A few weeks ago, I was scrolling through TikTok and I stumbled upon a video that included the voice of Wallace from one of my favorite cartoons from when I was a kid, Wallace and Gromit. The video was titled “POV: Wallace and Gromit Commit a Capital Offense” and in it a frantic Wallace is trying to cover up a murder that he just committed. Not something I ever thought I would see, but for some reason it didn’t feel wrong. It made sense. I immediately went to the kitchen, filled my Gromit mug with coffee, and got to investigating.
As of now, the original TikTok created by @thejacksonfield has racked up over 7.3 million views, 1.5 million likes, and it has spawned 4 more parts of the Wallace and Gromit story. On top of that, 54.4 thousand other TikToks have been made using the sound created in part one of the series. I’m sure you have seen or heard it at some point by now, but here is part one for reference:
After quoting this daily for the last month or so, I began to think more about the WGCU (Wallace and Gromit Cinematic Universe) and how well this TikTok would fit into it. The series begins from the point of view of Gromit as Wallace (Jackson Field) wakes him up in a panicked frenzy. Clearly some foul play has occurred and they are being pursued by the authorities. Here Gromit utters his viral lines “Come on, we need to hide the body! There’s no cheese and crackers in prison Gromit!” When Gromit is hesitant to help him get away with this crime, Wallace adds “Who will they believe? A man, or his dog? They don’t allow dogs in prison, Gromit. They’ll put you down!” Gromit reluctantly agrees and gets up to help Wallace hide the body, and the TikTok ends.
In just this clip alone, so much is revealed about the manipulative relationship between Wallace and Gromit, along with their darker intentions. However, that does not mean that the video itself is not based in fact and could very well be canon in the animated series. Now, hold on, before you write this off as some idiot trying to validate his favorite meme into something more, hear me out. There are a lot more similarities than you may think.
To understand Wallace and Gromit further, we need to go back to the very beginning. Wallace and Gromit: A Grand Day Out was released in 1989 and was the debut of our favorite claymation friends. This short finds Wallace trying to find a place for his future vacation, however, when he goes to take a break he discovers that he ran out of cheese and crackers. He and his highly intelligent dog, Gromit, decide that the only plan of action is to build a space shuttle and go to the moon, because the moon is made of cheese. Everyone knows that.
So, they do, and that’s that. They collect some cheese, meet a robot, get a parking ticket for their spacecraft, and accidentally cause an explosion by igniting some of their fuel with a match. Typical Tuesday activities. What’s important to draw from this first part however, is just how much they would do for cheese and crackers, along with their indifference towards anything that stands in their way.
Moving on to the second short film, Wallace and Gromit: A Close Shave from 1995 gives our heroes their first taste of the crime world. The plot is simple. Wallace falls for a wool shopkeeper named Wendolene and is completely distracted while Gromit is framed for sheep rustling by Wendolene’s dog, Preston. Gromit is thrown in the slammer for his crimes against the sheep, but Wallace and Shaun the Sheep (the same Shaun the Sheep from the other animated series, now on Netflix) know that Gromit is innocent. They bust him out of prison and hide out in the countryside for a while, dodging the authorities while also trying to get justice for the sheep. They eventually catch Preston and throw him in jail. Justice is served, right?
Maybe. Or maybe Gromit was the culprit after all, but his accomplices sprung him from his cage and threw another innocent dog in his place to cover their tracks? These are mere accusations at this point, but what is fact is that was the first time we see Wallace and Gromit acting outside the law. Whether it was justified or not, there was both a jailbreak and a harboring of a fugitive crime committed in this short. A jailbreak can be punishable by up to five years of prison time and harboring a fugitive yields up to three. Without hesitation, both Shaun and Wallace commit these crimes in order to save their friend. Does that sound like something a harmless claymation character for kids would do? I don’t think so.
Fast forward to 2005 and we get Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Our protagonists have entered a competition to grow a giant vegetable, and in typical Wallace fashion, he has built two new inventions to cheat his way to victory. The first of which is called “The Mind Manipulation-O-Matic” and the second is called “The Bun-Vac.” The plan is to capture rabbits from the garden and brainwash them into helping his vegetable grow while not eating in his garden.
This plan backfires, as mind control usually does (ask the CIA about MK Ultra, they’ll tell you… actually, they probably won’t) and Wallace’s brain fuses with a rabbit. Soon after, he becomes the Were-rabbit and terrorizes the town, pillaging gardens and eating his fill along the way. Just like every other werewolf movie, the town tries to hunt him, only to find out he’s one of their own. Blah blah blah you know how it goes, the town eventually chases him down and turns him back to his human self. The end.
What no one has talked about until now however is what happens after? Does Wallace get tried for trying to brainwash bunnies into aiding him? Does he get locked up for his destruction on the town and all of the gardens? We never know! What we do see from the film though is just how far Wallace will go to “win” in whatever he has involved himself in. Mind control? Really? How do we know that he didn’t brainwash his hometown into letting him roam free? Maybe Wallace is still under the Were-rabbit’s curse, leaving calamity behind him everywhere he goes.
We know that they are no strangers to running from the police, they did it in the last short and they do it quite a bit in this movie. We know they aren’t opposed to breaking the law to free their friends from prison. We know that nothing is off the table when it comes to cheese and crackers, whether it’s a homemade spaceship or mind control, they WILL find their win no matter what. Wallace and Gromit are unhinged and dangerous.
This all falls into place with the release of Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death in 2008. In this short, there is an unknown serial killer who is going around murdering all of the bakers in their town. When Wallace and his new love interest Piella are targeted by this assassin, Gromit springs into action to find out who the killer is. He follows the clues and eventually discovers that the killer is Piella herself, and Wallace is about to be her next victim. Gromit saves the day, protecting Wallace from a bomb and chasing Piella off as she attempts to flee in her hot air balloon. However, the hot air balloon falls and she plummets into the crocodile enclosure at the local zoo. Brutal.
No one has ever gotten as far as Piella did to almost kill Wallace. She fucked with the wrong dog’s owner, and in doing so released Gromit’s inner beast. There is simply no way that the balloon just “fell.” No, it was planned. Gromit shot it down, and he did so right overtop of the crocodiles. It was all intentional. This was the duo’s first killing. Did Gromit get the police to help Wallace? No. Did either of them alert the authorities to the serial killer? Nope. They both planned on handling it themselves.
Joe Ball, also known as “Alligator Man” was a serial killer in the 1930s that was said to have murdered 20 people in Texas. To dispose of the bodies, he fed the remains to his six pet alligators and let them do the rest of the dirty work. He thought that the term corpus delicti meant that being convicted of a crime was impossible without the body of the victim. The term actually means that a crime must be proved to have occured before anyone can be convicted for that crime.
Gromit is no fool. He is by far the most intelligent one in all of the parts of the series, which makes it very hard for me to believe that any of this was an accident. He took a page out of the Alligator Man’s book, but did so in a way that left Wallace and himself out of the equation all together. It was a setup, and he will get away with it too.
Now, this leads me back to Jackson Field’s viral TikTok. With all of this background information, it comes as no surprise to me that Wallace has found himself in another illegal pickle. Just like all of the other stories, he drags Gromit into it because he is the true criminal mastermind behind all of their wrongdoings. The reason for the murder is still unclear, but with Gromit’s help, they’ll surely get away with it.
The next few parts of the series see Wallace and Gromit avoiding officers, attacking those in their way, and doing whatever it takes to escape with their freedom. All of this is made in fun, but does any of it feel out of place in the series? I truly don’t think so. Wallace and Gromit are not kind neighbors who just love cheese and crackers. They are menaces to society, and they will do anything to eat their fill and cover for each other. Hold your snacks close, my friend, they might come for your pantry next.
Featured image credited to Ye Jinghan via Unsplash.
