Here’s a sentence that isn’t in the Bible: Warner Bros is trying to trademark Big Chungus, a chunky meme version of Bugs Bunny.
Big Chungus, of course, refers to a large version of Bugs Bunny that appeared in a 1941 Looney Tunes short. That image, like many popular memes, originated on 4chan according to KnowYourMeme. It became associated with the name “Big Chungus” thanks to Redditors who turned it into a meme, and it went truly viral after a GameStop employee’s 2018 Facebook post about a customer trying to buy a PlayStation 4 game that didn’t exist called “Big Chungus” with an image of the large Bugs Bunny on the front.
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Warner Bros already owns Bugs Bunny and the short where Big Chungus first appeared, but the trademark application was filed on August 26 with the European Union Intellectual Property Office. The trademark’s name is “Big Chungus,” according to the application, and would be a figurative trademark, which covers images without words such as logos. The application features a large drawing of Big Chungus, which is labeled “Big Chungus.”
While the application offers no explicit information about Warner Bros’ plans for Big Chungus, there are still a wide variety of general applications listed that include, but are not limited to: putting a picture of Big Chung on a screen, on a piece of paper, on a piece of clothing, on a building, in a machine, or representing it as a toy or figurine.
One section including “video and computer game programs” as well as “computer and video games which are designed for hardware platforms” has spurred a lot of talk among gamers that Chungus is coming to MultiVersus, a free-to-play fighting game that features characters from IP owned by Warner Bros. Bugs Bunny is already a character in the game and players can obtain skins for characters in the game, so it may not be too much of a stretch.
Warner Bros did not respond to Motherboard’s request for comment.
