Rabbit (Winnie the Pooh)

**Rabbit** is a fussy and compulsive anthropomorphic rabbit who first appeared in Disney's 1966 animated short, *Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree*. Rabbit lives in the Hundred Acre Wood, and—despite his frustration with the residents' antics—is a cherished member in Winnie the Pooh's circle of friends.

## Appearance

Rabbit is a slender domestic rabbit. He has yellow fur (green in the New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh), a white chest and belly, skinny arms, a pink nose and a white cottontail.

## Personality

Rabbit is arguably the most complex character in the *Winnie the Pooh* films. At his core, Rabbit is good-hearted and well-meaning. He enjoys the "finer things in life", such as gardening, tea time, and ice-skating in the winter. Contrary, Rabbit has numerous shortcomings as well—he is controlling and precise, with firm opinions and a strict way of going about his business.

Being one of the smarter and sensible residents of the Hundred Acre Wood, Rabbit is mostly intolerable of the other characters' quirks, such as Pooh's obsession with honey and Tigger's affinity for bouncing. This is, however, mainly due to the fact that these habits often result in Rabbit's misfortune. For example, when Pooh runs out of honey, he sometimes visits Rabbit for a "small helping" and eats the latter out of house and home. In the case of Tigger, he enjoys pouncing Rabbit when he least expects it, which oftentimes causes unintentional damage to Rabbit's prized garden; despite being all in good fun, Rabbit is usually given the shorter end of the stick when it comes to the antics of his friends.

Though Rabbit has felt neglected by his friends at times, in truth, the Hundred Acre Wood gang think highly of him; when trouble occurs, Rabbit is often the appointed leader, mainly due to his intelligence and craftiness. This has inflated Rabbit's ego to some degree, but at the same time, it's left him feeling burdened with responsibility. When he is unable to assist his friends, Rabbit becomes overwhelmed with guilt. He also becomes incredibly frustrated when his friends do not take dangerous situations seriously (such as when they neglected winter preparation in *The Tigger Movie*). This ties into Rabbit's most positive trait—he is extremely loyal, and even paternal, towards his friends. Protective and cautious, Rabbit looks out for the wellbeing of each member of the Hundred Acre Wood and has risked his own life numerous times for their safety. This is most prominently displayed in *Pooh's Grand Adventure* and *The Tigger Movie*. In *The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh*, Rabbit came to adopt a bird named Kessie, whom Rabbit raised and loved as his own daughter, despite how troublesome she was as a fledgling.

## Trivia

* Although Rabbit's official colour is light Maize yellow, in *The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh*, his fur is light green and in *Winnie the Pooh,* his fur is Mindaro yellow. This might be due to colouring errors, though.
* He is one of the few Hundred Acre Wood characters to have fingers, probably because of him being one of the few animal characters to be portrayed as a real animal as opposed to a toy one, and thus have much more organic appearance and movements compared to some of the toy characters.
* Rabbit is sometimes named the smartest resident in the Hundred Acre Wood, but the title also goes to Owl at times.
* In *The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh* episode "Three Little Piglets", Rabbit is the Big Bad Bunny, and he is wearing a suit that looks like a bunny version of the Big Bad Wolf.
* Rabbit is the first, and so far the only, recurring Disney character voice role for Tom Kenny.
	+ Rabbit, along with The Wizard of Oz, their voice actor, Tom Kenny, is known to be the voice of SpongeBob SqaurePants.
* Out of all Christopher Robin's friends Rabbit, Owl, and Gopher are the only ones that look like real animals rather than stuffed. The others, of course, look stuffed.
	+ This is because Rabbit and Owl are not based on any of the real-life Christopher Robin Milne's stuffed animals, but are created by A.A. Milne, and Gopher is not even a character in the book but one created by Disney.