The Brain
From Looney City Citizens
The Brain
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| Pinky (right) and the Brain (left). | |
| First appearance | Regulars on Animaniacs since the episode "The Monkey Song"; first cartoon starring them was "Win Big". |
| Created by | Tom Ruegger |
| Voiced by | Maurice LaMarche |
| Background Information | |
| Aliases | Various disguise names; Cranky Big-Headed Mousy (Elmyra's nicknames for him. |
| Friends | Pinky |
| Rivals | Snowball the Hamster. |
| Catch phrases | "Are you pondering what I'm pondering?", "The same thing we do every night Pinky, Try to take over the world!" |
The Brain is a character from the television series Animaniacs. Later, he starred with Pinky 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.
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[edit] Overview
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.
[edit] Domination
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.
[edit] The Dou (Pinky & The Brain)
The two are genetically enhanced lab mice who reside in a cage in the Acme Labs research facility. Each week sees Brain come up with a new plan for the two (led by him) to take over the world, which ultimately ends in failure. In common with many other Animaniacs shorts, many episodes are in some way a parody of something else - usually a film. 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!"
[edit] External links
- Jaime J. Weinman's article on Pinky & The Brain
- Article on Pinky, Elmyra & The Brain
- Pinky and the Brain on TV.com
- Pinky and the Brain at the Internet Movie Database
- The Pinky and the Brain Christmas Special on the IMDb
- Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain on TV.com
- Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain at the Internet Movie Database
- Press release detailing Toontopia TV which will feature Pinky & The Brain
- The Complete Pondering List, by Richard Watanabe, a collection of answers to Brain's running gag question: "Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
