Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
One of the internet’s favorite hobbies is discovering what dirty jokes slipped through the censors of their favorite ‘90s cartoons, and there are few shows better at playing that odd game than Animaniacs. The series follows the three Animaniacs — a trio of cartoon characters who were so destructive, they were locked in the WB’s water tower. It’s like the kid’s version of a joke machine. There is no plot, no format, minimal lessons, and nonstop gags. So you better believe when all five seasons of the series were added to Netflix, I nostalgically started binging. However, between snickering at Helloooo Nurse gags, Prince jokes, and creative cursing, I noticed something odd. Yakko, Wakko, and Dot have a lot in common with another well-known comedy group — the Gang from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
On paper, the Animaniacs and the Gang have nothing in common. As destructive as Yakko, Wakko, and Dot are, they’ve never done anything as dark as, say, pretended to have cancer or gone to a morgue to eat human flesh or threaten women with “the implication” (by the way, the Gang has done all of those things). However, the Animaniacs are far from blameless. They take babies (don’t worry; they return them later), ogle hot nurses, steal whatever they please, ruin plans, and have driven more than one of their animated co-stars insane. They’re a concentrated bottle — or water tower — of destruction, and it’s through that description that Yakko, Wakko, and Dot start looking a lot more like Dennis, Mac, Charlie, Dee, and Frank.
What makes Always Sunny the filthy, heartless, and critically snubbed comedy orchid that it is is its lack of boundaries. Always Sunny never pulls back comedic punches in an effort to make its characters more likable. Instead, the gang is the ultimate horrible mutation of every sitcom character who has ever existed. They’re selfish, mean, vulgar, and immune to silly things such as consequences. The gang leaves a trail of angry people, broken dreams, and ruined lives in their wake, the most noticeable of which is Cricket. Rickety Cricket started Always Sunny as an upstanding member of the clergy, but do you know where he is by Season 11? Homeless, in a foursome with stray dogs. That’s all the gang’s fault, and you can rest assured that A) they don’t blame themselves and B) they don’t care.
Always Sunny’s embrace of everything terrible about its characters is what makes it so consistently funny and refreshing. However, if you animated the show, threw in some kid’s show censors, and scaled back the cast, you’d likely be looking at Animaniacs. Though the bright colors and rapid-fire jokes detract from the implications of their actions, Yakko, Wakko, and Dot are almost as morally questionable as the Gang, and, in a oddly delightful twist for a kid’s show, they don’t care. The Animaniacs trio is out to entertain themselves and cause trouble. Whatever good or bad (mostly bad) results from that quest frankly doesn’t matter.
The shows even have character doppelgangers between one another. The smooth-talking and lady-loving Yakko is like the cartoon version of what Dennis (Glenn Howerton) imagines himself to be, and Wakko’s bizarre actions and questionable logic is essentially a smarter version of Charlie (Charlie Day) with an accent. Likewise, Dot walks the same line between only making jokes her gender can make and being one of the guys that Dee Reynolds (Kaitlin Olson) has owned for over a decade now.
Of course, these shows are far from identical, mostly because there is one huge difference between these two comedies. Whereas the Always Sunny gang consistently goes out of its way to destroy one another as much as possible, the Animaniacs are a pretty happy group. They don’t exactly work together unless their end goal involves destroying someone else’s life in some way, but they also don’t actively try to ruin each other’s lives. Also, Animaniacs forgoes all of the incest and group incest jokes that Always Sunny loves. However, if you focus on the episodes when the Gang is attacking the rest of the world rather than one another, such as “The Gang Reignites the Rivalry” and any plot involving the most hapless character of all, Attorney, their chaotic natures mirror a group of monkeys living in a certain water tower. Basically, if Yakko, Wakko, and Dot met our favorite drunken sociopaths, they would be friends. Either that or they’d all destroy each other — it’s a tough call.
