Someone's In the Kitchen! is a point-and-click kitchen simulator published by Dreamworks Interactive in 1996. In the game are various talking appliances who help you make foods for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert under the guidance of your chef's assistant, a talking chef's hat. As you go through the recipes a variety of goofy things happen including the ingredients doing small skits and the appliances getting into arguments, much to the chagrin of the chef's hat. After the food is made, it is then eaten by the eternally hungry dog Taste Test IV. The game also has an experiment mode where you can mess with ingredients to make your own recipes and discover new recipes to put into the cookbook. The cast noticeably includes some big-name voice actors such as Rob Paulsen, Tress MacNeille, Jeff Bennett, Ryan O'Donohue, and Mary Kay Bergman.
Not to be confused with the folk song I've Been Working on the Railroad, though the title was probably inspired by the lyrics.
Someone's In The Kitchen provides examples of:
- All There in the Manual: Despite being the character you interact with the most, the chef's hat name is never given in-game; the instruction manual reveals their name is "C.A.", short for "Chef's Assistant".
- Ambiguous Gender: The gender of C.A. the chef's hat is never specified, though their voice actor is male.
- Big Eater: Taste Test IV the dog is always ready to eat something.
- Cool Old Guy: Old Smokey the stove is a grumpy but friendly old appliance who treats both the player and Toby the toaster as if they were his grandkids.
- Deadpan Snarker: The chef's hat can deal out some good snark when the appliances get on their nerves. Old Smokey isn't a slouch either, like dryly saying "Later that same day" when the player needs to cook something for 45 minutes.
- Developer's Foresight: If you make something disgusting in the experiment mode, Taste Test will notice and his normally exuberant animation afterward will be different. These animations include smashing his food bowel angrily with a hammer, dramatically choking, and burying himself alive.
- Haute Cuisine Is Weird: Parodied with Sir Eaton Scraps the waste basket who speaks like a prim and polite gentlemen... And views all the trash he eats as fine dining.
- Holiday Mode: A minor example, when the player enters the game on a certain date the appliances will sing a song relating to it. This includes the player's birthday since they enter it in when they make a profile.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Nuke the microwave and Old Smokey the oven are the two most abrasive of the appliances, they even have a rivalry with one another, but they are ultimately friendly and helpful.
- Kid-Appeal Character: Toby the toaster is a peppy and rascally kid and the only appliance who isn't an adult.
- Kindhearted Simpleton: Blub the sink is a dim-witted but friendly sort.
- Large Ham: Blendolini the blender rarely speaks anything lower than a joyful shout and is quick to start singing.
- Lethal Chef: The player can become this in the experiment mode if you combine foods wrong. You can also intentionally be this by using gross ingredients exclusive to the mode, like dead bugs, worms, and a dissected frog.
- Nice Girl: Mother Chill is a warm and kind fridge who is happy to supply whatever you need.
- No Ending: While there is an end goal of sorts, making every recipe in the cookbook and finding all the secret recipes in the experiment mod, the game does not point out your completion and there is no ending to speak of.
- Only Sane Man: C.A. the chef's hat. They often get exasperated with how eccentric the rest of the kitchen is.
- Surfer Dude: Nuke the microwave wears big sunglasses and likes to put "dude" at the end of all of his sentences. When he sings his theme song it even has a surfing feel to it.
- Temporary Bulk Change: One of the animations Taste Test IV has when he eats something he likes is suddenly getting extremely fat and letting out a satisfied burp.
- The Trickster: Toby the toaster has elements of this. He will sometimes startle everyone with a loud noise to mess with them. Also unlike Nuke and Blendolini who sound concerned when the player makes something disgusting for Taste Test IV, Toby gets mischievously excited.
- Those Two Guys: Rhodo and Dendron, two potted plants who hang from the ceiling.
