It’s something of a miracle that “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” veteran Seth Green and Matthew Seinreich’s animated TV series “Robot Chicken” is still going as of 2025. The show debuted in 2005, a time when a certain kind of aggressive “shock” humor was in vogue and a Gen-X-focused pop culture obsession was riding high in the American consciousness. Green and Seinreich often made use of toys and pop characters that came into vogue in the 1980s (who remembers the Peculiar Purple Pieman from “Strawberry Shortcake?”), likely hoping to inspire a spark of recognition in a very specific subset of their late-night audience.
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That “Robot Chicken” remains popular proves a new generation has become savvy to its sense of humor (either that or 50-year-old men are relentlessly devoted). Of course, if “Family Guy” can play a similar hand for 23 seasons, why can’t “Robot Chicken?” (That “Family Guy” pilot was officially found, by the way.) Also, why is it called “Robot Chicken?” It’s a sketch comedy show, and the titular robotic chicken doesn’t appear except for the title sequence. It’s mostly about pop culture figures engaging in raunchy shenanigans, rarely pertaining to either cybernetics or poultry.
It seems that the title was the source of some contention among the show’s writers during its development. As the series’ creatives discussed in a 2019 oral history for Inverse, Green, Seinreich, and writer/producers Tim Root, Mike Lazzo, and Doug Goldstein kicked around a few amusing potential titles during their extended brainstorming sessions, but nothing would stick. Some of the proposed titles included “Junk in the Trunk,” “Toyz in the Attic,” and “The Deep End” (which, it appears was a nod to their future network, Adult Swim). It wasn’t until they looked at a menu for their local Chinese restaurant — West Hollywood’s Kung Pao Bistro — that “Robot Chicken” emerged. Not everyone loved it, but they went with it.
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Robot Chicken was a menu item at a local Chinese restaurant
Seinrich recalled the first squeeze he and his compatriots felt from their bosses in regards to a title. As he remembered it:
“When we started writing the first season, they wanted a name. We were like four or five episodes into the show and we didn’t have a name or a title sequence. We kept submitting things to Adult Swim. We tried ‘Junk in the Trunk,’ but we learned it was the name of a very popular porn series. We tried ‘ADD TV,’ and the studio hated it.”
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It was Root who recalled the first time someone thought up “Robot Chicken,” explaining that it came off a menu. In his own words:
“We would come up with titles for the show and the network would shoot them down. It was getting closer to air and we didn’t have a title. We used to sit around Seth’s living room eating Chinese food on his coffee table, and we’d always order it from the same place: Kung Pao Bistro. They had a dish called ‘Robot Chicken.'”
Robot Chicken, incidentally, is still on the menu at the Kung Pao Bistro. By the restaurant’s description, it contains “crispy chunks of chicken and broccoli, with sweet & tangy sauce.” It was Goldstein who suggested they call the show “Robot Chicken.” Lazzo agreed with the title. Root immediately hated it, disliking the non-sequitur absurdity of it all. He felt it was too close to other absurdist titles on Adult Swim like “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.” But Root’s concerns were ignored, and Goldstein quickly came up with a title sequence involving a dead chicken being resurrected as a partial robot and forced to watch their show, “A Clockwork Orange”-style.
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So, the title “Robot Chicken” is an insular reference, no different from strange-sounding band names or in-jokes you and your friends have. Weirdly, “Robot Chicken” matches the odd mechanical aspects of the show’s stop-motion animation. It works great. (My apologies to Root.)
