Screwy Squirrel

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The Trope Namer, currently summoning a dog to chase him so he can beat him senseless for chasing him.

"Now that's comedy!" —Slappy Squirrel, usually after a particularly nasty act of violence.

A protagonist who mercilessly pranks characters primarily for his own (and the audience's) amusement. This is sometimes over a minor slight where the character is annoyed that the perpetrator doesn't even acknowledge it. Often the product of a disturbed animator, the character's pranks are sometimes of the Dude, Not Funny category.

Many writers of original animated shorts felt it was more difficult to sympathize with an obviously clever lead doing this kind of thing too often. A famous comparison is the early "Tex Avery style" Bugs Bunny, who was zany on sheer principle (or better yet, Bob Clampett's take on Bugs, which portrayed him as a manic, short tempered egotist who breaks down when met with someone of his own wile). Chuck Jones turned Bugs into a Karmic Trickster. He was paired with bombastic or life-threatening antagonists who deliberately threaten or mistreat him without provocation. Given that he responds only in retaliation or in self-defence, Bugs was more easily excused for his behavior, and even then he tended to play on the stupidity of his enemies rather than outright aggression. A problem with this moral logic of the encounter was that it is always incredibly one-sided, since Bugs is obviously almost never at any real risk. It shades into Why Did You Make Me Hit You?.

On the bright side, this kind of character will rarely, if ever, cause any permanent or serious damage to their victims, mainly due to the downtoning of this trope. Modern examples of this trope will usually result in a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, who, while causing other characters a lot of annoyance, at least can manage to notice when they have gone too far even for them. They are trying to amuse themselves, after all, and some levels can flat out be disturbing even to them. Writers also frequently took pleasure in showing the odd occasion where such pranksters to have absolutely no sense of humor when it is they who act as the butt of a joke, often leading to a Humiliation Conga. If they have a favorite victim, on the other hand, they will usually be very protective of them should another similar-minded prankster show up and do the same on them, reasoning that it is only he or she is allowed to treat the victim in such a manner, which often leads up to a Hypocritical Heartwarming moment.

If the Screwy Squirrel is an otherworldly being, the character may also be an Amusing Alien or a Great Gazoo.

Media Watchdogs for Saturday Morning Cartoons in the 1980s came down heavily on any remaining Screwy Squirrels, citing them as bad influences on children; many revivals of them tend to be toned down considerably.

Not to be confused with Crazy Awesome or Nutty Squirrel (for actual squirrels).

Examples of Screwy Squirrel include:

Anime and Manga

• Suiseiseki of Rozen Maiden appears at first to be as aloof and proper as Shinku, but in actuality she loves nothing more than tormenting Hinaichigo with tricks and pranks.
  • Really, her "properness" is about as deep as her paint job. She's more like a spoiled and immature royal who is more than willing to smack around her "subjects." She only sobers up during life and death situations.
    • To elaborate, she acts like this during common situations, she is easily the most caring of the dolls anyway (it says something when she is the only doll who never even tried to become Alice out of fear of losing her sisters). When she snaps out of it, she snaps out of it hard. There's even one instance in the drama CDs when she tries to rectify her behavior after realizing that she had gone too far.
• Amachi Hitsugi, being the head of an Absurdly Powerful Student Council, often uses her powers to amuse herself, usually at the expense of others.
• Tomo may be an unintentional version of this trope, strangely enough. She is a good example of what a Jerkass with ADHD can become when she tries a bit too hard to be a Genki Girl.
• Guu is a Deadpan Snarker who spends most of her time pulling various pranks on Hale using her seemingly unlimited powers. Of course, with Hare + Guu being a rather screwy anime in the first place, the fact that one of the main characters is a Screwy Squirrel is to be expected.

Comic Books

• Comic book example: Ambush Bug, from The DCU.
• Screwy Squirrels make pretty good comic book villains: The Joker has had aspects of this in his character, especially when more in a Villainous Harlequin mode.
• Mr Mxyzptlk, Depending on the Writer.
• The Creeper, sometimes.

Fan Fiction

• Eileen Fields in Futari wa Pretty Cure Dragon is definitely this, though some of her pranks fall under Villainy Discretion Shot, particularly when she isn't seen in a particular episode and another character has to mention her to get her Once an Episode prank quota in for that episode.

Literature

• Geronimo Stilton's cousin, Trap, is a relentless prankster who teases his cousin whenever he sees him, when he isn't taking advantage of Geronimo's fame and fortune.
• The Cat in the Hat is a benevolent example. Played straight though with Mr. Fox in Fox in Socks.

Live-Action TV

• Star Trek: The Next Generation's Q is another non-cartoon example, and a perfect one; many a Great Gazoo falls into this category.
• Janitor in Scrubs torments J. D. to an insane degree. His own amusement is at least one of the possible reasons. Other interpretations include him honestly feeling just as tormented by JD (which is sometimes the case, though not because JD wanted to) or that he actually see's him as a friend but is too screwed up and socially awkward to properly show it (Something his actor believes).
• Dr. Gregory House. Has been known to ruin people's lives for no reason other than that he found them annoying. The fact that the majority of his victims wouldn't be alive were if not for him is the only thing saving him from complete Jerkassery.
• The Sesame Street Muppet character Harvey Kneeslapper had some of these qualities, and parental concerns about this were one reason (along with his loud voice, which was hard on Frank Oz's vocal chords) why he was eventually dropped from the show.
• Captain Kangaroo's Mr. Moose and Mr. Bunny Rabbit kind of fit this trope, too.
• Jim Halpert from the US version of The Office can verge into this. He tends to play pranks on Dwight and Andy out of boredom, but occasionally because they're driving him crazy and pranking them allows him to turn their insanity into comedy. How sympathetic Jim is depends a lot on how funny his pranks are and how much the victims did to deserve them that episode.
  • He takes this from his counterpart in the original, UK version, Tim Canterbury, who played pranks on Gareth to try to cope with the soul-crushing boredom of working in the office environment.
  • In one episode Dwight discovers a box full of his grievances against Jim for this that he thought Toby had been sending to corporate. As Michael read through the list, Jim commented that these didn't sound nearly as funny back to back. Since then, he has occasionally been shown being nice to Dwight, or having his pranks backfire, or even being the victim of the occasional prank by Dwight. He takes it better than most Screwy Squirrels do.
• Niles the butler from The Nanny. While normally his actions are limited to bitter sarcasm, his life's passion seems to be playing cruel tricks on C.C. Babcock.

Music

• "Star Invasion" by Helloween.

Religion and Mythology

• Older Than Print: Many stories about Loki in Norse mythology focus on his tendency to pull relatively harmless pranks on the other gods for no particular reason other than because he can get away with it.
  • Then he went too far and engineered Baldur's murder.
    • It's debatable how harmless he was to begin with, though - we are talking about the guy who once got his mouth sewn shut because he had to fast-talk his way out of getting his head cut off. He invites trouble, is what I'm saying.
  • ...and he's now a supervillain. Interesting.
  • Or a pint-sized detective, depending on who you believe.
    • It could be both.
  • I prefer to believe he's currently animating a stuffed animal,
  • Hell no, he's planning to sacrifice dozen of other gods to reclaim his own divinity with his old pal, er, nowhere to be found.
  • Or a god who will go the extra mile to protect the innocent (see the Loka Tattur), criticize corruption even if it means facing prison and torture (see the Lokasenna), and doesn't give a flying fuck if you're as queer as he is.

Theater

• Cirque du Soleil's Mystere has Brian Le Petit, the principal clown, who is explicitly described in the backstory as an intruder of the Magical Land the show takes place in. He constantly teases the pompous emcee (at one point successfully tricking him into stepping off a high ledge), pretends to lead audience members to their seats only to lead them on a roundabout path, steals their popcorn, and in the long climactic scene tricks a man from the audience into climbing into a crate, which Brian locks so he can woo the man's date. Nothing toned down about him, and most audience members love him for it. Once his plan starts falling apart, his increasingly absurd efforts to save himself edge him towards Crazy Awesome status. In the end, he's tossed out of the show and doesn't appear in the curtain call.
• Launcelot Gobbo, the clown in The Merchant of Venice, seems to genuinely love Old Gobbo, his aged, blind father. Which doesn't stop him from practicing deceptions on Old Gobbo's blindness when the poor guy doesn't recognize him, finally informing him that his son has died.
• Comes up occasionally in the Commedia dell'Arte, although with so much of the plays Depending on the Writer, it varies who it is--usually either Harlequin or Pulcinella. Any clever zanni, really.

Video Games

• Tewi Inaba from Touhou Project. Despite leading most of the youkai rabbits in Eientei, she is said to have a deceitful personality (this is later shown when Reisen Udongein Inaba arrives at Eientei, and Tewi often pulls pranks with her as the victim). Fanon takes it so far that she pulls pranks on everyone (mostly the lower-leveled girls), though canon and semi-canon shows that this isn't far from the truth, with her victims in both Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red and Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth having included Aya, Meiling, Eirin, Kaguya, Mokou, Suwako, and Yorihime. Strangely, her power is to give good luck to humans...
• The skull kids in The Legend of Zelda franchise commonly possess this kind of personality. The one in Majoras Mask is said to have possessed such a personality prior to finding the titular mask, who also may have appeared in Ocarina of Time, as implied in the game's ending. Twilight Princess also has a similar-minded skull kid, pulling pranks on Link while traveling to the Master Sword.
• While usually more an Idiot Hero or simple Cloudcuckoolander, Crash Tag Team Racing placed Crash Bandicoot as a rather conventional version of the trope for numerous easter egg FM Vs, harrassing Park Drones with endless pranks and Amusing Injuries.

Webcomics

• Bun-Bun from Sluggy Freelance can often be like this. Oh, he'll usually claim that the people he torments did something to piss him off, but for Bun-Bun sometimes just existing in the same room as him is enough to do that.
  • "sometimes"?
• Nearly all of the primary characters in Something Positive, but especially Aubrey.
• In Men in Hats, Aram seems to love setting his friends on fire or tossing scorpions on their faces for no better reason than that he grows bored easily.
• The Black Hat Guy of Xkcd, being based on the aforementioned Aram, also fits this trope.
  • Unless Word of God says so, Black Hat Guy was probably based around the old black-hat/white-hat notion of hackers. Black-hats (as in the bad guys from cowboy movies) were the ones that hack maliciously; white-hats are out to test security systems (and occasionally rob the rich to give to the poor).
• Elijah and Azuu has Fraja's Mom, who has actively antagonized basically every character she's interacted with at least once simply for her own amusement. She actually helps her son get through a romantic crisis by helping him realize that, as a demon, being impulsive and doing whatever you want is part of life.
  • Of course, the romantic crisis only came about because she herself seduced her son's boyfriend.

Web Original

• "HA! I HAVE FOOLED YOU! I AM CLAUS! I AM PRANKSTER BUG!" (NSFW)
• Fegelein from the Hitler Rants parodies. "FEGELEIN! FEGELEIN! FEGELEIN!
  • A bunch of other historical figures and fictional characters were also depicted as Screwy Squirrels in the Downfall parodies, like Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Lt. Werner from Das Boot, and even Felicity Merriman from the American Girl series.
• Tom Foolery of the Global Guardians PBEM Universe is a psychotic, sadistic clown who enjoys messing with people just to mess with them. Add in his scary makeup, his spine-chilling laugh, his weaponized toys, and an urge to see the whole world go down in flames, and you have a Screwy Squirrel who verges into Complete Monster territory. But then, he is basically the setting's Captain Ersatz of The Joker.

Western Animation

• Screwy Squirrel, a Tex Avery MGM character from the '40s for whom the trope is named. He at least had the excuse of being, well, screwy: One of the shorts starts with him escaping from an asylum and tormenting the asylum's guard dog while wearing a Napoleon hat.
  • Perhaps best encapsulated in 1997, when Screwy Squirrel, on April Fool's day "took over" Cartoon Network and refused to show anything but a repeat viewing of his short Happy-Go-Nutty while demanding his own animated series.
  • Screwy Squirrel is so completely demented a character he came to scare his creator. There were only four or five Screwy Squirrel shorts made - and already the Fouth Wall was in smithereens - before Tex Avery decided to stop using the character; the unlimited potential for utter insanity and chaos unnerved the animation team.
    • Incidentally Screwy did gain his own animated series in the early nineties (segments placed alongside Droopy: Master Detective), albeit renamed "Screwball Squirrel". Similar to Bugs, his sadism was toned down somewhat and made more karmic, he still had obvious sheds of this trope however.
• The earliest incarnations of Looney Tunes characters Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny were "screw balls", a character type that, along with Porky Pig's everyman, put Warner Bros. animation on the map.
  • Before Bugs Bunny turned into an agent of righteous reprisal, his personality largely depended on his adversary's intelligence: when facing Elmer Fudd or Yosemite Sam styled dumbasses, Bugs could only be a screwball tormentor; paired with certain gremlins or tortoises of equal wiles, however, Bugs was the tormented.
  • Daffy, who became a star by stealing the show, used screwiness to grab attention, and, in fact, may have been the first recurring example of this type of character; as various writers and directors learned, however, watching a screwball get his just deserts could be just as funny. A decades-long process of Flanderization turned him into the greedy, egotistical, self-righteous Jerkass we know today.
  • Foghorn Leghorn was an interesting take on the Screwy Squirrel: in his cartoons, clueless outsiders would be drawn into an ongoing prank war between Foggy and Barnyard Dog; as such, both characters, while low-key, were relentless tormentors with no stated motivation.
    • It's even more interesting once the Fridge Logic sets in when you realize that he's tormenting the Dog whose job it was to protect Foghorn and the other chickens from most of the involved outsiders.
      • Not that the dog was all that innocent of tormenting himself, and would often draw first blood in various cartoons by pranking Foghorn first.
        • Barnyard is also implied to be a rather crappy guardian, usually whenever a threat occurs he is either asleep on the job or outright sending it into the pen as part of his Escalating War with Foghorn. In at least one instance a frustrated Foghorn used this as an excuse to draw the first blow.
  • Sylvester the Cat, usually a hapless foil to such characters as Tweety, was utilized as a "screwball" type to good effect in Back Alley Op-roar, in which he drives a sleepy Elmer Fudd to distraction with his late-night singing. Kitty Kornered similarly played a prototype Sylvester (and three similar cats) as zany hecklers against Porky Pig.
    • Ironically Sylvester himself also fell victim to Screwy Squirrels on a few odd occasions, (eg. Canned Feud, Scaredy Cat). Granted since most of his tormentors were mice, we were possibly meant to enterpret some Offscreen Villainy on Sylvester's part, after all Cats Are Mean, but based on the short alone he played an unprovoked victim rather straight.
  • The Roadrunner is an odd example. While he does occasionally tease the Coyote who's trying to catch him, the Roadrunner very rarely has to actually do anything to thwart him. He'll just keep running around and, wherever he goes, the laws of physics will re-write themselves so the Coyote gets tormented.
  • In 1941, Tex Avery directed The Crackpot Quail, the title character of which bore a very strong resemblance to his early Bugs Bunny. Crackpot was paired up with Willoughby the Dog, who had previously tanged with Bugs in Avery's The Heckling Hare; he had a voice that sounded a bit like Bugs'; hell, he even addressed Willoughby repeatedly as "Doc"!
  • The unnamed dog in the short "It's Hummer Time" and "Early to Bet."
    • The dog in "It's Hummer Time" is punishing the cat for disturbing him. The hummingbird putting the dog through The Works definitely counts, as do the actions of the dog and the gambling bug in "Early To Bet".
  • Other examples of this type in the Looney Tunes world: Charlie Dog, the Goofy Gophers, the mice Hubie and Bertie, and the Do-Do in Porky in Wackyland.
    • Charlie Dog may also count as a somewhat twisted Loveable Rogue, in that his antagonism was usually motivated by a profit of some kind, usually a roof over his head. This also applies to Hubie and Bertie and (occasionally) Daffy. That said, it's not as if they weren't shown to take sadistic enjoyment in driving their foils crazy a lot of times.
• In the classic short Duck Amuck, it's the artist (who is none other than Bugs Bunny) who plays the Screwy Squirrel.
• Woody Woodpecker, whose merciless, skull-splitting cackle begged for comeuppance he seldom received, is a good example of why Screwy Squirrels get toned down. By the '50s the character was considerably more laid-back.
• Although usually depicted as personable, Donald Duck's famous temper is usually catalyzed by Screwy Squirrels, most often Chip 'n' Dale.
  • Huey, Dewey, and Louie actually debuted as this type of character in the 1938 short Donald's Nephews. For most later instances, however, it was actually Donald who started the fights, and they retaliated with some Disproportionate Retribution. Chip 'n' Dale were also similarly retaliators or Loveable Rogues a lot of occasions. In contrast, the little orphans common in the Classic Disney Shorts were always Screwy Squirrels against Donald, and sometimes Mickey had to suffer as well.
  • Contrary to popular belief, it was Chip and Dale, not Donald Duck who usually made the first attack. A lot of times it was merely their curiosity or hunger that grated on Donald's nerves, and led him to respond disproportionately, after that it was free game. They seemed to play the role more consistently against Pluto however.
  • In the early shorts Goofy can be as much of a victim of Screw Squirrel-types, due to his simple nature.
• Possibly a reference to the former character, this was the profession of the fictional retired cartoon "actress" Slappy Squirrel on Animaniacs. Slappy occasionally followed later laws regarding violent retribution, but always favored overkill and knew that her enemies were harmless. An obvious subversion, Slappy rarely excused her actions and frequently commented that modern cartoons take themselves too seriously.
  • Hell, she can almost be seen as an inadverdent deconstruction: she takes the undeserved torment aspect so far as to be a borderline Heroic Sociopath.
  • The Warners were a less-lampshaded but more prominent example. They typically act as hyperactive Constantly Curious children who ask questions, glomp and kiss every Hello, Nurse! in sight, and perform gags whenever it strikes them, But otherwise, they're generally harmless until someone acts like a real Jerkass, at which point they label him their "Special Friend", and turn into Karmic Tricksters.
    • One episode depicted them being forced to contend with an overly nice Maria Von Trapp-type character. They realized that they couldn't justify tormenting her when she hadn't been cruel to them like most of their foes, making them more Bugs Bunnies than Screwy Squirrels. Their solution? Summon Slappy, who of course had no problem with violently dealing with anyone.
    • In another episode they tormented a television anchorman who refused to tip them for delivering his food. The episode established the anchorman as a supreme Jerkass before the Warners appeared but he only didn't tip the Warners because they arrived late, got the order wrong and then ate the food anyway. It came across as Laser-Guided Karma (because he was cruel to his co workers) but technically he didn't do anything to or in sight of the Warners themselves to deserve becoming their target.
      • They had probably been watching the episode before they appeared.
  • Slappy probably gets away with it because she's at Social Security age.
    • Sometimes we see clips of her old cartoons. Aside from being a sprightly young probably twenty-something, the only real difference is that she's cheery about it.
• Quite a few of the early Tom and Jerry shorts portray have Jerry going after Tom with little to no reason--yet the poor cat still gets the shit end of the stick.
  • Not always, most of the time when Jerry goes from protecting himself to being a Jerkass, Tom pulls out with the win, but not always. Similarly there were a lot of times Tom was less intent on catching Jerry and just tormenting him for kicks.
    • Until Chuck Jones came anyway.
• One of these turned up on Clone High. "Try and catch me, bitch!"
• Itchy and Scratchy. The entirety of the Simpsons' show within a show within a show's purpose was to take this trope to the nth+ 1 degree, where Itchy is a violently psychopathic mouse that revels in repeatedly murdering Scratchy the cat in unbelievably graphic and gory ways. Interestingly, the supposed wrongs that Itchy is paying back are never shown or implied in the slightest. Itchy is merely portrayed as being an unrepentant psycho.
  • Likewise, virtually all of the Simpsons characters react to Itchy's horrific cartoon sadism, by screaming with laughter.
    • Bart Simpson himself is one of these, mercilessly pranking everyone from the local minister to the elementary school principal to even his own father. That said, Bart's main interest was merely to drive authority figures crazy, rather than cause any serious harm. On the occasions when his antics go too far (the episode where Principal Skinner gets fired and rejoins the Army being a good example), Bart generally feels remorse and tries to make up for what he's done.

Bart: There are times I almost feel sorry for them, but then I remember, they're trying to teach.

• The Aracuan Bird first introduced in The Three Caballeros seems to be like this. It steals José's cigar while he's still using it, and then later draws false train tracks that cause all the individual cars of a train to separate. When it shows up again in the Melody Time short Blame it on the Samba, it cheers up an incredibly depressed Donald and José, apparently just so that they'll be in a better mood for messing around with them. It also stars in a Classic Disney Short, a similar Mickey Mouse Works sketch and stars in an episode of House of Mouse where it is torments Donald in various ways in all three.
• Digeri Dingo from Taz-Mania was a combination of this, Deadpan Snarker, Fourth Wall Observer and Too Clever by Half. Needless to say, he had many a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
• Sledgehammer O'Possum from What a Cartoon Show really pushes the envelope of this trope, violently and repeatedly attacking victims who not only didn't cross him, but who amiably shared lunch with him.
• Eric Cartman of South Park parodies this character type when the gang encounters Osama Bin Laden, and Cartman becomes a Screwy Squirrel cartoon-character in attacking him.
• The bird in The Dirdy Bird.
• The three cockroaches in Oggy and the Cockroaches
• The three rodents in Big Buck Bunny, the most virulent of them is literally a squirrel.
• Pocahontas: Meeko the raccoon repeatedly steals food from anyone at any opportunity, although the hapless victim is generally Percy. It's gotten so bad that Percy is never shown eating more than a bite of food on-screen.
• The Red Guy With No Pants from Cow and Chicken and I Am Weasel in his less villainous moments.
• Mr. Mxyzptlk, whenever he showed up on Superman: The Animated Series