Baby Herman

Baby Herman is a supporting character in Touchstone's 1988 feature film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He is a chain-smoking, Brooklyn-accented Toon who is drawn to resemble a baby. Herman works as an actor for Maroon Cartoons, where he co-stars in theatrical shorts alongside Roger Rabbit.
==Background==
A grown baby mainly called, with his mob mentality and his cigar, he is the right baby for the job. Baby Herman has a deep voice and rides in a stroller. He wears a pink bow in his yellow hair and a white cloth diaper with a gold safety pin (without it in Tummy Trouble and Bunny Rollercoaster). Richard Williams claims Baby Herman's design to be a mixture of "Elmer Fudd and Tweety crashed together." 
His stage persona, a baby always getting into mischief, is reminiscent of two Tom and Jerry cartoons where the two would have to work together to keep a baby out of trouble; Busy Buddies (1956) and Tot Watchers (1958).
Baby Herman is very impatient and irritable, as shown when Roger messes up during their act at the beginning of the movie. Despite this, he cares about Roger and considers him a good friend. Baby Herman also claims that Roger is innocent when he is framed for the death of Marvin Acme. In the end, Baby Herman was right about Roger's innocence, after Judge Doom's crimes along with his true identity as a Toon has been exposed at the same time of his death, where Herman and his fellow Toons wonders about what kind of Toon Doom was.
==Appearances==
===Who Framed Roger Rabbit===
In the cartoons, he is depicted as a baby who wanders off and always gets Roger into trouble. Off-set, he reveals that he is really a middle-aged man with a gravelly voice who only looks like a baby. He constantly smokes and hits on women. He tells Eddie later in the film that he knows Roger is too much of a goofball to even be put in the same sentence as murder and that he has been framed in Marvin Acme's death and gives him a few clues to support this. At the end of the movie, he celebrates with the other Toons after Judge Doom is defeated and Toontown is awarded custody of the Toons in Marvin Acme's will.
Events start with Baby Herman and Roger rehearsing their latest Toon short for Maroon Cartoons, "Something's Cooking", but Roger ends up ruining the take for the 23rd time because he can't produce the result that is written in the script (mainly because he is too distracted by a news article about his wife, Jessica Rabbit, cheating on him with someone else to focus), frustrating his co-star and Raoul, the director, forcing both of them to retire to their trailers to cool down before even trying the take again, signaling a lunch break as they do.
At some point, Baby Herman learns of Roger being wanted by police due to being the prime suspect in the murder of Marvin Acme, owner of Toontown, and CEO of the Acme Corporation.
Sometime later, Baby Herman is outside the office of Valiant & Valiant Private Investigators when Eddie Valiant returns and discovers him when he notices Baby Herman's handler lighting up his cigar. After Baby Herman "encourages" his handler to head downstairs to pick up something for him, leaving him alone with Valiant, Herman tries to convince Valiant that Roger is innocent of murdering Acme, citing his long-time relationship with Roger as friends and co-workers as an incentive to his belief Roger is being framed for the murder. He then produces a newspaper with the headline mentioning that Acme left no will behind regarding Toontown's future should anything happen to him. Herman knows that Acme promised to entrust Toontown to the Toons in his will, and gave his solid oath that he would upon his death. Valiant has a hard time believing it due to Acme's history as a prankster and thinks Herman and the rest of the Toons are being duped. However, Herman argues that since it was Valiant's fault that got Roger into trouble with Judge Doom, it should be Valiant who gets him out of it.
Unfortunately, when Herman offers to pay Valiant for helping Roger, this sets off Valiant's hatred of Toons because of his brother's death by a Toon, and he tells Herman off before shoving Herman's pram towards the stairs, where it collides with his handler just coming back up the stairs, and causes Herman's cigar to fall out of his hand and onto the floor. Herman can only look down at it before bursting into tears like a baby, while Eddie smugly enters his office. However, Eddie soon discovers that Baby Herman was right when he sees Acme's will in his pocket in one of the photographs he took of Acme and Jessica Rabbit playing pattycake in her dressing room at the Ink and Paint Club, but after some thought, decides it is not worth it until he finds Roger sleeping in his bed, hiding from the Toon Patrol, and decides to help clear Roger's name after all.
Baby Herman reappears after Eddie stopped Judge Doom's plan to destroy Toontown for a freeway, once again citing that without Acme's will, Toontown is still vulnerable to another contractor's wrecking ball, before Eddie interrupts to have Roger read his love letter to Jessica, which is soon revealed to be Acme's will, written in Disappearing/Reappearing Ink, thereby entrusting Toontown to the Toons and saving it from further harm. Baby Herman joins the other Toons in singing "Smile Darn Ya Smile" as Eddie, Dolores, Roger, and Jessica's head into Toontown with the rest of the Toons right behind them.
=== Shorts ===
Baby Herman was featured as the deuteragonist in a series of Roger Rabbit cartoon shorts following the popularity of the film. In each of his shorts, Baby Herman, whom is left under the care of Roger Rabbit while his mother is away, get up to mischief which gets Roger into heaps of bad luck and misfortunes in a comical fashion.
==== Tummy Trouble ====
In the first short, he swallows a rattle, forcing Roger to take him to the hospital, where a series of mishaps caused the rabbit to accidentally swallow the rattle and even get mistaken for Baby Herman who swallowed a rattle by the doctors, which led him to be taken into surgery as the result. By the end of the short, he swallows the rattle again.
After filming of the short, he spits out the rattle, ranting on how he didn't like the rattle-swallowing idea and never wants to do that again. 
==== Roller Coaster Rabbit ====
In the second short, Baby Herman sneaks out onto various rides, causing the two to even end up on a rollercoaster.
While filming the cartoon short, he is sent flying into the microphone spinning around. Then Baby Herman puts on a robe and is smoking a cigar, grousing to himself that Roger messed up the episode. An attractive young woman in live action is seen holding the balloon and offering it to Baby Herman, who uses his lit cigar to pop it. As the cute girl flinches at the pop, Herman cackles and remarks: "What's the matter, toots? Afraid of a little...bang?"
==== Trail Mix-Up ====
In the third and final short, Baby Herman sneaks out into the wilderness, which causes the two to end up in a sawmill and a chaotic log flume ride around the wilderness, which even causes disaster even outside of filming.
While filming the cartoon short, the Old Predictable Geyser erupts, sending Roger, the bear, the log, the beaver, the boulder, and Baby Herman flying out of the studio, above Hollywood, from California to South Dakota, before crashing into Mount Rushmore, destroying it. Everyone is battered and beaten, and Baby Herman, who had lost his diaper and is left in the nude, angrily yells at Roger for destroying Mount Rushmore. 
===Printed media===
Baby Herman is a regular in the Roger Rabbit and Roger Rabbit's Toontown comic books. Sadly, in one of the graphic novels, he is murdered.
===Disney Parks===
Baby Herman can be seen reading a paper in the queue for Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin.
==Gallery==
==Trivia==
*In the original novel, Baby Herman was 30 years old instead of 50. The line "My problem is I got a 50-year-old lust in a 3-year-old dinky." was adapted from the line in the novel "I gotta 30-year-old lust in a three-year-old's dinky."
*Richard Williams absolutely loved the character of "Adult" Baby Herman and insisted on doing all the animation for the character himself, which he did.
es:Baby Herman
Category:Who Framed Roger Rabbit characters
Category:Males
Category:Heroes
Category:Disney characters
Category:Characters in Disney parks
Category:Characters in video games
Category:Animated characters in live-action films
Category:Touchstone characters
Category:Infants
Category:Anti-heroes
Category:Animated characters
Category:Characters who break the Fourth Wall