Pinky and the Brain

''Pinky and the Brain'' is an American animated television series that was created by Tom Ruegger that premiered on Kids' WB on September 9, 1995. It was the first animated television series to be presented in Dolby Surround and the fourth collaboration of Steven Spielberg with his production company, Amblin Entertainment, and Warner Bros. Animation. The characters first appeared in 1993 as a recurring skit on the animated television series '' Animaniacs''. It was later spun off as a series due to its popularity, with 65 episodes produced. The characters later appeared in the series '' Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain'', and have since returned to their roots as an ''Animaniacs'' skit in the 2020 revival of that series.

Pinky and the Brain are genetically enhanced laboratory mice who reside in a cage in the Acme Labs research facility. Brain is highly intelligent, self-centered and scheming, while Pinky is good-natured but feeble-minded. In each episode, Brain devises a new plan to take over the world which ultimately ends in failure, usually due to the impossibility of Brain's plan, Brain's own overconfidence, Pinky's bumbling, an oversight on Brain's part, circumstances beyond their control, or multiples thereof. In common with many other ''Animaniacs'' shorts, many episodes are in some way a parody of something else, usually a film or novel.

Premise

Many of the ''Pinky and the Brain'' episodes occur in the 1990s at Acme Labs, located in some large American city underneath a suspension bridge. Several episodes take place in historical times, with Pinky and Brain in the laboratory of some scientifically-minded person, including Merlin, H.G. Wells, Ivan Pavlov, and Johannes Gutenberg. There is very little continuity between episodes outside of the common fixtures of the two mice, though some plans for world domination from early episodes are subsequently referred to in later seasons; for example, Brain's mechanical human suit that was first used in "Win Big" reappears when Brain faces his rival Snowball in "Snowball".

The bulk of every episode involves one of Brain's plans for world domination with Pinky's assistance and the ultimate failure of that plan, with some exceptions. One centers on Snowball's plan to take over the world using Microsponge (a parody of Microsoft). Another episode features Brain's single day where he tries to do anything ''but'' take over the world: in the end, a group of people votes that he ''should'' take over the world on the one day that he does not ''want'' to.

Both Pinky and Brain, white lab mice kept as part of Acme Labs' experimentation, have undergone significant genetic alteration, per the show's title lyrics, "their genes have been spliced" which gives the two mice amplified intelligence over that of a typical mouse, the ability to talk to humans, and anthropomorphism. "Project B.R.A.I.N." suggests that the gene splicing occurred on September 9, 1995, which is coincident to the first full episode of ''Pinky and the Brain''. The episode "Brainwashed" states that the gene splicing was done by Dr. Mordough, along with Snowball the hamster and Precious the cat, using the Acme Gene Splicer, Bagel Warmer, and Hot Dog Steamer.

Although Pinky and Brain plan to conquer the world, they do not show much animosity. In a Christmas special, Pinky even wrote a letter to Santa Claus saying that Brain had the world's best interests at heart.

Episodes

Characters

Pinky

Pinky (voiced by Rob Paulsen, who also voices Yakko from '' Animaniacs'') is a genetically modified mouse who shares the same cage as Brain at Acme Labs. Pinky is an extremely unstable and hyperactive mouse. He has several verbal tics, such as "Narf", "Zort", "Poit", and "Troz", the last of which he started saying after noticing it was "Zort" reflected backwards in a mirror. Pinky's appearance contrasts with Brain's — while Brain is short, has a crooked tail and pink sclerae, and speaks in a deeper, more eloquent manner, Pinky has a straight tail, blue sclerae, and a severe overbite, is taller than the Brain and speaks in a high-pitched voice with a Cockney British accent. Pinky's name was inadvertently given to him by Brain himself: when insulting the two scientists responsible for their gene splicing while talking to himself, Brain claimed the scientists had "less knowledge in both their heads than I do in my...pinky!" Pinky then responded with "Yes?", believing that Brain was referring to him.

Pinky is more open-minded, kinder, and generally happier than the Brain. Troubles never ruin his day, possibly because he is too scatter-brained to notice them. He steadfastly helps Brain toward world domination, even though Brain usually berates, belittles and even abuses him. Pinky actually seems to enjoy this, often laughing after he is hit on the head. He is obsessed with trivia, spending a lot of time watching television in the lab and following popular culture fads. Sometimes, Pinky even finds non-rational solutions to problems. An entire episode (entitled "The Pinky P.O.V.") even shows a typical night of attempted world domination from his point of view, showing his thought processes and how he comes to the strange, seemingly nonsensical responses to Brain's famous question, "Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?" Pinky often points out flaws in the Brain's plans, which the Brain consistently ignores. The issues Pinky brings up can ironically lead to the downfall of the plan in the given night's plot.

He is also Brain's moral compass and his only true friend. When Pinky sold his soul to the devil to give Brain the world in "A Pinky and the Brain Halloween", Brain saved him because he missed him and the world was not worth ruling without him. Pinky also has shown signs of intelligence, despite his supposed stupidity. In "Welcome to the Jungle", Pinky was able to survive using his instincts and become a leader to Brain, who, despite his intelligence, could not survive in the wild on his own. And in "The Pink Candidate", when Pinky became president, he later began citing various constitutional amendments and legal problems that would bar Brain from his latest plot to take over the world. When Brain attempted to pressure him into helping, Pinky refused, claiming that the plan "goes against everything I've come to stand for."

The Brain

The Brain or "Brain" for short (voiced by Maurice LaMarche) looks and sounds like Orson Welles. In "What Ever Happened to Baby Brain", Brain actually crosses paths with Welles, who is working as a busboy in a Hollywood restaurant, and they find themselves inadvertently yelling in unison, "Things will be different when I take over the world!" In "Project B.R.A.I.N.", Brain's name is the backronym for the eponymous project: "Biological Recombinant Algorithmic Intelligence Nexus". His tail is angular and bent — he often uses it to pick the lock of the cage door — and his head is large and wide, housing his abnormally large brain. He is highly intelligent and develops complex plans for global domination using politics, cultural references, and his own inventions toward his goal. He seems coldly unemotional, speaking in a snarky deadpan voice. Nevertheless, Brain has a subtle sense of humor and has even fallen in love, with Trudie in the episode "The Third Mouse" and with Billie in "The World Can Wait". Due to his stature and megalomania, Brain has been compared to Don Quixote and has been called a pop culture depiction of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Brain sees his inevitable rise to power as good for the world and not as mere megalomania. In '' Animaniacs: Wakko's Wish'', he said to Pinky "We're on our way to fame, fortune and a world that's a better place for all." Many of the Brain's plots had the endgame of winning over the people's hearts and then having them make him their ruler. However, his motives are not pure. In one episode, Brain finds himself hypnotized by a psychologist whom he had planned to manipulate for one of his schemes, who turns out to be none other than Sigmund Freud. There Brain reveals that he originally lived with his parents in a tin can at the base of a tree in a large field. When he was young, ACME researchers captured Brain and took him from his home, and the last he saw of it was a picture of the world on the side of the can. Dr. Freud speculates that Brain's hunger to take over the world is misplaced, and that all he really wants is to go back home to his parents. According to the creators, Brain wants to take over the world not for the sake of being a dictator, like his rival Snowball, but because he believes that he could do a much better job of it than the people currently in charge. Brain has even helped save the world by doing everything in his power to prevent Snowball's evil schemes, knowing that a world under Snowball's rule would be a worst-case scenario. In the 2020 ''Animaniacs'' reboot, Brain gains a new rival in taking over the world in the form of his wife, Senator Julia Brain, after his attempts to mind-control her into becoming a puppet ruler for him led to her becoming insane.

Other recurring characters

* Snowball the hamster (voiced by Roddy McDowall) is Brain's former childhood friend-turned-rival who was also made intelligent by gene splicing and has a similar desire for world conquest (though his desire is far more malevolent than Brain's) which Pinky and Brain are sometimes forced to stop.
* Billie (voiced by Tress MacNeille) is a female white mouse and yet another result of gene splicing. She is smarter than Brain and also has the goal of world domination. Though Brain loves her, she fancies Pinky instead. In the episode "You'll Never Eat Food Pellets In This Town Again!", it is revealed that Brain is married to Billie (who in real life is named Sheila and hates playing Billie), who pretty much agreed to marry him only because he is famous, and eventually kicks him out and makes him live in his restaurant. It is later revealed that the events were just a dream.
*Pharfignewton (voiced by Frank Welker) is a white racing mare, with whom Pinky falls in love. Though Brain constantly tells Pinky that he is a mouse and Pharfignewton is a horse, Pinky always chooses ''not'' to listen to him.
* Larry (voiced by Billy West) is a white mouse who was created as a response to demands from Kids' WB executives to include additional characters on the show. His presence is sporadic, as the writers of the show believed that including an additional character would ruin the chemistry between Pinky and Brain, as they worked best as a comedy '' duo''; thus a third character would, therefore, be out of place and unnecessary to the plot. To further drive this point home, Larry's first appearance was marked by a modified version of the theme song with the words "and Larry!" shoehorned in between existing lyrics. He is a caricature of Larry Fine of The Three Stooges fame; therefore, the episode's title is "Pinky and the Brain...and Larry".

Other characters that have appeared on the series have included both of Brain's and Pinky's parents and the duo's "son", "Roman Numeral I" (Romy for short) another white mouse who was the result of a cloning mistake. Episodes also include recurring caricatures of celebrities, including both Bill and Hillary Clinton, David Letterman, Dick Clark, Drew Carey, Ryan Stiles, Kathy Kinney, J. D. Wilkes, Paul Gilmartin, Annabelle Gurwitch, Don Rickles, Michael Keaton, Eric and Donny from '' Too Something'', "Macho Man" Randy Savage, The Allman Brothers Band, David Cross, Jack Black, Chris Shiflett, Jim Nabors as Gomer Pyle, and Christopher Walken, as was common on other ''Animaniacs'' cartoons.

Creation and inspiration

''Pinky and the Brain'' was inspired by the peculiar personalities of two producers of Tom Ruegger's earlier show ''Tiny Toon Adventures'', Eddie Fitzgerald and Tom Minton, respectively. The two worked in the same office at Warner Bros. Animation and developed interesting personalities that the other staff had picked up on; Ruegger said that Minton seemed to be always scheming to take over the world, while Fitzgerald comedically agreed with him, injecting nonsense words like ''"Narf"'' and ''"Egad"'' around the office. The gag credit for the ''Tiny Toon Adventures'' episode "You Asked For It" credits Eddie Fitzgerald as "Guy Who Says 'Narf'". Series producer Peter Hastings described Eddie by saying, "He always greeted you like you were wearing a funny hat – and he liked it." During the development of ''Animaniacs'', animator Bruce Timm drew caricatures of Minton and Fitzgerald, and Ruegger then added mouse ears and noses to the drawing, cementing the concept for Pinky and the Brain. The Fitzgerald/Minton connection to Pinky and the Brain is shown in the episode "The Pinky and the Brain Reunion Special". Two characters shown as writers for Pinky and the Brain cartoons within the short are caricatures of Fitzgerald and Minton.

While Ruegger initially based the Brain after Minton, the Welles connection came from Maurice LaMarche, a big fan of the actor/director, who had supplied the voice for Orson Welles in the 1994 movie ''Ed Wood''. LaMarche stated that on coming in to audition for the character of the Brain, he saw the resemblance to Welles and went with that for the voice, and he was given the role on the spot. LaMarche describes Brain's voice as "65% Orson Welles, 35% Vincent Price".
Brain's similarity to Orson Welles was made explicit in the '' Animaniacs'' 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 before recording episodes, and Hastings took it to its logical conclusion. The writers developed the script in secret playing off these test lines and the ''Frozen Peas'' outtakes, and arranged to have recording on the same day as Sam Kinison's funeral, whom LaMarche was a close friend of. Prior to LaMarche's arrival, the other voice actors, including Paulsen, recognized the humor of the script after they started reading it. According to Paulsen, when LaMarche arrived, he had originally kept his professionalism after the funeral, but broke down in happiness as he recognized the script for what it was. The series also alluded to Welles with 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 Welles allusions included the episode "The Third Mouse", a parody of ''The Third Man'' in which the Brain played the part of Welles' character Harry Lime (with Pinky as Holly Martins), and "Battle for the Planet", in which Brain, inspired by Welles' infamous '' War of the Worlds'' radio broadcast and the hysteria that it provoked, stages an alien invasion on television. A caricature of Orson Welles appears in a late episode of the series ("What Ever Happened to Baby Brain"), echoing a rant of the Brain's and introducing himself afterwards.

Paulsen had already been selected to voice Pinky as he was already voicing Yakko Warner for ''Animaniacs''. Paulsen, taking inspiration from British comedies such as ''Monty Python's Flying Circus'', ''The Goon Show'', and Peter Sellers, soon gave Pinky "a goofy whack job" of a British accent for the character.

The episode "Win Big" was the very first ''Pinky and the Brain'' skit. It was developed for '' Animaniacs'', written by Ruegger with a script by Peter Hastings, and directed by Rusty Mills. According to Ruegger, most of the elements that would become part of ''Pinky and the Brain'' can be found in Hastings's original script. It held many dialogue bits that became conventions of the entire series, including Brain's "Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?", Pinky's "Oh...wait, no." in response to a plan, and Pinky's final question, "Why, Brain? What are we going to do tomorrow night?"

Production

Producers

As with ''Animaniacs'', Steven Spielberg was the executive producer during the entire run, Tom Ruegger was the senior producer, Jean MacCurdy was the executive in charge of production, and Andrea Romano was the voice director. Peter Hastings, Rusty Mills and Liz Holzman produced the series when it was spun off from ''Animaniacs'', as well as the season it ran primetime on the WB. After the first season Hastings left the show and Mills took over as the supervising producer.

Writing

The original Pinky and the Brain shorts on ''Animaniacs'' were written primarily by Peter Hastings. Upon moving into its own series, the writing staff included Gordon Bressack, Charles M. Howell IV, Earl Kress, Wendell Morris, and Tom Sheppard. Comedian Alex Borstein was also a staff writer, years before her fame on '' MADTV'' and ''Family Guy''. Classic Warner Bros. cartoon director Norm McCabe also wrote for the series.

Voice actors

Pinky and the Brain were voiced by Rob Paulsen and Maurice LaMarche, respectively. The series also used the work of many of the same voice actors for ''Animaniacs'', including Tress MacNeille, Jess Harnell, Frank Welker, Nancy Cartwright, Janet Waldo and Jeff Bennett. Celebrities such as Roddy McDowall, Nora Dunn, Townsend Coleman, Ernest Borgnine, Eric Idle, Dick Clark, Ed McMahon, Steve Allen, Joyce Brothers, Gavin MacLeod, John Tesh, Michael McKean, Garry Marshall, Mark Hamill, James Belushi, and Steven Spielberg have all performed guest voice work for the series as well.
Cree Summer has also voiced characters in ''Pinky and the Brain'' and reprised her role as Elmyra Duff during ''Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain''.

Music

As with ''Animaniacs'', ''Pinky and the Brain'' was scored by a team of composers, led by Emmy-Award-winning composer Richard Stone. This team included Steven Bernstein and Julie Bernstein, who also orchestrated and sometimes conducted the 40-piece orchestra. The recordings were done on Stage A on the Warner Bros lot, the same stage (and with the same piano) where Carl Stalling recorded his ''Looney Tunes'' music. The theme song for ''Pinky and the Brain'' was composed by Richard Stone with lyrics by Tom Ruegger.

Two versions of the opening sequence and theme, with slightly different lyrics, were used during the ''Animaniacs'' skits. In the first version, Yakko, Wakko, and Dot (voiced respectively by Paulsen, Harnell, and MacNeille) popped up in the lab and sang the theme while letting the two mice out of their cage. The second, later version had the singers off-camera as the Brain picked the lock on the cage door with a small needle to free himself and Pinky. On the ''Pinky and the Brain'' series, the theme gained an additional two verses and was sung by Harnell, Dorian Harewood, Jim Cummings, and Paulsen.

The score sometimes includes references to classical music. For example, in the episode where the Brain builds a new papier-mâché Earth, the theme from the 2nd and 4th movements of Dvořák's ''New World Symphony'' can be heard throughout the episode. The episode ''Napoleon Brainaparte'' makes frequent reference to the French anthem, '' La Marseillaise'', while in the episode in which Pinky becomes the artist "Pinkasso", Mussorgsky's ''Pictures at an Exhibition'' can be heard.

Animation

Like ''Animaniacs'', most of the original ''Pinky and the Brain'' skits used a variety of animation studios, including Tokyo Movie Shinsha, StarToons, Wang Film Productions, and AKOM. The bulk of the episodes created outside of ''Animaniacs'' (seasons 2 and beyond) were produced by Rough Draft Studios, Wang Film Productions and AKOM. The only episode that was animated by Tokyo Movie Shinsha on the spin-off series was '' A Pinky and the Brain Christmas''.

Humor

Like ''Animaniacs'', much of the humor in ''Pinky and the Brain'' was aimed at adult audiences. Parodies of pop culture icons were quite common on the series, more so during the original episodes developed for the WB prime time slot. In addition to previously mentioned political and actor caricatures, some episodes included complete parodies like those in ''Animaniacs''. The episode "The Megalomaniacal Adventures of Brainie the Poo" parodies '' The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh'' (or simply ''Winnie the Pooh''). "Cameos" include Jagger instead of Tigger and Algore instead of Eeyore. Algore is "full of hot air", and shown floating like a balloon. Other parodic elements include Christopher Walken in place of Christopher Robin and the "Brainie the Poo" book appears to have been written by " A. A. Meeting." The three-part episode "Brainwashed" included several allusions to the television show ''The Prisoner'', though everyone in this version of the Village was identified by the hat that they wore, and not by a number.

Three songs resemble the musical skits in ''Animaniacs'', matching existing music with new lyrics. Pinky sings "Cheese Roll Call" to John Philip Sousa's march "Semper Fidelis" praising his love for all cheeses from around the world. To the music of " Camptown Races", Brain lists the major parts of the human brain, with Pinky jumping in at the chorus to shout "Brainstem! Brainstem!". "A Meticulous Analysis of History" is set to "When I Was a Lad" from Gilbert and Sullivan's ''H.M.S. Pinafore'', and sung by both Brain and Pinky, with Brain reciting the rise to power of such historical leaders as Napoleon and Cleopatra, while Pinky mentions how they all fell. In addition, "Brainwashed" featured a song called the Schmëerskåhøvên, a parody of the Macarena, which would brainwash people if it was done correctly. The song includes such odd lyrics as "Put your fingers in your ears, then stick them in your belly" and "Bop yourself on the head and cross your eyes."

Like ''Animaniacs'', there was a gag credit in the closing credits: each show featured an English word appropriate for the episode with its definition. For example, "Around the World in 80 Narfs", where the mice are foiled by trying to speak "New York cabbie" and end up going in circles in one location, the gag credit word was "anophelosis" defined as "morbid state due to extreme frustration".

Another common element in nearly every episode is the following exchange (often referred to by the acronym "AYPWIP"):

Brain: Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Pinky: I think so, Brain, but...

Pinky's response ends with a non sequitur such as, "we're already naked", "isn't a cucumber

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