Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 film produced by Amblin Entertainment and The Walt Disney Company (on its Touchstone Pictures banner), combining animation and live action. The film takes place in a fictionalized Los Angeles, California in 1947, where animated characters (always referred to as "Toons") are real beings who live and work alongside humans in the real world, most of them as actors in animated cartoons. At $70 million, it was one of the most expensive films ever at the time of its release, but it proved a sound investment that eventually brought in over $150 million during its original theatrical release. The film is notable for offering a unique chance to see many cartoon characters from different studios interacting in a single film and for being one of the last appearances by voice artists Mel Blanc and Mae Questel from animation's Golden Era.

Plot
The movie opens as production of a Baby Herman short subject which in the realm of this film is "live action" slapstick ends when Roger Rabbit blows his lines for the 23rd time. Roger plays the supporting comic foil to cartoon star Baby Herman (a baby physically but chronologically a cantankerous 50 year old man). In the movie's milieu (taken place in 1947), cartoon characters are a sapient species cohabiting alongside human beings, though unlike them, "Toons," as they are called, are not bound by the laws of physics. A section of Los Angeles has been designated as "Toontown" and is inhabited exclusively by the Toons.

In an effort to discover why Roger cannot keep his mind on his work, studio boss R. K. Maroon, owner of Maroon Cartoons, hires washed-up, alcoholic private detective Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) to investigate. However, Valiant harbors a deep bitterness toward Toons and refuses to set foot in Toontown, explaining that his brother Teddy was killed there by a Toon 5 years ago.

He quickly obtains photographic evidence that Marvin Acme, the owner of the Acme Company and of Toontown, and Roger's wife, Jessica Rabbit, a sexy Toon "femme fatale" (speaking voice by Kathleen Turner, singing voice by Amy Irving, neither of whom was credited), have been (literally) playing pattycake together. This is tantamount to infidelity in the eyes of a Toon.

A devastated Roger attacks Valiant when shown the evidence, making it clear he will win his wife back, before running away. The next morning, Acme is found murdered, with the few clues pointing to Roger as the culprit. At the crime scene, Valiant first meets Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd) of the Toontown District Superior Court and his Toon Patrol henchmen, a group of weasels named Smart Ass, Greasy, Psycho, Stupid, and Wheezy. Doom has no reservations about dispensing draconian justice, which he demonstrates by submerging a wayward Toon shoe into “The Dip”, a mixture of turpentine, acetone, and benzene. This concoction dissolves Toons on contact and kills them within seconds.

Returning to his office, Valiant finds Baby Herman, smoking a cigar, waiting in the hall for him. Herman insists that Roger is innocent and that Acme had promised to leave Toontown to the Toons in his will, which has since gone missing. Valiant dismisses this claim by pushing the pram that Baby Herman is in, but changes his mind upon re-examining the photos he took. Before he can investigate further, he finds Roger in his office, hiding from the police, and is reluctantly dragged into the case. After stashing Roger at the bar where his sometime girlfriend Dolores works, he encounters Jessica, who tells him that she allowed herself to be seen playing pattycake with Acme. Maroon had threatened to ruin Roger's career if she did not cooperate.

Dolores informs Valiant that if the missing will is not found by midnight, a company called Cloverleaf Industries will be able to buy Toontown. Valiant and Roger flee the area, with the help of Roger’s friend Benny the Cab, after Roger’s antics in the bar nearly lead to his execution at the hands of Doom and the weasels. While hiding out in a movie theater with Roger and Dolores, Valiant recalls Teddy's murderer: a Toon with “burning red eyes” and a “high squeaky voice” who dropped a piano on the brothers after robbing the First National Bank of Toontown "of a zillion simoleons." Up until this point, Valiant had enjoyed working in Toontown with his brother and taking cases that involved Toons. He apologizes to Roger for mistreating him and makes up with Dolores; on the way out, he hears a newsreel item that proves to be a vital clue involving R. K. Maroon.

Valiant goes to the studio office and interrogates Maroon, who admits to having set up a blackmail scheme to force Acme to sell Toontown to Cloverleaf so he could sell his studio as well. Before he can identify the blackmailer, he is shot and killed from outside the window by an unknown assassin. Thinking the assassin had to be Jessica Rabbit, playing Roger for a patsy, Valiant chases the assassin's car all the way into Toontown, overcoming his long-standing avoidance of the place. Here he discovers from Jessica that the assassin was actually Doom, who also murdered Acme. Jessica says to Valiant that she tried to get to the studio to save R. K. Maroon, but was too late.

Benny shows up to help them chase Doom back into the human world, but a puddle of Dip dumped in the road by Doom causes Benny to lose control and crash into a light pole. Valiant and Jessica are taken captive by Doom and the weasels, while Roger later finds Benny and the two go after Doom in Eddie’s car to the Acme Warhouse. Afte dropping Roger off there, Benny drives off to call the police, while Roger gains entry only to be caught when Greasy drops a ton of bricks on him.

With Valiant, Roger, and Jessica captured, Doom reveals his master plan to them. He admit that he is the sole stockholder of Cloverleaf Indurstries, and that he is buying up properties along a proposed freeway route (funded by the L.A. city council), including Toontown, the Acme Company, and the Maroon Cartoons studio, for commercial development ("tire salons, and places for rapidly prepared food"). Doom has also purchased the Pacific Electric Railway (nicknamed "the Red Car") in order to shut it down so that people will be forced to use the freeway and his businesses. (This storyline is based on the General Motors streetcar conspiracy, an alleged effort by GM and Westinghouse to buy up and dismantle public transportation systems throughout the U.S.) Doom then explains that he'll retire from being a judge and start controlling the profits for the new road system.

To wipe out Roger, Jessica, and Toontown, Doom has built a monstrous vehicle with thousands of gallons of Dip and will spray and scrub the landscape with brushes. Valiant buys the couple some time by performing a slapstick comedy routine, drawing on his past experience as a circus clown, that causes all the weasels but Smart Ass to literally die of excessive laughter. Smart Ass meets his end when Valiant kicks him in the crotch, launching him into the Dip tank, destroying him.

As Psycho’s soul rises to heaven, he aims the Dip cannon back toward Roger and Jessica, putting them in danger once again. Valiant diverts it away temporarily, but Doom attacks him and a fight ensues. After a fight with Valiant by some ACME materials, Doom is then flattened by a steamroller but peels himself up off the floor alive, revealing himself to be a Toon; after he reinflates with a oxygen tank, he shows his Toon red eyes and talks in a high squeaky voice, admitting that he was the one who killed Eddie's brother during the bank robbery 5 years ago, which might explain how he had the money to buy the judicial election, the Red Car, and other properties.

Doom, with an evil grin, quickly gains the upper hand by turning his right limb into a variety of Toon weapons. Just as he is about to kill Valiant with a cartoon buzzsaw, Valiant grabs a spring-loaded boxing-glove mallet and uses it to open the drain valve on the Dip tank. The flood of solvents obliterates Doom’s Toon body, killing him, and leaving only his clothes and the rubber mask he wore to conceal his identity. The empty vehicle crashes through the warehouse wall and into Toontown, but it is out of Dip and is destroyed when it is hit by a Toon train.

After Valiant washes the spilled Dip away and frees Roger and Jessica, the police and a crowd of Toons arrive at the scene. Roger’s name is cleared and the murders of Acme, Maroon, and Teddy are closed. Although everyone can't understand what kind of Toon Judge Doom was, he "was definitely a seriously disturbed toon", and they decided not to know for good. Baby Herman objects that Acme's will is still missing, but it suddenly turns up, the words appearing on a blank sheet of paper that Roger had used to write a love letter to Jessica the night he found out about the pattycake incident. (Acme had written the will using “Disappearing Re-Appearing Ink” and given it to her for safekeeping, but she discarded it, thinking it blank.) Toontown is officially bequeathed to the Toons, who break into a chorus of "Smile, Darn Ya, Smile" in celebration, and Valiant regains his long-lost sense of humor.

Filming
The live-action sequences were directed by Robert Zemeckis. Interior scenes were partly filmed at Cannon Elstree film studios in Hertfordshire, England. Many of the outdoor scenes were filmed in Los Angeles. The block of "Hollywood Boulevard" where Eddie's office and the Red Car terminal sat were constructed from extant buildings on Hope Street between 11th Street and 12th Street in downtown Los Angeles, though the interiors were located in England. Other filming locations included the Hyperion Avenue bridge and the Ren-Mar Studios on Cahuenga Boulevard (standing in for the Maroon Cartoon studios). The "Red Cars" seen in the film were fabricated for the film and were powered by diesel engines, not by power lines.

Though Disney was the studio behind the film, the animated sequences were mostly done in London because Richard Williams refused to work in Los Angeles. The film stars Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lloyd, Joanna Cassidy and the voice of Charles Fleischer. The screenplay was adapted by screenwriters Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman from the 1981 novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary K. Wolf, and the music was composed by perennial Zemeckis film composer Alan Silvestri and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra.

As many as 100 separate pieces of film were optically combined to incorporate the animated and live-action elements. The animated characters themselves were hand-drawn without computer animation; analogue optical effects were used for adding shadows and lighting to the Toons to give them a more "realistic," three-dimensional appearance. This being before reliable computer effects were developed, a human operator could not be digitally "erased" from a scene, and all physical effects had to be done mechanically, using the "Toons" to cover the rods, wires and other machinery.

Since the animated Roger was added in post-production, Bob Hoskins was effectively acting against empty air during the shooting of his many scenes with Roger. In order to facilitate Hoskins' performance, Roger’s voice actor Charles Fleischer (dressed in a Roger bunny suit) stood in for Roger in some scenes.

Much of the cinematography and several scenes of the film are a homage to Roman Polanski's Chinatown. Chinatown's screenwriter, Robert Towne, had intended to write a trilogy, but it never materialized. One planned installment was a drama called Cloverleaf, with the plot revolving around the creation of the freeway network and the decline of the Red Cars. Probably one of the most obvious references is the scene in which Roger is shown the pictures of his wife cheating on him, which is very similar to the opening scene in Polanski's film. Also J.J. Gittes in Chinatown and Eddie Valiant are both pastiches of the same stock character, that of the hard-boiled private detective. Both plots involve a corrupt establishment and a femme fatale whose intentions are at first unclear to the protagonist and viewer.

Rating
The film was rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America for Mild Profanity and Cartoon Violence. This would translate to a PG-13 rating today.

Critical reaction
Roger Rabbit opened to extremely positive reviews on June 22, 1988. Both Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert included the film on their lists of ten favorite films of 1988 with Ebert calling it "sheer, enchanted entertainment from the first frame to the last - a joyous, giddy, goofy celebration". The film currently has a 100% "Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes.

Academy Awards
The movie received 7 Academy Award nominations.

Winner of 4 Oscars:


 * Best Film Editing — Arthur Schmidt
 * Sound Effects Editing — Charles L.Campbell, Louis L.Edemann
 * Best Visual Effects — Ken Ralston, Richard Williams, Edward Jones, George Gibbs
 * Academy Special Achievement Award — to Richard Williams For The Animation Direction.

3 additional nominations:


 * Best Art Direction — Elliot Scott, Peter Howitt  (Dangerous Liaisons won)
 * Best Cinematography — Dean Cundey  (Mississippi Burning won)
 * Best Sound — Robert Knudsen, John Boyd, Don Digirolamo, Tony Dawe    (Bird won)

Controversies
Several Easter eggs were hidden in the film by its animators. Tape-based analog video such as VHS did not reveal these, but technologies with better image quality, such as the analog laserdisc, were said to reveal the phone number of then Disney CEO Michael Eisner. Also, when Benny the Cab wrecks at night and Eddie and Jessica roll out, there are two separate frames (2170-2172 on side 4 of the CAV laserdisc version), within two seconds of each other, showing a blurry shot of what seems to be her with no underwear. Disney recalled the laserdisc and issued another disc, later claiming that it was an incorrectly painted cell. Disney also stated that the cell in question could be seen on the new disc and on the VHS version. Two DVD versions edit the scene where Jessica Rabbit rolls out of the cab after Benny the Cab crashes. The 1999 DVD version reanimated the scene so that Jessica is wearing white panties underneath her dress. When the DVD set was reissued in 2002, the scene was reanimated so that a piece of Jessica's skirt strategically covers Jessica as she rolls down the hill.

A brief scene consisting of the toon Baby Herman passing by a female (human) extra on the set of the opening cartoon and sticking his middle finger up her dress, and then coming back from under the dress with a drool of spit on his lip. This was edited out of the first DVD edition of the movie, though it can be found on editions of the VHS, laserdisc, and DVD issues.

In the piano duel scene with Donald Duck and Daffy Duck, when Donald Duck wins the duel, Daffy says "I've worked with a lot of wise-quackers, but you are despicable." and, according to some, Donald replies, in his kazoo-like voice, "God damn stupid nigger...." Snopes, a noted debunking website, debunks this with the closed-captioning and Cartoon Network airings which records Donald as saying "Goddurn stubborn nitwit," though Snopes actually believes he's saying something akin to his typical exclamation, "Doggone stubborn little...That did it...waaa-aaaghghgh!" as is heard in many old Disney cartoons. The Vista Series DVD release uses the latter quote in its closed-captioning.

In the sequence where Bob Hoskins is seen falling an incredibly long distance flanked by Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, shockingly Mickey and Bugs are best friends. [Gary Wolf (author of the original novel) corresponded with many fans of the film through written letters and the Internet, compiling an exhaustive listing of the many hidden "Easter eggs" in the film and in the later Roger Rabbit short films. Wolf also sued Disney in 2001 for unpaid earnings related to the film.

Legacy
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is seen as a landmark film that sparked the most recent era in American animation. The field of animation had suffered a recession during the 1970s and 1980s, to the point where even giants in the field such as The Walt Disney Company were considering giving up on major animated productions. This expensive film (production cost of $70 million - a staggering amount for the time) was a major risk for the company, but one that paid off handsomely. It inspired other studios to dive back into the field of animation; it also made animation acceptable with the movie-going public. After Roger Rabbit, interest in the history of animation exploded, and such legends in the field as Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and Ralph Bakshi were seen in a new light and received credit and acclaim from audiences worldwide. It also provided the impetus for Disney and Warner Brothers' later animated television shows.

Roger Rabbit also was known for its numerous spin-off films and television series. While not featuring any of the main characters from the film, it did help establish the Toon Noir sub-genre, which features toons and non-toon humans living together, each playing by their own set of physics. The small sub-genre also includes the television series: Raw Toonage, Bonkers, House of Mouse, Animaniacs, Freakazoid!, and Tiny Toon Adventures, the movies: Cool World (1992), Space Jam (1996), and Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), and also the MMORPG Toontown Online; all of which are considered spin-offs of the movie. The 2000 film, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, is also in this sub-genre category and is considered to be another spin-off film of Roger Rabbit.

The film featured the last major voice role for two legendary cartoon voice artists: Mel Blanc (voicing Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Tweety Bird, and also Sylvester in a one-line cameo) and Maw Questel (voicing Betty Boop, but not Olive Oyl, who did not appear in the final version of the film). Blanc (who would shortly thereafter pass away at the age of 81) did not do Yosemite Sam's voice in the movie, done instead by Joe Alaskey. (Blanc had admitted that in his later years he was no longer able to do the "yelling" voices such as Sam's, which were very rough on his vocal cords in old age. There was a Foghorn Leghorn scene recorded, but cut, which also utilised Alaskey for the same reason.) Blanc also does Porky Pig, who gets the last line of the film, dressed as a police officer.

The film was also the next-to-last screen appearance for veteran actors Alan Tilvern, who portrays R.K. Maroon in the film, and Stubby Kaye, who plays Marvin Acme. Tilvern appeared in only one other production before his retirement, the 1993 television version of Porgy and Bess, in which he played the non-singing role of the Detective. Alan Tilvern died in 2003. Stubby Kaye, best known for playing Nicely Nicely Johnson in the original stage and screen versions of Guys and Dolls, died in 1997. Despite being produced by Disney (in association with Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment), Roger Rabbit also marked the first (and to date, only) time that characters from several animation studios appeared in one film. Studios that provided characters included:
 * Universal/Walter Lantz Studios/Amblin Entertainment
 * Paramount Pictures/Fleischer Studios (characters now largely owned by Republic Pictures)
 * Hanna-Barbera Productions
 * Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/United Artists (though the characters have been owned separately by Turner Entertainment since 1986)
 * Warner Bros.
 * Terrytoons

This allowed the first-ever meetings between Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse. A contract was signed between Disney and Warner stating that their respective icons, Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, would each receive exactly the same amount of "air time" (they also had the same number of lines). This is why the script has Bugs, Mickey, and Eddie together in one scene falling from a skyscraper. (However, Bugs Bunny can be seen for a second in the studio lot near the beginning of the film, and Mickey has a second of free time before Bugs arrives.) Also the speakeasy scene features the first and only meeting of Daffy Duck and Donald Duck performing a unique dueling piano act. Finally the unique pairing is given a final send off at the end of the film when Porky Pig faces the audience and says the traditional Warner Brothers animation closing line, "That's All, Folks!" just before Tinker Bell appears to tap the scene in the traditional Disney ending manner. Eventually, several additional animated shorts featuring Roger Rabbit, Jessica Rabbit, Baby Herman and Droopy would be released. In 1991, the Disney Imagineers began to develop a new land for the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California, completely based on the Toontown of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Mickey's Toontown opened in 1993 and spawned "Toontown" (without the Mickey's prefix) at Tokyo Disneyland in Japan. The Californian and Japanese Toontowns feature a ride based on Roger Rabbit's adventures, called Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin.

Prequel/Sequel
A prequel entitled Roger Rabbit II: Toon Platoon was planned in 1992. Set in 1940, the script had Roger expose the manager of the radio station that Jessica works at as a Nazi spy. However, having made Schindler's List, Spielberg rejected making a film with cartoonish Nazis in it. Who Discovered Roger Rabbit was being written in 1994 by Sherri Stoner and Deanna Oliver, which focused on Roger looking for his mother during the Great Depression. Alan Menken volunteered to serve as executive producer and wrote five songs for what was conceived as a parody of classic Hollywood musicals. (One of the songs, "This Only Happens in the Movies," was recorded in 2008 on the debut album of Broadway actress Kerry Butler). Walt Disney Pictures was planning to create the cartoon characters with computer animation. Michael Eisner pulled the project in 1999 when the budget rose to over $100 million, believing a prequel to a film made twelve years before would not be successful. In December 2007, Frank Marshall told MTV that he was willing to revive development of the film.

Merchandising
The success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit led to a moderate degree of merchandising for the film. In October 1989, McDonald's made a Halloween themed certificate offer for a free VHS copy of the film as well as a Roger Rabbit doll. Other memorabilia included cookie jars, Christmas ornaments, music boxes, snow globes, pinback buttons, three videogames, and a novelization of the film. While much of the merchandise was produced throughout the 1988–89 promotion of the film, other items would later be offered as commemorative collectibles in celebration of Disney-related anniversaries.

In 1989, Marvel commissioned a special graphic novel as a novelization in comic-book form. The novel featured several ideas for the plot scrapped from the original film, such as Roger and Eddie actually making a getaway in Dooms' squad car (until the engine blows up after Roger constantly hammers the pedals), as well as the deleted Pighead sequence featured on the Laserdisc version of the DVD releases (as well as on its first broadcast on CBS). Today, these Graphic novels are collectors' items due to their rarity. A follow up Graphic Novel titled Roger Rabbit: The Resurrection of Doom was also published, which was later continued by Disney Comics with their own Roger Rabbit comic-book series, which lasted 18 issues.

Main cartoon characters
These characters were all created for and made their first appearances in the film.
 * Roger Rabbit
 * Jessica Rabbit
 * Baby Herman
 * Benny The Cab
 * Judge Doom
 * The Toon Patrol
 * Lena Hyena - actually created by Basil Woolverton as a competition-winning entry for Al Capp's Li'l Abner comic strip.
 * Bongo, the Ape Bouncer of the Ink & Paint Club

Cartoon characters that make cameo appearances
These characters had all appeared in either film or cartoon shorts made by various studios.

Disney

 * Mickey Mouse
 * Minnie Mouse
 * Donald Duck
 * Daisy Duck
 * Goofy
 * Pluto
 * Pete
 * Horace Horsecollar
 * Clarabelle Cow
 * Huey, Dewey and Louie
 * Chip 'n Dale
 * Clara Cluck
 * Peter Pig
 * Professor Ludwig Von Drake*
 * A skeleton dancer from The Skeleton Dance
 * The merry dwarfs from The Merry Dwarfs
 * The Trees and Flowers from Flowers and Trees
 * The Big Bad Wolf, the Three Little Pigs, and Little Red Riding Hood
 * Hades' imps from The Godess of Spring
 * Toby Tortoise, Max Hare, and the girl bunnies from The Tortoise and the Hare
 * Jenny Wren from Who Killed Cock Robin
 * Elmer Elephant
 * The orphans from Orphan's Benefit
 * Snow White, the Seven Dwarfs, and The Queen (appearing as the Witch) from tital film
 * Wynken, Blynken and Nod
 * Ferdinand The Bull
 * Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket from tital film
 * Various Fantasia characters: broomsticks from The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Hyacinch Hippo and Madame Upanova ostrich from Dance of the Hours, cherubs and Pegasus from The Pastoral Symphony, the mushrooms and thistle dancers from The Nutcracker Suite, and the demons from Night on Bald Mountain
 * The Reluctant Dragon and Sir Giles
 * Dumbo, the Crows, Mrs. Jumbo, the Pink Elephants, and Casey Junior from tital film
 * Bambi, Faline, and Thumper from the tital film
 * Jose Carioca from Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros
 * Monte the pelican from The Pelican and the Snipe
 * Chicken Little
 * Peter from the Peter and the Wolf segment of Make Mine Music
 * Br'er Rabbit, Brer Bear, Hummingbirds, the Tar Baby, and the Sis Moles from Song of the South
 * The Singing Harp and Willie the Giant from Fun and Fancy Free
 * The animals and Johnny's angel from the Johnny Appleseed segment of Melody Time*
 * Danny, the sheep from So Dear to My Heart*
 * Mr. Toad and Cyril Proudbottom from The Wind in the Willows segment of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad*
 * Jaq and Gus from Cinderella*
 * Alice, Bill (the lizard with a ladder), Tweedledum, the doorknob, and the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland*
 * Peter Pan, John Darling, and Tinker Bell from tital film*
 * Maleficent's goons from Sleeping Beauty*
 * Pongo the father of the One Hundred and One Dalmatians*
 * The penguin waiters from the live action film Mary Poppins*
 * Flaps the vulture from The Jungle Book*
 * Piglet from Disney's 1977 film The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh based on book series*

Warner Bros.

 * Bugs Bunny
 * Daffy Duck
 * Elmer Fudd
 * Porky Pig
 * The Road Runner*
 * Wile E. Coyote*
 * Yosemite Sam
 * Speedy Gonzales*
 * Tweety Bird
 * Sylvester
 * Foghorn Leghorn
 * Pepé Le Pew
 * Marvin the Martian*
 * Marc Antony and Pussyfoot*
 * The Do-Do Bird*
 * Buddy
 * Toro the Bull*
 * The Hillbilly Brothers*
 * Sam Sheepdog*
 * Michigan J. Frog*
 * Hector the Bulldog
 * Tasmanian Devil

MGM/UA

 * Droopy Dog
 * Barney Bear
 * Spike
 * Screwy Squirrel

Paramount Pictures/Fleischer/Famous Studios

 * Betty Boop
 * Koko the Clown
 * Little Audrey
 * Baby Huey
 * Herman
 * Joker, the harlequin jack-in-the-box logo for Noveltoons from No Mutton Fer Nuttin and Little Red School Mouse

Universal Studios/Walter Lantz/Amblin Entertainment

 * Woody Woodpecker
 * Any Panda
 * Wally Walrus
 * Chilly Willy* and Dinky Doodle are mentioned

Hanna-Barbera Productions

 * Scooby-Doo*

Terrytoons

 * Heckle and Jeckle

Deleted Characters
Some other characters were scripted to appear in the final script, but the rights to the characters could not be obtained in time, although a photo of Felix the Cat shaking hands with R.K. Maroon can be seen in Maroon's office when he first hires Eddie.

MGM/UA/DFE

 * Tom and Jerry
 * The Pink Panther*

Paramount Pictures/Fleischer/Famous Studios

 * Popeye
 * Bluto
 * Olive Oyl
 * Little Lulu
 * Casper the Friendly Ghost
 * Gabby

Hanna-Barbera Productions

 * Yogi Bear*

Terrytoons

 * Mighty Mouse
 * Deputy Dawg*

King Features Syndicate

 * Felix
 * Mutt and Jeff

Jay Ward Productions

 * Rocky the Flying Squirrel*
 * Bullwinkle J. Moose*
 * Crusader Rabbit*

Columbia

 * Krazy Kat
 * Scrappy

Special Edition DVD Cameos
Numerous characters who did not make cameos in the movie itself make a few cameos on the menus of the Special Edition DVD. Note: most can be seen in the 2nd disk.


 * Emperor Kuzco from The Emperor's New Groove*
 * Elliot from Pete's Dragon*
 * Lady Tremaine from Cinderella*

(*) Denotes anachronisms; these characters (or, in the cases of characters such as Tinker Bell, the animated versions of them that appear in the film) were created after 1947. But as screenplay writer Peter S. Seaman said, "The aim was entertainment, not animation history."

Trivia

 * Terry Gilliam was initially offered the job of directing this movie, but turned it down because he considered it "conceptually inauthentic to use the Looney Tunes genre/character stable as a springboard for a variation on the Howard the Duck story".
 * Benny the Cab drives across a bridge while being pursued by the Weasels. The bridge is the "Hyperion Bridge," which crosses a freeway near the OLD Disney Studio down in Hollywood; the one they had before they built the one in Burbank (around 1939).
 * Bob Hoskins watched his young daughter to learn how to act with imaginary characters. He later had problems with hallucinations. Hoskins' son was reportedly furious that his father hadn't brought any of his cartoon co-stars home to meet him.
 * Some scenes of Eddie Valiant in the taxi are actually drawings of Eddie Valiant instead of pictures of Bob Hoskins.
 * Another scene that came about by accident was when Roger and Eddie Valiant arrive at Maroon Studios to interrogate Mr. Maroon. As Bob Hoskins delivered his lines, he looked straight ahead, instead of down at a three-foot rabbit. The animators decided to have Roger stand on tiptoe against the wall to cover up the gaffe.
 * During filming, Charles Fleischer delivered Roger Rabbit's lines off camera in full Roger costume including rabbit ears, yellow gloves and orange cover-alls. During breaks when he was in costume, other staff at the studios would see him and make comments about the poor caliber of the effects in the "rabbit movie".
 * Exteriors of the Maroon Cartoon studios were shot at Ren-Mar Studios in Hollywood, California.
 * Judge Doom picks up a record and reads its label: "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down". Then he says, "quite a loony selection for a bunch of drunken reprobates." The song "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" is the familiar theme song for the Looney Tunes cartoons.
 * Visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston donned the Judge Doom costume for the scene where Eddie Valiant shoots cartoon bullets at Doom in Toontown, as Doom runs away from Valiant.
 * The song "Smile, Darn Ya, Smile", which the Toons sing when Eddie Valiant first arrives in Toon Town and also at the end of the picture, is featured in an eponymous 1931 Warner Brothers Merrie Melodie Smile, Darn Ya, Smile! (1931).
 * Some versions include an extra sequence (called the "Pig Head Sequence"): Eddie Valiant had gone into Toontown, ambushed by the weasels and had a pig's head "tooned" onto his. He went home and took a shower during which Jessica walks into his apartment. This scene was cut from the original release, but did appear in theatrical trailers and a television broadcast. A scene cut from the theatrical version where Jessica rolls up her dress to reveal her stockings as she sits cross-legged is included in this sequence.
 * Eddie enters a Toontown men's room which has the graffiti "For a Good Time, call Allyson Wonderland" in the background. In the original theatrical version, a phone number was visible beside the words -- rumored to be either Michael Eisner's or Jeffrey Katzenberg's. The phone number was removed for the VHS and Laserdisk releases
 * Although the film's title is a question, no question mark appears in the title, as this is considered bad luck in the industry.
 * Several voice actors make cameos as the voice of the character(s) they have played before. These are Tony Anselmo (Donald Duck), Wayne Allwine (Mickey Mouse) and Mel Blanc (Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester and Tweety Bird). But most noticeable is Mae Questell as Betty Boop. Mae did Betty's voice from 1930 until the character was retired in 1939.
 * During production, one of the biggest challenges faced by the makers of the film was how to get the cartoon characters to realistically interact with real on-set props. This was ultimately accomplished in two different ways. Certain props (such as Baby Herman's cigar or the plates Roger smashes over his head) were moved on-set via motion control machines hooked up to operator who would move the objects in exactly the desired manner. Then, in post, the character was simply drawn 'over' the machine. The other way of doing it was by using puppeteers. This is most clearly seen in the scene in the Ink & Paint club. The glasses held by the octopus bartender were in fact being controlled by puppeteers from above, whilst the trays carried by the penguin waiters were on sticks being controlled from below - both the wires and the sticks were simply removed in post and the cartoons added in.
 * The song played by Daffy and Donald Duck in the Ink and Paint Club is the Second Hungarian Rhapsody by Franz Liszt, a song featured in numerous cartoons, including the Oscar winning Tom & Jerry short The Cat Concerto (1947) and the Bugs Bunny Merrie Melodie Rhapsody Rabbit (1946).
 * Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner also appear silhouetted on the elevator door as it goes up.
 * Felix the Cat's face appears as the masks of tragedy and comedy on the keystone of the entrance to Toontown.
 * The Disney Afternoon character Bonkers Bobcat was created because Amblin Entertainment, co-owner of all of the characters created for "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" refused to allow Disney to produce a TV series incorporating characters from the film. At the time, Amblin was working with Warner Brothers on the animated series "Tiny Toon Adventures" (1990) and "Animaniacs" (1993).
 * To create the animation, over 85,000 hand-inked and painted cells were created and composited with the live-action backdrops, live-action characters, and hand-animated tone mattes (shading) and cast shadows using optical film printers. NO computer animation was used in creating the animations. Some scenes involved up to 100 individual film elements. Any live-action that had to be later composited was shot in VistaVision to take advantage of the double-area frame of the horizontal 35mm format. The finished film thus does not suffer from the increased grain that plagued previous live-action/animation combos such as Mary Poppins (1964).
 * Robert Redford, Harrison Ford, Sylvester Stallone, Jack Nicholson, and Ed Harris were considered for the role of Eddie Valiant.
 * The photograph that Eddie takes of Marvin Acme and Jessica playing "patty-cake" was created during pre-production, and features an earlier design of Jessica than the one that is used in the final character animation. The one shot that was re-done to incorporate the new Jessica design was the insert shot of the picture after it is first developed.
 * At the time of its release, this was the most expensive film produced and had the longest on-screen credits for a film.
 * When the toon train hits the Dip Machine, each window of the train shows a murder or death taking place (if viewed frame-by-frame). Piglet (from The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh) also makes another brief cameo as the passenger holding on to the back of the fast-moving train (his next cameo is seen in the crowd of Toons surrounding the remains of Judge Doom during the final scene).
 * In one of the cut scenes of the final version of the script, Judge Doom was revealed to be the hunter who killed Bambi's mother. But the film's executive producer, Steven Spielberg, realized this would be too extreme for younger members who would see the movie, so the scene ended up being cut.
 * The opening track on the Sting album "...Nothing Like the Sun", the song "The Lazarus Heart" was originally written as the movie's musical finale, at an early stage of the movie's production when the book's tragic ending, where Roger is killed in the crossfire during the final duel, was still in the script. When the studio ordered its default ending to be used at the film's end, in which Roger is alive at the end of the duel, however, the song was deleted from the script and ended up on Sting's album instead.
 * Bill the Lizard, from Alice in Wonderland (1951), can be seen carrying a ladder in the scene where the musical toon chairs break out of their box. His next cameo is seen in the crowd of Toons surrounding the remains of Judge Doom during the final scene
 * The dancing thistles from the "Nutcracker Suite" segment of Fantasia (1940) appear as the wallpaper pattern in the hallway of the Toontown building where Eddie Valiant looks for Jessica.
 * The gag of the Monte the pelican from The Pelican and the Snipe falling off his bicycle came about by accident. Originally, the pelican would have ridden straight past the camera, but the effects technicians were unable to keep the bike upright. The filmmakers decided to let the bicycle fall and animate the pelican losing his balance.
 * An exposure sheet (a chart for keeping track of the drawings to be shot for animation) can be seen in R.K. Maroon's desk. The exposure sheet can also be seen clinging to Eddie Valiant as Roger jumps up screaming after drinking scotch in Maroon's office.
 * Animation director Richard Williams strove for three things while creating this film's animation: Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes-type characters; Disney-quality animation and Tex Avery-style humor..."but not so brutal."
 * Roger Rabbit is described (design-wise) as having a "Warners face", a "Disney body", a "Tex Avery attitude", Goofy's overalls, Mickey Mouse's gloves, and Porky Pig's bowtie. Animation director Richard Williams says he based his Roger color model on the American flag (red overalls, white body, blue tie) so that "everyone would subliminally like it".
 * To give Jessica's ample bosom an unusual bounce, her supervising animator Russell Hall reversed the natural up-down movements of her breasts as she walked: they bounce up when a real woman's breasts bounce down and vice versa.
 * Animation producer Richard Williams fell in love with the character of ("adult") Baby Herman, and insisted on animating pratically every frame of this character himself.
 * The bottle of chili sauce falling in the opening cartoon had to be reanimated several times as British animators used the UK spelling "chilli".
 * One of the photos in Roger's wallet is of him and Jessica dining at the Brown Derby. The caricatures on the walls are of some of the filmmakers, including Robert Zemeckis, Richard Williams, and Steven Spielberg, as well as one of Mickey Mouse.
 * The crowd scenes at the beginning of the Toontown sequence consist mostly of animation from previous Disney films. (Reusing animation was a common practice for Disney up until the early 1990s.)
 * When Eddie takes Roger Rabbit into the back room at the bar where Dolores works to cut apart the hand-cuffs, the lamp from ceiling is bumped and swinging. Lots of extra work was needed to make the shadows match between the actual room shots and the animation for very little viewer benefit. Today, "Bump the Lamp" is a term used by many Disney employees to refer to going that extra mile on an effect just to make it a little more special even though most viewers or guests will never notice it.
 * The Ink and Paint Club is the name of a show of Walt Disney's from back in the '50s.
 * The Judge Doom character was originally going to have an animated pet vulture that sat on his shoulder, but that idea was dropped in the interest of saving time. However, the vulture later resurfaced with Judge Doom when a bendable action figure was produced. It also appears during the final scene when the Toons are looking at the remains of Judge Doom.
 * There were over 40 drafts of the script, including drafts that had either Jessica Rabbit or Baby Herman as the villain.
 * Roddy McDowall was considered for the role of Judge Doom
 * Christopher Lee turned down the role of Judge Doom.
 * Judge Doom never blinks once throughout the entire movie, this was really director Robert Zemeckis' idea.
 * The movie's line "I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way." was voted as the #83 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.
 * Among the song selections on the Acme "Select-a-Tune" (the device that Eddie "sings" to in order to make the weasels laugh themselves to death) are "Jolson Medley", "Merry-Go-Round Broke Down", "Broadway Selection" and "Mickey's Melody".
 * The first test audience was comprised mostly of 18-19-year-olds, who hated it. After nearly the entire audience walked out of the screening, Robert Zemeckis, who had final cut, said he wasn't to change a thing.
 * Full-size rubber models of Roger Rabbit used as stand-ins so that the human actors could get a feeling for the size and shape of their imaginary costar.
 * The Ink and Paint Club's policy of only letting toons onto the premises as entertainers and employees, not as customers or audience members, is a reference to the real-life Cotton Club, which, along with many other segregated clubs before the Civil Rights movement, only allowed Black people to enter as performers.
 * The truck full of "stuff" (bowling balls, pianos, etc.) that Eddie Valiant crashes into when he returns to Toontown is labeled "ACME Overused Gags".
 * Chuck Jones received a credit as "animation consultant" but disavowed the movie forever after, complaining that there was something wrong with a movie where the live-action hero got more sympathy than the animated-cartoon star did.
 * Jessica Rabbit's look was designed after Veronica Lake. Jessica even sports the Lake trademark "Peek-a-Boo" hairstyle.
 * Bob Hoskins said that, for two weeks after seeing the movie, his young son wouldn't talk to him. When finally asked why, his son said he couldn't believe his father would work with cartoon characters (such as Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck) and not let him meet them.
 * The piano duet between Donald Duck and Daffy Duck was storyboarded by animation director Richard Williams and Chuck Jones, who was working as a consultant. Williams drew Donald, while Jones drew Daffy.
 * A brief sequence was prepared to test the techniques used to combine live-action with animation. The footage, which showed Eddie Valiant (played by another actor) walking in an alley with Roger Rabbit, touched on all the challenges expected of the production - shading on the cartoon characters, interaction with the live-action actors and environment, matching with the constantly moving camera, etc. The brief, one-minute film, budgeted at $100,000, convinced the filmmakers that the effects could create the illusion of cartoons and live actors occupying the same reality.
 * Robert Zemeckis keeps the stop-motion model of the flattened Judge Doom in his office.
 * Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, who briefly appear in the final "roll call" shot, actually had not been created at the time the movie was set (1947). The characters were given a small cameo anyway at the insistence of Steven Spielberg along with many other anachronistic Toons.
 * When Valiant confronts Maroon and sprays him with a seltzer bottle a Rodger Rabbit poster can be seen in the background.
 * The case where Valiant keeps his cartoon gun is inscribed "Thanks for getting me out of the Hoosegow - Yosemite Sam".
 * When Angelo tells Judge Doom in the bar that he knows where the rabbit is, he points to the empty seat next to him and says "Well, say hello, Harvey". Harvey is a 6-foot invisible rabbit from the stage play with the same name (as well as the movie Harvey (1950)).
 * The tunnel was also used in the Back to the Future movies (as discussed in the audio commentary of the 2 disc DVD)
 * The argument between Eddie Valiant and Roger Rabbit in the bar concerning Roger not wanting a drink is a remake of a classic cartoon argument switch. This technique was used in the Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck/Elmer Fudd cartoons "Rabbit Fire" and "Rabbit Seasoning." Bugs and Daffy would argue back and forth as to which hunting season it is (Rabbit/Duck Season) Bugs would trick Daffy into saying "Duck Season" by saying "Rabbit Season."
 * Eddie Valiant's initial 30 second stroll through Maroon Cartoon Studios, was so complex that it involved over 180 individual elements, that when assembled with the film pieces, created stacks 8 feet in height.
 * When the Special Edition DVD was released, Robert Zemeckis stated in an interview for a newspaper that Bill Murray was his and producer Steven Spielberg's original choice for the role of Eddie Valiant but neither could get in contact with him in time. Bill Murray states in interviews that when he read the interview he was in a public place at the time but he still screamed his lungs out, because he would have definitely accepted the role.
 * The proposed route for Judge Doom's freeway is the same one the 10 Freeway follows through Los Angeles.
 * Judge Doom's master plan to dismantle the Red Car trolley is based in fact. Private corporations conspired to eliminate public transit in the late 1940s and 1950s in order to generate demand for automobiles and ancillary industries to keep said automobiles running.
 * Lena Hyena, the hideously ugly Jessica Rabbit impostor that Eddie meets in Toontown, is based on the creation of the same name by artist Basil Wolverton. She was first conceived in 1946 for a contest to depict "the world's ugliest woman".
 * Joel Silver's cameo as the director of the Baby Herman cartoon was a prank on Disney chief Michael Eisner by Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg. Eisner and Silver hated each other from their days at Paramount Pictures in the early '80s, particularly after the difficulties involved in making 48 Hrs. (1982). Silver shaved off his beard, paid his own expenses, and kept his name out of all initial cast sheets. When Eisner was told, after the movie was complete, who was playing the director - Silver was nearly unrecognizable - he reportedly shrugged and said, "He was pretty good."
 * Screenwriters' Jeffry Price' and Peter S. Seaman first adapted the Gary K. Wolf novel, 'Who Censored Roger Rabbit?', in 1981, with a view to making it with up-and-coming director Robert Zemeckis. However, when Disney viewed Zemeckis' two feature films (I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Used Cars), they felt that Zemeckis wasn't talented enough to pull off the movie. After Zemeckis made Romancing the Stone and Back to the Future, Disney reconsidered and the movie was green-lit.
 * At the movie theater where Eddie tells Roger his back story, the short Goofy Gymnastics (1949) is being played, which didn't come out for another two years from the period the film is set in (1947). Crew members claimed to have chosen this particular short, despite its inaccuracy, because it was the zaniest thing they could find in the Disney Vault.
 * Initially, there were to be seven weasels (Greasy, Sleazy, Wheezy, Smartass, Psycho, Stupid and Slimy) to parody the seven dwarfs.
 * The three ingredients of the dip which 'kills' toons, (turpentine, benzene and acetate) are all paint thinners which are used to remove animation from cells.
 * 326 animators worked full-time on the film. In total, 82,080 frames of animation were drawn. Including storyboards and concept art, animation director Richard Williams estimates that well over one million drawings were done for the movie.
 * To convince the Disney and Amblin executives that they could make the movie, the filmmakers shot a short test involving Roger bumping into some crates in an alley and then getting picked up by an actor (this test can be seen in the Behind the Ears: The True Story of Roger Rabbit (2003) (V) documentary on the Vista Series DVD). After viewing the test, several of the Disney executives were convinced they had seen a traditional 'man-in-a-suit' gag with added animation. They couldn't believe it when they were told that it was 100% animation.
 * Every frame of the movie which featured a mixture of animation and live action had to be printed up as a still photograph. An animator would then draw the particular illustration for that frame on tracing paper set on top of the photo. The outline drawing then had to be hand-colored. Once that was done, the drawing had to be composited back into the original frame using an optical printer.