About~
Robot Chicken is an American stop motion
animated television series created by Stoop!d Monkey and Sony Pictures
Digital and produced by ShadowMachine Films, currently airing in the US as a
part of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim line-up, in Britain as part of the
Bravo's Adult Swim line-up, and in Canada on Teletoon's Detour nightly adult
programming. It premiered on Sunday, February 20, 2005. Seth Green and
Matthew Senreich are the creators and executive producers of the show. They
are also on the writing team, provide the majority of voices, and have even
directed a few episodes.
Robot Chicken is a variety show that parodies a number of pop culture
conventions using stop motion animation of toys, action figures, dolls, and
claymation (usually for special effects) and various other objects, such as
tongue depressors. The show's name was inspired by a dish on the menu at a
Chinese restaurant, Kung Pao Bistro, where Green and Senreich had dined.
The frame story, seen during the show's opening credits, recounts the life of the eponymous Robot Chicken. It was a regular chicken who was run over by a car (presumably while crossing the road) and was brought back to life in cyborg form, inadvertently resembling a Borg from Star Trek. Its 'creator' is a mad scientist named Fritz Huhnmorder ("Huhnmörder" is German for "chicken murderer") who resembles the "unmasked" Dr. Claw figure from the Inspector Gadget toy line. He forces Robot Chicken to watch a random selection of television shows as an act of 'torture' in parody of A Clockwork Orange. The main focus of the show is the "TV shows" Robot Chicken watches; the chicken story is not relevant to the sketches.