Metaphorical Power
The rabbit is now used as a metaphor for something ostensibly harmless which is, in fact, deadly. Such hidden but real risks may even arise from similarly cuddly animals. The humour of the skit comes from this inversion of the usual framework by which safety and danger is judged.
Four years after the release of the movie, Killer Rabbit was the term used widely by the press to describe the swamp rabbit that "attacked" the then US-President Jimmy Carter while he was fishing on a farm pond. This reference to the Monty Python sketch symbolized the failings of a president who, to many, was seen as incapable, inept, and weak.
Although not so named in the film, the animal is often referred to by fans as the Vorpal Rabbit (or Vorpal Bunny), a reference to the Vorpal Sword from Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem "Jabberwocky". Like the sword, the Vorpal Rabbit kills with a single attack.
The Vorpal Bunny was a term first used in the Monty Python scenario in an edition of Steve Jackson's Space Gamer in the early Eighties. The reason it was vorpal was that it cut characters' heads off when rolling a critical success, the same as a vorpal blade in the Dungeons & Dragons game system.
Read more about this topic: Rabbit Of Caerbannog
Famous quotes containing the word power:
“In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)