Robot Chicken / Tropes I to R

Robot Chicken Trope Examples
A - H | I - R | S - Z

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I

• I Am Not Spock: An In-Universe example. In a sketch parodying Armageddon (1998), Harrison Ford complains that he doesn't want to go into space because he's just an actor, only for a fat nerd to shout "You go, Han Solo!" Later inverted in the same sketch, where Mark Hamill says he should have gone up to space because he "destroyed the Death Star", only for the very same nerd to tell him "That was just a movie, dude."
• I Approved This Message: Parodied: "My name is George W. Bush and I approve this message: Tacos rule!"
• An Ice Person: Mister Freeze, Captain Cold, Icicle, and Chillblaine all each decide to rob the same museum at once, though nobody told any of the others and Captain Cold forgot Chillblaine existed ("You and America, buddy"). Before Ice has a chance to stop them all with her amazing freeze powers, the museum collapses in on itself after Icicle notices that all four of them demolished a lot of load-bearing walls in the process.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Most of the episode titles of Season 1 are rejected titles for the show. Those of the first half of Season 4 form a letter written by someone trapped in a DVD factory who's missing his thumbs:
  Help me. I'm trapped in a DVD factory. They took my thumbs. Two weeks without food. Tell my mom I love her, but not in that way. Love, Maurice PS: Yes, in that way.
  • And the titles of the second half form the DVD factory's response:
    Dear Consumer: We are a humble factory. Maurice was caught unionizing our labor. President Hu forbids it. Due to constraints of time and budget, the ramblings of Maurice cannot be erased, so sorry. Please do not notify our contractors, especially the animal Keith Crawford.
  • Season 5's episode titles tend to be mashups of two completely different films that have nothing to do with the episode (usually one generally perceived as really good while the other is seen as awful) leading to titles like Catch Me If You Kangaroo Jack, Schindler's Bucket List, and Saving Private Gigli.
  • For the most part, the episodes of Season 6 are named after ways to die (i.e., "Executed by the State", "Punctured Jugular", etc.), which ends with "In Bed with Loved Ones", revealing it to be a Trauma Conga Line.
• I Do Not Drink Wine: Dracula is kind of a mood-killer at parties.
• I Got a Rock: Parodied in one Peanuts sketch in which the gang has been assigned to different countries for geography class. Linus Van Pelt got Italy and Lucy Van Pelt got Russia. As for Charlie Brown... "I got Iraq."
• I Have Boobs, You Must Obey!:
  • The nerd fantasizes about what he'll do with the Most Common Super Power before he jumps into the "Spring Of Drowned Girl" from Ranma ½. Naturally things don't work out the way he expected.
  • Also in the "Narnia" sketch, the Nerd has doubts when the White Witch asks him to kill the Jesus-allegory lion. She sighs, then flashes him, causing him to hypnotically pledge to do whatever she wants.
• The Internet Is for Porn: In the "Cyberdyne" skit, while Penny and Brain escape from Terminator uncle Inspector Gadget, she uses her browser to get a map for safety leading to this exchange:
  Penny: I'll plot us a map to safety...Who bookmarked dog-on-dog porn on my browser? (looks at Brain, who smiles) As if I have to ask!
• I Love the Dead:
  • In "How The Nerd Saved Christmas", the Nerd pushes the Jim Carrey version of The Grinch to his death. A member of a circle chanting to exact revenge on him for robbing them finds his corpse, and they agree to rape it.
  • A song about the Boglins has the lyric "They also eat and fuck their dead!"
• Immodest Orgasm: One of the Care Bears, while calling a phone sex line.
  Care Bear: Mmm...you act like you don't have feelings, but I bet deep down, you wanna care, don't you? Tell me you wanna care. Tell me! Tell me you wanna care! Oh yeah, that's it! (shoots out his Care Bear Stare in a giant shower of light and sparkles) Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh!! Oh...oh...
• Impact Silhouette: In the "Cat Court" sketch, Garfield uses Nermal as a Cat Shield against Heathcliff before the latter knocks him through a window to his death, leaving this behind.
• Improbable Weapon User: A TMNT sketch had Shredder killing the Turtles with plastic straws after reading online about how plastic waste kills turtles, ending with him impaling Michaelangelo with an enormous bendy straw and drinking his blood.
• Inconvenient Summons:
  • One skit had Beetlejuice's wife accuse him of liking Lydia more than her since he had to appear when she said his name three times.
  • Pikachu when summoned from his Poké Ball.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Darth Vader, who constantly fails to capture the Rebels, gets relentlessly bullied by the Emperor, and even lacks the ability to Force Choke people.
• Ironic Fear: In the "MasterChef Celebrity Showdown" sketch, SpongeBob SquarePants, Bob Belcher, Alfredo Linguine, and Jerome "Chef McElroy compete on the titular cooking show, where each contestant has to cook with what they fear most. It is revealed in this sketch that SpongeBob is afraid of water.
  Gordon Ramsay: WATER?! You live in the SEA, you festering gutterslop!
  SpongeBob: But I can't swim, Chef...
  Gordon Ramsay: It's "Yes, Chef", you piss-colored tampon alternative!
• I Want My Jetpack: Directly addressed in-universe in a Season 4 sketch. Apparently, the prototype jetpacks would keep catastrophically malfunctioning, so the world's scientists gave up on jetpacks and moved on to making iPods smaller. Which also blew up.

J

• Jerkass: The Hyena, labeled as "Nature's Asshole", who laughs at other people's misfortunes, such as a drowning hippo. Exaggerated when he frames a lion for domestic abuse, and then starts hitting on his traumatized wife.
• Joke and Receive: Upon arriving in Gilead, Bitch Puddin' is incredulous that she's about to become "Ofdylan", on the grounds that the "Dylans" of the world are already locked up at 19 on some very specific criminal charges she pulled out of her ass. The woman dictating is taken aback about hearing how she somehow knows Commander Dylan's "...difficult criminal past."
• Joker Immunity: Subverted with the invokedTrope Namer. In a sketch the Joker lampshades the trope and then Batman testifies against him in court, and the Joker gets the death penalty. During execution by electric chair his head explodes.
• Just Here for the Free Snacks: The characters from Punch-Out!! attend Doc Louis' funeral. While some of them gave a eulogy out of respect, Mike Tyson states that he didn't know who Doc was, only showed up to steal food from the catering table, and dared anyone to try and stop him.

K

• Karmic Death: The Mad Scientist is crushed underneath the television sets he forced the chicken to watch after one of his hands is strapped to the Robot Chicken's torture chair.
• Kicked Out of Heaven: One sketch has a guy who goes into Heaven and looks through a book detailing facts about his life. He gets sent to Hell for using the book to only find disgusting facts like how long would a 6-foot wall made out of all of the poop he's produced run for.
  Satan: 2.7 miles?
  Man: I know!
• Kick the Dog:
  • Dora does this to Swiper when he's freezing to death and she gives him an unloaded pistol.
    Swiper: You bitch.
  • A Wizard of Oz sketch has the Wizard waiting for Dorothy to go home so he can come back and take back the Scarecrow's brain, which he rips out of his head, and the Tin Man's heart, which he retrieves and then eats after compacting the Tin Man into a cube. The Cowardly Lion pleads him that his courage is a concept instead of something tangible, so the Wizard has him made into a rug. At the end when he's told that Glinda has come to see him, he declares his intention to rape her.
• Kubrick Stare: Parodied in the "Just The Good Parts" sketch: a segment of that dealing with The Shining consists entirely of the Kubrick Stares from the film (and a black dude dancing in the kitchen for some reason).

L

• Lampshade Hanging: In one sketch, when the Nerd starts to do his typical drifting off to sleep routine, he quickly wakes up to mention that he might want to get himself tested for narcolepsy.
• Lampshaded the Obscure Reference: A sketch revolving around movie plot twists included a reference to the obscure 1983 slasher movie Sleepaway Camp. The director of Sleepaway Camp shows up at the end, amazed that anyone would decide to spoof the movie, or even remembered that it even existed.
• Laser-Guided Broadcast: Played with in an episode where Lex Luthor uses Superman's hypersonic hearing to broadcast a message only he can hear about a bomb the villain has planted in the city. The joke comes in that while the human population may be ignorant of the broadcast, Metropolis's animal population is acutely aware of what's being said and are taking the opportunity to get the heck out of Dodge.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • The Robot Chicken gets his revenge on the Mad Scientist in the Season 6 opening credits by taking the scientist's body and tossing him onto a table, turning him into a robot, strapping him to the chair, and forcing him to watch the show, just as RC had been forced to do for the first 5 seasons.
  • The Billy Joel parody, which turns "Pianoman" from a humblebrag to an unhinged psychotic rant. Billy gets his comeuppance later when one of the bar patrons he's taunting stabs him to death—and then receives everything he's ever dreamed of.
    Man: POETIC JUSTICE!!!
• Laughing Mad: Laugh-A-Lot Bear welcomes the Care Bear Cousins to a "special happy celebration" and laughs maniacally before killing them all with a single blast from a rainbow cannon.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Mafia-installed union reps are brutally killed... by Bob the Builder and crew.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: The famous gummi bear sketch has the main character, after getting her leg caught in a bear trap, decide to chew it off, which is easier than most examples because she was already edible, to begin with.
• Literally Shattered Lives: In a sketch showing the sun from Teletubbies growing from a baby to a teenager to an old woman and lamenting that she wasted her life watching them, she gloats that she'll get the last laugh when she finally burns out. As soon as she does, the planet freezes over and the Teletubbies promptly freeze to death and shatter.
• Literal Metaphor: The nerd in the season 11 Halloween Episode is killed over and over again by another version of himself that directly calls himself a metaphor. The double states that he represents the Nerd being His Own Worst Enemy due to cowardice and lack of self-confidence. When he kills it, he says that he killed his own insecurity.
• Logic Bomb: A pair of robots planning to kill a human want him to finish going to the bathroom first. He tells them that he can't go if he knows they're going to kill him. A logic paradox kicks in and they explode. Later on, Robin Hood realizes that robbing from the rich and giving to the poor makes the poor rich, which means he has to rob from them and make them poor again, only to give them riches again. The robots explode again.
• Logo Joke: The tenth season highlights the T in "Robot" and EN in "Chicken" with lightning to celebrate that it's the tenth season.
• The Loins Sleep Tonight:
  • In the "Wizards In Heat" sketch, Dumbledore tells Harry, Ron, and Hermione that they can't defeat Pubertus because he's inside of them, just as his own demon, Wandus Limpus, prevents him from having meaningful relationships.
  • Parodied in one sketch with Barbie and Ken:
    Ken: I'm sorry, this has never happened to me before.
    Barbie: Not having a penis has never happened to you before?!
  • Peter Parker's Spider-Sense attempts to warn him of this, but he brushes it off.
• Love Hurts: In "The Time of the Great Pumpkin", Linus Van Pelt summons the titular monster with a Satanic ritual and is promptly killed by it. At his funeral, a tearful Sally Brown declares that she is unable to bear life without her "sweet babboo" and throws herself into his grave, getting Buried Alive with his remains.
• Low-Speed Chase:
  • The baby Terminator and Terminator Puppy battle one out on a toddler-sized fire truck toy.
  • Snail Cop with a megaphone: "YOUUUU ARE GOIIIIIINGGGG TOOOOOO FAAAAAAAAAASST! PULLLLLLLL OVVEERRRRRR IMMMEDIATELYYYYYYYYYYYY!"

M

• Malaproper: The Sailor Earth sketch ends with him accidentally breaking a sewage pipe and flooding a food court with waste, then saying the phrase "Never shit where you eat" as "Always shit where you eat." One of the other Sailor Scouts is quick to point out that that's not the saying.
• Man on Fire:
  • A man's telling of why he converted to Judaism reveals that as a child, he accidentally set his church on fire along with his grandfather.
  • The Fraggle Rock sketch has the Fraggles trying to cross a road, but one of them catches fire when they make two cars crash.
  • When Betty Crocker battles Sara Lee, she finishes her off by setting her head on fire, causing it to quickly burn down to just her skull.
  • The Little Match Girl sketch ends with the girl dousing her father with alcohol and using one of the matches he made her sell to set him on fire as he declares "I never dreamed you would learn to use the matches for your own purposes!"
  • In the Island of Recalled Toys sketch, one of the toys is one of the old Easy-Bake ovens that would get hot enough to burn the user. While singing, it accidentally sets an Elmo toy (which was recalled because it had Hollywood Tourette's) on fire.
  • A sketch based on Sesame Street has this happen to Oscar the Grouch when a group of homeless people start a bonfire in his trash can.
  • In the "MasterChef Celebrity Showdown" sketch, SpongeBob SquarePants is one of the contestants, and has to cook with what he fears most; water. When he accidentally spills some water on himself, fearing he'll drown, he accidentally knocks his pot off the still-lit stove and the flames set him on fire.
    SpongeBob: Aaaah! Fire! It's impossible to put out!
• Maternal Death? Blame the Child!: In their parody of The Sound of Music, Bitch Pudding replaces Maria. Rather than learn the children's names, she gives them all crude nicknames. She calls the youngest "Mommy Killer." Their father just sighs and concedes it's close enough.
• Mauve Shirt: Gary the stormtrooper is given enough characterization that he survives through the entirety of episodes 4 - 6. He avoids Darth Vader's wrath after confessing that it was "Bring Your Daughter To Work" day, and he loves his daughter.
• May–December Romance: A sketch parodying Riverdale has the teenage Archie in a sexual relationship with the original, elderly Mrs. Grundy. The series creator pops up to explain this was his original vision, but the network insisted he give Mrs. Grundy an Age Lift.
• May the Farce Be with You: The series has had three Star Wars specials building on skits from previous episodes.
• Meaningful Name: The Mad Scientist seen in the intro is named Fritz Huhnmörder. His last name means "Chicken Killer" in German.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: A sketch based on The Smurfs (1981) has a flood wiping out the Smurf village, allowing Gargamel to finally achieve his goal of eating the Smurfs. After taking one bite, he finds out that they taste really bad, so he throws them out and orders Chinese food.
• Medium Blending:
  • The 100th episode has Yogi Bear stealing another picnic basket, but the park ranger stops him by transforming into a live-action five-man Super Sentai-esque team. It was a proposal to bring Yogi Bear into Japan. The Japanese execs were not pleased.
  • The "updated" release of 2001: A Space Odyssey simply involves the actress Robin Bain jumping around naked and pretending she's part of the movie.
  • One skit involves the G.I. Joe team taking down the kid who was torturing and injuring them. They shot him in the back with the aid of a tank, but Roadblock voices his concern.
    Roadblock: Did we just kill a kid? I mean, Yo Joe, but I think that was a kid.
• "Meet the Celebrity" Contest: An early sketch had the Nerd win a radio call-in contest and get to choose between a new video game system or a date with Scarlett Johansson. It's an impossible choice, but he opts for the latter. His friends stage a mugging so that he can "save" her, which leads to a Rescue Romance where they fall in love, get married, and have a child. On his deathbed, the Nerd reveals that he faked the fight, and Scarlet reveals "she" was actually a male Celebrity Impersonator.
• Metaphorically True: In the second Star Wars special, Obi-Wan's claim that what he said was true "From a certain point of view" becomes the refrain of a musical number for Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda as they explain themselves to Luke.
• Michael Jackson's Thriller Parody: All the writers are "killed" at the end of season 2, at the start of season 3, one survived. The network renewed the show, causing the others to come back as zombies. He manages to keep them from eating him while his cell phone ringtone plays "Thriller" causing the zombies to dance instead, until he can give them jobs, causing them to lose interest in eating him.
• Mirror Monster: This show likes to spoof the "Bloody Mary" urban legend in its own ways.
  • Saying "ho ho ho" in front of a mirror in a dark bathroom will summon Composite Santa to snatch you away.
  • When three boys each tweet fake news about Donald Trump in front of a bathroom mirror, Donald himself shows up and starts saying fake news about them in return. This rightly freaks them out. The next day at school, all three of them show up for class dressed up and acting like Trump. The entire classroom starts screaming in terror.
  • In one sketch, a girl successfully summons Bloody Mary, who is surprised that it worked and summons Candyman, who then summons Beetlejuice, who tries to summon God to disprove his existence.
• Mistaken for Insane: Zigzagged in "Happy Birthday, Calvin!", where it leaves it ambiguous as to whether Calvin was thought to be insane by his parents when he was actually just pretending that Hobbes was real, only to actually go insane and start truly thinking Hobbes was real when he got shock therapy and pills, or if Calvin was always insane and always thought Hobbes was real.
• Mob-Boss Suit Fitting: This spoof of Star Wars has Emperor Palpatine flipping out at Darth Vader over the phone for losing the Millennium Falcon, only for Alphonso the barber to cheerfully suggest hiring a bounty hunter.
  Palpatine: (hangs up) I just want to sit in a hot bath and cry!
  Alphonso: You're looking for some guys? What about a bounty hunter? You know, a guy who looks for a guy for money! My sister's dating one!
  Palpatine: Alphonso, you're a lifesaver!
• Mocking the Mourner:
  • In "Real Boy, Real Death", after Pinocchio ends up dying of an auto-immune disorder brought on by a peanut allergy, the Blue Fairy callously says at the former's funeral that if Gepetto hadn't wished for Pinocchio to be a real boy, he would have survived as a wooden puppet, before offering half-hearted condolences when Jiminy Cricket clears his throat to subtly rebuke her for her lack of decorum.
  • In the first Star Wars special, when Luke mourns Obi-Wan's recent death, Leia berates him for being hung up over the loss of someone whom he's only known recently while she just watched Alderaan and everyone she knew on it get destroyed by the Death Star.
• Mood-Swinger: In "Dolly Hates You Too", a young girl says to her father, "I hate you, and Dolly hates you too" after being told to go to sleep. The father violently tears Dolly to shreds while screaming insults at her and impaling her severed head on the bedpost before lovingly tucking his traumatized daughter into bed.
• Most Writers Are Male: Go ahead and compare the amount of Transformers, G.I. Joe, ThunderCats, Masters of the Universe, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sketches to the amount of My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, Rainbow Brite, Barbie, Jem, and Care Bears sketches.
• Motor Mouth: Micro-Machines Man shows off the product... and tosses in some info about his life.
• Multiboobage: In "Kramer vs. Showgirls", an Enterprise crewmember is enticed by the description of alien women with ten breasts apiece.
• Mundane Utility: When Blanka's cellphone runs out of energy in the middle of a business call, he charges it up with his own electricity.
• Mushroom Samba: Santa ends up eating pot cookies in "Freshly Baked: The Robot Chicken Santa Claus Pot Cookie Freakout Special: Special Edition", and comes to reflect upon his life from the ensuing trip.
• Musical Number Annoyance: In the Bitch Pudding Special, she gets annoyed when the Shlorps sing their "Get To Know You" song. When they finish, she grabs their banjo and sings "Shut The [Bleep] UUUUUP!"
• Must Be Invited: One sketch has a vampire get around this weakness by impaling a man with a harpoon gun and dragging him out of his home.
• My Future Self and Me: A parody of Star Trek (2009), where Old Spock meets Young Spock, and tells him of certain future events that would help him avoid certain injuries and other minor inconveniences. Other Spocks from the future show up to warn Spock about other things that will happen, including one Spock who had a sex change. (Old Spock changed back because he didn't like it, though not without consequences). When Spock asks why all these Spocks are showing up, it's revealed that this is the only point in time when they could all meet up to give Ancient Spock a surprise 2000th birthday. He nearly dies from a heart attack.
• My Little Panzer:
  • A kid playing with his Bop-It is quite surprised to learn that he transformed it into a sniper rifle. The toy insisted on him loading the gun with the bullets supplied inside the box, had him memorize a target that he was assigned to kill, and goaded the kid into pulling the trigger. At the trial, the kid testified against the toy and sent him to prison, where he was immediately raped.
  • One sketch features the Island of Recalled Toys, populated by some infamous real-life examples such as a Lawn Dart and an old Easy-Bake oven.
• My Little Phony: The Parody Commercial sketch advertising My Little Pony: Apocalypse Ponies, a toyline modeled after the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Peter Parker's spider-sense ends up tingling just for the most mundane of reasons, including trying to tell him his cereal's milk was spoiled, that he was about to step into a water puddle, and he was suffering from erectile dysfunction. A doctor later tells him that it was a brain tumor that was causing it and Peter immediately tells him to remove it, but he ignores his spider-sense frantically going off to warn him that the tumor is inoperable and dies during surgery.

N

• Named After the Injury: One skit has some television heroes conduct a race in their iconic vehicles. Two of the participants are Ponch and Jon from CHiPs, aboard their police motorcycles. Ponch gets his head pulled off by a grapple from the Batmobile (Robin needs to practice his aim), but this has no detrimental effect on his driving. In fact, he wins the race, for which "Headless Ponch" receives a gift basket.
• Never Heard That One Before: Cheetara's reaction to guys trying to flirt with her using "pussy" double entendres.
• Newhart Phonecall:
  • In a Star Wars sketch, Palpatine is on the phone with Vader when Vader tells him that the Death Star blew up. Palpatine gets angry with Vader, making him cry over losing Padmé.
  • Also used in a skit where Dr. Claw learns that his cat is dying of cancer.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: If the Mad Scientist hadn't equipped the Chicken with so many cybernetic weapons, he wouldn't have been able to escape, much less kill his former captor. Heck, the opening even shows the Mad Scientist finding the chicken dead on the road. He'd still be dead if the Mad Scientist hadn't revived him in the first place.
• No Ending: Some sketches simply end without exactly providing a payoff.
• No Endor Holocaust: Averted with the titular theory in the DVD of the second Star Wars special.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Popeye to Wimpy when he didn't pay him on Tuesday for his hamburger.
• No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: In one of the Star Wars skits, the heroes are forced to eat dinner with Darth Vader and Boba Fett after Lando betrays them. The atmosphere at the meal is tense at best.
• No-Sell: Bitch Pudding is completely immune to a ghost's attempts to haunt her house, eventually insulting him so much that he leaves.
• Not Allowed to Grow Up: A The Simpsons sketch lampshades this, at least for Bart, wherein he writes repeatedly on the chalkboard "Why aren't I aging? Good God, am I a monster?".
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: A sketch involving the Airwolf helicopter crashing into a mountain while acting as a flying ambulance in "Caffeine-Induced Aneurysm" ends with the message "F***ING GOOGLE IT" to assure audiences that it actually happened. Followed with the same for the crimes of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers "actor"^note He was actually a non-credited extra Skylar Deleon.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Lampshaded in "Smurfatar" over the distinct lack of nipples on Smurfette when Garglesmurf sees her bathing.
  "I don't know what you're censoring. Smurfs don't have nipples... Not arousing."
• Non-Standard Character Design: Most of the train characters from the Thomas and Friends spoof "Blow Some Steam" use the toy models from Bachmann Trains, with the exception of Rosie, who is depicted with a Trackmaster/Tomy toy as Bachmann didn't create Rosie yet until 5 years after the short was made.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: During the DC Comics special, the audience is reminded that an alien squirrel Green Lantern named B'Dg, a douchebag with no fashion sense named Firestorm, and Mr. Banjo actually exist, all while the show mocks them right in front of their faces. Firestorm doesn't take too kindly to it.
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend: Martian Manhunter's invisible sidekick, "Martian Boyhunter".
• Not Where They Thought: In "Happy Birthday, Calvin!", Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes gets sent to an asylum but thinks it's Mars, due to either having been born Ax-Crazy or because his pills and shock therapy drove him insane.
• No, You: Subverted in the "There Can Be Only One Lohan" sketch: Duff tells Lohan "Your album sucks!" and Lohan retorts "My album sucks!" before landing a killing blow.

O

• Obituary Montage: One such montage cycles past two cast members who apparently died improbable deaths. Seth Green is disappointed in how lame and short the montage was and starts murdering other cast members to improve it.
• Oblivious Janitor Cut: Made into a Running Gag in the Star Wars specials.
• Oblivious Mockery: Combined with Actually, I Am Him in the DC Comics special—Sinestro draws "Leonard Snart" for the Legion of Doom's Secret Santa, thinks he's the mailroom clerk with body odor, and starts expostulating about it.
  Captain Cold: [standing behind him with the name-drawing hat] I'm Leonard Snart!
• Off with His Head!:
  • One sketch has the Cryptkeeper being Driven to Suicide after he loses his latest job and his wife walks out on him. He hangs himself, and his head pops right off.
  • In one Scooby-Doo sketch, a muscular Daphne rips off the Monster of the Week's head, pulls it out of his mask, and nonchalantly says that she accurately predicted it would be the butler.
  • Much like one of the deaths on 1000 Ways to Die, the Betty Spaghetty sketch in "Molly Lucero in: Your Friend's Boob" shows why it's better to simply wait for rescue if you're in a stalled elevator than attempt to escape; Betty tries to use her elastic powers to get through the doors, only for the elevator to immediately regain power. Instead of being crushed to death, The Stinger of the episode shows her getting decapitated.
• Only Sane Man: Despite a clean handicap indication, the kid from the Cookies sketch is this. When it's announced that the cookies are poisoned, look at said kid at the right closely: He's the only one who doesn't take a bite.
• Off the Chart: There's a quick take of a boardroom with a chart like this, going off the bottom, and a guy with a pointer panicking: "What did I tell you? This is bad!!!"
• Of Corpse He's Alive: A Hannah Montana sketch had Miley get shot by an overzealous fan and her friends having to pretend that she's still alive, until her father reveals her secret identity to her class and her friends throw her corpse out the window. It then turns out the whole thing was a threat to the actual Miley Cyrus of how the show would've ended if she let herself get pregnant during production.
• Oh, Crap!: In the Gooey Louie sketch in season 10, the guy he's sitting next to has this reaction when the former decides to watch Up for the first time, unaware of its Downer Beginning.
• Older Than They Look: Twilight's Edward tells Bella that's he's really 109 years old, despite how young he looks. Bella soon finds out that he acts like a typical old person, including driving 30 miles under the speed limit with your right blinker on, and being completely behind the times when it comes to knowing how modern society works.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: In a short parodying Final Fantasy VII, the main characters run a fast food restaurant. When Sephiroth enters the room, his theme is parodied with the chanting being "Hamburger! Hamburger!"
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: One example involves a new member getting inducted into G.I. Joe, and ruining first impressions by tripping over. He is mercilessly mocked by the crew and given the nickname "Fumbles". This backfired horribly, because after too much abuse he ends up joining Cobra, and turns out to be an ace sniper.
• The Other Darrin: invoked The Harry Potter film series' having to recast Dumbledore was parodied in the "Pubertus" sketch, where Dumbledore is suddenly a young, hip black man.
  Harry: Who are you?
  Dumbledore: Aw, Harry, it's me! Dumbledo'!
  Harry: But Dumbledore isn't-
  Dumbledore: Listen, I'm a different actor in every movie!
• Overly Long Gag:
  • Once the second season started, the show switched from "machine-gun comedy" to "drag the jokes out as long as humanly possible".
  • "Fridge Smell" starts off with Paul and John from The Green Mile literally walking the Green mile. For the entire episode, it shows them walking an entire mile in a small box while the rest of the episode played out.
  • Darth Vader's "I've altered the deal, pray I don't alter it any further".
• Our Nudity Is Different: A Rescue Rangers skit plays on the fact that the male characters are 'clothed' in just a jacket or a shirt, but Gadget is 'nude' when she wears the same thing.

P

• Parental Favoritism: Odin's parenting is most inequitable. In this skit, he even says "I love my son Thor and not my son Loki" to Loki's face.
• Parody Assistance: The show goes to great lengths to get actors just to sometimes participate in one skit.
  • Billy Dee Williams, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Ahmed Best, and even George Lucas himself all contributed to numerous Star Wars sketches.
  • The main cast from the Scooby-Doo live-action films are always brought in to voice their respective characters.
  • Frank Welker playing Megatron, Soundwave, and Doctor Claw.
  • Cree Summer reprised her role as Penny for an Inspector Gadget / Terminator 2 crossover skit.
  • Jon Berg, who did much of the stop motion effects for the original Star Wars films, did the stop motion animation for the Nerd in his Tauntaun costume in the second Star Wars special.
  • Michelle Trachtenberg was brought in just to do a Harriet the Spy skit in which Harriet takes on the role of Edward Snowden's discovery of the US government spying on its citizens.
  • The cast of That '70s Show voiced their own counterparts in "That '00s Show."
• Parody Magic Spell: Frequent in this Harry Potter parody. When Snape tries to seduce Hermione in his "magical jacuzzi", he calls it forth with the spell, "Barry Whiteus, candlelightus, girl-exciteus!" She dispels his lecherous advance with the counterspell, "Pedophilius repelus!"
• Papa Wolf: The neighbor in this Grinch spoof. If you steal his kid's iPad, he will pray to the spirit of vengeance to come out of hell and rip your guts out with a spear.
• Partially-Concealed-Label Gag: A variant happens in a sketch where the Wonder Pets rescue a baby cow. They think the cow is sad and bring him to a nearby building labelled "Laughterhouse" to cheer him up. However, the owner of the building then arrives and comments that he forgot to paint the letter "S" on his slaughterhouse.
• The Peeping Tom: Ben Tennyson gets a spy-glass for his 14th birthday. His "real" present was the ability to peep at the naked girl showering next door.
• Perpetual Smiler: The scientist never stops smiling, even when he's about to get killed by falling televisions.
• Perspective Flip: The Star Wars sketches are often told from the perspective of Emperor Palpatine.
• Pimp Duds: The Beanie Baby Pimp skit deals with a man who after investing all of his life savings into Beanie Babies (not knowing that they were worthless) soon became a beggar forced to wear a coat made of Beanie Babies. This gets him confused for a pimp, because last all the streetwalkers heard Beanie Babies were incredibly valuable, which he leverages into becoming an actual pimp.
• Pink Is Erotic: In Voltron Boner, Pink Lion is one of the members of Voltron and the vehicle is in a phallic position. The vehicle is colored pink and fires acidic plasma, which the villain learns while giving Voltron oral sex.
• Place Worse Than Death: When the Care Bears ethnically cleanse Care-A-Lot of the Carebear Cousins, the great Cloud Keeper in the Sky turns the place into New Jersey. New Jersey's governor is rather proud of his state's history.
• Plane Awful Flight: They depict B.A. Baracus' dislike of flying through a flashback. He was all happy and eager to take his first flight. The pilot commended him for going all alone, moments before mentioning to the passengers that they discovered that all the in-flight meals had gone bad, and all the bathrooms were occupied. Cue everyone trying and failing to hold in their bowel movements, and one severely traumatized B.A.
• Planet of Steves: A sketch based on The Adventures of Pete & Pete has a mass amount of people frantically declaring themselves Pete, culminating in a giant Pete being struck by a Bolt of Divine Retribution by God, otherwise known as Pete, Destroyer of Petes.
• Pluto Is Expendable:
  • A scientist announces that Pluto is no longer a planet, then goes mad with power and starts coming up with many other ridiculous declarations, such as that the letter A is no longer a vowel, Mt. Fuji is no longer a mountain, and bullets are no longer lethal. Unfortunately for him, he turns out to only have the power to make these decisions in theory.
  • And also, when Earth asks Pluto if he feels he's been rehabilitated, he just faces everything with a grin and says, "This room must be huge!"
• Poetic Serial Killer: There's a sketch that parodies Se7en= using The Smurfs, with Jokey Smurf as the serial killer. Baker Smurf was baked alive in an oven, Lazy Smurf was killed in his recliner, and so on. Chronic Masturbator Smurf was found with his wang chopped off and stuffed up his Smurfhole.
• Police Code for Everything: In a sketch based on Beauty and the Beast Belle calls the cops to report her kidnapping. When they arrive the Beast defends himself and the cops call in a "Code 4-5-9: Giant hamster throwing household items."
• Politically Correct History: Painfully averted in the Robin Hood sketch where the narrator details that the evil King John was forgiven by King Richard, that King Richard died a stupid and avoidable death and King John was a Karma Houdini whose only punishment was dying of dysentery.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis: The Nerd recognizes the TARDIS and jumps at the chance to become the Doctor's companion, despite openly saying that he's never seen the show, yet feels he's absorbed enough knowledge about it through nerd osmosis.
• Power Perversion Potential: When the nerd becomes the new Green Lantern member, Kilowog teaches him that his powers are limited only by his imagination. He summons Selena Gomez to start slapping Kilowog, so he summons a girl in return. Cue the summoning of lawn chairs by both of them while using the rings to start making both girls strip and make out with each other.
  • During "Bring Your Sidekick to Work Day", Kid Flash used his Super-Speed to strip Wonder Woman.
• Prehensile Hair: In The Cabin in the Woods skit in "Immortal", one of the cursed items in the cabin is a copy of Watchmen, which when picked up will cause Alan Moore to appear and attack the characters with his beard.
• Pulled from Your Day Off: One episode had a Final Fantasy VII parody set at a fast food joint. Sephiroth the manager arrives, complete with Ominous Latin Chanting, and tells Cloud that he needs to come in on Saturday, but Cloud has Lakers tickets! In the ensuing battle, Sephiroth hits Cloud with the Unpaid Overtime attack and Cloud levels the restaurant with a meteor.
• Pulling Your Child Away: A sketch centered around a suicidal man on a dunk tank-like game (with the difference being a noose around his neck) who tries to encourage people to play. A child tries to approach him, but his mother pulls him away, much to the man's chagrin.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: A recurring sketch parodying This! Is! Sparta!, starting with "This. Isn't. FUNNY!!", regarding Two and a Half Men. The episode also featured Leonidas shouting at other people in this manner, usually kicking them afterward for no reason. The kick was averted when he shouted "This... is... SCRUMPTIOUS!" when having dinner with his family.
• Pungeon Master: The Crypt Keeper is frustrated that the role of "spooky franchise full of puns" has been taken by Monster High.
• Pushed at the Monster:
  • In a sketch involving Scooby-Doo investigating Crystal Lake, they naturally run into Jason after the split up. When he confronts Fred and Daphne, Fred pushes Daphne into Jason for him to kill while he escapes. Scooby himself does this when Jason stabs at the barrels Shaggy and he were hiding in and manages to hit Shaggy. He tries to run, but Jason grabs his tail before he can get far.
  • The season 3 premiere involved Seth Green, who was murdered in the previous season, and several regulars of the series coming back as zombies and attacking the studios. When Co-Creator Mathew Senreich and producer and (at the time) head of Adult Swim, Mike Lazzo, get stuck at an elevator with the zombies closing in on them, Mat pushes Mike into the crowd to buy himself time for the elevator to come.
  • In the Archie Comics/Final Destination sketch, when Death personally comes after Archie, Reggie, Betty and Veronica, Veronica offers Death a large sum of money as long he spares her and kills the others. Death accepts.

Q

• Quarter Hour Short: Normal episodes of the show run 11 minutes, though specials are sometimes 22 and the third Star Wars special is 44 minutes long.

R

• Rape and Revenge: Occurs a few times.
  • When Scarecrow, Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion go to prison for murdering the Wicked Witch of the West^note in the sketch they're covering for Dorothy Gale the Scarecrow is raped by his cellmate at the encouragement of the guards. When his rapist walks by and brags about it to his friends, Scarecrow snaps and proceeds to disembowel the man with his bare hands. When he's executed for it, he shows no remorse.
  • One sketch is a commercial where a Mountain Man uses Bearalis, a roofie designed for bears, to drug and rape a bear. The side effects listed include "sudden death from an inadequately tranquilized bear".
  • When Huckleberry Pie steals Black Cherry Pie's Black Cherry, she and Strawberry Shortcake assume the Evil Purple Pieman is responsible. So they burn down his house, and when he rushes out they stone him to death and dump him in a shallow grave.
• Rapid-Fire Comedy: No sketch in the show (originally) lasted longer than two or three minutes, and many of them were just a few seconds long. Case in point: one sketch of a kung-fu Benjamin Franklin. The entire sketch.
  Benjamin: "HA! HIYAH! For America!"
• Read the Freaking Manual: In a Street Fighter II sketch, Ryu specifically wrote a manual for all the characters, giving detailed schedules of which character was to fight who. Ryu's fighting Sagat, who gives every excuse he can to claim he never got the manual right in front of Ryu. Guile calls up and complains about how E. Honda's stage is a men's bathhouse, and he doesn't want to see everyone's sushi rolls hanging out. Blanka complains about the hotel he wants to check into not allowing his dog. Ken complains about how his opponent is 20 minutes late. He thought he was fighting E. Honda, but Ryu corrects him by saying he's fighting a Honda. Ken ends up finding the joy in destroying a car anyway. M. Bison somehow found his way into Q*bert, though he has no problems with casually punching out the titular character.
• The Real Spoofbusters: MythBusters' Jamie and Adam investigate the myth of whether or not masturbation causes blindness by driving to a kid's house in Ecto-1 and catching him like a ghost.
• Reality Warper: When the crew of the show is trying to find a way to get their show invokedUn-Canceled, they find that Seth MacFarlane is capable of changing reality by way of Family Guy style Flashback Twists. As an example:
  Seth: Robot Chicken? I haven't heard about that show since it got renewed.
  Executive: Robot Chicken's renewed. [stamp]
  • They can't convince him to "offhandedly refer to the time we all ended world hunger", though, probably because he hadn't heard a more stupid idea since "Scooby Jew".
• Really Gets Around: Captain Kirk learns that he has Class-3 Space Herpes, and needs to go tell everyone he's slept with in the last 5 years that they may have been infected. In the end though, Kirk wonders who gave him the disease in the first place. Afterward, a tribble tells him that they need to talk.
  Kirk: Scottie, here are the coordinates of every place my wang has made contact.
  Scottie: [looks at the list] Oh, me mother's house!?
  Kirk: I wouldn't kiss her on the mouth from now on. Or the butt. You want to slide those knobs there, or do you want me to keep going? [beamed out]
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Dark Meat, the Evil Counterpart to the Robot Chicken, has red feathers and black robotic enhancements.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning:
  Kid: Mommy, there's a monster in my closet!
  Mom: I know...
• Reincarnated as a Non-Humanoid: One sketch features a man named Doug who gets killed in an archery accident. He gets sent to Purgatory, where he has to spin the Wheel of Re-incarnation to find out what he will be reincarnated as. Doug spins the wheel and hopes he will land on Keira Knightley's Underwear, which he finds out is a popular choice. Much to his dismay, he ends up getting reincarnated as a Huggytime Bear named Doug-A-Lot Bear. At the end of the sketch, it is revealed that Doug merely had a Near-Death Experience.
• Reboot Snark: A sketch from "May Cause the Exact Thing You're Taking This to Avoid" has a Disney executive in the year 2063 announcing that the live-action remake of A Goofy Movie was a success, meaning they've officially run out of animated movies to remake. The board is then approached by Walt Disney's frozen head, who says there's one more animated film of his that hasn't been remade yet: The Story of Menstruation.
• Red Shirt: A Red Shirt gets his revenge upon Kirk, Spock, Bones, and Uhura. The Enterprise blows up because Kirk traded all the dilithium crystals for holographic pornography, and there was only enough energy left to transport an away team. Toby the red shirt points out that he has to go because you just gotta have a red shirt. After the others realize that they may have to resort to cannibalism to survive, on behalf of all the red shirts who died before him, he's proud to announce he was the only one who brought a gun.
  • Another one wasn't so lucky courtesy of Good News, Bad News.
• Reference Overdosed: Pretty much the point of the series.
• Rejected Marriage Proposal: Played for comedy in the sketch "A Modest Proposal", where a guy attempts to propose to his girlfriend on top of a stopped Ferris Wheel. She rejects him, leading to an awkward silence, as the two are now stuck together on the not-moving Ferris Wheel.
• Relax-o-Vision: A woman imagines herself dancing with a pony from My Little Pony, only to be snapped back to reality to find a prostitute who's delaying having sex with a donkey. She does the deed, but the viewers go back to seeing flowers being thrown against her face.
  • "Anakin's Happy Place" parodies the infamous Anakin kills the Baby Jedis scene by having Anakin imagining himself cutting down sunflowers instead. Then, Padmé finds the "fresh cut sunflowers" Anakin left for her.
• Replacement Goldfish: One Alvin and the Chipmunks sketch reveals that the band members have been replaced with identical chipmunks many times over, as real chipmunks only live for an average of 3 years. At a press meeting, Dave stresses that they're just rodents and unashamedly admits to keeping a crate of backup chipmunks in his Jeep.
• Ret-Gone: Happens to Skeletor in one sketch where he goes back in time (in the process accidentally giving himself a baby body) to kill King Randor and prevent He-Man's birth. He's successful, but also kills Randor's mistress, who was Skeletor's mother, resulting in his own erasure.
• The Reveal: The audience in front of the blond, Stepford Smiler Bloopers host? There's not a single person in the seats; just monstrous disembodied voices, laughing and taunting him.
• Riddled and Rattled: The "Little Iron Man" sketch features a young boy pretending to be Iron Man and wandering into the middle of a battle. The real Iron Man gets knocked away, so the rest of the Avengers think the boy is him. Giant Man tosses him into the air to distract the giant robot they're fighting, which results in the boy being suspended in the air as he gets filled with machine gun fire until it runs out of bullets, at which point the boy falls into the intake port and destroys the machine. One Tony Stark returns to battle, everyone realizes what had just happened.
• Ridiculous Exchange Rates: One sketch poofed The Six Million Dollar Man with the Six Million Peso Man (who upon being completed immediately disappears past the US border).
  Mexican Government Man: "That's 283 American dollars we won't see again..."
• Road-Sign Reversal: In the spoof of The Cannonball Run, Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane does this to trick "them Duke Boys" as an homage to The Dukes of Hazzard. Unlike the original, this causes them to have a fatal accident.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: In the 100th episode, the Robot Chicken finally escapes. The Mad Scientist wasn't pleased about this, so he kidnapped the chicken's wife and forced her to start watching the show in the same manner that he did for the last 5 years. On his way up through the castle, he fights nearly every character who had ever shown up in the series (killing off most of them in the process) before finally confronting the Mad Scientist himself.
• Roger Rabbit Effect:
  • Used to insert Playboy model Robin Bain into 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  • A sketch that parodies the Boglins have the creatures themselves as live-action puppets, but the rest of the characters are stop-motion as usual.
• Rule of Three:
  • In the first DC special, Bane breaks Batman's back across three sketches, then at the episode's climax breaks it again, which Batman lampshades.
    Batman: It's Rule of Three, asshole, not Four!
  • Another Batman-related sketch features Two-Face getting his face burnt a second time, turning him into Three-Face, who replaces his coin with a three-sided dice that he uses to decide if he kills Batman, lets him live, or they have hot chocolate together. He gets burnt a third time and becomes Four-Face, who makes Batman draw straws to decide if he lives, he dies, he gets bleach thrown on his costume, or they have hot chocolate together. He draws the hot chocolate straw and accidentally burns Harvey's face a fourth time, and the sketch ends.
  • One sketch features an inventor building a time machine and intending to go back in time to see a T. rex. He instead ends up accidentally getting shot during the presidential assassinations of Lincoln and JFK and the attempted assassination of Reagan, then when he finally does meet a T. rex, it pulls out a handgun and shoots him again.
• Running Gag: Several.
  • The Humping Robot.
  • The show getting cancelled at the end of each season, and then renewed at the start of the following season.
  • BACK FROM THE DEAD, ASSHOLES!
  • During the end credits, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mila Kunis, and Shannon Gold get quite a few interesting roles, such as Arah-say Eller-gay, Ila-may Unis-kay, and Pig Latin Translator, respectively. It varies between episodes.
  • When Snoop Dogg makes the scene.
    Snoop: Hey y'all, snibbity diggity! [gets mauled]
  • WHAT A TWEEST!
  • People receiving a "Shark BJ" in Season 8.
  • Composite Santa refers to everything used to kill him as his only weakness.
  • All throughout the DC Comics special:
    • Lex Luthor keeps getting smacked in the head with a dodgeball.
    • Batman lampshades the Rule of Three after Bane sneaks up behind him and breaks his back for a fourth time.
      RULE OF THREE, ASSHOLE, NOT FOUR!
    • Two-Face decides EVERYTHING he does in life with the flip of a coin. Flip a coin, punch himself out.
    • Superman kissing villains to make them forget why they're villains.
    • "BLAM! You all get a taste of the Bitch Pudding!"
• Runs with Scissors: In one episode featured Cobra try to ape G.I. Joe's And Knowing Is Half the Battle segments. Storm Shadow was going to do a "don't run with scissors message," but he pointed out that he ran with katanas all the time. Then a kid on set runs with scissors, trips and falls on them. Storm Shadow promptly apologized.

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