the airplane, rolls it vertically, and flies through an extremely narrow slot between the towers to avoid what seemed to be an inevitable impact. The plane goes into a steep nosedive, its wings ripping off during its descent. Bugs is helpless, airsick and melting with terror. The gremlin nonchalantly plays with a yo-yo while awaiting impact. An impossibly short distance above the ground, the plane unexpectedly sputters to a halt and hangs in the air, defying gravity. Both Bugs and the gremlin casually address the audience. The gremlin apologizes for the plane's fuel depletion, while Bugs points to a wartime gas rationing sticker on the plane's windshield and remarks, "Yeah. You know how it is with these A cards!" Production notes Falling Hare went into production under the title Bugs Bunny and the Gremlin. Walt Disney was developing a feature based on Roald Dahl’s novel The Gremlins, and asked other animation studios not to produce any films involving gremlins. However, Warner Bros. was too far into production on this cartoon and Russian Rhapsody to remove the references to gremlins, so Leon Schlesinger merely re-titled the cartoons as a compromise. This is one of the few Bugs Bunny cartoons to have fallen into the public domain, as in 1967, United Artists, the copyright holder for most of the pre-1950s Warner Bros. cartoons at the time, failed to renew the copyright in time. Release Because of the cartoon's public domain status, it can be found on budget compilations in lower quality prints, while Warner Home Video issued a restored print on Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3 and Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 3, with optional audio commentary by John Kricfalusi and Bill Melendez (Melendez was one of the animators on the cartoon). In 1989, it was included in the MGM/UA Home Video release Bugs & Daffy: The Wartime Cartoons. When the Southern Television broadcast interruption occurred in the United Kingdom, the interruption ended shortly before the start of this cartoon. Elements from the short have been used in other Warner Bros. works. Footage of this cartoon's climax was incorporated as a flashback into a later Bugs Bunny cartoon, His Hare-Raising Tale (1951). Bugs, narrating to his nephew Clyde, describes himself as a World War II test pilot who narrowly escaped death in a near-crash (fortunately, as in Falling Hare, he ran out of gas). There is no mention of the Gremlin