These similarities are the result of the artistic license of the creators and have caused much confusion within the birding community among those who have attempted to classify Woody's species.

Woody's original voice actor, Mel Blanc, stopped performing the character after the first three cartoons to work exclusively for Leon Schlesinger Productions (later renamed Warner Bros. Cartoons), producer of Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies after signing a loyalty contract.

At Leon Schlesinger's, Blanc had already established the voices of two other famous "screwball" characters who preceded Woody, Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny.

Once Warner Bros. signed Blanc to an exclusive contract, Woody's voice-over work was taken over by Danny Webb, followed by Kent Rogers and Dick Nelson, and Ben Hardaway later became Woody's voice after Rogers was sent to the army during World War II and would voice the woodpecker for the rest of the decade.

His image appeared on US aircraft as nose art and on mess halls, and audiences on the homefront watched Woody cope with familiar problems such as food shortages.

Woody Woodpecker's debut also marked a change in directing style for Walter Lantz studio, since the character was heavily inspired by Tex Avery-created Looney Tunes character Daffy Duck at Warner Bros, and thus Woody's cartoons tended to have a hint of Tex Avery's style and influence in terms of humor, and that's what gave Walter Lantz studio its fame.

Animator Emery Hawkins and layout artist Art Heinemann streamlined Woody's appearance for the 1944 film The Barber of Seville, directed by James "Shamus" Culhane.

Nevertheless, Culhane continued to use Woody as an aggressive lunatic, not a domesticated straight man or defensive homebody, as many other studios' characters had become.

The follow-up to The Barber of Seville, The Beach Nut, introduced Woody's original chief nemesis, Wally Walrus.

Lundy rejected Culhane's take on the series and made Woody more defensive; the bird no longer went insane without a legitimate reason.

[17]: 161  The UA-distributed Lantz cartoons featured higher-quality animation and the influence of Dick Lundy (the films' budgets remained the same).

Kay Kyser's 1948 recording of the song, with Harry Babbitt's laugh interrupting vocalist Gloria Wood, became one of the biggest hit singles of 1948.

Financial problems at United Artists during the aftermath of the Paramount case—which forced movie distributors to end the practice of block booking, or selling shorts and features to theaters in packages—affected Lantz.

[17]: 172–175  He began a series of staggered layoffs in December 1948 until work on the final 1940s Lantz short, the Woody cartoon Drooler's Delight, was finished at the otherwise shuttered studio in early 1949.

In the segment, astronauts are shown an animated educational film featuring Woody Woodpecker explaining rocket propulsion.

Lantz signed again with Universal (now Universal-International) in 1950 and began production on two entries that director Dick Lundy and storymen Ben Hardaway and Heck Allen had begun before the 1948 layoff.

Harding made Woody smaller and cuter, moving his crest forward from its original backward position.

With Smith on board, the shorts maintained a healthy dose of frenetic energy, while the animation was simplified due to budget constraints.

A year later, Woody made a cameo in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, voiced by Cherry Davis, near the end of the film.

[22] In August 2023, MeTV acquired the broadcast rights to Walter Lantz cartoons from 1934 to 1972 to air The Woody Woodpecker Show on Saturday morning on September 2, marking the return on TV after 25 years.

In Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975), Grace Stafford cameos, carrying a Woody Woodpecker doll.

Obvious references to "The Woody Woodpecker Song" can be found in the work of at least two noted jazz innovators: specifically, Charlie Parker, a number of whose solos quote it in passing,[24][25] and Wayne Shorter, whose 1961 composition "Look at the Birdie" — as heard on Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers' Roots & Herbs (recorded in 1961, released in 1970) — has been singled out by both composer/trumpeter David Weiss and Shorter's biographer Michelle Mercer as an ingenious variation on the theme.

[32][31] The band's animated mascot, a "spacepecker" named Tico Tac, was created and used in place of Woody in order to avoid a lawsuit from Universal.

The character has been referenced and spoofed on many later television programs, among them The Simpsons, American Dad!, South Park, The Fairly OddParents, Family Guy, Seinfeld, Robot Chicken, Three's Company, and Flash Toons.

Like Bugs Bunny for Warner Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog for Sega, Mario for Nintendo and Mickey Mouse for Disney, Woody Woodpecker serves as the official mascot of Universal Pictures.

[22] A handful of non-comprehensive Woody Woodpecker VHS tapes were issued by Universal in the 1980s and 1990s, usually including Andy Panda and Chilly Willy cartoons as bonuses.

In the early 2000s, a series of mail-order Woody Woodpecker Show VHS tapes and DVDs were made available by mail order through Columbia House.

In 2007, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection, a three-disc DVD boxed set compilation of Walter Lantz "Cartunes".

[63] Walter Lantz Woody Woodpecker became an independent comic book (starting with issue #16 to reflect the earlier appearances in Four Color) in Dec. 1952-Jan.

[62] Foreign-language versions of the Woody Woodpecker comic were published in many European countries, most actively in Sweden ("Hacke Hackspett"), the Netherlands, France, and Italy ("Picchiarello").