The Rabbit of Caerbannog, often referred to in popular culture as the Killer Rabbit, is a fictional character who first appeared in the 1975 comedy filmMonty Python and the Holy Grail by the Monty Python comedy troupe, a parody of King Arthur's quest for the Holy Grail.[1] The character was created by Monthy Python members Graham Chapman and John Cleese, who wrote the sole scene in which it appears in the film; it is not based on any particular Arthurian lore, although there had been examples of killer rabbits in medieval literature.[2] It makes a similar appearance in the 2004 musical Spamalot, based on the film.
The Killer Rabbit appears in a major set piece battle towards the end of Holy Grail, when Arthur and his knights reach the Cave of Caerbannog, having been warned that it is guarded by a ferocious beast. They mock the warning when they discover the beast to look like a common, harmless rabbit, but are brutally forced into retreat by the innocent-looking creature, who injures many of Arthur's knights and even kills several before being killed in return by Arthur, who uses a holy weapon, the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, to blow up the beast.[3]
The "Killer Rabbit scene" is largely regarded as having achieved iconic status, and is considered one of Monthy Python's most famous gags; it has been referenced and parodied many times in popular culture, and was important in establishing the viability of Spamalot.[4] Despite its limited screentime, several publications have acknowledged the Rabbit of Caerbannog as one of the best and most famous fictional bunnies in film history.[5][6]
In the film
The Cave of Caerbannog, home of the Legendary Black Beast of Arrrghhh,[7] is guarded by a monster, whose nature is initially unknown.[8] Tim the Enchanter (John Cleese) leads King Arthur (Graham Chapman) and his knights to the cave and they find that they must face its guardian beast. Tim paints a verbal picture of a terrible monster that has killed everyone who has tried to enter the cave, and warns them, "...for death awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth!" As the knights approach the cave, their "horses" become nervous, forcing the knights to dismount. Although the entrance is surrounded by the bones of "full fifty men", Arthur and his knights no longer take Tim seriously when they see a rabbit emerge from the cave. After mocking Tim for frightening them ("You manky Scots git!") and ignoring his subsequent warnings ("Look, that rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide!"), King Arthur orders Sir Bors (Terry Gilliam) to chop off the rabbit's head. As Bors draws his sword and confidently approaches it, the rabbit suddenly leaps directly at Bors' neck and bites clean through it in a single motion, decapitating him to the sound of a can opener. Despite that initial shock, the knights attack, but the rabbit also kills Gawain and Ector and wounds several other knights. Arthur panics and shouts for the knights to retreat ("Run away! Run away!"), to the sound of Tim's raucous laughter. As the remaining knights regroup, Sir Robin asks if "running away more" would confuse it, and Sir Galahad suggests taunting the rabbit to cause it to make a mistake. Sir Lancelot (John Cleese) asks, "Have we got bows?" ("No", says Arthur), but then Lancelot recalls, "We have the Holy Hand Grenade!"[9]
Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch
The Sovereign's Orb of the United Kingdom, which The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch satirises
The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch is a visual satire in the form of a globus cruciger of the Sovereign's Orb of the United Kingdom, and may refer to the mythical Holy Spear of Antioch. The Holy Hand Grenade, described as a "sacred relic" is carried by Brother Maynard (Eric Idle). Despite its ornate appearance and long-winded instructions, it functions much the same as any other hand grenade, with a safety pin. At King Arthur's prompting, instructions for its use are read aloud by a cleric (Michael Palin) from the fictitious Book of Armaments, Chapter 2, verses 9–21, parodying the King James Bible and the Athanasian Creed:
...And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, "O LORD, bless this Thy hand grenade, that with it Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits, in Thy mercy." And the LORD did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats and large chu... [At this point, the friar is urged by Brother Maynard to "skip a bit, brother"]... And the LORD spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out! Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it."[10]
Arthur then pulls the pin, holds up the Holy Hand Grenade and counts "One! Two! Five!" Sir Galahad (also Palin) corrects him: "Three, sir!" (Arthur's innumeracy is a running gag in the picture).[10] Arthur then yells "Three!" and hurls the grenade towards the rabbit. The grenade soars through the air—accompanied by a short bit of angelic choral a cappella—bounces, and blows up the killer rabbit. The hapless knights errant continue on their quest, but the sound of the explosion also attracts the attention of policemen who are investigating the murder of a historian by a mounted knight earlier in the film.
The rabbit was portrayed in the movie by both a real rabbit and a puppet.[14]
The name "Caerbannog", though fictitious, does reference real-world Welsh naming traditions: the element caer means 'castle', as in Caerdydd (Cardiff) and Caerphilly, and bannog can have a variety of meanings, the most apposite here being "turreted".
Killer rabbits are a medieval literary tradition, and rabbits sought justice against the hunters in the margins of illuminated manuscripts at least as early as the 1170s.[15] A killer rabbit appears in an early tale of Roman de Renart in which a foe takes hubristic pride in defeating a ferocious hare:[16]
Si li crachait en mi le vis Et escopi par grant vertu[17]
The idea of the rabbit in the Monty Python movie was inspired by the façade of Notre Dame de Paris, which depicts the weakness of cowardice with a knight fleeing from a rabbit.[18]
Merchandise
The rabbit has been reproduced in the form of merchandise associated with the movie or musical. Such items include cuddly toys,[19] slippers[20] and staplers.[21] The plush killer rabbit was rated the second-geekiest plush toy of all time by Matt Blum of the GeekDad blog on Wired.com, coming second to the plush Cthulhu.[22]
Killer rabbits are sometimes used as a metaphor to say that an ostensibly harmless thing is in fact deadly.[25] Such hidden but real risks may even arise from similarly cuddly animals.[26] The humour of the scene comes from this inversion of the usual framework by which safety and danger are judged.[27] Four years after the release of the movie, the press widely used the term killer rabbit to describe a swamp rabbit that "attacked" then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter as he was fishing on a farm pond.[28]
Video games
In the sandbox gameMinecraft, an unused "Killer Bunny" can be summoned via an in-game console command. Unlike normal rabbits, it is aggressive towards the player.[29]
In the MMORPG Old School RuneScape, there is a hidden boss called simply 'Rabbit'. Although it has the same combat level as normal rabbits in the area, the boss version has much higher statistics including an incredibly high hitpoint level. In reference to the film the rabbit drops a grail when defeated.[30]
In the RPG Fallout 2, two special encounters feature King Arthur's Knights searching for the Holy Hand Grenade and fighting a Vorpal Rat (a stand-in for the rabbit), but bugs prevented them from appearing in the game as released. Per Jorner's comprehensive Fallout 2 Walkthrough[31] mentions the encounters along with a way to see them in the game. A fan-made patch for the game completely restored the encounters.[32]
In the RPG Fallout: New Vegas, 3 grenades called "Holy Frag Grenade" can be found in a basement of a church in the eastern part of a radiated town called Camp Searchlight (based on and set in the real-life community of Searchlight, Nevada). These grenades look like regular frag grenades in the game, except have a larger damage value and a white cross painted on them. On the table where these are found, there is also a wooden box with a text written on it: "Holy hand grenades. Pull pin and count to 5 3". Only these 3 exist in the entire game (although more can be obtained using console commands) and the player needs to have the "Wild Wasteland" -trait to see them. Without the trait, there will be 2 mini nukes on the table instead.[33][34][35]
In the role-playing game Blue Archive, the fourth volume of the main story is named "Rabbit of Caerbannog", which the main characters consist of Tsukiyuki Miyako, Sorai Saki, Kasumizawa Miyu, and Kazekura Moe, who are the members of RABBIT Platoon from now-defunct SRT Special Academy.[36] In the story's second chapter "We Were RABBITS!", episode 20 and 21 are named "Caerbannog's Cave". In the episode 19, Moe and Saki mentioned about a novel, possibly referencing the literary companion of the same film. A thermobaric warhead, named as "A.N.T.I.O.C.H.", is a direct reference to Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.
In the RPG Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna, the "HHG(Holy Hand Grenade) of Aunty Ock" needs to be found and used to blow a hole in the last level of the Cosmic Cube to escape the dungeon and complete the game. Ironically the Holy Hand Grenade is itself cursed (meaning it can't be unequipped) and one needs to use Cleansing Oil to uncurse it after pulling the pin so that it can be dropped after which point the game will count down out of order.[37]
In the multiplayer action game Chivalry 2, in the map "The Raid on Aberfell" there is a cave that is surrounded by skeletons. Approaching or being near the cave has a random chance of triggering a rabbit that will jump out and instantly kill the player.
Technology
In Apple Inc.'s iOS system, Siri may say that the "Rabbit of Caerbannog" is its favourite animal when asked.[38]
When a Tesla Model 3 is named "the rabbit of Caerbannog", a link to the Monty Python YouTube channel in the Tesla Theatre will appear.[39]
Miscellaneous
Jennell Jaquays authored a short article, "Monster Matrix: Vorpal Bunny," in Judges Guild's periodical The Dungeoneer issue #01 (June 1976), which provided statistics for the rabbit of Caerbannog for the original edition of Dungeons & Dragons players. The article was reprinted in The Dungeoneer - The Adventuresome Compendium of Issues 1-6 in 1979.
Creatures & Treasures, a 1985 sourcebook for Iron Crown Enterprises' Rolemaster tabletop role-playing game, includes a "Killer Rabbit" monster entry. The creature's outlook is given as "Hostile", with a note that it "bounds for the throat, never for another part of the body." Another note in the description instructs the gamemaster to "treat 'exploding' attacks [made against the rabbit] as 'slaying' (H.H.G.O.A.)", a clear reference to the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.[40]
In Dragon magazine issue #156 (April 1990), in the monster collection "(Not Necessarily the) Monstrous Compendium," Sharon Jenkins contributed the "Werelagomorph (Were-hare)" monster for the 2nd edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. This version includes the notation, "This creature can be hit by only silver or magical weapons, including Holy Hand Grenades."
↑ Cheal, David (5 October 2006). "Top five movie bunnies". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 12 February 2009. Retrieved 22 May 2010.
1 2 John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, Monty Python and the Holy Grail: The Screenplay, p.76, Methuen, 2003 (UK) ISBN0-413-77394-9
↑ Cheal, David (5 October 2006). "Top five movie bunnies". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 12 February 2009. Retrieved 22 May 2010.
↑ Simpson, R (September 1996). "Neither clear nor present: The social construction of safety and danger". Sociological Forum. 11 (3). Springer: 549–562. doi:10.1007/BF02408392. S2CID145706377.
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