Trivia / Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?

• Bad Export for You: The show was not treated well when it aired in Canada. It only aired on Teletoon for a month and at 7AM on weekends, a time almost no kid would be awake.
• Executive Meddling: Robot's much-loved Apple Speak voice was replaced by Bobby Block in later episodes and dubbed into the earlier ones because Cartoon Network felt the former "wasn't Hollywood enough."
• Inspiration for the Work: On Greg Miller's Twitter page, he cites Chibi Maruko-chan for inspiring the general art direction and framing of reaction shots. He specifically appreciates "the idea of characters turning white when they're overcome with emotion", and "a dramatic moment or intense emotion [...] emphasized by a graphic BG change or color shift on the characters."
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • The 13 U.S.-aired episodes were available on Cartoon Network Video back in 2008, but they since got taken down and will probably never make an appearance again (the episodes didn't even appear when Cartoon Network was celebrating its 20th birthday and they put all of its classic shows on their website. Even Time Squad — another early 2000s Cartoon Cartoon that had a robot and was Screwed by the Network for little to no reason — aired episode clips during that time) unless the channel feel generous and puts it on its retro channel (Boomerang) in a few years. The fact that Cartoon Network hasn't aired the series at all since The Cartoon Cartoon Show and Top 5 were cancelled in 2008 doesn't help matters either.
  • Season one originally had Robot voiced by a text-to-speech program, only for every episode to be redubbed by Bobby Block when he was cast in the role for season two. The original versions of these episodes have never officially reappeared in any form since then, resulting in VCR recordings of them becoming highly coveted among animation fans.
  • As of 2023, the entire series is on HBO Max, but in Latin America. At least it comes with its original English audio.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Robot's synthesized Macintosh voice was eventually replaced by human actor Bobby Block. The season one episodes with the synthesized voice of Robot Jones were even redubbed with Bobby Block's performance.
  • In the pilot, the bus driver, Mr. McMcMc the math teacher, and Principal Madman were voiced by Maurice LaMarche, but in the actual series Mr. McMcMc is voiced by Rip Taylor and the bus driver and Principal Madman were both voiced by Jeff Bennett.
  • Dee Bradley Baker initially voiced Socks, Mitch, and the Yogman Twins in the pilot, but the actual series replaced him with Kyle Sullivan as Socks, Gary LeRoi Gray as Mitch, and Josh Peck and Austin Stout as the Yogman Twins.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Until Word of God said otherwise, it was commonly believed that Robot's Apple Speak voice was replaced by Bobby Block because the voice was used without Apple's permission, and they threatened to sue Cartoon Network.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: In 2019, Turner/Warner Bros. began to globally block episodes of the series on YouTube. Turner not only blocked full episodes, they globally blocked anything related to this series, even if the said videos don’t contain any episode footage or even images for that matter, and if the video falls under fair use. So much for the show's title being appropriate nowadays!
  • As of 2024, this, alongside other forgotten Cartoon Network originals, has been toned down and some episodes can be unofficially viewed on the site again.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Ever wonder why Principal Madman resembles Adolf Hitler? According to Greg Miller, Principal Madman was created with the intent of being voiced by Les Lye from "You Can't Do That on Television", as he played a teacher named "Mr. Schidtler" who also happens to resemble Hitler. Lye was unable to take the role because he couldn't commute from Canada.
  • Miller has also stated that he envisioned the series ending with Robot Jones rallying an army of robots into annihilating the human race (prompting the question in the show's title) and that such a scenario would still be the canon ending if the show wasn't canceled.

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