Robot Chicken / Tropes S to Z

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

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S

• Safe Under Blankets: In one sketch, a couple of monsters sarcastically lament that they can't get a kid under the covers... and then bust out the baseball bats.
• Self-Made Orphan: In the "Happy Birthday, Calvin" skit, Calvin's parents are concerned about his mental health and try to make him stop believing Hobbes is real, with electroshock therapy and pills. Hobbes comes back to life when they aren't looking, and, well...
  Hobbes: Calvin, your parents don't believe...we have to kill them. (pulls out a chainsaw)
• The Scottish Trope: One sketch features a young Seth Green acting in a Burger King commercial and repeatedly flubbing his line, his attempts getting increasingly less coherent as he takes more bites from the Whoppers he's provided until he gets sick and throws up since he declined the director's suggestion to spit his bites into a bucket after every take. In the present day, he can't hear or even say the word "cheeseburger" without throwing up.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: When the Archie characters are dying off in the style of the Final Destination movies, Veronica pays the Grim Reaper a million dollars in exchange for not killing her, and he accepts.
• Screw Yourself: Discussed in one sketch starring a pair of Clone Troopers, one of which asks his partner if masturbation is gay, since them two having sex would technically be that. Said partner states that masturbation isn't on its own but even if them two doing it with consent counted as gay, who cares?
• Secretary of Evil: Parodied in the Star Wars sketches, where Palpatine and Vader often consult with Sheila, who seems to be their shared secretary. She's also apparently married to the bounty hunter Dengar.
• The Secret of Long Pork Pies: The sketch titled "Krabby Patties" involves a SpongeBob SquarePants parody where SpongeBob finds out that Mr. Krabs was using crab meat as an ingredient for the Krabby Patty. When he tells it to everyone in the Krusty Krab, they beat up Mr. Krabs in absolute anger.
• Secret Santa: The Legion of Doom holds one in the DC Comics special. Luthor has to make a rule against exploding toys, and Toyman complains that he's being persecuted.
• Self-Deprecation:
  • Co-Head Writer Doug Goldstein likes to put himself down in a few of the sketches, portraying himself as a loser and Butt-Monkey who's not as popular as Seth and Matt.
  • The entire premise of the show is that the Robot Chicken is being forced to watch the sketches, implying they're not something anyone would watch willingly. In the episode where the Mad Scientist's son kidnaps all the living presidents, he tortures them by making them watch the show.
• Series Fauxnale: Every season actually ends in this manner. Season 5's actually takes the cake, with the Robot Chicken escaping and killing nearly every reoccurring character in the series.
• Shapeshifter Weapon: In the Season 5 finale the Robot Chicken reveals his bionic arm is capable of forming whatever weapon he wants: sword, hammer, fist, etc.
• Short Title: Long, Elaborate Subtitle: The 2017 Christmas episode is "Freshly Baked: The Robot Chicken Santa Claus Pot Cookie Freakout Special: Special Edition"
• Shout-Out: Maybe not the most affectionate ones, sure...
  • The most affectionate, probably, being the end credits music, a chorus of chickens singing "The Gonk" from Dawn of the Dead (1978) soundtrack. The Star Wars specials have the chicken chorus singing the film series' standard end credits theme.
  • "The Rescue" took The Oner from Tony Jaa's Tom-Yum-Goong, and had one of the two recurring nerds lampshade this fact in the middle of the chicken's rampage.
  • A reporter in "Junk in the Trunk" is named Jerry Poppendaddi, after the similarly named ska band Cherry Poppin' Daddies.
  • Season 10 episode 6's opening credits is a recreation of the opening to Monty Python's Flying Circus.
  • The season 11 intro is one to 2001: A Space Odyssey, with the Monolith being made out of television screens.
  • The season 11 finale is a "Groundhog Day" Loop that takes after both the film, and Happy Death Day. The nerd notes he has to fix a personal flaw like the first movie, and he only has so many tries until his masked murderer kills him off permanently like in the latter.
• Shrunk in the Wash: In the "Big Horror Movie Brother" segment, Ghostface pisses off Freddy by shrinking his iconic sweater.
  Freddy: YOU FOOL! The label CLEARLY says permanent press!
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: The message of the "Revised Lessons of Dr. Seuss", where in The Lorax learns that morals are lame and ultimately it's better just to sell out.
• Simpleton Voice: Buzz Lightyear starts speaking in a goofy tone of voice in the "Toy Story 4" sketch after being effectively lobotomized in the process of being turned into a makeshift bong by a college-aged Andy.
• Single-Target Law: Played for Laughs in the first DC Comics Special: Lex Luthor issues a new rule to the Legion of Doom, banning them from gifting each other with explosive toys during "Secret Santa". Toyman immediately complains, pointing out that he's literally the only one affected by that rule.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot:
  • Palpatine in the Star Wars specials is probably the worst offender in regards to swearing. In particular, he uttered exactly nine usages of the F-word, six of which were in a chain, in the skit where Vader calls him at his office when telling him about the destruction of the Death Star. He later gives four usages of the F-word in a later skit detailing his bad day on the Death Star, two of which were, again, in a chain. In fact, with the exception of two Stormtroopers in Episode II and Lando Calrissian, a large majority of the more profane language (i.e. the ones that are required to be bleeped out when in syndication) are from Palpatine's mouth.
  • The alien that keeps shouting, "DAMN IT, DAMN IT, DAMN IT!!!" in triplicate whenever his and his less blue partner-in-crime's plans go horribly wrong.
  • We can't discuss Robot Chicken and not mention the queen of the guttermouths, Bitch Pudding.
• Sir Verb-a-Lot: One skit actually features Sir Mix-A-Lot as a member of King Arthur's court. He's the one who suggests the concept of the Round Table, via the song "Table Be Round" (a parody of "Baby Got Back").
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis:
  • Bill Clinton often serves as this towards George W. Bush.
  • Santa Claus and Superman also share this role with each other in a few skits.
• Smoking Is Not Cool: One sketch involves several famous cartoon characters being treated for lung cancer in a hospital. These include The Pink Panther, the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland, Olive Oyl (who suffered from secondhand pipe smoke from Popeye, who ironically built up an immunity to lung cancer from the antioxidants in his spinach), and Fred Flintstone (who speaks through an electrolarynx as a result of smoking too many Winston cigarettes).
• Smuggling with Dolls: A short documented that Santa Claus from Rudolph The Rednosed Reindeer was a coke pusher, with his preferred method of hiding the coke inside toy bears.
• Smug Super: Superman. Robot Chicken takes Superdickery to a whole new level.
• Soda-Candy 'Splosion: After hearing of the myth of a kid's demise from consuming Pop Rocks and soda, a bunch of kids dare their friend Mikey to try it and see what happens. One kid even bets a dollar that he'll do it. Mikey quickly turns into an out-of-control Gasshole who's ignited farts cause him to run faster than the nearby train before his body ultimately starts spinning out of control. A nearby citizen caps his butt with a softball, only for the explosion to turn upward and send his head flying off to land by his friends feet. In their Stunned Silence, the one kid hands a dollar to the other.
• Sorrowful Stutter: Parodied in the sketch about a Inspector Gadget/The Terminator when Dr. Claw's cat dies of leukemia. The Stinger of the episode has him seemingly stuttering in grief and about to tearfully eulogize him, only to suddenly break out in anger with, "I'll get you next time, Gadget! NEXT TIME!"
• Space Opera: The page image is one of the most brilliant parodies of this.
• Sparing the Final Mook: In "The Rescue" (the one that parodies the famous fight scene from The Protector) the Chicken goes to rescue his wife and battles his way through more or less every notable original character on the show. After having killed them all, even some that weren't fighting him, the Chicken comes to the final door, which is guarded by the Nerd. When the Nerd meekly steps aside, the Chicken lets him live.
• Spinning Paper:
  • Parodied with a headline reading "Spinning Newspapers voted 'Lamest Cliche' by TV viewers."
  • Another episode lampshades the trope by having one of the papers be named "The Spinning Times".
• Spin-Off: The Stoopid Monkey videos seen here could be counted as a spin-off.
• Spoiling Shout-Out: In a The Walking Dead skit, Munsun begins to reference plot points from episode 3 that detail how the characters got out of situations very similar to what him and the Nerd found themselves in. The Nerd objects and says how he has so many episodes backlogged on his DVR that he hasn't seen it yet.
• Squashed Flat: In one sketch where Zordon selects the Teletubbies to be his new Rangers, they get crushed on their first mission. Unlike most examples, it's fatal.
• Staging an Intervention:
  • One sketch had Popeye's friends confronting him over his addiction to spinach.
  • A parody of Adventures of the Gummi Bears had the bears holding an intervention for Tummi over his addiction to gummiberry juice.
• Stark Naked Sorcery: In a sketch parodying Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother's wand wasn't working, so she decides to use dark magic, complete with her taking her clothes off to reveal her elderly and sagging body. It turns out her wand just wasn't turned on and didn't need the dark magic.
• Stealth Pun:
  • In one skit, Woody smothers a brain-damaged Buzz with a pillow after Andy uses him as a makeshift bong. What a buzzkill.
  • The eleventh episode of Season 9 is titled "Never Forget".
• Stop Motion: Animated using a mix of action figures and claymation.
• Storyboarding The Apocalypse How: If you give a mouse a cookie, the world ends in nuclear holocaust. And that's why Mommy had to stab Daddy.
• Story-Breaker Team-Up: All the time and played for laughs. The Mario Brothers in Vice City, and Yoshi in Raccoon City.
• Stylistic Suck: The Mrs. McNally's Third Graders Present sketches.
• Stupid Evil: Hitler in "Hitler and The Ten Commandments" is furious with Arnold Ernst Toht, Johann Schmidt, and Ilsa Haupstein for failing to secure the magical artifacts he was counting on to win the war, ignoring and killing them when they attempt to tell him that in this timeline these things don't exist and that he should try to come up with real battle strategies. Hitler scares Toht so much that he pretends the Ark of the Covenant is in his briefcase....which Hitler happily runs directly into the American forces with trying to use the power of the ark to melt their faces. The only reason they don't shoot him on the spot is their curiosity about where his stupidity will lead him.
• Subverted Kids' Show: While many of the sketches are based on family-friendly source material, the content itself is about as far from family-friendly as you can get.
• Suddenly Speaking: At the end of season 10, the mad scientist from the intro, whose only previous lines had been given via Talking with Signs, finally speaks, giving a presentation on the findings of his experiment.
• Sugar Apocalypse: Among other examples, the Care Bears decide that to save their ratings, they must kill all of the Care Bear cousins in an act of genocide. Not even Don Cheadle offering to put all the cousins in a hotel could stop them. And, to punish the Care Bears for genocide, the Cloud Keeper turns Care-a-Lot into Hell on Earth.
  "Mmm, that's good rainbow."
  • "My Little Pony, Apocalypse Pony! Punish mankind for their sins!"
• Suicidal Lemmings: Parodied in a sketch parodying nature documentaries, where lemmings gain the title of "Nature's Retards" for not only the typical behavior, but also running right into the path of moving cars, jumping into a blender, and not using condoms.
• Summon Bigger Fish: Charlie Brown defeats The Great Pumpkin by siccing The Kite-Eating Tree on it.
• Suspect Existence Failure: Unnecessarily lampshaded just before the end of the "Michael Jackson vs. Michael Jackson" sketch.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Invoked.
  • Lampshaded in a sketch about Libertarians from an episode in Season 4. During multiple election years, they chose similar-but-not-copyrighted versions of popular songs such as "We Are The Victors Of The Globe" instead of "We Are The Champions" by Queen and "We Are Close In Group" instead of "We Are Family" by Sister Sledge. They ended up getting sued for copyright violations anyway.
  • Earlier on, it was used twice, and both times for the same reason—and it was even mentioned in the commentary. Used for a Season 1 sketch about Voltron getting served, where the aired version used a similar version of the DMX song "Get It On The Floor" (which the crew even made lyrics for) for the dance-off, which was apparently so similar to the actual song that it THEN had to be dubbed over with a generic production song (that they recorded more new lyrics for) for the DVD. One of the behind-the-scenes extras even shows a couple of seconds of Seth and another crew member recording "WHAT? WHOA!" for the original version of the dance-off theme.
  • Also, "Playing with a Car" ("Playing with the Boys") from Season 1 (and the Season 2 DVD menu) when the valets joyride KITT instead of parking it.
  • "Let's Have a Party" ("Let's Get It Started") from Season 4 (and the DVD menu) during Castle Greyskull's dance party where Faker goes in place of real He-Man.
  • In a crossover of Super Mario Bros. and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, they used takeoffs of the music from both games.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: In the Bitch Puddin' Special, a new character named Raspberry Parfait appears to be a replacement for Strawberry Shortcake. American Greetings has gone after people who they feel have misused the character in the past, or alternatively, the licensing fee might have gone up.
• Synchro-Vox: One of the Star Wars episodes spoofs Conan O'Brien's use of this.

T

• Take That!: What the show more or less revolves around.
  • There's a pretty epic one against the comedian Gallagher. He gets his niece a Teddy Ruxpin doll, and goes to put a tape of his comedy performance into it. The doll comes to life, tries to fight him off, and eventually commits suicide via Cyanide Pill rather than do it. Gallagher then comments that they'll just have to listen to the performance on the family's stereo, at which point his 5-year-old niece also tries to commit suicide. And it's one of the highest-rated videos on Robot Chicken's site.
  • Following in MAD's footsteps, not even Robot Chicken can resist making fun of The Annoying Orange. In this case, showing what each of The Avengers weapons do in their spare time, with Thor's hammer being exceptionally annoying.
  • Though if anyone is gonna be portrayed as a moronic drunk mess of an idiot by the Robot Chicken guys, it will always be Lindsay Lohan. Not even Lohan's family was safe in one sketch.
  • The last sketch of "Help Me" shows a service that allows you to skip the boring parts of a movie or TV show and watch only the good parts. For Peter Jackson's King Kong, it just goes straight to the end credits.
  • In "The Arkham Redemption" sketch, when Batman searches a sewer pipe thinking that the Joker escaped through it, he comments that it smells like Batman Forever.
  • In the Zombie Apocalypse sketch in "Collateral Damage in Gang Turf War", to learn what caused the outbreak, Gyro Robo consults the "zombie backstory generator" (a magic 8-ball) and the result is "supervirus"... then he sees that every message on it says the same thing, as a potshot at how often works use a supervirus as the origin of a zombie outbreak.
  • In one sketch in "Babe Hollytree in: I Wish One Person Had Died", the Ark of the Covenant, the Sankara Stones, and the Holy Grail are having breakfast and are hesitant to let the Crystal Skull of Akator join in.
  • In one sketch where an e-sports player starts masturbating on live ESPN, the announcer yells to "cut to a real sport". Cut to a paunchy middle-aged golfer slowly putting a ball.
    Announcer: Wow. A true athlete, folks.
  • Their lone Doctor Who sketch amounted to them openly hating on the entire franchise, and the writers have dropped a few mentions in various sketches that they also do not like NCIS.
• "Take Your Child to Work Day" Plot: Taken to a funny extreme when Gary the Stormtrooper takes his daughter to work ... to the Devastator ... where she meets Darth Vader, participates in the boarding of Leia's Blockade Runner, and ends up with her father on Tatooine where he's the subject of Ben's Jedi Mind Trick.
• Team Rocket Wins: In one Smurfs skit, due to the Smurfs' village being flooded, Gargamel finally gets to capture some of their corpses and make a meal out of them. He takes one bite... and with some thought, dunks the rest of it into the trash and orders Chinese.
• Technologically Advanced Foe: Two rival gangsters stop fighting during an Alien Invasion (apparently the Chitauri from The Avengers (2012)) and decide it really doesn't seem worth it in light of the scale of things. Then The Punisher busts into the room and spends a few seconds chasing them with guns blazing before he also notices the invasion. He also concludes this changes everything, but adopts the use of one of the aliens' vehicles to pick up where he left off, otherwise.
• Tempting Fate: In the second Star Wars special, referred to by name. Emperor Palpatine has arrived on the Death Star and is having a crappy day. He turns to a nearby Red Guard and says, "Wanna see me tempt fate? Could this day get any worse?" It does.
  Palpatine: I did it ironically so I think I'm safe.
• That Poor Cat: In the Bob the Builder sketch, "Bob the Union Scab", Pilchard does this before she mauls one of the union workers to death.
• Thinks of Something Smart, Says Something Stupid: In a Dora the Explorer-themed sketch, Dora is sick of Boots saying he loves everything and asks him if there's anything he doesn't love.
  Boots' Brain: Tell her, man! Tell her her hair looks like Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men! This is your chance, Boots! Don't puss out!
  Boots: (beat) Nope!
  Boots' Brain: You pussy...
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman:
  • One skit involving G.I. Joe has Snow Job getting rejected for missions for not only wanting to go to places where skis wouldn't work, but also for wearing bright white, making him a very shootable target.
  • invokedAverted with the Trope Namer where despite having a series of rescues in the ocean, Superman still rejects the idea of letting Aquaman tag along since he could still handle the situation fine without him.
• 30 Minutes, or It's Free!: Astronauts on the Space Station call a pizza place with this policy in order to get unlimited free pizza for the guys at NASA.
• Those Two Guys: Tom Root and Doug Goldstein, who appear in a few sketches once in a while.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill:
  • After Batman beats The Joker literally to within one punch of his life, Joker mentions that if Batman doesn't kill him, he'll just break out of jail and keep on killing. Batman contemplates this conundrum and persuades the Gotham legal system to give him the death penalty instead. Commissioner Gordon chooses to not use the sponge during his electrocution.
  • Parodied when the Nerd ends up in Arrow. After determining that this is the season 2-4 Arrow with this rule, he tries to go for crippling shots only to constantly shoot people in the eye. He succeeds in hitting the leg, only for the man to bleed to death due to being hit in the femoral artery.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Subverted when Percival tries returning Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake and it keeps falling into the lake before even getting close to her arm. He lampshades that a sword's weight balance completely throws off any attempt to properly calculate a throw.
• Throw the Pin: Seen from the outside; two G.I.s sitting in a foxhole with a bunker in the background. One is hit on the helmet with a pin, looks at it quizzically, and a shout of "You idiot—" then the bunker explodes.
• Time-Compression Montage: Played with in a sketch that featured a Jamaican superhero named Montage, whose power was to dilate time by invoking montages. His archenemy is End Credits Man.
• Time-Traveling Jerkass: The "Dicks With Time Machines" sketches play this straight by having a time traveler ruin J.K. Rowling's writing career, stop Paul Revere from completing his midnight ride, and inverts it when he prevents Hitler from taking power in Germany.
• Toilet Horror: Played for Laughs in a parody of The Twilight Zone (1959), with Dumpelstiltskin, "a creature not of this world, but a user of its bathrooms". A man goes to use the toilet in an office building when a monster stomps in, tries to enter his stall, then enters the one beside him. After an incredibly loud and lengthy bowel movement that causes the lights to flicker and ceiling tiles to fall, the creature asks him to pass the toilet paper roll, then exits, leaving a crater where the other toilet had been.
• Too Kinky to Torture:
  • The creator of Girls Gone Wild had become so desensitized that the only way to excite him anymore was to summon Pinhead to help him out.
  • Bill Clinton is more than willing to become part of a Human Centipede.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth:
  • Boba Fett and the other guy he was with both got spit out of the Sarlacc beast because it just couldn't take their annoying activities anymore.
    Sarlacc: Umm, hey guys, I don't mean to be a prick, but... you guys gotta get the fuck out. [belches them out]
  • In a different skit, Bitch Pudding's house is invaded by a ghost. Instead of being scared, she curses it out and trash-talks its parents until it agrees to leave town.
• Toyota Tripwire: A businessman does this on a passing motorcyclist. Why should the cyclist be able to move between the cars while he's stuck in traffic?
• Transformation Sequence: Sailor Moon's transformation sequence provokes an obvious physical reaction in her opponent, much to their mutual embarrassment, and going a long way towards explaining why the monsters she fought were Always Female.
  Sailor Moon: Should we still fight? Because I don't really want to anymore.
• Trojan Horse: The Legion of Doom tries this on the Justice League. It doesn't work out well for either side.
• Trolling Translator: In a Star Wars parody, Evazan does this for Ponda Baba's innocent question to Luke Skywalker. (The two are architects, according to the skit.)

• Turbine Blender:
  • One sketch involves Launchpad McQuack and seventeen seagulls being sucked into the turbine of the jet engine of the US Airways Flight 1549 airplane. This resulted in an emergency landing and Darkwing receiving an ensuing lawsuit that forced him to donate his body to a Chinese restaurant to pay for his daughter Gosalyn's kidney transplant.
  • A parody of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy has the trio on a plane and Grim working up the courage to kill Billy and Mandy by throwing them into the turbine.
• Turn Your Head and Cough:
  Doctor: Okay, turn your head and cough... It's just as I had suspected; you let a stranger grab your balls.

U

• Un-Canceled:invoked A running joke. Every season finale they get canceled, and the next season they get "uncancelled". One wonders when this trick is going to backfire. Discarded in the 100th episode in favor of a bloody lampshading the show's Adored by the Network status.
• Undignified Death: There are plenty of examples that are almost always Played for Laughs, but Jughead's death in the "Archie Final Destination" sketch is pretty memorable. We learn that not only does he stay thin via bulimia while showering, but he's also bald underneath his pointy hat. In trying to stomp the vomit down the drain, he starts slipping on it and ends up falling and getting impaled on said hat. Even worse, the newspaper headline on his death reads "Stupid Kid Impaled On Stupid Hat".
• Unexpected Kindness: In "Bitch Pudding Special: Part 1", Bitch Pudding comes to Granny Graham Crackers's funeral. All the funeral-goers are clearly expecting the worst, thinking that Bitch Pudding is going to be crass as usual. However, she starts to have a rather sweet eulogy for Granny Graham Crackers and everyone sighs in relief. Then it becomes subverted when Bitch Pudding starts making crude jokes.
• Unfortunate Names: Lando tells Boba Fett that while the Slave I is a pretty neat ride, he's not crazy on the name.
• Unhand Them, Villain!: A heroic (of a sort) version. Ted Turner, having dressed himself as Captain Planet, forces someone to sign a pledge not to dump any more sludge by holding them out of a skyscraper window, after which he will let them go. The guy complies, and Turner releases him.
• Unions Suck: One skit parodying Bob the Builder has Bob and friends kill a group of union thugs who try to stop him from doing some scab work.
• Unknown Rematch Conclusion: One episode had Superman and Santa Claus competing in a race against each other that was repeatedly interrupted by villains. After dealing with them, Superman and Santa decide to race without any interruptions, with the episode ending without showing the conclusion.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: A producer for one of Justin Bieber's music videos exclaimed how big a hit this singer will be. She's a teenage lesbian who's open about it in her music and videos, and there's nothing the public won't like about this. Then a stagehand tells him the truth.
• Unusual Euphemism: Discussed in the "Girl Code" skit.
  Strawberry Shortcake: Do boys ask for photos of my berries? Why, yes! Everyone knows I have very good berries. ...That's what I said. My berries. Berries...are you asking about my tits?!

V

• Vampire Doctor: A sketch involves vampires taking over TV media. One of their shows was about a hospital where all the doctors and nurses are vampires. They try to treat a patient by giving him a blood transfusion, but since they're, well, vampires, they keep drinking all of it. Ultimately, they just decided to drain the patient of his blood, instantly turning him in the process.
• Victory Sex: In "Welcome to the Golf Jam", Cleo promises Tiger Woods a blowjob if he wins. She has a little Oh, Crap! moment when she realizes she has to keep her promise.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: Played With. The Doctor is standing on the first base of a baseball diamond. After a few seconds, he just asks "Do you get it?!"
• Villains Out Shopping: Loves this trope. Famous examples are the obvious "Villains in Traffic" and "Darth Vader Calls" skits.
  Emperor Palpatine: "What the hell is an aluminum falcon?!"
• "The Villain Sucks" Song: In the Bitch Pudding special, the villagers sing a hymn about her supposed death after celebrating all day with a "The Bitch Is Dead" festival.
  "She made our lives a living hell / So nasty and so mean / And when Bitch Pudding hit the lava / You should have heard her scream!"
• The Voiceless: The Mad Scientist never talks until the Season 10 finale, which gives him the voice of David Lynch.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Happens quite frequently.
  • In the "Big Bird Flu" sketch, Big Bird vomits as a result of being sick with the bird flu.
  Big Bird: Ugh, I feel like I'm gonna blow chunks of bird seed! (starts vomiting all over the main apartment steps, then falls over)
• Voodoo Shark: A mobster interviews the assassin "Waffle Face", who has a waffle for a face. The mobster asks for how he got a waffle for a face. Waffle Face explains an incident with the Triads and a waffle iron but mentions he'd had a pancake for a face. The mobster becomes irritated and guarantees him no one who asks wants to hear him walk back to the time he had a pancake for a face and threatens him if he tries to say. Waffle Face, with irritation and haste, says he got run over and that's how he had the pancake head; this seems satisfactory until he mentions that it was another breakfast food before that. The mobster screams bloody murder and shoots him where he sits.
• Vorpal Pillow: In a skit parodying Toy Story 3, Woody has to smother Buzz to death with a pillow after Andy used Buzz as a bong, burning out the insides of his head and making him mentally retarded as a result.

W

• Wanting Is Better Than Having: After a flood wipes out the Smurfs' village, Gargamel finally achieves his goal of eating them. As it turns out, they taste really bad. He throws the food out, and orders Chinese.
• Warm Water Whiz: When the Nerd is telling stories to his niece and nephew, he falls asleep to dream about his stories, as he does. The kids decide to just pee on him, but he wakes up and thinks that they pranked him with the hand-in-the-water prank... before wondering where the cup of water is.
• We Are as Mayflies: The characters from A Bug's Life cannot get any sleep because the Mayflies themselves are partying, having sex, giving birth, going through a midlife crisis as husband and wife, and finally dying in the span of three hours. Just when they think they can finally get a moment's rest, the eggs hatch and it starts all over again.
• We Can Rebuild Him: Like everything else in life, Robot Chicken had taken a few shots at the concept:
  • The titular robot chicken was a chicken found in the middle of the road, having been run over. A scientist found the chicken, rebuilt it as a cyborg, then forced it to watch stop-motion animation on a wall of TVs, presumably For Science!. Later, the chicken breaks free, kills the scientist, then rebuilds him and forces him to watch the same TVs.
  • Parodied and averted in one sketch making fun of The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. Steve Austin gets the scientists who rebuilt him to do the same to his girlfriend, which they do. The problem is that in addition to the standard cybernetics, they give her padded knees, larger breasts, and a hand that automatically does a jerking motion (for "polishing things"). She's naturally angry and delivers a beatdown to Steve and the scientists, leaving them as nothing more than heads. They ask the people attending to them if they could be rebuilt, but they just get laughed at because the question is considered absurd, and they're told that they won't live through the night.
  • There's also the Bionic Mexican, which features the "Six Million Peso Man". He promptly uses his stronger and faster body to jump the border into the U.S, and one agent laments their loss of 283 American Dollars.
• We Will Meet Again: Promptly turned into a Sedgwick Speech with two bullets to the head during a G.I. Joe skit where the US military gets involved.
  Cobra Commander: "You haven't seen the last of me, Seal Team Si-" *blam* *blam*
• Weird Aside: From the cliffhanger of the Enter the Fat One sketch: "Will Joey win the tournament? Will he avenge his former bandmates? Does this look infected to you? Find out next time, on Enter the Fat One!"
• Wham Episode: "Fight Club Paradise", mainly because it's the only season finale other than the finale of season 7 to end with the series not getting canceled.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Aquaman from Superfriends awkwardly makes his way to a board meeting at the BP oil company (even after nearly spraining his ankle when the secretary tripped him) in order to send the CEO to jail for all the sea life they killed with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The CEO tells him that he can't go to jail because the court case was already settled and BP paid a fine. He asked if Aquaman was going to kick his ass, to which Aquaman responded that he wasn't really planning that. The CEO tried to sincerely but sarcastically insisted they were sorry, and Aquaman returned home. The sea life didn't take the news that well, so they beat him up and killed him.
• Where da White Women At?: A black scientist programs his Afrobot to say this.
• Whip of Dominance: A skit paroding Castlevania has two werewolf Mooks wondering if the Belmonts specialize in fighting with whips because of a fetish.
  Werewolf 1: What kind of a sadist uses a whip?!
  Werewolf 2: [shrugs] Could be a fetish.
• White Glove Test: In the "Bitch Pudding" sketch, Bitch Pudding does this.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The "Of Moose and Squirrel" sketch is Of Mice and Men with the cast replaced with characters from Rocky and Bullwinkle. The sketch ends the same as the original, with Rocky about to shoot Bullwinkle in the back of the head with a shotgun to spare him from getting lynched for accidentally killing Natasha, followed by a parody of their show's Find Out Next Time at the end of every episode.
• Who's Laughing Now?: It's "Fumbles"... it was always "Fumbles"...
• Who Writes This Crap?!: In the "Pokémon Bloopers" sketch, Pikachu and Squirtle are having a conversation until Squirtle loses his composure, and, to Pikachu's horror, says "Squirtle! Squirtle squir- what the fuck am I saying?! No, I mean it! This shit makes no sense at all!"
• Womb Horror: Played for Laughs in one sketch, where a giant monster hand comes out of a woman's womb and drags the doctor inside.
• World of Ham: Boy howdy. This show is filled to the brim with it, since many of the sketches tend to be notorious for overdramatic reactions to the slightest of actions.
• Worst News Judgment Ever: In the "Voltron Dance Battle" sketch, a news report focused more on the Voltron team getting "served" in a Dance-Off against a Robeast, than the robot defeating it in a traditional battle shortly after.
• Worthy Opponent: The only person who can match the Robot Chicken's power is Bitch Pudding.
• Would Harm a Senior: When Strawberry Shortcake gets the chance to confront her old adversary the Purple Pieman, it turns out that he's now elderly, blind, diabetic, and using a walker. She beats the stuffing out of him anyway, and ends up in jail for it.
  Strawberry Shortcake: I told that motherfucker I'd bury him. And that's not some fruit-related speech impediment. B-U-R-Y. Bury. Like in the fucking ground.
• Would Hurt a Child: Children are abused, both physically and emotionally, or killed as often as the adults are.
  • "Executed by the State" has Duke inadvertently kill a young boy for torturing the toy-sized Joes and Cobras. He quickly realizes his mistake once Roadblock tells him who he just shot.
  • One sketch has a couple of children sing the popular "Batman Smells" version of Jingle Bells, and the Caped Crusader and Boy Wonder have no issues beating up and humiliating the children. It then cuts away to a music teacher upsetting the kid who sang the offending lyrics scaring him with this story.
• Wrestler in All of Us/Professional Wrestling:
  • In a Season 1 episode (guest-starring Conan O'Brien), there was a wrestling sketch (the Historical Wrestling Federation), featuring Benjamin Franklin and Gandhi in a tag team match against the Wright Brothers. Noted for using ACTUAL Jakks Pacific WWE figures (instead of the standard figures) for the 4 wrestlers (though their original heads were indeed replaced); the 2 commentators (voiced by Seth, doing his cheesiest impersonation of a color commentator and Conan as the driest play-by-play historian you could imagine) were regular figures.
  • A Season 2 episode guest-starring Hulk Hogan featured the sketch Hogan's Heroes, where the gang was replaced by (more Jakks Pacific figures, this time from the "WWE Legends" line) Hulk Hogan and his fellow pro wrestlers "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (voiced by Piper himself), "The Mouth of the South" Jimmy Hart, The Iron Sheik, and Randy "Macho Man" Savage.
  • Also, since every standard Robot Chicken action figure is animated in stop-motion, and any aerial shots are on wires, many of the close-range combat stunts you see are usually a wrestling-type maneuver.

Y

• Yank the Dog's Chain: In "Annie's Super Sweet 16", Annie Warbucks (who is now a Spoiled Brat and Rich Bitch) seemingly invites some young orphans to her Sweet 16 birthday party, but it turns out she just wanted to use them as part of her "super special invitations" idea.
  Orphan Girl: Thanks for the invite, Annie.
  Annie: Oh, you didn't get an invitation, you are the invitation! Isn't that clever? Your own little orphan!
• You All Look Familiar: There are only a couple different character models for generic people, so viewers will end up seeing the same faces on different minor characters.
• "You!" Exclamation: At the end of "Sesame Street Rave", Count Chocula has this reaction to seeing Blade before getting his head blown off by the latter.
• You Just Had to Say It: In the second Star Wars special, Emperor Palpatine has a terrible day when he visits the Death Star. He says things couldn't possibly get any worse. Cut to a couple hours later and we see the Return of the Jedi scene of Darth Vader throwing him over the balcony.
• You Must Be This Tall to Ride: Subverted and lampshaded in the sketch, "Attack of the Giant Midget". A midget, turned into a giant by a Mad Scientist, goes on a rampage through an amusement park. It comes to a "you must be this tall" sign, then pauses a moment to let the irony sink in before continuing on its rampage.
• Your Head Asplode:
  • The above-mentioned Explosive Decompression example.
  • "Raiders of the Magic Garden" has Paula's head exploding when the Story Box is opened.
  • "Hogwarts Lessons" has Ron putting an extra drop of wolfsbane extract in a potion, which causes his teeth to rocket out of his mouth and his head to explode. As Harry and Hermione point out, the ridiculously slim margin for error and result of a botched attempt aren't proportionate for a potion that was just supposed to change their eye color.
  • When The Joker is sentenced to death by electric chair, his extra-crispy body suddenly convulses and his head explodes.
  • In "I Know What the Bratz Did Last Summer", Chloe's head explodes when her encephalitis medication is stolen.
  • One sketch in "May Cause Weebles to Fall Down" shows that this is apparently what happens when a doctor eats an apple ("an apple a day keeps the doctor away").
• Your Mom: Robot Chicken isn't above doing these every now and then. One notable example is a pull-and-say children's toy.
  "The cow says "MOOOOOOOO"."
  "Your mom says "Wabglwgaw" because my cock's in her mouth."

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