If you’ve been on social media the past few days, you’re probably wondering why Foghorn Leghorn, the boisterous rooster from Looney Tunes, is giving pep talks to your favorite anime and video game characters. It turns out the joke has roots going as far back as 2021, but has gained new life in the past few days.
One of the earliest examples of Foghorn’s anime coaching I found was from X (formerly Twitter) user @nflstreet4, who plopped our feathered friend into a scene from the anime Don’t Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro. Here, he’s seen telling protagonist Naoto Hachiouji to stand up for himself, and even if it’s just in text, the cadence of his southern accent is unmistakable.
Different joke variations of Foghorn giving advice to other characters have sprouted up over the years, and it’s led to some incredible creations. This video of the rooster teaching proper nighttime pissing etiquette, which started as a text post, was dubbed by a voice actor and then animated by an artist in June of last year.
But the joke is gaining traction once again in 2024. Unfortunately, the springboard was an uncredited repost of the Miss Nagatoro joke on April 20, but a response to it requesting Foghorn ramble to more anime characters was the spark for hundreds of mockups of the classic character coaching other heroes and villains through their own shit.
The trend has become so massive that it caught the attention of Foghorn’s current voice actor, Eric Bauza (who also voices several other characters in the franchise, like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck). Bauza graciously voiced a fan-made interaction between the character and Dragon Ball’s Goku as he fights Frieza, one of the main villains of the franchise.
Sometimes, the internet is a force for good, and I have been howling at some of these gags all morning. To be honest, I’d post even more of them here, but I fear my editors will tell me I’ve already put too many. [Go on, do one more -Ed] But you can find some of the good shit in the quote retweets on the original request for more. I’ve been given permission to include one more, so here’s an Evangelion mock-up for the road:
