Who Framed Roger Rabbit: 13 Easter Eggs & References You Probably Missed
10. The Toontown Tunnel Keystone
The gateway to Toontown is via a tunnel, and we get a good look at its entrance when Eddie momentarily pauses his pursuit of Jessica Rabbit to dump his Wild Turkey and ready his Toon six-shooter with its Dum-Dum bullets.
The tunnel features an easy-to-miss Easter Egg for animation fans: its keystone bears the face of Felix the Cat in the fashion of the tragedy comedy masks (“Thalia and Melpomene” or “Sock and Buskin”). It’s a nice nod to the first bona fide animated cartoon superstar, effectively the Mickey Mouse of the silent film era, complete with merchandise. So famous was Felix that a figure of him appeared as the subject of NBC's first test television broadcasts in 1928 and he appeared as a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade float 1931–1933.
Minus Felix and the Toon curtains at the far end, the tunnel might look familiar to movie lovers because it’s been seen in numerous films including WarGames, Back to the Future Part II, Barton Fink, and Bumblebee, and TV series like Agent Carter. In the real not reel world what we see in Roger Rabbit is the eastern end and bore of the Mount Hollywood Tunnel just north of the Griffith Park Observatory in Los Angeles.