote down the road after it.
• Nice Guy: The ever peppy Road Runner bears no ill will against Wile E. for chasing him, and seems to appreciate that's just nature's way. In fact, Rule #1 prohibits the Road Runner from ever causing the coyote any direct harm, except by Jump Scare with his happy "Beep Beep!" call.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: In "The Solid Tin Coyote" Wile manages to create an elaborate Giant Mecha that is formidable enough to actually garner the Road Runner's fear. It even catches him multiple times, though always loses him due to a malfunction or command error.
• Now What?: At the end of 1980's "Soup or Sonic", the Coyote finally catches the Road Runner. Just one problem: it's at the end of a pipe gag that ended with Road Runner regular size, and Wile E. ultra tiny. The moment is actually the Trope Image.
  Wile E. Coyote (his sign): Okay, wise guys, you always wanted me to catch him — now what do I do?
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Wile E. has this expression a lot (especially when gravitational cognizance kicks in). This one◊ being a prime example of these anxious expressions he'd make in every setback and backfire he partakes in.
  • Perhaps the only time the Roadrunner has shown it is in "The Solid Tin Coyote" when he sees the giant mechanical coyote that Wile E. has built.
    Roadrunner: Beebeebeep! *exits in his biggest hurry yet*
  • The Roadrunner also gets an Oh, Crap! moment during a guest appearance in the Animaniacs segment ''The Little Old Slappy From Pasadena'' ... just before Slappy Squirrel bumps him & Wile E. with her car.
• OOC Is Serious Business: In the above mentioned "The Solid Tin Coyote", Road Runner shows fear for the first and only time ever when the Coyote chases him down with a Humongous Mecha, and actually catches him.
• Overly Long Gag: Each of the shorts might contain at least one. But the most notable ones are the Acme Bat-Man outfit in Guided Muscle and the Earthquake Pills in Hopalong Casualty.
• Packed Hero: Wile E. ends up in a parcel that was meant for the Road Runner. Courtesy of an Acme parcel-making machine, naturally.
• Painted Tunnel, Real Train: A tunnel painted on the side of a cliff face may act as a real tunnel when the Road Runner escapes into it, but for Wile E. Coyote it remains solid rock (as in their first cartoon, "Fast and Furry-ous"). Or it may injure the Coyote when a very real truck or train exits it and runs him over as he stands in front of it. Wile E. may also paint a fake bridge over a real canyon. That one is reversed in "Gee Whiz-z-z-z-z-z-z", where Wile E. puts a painting of a broken bridge in the middle of the road to get the Road Runner to stop. When the Road Runner just zips through the canvas, Wile E. goes after him, enters the painting, and falls off the cliff therein.
• Pedestrian Crushes Car: In one cartoon, Wile E. is hit so hard by a truck that he leaves a hole through it.
• Perpetual Smiler: The Road Runner. There are a handful of subversions, though:
  • The first time he ever changes from this is when he sees the cannonball plummeting to earth from the Coyote's Rube Goldberg contraption ("Hook, Line and Stinker").
  • He does so again when he sees the eponymous giant robot from "The Solid Tin Coyote".
  • He also changes it into a thoughtful frown as he seemingly forgets his catchphrase in "The Whizzard of Ow".
• Pet the Dog: At the end of "Zoom and Bored" the Road Runner is about to Jump Scare the Coyote like he usually does but after seeing him desperately whimpering for all the troubles and injures he went through he decides to spare it showing a sign that says "I just don't have the heart."
• Pin-Pulling Teeth:
  • "Zipping Along". When Wile E. tries to pull the pin from a grenade, the grenade stays in his teeth.
  • "Hip Hip-Hurry!" Wile E. Coyote pulls the pin of a grenade with his teeth and drops the grenade on the Roadrunner from a great height. It bounces off power lines and back up to him. He tries to re-insert the pin, but the grenade blows up before he can.
• Plummet Perspective: The old shorts often feature the Coyote falling from a cliff into a deep ravine, the "camera" looking down as he falls out of sight with a distant PAF impact at the end. Sometimes another object precedes or follows him down. "Ready.. Set.. Zoom!" has the former, with a cord. "Whoa, Be-Gone!" is an example of the latter, with a cable which lands on some electrical wires and into the very body-shaped hole his fall created (electrifying!). "To Beep or Not to Beep" is a further example of this, wherein the Coyote is chasing the Road Runner in a chase that started when the Runner's speed uprooted several cacti. The chase continues until they get to a bridge; the Runner makes it safely across, with most of the cacti (the bridge contracts at this time), but one cactus doesn't quite make it, and after the Coyote falls to the ground, the lone remaining cactus drops directly down on him, and then the Coyote makes the injury quite obvious in a Pain-Powered Leap, screaming "Yeow!!!!"
• Pretentious Pronunciation: When introducing himself in a couple of his shorts with Bugs, Wile E. pronounces his Species Surname as "Coyo-tay."
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Downplayed in a short. Coyote discovers a spell that can force people to walk off a cliff, but it doesn't kill them due to being a cartoon. When he tries it on the Roadrunner, the just holds up a mirror and reflect the spell back to him, meaning Coyote then feels compelled to walk off a cliff himself.
• Pun-Based Title: Most of the shorts have a pun in their title.
• Punny Name: Wile E. (wily) Coyote
• Racing the Train:
  • In the cartoon "Zipping Along," the establishing scene features the bird zipping along a train, although he is on the road and never attempts to beat the train to the crossing.
  • The Road Runner's observation of safety is reprised in a later Operation:Lifesaver commercial aimed at children. In it, the Road Runner, despite his ability to put some extra speed in his already fast run, is aware of safety rules concerning railroad crossings and stops to allow a train to pass. Of course, Wile E. Coyote arrogantly doesn't, and he (once again) is crushed beneath another oncoming train.
• Railroad Tracks of Doom: A common gag in the shorts is for Wile E. Coyote to paint a tunnel complete with railroad tracks in it. The Road Runner goes in unscathed - but Wile E. Coyote is promptly run over by an impromptu train. One variation is Wile E. building a fake railroad crossing to stop the Road Runner. Unfortunately, no one told the train.
• Rain Dance: In the episode Run, Run, Sweet Road Runner, Wile E. does a rain dance in attempt to strike lightning on Road Runner by rigging a lightning rod disguised as a female roadrunner. The lightning instead redirects to the umbrella Wile E. was holding.
• Read the Fine Print: In "Hopalong Casualty," Wile E. attempts to trap the Road Runner by getting him to eat some Acme Earthquake Pills disguised as birdseed. They don't work, and it isn't until Wile E. contemptuously swallows the entire bottle of pills that he reads the fine print on the pill bottle and discovers that they're "not effective on Road Runners." Cue Oh, Crap!.
• Recycled with a Gimmick: It's a cat and mouse cartoon AS A CANINE AND AN AVIAN IN THE DESERT! AND THE VILLAIN IS THE ONE WHO IS SUPPOSED TO EARN OUR SYMPATHY! Considering it made as a parody of chase cartoons, it makes sense.
• Reduced to Dust: Happens to Wile E. because of some of the ACME Products he uses to catch Road Runner.
• Revenge Before Reason: After a certain point, it becomes clear that Wile E. is really motivated more by this trope than by his ostensible motivations of desire for food. Many of his traps would kill the Road Runner in ways that would render the corpse totally inedible, but Wile E. has come to care more about finally defeating the Road Runner than feeding himself or not getting maimed. By Chuck Jones' own admission, Wile is a fanatic; ie. one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim. This is especially true in more modern versions, where (assuming they're set in current times) the Coyote, instead of ordering all those contraptions, could just order food^note he's certainly somehow got the money for it; any number of businesses exist that will ship actual food to you, even if you're too isolated to just get takeout delivered.
• Rhymes on a Dime: In some Looney Tunes comic books from the 80's where both characters talk, the Road Runner does this.
• Road Runner vs. Coyote: Trope Namer, and that trope is the plot of these cartoons in a nutshell. Interestingly, they were originally intended as a parody of Tom and Jerry (or indeed, Bugs Bunny) type cartoons, where instead of the pursued outwitting the pursuer, the coyote was his own worst enemy due to his increasingly convoluted ploys. (The initial plan had been for the pursuer and pursued to not even make sense, like "an aardvark chasing a wildebeest".) Instead, they were successful enough that subsequent chase cartoons chose to Follow the Leader.invoked
• Road-Sign Reversal: Wile E. Coyote tries this a few times with the Road Runner and a detour sign. The gag being that the way the Road Runner goes turns safe, while Wile E.'s way turns out to be the one with the road out... cue whistling sound...
• Rocket Ride: This is a common mode of transportation for Wile E. Coyote, which turns out as well as you might expect. He returns with the rocket in Road Runner's Death Valley Rally. Though not as frequently, Coyote also rides life-sized fireworks in this manner.
• Rube Goldberg Device: Used in the climax of "Hook, Line and Stinker".
• Run and Roll: One of the shorts by Rudy Larriva has the coyote set up a large log to roll down an incline onto a part of a paved roadway with a concentric target painted on it. The log would be launched by a lever-and-fulcrum mechanism. The coyote is so intent on his trap that he fails to detect the Road Runner behind him, who beep-beeps suddenly. This frightens the coyote, who jumps in reflex, landing atop the log. The Road Runner then triggers the lever, sending log and coyote down the incline. The coyote is forced to run atop the rolling log to avoid being flattened by it, but this only delays the inevitable.
• Running Gag Stumbles: Used in a couple of cartoons:
  • In "Lickety-Splat", one of Wile E's attempts to catch the Road Runner involves a swarm of explosive darts with wings. He releases them from a balloon, and of course it goes wrong and the last dart of the swarm lands on the balloon and blows it up. For the rest of the cartoon, every one of Wile E's plots is ruined by another dart landing somewhere nearby and then exploding. Until the very end, when his head is stuck in a piece of rock after yet another failure and darts land on both sides of him. As the darts' fuses burn down, Wile E shuts his eyes tight and folds his ears over them. Then the fuses run out.. and instead of exploding, the darts unfurl into signs, with the one on the left saying "THE" and the one on the right saying "END". Cue the ending fadeout.
  • In "To Beep or Not to Beep", Wile E tries to use a catapult to throw a boulder at the Road Runner as he zooms by. Of course it goes wrong, and the boulder lands on Wile E instead. There follows a montage of Wile E trying everything he can think of to not have the boulder land on him. He stands in front of the catapult, behind the catapult, even takes shelter under the catapult, and still the boulder lands on him every time. Then he hides in a manhole... and this time the catapult doesn't fire at all.
• The Runt at the End: When Wile E disguises himself as a female roadrunner to attract his prey but instead attracts other coyotes, the last coyote is a runt.
• Sadist Show: The whole point of the series is to laugh at how the universe contorts itself to torture Wile E.
• Saved by the Platform Below: Happens in one cartoon, in which Wile E. falls off a cliff and lands on a ledge just below. He's at first relieved, until the ledge gives way.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Invoked at the End of "Guided Muscle," Where after being defeated by the final trap, he puts out a sign advertising for a "gullible coyote," then walks off-screen and pulls out the end title card.
• Seesaw Catapult: Happens several times, with the teeter-totter being made of stone. The Coyote would either use the teeter-totter rock as part of his scheme or end up falling on it as a result of a scheme. He would be flung into the air when a large rock fell on the other end of the teeter-totter rock.
• Shadow of Impending Doom: Anything that Wile E. launches will produce one of these. Right over him. No matter where he is.
• Shown Their Work:
  • In "The Whizzard of Ow", the freeze frames that show Wile E. and the Road Runner's scientific names show their actual scientific names.
    "Road Runner (Geococcyx californianus)"
    "Coyote (Canis latrans)"
  • If a real coyote tops out at 38 mph versus 20 mph for the Greater Roadrunner, the chase scenes shown at the start of most episodes are a sign of this. Of course, Hilarity ensues with the little burst of speed the Roadrunner puts on for his getaway (one exception being "Sugar and Spies," when the Coyote was knocked down by a thrown briefcase). In "Fastest with the Mostest," it goes up to eleven, since the Coyote actually outruns the Roadrunner when the Roadrunner normally puts on the extra burst - running right past him and off the edge of a cliff.
• Small Name, Big Ego: In most of the Coyote's confrontations with Bugs.
  "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Wile E. Coyote, genius."
  • Operation: Rabbit uses it as a Brick Joke.
    Wile E.: (seriously dazed) Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mud. (passes out)
    Bugs: And remember, mud spelled backwards is dum.
• Smug Snake: Wile E. thinks of himself as a "super-genius", but is actually the epitome of the villainous Butt-Monkey in Western animation. No matter how hard he tries, the Coyote's plans always backfire on him, including the devices he orders from ACME. Furthermore, if his traps do work as planned, the Coyote is the one taking the bait.
• Sprint Shoes: Coyote orders a pair of sprint shoes from Acme in one short. Of course they backfire and cause him to run off a cliff.
• Squashed Flat: Another Running Gag. Wile E. will oftentimes end up being crushed by boulders, vehicles, and anvils, and emerge out as an Accordion Man. Occasionally, he'll be in a Humiliation Conga of being covered in soot by explosives or end up falling in an abyss. He even ends up being flattened several times by his own giant robot in "The Solid Tin Coyote." It also happened to his foot once.
• Sticky Situation: Anytime Wile. E. uses quick drying glue or similar things with the intent of stopping the Roadrunner, it's him who ends up stuck on the road. Most of the time, a car or truck will pass by and squash him flat as a result.
• Stock Desert Interstate: The cartoons take place entirely along highways on the American Southwest with lots of images of the rocky red-tinged deserts.
• Stopped Reading Too Soon:
  • One ploy that Wile uses on the Road Runner is to leave a pile of bird seed laced with Acme Earthquake Pills. The target ingests the entire bait, then departs unaffected. The coyote disgustedly eats the remaining pills, about half the bottle. A moment later, his eye catches the fine print at the bottom of the label: "Caution: Not effective on road runners." Cue the coyote's leg quivering ominously.
  • In another story, Wile acquires sled dogs that are said to catch up with road runners. It's only after they maul him that he reads the line stating sled dogs love coyotes. "Especially for supper".
• Straw Loser: The former and titular Wile E. Coyote. In spite of being a genius (later super genius), he's always screwing up his own plans and makes a continual fool of himself in every cartoon he's in. Such to the point that it's obvious that many characters such as the latter and titular Road Runner and Bugs Bunny are always presented as awesome and flawless.
• Strictly Formula: Popular as the shorts are, they're best watched in small doses, as they tend to feel really, really samey if you watch all of them back to back.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Wouldn't be a Warner Bros. cartoon without some dynamite and Cartoon Bombs exploding, usually in the Coyote's face.
• Suddenly Speaking:
  • At those rare occasions Wile E. does talk, he speaks in a very refined voice, as well as revealing the fact that he's an Insufferable Genius. However, he always speaks when he's up against Bugs (except for "Hare-Breadth Hurry", which doesn't really count as Bugs is taking over for the Roadrunner in that one).
  • Wile E. once had a cameo appearance on Family Guy, where Peter Griffin was the customer service rep for ACME. Wile E. complains about the the product backfires such as slamming him into a mountain. When Peter says he can't refund money because the products were used, Wile E. complains that he's been a loyal customer for years so Peter offers him store credit.
  • There's a few instances in the Road Runner cartoons where the Coyote will let out a yell or "OUCH!" For example in "To Beep or Not to Beep" when a cactus lands on him, or "Tired and Feathered" where he chops his tail with a propellor.
• Super-Persistent Predator: Wile E. Coyote. For years, that poor guy has been chasing the Roadrunner far beyond the call for reason, going so far as to buy countless Acme products and mountains of birdseed instead of spending that money on something he could actually eat. It actually was explained by Wile E. himself, in the only episode in which he speaks. He addresses the question of, "Why would a supposedly intelligent predator invest so much time and energy chasing a difficult prey with very little meat?" He shows a diagram of the roadrunner and how its different cuts correspond, in the coyote's palate, to the most sumptuous delicacies that humans enjoy. One of the rules for the Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons set in place by Chuck Jones, the rules that made the cartoons so awesome, is that "The Coyote can give up at any time." Being a Super-Persistent Predator is a choice of his own, maybe even an addiction he just can't quit, no matter what he does. Which is morbidly hilarious. Lampshaded by Bugs Bunny in "Hare-Breadth Hurry":
  "Y'know, it's amazin' the trouble this joker goes to to get a square meal. Case in point..." (watches with dismay as Wile E. Coyote fails yet another one of his attempts at trying to catch his prey through the use of a seesaw)
• Surprise Jump: The Road Runner frequently does this to the Coyote. Subverted at the end of "Zoom and Bored", where the Coyote has just endured a harrowing journey involving a harpoon gun and landed safely on solid ground. The Road Runner runs up behind him as usual... but then "says" he doesn't have the heart this time, and leaves.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Every so often, the Coyote actually manages to get some sort of Acme product, plan or thing to work as it should — only for it to backfire horribly because it was a flat-out stupid idea. And occasionally some of these plans aren't even met with cartoon logic, but a realistic application of how physics might make something fall apart.
• Super-Speed: The Road Runner moves impossibly fast. One crossover between the Looney Tunes and DC Comics showed that he could outrun The Flash.
• Swallowed Whole: In the episode "The Solid Tin Coyote," Wile E. Coyote has managed to catch the Road Runner with his titular Humongous Mecha. However, when he issues the command "Eat, stupid!" to the robot to eat the Road Runner, he gets swallowed instead by the robot. He survives, of course, and manages to escape through one of the robot's ears.
• Talking with Signs: How both characters (mostly) communicate. One classic example occurs in "Stop! Look! and Hasten!" when Wile realizes he's about to get clobbered by a speeding train: STOP IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY.
• Team Rocket Wins: Yes, the Coyote catches the Roadrunner at one point... but the gag makes it impossible for him to actually eat the bird. He even lampshades it by asking the audience what he should do now.
  • He also catches Roadrunner in "The Solid Tin Coyote". Doesn't work out.
  • He catches the Roadrunner in "Tired and Feathered" but only for a brief second and only by the tail - when he tries to pull the Roadrunner in, he only manages to yank out two tail feathers - which also throws himself backwards off the edge of a cliff.
  • And again in the CGI short "Shut Your Trap". Doesn't work out.
  • And AGAIN in the CGI short "Heartbreak Bridge", where The Road Runner willingly and happily jumps into the Coyote's arms, but this unbalances the bridge they are both standing on, and to save himself the Coyote has to throw the Road Runner to the other side. The rest of the short is the Coyote attempting to keep the bridge balanced while the Road Runner tries to tip it up. Doesn't work out.
  • In one "Acme Hour" commercial on Cartoon Network, the Coyote catches and cooks the Roadrunner using rocket-rollerblades instead of ACME (it's non-canon, however).
  • In another Cartoon Network bumper, Dexter of all characters took a crack at catching the Road Runner using a self-made rocket, and won.
  • Most of the Road Runner shorts made by parody comedians have the Coyote finally catching the Road Runner. A Seth MacFarlane short called "Die Sweet Roadrunner, Die", has the coyote finally catching and eating the bird. But with his purpose in life lost he gets horribly bored and depressed and attempts suicide (hysterically enough, he does so with an ACME product). Then he does find a purpose in life and becomes a Born-Again Christian.
  • In his later years, Chuck Jones created a piece of artwork◊ depicting the Road Runner in the Coyote's clutches. Note the glasses the Coyote is wearing.
  • A Robot Chicken installment had the coyote throwing in the sponge and committing suicide, only to get even when the Road Runner arrives at his memorial.
  • A series of unlicensed T-shirts being sold in the 1970s showed the coyote with the Road Runner in his grasp saying "Beep beep yer ass!"
• Technicolor Eyes: In the shorts by Matthew O'Callaghan, Wile E.'s are red, and the Road Runner's are turquoise.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Wile E. often did this voicelessly or via a little sign. If a gigantic boulder was going to crush him, he usually opened a tiny parasol in response.
• Those Wily Coyotes: He's never wily enough, however.
• Three-Dimensional Episode: "Coyote Falls", "Fur of Flying", "Rabid Rider" and "Flash in the Pain".
• Throw the Dog a Bone:
  • The ending of "Gee Whiz-z-z-z-z-z-z" has the Coyote falling off another cliff and with pleading eyes, holds up a sign that reads "How about ending this cartoon before I hit?"; to which an Iris Out begins and he holds another sign that reads "Thank You" and then it cuts to the That's All, Folks! screen. This was referenced at the end of Road Runner's Death Valley Rally, although it doesn't end as well when compared to the original episode.
  • In "Zoom and Bored" the Roadrunner repeatedly sneaks up behind the Coyote with his usual Beep-Beep and made him jump off cliffs in the beginning of the short. Later after Coyote gets sent flying via rope tied harpoon and sent skidding off the ground, flying in and out of a thin pipe, through a speeding truck, being hit by a train and finally landing safely on a cliff's edge sobbing and gasping in relief; the Roadrunner then sneaks up behind him, but this time holds a sign to the audience that reads "I just don't have the heart" before zooming away and leaving him be.
  • In "Lickety-Splat", the Coyote is trapped by a piece of the cliff he was standing on earlier in the last gag, and the last of the dart bombs are sticking on either end! Thinking that he's going to die, Wile E. covers his eyes with his ears, ready to accept his fate... but instead of exploding, the dart bombs unfurl to read "THE END". Upon realizing this, he gives a big laugh of relief.
  • In a Honey Nut Cheerios commercial from the 1990's, Wile E. corners the Road Runner at the edge of a cliff and is about to eat him, but Buzz the honeybee intervenes and offers to give the Coyote the aforementioned cereal. Not interested in the least bit, Wile E. tells Buzz to "Buzz off", but immediately changes his mind when the bee asks if he would rather have the taste of golden honey and crunchy nuts. Eventually, the Coyote decides to have the cereal instead and lets the Road Runner go for once.
• Throw the Pin: This occasionally happens to Wile E. Coyote in the cartoons when he tries to use a grenade to blow up the Road Runner. One notable instance in "Zipping Along" combined this with another trope. Or sometimes, the pin explodes. In one, he correctly drops the grenade down a cliff, but it's bounced back at him. He then drops the pin... and another grenade is bounced back at him.
• Tongue-Out Insult: The Road Runner often taunts Wile E. with his tongue out, making multiple "finger being pulled out of a bottle" sounds at it.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: According to the cartoon rules of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, the only harm the Road Runner can do to Wile E. is to give him a Jump Scare by going "Beep beep". This rule has been broken in the DePatie-Freleng era and the CGI shorts of The Looney Tunes Show, where the bird has actually caused direct harm to the coyote other than the classic Jump Scare.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Bird seed for the Road Runner. Wile E. has used this on occasion to try and catch him, and has even tried mixing it with iron pellets and earthquake pills. In several video games based on the series, eating bird seed replenishes Road Runner's health, although some of them, such as Desert Speedtrap for the Sega Master System and Game Gear also have plates with explosives hidden inside the bird seed, causing Road Runner to take damage if he eats from them.
• Tragic Hero: Coyote is a relentless chaser unwittingly fighting against the gods of Rule of Funny, and alas, doomed to failure. The only thing he wins is the audience's sympathy.
• Truth in Television: In Just Plane Beep when Wile E. shoots the propeller of his biplane off trying to hit the road runner. That was a real problem in WWI before the interrupter gear was invented, and one solution (as was also shown) was to put armor plating on the propeller.
• Twitchy Eye: Wile E. gets one ever so often.
• Umbrellas Are Lightning Rods: In one short, one of Wile E.'s plans to catch the Road Runner is to disguise a lightning rod as a female road runner so he'll be struck by lightning. This being Wile E. Coyote, the ensuing lightning bolt makes a sudden 90 degree turn from the lightning rod to hit the umbrella he's holding instead.
• Unknown Rival: This depends on the writer, as the Road Runner's personality varies from Karmic Trickster, to Friendly Enemy, as he does not consider Wile E. a threat nor ever tries to get revenge for being hunted. For the most part, Wile E. is a victim to his own schemes when they backfire, leaving the Road Runner completely oblivious as to what transpired.
• Variable Terminal Velocity: When dropped from roughly the same height at roughly the same time, Coyotes will land about 2-3 seconds before anvils and boulders land. On the Coyote.
• Villain Exclusivity Clause: Goes without saying, but the Coyote is the antagonist in every short.
• Villain Protagonist: Wile E. Coyote is trying to eat the Road Runner, and is therefore ostensibly the bad guy. But he's just so adorably persistent in how he goes about it that you can't help but root for him. Most interpretations however consider the Coyote an antagonist instead of a protagonist, and put more sympathy on Roadrunner. Chuck Jones in fact had it as written lore that all sympathy must be with the Coyote.
• Villainous Underdog: The cartoons are built around this concept, with the smart, but horribly unlucky coyote being thoroughly overmatched by the super fast, equally smart, and and ungodly fortunate Road Runner. Physics itself was always on the Road Runner's side, meaning Wile E's schemes were doomed from the start.
• Villain Team-Up: Well, if Sylvester counts as a villain, then the aforementioned Crossover counts.
• The Voiceless: Both of them. Wile E. does speak during four of his five appearances with Bugs Bunny, and again when explaining to two young boys why he wants to eat the road runner.
• Weak, but Skilled: Bugs Bunny in comparison to the Roadrunner as objects of hunger for Wile E. Coyote. “Hare-Breadth Hurry”, which follows the usual Road Runner vs. Coyote formula instead of Wile E. trying to catch Bugs with contraptions and Bugs foiling them, shows that Bugs can’t naturally run as fast as the Roadrunner without special vitamins. When Bugs runs out of those, he has to rely on his guile to evade Wile E. Coyote.
• Weaponized Car: Wile E. builds one in "Sugar and Spies". It includes machine guns, a cannon and an ejector seat.
• Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?: Coyote has ACME supplying all his gadgets, but how does he pay for them? Looney Tunes: Back in Action proposes that he works for Acme. He still has to order the products through an Amazon.com-esque website, though, for some reason, and in one cartoon it turns out the roadrunner is the one shipping them to him, purely for the lulz.
• Wicked Cultured: In the cartoons where he speaks, Wile E. Coyote comes across as this. The episode "Compressed Hare" even shows that he owns a huge assortment of wines in his home.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: Aside from ocassionally sneaking up from behind and startling him with a loud "Beep beep!", the Roadrunner does nothing to Wile E. He just runs off or stands back and lets Wile E. get Hoist by His Own Petard.
• Written Sound Effect: "Chariots of Fur" (Chuck Jones's last Road Runner short) uses these quite a bit, but only once does it do something creative with them — when the Coyote disguises himself as a cactus and tries to grab the Road Runner, but the Road Runner avoids him, the Coyote accidentally wraps his arms around himself in the process, and the smoke trail the Road Runner left behind turns into a "!!YEE-OOWW!!"
• Wrong Parachute Gag: Wile E. tries to be Crazy-Prepared by wearing a parachute in case he falls off a cliff. He opens it and out comes... canning samples.
• Xylophone Gag: The "exploding piano" gag is used in "Rushing Roulette," as it was used in "Ballot Box Bunny" and "Show Biz Bugs" (though the third of these uses a xylophone instead of a piano). Wile E. uses a piano in an attempt to catch the Road Runner, but the trap backfires on him when he presses the rigged key.