Back in June we covered the Annecy announcement that Robot Chicken was getting two new specials, the first of which turns the show’s aim on Adult Swim itself. Now we’ve got 75 seconds of trailer, and it is absolutely stuffed.
The setup, per Adult Swim: every iconic character in the network’s history is aboard a cruise ship celebrating 25 years on the air… and then it becomes “a disaster of titanic proportions.” So yes, everybody’s on a boat, and yes, the boat is in trouble.
Watching this a few times (okay, closer to fifteen, and eventually frame-by-frame because I have a problem), here’s what jumped out:
- They made an ATHF-Boston joke — and Harvey Birdman is defending the Mooninites. There’s a whole sequence built around the 2007 Mooninite LED sign incident, the guerrilla marketing stunt that got the bomb squad called out in Boston. Birdman gets four straight shots and turns up again alongside the Mooninites themselves, with Mike Tyson somewhere in the mix — so it looks like the network’s most infamous PR disaster is finally getting the Attorney at Law treatment nineteen years later. Parts of it fly by in about a quarter of a second. Blink and you miss it.
- AT LEAST twenty-eight different Adult Swim series show up, not counting Robot Chicken itself. Some of them serious deep cuts. And that’s just in this 75-second trailer! No telling what RC is leaving for the full special.
- Jan and Jace are in this. Space Ghost’s sidekicks. In 2026. They’re in the group shot above alongside Doc Venture, Hank, 21 and 24, Joe Pera, Babycakes, Lucy, Brak, Dr. Blake Downs and the Marquess of Queensberry — ten characters from nine shows in a single frame.
- Xavier: Renegade Angel and Lucy, Daughter of the Devil sharing a beat. Why do I suspect that was written as a deliberate “Angel/Devil” encounter?
- There’s a Squidbillies nod tucked into the same shot as Meatwad, Chris Monsanto and Assy McGee.
- Master Shake and Frances from Common Side Effects share two shots. If you think about it, that’s 2000 meets 2025. A whole “25 years” thing in one image.
- Also aboard: the entire Dethklok lineup plus Dr. Rockso, four Sealab crew including Captain Murphy, “White” Debbie, Dr. Quinn and Stormy, Assy McGee, Saul (of the Mole Men) Malone, Drinky Crow, Eagleheart’s Chris Monsanto, Black Jesus, Eric Wareheim, Eric Andre, Orel, Simon from Frisky Dingo, Gary & Claude from Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell, Pim and Charlie, Mr. Boss, Leon from Titan Maximum, the Mooninites, Dr. Venture, Hank Venture, Brock Samson, Triana Orpheus, The Monarch + Henchmen 21 & 24, Mr. Pickles and Grandpa — and somewhere in there, what looks an awful lot like a bronze statue of Space Ghost.
Now my favorite part, and the part I can only tell you because I own an unreasonable number of Adult Swim figures: these are the actual toys (or at the very least a fabrication). The Venture crew look built on the Bif Bang Pow Mego-style figures. Master Shake and the entire Sealab crew are the original Palisades Adult Swim line — dead for the better part of twenty years. And unless my eyes are lying, Assy McGee is from the old Kidrobot blind box series. Tracking down discontinued collector figures and rigging them for stop-motion is way MORE work than building puppets from scratch, which tells you plenty about how much everyone involved cared here.
So who’s actually voicing all this? More of the originals than I expected, honestly. Carey Means confirmed on his own Facebook that he’s back as Frylock. Matt Maiellaro was the first real leak on this whole thing — he had photos up on Instagram from the recording session before the special was even announced. And there are voices in here you simply cannot mistake: Dana Snyder as Master Shake, Dave Willis as Carl and Ignignokt, Patrick Warburton as Brock Samson (no way to mishear THAT voice), Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick as Henchmen 21 and 24, Gary Cole as Birdman, Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack as Charlie and Pim, plus Joe Pera, Mike Tyson and Eric Andre all turning up as themselves.
Not everybody, though. Andy Merrill — the voice of Brak — has said publicly he was never approached for this one: his words, if you hear Brak in it, it isn’t him. And a few others sound off to my ear, particularly Lucy, Babycakes and Black Jesus. IMDb currently has the original actors listed across the board, which doesn’t really settle anything either way. Fill-ins, soundalikes, archival audio I’m misremembering — I genuinely don’t know. Considering the goings-on at WBD lately it could come down to money, or it could just be logistics — wrangling several dozen voice actors into booths for one half-hour special is a genuinely hard scheduling problem.
At any rate, are you ready for Space Ghost’s sidekicks, resurrected toy lines, a bomb-scare callback nobody was supposed to catch, and dozens of Adult Swim’s finest going down with the ship? The Robot Chicken Adult Swim Special premieres Sunday, August 30th at midnight on Adult Swim (and next day on HBO Max).
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Check out the trailer plus a pile of screengrabs below:
