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Robot Chicken is an American adult stop motion-animated sketch comedy television series created by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich for Cartoon Network's nighttime programming block Adult Swim. The writers, most prominently Green, also provide many of the voices. Senreich, Douglas Goldstein, and Tom Root were formerly writers for the popular action figure hobbyist magazine ToyFare. Robot Chicken has won two Annie Awards and six Emmy Awards. Production history Robot Chicken was conceptually preceded by "Twisted ToyFare Theatre", a humorous photo comic strip appearing in ToyFare: The Toy Magazine. Matthew Senreich, an editor for ToyFare, got in touch with actor Seth Green when the former learned that the latter had made action figures of castmates from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and asked to photograph them. Months later, Green asked Senreich to collaborate on an animated short for Late Night with Conan O'Brien, featuring toy versions of himself and O'Brien. This led to the 12-episode stop-motion series Sweet J Presents on the Sony website Screenblast.com in 2001. Conan O'Brien is voiced by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane in the first episode ("Conan's Big Fun"). Continuing the concept of the web series, the show creators pitched Robot Chicken as a television series, the name being inspired by a dish on the menu at a West Hollywood Chinese restaurant, Kung Pao Bistro, where Green and Senreich had dined. (Other ideas for the series' name included Junk in the Trunk, The Deep End, and Toyz in the Attic; some of these would be reworked into episode titles for the first season.) Some television networks and sketch shows rejected the series, including Comedy Central, MADtv, Saturday Night Live, and even Cartoon Network. However, someone at that network passed the pitch along to its nighttime programming block, Adult Swim, around the same time that Seth MacFarlane (various voices, 2005–2022) told Green and Senreich to pitch the show to the channel. On February 20, 2005, the series premiered on Adult Swim. The show was created, written, and produced by Green and Senreich and produced by ShadowMachine Films (Seasons 1–5) and Stoopid Buddy Stoodios in association with Stoop!d Monkey, Williams Street, Sony Pictures Digital (Seasons 1–5) and Sony Pictures Television (Seasons 6–10). The show mocks popular culture, referencing toys, movies, television, games, popular fads, and more obscure references like anime cartoons and older television programs, much in the same vein as comedy sketch shows like Saturday Night Live. It employs stop-motion animation of toys, action figures, claymation, and various other objects, such as tongue depressors, The Game of Life pegs, and popsicle sticks. 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 aired a 30-minute episode dedicated to Star Wars that 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). The series was renewed for a 20-episode third season, which ran from August 12, 2007, to October 5, 2008. After an eight-month hiatus during the third season, the show returned on September 7, 2008, to air the remaining 5 episodes. The series was renewed for a fourth season, which premiered on December 7, 2008, and ended on December 6, 2009. In early 2010, the show was renewed for a fifth and sixth season (40 more episodes total). Season five 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. Season 11 premiered on September 6, 2021. Following the 2020 cancellation of The Venture Bros., it became Adult Swim's longest running series, until it was surpassed by Aqua Teen Hunger Force after its renewal in 2023. Despite not having released new episodes since 2022, Matthew Senreich claims that Robot Chicken is "still going". Format The sketch series has an iconic opening sequence involving a mad scientist and a chicken set to theme music by Les Claypool of Primus. On a dark and stormy night, the scientist finds a chicken that has been the victim of roadkill, and takes it 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, just as Les Claypool cries (a line from Frankenstein), "It's alive!" 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 grid of television monitors showing different content (akin to imagery from A Clockwork Orange). The sketches are interspersed with static, resembling the act of channel surfing. While the sketches lampoon various aspects of pop culture quite randomly, they frequently parody DC Comics superheroes as well as many other franchises. Original characters include the Nerd, the Humping Robot, and the show's creators as themselves (often facing potential cancellation at the end of a season), as well as the Mad Scientist and the Robot Chicken. Alternate opening sequences and related sketches In the episode "1987", Michael Ian Black claims in the "Best Robot Chicken Ever" sketch that the opening sequence tells the viewers that they are the chicken, being forced to watch the skits. The frame story of the Robot Chicken and the Mad Scientist would not continue beyond the opening sequence until the 100th episode, entitled "Fight Club Paradise", when the chicken finally makes his escape and later kills the Mad Scientist when he takes his hen wife in response, fighting and killing several characters from previous skits (most of them being implied to be the Mad Scientist's henchmen) in the process. Beginning in the sixth season (after the events of the show's 100th episode), the opening sequence features a role reversal. The Robot Chicken comes upon the body of the Mad Scientist, which has been decapitated. He turns him into a cyborg with a laser eye (this time blue instead of red, reflected by a title background color change). The chicken then straps the scientist to the same chair he was strapped to and forces him to watch the same TV monitors while the chicken and his wife .... Discover the Robert J Sweet popular books. 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