"Knighty Knight Bugs" is the only "Looney Tunes" entry to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1959. In doing so, it beat out cartoons Walt Disney Studios' "Paul Bunyan" and Terrytoons' "Sidney's Family Tree". It was the third Oscar-nominated Bugs Bunny cartoon, after "A Wild Hare" in 1941 and "Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt" in 1942. The Oscar was presented to John W. Burton, the producer of this cartoon.