there's a gag in anime (it seems only) - where they name a robot or silent character (such as a cat) "Pierrot", which sounds like "perro" - the straight man misidentifies it as "Perro"; the other corrects him to some other name. But this is the allusion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierrot
come to think of it, I'm sure the classic mime plot (Pierrot - Columbine - Harlequin) underlies a lot the symbolism used, especially when Japanese writers are depicting Western subjects. In "Big O" the sexes are reversed (Dorothy is the sad clown.)
