Robot Chicken

Robot Chicken

Format: Stop motion animation/Comedy
Created by: Seth Green, Matthew Senreich
Voices of: Seth Green, Breckin Meyer, Chad Morgan, Tom Root, Dan Milano, Seth MacFarlane
Country of origin: United States
No. of seasons: 4
No. of episodes: 70

Production

Running time: approx 11 minutes, approx. 23 minutes (Star Wars specials)

Broadcast

Original channel: Adult Swim
Picture format: 480i
Original run: February 20, 2005 – present

Robot Chicken is an Emmy Award-winning American stop motion animated television series created and executive produced by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich. They are also on the writing team, and have directed some episodes. Green provides many voices for the show.

Robot Chicken is an animated comedy that uses characters from popular shows to portray comedy situations. It uses stop motion to animated toys, action figures, dolls, and also uses claymation. 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 titled "Junk in the Trunk".

The show is produced by Stoopid Monkey, ShadowMachine Films, Williams Street, and Sony Pictures Digital, and currently airs in the US as a part of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block, in the United Kingdom and Ireland as part of Bravo's Adult Swim block, in Canada on Teletoon's Detour block, in Australia on The Comedy Channel's Adult Swim block, in Russia on 2x2's Adult Swim block and in Latin America on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block. It premiered on Sunday, February 20, 2005.

The series was renewed for a 20-episode third season, which ran from August 12, 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 five episodes, Three episodes beginning with "Tubba-Bubba's Now Hubba-Hubba", which also aired as an April Fool's Day prank. The series has been renewed for a fourth season which premiered on December 7, 2008.

Robot Chicken is currently the highest rated original show on Adult Swim and the second highest on the network (after Family Guy).





Inspirations

"It is not a tumor, it's not a tumor at all."
The show focuses on mocking pop culture, referencing toys, films, television, and popular fads. One particular motif often 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 due to aging, Optimus Prime performing a prostate cancer PSA, 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: Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour).) Another recurring segment is "Hilarious Bloopers", a parody of the Bob Saget era of America's Funniest Home Videos featuring the host constantly moving around in various exaggerated, disjointed motions. Unlike that show, this skit ends with the host using various household methods of suicide.

The show's theme song was composed and performed by Les Claypool of Primus, and he sings the song's only lyrics, "It's alive!", in typical Frankenstein fashion. The ending theme of the show is not actually Muzak but from a cut from a Capitol Hi-'Q' production music album entitled "The Gonk" (famously used in George A. Romero's 1978 horror film Dawn of the Dead) clucked by a chorus of chickens, which are actually the crew members.


Opening sequence

The opening sequence, which is the only part of the show that includes a robot chicken (with the exceptions of "The Black Cherry," the Christmas Special, "Suck It", "Adoptions an option" and "Book of Corrine"), opens with a mad scientist finding a road-killed chicken. He takes it back to his laboratory and refashions it into a cyborg resembling Locutus of Borg, although Matt Senreich denies that this allusion was deliberate. The mad scientist then straps it into a chair, uses specula to hold its eyes open, and forces it to watch a bank of television monitors (an allusion to A Clockwork Orange); this scene segues into the body of the show. In the episode "1987", Michael Ian Black claims that this sequence tells the viewer that they are the Robot Chicken being forced to watch the skits. Midway through, the words Robot Chicken appear and the mad scientist can be heard screaming "It's alive!"

In the "Star Wars Special", the opening is changed to mimic Anakin Skywalker's transformation into Darth Vader as depicted in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, with the mad scientist in the role of Darth Sidious and the chicken as Vader.