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Pinky and the Brain are cartoon characters from the American animated television series Animaniacs. Later, they starred in their own spin-off animated television series called Pinky and the Brain and even later in Pinky, Elmyra and The Brain. These latter series were produced by Steven Spielberg and Warner Bros. Animation, and aired from 1995 to 1998 on The WB Television Network, running for 65 episodes.
The two are genetically enhanced lab mice who reside in a cage in the Acme Labs research facility. Each week sees Brain come up with a new plan for the two (led by him) to take over the world, which ultimately ends in failure. In common with many other Animaniacs shorts, many episodes are in some way a parody of something else - usually a film. The cartoon\'s famous tagline is: \"Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?\" \"The same thing we do every night, Pinky: Try to take over the world!\"
The series won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Class - Animated Program in 1996.
The series will re-run on Warner Bros. and AOL\'s new broadband internet channel Toontopia TV.
The Brain
The Brain bears a resemblance to Orson Welles, particularly in his vocal characteristics (voiced by Maurice LaMarche). Series creator Tom Ruegger originally based Brain on a caricature of WB animation staffer Tom Minton, a very dry wit of the writing crew. The Welles connection comes from LaMarche, who is a big fan of the actor/director. LaMarche describes Brain\'s voice as \"65% Orson Welles, 35% Vincent Price\". Brain is highly intelligent and develops Rube Goldberg plans for global domination. His tail is bent like a staircase (which he often uses to pick the lock of the cage), and his head is large and wide, supposedly housing his abnormally large brain. He appears to be coldly unemotional and speaks in a deadpan manner. Nevertheless, Brain has a very subtle sense of humor, and has even fallen in love once, with Billie (voiced by Tress MacNeille), a rather dippy girl mouse with a Queens accent (perhaps based on the Citizen Kane character Susan Alexander, in another Welles connection). Intellectually, Brain sees his inevitable rise to power as beneficial to the world rather than merely being greedy for power.
The characteristics of Brain would lead one to believe that he is more suited to be an antagonist rather than a protagonist, but the series tends to present him as a quixotic fellow striving for greatness against the odds, evoking sympathy from the audience and causing viewers to like him, despite his seemingly evil plans for world domination. Such a thing is typical of an anti-hero, which many consider Brain to be. The absurdity of a normally insignificant creature hungering for world dominance adds to the comical effect, and one senses a Napoleon complex within him, despite the gravitas of his Wellesian diction - highlighted when other characters inadvertently become as smart as or smarter than him. Unfortunately for the Brain, his schemes are inevitably doomed to failure by reason of one or more of a few common mishaps: Pinky doing something idiotic to ruin the plan, Brain gravely under/overestimating the masses\' intelligence, or, simply, bad luck.
Brain\'s similarity to Orson Welles was made explicit in the episode \"Yes, Always\", which was based upon an outtake from one of Welles\' television commercials, colloquially known as Frozen Peas, in which he ranted about the poor quality of the script. This cartoon was described by writer Peter Hastings as \"a $250,000 inside joke\": LaMarche used excerpts from it as sound check material, and Hastings took it to its logical conclusion. Strengthening the Welles connection was an episode in which Brain took on the mind-clouding powers of a radio character called \"The Fog\": a parody of The Shadow, a popular radio character for which Welles once provided the voice. Other episodes alluding to Welles included an episode entitled \"The Third Mouse,\" a parody of The Third Man, in which Welles appeared, and an episode in which Brain, inspired by Welles\' infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast and the hysteria it provoked, stages an alien invasion on television, believing that this will cause humanity to turn itself over to his rule
Pinky
Pinky (voiced by Rob Paulsen) is another genetically modified mouse who shares the same cage at Acme Labs but is substantially less bright. He speaks with a heavy cockney accent. He frequently says nonsensical interjections like \"narf\", \"zort\",\"poit\", and \"troz\" (the last of which Pinky started saying after noticing it was \"\'zort\' in the mirror\"), with an occasional spontaneity leading some viewers to think that Pinky has Tourette\'s Syndrome. He also used \"fjord\" and \"gnurf\" on unique occasions. Rob Paulsen won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program for this role in 1999. Series creator Ruegger based Pinky on former Tiny Toon Adventures writer and director Eddie Fitzgerald (who has also worked on Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures and Ren and Stimpy) who is said to have constantly said \"Narf\" around the Tiny Toons production office. Although Pinky is also an albino lab mouse like the Brain, he has a straighter tail, a severe overbite, and is taller than the Brain. Pinky is more open-minded than the Brain, and much more up-beat. He doesn\'t let troubles ruin his day, mostly because he\'s too scatter-brained to notice them. Pinky also works with Brain despite the fact that Brain insults him constantly and often beats him over the head. Howver, Pinky actually seems to enjoy this, laughing after every hit. Pinky is just happy spending time with his best friend, The Brain.
Pinky has a number of unusual special abilities, something like \'magic\' but caused by his genetic engineering. Most notably, he occasionally levitates, but also has been known to come up with incredible insights on the scale that one would expect from Brain, contrasting with his otherwise stupid appearance. The viewer might consider that Brain should be frustrated by the success that could have been possible if he\'d listened to or asked Pinky about the situation and/or plan, but Brain rarely shows anything more than a confused or sarcastic face and sometimes a comment, and usually near the end of the episode.
The show\'s theme song informs us that \"One is a genius, the other insane.\" Pinky\'s unpredictable and startling insight versus Brain\'s rather more plodding and stubborn approach to \"taking over the world,\" has led more than one fan to suggest that Pinky is, in fact, the real genius rather than Brain.
In at least one instance, Pinky had much of an episode centering around himself wherein he took on some of Brain\'s motivation for taking over the world. This episode has Pinky becoming extremely successful at ruling at least a town, but of course the whole thing is put through the wringer of Pinky\'s \'clockwork orange\' view of things, hence Pinky\'s choice of naming the town: \"I think I\'ll call it \'Shiny Pants\', because everyone in there will want to wear shiny pants...\" and goes on to describe his ultimate goal and the path to get there. Seeing Pinky\'s unexpected success, Brain is understood to wonder questions similar to many that have been asked for centuries: \"why do people with such capacity for power seem to waste it on crazy things that work out somehow, but shouldn\'t?\"
The following exchange occurs in each episode:
Brain: Pinky, are you pondering what I\'m pondering?
Pinky: I think so, Brain, but . . .
The ellipsis is filled in each time with a unique non-sequitur such as, \"we\'re already naked,\" or \"isn\'t a cucumber that small called a gherkin?\" The result is always utterly nonsensical in the context given, indicating that Pinky was in no way pondering what Brain was pondering. In one episode, the viewer sees from Pinky\'s perspective and witnesses his train of thought as Brain speaks to him. The picture begins as Brain and his speech, but the dialogue fades out and the picture morphs into a whimsical fantasy. When Brain asks Pinky the usual question, Pinky responds with a query regarding the last thing he saw.
In one episode, Brain uses a machine that can increase or decrease intelligence, and uses it so that Pinky can become smart enough to understand that he is the cause of Brain\'s failures, due to research Brain conducted. (Brain will later discover he miscalculated his research, and that he himself is the cause of his failures.) Pinky, depressed over the fact that Brain doesn\'t like him when he is smart, uses the machine to make himself stupid, so Brain will like him again. However, Brain, realizing he has botched his own plans, and believing both of them to be better off with Pinky as the genius and Brain as a moron, uses the machine on himself as well. In the end, both of them are idiots, and thus, are too dumb to operate the machine and restore either of them to their intelligent selves. This is reflected in the episode\'s final lines.
Pinky: What are we going to do tomorrow night, Brain?
Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky.
Pinky: What\'s that?
Brain: ...I have no idea.
Also Brain often asks Pinky about famous people when needed , for example when a basketball player was receiving attention, Brain asks why, which concludes in him using basketball to attempt to take over the world. It is unexplained how Pinky knows about famous people, probably from T.V(which we know they have as they have a remote control).
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