Chicken Boo

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Chicken Boo was a sketch character on the Animaniacs television series.

A six foot tall chicken, Boo wandered through different situations and time periods assuming various human identities. He was remarkably adept at doing this, at different points becoming a ballet dancer, a dashing romantic lead, frontier hero, Confederate general, and even Santa Claus.

His success was meant to be confusing to the viewer, firstly as his "disguises" often consisted of nothing more than a jacket or fake mustache, and secondly because unlike traditional cartoon animals, Chicken Boo possessed no speech, cognitive or motor abilities better than those of an actual farm chicken. His behavior as a chicken was not subverted in his disguises to the extent that he answered questions with clucks. The character generally appeared without arms.

Each sketch would find Boo in an incredible new situation, with one person immediately realizing what he was. Quickly escalating to an Invasion of the Body Snatchers-like tirade, the person would appear mad and invariably say "He's a chicken, I tell you! A giant chicken!" to which everyone else would remain in disbelief. Some mishap would eventually cause Boo's disguise to fall off, inciting riot behavior from everyone he had fooled. (Ocassionaly the person from before would return to say "I told you he was a chicken!") This would force him to flee in face of the outrage.

Seemingly, his sketches were a postmodern commentary on the traditional anthropomorphism of animated cartoons, in which animal characters are typically treated as humans by other characters and more so by the audience. Chicken Boo stands in staunch opposition to his Warner Bros. predecessor, Foghorn Leghorn, and perhaps stands to humorously teach children about the dangers of mass ignorance.

Each segment began with the following theme song:

Chicken Boo, what's the matter with you?

You don't act like the other chickens do.

You wear a disguise to look like human guys.

But you're not a man, you're a chicken, Boo.

Boo's clucks were provided by Frank Welker.