In each film, the cunning, devious and constantly hungry coyote repeatedly attempts to catch and eat the roadrunner, but is humorously unsuccessful.

Wile E. Coyote often obtains various complex and ludicrous devices from a mail-order company, the fictitious Acme Corporation, which he hopes will help him catch the Road Runner.

In August, September and October 1982, the National Lampoon published a three-part series chronicling the lawsuit Wile E. filed against the Acme Corporation over the faulty items they sold him in his pursuit of the Road Runner.

The rest of the scene, shot from a bird's-eye view, shows him falling into a canyon so deep that his figure is eventually lost to sight, with only a small puff of dust indicating his impact.

The coyote is notably a brilliant artist, capable of quickly painting lifelike renderings of such things as tunnels and roadside scenes, in further (and equally futile) attempts to deceive the bird.

The premise was a race between the bird and "the fastest mouse in all México", Speedy Gonzales, with the Coyote and Sylvester the Cat each trying to make a meal out of their respective usual targets.

In 1979, Freeze Frame, in which Jones moved the chase from the desert to snow-covered mountains, was seen as part of Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales.

However, Cartoon Network began to air them again in 2011, coinciding with the premiere of The Looney Tunes Show (2011), and the shorts were afterward moved to Boomerang, where they have remained to this day.

In this series, Wile E. (voiced in the Jim Reardon episode "Piece of Mind" by Joe Alaskey) was the dean of Acme Looniversity and the mentor of Calamity Coyote.

In the direct-to-video film Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation, the Road Runner finally gets a taste of humiliation by getting run over by a mail truck that "brakes for coyotes".

In the latter, the Road Runner gets another taste of humiliation when he is out-run by Slappy's car, and holds up a sign saying "I quit" — immediately afterward, Buttons, who was launched into the air during a previous gag, lands squarely on top of him.

Wile E. appears without the bird in a The Wizard of Oz parody, dressed in his batsuit from one short, in a twister (tornado) funnel in "Buttons in Ows" Also, in the beginning of one episode, an artist is seen drawing the Road Runner.

Wile E. and the Road Runner would also make an appearence in the 1996 film Space Jam, where they, along with the read of the Looney Tunes characters, must win against invading aliens through basketball with the help of Michael Jordan.

Wile E. Coyote had a cameo as the true identity of an alien hunter (a parody of Predator) in the Duck Dodgers episode "K-9 Quarry", voiced by Dee Bradley Baker.

Wile E. Coyote also appears in the TV series Wabbit, voiced by J. P. Karliak, in a similar vein to his previous pairings with Bugs Bunny.

In the episode "General Hogspital", Wile E. develops a potion that makes toons lose their looney DNA to try and finally catch the Road Runner, only for it to backfire and pollute the campus water supply.

[29] Published in 1990, the piece imagined a lawsuit brought about by Wile E. Coyote against the Acme Company who provided him with various devices and tools to aid in his pursuit of the Road Runner.

[34] Despite its completion by November 9, 2023, it was announced that its theatrical and public release would be cancelled, with the company taking an approximately US$30 million tax write-off for the film.

Later that day, it was reported that Warner Bros. would instead allow the crew behind Coyote vs. Acme to shop out the film to other possible distributors, with Apple TV+, Netflix, and Amazon MGM Studios being among its potential buyers.

Congressman Joaquin Castro called for a federal investigation regarding the film's initial cancellation and tax-write off plan, stemming from possible violations of antitrust guidelines.

Hare-Breadth Hurry in particular stands out as the short uses the framework of a typical Road Runner cartoon, but with Bugs as the substitute since the former had "sprained a giblet cornering a sharp curve the other day."

In another series of Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoons, Chuck Jones used the character design (model sheets and personality) of Wile E. Coyote as "Ralph Wolf".

As with the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote series, Ralph Wolf uses all sorts of wild inventions and schemes to steal the sheep, but he is continually foiled by the sheepdog.

Afterward, new stories began to appear, initially drawn by Alvarado and De Lara before Jack Manning became the main artist for the title.

In this version, the Road Runner, Wile E., and other Looney Tunes characters are reimagined as standard animals who were experimented upon with alien DNA at Acme to transform them into their cartoon forms.

In the back-up story, done in more traditional cartoon style, Lobo tries to hunt down the Road Runner, but is limited by Bugs to be more kid-friendly in his language and approach.

Before and after his death, his voice was appearing in various media through archive recordings, for example, in TV series, shorts, and video games, such as 2014's Looney Tunes Dash.

In the 1992 film Under Siege, "Road Runner" is the code name of the renegade former CIA operative William Strannix, played by Tommy Lee Jones, in a reference to the fact that the character is never captured.

Ultimately, after a short-lived job as a waiter in a local diner, and a suicide attempt (by way of catapulting himself into a mountain at close range), Wile E. finally realizes what he is to do with his life, and reveals he is now an advocate for Christianity.

The Road Runner appeared in the episode "Crystal Blue-Haired Persuasion" during a dream sequence in which he is attacked and eaten by the Space Coyote.