"Hey, Billy … break it up, son."
Billy Boy is a 1954 animated short film directed by Tex Avery, as one of the Tex Avery MGM Cartoons.
One morning, a wolf farmer (voiced by Daws Butler a la Huckleberry Hound) finds a note slipped under his front door asking him to take care of a little billy goat left on his doorstep. The note assures him that feeding the goat won't be a problem as he'll eat anything. Sure enough, the goat demonstrates its appetite by devouring everything he gets his teeth into. The wolf tries to be accommodating but finds Billy's appetite more than he can keep up with, resulting in him trying increasingly extreme measures to deal with the goat, only for Billy's hunger to thwart every attempt.
Billy Boy contains examples of:
- Big Eater: Billy just keeps on eating without a break. At the end, he even devours the moon in seconds.
- Black-Hole Belly: Billy's not just a voracious Extreme Omni-Goat that'll eat anything, but the little guy never stops eating that's the biggest problem. Nothing can hold or contain him, forcing the Southern wolf farmer to try and get rid of him, which of course repeatedly fails.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Or rather eat the Fourth Wall as at one point, Billy eats the animation.
- The Cat Came Back: The wolf attempts to get rid of Billy by having him chow on a railroad rail, only for him to come back in the middle of the night, covered with stamps from every state he's been to.
- Deface of the Moon: The wolf's final attempt to get rid of Billy is to fire him to the moon with a large rocket, resulting in Billy eating the entire moon, leaving the wolf in pitch darkness.
- Dinner Deformation: Billy eats a tire and takes its shape, down to the hole in the middle.
- Doorstop Baby: Doorstop Goat in this case, which is how the wolf first meets Billy.
- Extra Digits: When Billy eats the tip of his shoe, the wolf checks to see if he lost any toes. He counts ten toes on that one foot. "Nope—they're all there."
- Extreme Omni-Goat: Exaggerated Trope, as Billy literally eats everything, including the moon. That note he came with wasn't kidding. Even funnier is that Billy's the trope image.
- Extremely Short Timespan: The short takes place over a day, starting when Billy's dropped off around breakfast and ending after the moon comes up.
- Failure Is the Only Option: All of the farmer wolf's attempts to pacify or dispose of Billy fail miserably as the little goat devours anything and everything.
- Inexplicably Tailless: Subverted. The wolf is usually seen without a tail, but he is revealed to have one in the scene where the now-hairless horse sends him running with Billy Boy on him, who then proceeds to eat his clothes and fur off.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Or eating the fourth wall. Billy's hunger gets so out of control, he ignores the Southern wolf's latest attempt to get rid of him and starts eating the cartoon itself to the wolf's dismay.
- Mellow Fellow: Barely anything fazes the wolf over the course of the cartoon despite Billy (quite literally) eating him out of house and home—not even when the goat munches on one of his arms, as seen above.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: Most of the music in this short is based on the Civil War-era song "Kingdom Coming".
- Unexplained Recovery: At one point, Billy Boy eats the wolf's hair and clothes, leaving him completely smooth-skinned. In the very next scene, his fur and clothes have magically returned.
- Verbal Tic: The wolf, for some reason, a few times, repeats the last word he says like a Broken Record. Record. Record. Record. Record.
- Visual Metaphor: Upon coming back to the wolf's farm in the middle of the night, the goat eats his house, literally eating him out of house and home.
