This is a bitchin’ article called Teemings - Issue 12 - The Persistence of Bugs Bunny : Take 2. Just to quote a great paragraph:

“The more I thought about it, the clearer it became that Bugs was like the Trickster character in so many mythologies. Raven in the Pacific Northwest and Anansi in Sub-Saharan Africa and even Odysseus (Ulysses) in Greece. Ready liars, “full of twists and turns”, always ready with an angle. Then it occurred to me that many of these Trickster types are themselves rabbits - Hare in Africa, who became Br�er Rabbit in the American South, Rabbit in the American Southeast and Southwest, and Brother Rabbit and Judge Rabbit in Southeast Asia. Could this all be coincidence? Had the Warner Bothers cartoon directors and Gag Men tapped into the Collective Unconscious? Or were they consciously adapting the stories of the Trickster Rabbits of the world? Or was there some sort of story-telling dynamic that naturally forced stories into this form, so that the Rabbit was somehow inevitable?”

I like that Oddysseus thing too. Oddysseus was always a favorite of mine.