Think *we're* a bunch of nitpickers?

[blackteddylace]

There's this site called "Cartoon Overanalyzations" that discusses all the weirdnesses one finds in various toons, particularly tube toons. It's very reseached and scholarly, yet decidedly tongue-in-cheek. I'd post a link, but there are a couple of topics, including one involving My Little Pony, that might be a little questionable, so I'll refrain. But here's a comment from the site regarding the issue of talking-versus-non-talking-animals, a topic we've discussed recently here:

?I don?t know if Disney has a house rule about which animals can speak and which cannot, but guidelines seem to be emerging. The rule is, if you are a predatory carnivore, you don?t talk, but if you are a pacifist, a vegetarian or cute, you do. In Tarzan, the apes spoke, but the leopards didn?t. In Dinosaur, all of the creatures speak, except for the vicious carnotaurs. A Faustian bargain seems to be at work: If you are an animal in a Disney picture, you can speak, but only if you are willing to sacrifice your essential nature.?
-Quoted from Roger Ebert?s review of Dinosaur >Catena Ex Situ "
Wow. Ebert thinks about these things too. And he gets paid for it. I'm in the wrong business...

 

[LittleJoe]

Wow, the sheer length of that actually hurt my eyes.

 

[iheartmairbear]

Waitaminute, what about the talking hyenas in The Lion King?

 

[Shaunte]

Most of them were incapable of speech outside of the musical number.

 

[Kunmui]

Well, yes, but they were also quite literally background character baddies , who normally don't have lines anyway, even in non-anthro cartoons. Background characters of any sort usually don't have any lines.