From "The Emperor's Phone Call" Stoopid Buddy Stoodios
From "The Emperor's Phone Call"
From the 100th episode. Stoopid Buddy Stoodios
From the 100th episode.
From "Quicksand" Stoopid Buddy Stoodios
From "Quicksand"
From the Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode III Special Stoopid Buddy Stoodios
From the Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode III Special
From the Simpsons' couch gag that the Robot Chicken team made Stoopid Buddy Stoodios
From the Simpsons' couch gag that the Robot Chicken team made
From "Starbucks Origin" Stoopid Buddy Stoodios
From "Starbucks Origin"
From "Our Newest Member, Calvin" Stoopid Buddy Stoodios
From "Our Newest Member, Calvin"
From "Apocalypse Pony" Stoopid Buddy Stoodios
From "Apocalypse Pony"
From "Voltron Got Served!" Stoopid Buddy Stoodios
From "Voltron Got Served!"
From "Delicious Gummy Bears" Stoopid Buddy Stoodios
From "Delicious Gummy Bears"
It’s hard to believe that it’s already been 10 years since Optimus Prime faced the most dangerous Decepticon of them all: prostate cancer.
OK, not really. But on Feb. 20, 2005, Robot Chicken premiered—and with short stop-motion bits like Optimus’ medical scare, introduced the world to its very off-kilter take on pop-culture-steeped comedy. TV hasn’t been the same since. (The episode also featured Rachael Leigh Cook doing a “this is what happens to your brain on heroin” bit.)
“I don’t think we expected to make it past a few episodes, let alone the number of years that we had,” says co-creator Matthew Senreich.
A lot of that success might have something to do with the fact that the show’s launch happened to come at almost the exact same time as the arrival of YouTube, where many of its sketches have found life well beyond their air dates. We’re not sure if you know this, but sketches, animation, and absurd comedy are kinda popular on the Internet, and while Robot Chicken did well enough on Adult Swim, YouTube helped make it a web favorite. (There have been times when the videos were taken down, but many of their best offerings still have more than a million views.)
That popularity led to Robot Chicken running for seven seasons and nearly 150 episodes, but it was a couple seasons into their run before the creators realized they might have staying power. “We had a realization in our third season that we were actually getting an audience,” says co-creator Seth Green. “So we were like, ‘Hey, people are listening, what do we actually want to say?’ So we try really hard to make it out of love and appreciation for all these crazy things that pop culture yields us.”
In honor of Robot Chicken‘s 10th anniversary, we asked the show’s creators for their 10 best—and often most viral—sketches.
The Emperor’s Phone Call
This sketch, about Darth Vader checking in with his boss Emperor Palpatine, came from the brain of writer/producer Doug Goldstein, who wanted to address the absurdity that Vader essentially destroyed the Death Star but didn’t face any repercussions. “In Star Wars, Darth Vader is kind of a big thug of a bad guy, then in Empire Strikes Back he’s kind of running the whole show,” Goldstein says. “He’s telling folks what to do; he’s hugely important. And I’m thinking, ‘In Star Wars, he’s the only survivor from the Death Star, how did he possibly spin that into getting a promotion? How did he come out of that looking good?'” The sketch, in turn, got the Robot Chicken team a promotion from a different kind of Emperor: George Lucas, who enjoyed the sketch and invited them to Skywalker Ranch. “I still have the bathrobe,” says Green, “which I found out was one of the five last bathrobes given out on the Ranch.”
Delicious Gummy Bears
This sketch about a self-cannibalizing gummy bear is the Robot Chicken sense of humor in a nutshell (or bear trap, as it were). “It really distilled our comedic sensibilities down to 30 seconds,” says writer/producer Tom Root. “Everything cute and cuddly from our childhood has horrible violence committed against it.” But it gets its signature sound from actress Michelle Trachtenberg. “I knew for a fact that she had a horror-movie scream, so we cast her knowing she would give us this scream,” says Green. “She was behind glass in the recording booth and she warned the board op, ‘This is going to be really, really loud.’ I think she blew out the mike. It was traumatic to even watch it performed.”
Starbucks Origin
Ever wonder why the original Starbucks logo looked so, um, perverse? So does Seth Green. “When you really think about it, what were they trying to pull with that logo?” he says. “It’s bananas.”
100th Episode Finale
This entire episode led up to a crescendo the team invented to “use that scene from The Protector,” says Senreich. Also, “we wanted to so something epic with the characters we created over the previous 100 episodes.”
Our Newest Member, Calvin
This might be the Robot Chicken episode that’s inspired the most Comic-Con costumes. Pretty much everyone wants to be “Fumbles,” the world-class sniper who gets an unfortunate G.I. Joe codename and goes ballistic on the Joes. “For whatever reason it got a big fan following,” says Senreich. “Lots of people dressed as Fumbles at Comic-Con.”
The Simpsons Opener
The opportunity to do a Simpsons opening came after a few of the Robot Chicken team met Al Jean and Matt Groenig at an Emmys after-party. “They just basically let us do whatever we wanted to do,” says Senreich. “It’s been very nice getting to know the Simpsons guys.”
Quicksand
There’s just something funny about watching a giraffe die in quicksand (their necks are so long!). It’s a LOL-yielding bit that came from occasional Chicken brain Dan Milano. “One of the jewels that just came right out of his head was the five stages of grief as acted out by a giraffe,” says Root. And his colleagues weren’t the only ones who found it funny. “There was this weird thing where for a long time we were on YouTube and then Adult Swim yanked all the YouTube clips to put them on their own web site,” Root adds. “Before the big cull, the giraffe had millions and millions of pageviews.”
Apocalypse Pony
If the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse rode My Little Ponies, this would likely be the result. (Just as Saint John the Evangelist intended.) “That was one of the episodes I got to direct,” says Green. “It was really early on in our entire program and it is one of the things I am most talked to about.” In case you’re wondering, they did pursue the idea of actually making Apocalypse Pony toys with Hasbro, but it never came to pass, unlike the End of Days. But, like the New Testament itself, Green says “I’ve seen many art pieces inspired by it.”
The Opening to the Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode III Special
Senreich says this one is unique because “it was the first time we licensed music—a rare treat for the show. “We’re on an Adult Swim budget,” he says, “so licensing music is not something that we’re able to do that often.”
Voltron Got Served!
This sketch was made thanks to a homebrewed edit of street dancer videos found online that the animators replicated using their foam Voltron. The team says it set standards for what they could do in terms of writing their own music and making impossible-seeming ideas happen. “You can sort of see the ripple effect,” Green says.
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