Robot Chicken

Robot Chicken
Robot Chicken Logo.
Genre	Sketch Comedy Black Comedy
Format	Animated Series
Created by	Seth Green Matthew Senreich
Voices of	Jordan Allen-Dutton Candace Bailey Carlee Baker Abraham Benrubi Rachel Bloom Alex Borstein Leah Cevoli Rachael Leigh Cook Macaulay Culkin Hugh Davidson Mikey Day
Opening Theme	Robot Chicken Theme By Les Claypool
Closing Theme	The Gonk By Herbert Chappell
Composer	R
Country of Origin	United States
Language	English
No. of Seasons	11
No. of Episodes	212 (And 11 Specials) (Episode list)
Production
Executive Producers	R
Producers	Alex Bulkley (2005–2012) Corey Campodonico (2005–2012) Whitney Loveall (2019–2020) Laura Pepper (2021-2022)
Running Time	11 Minutes
Production Companies	ShadowMachine Films (Seasons 1–5) Stoop!d Monkey Stoopid Buddy Stoodios (Seasons 6–11) Sony Pictures Digital (Seasons 1–5) Sony Pictures Television (Seasons 6–10) Williams Street
Distributor	Warner Bros. Television Studios
Broadcast
Original Network	Adult Swim
Picture Format	4:3 SDTV (2005–2009) 16:9 HDTV (2010-2022)
Original Airing	February 20, 2005 -present
External Links
Website

Robot Chicken is an American stop motion animated sketch comedy television series that airs on Adult Swim, created and executive produced by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich, along with co-head writers Douglas Goldstein and Tom Root. The writers, especially Green, also provide many of the voices. Senreich, Goldstein and Root were formerly writers for the popular action figure hobbyist magazine ToyFare. Robot Chicken has won two Annie Awards and six Emmy Awards.

Background[]

Robot Chicken is inspired on Twisted ToyFare Theater, a humorous photo comic-strip that appeared in the now-defunct ToyFare: The Toy Magazine - which Matthew Senreich, Tom Root and Doug Goldstein had previously written for. It is a sketch comedy that parodies a number of pop culture conventions using stop motion animation of toys, action figures, claymation and various other objects, such as tongue depressors, The Game of Life pegs and popsicle sticks during a joke about a loss of budget. 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, although the series originally was intended to be called Junk in the Trunk. The series first appeared as Sweet J Presents, produced for the Sony website Screenblast.com in 2001. The show was created, written and produced by Green and Senreich. The show ended after 12 episodes and returned to Cartoon Network's Adult Swim in 2005 as Robot Chicken. In the first episode (Conan's Big Fun), Conan O'Brien was featured, but he was instead voiced by Seth MacFarlane.

The show premiered on Sunday, February 20, 2005, as a part of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block. It is 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). It currently airs in the U.S. on Adult Swim, in the United Kingdom and Ireland as part of FX's Adult Swim block, in Canada on Teletoon's TELETOON at Night block, in Australia on The Comedy Channel's Adult Swim block, in Russia on 2x2's Adult Swim block, in Germany on TNT Series' Adult Swim block and in Latin America on the I.Sat Adult Swim block (After being cancelled from Latin Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block in 2008 for unknown reasons). The show is rated TV-MA and many of the sketches from Sweet J were redone for Robot Chicken.

The series was renewed for a 20-episode third season, which ran from August 1, 2007, to September 28, 2008. After an eight month hiatus during the third season, the show returned on August 31, 2008, to air the remaining 5 episodes. The series was renewed for a fourth season which premiered on December 7, 2008 and ended September 20, 2009. In early 2010, the show was renewed for a fifth and sixth season (40 more episodes total). Season 5 premiered on December 12, 2010. The second group of episodes began broadcasting on October 23, 2011. The 100th episode aired on January 15, 2012. In May 2012, Adult Swim announced they were picking up a sixth season of Robot Chicken, which began airing in September 2012. The seventh season premiered on April 13, 2014. Season eight premiered on October 25, 2015. Season nine premiered on December 10, 2017. Season 10 premiered on September 29, 2019, containing the 200th episode, containing the 200th episode. Season 11 premiered on September 6, 2021.

Despite not having released new episodes since 2022, Matthew Senreich states that Robot Chicken is "still going".

Opening Sequence[]

On a stormy night, a mad scientist finds a road-killed chicken, which he takes back to his laboratory to re-fashion 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! a-la 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 (An allusion to A Clockwork Orange); this scene segues into the body of the show, which resembles someone frequently changing TV channels.

In the episode 1987, Michael Ian Black claims that this sequence tells the viewer that they (The audience) are the chicken, being forced to watch the skits. As a result, the show does not actually focus on the Robot Chicken until the 100th episode when he finally makes his escape and later kills the mad scientist when he kidnaps a hen who is the chicken's girlfriend.

Beginning in the sixth season, the role of the Robot Chicken and the mad scientist are reversed in this opening sequence: The Robot Chicken turns the mad scientist into a cyborg and then subjects him to watch the television sets. However, the eye color is changed in the sixth season intro, with it being changed from red to blue.

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.

In the eleventh season, a new opening sequence has been featured with the Mad Scientist launching the Robot Chicken off a space station in a capsule. The capsule then crashes on the ground where the Robot Chicken meets another cyborg chicken, only in an elderly state (with allusion to 2001: A Space Odyssey). The monolith-shaped TVs in the house show a baby Robot Chicken floating through space. Starting with the episode "May Cause a Whole Lotta Scabs", an extended version (which set in a 2.39:1 aspect ratio) exists where it begins with a tribe of hominids watching the skits on the TVs while a hominid version of the Nerd bites a remote control to turn on the TV monitors. Suddenly, a hominid tries to take the remote, but the hominid Nerd kills it and gets the remote back, segueing into the opening sequence.

Overview[]

The show focuses on mocking pop culture, referencing toys, movies, television and popular fads, as well as more obscure references like anime cartoons and older television programs, much in the same vein as comedy sketch shows like Saturday Night Live. 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 aging, Optimus Prime performing a prostate cancer PSA for the humans and Godzilla having problems in the bedroom). The program even had 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. The Star Wars episode was nominated for a 2008 Emmy Award as Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming Less Than One Hour).

Five of the ten season finales of Robot Chicken to date have ended with either Mike Lazzo or Keith Crofford, then the president and vice president, respectively, of Adult Swim, saying that Robot Chicken is canceled, although thus far it has still returned for an additional season following each joke proclamation. Although the finales of seasons 2, 5, 7, 9, and 10 don't feature the gag, Season 9's finale does make a reference to the gag.

Episodes[]

Main Article: Episode list

Robot Chicken

Contents

Background[]

Opening Sequence[]

Overview[]

Episodes[]

Voice Cast[]

Gallery[]

Fan Feed