On July 27, 1940, Bugs Bunny, the suave, smart-alecky rabbit who became the most popular of Warner Brothers' cartoon characters, made his first official film appearance, in "A Wild Hare". He was hunted then by Elmer Fudd.
As per CBS News, prototypes of Bugs (sometimes referred to as Happy Rabbit) had already appeared in four films, as early as 1938's "Porky's Hare Hunt." Directed by Ben "Bugs" Hardaway (yes, that where Bugs' name came from), the smart-alecky rabbit was much more diminutive, with a laugh that predated Woody Woodpecker (a character Hardaway would go on to create with Walter Lantz).
The pinnacle of his career (or at least that of his greatest director, Chuck Jones) was the 1957 "What's Opera, Doc," which parodies Wagnerian opera in a grandly-stylized rendition of the classic Elmer-hunts-Bugs plotline.
It gave Bugs another chance to prance around in drag as the Valkyrie Brunnhilde. Named in a 1994 poll of animators the greatest cartoon ever made, "What's Opera, Doc" was the first animated short to be inducted onto the Library of Congress' National Film Registry.
Check out 11 facts about the impish rabbit, who debuted 76 years ago at Mentalfloss.com.