Adult Swim’s gone-too-soon adult animation hit Aqua Teen Hunger Force is known for its frequently absurd jokes, surreal premise, and anthropomorphized fast food protagonists.
While this absurdist humor isn’t exactly for everyone and it can occasionally be too edgy for its own good, it’s a legitimately great time, and it’s pretty widely considered a cult classic now. For those who aren’t initiated into the show, Adult Swim also features a randomized 24-hour stream of the show on their website, which can be accessed without a login or a cable subscription. Let’s take a look at the funniest moments in the show’s history that heavily feature the show’s sometimes straight man, Frylock.
10 T-Pain?
In the live-action episode of the show—which a lot of people weren’t huge fans of, probably due to the fact that it didn’t include a lot of the original voice actors for the characters—Frylock is portrayed in the flesh by none other than the pop/r&b musician T-Pain.
The episode mostly centers around Shake, who’s played by H. Jon Benjamin, who a lot of the fans of the show are probably familiar with due to his starring role as the titular Bob in Bob’s Burgers. While T-Pain doesn’t feature very much in the episode, he’s seen on Frylock’s computer at the end.
9 Hanging Out With The Wrong Crowd
In the episode “Super Birthday Snake,” we see that Meatwad thinks he’s ready for a lot more responsibility than he’d previously been taking on, petitioning Frylock to allow him to get a pet. Eventually, he gets one, though it’s a snake rather than the bunny he’d been asking for.
The snake ends up eating both Shake and Meatwad, and Frylock accidentally kills both of them instead of just the snake. Frylock then decides that, with both of them gone, he can hang out with the wrong crowd. He then kills Carl for being annoying, starts drinking and smoking heavily, and then realizes that everything that’s happened is a simulation. This complete flip is super funny.
8 Total Recarl
Total Recarl is perhaps one of the best examples of the fact that, while Frylock is generally a paragon of morality and level-headedness, he’s not always the shining beacon of keeping things together that he seems to be.
The way this usually manifests itself—despite the fact that Frylock is usually the voice of reason—is that he invents things with consequences he never predicted before unleashing his new creations upon the world. Frylock essentially forces Carl to test out an environmentally friendly toilet that he’s created, which destroys Carl’s body. The rest of the episode consists of Frylock doing his best to build Carl a new cybernetically enhanced body.
7 Parents
During the film Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters, there’s essentially a lot of parody going on towards the fact that anyone would expect a coherent plot from the film, or think they’re getting any more than just a particularly long episode.
As a result of this fact, a lot of the movie is spent on dramatic twists that are playing with the fact that viewers expect pathos from the film. Instead of giving the viewer any kind of reason to be emotionally invested, the movie instead throws a twist at the viewer where we find out that Frylock’s dad is a slice of watermelon, and his mother is a nine-layer burrito.
6 The Slim Jim Commercial
While this entry isn’t necessarily a moment that very heavily features Frylock, the pure absurdity of the advertisement warrants mention. Back in the day, Aqua Teen Hunger Force got a deal with the Slim Jim snack brand and had a commercial on air that featured our fast-food friends.
The commercial mostly consists of Meatwad turning into various types of food shapes in a game of charades, only for him to reveal that he’d been turning into different types of flavor that Slim Jim offers. The fact that the commercial even happened is what makes it so funny, considering the fact that ATHF is so controversial that it’s hard to imagine that any brand would like to be associated with the show.
5 Fry Legs
“Fry Legs” is another episode of the show in which Frylock lets his facade slip, revealing that, when the mood strikes him, he can be just as maniacal, evil, and self-serving as Master Shake. In this episode, Frylock goes full creep mode after he falls in love with a television repair woman, who then proceeds to get called to the house frequently.
Frylock then creates legs, arms, and other grotesque and vague approximations of a human body to do his best to woo the cable repair lady who’s won his affections. Then, Frylock decides he’ll have better chances if he not only continues to harass her and kill her boyfriend, which really doesn’t do incredibly well for him.
4 The Cloning
“The Cloning” is another episode where Frylock has some ridiculous science fiction scheme that he goes through with for no other reason than the sole fact that he can do it. Frylock decides to clone the TV just to prove to Shake that you can’t just go around cloning things willy-nilly.
If you really tear that apart logically, though, Frylock is doing exactly what he’s preaching against. The TV starts to show potential futures like an absurd version of The Ring. They then ditch the TV at Carl’s, and things just get worse from there.
3 Magic Shampoo
Aqua Teen is nothing if not a little crass, so it absolutely makes sense that there would be an episode created originally as a secret easter egg for the Adult Swim website.
The episode in question is entitled “The Greatest Story Ever Told” and it takes place after what was previously expected to be the last episode of the show, which the title made very clear, with the name “The Last One Forever And Ever (For Real This Time)(We F****** Mean It). The episode that follows is mostly about Frylock being a hypocrite after he discovers the secret to immortality and then denounces it completely.
2 Bible Fruit
This moment in the series wasn’t exactly Frylock’s best idea, but he definitely meant well when making this call. In the episode “Bible Fruit,” Frylock decides that he’s going to check up on his old MySpace buddies and see how they’re doing. They were doing decently well… that is, until being exposed to Carl, Shake’s horrible antics, and Meatwad’s buffoonery.
After just a little while with the Aqua Teens, they go from being God-fearing born-again Christians to adopting their old vices once again, turning to alcohol and drugs to help them cope with their experience. The voice cast of David Cross, H. John Benjamin, and Kristen Schaal really serve to bring the characters to life.
1 Happy Time Harry
This episode is really only funny in a super morbid kind of way, but Meatwad spends most of the first little bit of the episode entitled “Happy Time Harry,” begging Frylock to get him some new toys, which he does. The first one is a prospector with the catchphrase “Commence to jigglin’!”. The second doll isn’t quite so jovial. Frylock begins to notice some drastic changes in the personality of the ever-impressionable Meatwad, which are happening at the behest of Happy Time Harry, a sadsack alcoholic who struggles with depression and comes with about the saddest accessory you could imagine for a children’s toy, Action Bills, which he frequently insists need paying.
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