Regular Show (known as Regular Show in Space during its eighth season)[3] is an American animated sitcom created by J. G. Quintel for Cartoon Network. It ran from September 6, 2010, to January 16, 2017, over the course of eight seasons and 244 episodes.[4][5][6][7][8]

The series follows the daily lives of two 23-year old friends, Mordecai, a blue jay, and Rigby, a raccoon, who work at a local park as groundskeepers. Their coworkers are Skips, an immortal yeti, Muscle Man, a green-skinned overweight man, and Hi-Five Ghost, a small ghost. Other characters include Pops, the lollipop-shaped owner of the park, and the duo's boss Benson, a gumball machine. Mordecai and Rigby spend their days slacking off and avoiding work to entertain themselves by any means, which unexpectedly leads to surreal, extreme, and supernatural misconduct.[9]

Many of Regular Show's characters were loosely based on those developed for Quintel's student films at California Institute of the Arts: The Naïve Man from Lolliland and 2 in the AM PM.[10] The former was one of the winners of the 2005 Nicktoons Film Festival and received international attention after being broadcast on Nicktoons Network.[11] Quintel pitched Regular Show for Cartoon Network's Cartoonstitute project, in which the network allowed young artists to create pilots with no notes, which would possibly be optioned as shows.

Regular Show received critical acclaim and became one of Cartoon Network's most successful original series. The show was nominated for several awards, including seven Annie Awards, six Primetime Emmy Awards – winning one for the episode "Eggscellent" (season 3, episode 17) – and three British Academy Children's Awards. A film adaptation based on the series, titled Regular Show: The Movie, premiered in 2015.[12]

On June 12, 2024, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that a new series featuring some characters from Regular Show had been greenlit, with Quintel returning as showrunner.[13]

The series revolves around the daily lives of two 23-year-old[14] friends – Mordecai (voiced by J. G. Quintel) and Rigby (William Salyers) – who work as groundskeepers at a park and spend their days avoiding work to entertain themselves by any means. This is much to the chagrin of their boss Benson (Sam Marin) and their coworker Skips (Mark Hamill), but to the delight of Pops (Marin), the son of the park's owner, Mr. Maellard (David Ogden Stiers). Their other coworkers include an overweight green male named Muscle Man (Marin) and a ghost named Hi-Five Ghost (Quintel), who occasionally serve as their rivals.

Regular Show largely grew out of creator J. G. Quintel's life and experiences in college.[15] Quintel attended the California Institute of the Arts, and many of the characters on Regular Show are based on the characters developed for his student films The Naïve Man from Lolliland (2005) and 2 in the AM PM (2006). Both originated as part of the 48-Hour Film Project, in which students put words into a hat, pulled out one word at midnight and spent a weekend developing ideas for a film. Quintel attended college with Thurop Van Orman and Pendleton Ward, who both went on to work at Cartoon Network Studios with Quintel; Van Orman created The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack and Ward created Adventure Time. Quintel concurrently worked on Camp Lazlo and as creative director on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack while completing his degree. He was later invited to pitch for Cartoon Network's Cartoonstitute, a project to showcase short films created without the interference of network executives and focus testing.[16][17]

Quintel returned to the characters from his films, put them together with newer characters and created a pilot.[17] Quintel wanted to present a visual pitch rather than a verbal one, believing the idea would make little sense otherwise. He storyboarded the idea for the pilot, and Craig McCracken and Rob Renzetti liked his presentation.[18] Regular Show was one of two series from the project that were green-lit – the other being Secret Mountain Fort Awesome, based on the Cartoonstitute short Uncle Grandpa, which in turn became its own series later on. The project was eventually scrapped and never premiered on television.[19] The character of Mordecai embodies Quintel during his college years, specifically at CalArts; Quintel said, "That's that time when you're hanging out with your friends and getting into stupid situations, but you're also taking it seriously enough."[9] The character of Rigby was randomly developed when Quintel drew a raccoon hula-hooping. He liked the design and developed the character of Rigby to be far less responsible than his companion.[20]

Episodes are produced using storyboarding and hand-drawn animation, and each episode takes roughly nine months to create. Quintel recruited several independent comic book artists to draw the show's animated elements; their style matched closely with Quintel's ideas for the series. The show's soundtrack comprises original music composed by Mark Mothersbaugh as well as licensed songs. While preparing for the beginning of the show, Quintel looked for young, independent comic artists to comprise the show's storyboard artists; he thought that the style would closely match that of Regular Show. He looked through blogs and convention panels for the "total package", which he said was the ability to write and draw, something that many independent comic book artists possess. In addition, Quintel attended many open shows at CalArts, an eight-hour festival of student animation.[17] The style and sensibility of Regular Show was difficult to work with in the beginning; the artists struggled to create a natural, sitcom-like sound for the series.[18]

Growing up, Quintel was inspired by The Simpsons and Beavis and Butt-Head, and credits the stylistic elements of Joe Murray's Rocko's Modern Life and Camp Lazlo as working their way into his style.[18] Video games Street Fighter, Shadowrun and ToeJam & Earl—which Quintel played when he was a child—also inspired the series, as did some British television programs. Quintel's interest in British television was influenced by his British roommate at CalArts, who introduced him to The League of Gentlemen, The IT Crowd, Little Britain, The Office, and The Mighty Boosh; the latter was very influential to Quintel and would later influence the humor in Regular Show.[17]

The plots of Regular Show episodes generally begin with a basic problem that the characters must overcome. While the protagonists work on their task, a magical, supernatural or strange element appears and complicates the initially simple problem.[9] The writers decided to follow this narrative structure to take advantage of the animation.[9]

The series is rated TV-PG. Cartoon Network told Quintel early on that they wanted to "age it up from the TV-Y7 stuff [they'd] been doing in the past".[9] This direction led the crew to use more adult-oriented humor, with light vulgarity and references to alcohol.[21]

The plots of the episodes were influenced by Quintel's and the writers' personal experiences, such as performing prank telephone calls or accepting an eating challenge from a restaurant. The show often references 1980s culture, using music and electronic devices from that era since many factors from the decade left a positive influence on Quintel.[9] The show also makes references to modern social trends such as viral internet videos.[9]

The intention of the show's voice acting was to make most of the characters sound more "natural" and "conversational" (having the characters not talk loudly).[9] Quintel wanted to make the show listenable and given contrast to most other cartoons, which can be difficult for adults to listen to. The main cast consists of voice acting veterans Mark Hamill, who portrays Skips, and Roger Craig Smith, who plays Thomas. William Salyers plays the voice of Rigby; Janie Haddad portrays Margaret; Quintel's former CalArts classmate Sam Marin voices Benson, Pops, and Muscle Man;[9] and Quintel portrays Mordecai and Hi-Five Ghost.[9] Members of the production staff have voiced several characters throughout the series, including Minty Lewis, Toby Jones, Andress Salaff, and Matt Price. The Regular Show cast recorded their lines together in group as opposed to individual recording sessions for each actor (a technique that was later used for Pig Goat Banana Cricket); this helped make the show's dialogue sound "natural". The series regularly used guest voice actors for recurring characters, such as Steven Blum, Courtenay Taylor, David Ogden Stiers, Robin Atkin Downes, Jeff Bennett, Jennifer Hale, David Kaye, Fred Tatasciore, Matthew Yang King, and Julian Holloway.

Each episode of Regular Show took about nine months to complete. Quintel and his 35-member team developed each episode at Cartoon Network Studios in Burbank, California.[22][23] The script was illustrated in rough hand-drawn storyboards.[24] The storyboards were then animated and mixed with the corresponding dialogue to create the animatic, which was then sent to be approved by the network. The show's assets – backgrounds, character designs, props, etc. – were then assembled to be sent to Saerom Animation in South Korea, where the actual animation production of the episode was performed. When finished, the episode was sent to Sabre Media Studios back in California. Music and sound effects were created, and the final episode was mixed and completed. The process allowed the production team to work concurrently on dozens of episodes at different stages of production.

Although most modern animation had switched to hybrid methods such as the Cintiq, Regular Show was animated traditionally by hand using paper, which was then digitally composited and painted with digital ink and paint. Although Cintiqs were initially optioned to be used for the show, Quintel stated that he felt more comfortable working on paper, considering it to be more organic and more representative of each artist's individual style. Board artist Calvin Wong said, "the tools of the trade as being pencils, pens, white-out, and occasionally lightboxes and electric erasers".[17]

Regular Show's intro consists of a blurred sound (provided by Quintel) followed by the sound of a clock ticking with a title card and the opening credits.[citation needed] The main composer of the series is Mark Mothersbaugh, one of the founding members of the band Devo. As Quintel was developing the pilot, he considered asking Mothersbaugh to create the music for the show. The episode's animatic was sent to Mothersbaugh, along with a request for him to join the show's staff and crew.

Regular Show also made use of licensed songs — mostly from the 1980s — which began when Quintel and the staff writers started recording the animatics using copyrighted songs for the montage scenes. The network executives watched the animatic and asked the crew if they wanted to use some of the songs for the finished episodes.[9] Quintel said that the songs are chosen for their suitability for the scene, whether they sound good, and if their licensing is affordable. Quintel enjoyed using the songs in the episodes, saying he thought adult viewers may remember them and younger viewers might appreciate older music.[9] Some songs used in the show include "I'm Alright", "You're the Best Around", "Mississippi Queen", "Don't You (Forget About Me)" and "A Holly Jolly Christmas".[9] The show also used several non-'80s songs, such as "Pale Blue Eyes" by The Velvet Underground in Regular Show: The Movie and "'Heroes'" by David Bowie in the series finale. Another notable song used in the show is "Here Comes a Regular" by The Replacements, a band often considered as underground.

The show also produced original songs that were used in episodes, which were generally composed by Mothersbaugh and written by one of the staff's storyboard artists.[9] "Summertime Loving, Loving in the Summer (Time)" was written by staff member Sean Szeles and appeared in the episode "This Is My Jam" (season 2, episode 13).[9]

On June 12, 2024, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that a new Regular Show series had been greenlit for two seasons, with Quintel returning as showrunner.[13] On September 30, 2024, Mark Hamill confirmed that he would reprise his role as Skips.[25]