Any body suspended
in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation.
Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He loiters in mid
air, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to look down. At this point,
the familiar principle of 32 feet per second per second takes over.
Any body in motion will tend to remain in
motion until solid matter intervenes suddenly.
Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon characters are so
absolute in their momentum that only a telephone pole or an outsize boulder
retards their forward motion absolutely. Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden
termination of motion the stooge's surcease.
Any body passing through solid matter will
leave a perforation conforming to its perimeter.
Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the speciality of
victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless cowards who are so
eager to escape that they exit directly through the wall of a house, leaving a
cookie-cutout-perfect hole. The threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes
this reaction.
The time required for an object to fall
twenty stories is greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever
knocked it off the ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it
unbroken.
Such an object is inevitably priceless, the attempt to capture it inevitably
unsuccessful.
All principles of gravity are negated by
fear.
Psychic forces are sufficient in most bodies for a shock to propel them
directly away from the earth's surface. A spooky noise or an adversary's
signature sound will induce motion upward, usually to the cradle of a
chandelier, a treetop, or the crest of a flagpole. The feet of a character who
is running or the wheels of a speeding auto need never touch the ground,
especially when in flight.
As speed increases, objects can be in several
places at once.
This is particularly true of tooth-and-claw fights, in which a character's head
may be glimpsed emerging from the cloud of altercation at several places
simultaneously. This effect is common as well among bodies that are spinning or
being throttled. A 'wacky' character has the option of self-replication only at
manic high speeds and may ricochet off walls to achieve the velocity required.
Certain bodies can pass through solid walls
painted to resemble tunnel entrances; others cannot.
This trompe l'oeil inconsistency has baffled generations, but at least it is
known that whoever paints an entrance on a wall's surface to trick an opponent
will be unable to pursue him into this theoretical space. The painter is
flattened against the wall when he attempts to follow into the painting. This
is ultimately a problem of art, not of science.
Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is
impermanent.
Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional nine lives might
comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced, splayed, accordion-
pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be destroyed. After a few
moments of blinking self pity, they reinflate, elongate, snap back, or
solidify.
Corollary: A cat will assume the shape of its container.
Everything falls faster than an anvil.
For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance.
This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also applies to the
physical world at large. For that reason, we need the relief of watching it
happen to a duck instead.
A sharp object will always propel a character
upward.
When poked (usually in the buttocks) with a sharp object (usually a pin), a
character will defy gravity by shooting straight up, with great velocity.