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I seem to remember seeing Roger Rabbit in some cartoon shorts before the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" came out, but I can't seem to find out where I saw them. Was Roger Rabbit an established cartoon character prior to that film and were there any other Roger Rabbit shorts that exist outside of the film?

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    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Rabbit
    – user18935
    Dec 1, 2019 at 23:02
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    He appeared in three shorts from 1989 to 1993, but you may have misremembered one of these as predating the film in 1998.
    – J.G.
    Dec 3, 2019 at 14:22
  • I actually found the short I was remembering and it was on the VHS release of "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids". It may have been shown in theaters too but I can't say that for sure.
    – sanpaco
    Dec 3, 2019 at 21:24
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    @J.G. You mean 1988, right?
    – FinancialRadDeveloper
    Dec 4, 2019 at 10:13
  • @FinancialRadDeveloper Yes! Forgive my now unfixable typo.
    – J.G.
    Dec 4, 2019 at 11:28

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Roger Rabbit originated not as an animated character, but rather as a literary character in the 1981 book "Who Censored Roger Rabbit", where he played a sidekick to Baby Huey. This book was later adapted to the film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", released in June of 1988.

However, Roger makes at least one appearance as an animated character before the release of the 1988 film. He made a cameo in Sport Goofy in Soccermania, which came out in 1987. This was the only pre-film appearance I could find.

He also makes several appearances that postdate it, notably in November 1988, where he appears in "Mickey's 60th Birthday", where he mistakenly uses a stick of dynamite for a candle and blows up the set.

There are also a couple of appearances ("New Character Day" and "Buster and Babs Go Hawaiian") in Tiny Toons Adventures that also postdate the film release.

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    @user151841: Correct. And it may be worth noting that the book was as different from the eventual movie as was the case with Forrest Gump (and similarly, both authors made the sequels like the more successful movie, if not outright in the movie's continuity).
    – Sean Duggan
    Dec 2, 2019 at 18:13
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    @user151841 - I edited it a bit to clarify that the first appearance was a printed version.
    – JohnP
    Dec 3, 2019 at 0:27
  • Did Roger Rabbit's look in that cameo appearance of the 1987 work look like his 1988 film or it differed?
    – Etack Sxchange
    Sep 17 at 22:22
  • @EtackSxchange - If you follow the link for Sport Goofy that is provided, at the bottom is a thumbnail photo. Essentially the same, a couple of differences (teeth, bowtie).
    – JohnP
    Sep 18 at 15:46
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The character comes from Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary K. Wolf published in 1981. While the characters are from the book, the scenario is very different. The characters are comic strip characters, who speak in word balloons, which decay away. A key plot point is a word balloon that hasn't decayed and is still around for Eddie Valiant to see. Characters such as Baby Huey and Jessica Rabbit are in the story, for instance.

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    Also, the toons can create short-term clones for stunts. It's an important plot point.
    – Sean Duggan
    Dec 3, 2019 at 1:09
  • And those characters are all rather different. Baby Huey is probably the closest to his book counterpart. Roger and Eddie are somewhat different, and Jessica is very different. The tone is more noir.
    – trlkly
    Dec 5, 2019 at 4:56

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