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Wile E. Coyote is an fictional anthropomorphic coyote from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated shorts. He is a main character and antagonist who attempts to capture the Road Runner for food. Instead of using basic animal instincts, Wile E. does so by using complex, Rube Goldberg-like contraptions and/or mail-in products from the Acme Corporation. However, a majority of his plans backfire and have always injured the coyote through slapstick comedy. Sometimes, getting crushed by large boulders or falling into the canyon are his worst enemies.

Both Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner were first created by animation director Chuck Jones and writer Michael Maltese. They both debuted in the 1949 Looney Tunes short Fast and Furry-ous. Jones based the coyote on the Mark Twain book Roughing It, in which Twain described his text's coyote as "a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton" and "a living, breathing allegory for Want." Wile E. was also modelled after Ken Harris, a fellow Warner Bros. animator whom Jones supervised with.

In a majority of his classic appearances with the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote never utters a single word, save for when he ocassionally holds up a written sign to express his thoughts. Wile's name is not mentioned in these shorts, instead aliased with comically inaccurate scientific names (i.e. Carnivorous vulgaris, or Roadrunner digestus).

He was first given his own name the 1952 Bugs Bunny short Operation: Rabbit, where he first aliases himself as "Wile E. Coyote: genius." In that short and in the following Bugs Bunny cartoons, he speaks with a highly upper-class dialect. Much like his encounters with the Road Runner, his schemes have also backfired due to Bugs using his sly tricks to foil him.