Prepare the various “Narfs!” and “Zorts!”, as it’s time to fondly recall Pinky And The Brain. Originally appearing as a segment in Animaniacs in 1993, the pair of would-be world-conquering lab mice got their own spin-off 20 years ago today on the WB Network. Pinky and the Brain (voiced by Rob Paulsen and Maurice LaMarche, respectively) were an oddball pairing of a super-intelligent mouse hellbent on global domination and his fellow laboratory mouse given to sudden exclamations and various flights of fancy.


In their adventures, the duo would go on game shows, become country mega-stars, be medieval lab mice, and eventually get teamed up with Elmyra from Tiny Toons Adventures for a season. One memorable short, titled “Yes Always,” parodied the infamous recording session of Orson Welles as he battles radio ad producers on how to emphasize certain lines in a frozen peas spot. While the younger audience would not be familiar with the reference (it was referred to as a “$250,000 inside joke” due to cost of the segment), it highlights the low and high comedy aimed at both adults and children at different times.

In addition to the well-known set-up about what they are going to do tonight (try to take over the world, of course), there was also a long-running gag in which Brain would ask Pinky if the latter was pondering what the former was pondering. Of course the answer would always be a non-sequitur response from the googly-eyed mouse, only further angering the giant-headed one. But here now, as collected by YouTube user tomron87, is everything that Pinky has ever pondered when faced with that question by Brain.