Robot Chicken (2005 — 2024)

Robot Chicken (2005–2024) is an adult animated sketch comedy series on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Created by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich, the show features the voices of its writers, particularly Green. It was produced by ShadowMachine Films (Seasons 1–5) and Stoopid Buddy Stoodios in conjunction with various companies including Williams Street, Sony Pictures Digital (Seasons 1–5), and Sony Pictures Television (Seasons 6–10). The series satirizes popular culture, parodying toys, movies, television, games, trends, and even more obscure references like anime and older TV shows. The premise involves a mad scientist reviving a dead chicken as a half robot, half chicken creature. He uses it to cruelly showcase stop motion sketches of various pop culture icons, TV shows, movies, and real life celebrities.

The popular sketch series features a memorable intro featuring a deranged scientist and a chicken accompanied by the distinctive theme music of Les Claypool from Primus. On a dark and stormy night, the scientist stumbles upon a mangled chicken on the road and brings it to his lab to transform it into a cyborg. In the middle of the opening sequence, the chicken, now the title character, gazes into the camera with its laser eye as Les Claypool exclaims (quoting Frankenstein), ‘It’s alive!’ Then, the Mad Scientist straps the robotic bird onto a chair, uses calipers to keep its eyes open, and forces it to watch multiple television screens in true A Clockwork Orange fashion. The sketches are interspersed with static, mimicking the act of flipping through channels.