How Bugs Bunny Was Created: Origins, Name and Voice

Bugs Bunny was created over several years, through changes to his appearance, voice and behavior. His earliest screen ancestor was a white rabbit who bounced, cackled and tormented Porky Pig in Porky's Hare Hunt (1938). The familiar hunter-and-rabbit conflict was already there, but this noisy little troublemaker had a different way of handling it.

The breakthrough came with A Wild Hare, released on July 27, 1940. Directed by Tex Avery, it introduced the relaxed, carrot-chewing rabbit who could face Elmer Fudd's gun and ask, “What's up, Doc?” That film is generally recognized as Bugs Bunny's official debut. Getting there took several cartoons and the work of more than one artist.

Before Bugs: the rabbit who heckled Porky

These early films were made at Leon Schlesinger's studio, which produced Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies for Warner Bros. They were theatrical shorts, made to play in movie theaters long before television reruns introduced them to later generations.

In the black-and-white Porky's Hare Hunt, Ben Hardaway's rabbit turns a hunting trip into a series of humiliations for Porky. He is energetic and unpredictable, with a wild laugh. There is nothing particularly shy about him. The pleasure he takes in tormenting a hunter survives in Bugs, although the performance would become much more controlled.

The studio kept trying different versions. Chuck Jones directed a white magician's rabbit in Prest-O Change-O (1939). Hardaway and Cal Dalton used a gray rabbit in Hare-um Scare-um that same year. In Jones's Elmer's Candid Camera (1940), the rabbit interferes with Elmer's attempts at wildlife photography. His relationship with Elmer is taking shape, while his voice and design are still changing.

Tex Avery's rabbit in A Wild Hare

A Wild Hare makes the rabbit's confidence central to the comedy. Elmer approaches the hunt seriously; Bugs treats it as an opportunity to amuse himself. He can stop for a conversation because he has already understood how easily this particular hunter can be distracted.

Avery directed the short, Rich Hogan received the story credit, and Bob Givens supplied a new character design. Givens's model sheet, reproduced alongside an interview with Givens and Maurice Noble, shows the drawings that guided the rabbit's appearance and proportions.

Illustration of an animation desk with drawing paper, transparent cels, paints and a painted forest background. — An illustration of the materials used in traditional animation.

The opening also gives the rabbit time to establish himself. Before we see him properly, a hand emerges from the hole and reaches for a carrot. Elmer is trying to catch an animal; the audience is beginning to recognize a comedian. By the time Bugs starts talking, the hunt has become a performance in which Elmer keeps getting the worst part.

Mel Blanc's voice was still evolving

Mel Blanc voiced both the early rabbit and the recognizable Bugs, but the performances changed. Compare Elmer's Candid Camera with A Wild Hare: the latter has a more conversational delivery, suited to a rabbit who can pause and let the other character become uncomfortable.

Blanc later described Bugs's accent as a combination of Brooklyn and Bronx speech.

His acting matters as much as the accent. An apparently innocent question becomes an insult through its timing or a small change in emphasis. Bugs can sound helpful while making Elmer's situation steadily worse. The joke is often already in the way he says a line.

How Bugs Bunny got his name

The name came from Ben “Bugs” Hardaway. According to Warner Bros.' retrospective account, designer Charlie Thorson prepared a rabbit model for Hardaway and labeled it “Bugs' Bunny.” The possessive meant Hardaway's rabbit. As the drawing circulated, the label became a candidate for the character's name.

Surviving paperwork helps separate the naming story from the later debut. Animation historian Jerry Beck has reproduced copyright records and a 1939 merchandising manual that already use Bugs Bunny. The name therefore predates A Wild Hare, even though it first appeared on-screen in the opening credits of Elmer's Pet Rabbit (1941).

Why “What's up, Doc?” worked

Avery drew the greeting from speech he knew in Texas. “Doc” could be a casual way of addressing someone, without suggesting that the person was a doctor. The Texas State Historical Association's biography of Avery traces such greetings to his school years in Dallas.

What makes the line funny in A Wild Hare is the situation. A hunter expects a frightened rabbit. Bugs starts a friendly conversation. Avery later recalled the laughter this unexpected response drew from audiences, and the studio kept returning to it. The greeting lets Bugs interrupt a threatening encounter on his own terms.

Where the Clark Gable carrot story comes from

In It Happened One Night (1934), Clark Gable eats a carrot while explaining hitchhiking to Claudette Colbert. Bob Clampett said in his interview with Michael Barrier and Milton Gray, published in 1970, that the scene inspired his idea of a rabbit talking while chewing.

That account needs attribution. In their 1975 correspondence, Chuck Jones and Avery challenged Clampett's claims about his role in creating Bugs, including his claim to have introduced the carrot. The Gable connection is part of a filmmaker's recollection; who first contributed that detail remains disputed.

Bugs kept changing after his debut

The success of A Wild Hare did not immediately settle every detail. In Elmer's Pet Rabbit, released in early 1941, Blanc again uses a noticeably different voice. The character has his name on the screen, yet the performance still differs from Avery's version.

His face continued to change, too. Robert McKimson refined the design during the early 1940s, helping establish the look adopted across the studio's production units. Jones, Friz Freleng and Clampett developed Bugs further in their own films, giving him different opponents and different opportunities to perform.

Even Avery was willing to turn the rabbit's confidence against him. In Tortoise Beats Hare (1941), Cecil Turtle and his relatives outwit Bugs. The rabbit becomes impatient, angry and thoroughly rattled. It is an early example of how funny Bugs could be when someone else controlled the game.

Watching these films in sequence makes his development visible: the frantic rabbit tormenting Porky, the self-assured Bugs teasing Elmer, and then the furious loser chasing Cecil. For examples from his later career, our selection of seven classic Bugs Bunny cartoons follows him into opera houses, a bullring and arguments with Daffy Duck.

How Bugs Bunny Was Created: Early Cartoons, Name and Voice