Cartoon physics

Cartoon physics is a joking reference to the fact that animation allows regular laws of physics to be ignored in humorous ways for dramatic effects. For example, when a cartoon character runs off a cliff, gravity has no effect until the character notices and reacts.

In words attributed to Art Babbitt: "Animation follows the laws of physics — unless it is funnier otherwise."

The phrase also reflects the fact that many of the most famous American animated films, particularly those from Warner Brothers and MGM studios, unconsciously developed a relatively consistent set of such "laws" that have become regularly applied in comic animation.

History of the phrase

The idea that cartoons behave differently than the real world, but not randomly, is virtually as old as animation. Walt Disney, for example, spoke of the plausible impossible (see The Plausible Impossible, 1956), deliberately mispronouncing the second word so it rhymed with the first.

Specific reference to cartoon physics extends back at least to June of 1980, when an article "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion" appeared in Esquire magazine. A version printed in 1994 by the IEEE in a journal for engineers helped spread the word among the technical crowd, which has expanded and refined the idea. Dozens of websites exist outlining these laws.

The situation is so well-understood that it has been used as the topic of jokes for decades, as in the 1949 Looney Tunes short High Diving Hare, in which Bugs Bunny explains, "I know this defies the law of gravity; but you see, I never studied law!"

More recently, the cartoon characters Roger Rabbit and Bonkers D. Bobcat have their own variations on the theme, explaining that toons are allowed to bend or break natural laws for the purposes of comedy. Doing this is extremely tricky, so toons have a natural sense of comedic timing, giving them inherently funny properties. Bonkers also warns that the loss of this sense can lead to unfunny and even dangerous situations, perhaps explaining why cartoon violence, but not the real variety, is always funny.

In 1993, Stephen R. Gould, writing in New Scientist noted that "... new, looney toon analysis reveals that these, seemingly nonsensical, phenomena can be described by logical laws similar to those in our world. Nonsensical events are by no means limited to the Looniverse. Laws that govern our own Universe often seem contrary to common sense." This theme is further described by Dr. Alan Cholodenko in his article, "The Nutty Universe of Animation"

Why is it funny?

Adherents of evolutionary psychology have suggested that the humorous effect of cartoon physics is due to the interplay of intuitions between physics (objective) and psychology (self-perception). The physics module predicts that the cartoon character will fall over the cliff immediately, while the psychology module anthropomorphizes the force of gravity and thus see it as vulnerable to deception, as long as the actor is self-deceived .

In short, it can lead to the humorous situation where a cartoon's logic is governed by what "makes sense" (is consistent) rather than what "is" (natural law).

Examples

Commonly cited cartoon physics laws include:

• Explosives, even if detonated close to a character's face, will cause only scorching of the skin. (Prior to the efforts of the American Civil Rights Movement, characters would often take on the appearance of blackface and sometimes briefly sing a short song such as Way Down Upon the Swanee River.) Similarly, a gun discharged directly into the face will seldom fire an actual bullet but will instead fire what is essentially a directed explosion with the same properties as above, or a flag with the word "BANG!!".

• Characters are allowed to swim or blow themselves upwards a short distance in the air before falling normally. Sometimes when a character runs off the edge of a cliff, they will not actually start falling until they look down and realize they should.

• Characters who are standing on a falling object can jump off before impact and avoid injury.

• When a toon (normally a villain) saws off a platform, it causes the main platform (the toon standing on it) to fall down, with the sawed-off platform floating on air.

• Glues is remarkably strong, as it is impossible for characters to remove the glued object.

• Balloons inflated by mouth float in the air, exactly as if they had been inflated with helium. (Don Martin also used this in a cartoon-strip series about National Gorilla Suit Day.)

• Motion reference frames are arbitrary. For instance, an outboard motor in a pan of water on wheels causes the motor and pan to move together. Likewise, a fan and a sail attached to a wheeled platform will cause the platform to move.

• Holes can be physically picked up and moved. This also applies to tunnel mouths and roadways that might conveniently be redirected off the edge of a cliff or into a wall. This principle was used for both comedic and dramatic effect in the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as well as in Yellow Submarine (1968).

• Tunnels and doors can be created merely by painting them on the surface where they are desired. Frequently a train will egress from tunnels, trailing freshly rolled railway tracks behind it.

• On the rare occasions that a character retains injuries into the next scene, he or she will show signs of having undergone significant medical treatment. Great lengths of bandage will be wrapped around them, arms will be in slings, legs are in casts, and the character may be using crutches. The source of these dressings is never addressed. Removal of these items results in the damage being instantly healed. The character will limp when moving, unless another injury is imminent. In this case the character will attempt to escape very quickly (but never quickly enough).

• When the character receives a high voltage electric shock (eg. he or she's struck by lightning), his or her skeleton will be flashing a number of times (similar to properties exhibited by x-rays). A live action example can be seen when a character is struck by Force lightning in the Star Wars films. The result is different: In most cases the character will have a black color (with minor smoke going up from it), but it can turn to ashes as well occasionally with the blinking eyes on top of them.

• The reference frame can loop, where a character disappearing into one edge (or door way) can appear from another. A live-action variation was featured in Matrix Revolutions.

• Grappling hooks can be attached to the sky. The term Skyhook has come to be used in many real-world situations where something is lifted into the sky by a hook lowered from aircraft of some kind.

• A toon's tongue can be stretched to almost any length — and when released it may either roll up like a tape measure (with a similar sound) or just land in a large pile at the characters' feet.

• A character can instantly disconnect a heavy piece of machinery and replace it with his or her own body. This was illustrated in a Popeye cartoon in which Popeye and Bluto are racing with locomotives: First Bluto reaches over (with a bare hand!) and pulls a drive rod off the driving wheels of Popeye's locomotive; Popeye leaps over and assumes the function himself, becoming a human drive rod.

• When a character undergoes very cold temperatures, or has a very great sensation of being cold, he becomes immediately cased in a thick layer of ice, likewise whilst in this layer the character can be shattered into a million pieces or melted into liquid completely, as if becoming the ice itself. This is also expressed in later renditions of Mortal Kombat, in which you freeze the opponent then shatter them.

• Female characters are almost always immune to physical injury, with the exception of Amy Wong from the Futurama series. It was even mentioned by Matt Groening in the audio commentary of Xmas Story that Amy was created to see if it would be funny if a female cartoon character was hurt rather than just a male character, as it is rare to see a female character undergo harm.

• Many characters are able to produce any object from behind their back at will (See also: Hammerspace).

• Objects can enter a character's head from one ear and exit from another ear. The object will be visible through the character's eyes in some cases. Similarly, characters have the ability to get inside television sets.

• A watch will instantaneously appear on the wrist of any character as soon as one is needed. It will disappear as soon as it is not needed anymore. If the character is an animal with fur, he or she will push up the fur like a sleeve to reveal the watch.

• Cartoon characters (mostly Shaggy from Scooby-Doo and Bugs Bunny) can almost instantly change into a costume and, of course, trick a bad guy into believing they're someone else (or even fall in love).

• Realizing the flaws of these physics is extremely dangerous. This is exemplified in an episode of Ed Edd 'n' Eddy, in which the titular characters attempt to understand their universe, and, in the end, cause reality to collapse on itself.

• By contrast, cartoon characters can achieve deity-like powers by simply being ignorant of physical or biological laws, as in Water, Water Every Hare, where Bugs Bunny can breathe (and snore) underwater because he is not awake and therefore unaware that he would drown. In the case of some clever characters like Bugs Bunny, this also applies by feigning ignorance: see High Diving Hare, where Bugs pulls the sawed-plank-of-wood trick on Yosemite Sam and declares, "I know this defies the law of gravity, but, you see, I never studied law!"

• Occasionally, any amount of force applied to an object will not only move it, but send it flying at high speeds. Case in point: Nibbles simply using a loaf of French bread to cast half a watermelon at Tom. (Tom and Jerry Tales, ep. "Cat Show Catastrophe").

Anvilology

Anvilology[1] is the study of (cartoon) physical principles of anvils, as studied at "Acme Looniversity" in the animated series, Tiny Toon Adventures.

• Everything falls faster than an anvil (so that the evil character can hit the ground first and then be crushed, but not killed, by the anvil).

• Anvils are readily available.

• Anvils have mass but not much weight, so that they are very hard to push around, but it is possible to jump out of a plane with an anvil instead of a parachute and not notice until the parachute is opened while airborne.

• Anvils can stay in the air until noticed by a character, at which point they fall on the character.

• If a character moves out of the way of a falling anvil, the anvil will shift its position over the character before falling, so that it crushes (but does not kill) the character. The anvil's shadow may not reflect this shift and could stay in its original position until the anvil strikes the character.

• The item in question does not necessarily need to be an anvil; a safe or a grand piano would also follow the laws of anvilology. If a safe has fallen on a character, the character may be rescued by opening the safe.

It is to be noted that, in the Taz-Mania series, a recurrent joke is that all anvils weigh 16 tons. Also, in one supplement, it is explained that the reason for the anvils to have 16 tons is that this is the exact amount determined to make audience laugh (to the point that the drop of a 15.99999... ton anvil was demonstrated and brought a near-happy expression to the watchers, who then fell in sadness). This recurrent joke may be a cartoon parody of the Monty Python favourite way of ending sketches -- to drop a cartoonish "16-ton weight" on a character.

Cartoon collision physics

Cartoon collision physics are a subset of cartoon physics regarding the laws of collisions.

For a given cartoon character C:

• If two characters C1 and C2 collide while running towards each other, rather than doing considerable harm to each other, the characters will often fuse into one being, with facial and body features randomly mixed around their merged body.

• If C runs into a wall,
  1. If the wall is too thick, C will strike it and flatten out like dough, often regardless of clothing.
  2. If the wall is thin enough, C will leave a hole in the wall in the shape of their full silhouette. Depending on how frightened or how much of a hurry C is in, this can happen even if the wall is quite thick. This has happened at least once in a live-action film, when the character played by Jonathan Winters went through a wall in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, leaving a Jonathan Winters-shaped hole.

• If C runs into something made of metal, C will dent it in the shape of his or her body.
  • If C1 hits C2 over their head with a metal pole, the pole will take the outline-shape of the top of C2's head.

• If C runs off a cliff, the impact crater C leaves will conform with Rule 2b.

• If C has a fragile body,
  1. Running into any wall will cause C to be squashed into a musical instrument (usually an accordion), or
  2. Any collision or fall will fracture C into a million pieces. This is especially true when said character is frozen and hits said collision.
  3. If C collides with a mesh barrier such as a screen door, C will appear to pass through said barrier unharmed, only to fall apart shortly afterward into a pile of cubes.

• If C runs into a wall which has been painted to look like part of the landscape or a tunnel:
  1. If the camera angle blends the painting with the actual landscape, C will enter the landscape or tunnel as though it were real.
  2. If C was the one who painted the wall, C will just run into the wall — see Rule 1.
  3. If the camera views the painting at an angle such that it is, without doubt, a painting on a wall, C will just run into the wall — see Rule 1. There are exceptions to this rule.
  4. Trains or large trucks are often known to drive out of walls painted in this way, usually just after the painter has slammed into the wall and is feeling sheepish for having fallen for his or her own ruse. However, if the view of the oncoming vehicle is blocked, then the vehicle will apparently stop.

Laws of Cartoon Dynamics

The Laws of Cartoon Dynamics are physical laws in the cartoon universe identified by Trevor Paquette and Lt. Justin D. Baldwin and popularized by film critic Roger Ebert. They overlap greatly with the older concept of "laws of cartoon physics".

• Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation (plus an interval for live falling bodies to express an appropriate emotion). (Al Jaffee used this in a short sequence he drew for his stand-alone paperback Mad Monstrosities, in which a nearsighted man doesn't realize he's walked off a cliff until he puts his glasses back on.)

• Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter intervenes suddenly.

• Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation conforming to its perimeter.

• The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken.

• All principles of gravity are negated by fear.

• Falling objects will emit a sound of changing pitch opposite to that which is described by the Doppler effect. As the object gains velocity while approaching its target on the ground, the whistling sound starts at a high pitch and gets lower, when the reverse would be true in our world. (Corollary - falling objects will emit a sound)

• Falling bodies either collide with the earth completely elastically or inelastically. If the collision is elastic, the energy will be ultimately transferred to something else which collides absolutely inelastically (e.g., into a hanging cliffside that cracks and falls).

• Momentum is continual until noticed.

• As a corollary to the above, if a smaller, smart character is being chased by a larger, not-so-smart one, the smaller one can stop short while the larger one obeys the laws of momentum and falls over a cliff, crashes into a wall, etc. (This happens with Speedy Gonzales and Sylvester, for example.)

• Bodies can achieve energies greater than they originally started with, even if no external force is added (e.g., a rock will, when rolled against a ramp) fly higher than its original starting point.

• The amount of work on rocks falling tends towards zero (i.e., they tend to fall to their original (!) starting point).

• As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once, a situation similar to the ones described by quantum mechanics. Or a character running wildly will meet himself or herself face to face (as Felix the Cat, Farmer Al Falfa, or "Dexter" in the animated spot in the middle of an episode of Meet Corliss Archer.")

• Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel entrances; others cannot. The one who cannot is usually the one who painted the tunnel in the first place and almost always after a character has passed through successfully.

• Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent.

• Everything falls faster than an anvil, except for an agent attached to an anvil by parachute strings, in which case the anvil tows the agent.

• Guns, no matter how powerful, or no matter where aimed, will do nothing more than char flesh, blow away feathers, or rearrange beaks. In certain occasions, they leave a perfectly circular hole that goes completely through the body of the character being shot, but this does not affect his/her health in any way.

• Any given amount of explosives will propel a body miles away, but still in one piece, charred and extremely peeved.

• Arms holding large falling weights are infinitely elastic, but will eventually drag the holder along.

• Protocol or photo opportunities will suspend the motion, not only of persons running, but also of inanimate objects. Case in point: In a Warner Brothers cartoon, set on a Navy ship, whenever the Captain walks by, the sailors stand at attention. When the main characters are running from a live bomb that has been propelled at them, they run on the deck until the captain walks by. The sailors--and the bomb--stand at attention.

• Tools and machinery also behave in unusual ways. An old-fashioned bumper jack, raised or lowered with a long lever, will exceed by many times the height of its own housing (similar to hammerspace) when a character needs it to lift something to a considerable height. Also, lazy tongs can be manufactured to reach over considerable distances; in a Porky Pig cartoon set on a Navy ship, every time Porky scores a shot against an enemy vessel a lazy tongs set on shore--miles away--reaches a cigar out to him.

• It is possible to maniupulate even the most supposedly sophisticated devices. In a Bugs Bunny cartoon, in which Wile E. Coyote tries to kill Bugs with sophisticated technology, he sends a deadly flying saucer to Bugs' lair, after setting it for "Rabbit." Bugs sees it approaching and puts a chicken mask over his head; the machine hovers and twitches harmlessly. Meanwhile, Bugs draws another setting on the device, for "Coyote," and turns the dial to that. Of course, the device speeds back to Wile E.'s lair and attacks him.

• When a character sees an object about to fall on him from above (this never seems to happen to female characters), he will run in place, with appropriate sound effects; but his efforts to get out of the path of the falling object--such as a boulder, a snowball or a safe--will fail and the object will fall on him.

Anime physics

Anime physics can be considered a subset of cartoon physics. These are commonly seen in anime, Japanese cartoons, but not so common in cartoons from other parts of the world. Normally, these are referenced from popular series in the past. They are generally considered as common clichés found in anime - however, an important distinction to make is that while the rules of Western cartoon physics are used as a source of comedy, several of the following are used in perfectly serious situations with the intent of conveying genuine drama or action.

Note that many of these laws only apply to the shōnen genre.

Examples include:

• Dramatic moments tend to distort time, either by slowing it down (usually long enough to call out the name of an attacker or the name of the "special move" used in the attack, or for bystanders to comment on the situation), or by looping three times.
  • Similarly, transformations (especially those animated with stock footage) also seem to stop time until completed, allowing them to be used to counter attacks, or not allowing the person to be attacked while performing them.
  • Death is not instantaneous to significant characters. Permanent death is also a rare occurrence.

• Humans are capable of instantaneously freezing into solid ice or transforming into stone when surprised and/or embarrassed.
  • In lesser cases, a person's forehead will instantly turn blue.

• When a character is in an extremely pensive mood, the entire area around him/her will disappear into a featureless black void, while he/she remains illuminated by a misty light coming from an unknown but vertically located source.

• Intense emotion can be manifest in audible artifacts as well as physical/visual ones. For example, intense grief or concern imparts a slow repeat echo to the human voice in dramatic situations, even when appropriately placed reflective surfaces are not present. However, the amount of echo thus imparted is inversely proportional to the number of words, with anguished cries of another person's name usually receiving the most echo.

• In a series where characters change size, the opponents must be of the same size to battle. The hero(es) cannot use their mech or their larger form to squish the monster, nor can the monster grow and squish the hero(es). This is also found in Tokusatsu series, especially Super Sentai, but not in Kaiju films, where monsters such as Godzilla often stomp humans at will.

• Sorrowful crying with much feeling can force tears to gush out like waterfalls. Usually used only during humorous situations, while in dramatic situations, the tear flow is more realistic.

• Angry scolding to another character causes the scolder to enlarge and grow sharp fangs while the person being scolded will shrink.

• Attacks strong enough to shred entire planets will not destroy anyone's clothes or hair. Conversely, certain explosions can destroy a female character's clothing without significantly harming her body—in some cases, without her initially noticing this.

• Any fire-based attack on a character will not completely burn his/her clothes but will leave black stains instead.

• A single cut can be made swiftly, cleanly. This is possible with any object, particularly with hands, paper, swords, and even air.
  • A sword, especially a katana, can cleanly cut through anything, even including large objects (such as ships) and hair, but not through other swords. There is a slight loophole in this law - if an expert fighter (even if using hand-to-hand techniques) wishes to end a duel with an obviously lesser opponent in an appropriately dramatic way, he can execute an appropriately dramatic attack that destroys his opponent's weapon-often without their knowledge; after completing a seemingly successful attack, they will notice the expert is unharmed and look at their weapon quizzically, at which point it will either fall into two cleanly cut pieces (in a dramatic battle) or shatter like glass (in a comedic battle).
  • Wooden katanas (bokken) can cut just as well as the real thing (and are almost never destroyed by the aforementioned loophole), if not better.

• Faster than light travel is possible with many characters, particularly those engaged in martial art battles; and so a vehicle is not required.

• Trains and other unlikely forms of transportation can fly, through either technology or magic. And the bigger it is, the faster it moves.

• Any female can, if angered by someone, pull out a wooden rice mallet, of any proportions, from hammerspace and hit the offender with it to let go of some aggressions. It should be noted that, no matter how large the mallet is, or how flat the offender gets after the pounding, he/she will always revert to original shape without having to experience any lasting health deterioration from the whole ordeal. A good example of this is in the anime Pokémon: when Misty explained her hatred of bugs, she whacked Caterpie with a rice mallet.

• Death can be suspended until it is appropriate, suspenseful, or ironic. During the end part of some battles, characters may opt to charge at one another with their sword, meaning to chop the other in half. At the point of contact, all that will be seen is a bright white slash going across the screen, but it will remain unclear who is hurt. The two characters will then stay, kneeling on the floor, facing away from each other, until the evil character falls into pieces, having been killed minutes earlier.
  • For added dramatic effect, the good character will clutch the area that they were hit or cough up blood, after the two have performed their attacks and are facing away from each other, making it appear as though they lost. A few moments later, the evil character will fall to the ground, defeated.
  • Also note, death is never, under ANY circumstance, certain, a character can be impaled, literally from navel to nose and come back later, unscathed.

• Every human body contains 16 gallons of blood under high pressure-a familiar term used is 'to make it rain blood'.
  • This will not occur if whatever inflicts the wound is left in it, which allows the attacker to withdraw it, turn, wipe it clean and put it away-blood may begin spraying from the wound like a firehose after any one of these actions. Alternatively, the mortally wounded character may pull it out himself and use it to execute a final attack.
  • Non-impaling wounds, such as being crushed or falling from a great height, usually do not cause these geysers of blood, but nosebleeds will often fountain impressively immediately upon a character's recognition of appropriate portions of an attractive female body. This is apparently true conversely, as sexual innuendo in the form of a guitar causes significant nosebleeds in the female cast of FLCL.

• Loud noises, such as screams of anguish and explosions, can be heard from space. All sounds can be transmitted in space, e.g. transmitted differently then with air-compression waves.

• Band-aids heal anything and everything, especially when applied with care.

• Any pain inflicted in a humorous fashion will almost never cause any lasting damage.

• Whenever a female character falls down while running in any non-humorous scene, she will almost certainly sprain her ankle in such a way that movement becomes impossible.
  • Furthermore, if the character is the leading female character, she will be found or be in the company of the male lead and he will carry her on his back, sparking a deeper romantic interest.
• Should two characters of the opposite sex fall within proximity of each other, the male's face will end up planted in the female's crotch or chest. Skirts will helpfully flip up to provide maximum humiliation to both parties, and shirts will open to reveal maximum cleavage. Towels will fly off both parties for this same reason. In the rare occasion that the female is wearing pants, the male will instead be on top of the female while groping the female's breast(s).

• In a similar sexual vein, a pre-adolescent girl will blossom out with full breasts and hips, sometimes growing instantly out of her clothing (common in erotic manga.)

• Characters, mostly men, can run perfectly and quickly, with their arms trailing behind them or sticking straight out from their sides. This is often done in a comical fashion, and possibly fleeing from an angered female character.

• The hero always wins with two exceptions
  • a. the other guy cheated
  • b. the other guy is a master at fighting or something
    • b1. Amendment: no matter how strong the other guy is, the hero will be able to beat him or her with an intense compacted training session, usually in the span of one day(unless handwaving time compression technology is available, enabling the hero to accomplish weeks or months of training in that same period of time).
    • b2. Amendment: the other guy can win, but the hero will then proceed to train while dead in a variety of ultimate techniques, and will then return from the dead. All but the last technique trained in will cause damage, but will not defeat the other guy. The hero will then use the final technique. This technique often is said to result in death for the user, but almost always fails to do so.

• In most manga series the main characters (most times a boy) will always be secretly coveted by a girl, which later blooms into a relationship. (i.e. Naruto Shippuden, Naruto and Hinata)

• In some occasions, some characters' injuries heal much quicker. (i.e. One Piece)

• No matter the relative strengths or abilities, a male character always takes a maximum amount of damage when punched by an angry female character in a comedic manner (often with the male being knocked bodily to the ground or across a room)

See also

• Slapstick
• Hammerspace
• Acme Corporation

External links

• Cartoon Laws of Physics
• 100 Laws of Anime Physics
• Animeinfo.org: Anime Physics
• The Laws of Anime
• Laws of Cartoon Thermodynamics from Roger Ebert's website.