The Bugs Bunny Mystery Special The Bugs Bunny Mystery Special The Bugs Bunny Mystery Special is an animated television special that was broadcast on CBS October 26, 1980. Presented as an Alfred Hitchcock-style whodunit, the plot is modeled after those of "North by Northwest" and "The Fugitive". Like most Looney Tunes specials of the time, this program consists of clips from classic cartoons with some new original animation holding them together. A criminal known as the Tall, Dark Stranger robs a bank, and Inspector Elmer Fudd mistakenly arrests Bugs Bunny for the crime. Escaping from jail, Bugs sets out to prove his innocence while evading
Bugs Bunny Scare-um" (1939), directed again by Dalton and Hardaway. This cartoon—the first in which he is depicted as a gray bunny instead of a white one—is also notable as the rabbit's first singing role. Charlie Thorson, lead animator on the film, gave the character a name. He had written "Bugs' Bunny" on the model sheet that he drew for Hardaway. In promotional material for the cartoon, including a surviving 1939 presskit, the name on the model sheet was altered to become the rabbit's own name: "Bugs" Bunny (quotation marks only used, on and off, until 1944). In his autobiography, Blanc claimed