Robot Chicken (2005 — 2021)

Robot Chicken is an American adult animated stop motion sketch comedy television series, created and executive produced for Adult Swim by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich along with co-head writers Douglas Goldstein and Tom Root. The writers, most prominently 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. Robot Chicken was conceptually preceded by “Twisted ToyFare Theatre”, a humorous photo comic-strip appearing in ToyFare: The Toy Magazine.

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 allusion to A Clockwork Orange); this scene segues into the body of the show, which resembles someone frequently changing TV channels.