[5] Despite the perceptions that people may hold, owing to the long eyelashes and high-pitched voice (which Mel Blanc provided), Tweety is male[6][7][8] although his ambiguity was played with.

In his early appearances in Bob Clampett cartoons, Tweety is a very aggressive character who tries anything to foil his feline adversary, even kicking the cat when he is down.

A similar use of that voice is in A Tale Of Two Kitties when Tweety, wearing an air raid warden's helmet, suddenly yells "Turn out those lights!"

Tweety's aggressive nature was also initially characterized by Friz Freleng when he began directing the series, but would later be toned-down to instead have him be portrayed as a cutesy bird usually going about his business, and doing little to thwart Sylvester's ill-conceived plots, allowing them to simply collapse on their own; he became even less aggressive when Granny was introduced, but occasionally Tweety still showed a malicious side when egged on.

Despite this, in comparison with other major Looney Tunes protagonists such as Bugs Bunny and Foghorn Leghorn, Tweety was not given a complete character arc, instead embodying the "innocent child" role offsetting the motives of his superior Sylvester and their guardian figure.

Bob Clampett created the character that would become Tweety in the 1942 short A Tale of Two Kitties, pitting him against two hungry cats named Babbit and Catstello (based on the famous comedians Abbott and Costello).

In the documentary Bugs Bunny: Superstar, animator Clampett stated that Tweety had been based "on my own naked baby picture.

Clampett began work on a short that would pit Tweety against a then-unnamed, lisping black and white cat created by Friz Freleng in 1946.

However, Clampett left the studio before going into full production on the short (which had a storyboard produced, where it was titled "Fat Rat and the Stupid Cat"[13]), however Freleng would use Tweety in his own separate project.

In 1951, Mel Blanc (with Billy May's orchestra) had a hit single with "I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat", a song performed in character by Tweety and featuring Sylvester.

Later the name "Sweetie Pie" was applied to the young, pink female canary in the Tiny Toon Adventures animated TV series of the early 1990s.

From 1945 until the original Warner Bros. Cartoons studio closed, Freleng had almost exclusive use of Tweety at the Warner cartoon studio (much like Yosemite Sam), with the exception of a brief cameo in No Barking in 1954, directed by Chuck Jones (that year, Freleng used Pepé Le Pew, a Jones character, for the only time in his career and the only time in a Tweety short, Dog Pounded).

The storyline carries into the 2000 direct-to-video feature-length animated film Tweety's High-Flying Adventure, where Joe Alaskey reprises his role.

In the 1995 cartoon short Carrotblanca, a parody/homage to Casablanca, Tweety appeared as "Usmarte", a parody of the character Ugarte played by Peter Lorre in the original film.

In 1996, Tweety (voiced by Bob Bergen again) appeared in the feature film, Space Jam, with legendary basketball player Michael Jordan.

He appeared in the episode "Ridiculous Journey", where he and Sylvester work together with Taz to get back home to Granny and Bugs Bunny.

Tweety appears in the preschool series Bugs Bunny Builders which aired as part of Cartoonito on Cartoon Network and HBO Max on July 25, 2022.

British artist Banksy's 2008 New York art installation The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill features Tweety, an animatronic sculpture of an aged and molting version of the character.