Robot Chicken

Robot Chicken is based on "Twisted ToyFare Theatre", a humorous photo comic-strip appearing in ToyFare: The Toy Magazine.[5] The show's name was inspired by a dish on the menu at a West Hollywood Chinese restaurant, Kung Pao Bistro, where Green and Senreich had dined; the series originally was intended to be called Junk in the Trunk.[6]

The show was created, written, and produced by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich, and produced by Stoopid Buddy Stoodios (ShadowMachine Films Seasons 1–5) in association with Stoop!d Monkey, Williams Street, and Sony Pictures Television (Sony Pictures Digital Seasons 1–5). The series first appeared as Sweet J Presents on the Sony website Screenblast.com in 2001.[7] In the first episode ("Conan's Big Fun"), Conan O'Brien was a featured character, voiced by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane (2005–present).[7][8] Sweet J Presents ended after 12 episodes and moved to Cartoon Network's Adult Swim in 2005 as Robot Chicken, premiering on Sunday, February 20, 2005.

Some television networks and sketch shows rejected Robot Chicken, including Comedy Central, MADtv, Saturday Night Live, and even Cartoon Network. However, someone at Cartoon Network passed the pitch along to Adult Swim, around the same time that Seth MacFarlane told Seth Green and Matthew Senreich to pitch the show to Adult Swim.

The show mocks popular culture, referencing toys, movies, television, games, popular fads, and more obscure references like anime cartoons and older television programs, much in the same vein as comedy sketch shows like Saturday Night Live.[9] It employs stop motion animation of toys, action figures, claymation, and various other objects, such as tongue depressors, The Game of Life pegs, and popsicle sticks.[6]

One particular motif involves the idea of fantastical characters being placed in a more realistic world or situation (such as Stretch Armstrong requiring a corn syrup transplant after losing his abilities because of ageing, Optimus Prime performing a prostate cancer PSA for the humans, and Godzilla having problems in the bedroom).[9] The program aired a 30-minute episode dedicated to Star Wars which premiered June 17, 2007, in the US, featuring the voices of Star Wars notables George Lucas, Mark Hamill (from a previous episode), Billy Dee Williams, and Ahmed Best.[10] The Star Wars episode was nominated for a 2008 Emmy Award as Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour).

The series was renewed for a 20-episode third season, which ran from August 12, 2007, to October 5, 2008.[7] After an eight-month hiatus during the third season, the show returned on September 7, 2008, to air the remaining 5 episodes.[7] The series was renewed for a fourth season which premiered on December 7, 2008, and ended September 20, 2009.[7] In early 2010, the show was renewed for a fifth and sixth season (40 more episodes total).[11] Season five premiered on December 12, 2010.[7] The second group of episodes began broadcasting on October 23, 2011. The 100th episode aired on January 15, 2012.[7] In May 2012, Adult Swim announced they were picking up a sixth season of Robot Chicken, which began airing in September 2012.[12] The seventh season premiered on April 13, 2014. Season eight premiered on October 25, 2015.[13] Season nine premiered on December 10, 2017.[14] Season 10 premiered on September 29, 2019.[15] After a five-month hiatus during the tenth season, the show returned on June 28, 2020, to air the remaining 8 episodes with the 200th episode.[16][17] The staff are currently working on Season 11, which is scheduled to premiere in 2021.[18]

Following the 2020 cancellation of The Venture Bros., it is Adult Swim's longest running series, both in terms of years and episodes.

On a dark and stormy night, a mad scientist finds a road-killed chicken, which he takes back to his laboratory to refashion into a cyborg. Midway through the opening sequence, the titular chicken turns his laser eye towards the camera, and the title appears amidst the "laser effects" as Les Claypool of Primus can be heard screaming "It's alive!" quoting Frankenstein. Claypool also composed and performed the show's theme song. The mad scientist then straps the re-animated Robot Chicken into a chair, uses calipers to hold his eyes open, and forces him to watch a bank of television monitors (with allusions to A Clockwork Orange and Watchmen); this scene segues into the body of the show, which resembles someone frequently changing TV channels.

In the episode "1987", Michael Ian Black claims in the "Best Robot Chicken Ever" sketch that this sequence tells the viewers that they are the chicken, being forced to watch the skits. Because of all this, the frame story of the Robot Chicken and the mad scientist would not continue beyond the opening sequence until the 100th episode "Fight Club Paradise", when the chicken finally makes his escape and later kills the mad scientist when he takes his hen wife as revenge, fighting several characters from previous skits in the process.

Beginning in the sixth season, a new opening sequence has been featured with a role reversal (after the events of the show's 100th episode). The Robot Chicken comes upon the body of the scientist, which has been decapitated. He decides to do to the scientist what the mad scientist did to him: add robotic parts to him, turn him into a cyborg, and give him a laser eye (although he gives the scientist a blue eye instead of a red one, which necessitates a change in the title background color). He then straps him to the same chair he was strapped to and forces him to watch the same TV monitors while the chicken and his wife share a kiss.[19]

Beginning in the eighth season, a new opening sequence has been featured with the Robot Chicken being uncovered in snow, frozen in a block of ice, by robots. Taken to a futuristic laboratory, the Robot Chicken is taken out of suspended animation by a masked scientist, revealed to be a descendant of the mad scientist who first reanimated the Robot Chicken. The descendant mad scientist then proceeds to force the Robot Chicken to watch a wall of projected images with different shows, as his ancestor did before him. This new opening was necessary following the plot of last season's episode "Chipotle Miserables" in which the mad scientist's son rips out his father's remaining eye to open a door controlled by an optical biometric reader, and then creates a posse of reanimated cyborg animals, as well as a cyborg homeless person. The posse then proceeds to kidnap all 5 living US presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. The Robot Chicken and the mad scientist then team up to rescue the presidents, after which, the Robot Chicken flies away, free. However, the extended version (seen on the Season 8 episode "Garbage Sushi" and the Season 9 episode "3 2 1 2 333, 222, 3...66?") exists where it begins with a destroyed Statue of Liberty buried in snow (referring to the ending scene of Planet of the Apes) with two drones are flying together and a drone scans the frozen Robot Chicken while the wind blows to himself.

Beginning in the tenth season, a new opening sequence has been featured with the Nerd being turned into a cyborg by both the Robot Chicken and the mad scientist and being forced to watch the skits while they high five. This is a result of the previous season finale where the Nerd dies from a cliff jump stunt to get the show renewed. The letters "TEN" in the title have been also highlighted to mark the show reaching ten seasons. In the 200th episode, as the title is showing, David Lynch shouts "Robot Chicken!" in an off-screen voice.

While Robot Chicken uses a variety of famous real people and fictional characters, it also has original characters created exclusively for the show.

• Robot Chicken (vocal effects by Seth Green) - The show's titular character. He is a cyborg chicken with a red laser eye. First seen as a roadkill chicken on Highway 9W, the mad scientist revived him as a cyborg and experiments on him by forcing him to watch sketches on numerous TV monitors. In the 100th episode, he gets freed by a maid and later kills his creator after he kidnaps his wife. He later revived the mad scientist as a cyborg and reverses the roles, forcing him to watch sketches.
• Cluckerella (vocal effects by Seth Green) - The Robot Chicken's wife. She wears a dress and has blonde hair and red lipstick. She gets kidnapped by the mad scientist during the 100th episode, causing the Robot Chicken to go to the scientist's lab and kill him to rescue her. In the Season 7 finale, it is revealed that Cluckerella has left.
• The Mad Scientist (voiced by Les Claypool for the laughter and line in the opening and David Lynch for the speaking voice in the Season 10 finale) - A scientist who revived the Robot Chicken. He has wild white hair and a diabolical grin. Starting with Season 3, his name is revealed to be Fritz Huhnmörder (German for "chicken murderer"), which is seen at the gravestone. He was killed by the Robot Chicken after the events of the 100th episode only for him to be revived as a cyborg by the Robot Chicken in the Season 6 premiere, and then gets his revenge by forcing the scientist to watch the same sketches that he had previously forced the Robot Chicken to watch. In the Season 10 episode "Fila Ogden in: Maggie's Got a Full Load" with the Saturday Night Live-styled opening, it says the mad scientist's name is Rick Sanchez, which is strangely named after another Adult Swim mad scientist character.
• Mad Scientist's Son (voiced by Zachary Levi) - The mad scientist's 32-year-old twisted son, who steals his cyborg-making tools as part of a plot to kidnap all living US presidents for ransom. According to the script of the Season 7 finale, it revealed his real name is Tony Huhnmörder-Anderson.
• The Nerd (voiced by Seth Green) - A 26-year-old nerdy man with square-framed glasses. He appears in many episodes and often ends up in wild situations in famous media. His real name is Arthur Kensington, Jr., or referred to as Gary in the Season 1 episode "Joint Point". He dies in the Season 9 finale only for him to get revived as a cyborg by the Robot Chicken and the mad scientist in the Season 10 premiere.
• Bitch Pudding (voiced by Katee Sackhoff) - A fictitious addition to the Strawberry Shortcake universe, Bitch Pudding is a foul-mouthed, crass and violent 17-year-old girl and the former resident of Pastryville who has a penchant for insulting, tormenting, and sometimes even killing others. In Season 7, Bitch Pudding became the first of the series' recurring characters to have their own special, titled the "Bitch Pudding Special".
• Unicorn (voiced by George Lowe) - A white homosexual unicorn who is a complete pervert. In his debut episode of the show's second season ("Suck It"), he appears before the Nerd, who had just daydreamed about unicorns being real. When his magic horn is polished, it gives "magical unicorn mayonnaise".
• Mo-Larr: Eternian Dentist (voiced by Michael Ian Black) - A fictional addition to the cast for the show's Masters of the Universe parodies. Mo-Larr is the resident dentist of Eternia. He is willing to resort to drastic measures in order to perform his dental work on unwilling patients such as Skeletor, even going so far as to ensnare Beast Man in dental floss and stick a dental drill into Grizzlor's eye. In the Season 5 episode "Terms of Endaredevil", his real name is revealed to be Moe Larrstein.
• Composite Santa Claus (voiced by Christian Slater) - A genocidal monster who is half Santa Claus, half snowman, and is based on Composite Superman. In the Season 4 episode "In a DVD Factory", his backstory is revealed: he has been created by a diabolical scientist from the combined DNA of Santa and Frosty the Snowman. After he awakens, he shoots the scientist and his two assistants with an automatic rifle, killing the latter two, and goes on a rampage, waging war on all non-Gentile religions.
• Little Drummer Boy (voiced by Seth Green) - An anime-style drummer whose drums can summon demons when beaten.
• Humping Robot - A mute robot looking for love, who is first seen humping a washing machine. He has also been seen humping church bells, jukeboxes, and slot machines, among other metallic objects.
• Daniel a.k.a. "Gyro-Robo" (voiced by Seth Green) - A negative-minded teenage nerd who hosts a web series (entitled the "Gyro-Robo News Hour") where he complains about inaccuracies in media - and not even Robot Chicken is immune from his criticism. He masturbates frequently and is often targeted by the local bully, Munson.
• Munson (voiced by Breckin Meyer) - A jerkish teenager who bullies nerds, especially Daniel.
• Aliens (voiced by Seth Green, Breckin Meyer, Adam Talbott, Mark Hamill, and Patrick Pinney) - A race of wacky grey aliens who have a tendency to bungle their plans and efforts, usually resulting in them letting out a frustrated scream of "Dammit, dammit, dammit!".
• Bloopers Host (voiced by Jamie Kaler) - The host of the "Bloopers!" sketches, which parodies the early years of America's Funniest Home Videos, substituting home videos for humorous television and film outtakes (although home videos have been shown on two occasions, the later of which are from his own life). At the end of almost every sketch he appears in, he commits suicide in various ways, including hanging himself, swallowing whiskey and pills, putting a toaster in a bathtub, and suffocating himself with a plastic bag.
• Gummy Bear (voiced by Michelle Trachtenberg) - A sentient gummy bear who is doomed to scream in utter agony from stepping onto a bear trap. In her debut appearance in the Season 3 episode "Tapping a Hero", she resorts to chewing away at her own leg to escape the trap, and doesn't seem to mind since she finds the taste of her flesh delicious, only to step onto another bear trap.

All Robot Chicken episodes are available on HBO Max.

Revolver Entertainment have released the first four seasons and all three Star Wars specials on DVD in the United Kingdom.[22] A box set including the first 3 seasons and a box set including all three Star Wars specials have also been released.[23]

Madman Entertainment has released the first 9 seasons of Robot Chicken and specials on DVD in Australia and New Zealand.

The show airs in the United Kingdom and Ireland as part of E4's Adult Swim block, in Canada on Adult Swim (formerly Teletoon's Teletoon at Night block from 2006 to 2019) and also in Quebec on Télétoon's Télétoon la nuit block, in Australia on The Comedy Channel's Adult Swim block, in Russia on 2x2's Adult Swim block, in Germany on TNT Comedy's Adult Swim block (formerly TNT Serie's Adult Swim block from 2009 to 2017), and in Latin America on the I.Sat Adult Swim block (after the Adult Swim block was canceled from Cartoon Network Latin America in 2008). Many of the show's sketches from Sweet J Presents were redone for Robot Chicken.[7]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Robot Chicken

• Official website
• Robot Chicken at IMDb
• Robot Chicken at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• Robot Chicken at TV.com
• Robot Chicken – Star Wars Review at Variety.com