An explainer of my perspective on permanency and bad ends in cartoonish fiction.
If you've stuck around my page long enough, read some of my stories or just seen me comment in a very flippant and even, let's say, LUSTFUL way about wanting to be literally obliterated by something, you know that I am a big fan of permanency and bad ends and am open and inviting of other people to join in and go hog wild messing me up in horrible, 'deadly' cartoonish ways. Where a lot of other people are squicked or saddened by the prospect of a toonish character dying and being destroyed utterly, I'm totally lighthearted and happy with it. And I think that has to do with how I perceive cartoonish character's existences.
Toons are, in my opinion, a very clear example of a Quantum Life-form. A life-form that adheres to certain rules while being observed which are potentially NOT enforced or are in flux at any time that they (or even just specific parts of them) are unobserved. Think of Schrodinger's cat. When unseen inside of the box, the cat is both alive and dead at all times. It's because it has the POTENTIAL to be either. Beyond that though the cat has OTHER potential states that are in flux dealing with things like, what condition the cat's body is in(what specifically has the radioactive isotope done to the creature physically if anything), what position it's body is in and so on. It's very important to understand that quantum states are all about POTENTIAL and not just a simple black/white, on/off, alive/dead binary.
The bodies of toons in classic cartoons, as well as more recent examples that were inspired and informed by the classics, react in very different ways to physical forces, harm, and potential alterations, than a regular flesh and blood human body would. As an example let's take a toon being run over by a steamroller, a definite classic situation. In reality the result would obviously be gruesome and deadly, but our lucky cartoon friends have much less to worry about. Because the viewer/reader is an observer that cannot interact directly with the subjects, their fictional bodies are actually existing at all times in multiple physical states. But ONLY physical states that are not obvious to the viewer/reader. In the steamroller example you can observe the outside of the toon's body but have no available information on how their body feels/smells/tastes/etc. So the texture, consistency, and literal atomic makeup of said body is unknown. So it's equally true that the toon is flesh and blood and organs and bones... as it is true that the toon is something more along the lines of a polymer clay-like substance or a non-Newtonian fluid barely held together by an outer membrane, or any other physical state that can be imagined. So when that toon gets run over by the steamroller it's body can react in any number of ways. It should be noted, however, that as fictional creatures who owe their existence to creatives, toons have a unique force relating to probability exerted upon their bodies known as "genre conventions."
Genre conventions are like legal precedents. Once a genre convention is shown to be TRUE in a certain circumstance, it becomes much more likely for that convention to be upheld by the toon's local reality in that circumstance. This doesn't mean that OTHER outcomes are impossible, just that those that have been previously shown in cartoon history are more LIKELY to continue to hold true. So we have over one hundred years of cartoon history informing us upon what genre conventions toons are affected by. That's a lot of history that's done a great deal to define what a TOON even is.
So back to our steamroller example. Toon gets run over by steamroller; it's possible for it's body to react in any number of ways as the viewer/reader doesn't know what state its fictional body is in, but due to how previous toon's bodies have been affected by being run over by a steamroller the probabilities of the toon body's reaction to the crushing weight and pressure being exerted on it are somewhat narrowed. It's still possible for the toon's body to act as if it were made of solid steel; the steamroller awkwardly rolling over the hard shape of their body but leaving it completely intact and three dimensional as they lay there in the road understandably very confused. But due to the long history of cartoons informing what MOST OFTEN happens in this scenario, it becomes very unlikely that the toon's body will behave in this way and much MORE likely that the toon's body will compress like some sort of soft doughy substance, yielding under the weight and pressure and flattening out on the road. IF, however, there are other genre conventions at play, such as the toon in question being previously shown to be tough as nails and/or nigh indestructible and unstoppable, the chance of them shrugging off being run down by the steamroller and remaining in an unharmed three dimensional state SKYROCKETS. Just think back to the mean cat and tough protective dog archetypes in classic cartoons. Mean cat is trying to eat a mouse or bird but the tough protective dog keeps thwarting them in that endeavor, and then... imagine the cat, tired of the dog's interference, decides to slam a lead pipe down on the unwary dog's head. A number of things are more likely to happen than others, such as the dog's head caving in under the force of the blow leaving a deep cartoonish dent, or the lead pipe hitting the dog's head but not having a visible effect until a moment later when a large bump rises upon their head comically, or, potentially, because the dog has been shown to be so tough and protective, the lead pipe may slam down over the dog's head leaving the pipe bent into a perfect contour of their head.
So we've covered probability and genre conventions relating to cartoon physics. Finally let's get to the meat of this explainer. Permanency and bad ends. I'll mostly be describing bad ends, but everything said also applies to the permanence of a transformation as well. If a toon is observed getting utterly demolished, destroyed and obliterated somehow and the permanency and seriousness of it is reinforced by, say, dialogue spoken by another character, such as; "Well, she had a good run." or "I lose more friends that way." then it can be taken with almost complete certainty that the toon in question is deader than a door-nail and there's no way they're ever recovering or coming back. The thing to keep in mind here is that due to genre conventions developed over the last hundred years, that can be both one hundred percent true... and yet NOT at the same time. Often times in cartoons a toon would get effectively obliterated at the end of the episode, sometimes even being represented as a spectral or angelic version of themselves to make it more clear that they've moved on to the great beyond (A good example of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKpyrHiZgZA ). The FUN thing is that after the episode ends, you can watch another cartoon that took place after the previous one in which the toon was sent packing from this mortal coil, in which the same toon is BACK as good as new like nothing even happened (I mean Daffy's still going strong right?). In serialized cartoons there would sometimes even be references to previous episodes in which a prominent character was destroyed, cementing their destruction as canon despite them existing in the current episode. I like to think that they were able to come back because during the period of time between episodes no one was observing them or even their toony world ^u^
So toons can be absolutely killed off and obliterated in extreme cartoonish ways 'PERMANENTLY' and then come back as good as new in the next episode/story. They can even reference events from the previous episode/story calling back to the fact that the events really actually happened... but just sort of... refuse to be bound by the result of those events. In other words, toons are dirty feckin cheaters and can commonly warp the meta narrative XD Basically, if a toon's body is destroyed, it isn't the same thing as the TOON being destroyed. They're a largely protected being of THOUGHT, an idea, and as long as there's still someone invested in their existence and hi-jinks at least, they, as an idea, are really hard to destroy. And the more interest there is in them the more likely that you're going to see more of them, regardless of their body's recent physical circumstances.
Once the box Schrodinger's cat is inside of gets opened, there is no more unlimited potential for the pussy cat. The cat will either be alive or dead and the fact that the state is observed means it is locked into history as either alive or dead. There's no shutting the box on the cat again and quickly reopening it to try and get the other outcome. Toons, on the other hand, because they are creatures of thought given physical form, just have to have whatever is left of their destroyed physical form, if anything, removed from observation for a moment to come back as good as new. If you've got a flattened toon that's been run through a paper shredder and had the confetti like result of that burned in a waste basket reducing them to a fine ash, which is then dumped outside for a strong breeze to scatter the burnt remains in a way that they could never be collected to somehow magically return their body to life... they can still reappear, healthy and normal, when the character that just got finished scattering their ashes to the wind turns around and finds them, understandably very angry, standing there in a space that the viewer/reader wasn't actively observing. You can literally put the dead cat back in the box, close the lid, and then open the box and take a potentially live cat back out!
So permanency and bad ends, while still POTENTIALLY permanent or an ACTUAL end, are not really so permanent or final for a toon. The damn things have basically got plot armor. Woe be it to any minor unnamed character that's obliterated during the course of a cartoon/story HOWEVER, because if the creators and consumers of the creation don't have an interest in them returning and becoming a more prevalent character, they're much more likely to actually be stuck in that permanent state or ceasing to exist in their entirety.
I hope you enjoyed this EXTREMELY nerdy and goofy explainer of how I view toon existence and how it relates to my personal treatment of cartoonish characters in regards to permanent or deadly outcomes in fiction. It's all gobbledygook, but it's gobbledygook based on the ways creators have treated toons throughout history. Which has basically just been done on vibes alone heehee! XD