Chicken Boo

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Chicken Boo was a sketch character on the Animaniacs television series. Boo's clucks were provided by Frank Welker.

[edit] Basics

A six foot tall chicken, The same size as the more cartoonish Foghorn Leghorn, Boo wandered through different situations and time periods assuming various human identities. He was remarkably adept at doing this, at different points becoming a famous ballet dancer, Boo-ryshnikov, a dashing romantic lead, frontier hero, Confederate general Boo-regard, secret agent James Boo 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.

[edit] Sketch formula

In each sketch Chicken Boo would assume the role of a new character, usually with an already-established reputation as being very talented or skilled (ex. a ballet dancer, a movie star, a western hero). Because of his fame, the local characters would sing his praises, with the exception of a single naysayer, who would shout something to the effect of "He's a chicken, I tell you! A giant chicken!", yet the other characters would refuse to believe him, and often respond with harsh words (the short "Katie Ka-boo" was an execption, because Katie was the only character in the short that fell for the disguise). Chicken Boo would then arrive, wearing a very obvious disguise. He would proceed to accomplish some tremendous feat, thus living up to his reputation, however he would invariably lose his disguise in the process. As a result, when the other characters saw that they had been fooled, they would become infuriated and chase him out of town.

Boo would then usually have to leave the scene and remind himself that he is not meant to be in the human world. One exception to this was an episode (Jingle Boo) where Boo played a department store Santa Claus. Through the usual bad luck, his disguise came off and he was literally kicked into the air. However, he was rescued by the real Santa Claus, who said that for once Chicken Boo would get a good ending.

[edit] Boo's abilities

One other side was that whenever Chicken Boo was introduced, he would be recognised as an expert in whatever field he was posing to be. Examples include 'General Boo-Regarde', where he's recognised by soldiers on both sides of the US Civil War as an accomplished, merciless general, and 'Davy Omelette', where he's a famed outdoorsman in the style of Davy Crockett. Notable in this and 'The Good, the Boo, and the Ugly' is that he displays the competence he's famed for--in both, he accomplishes the task he'd undertaken, merely to be undercut as he's stripped somehow of his disguise.