Over the years, we've seen plenty of Adult Swim shows like Ricky and Morty and
Robot Chicken garner success. However, the network's first big runaway hit, arguably,
came in the form of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The misadventures of these talking food items
and their disgruntled neighbor led to some of the most memorable situations
and characters ever to appear in late night animation. But with such a bizarre cast of
characters and weird plotlines… how do these characters stack up on the morality spectrum?
I'm Andrew with WickedBinge and this is Aqua Teen Hunger Force Characters: Good to Evil.
First off, we've got to establish the rules for a show that doesn't really have rules
to begin with. We're sticking to main cast members and prominent reoccurring characters.
We should also note that when it comes to this series, there aren’t really any
characters we’d describe as Good. So we’re going to kick things off in the Grey Area.
Though we will honor the best of this section with our standard “good” medals.
With that out of the way, let's jump into Carl's pool… I mean,
our ranking… starting with the moral Gray Area.
The Gold Medal of Good, by default, is going to the faithful lab rat Steve. In the first two
seasons of the show, Steve frequently appeared as the assistant to Dr. Weird during the cold
opens of episodes. Dr. Weird often uses Steve as the guinea pig for many of his experiments,
resulting in the frequent deaths of one or both of them. Despite his close association
with the crazy doctor, Steve is very polite and seems generally more sensible. We say
“seems” because he still works with Dr. Weird frequently despite dying several times. His
complacency in Dr. Weird’s experiments is not only stupid but unethical as many of
these creations escape and wreck havoc on New Jersey. Steve does eventually quit his
job but is seen working with Dr. Weird on occasion after that so who knows. This is
Aqua Teen Hunger Force after all so continuity doesn’t really have to make sense. Nevertheless,
Steve’s well-mannered personality is enough to land him a spot at the top of our countdown.
Floating in with the Silver Medal of Good is Frylock. In a show filled to the brim with
insanity, a flying box of fries being the voice of reason makes sense to us. On top of being easily
the most intelligent member of the cast, Frylock is one of the most moral as well. While Shake is
often the one to perpetuate the conflict, Frylock tends to be the one to resolve it,
showing he’s one of the few characters to care about the safety of himself and others. He
also makes many elaborate inventions both for scientific advancement and for the betterment
of the world as a whole. Granted, many of these inventions end up doing the opposite,
especially when Shake or Meatwad get a hold of them but it’s the thought that counts…
I guess. Even so, Frylock still lands in the Gray Area because he does have moments where
he throws ethics out the window. This is best demonstrated in the episode Fry Legs where he
murder’s a woman’s boyfriend and wears his corpse due to being romantically interested
in her. Usually murdering someone would rank a character even lower but most of the Aqua
Teen Hunger Force characters die all the time and come back to life so… no real harm done? Probably?
Taking the Bronze Medal of Good is Meatwad. By fear the most friendly and cheerful of the
main cast, Meatwad is by far the most childish as well. This leads to a lot of moments to where he
can be easily manipulated, especially by Shake who also constantly bullies Meatwad. Even so,
Meatwad maintains a very positive attitude most of the time showing that the constant harassment he
receives doesn’t affect how he treats strangers. This doesn’t stop Meatwad from occasionally
being vindictive though, especially when he takes advantage of Shake’s ignorance and materialistic
motivations. Meatwad even occasionally tricks Shake into doing deadly acts such as convincing
him to eat a scorpion. Despite this, Meatwad and Shake seem to both like each other on some
level so I guess it’s just the nature of their relationship. Meatwad also occasionally can be
very sassy which causes him to get punished by Frylock. Not exactly a character defined by a
strong set of ethics but Meatwad usually is well intentioned and easy to get along with.
Boxy Brown is up next. A creation of Meatwad that was initially thought to be an imaginary friend,
Boxy Brown is eventually revealed to be able to converse with other characters,
such as Shake when he gets bitten by a radioactive black man. Boxy Brown’s voice
and personality are a parody of Blaxploitation films from the 70’s, which is also the reason
disco music is heard whenever he speaks. While generally laid back and not physically harmful
due to his inability to move, Boxy Brown does occasionally threaten Meatwad and
other characters whenever they talk back to him. While these are obviously empty threats, we kind
of wonder if Boxy Brown would follow through on these statements if he could. Meatwad seems
to both care about and fear Boxy Brown making for an… interesting companion to say the least.
Next, we have Emory. One half of the Plutonians, Emory, much like Steve, is the assistant to
someone who is much stupider and more impulsive than he is. In this case, Oglethorpe hatches many
plans to take over the Earth with Emory more or less going along with him for no disenable reason.
As such, Emory usually isn’t the direct cause of any of the Plutonians’ mischief but he certainly
is complacent in a lot of it. While Oglethorpe is quick to anger, Emory is usually laid back,
harbouring no deep resentment toward people who have thwarted their plans like the Aqua Teens
or the Mooninites. If it wasn’t for being oddly obsequious to Oglethorpe, we’d be hard pressed to
even call Emory a villain since he generally means to harm to anyone around him. However, since he’s
always assisting Oglethorpe’s crazy antics, we have to put him on the lower end of the Gray Area.
And that wraps up the Grey Area… It’s time to descent into the dark
side. These characters are The Bad and The Evil.
Thousands of years ago The Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future
was placed onto the next spot. This is a hard character to rank due to how mentally
unstable this robot is. A creation of Dr. Weird, The Cybernetic Ghost of…
et cetera is claims to be able to wee into the past and the future and tells stories of those
times. The problem is that these stories are inaccurate, long and have nothing to do with
what the characters are dealing with. Frylock eventually calls him out on this in Aqua Teen
Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, where it’s revealed the Cybernetic Ghost strings random
words and sentences together that have no bearing on reality. The Cybernetic Ghost is a annoying,
attention seeking liar but we’re cutting him a little bit of slack because we think he’s
mentally unhinged. Maybe even to the point to where he believes some of the nonsense that
he’s spouting. Still, he does get impatient with anyone who contradicts him and he has an impulsive
habit of humping things that are around him so he still lands closer to the top of the Bad category.
Another character who is hard to rank due to his mental state is Jimmy, also known as Tree Wizard.
A recurring homeless gentleman who appears in many episodes, Jimmy is a drug addict who
is often out of his mind. There are times where he’s so high that he can’t even form sentences,
instead speaking in incoherent murmurs. Jimmy obviously has few ethics and mostly is looking
for his next smoke or drink. This leads him to do things like steal the Aqua Teen’s television
set and ask Meatwad to sneak alcohol into jail for him.Jimmy’s behavior goes from bad to worse,
eventually becoming so self absorbed that he starts a religion based around
worshiping him. This possibly indicates that Jimmy has developed a God complex
due to his mind becoming corrupted by drugs.Whatever the case, Jimmy is an
entertaining character to watch but certainly not one we’d want to find ourselves around.
Now we’re finally getting to everyone’s favorite disgruntled neighbor, Carl. Occupying the house
next door to the Aqua Teens, Carl naturally has to put up with the antics of the group more than
any other character, much to his dismay. Carl is quick to anger, not very intelligent and quite
cynical. We can’t say we entirely blame him since he does more or less want to be left alone despite
getting constantly wrapped up in the Aqua Teen’s antics. His only real passions are football,
pornography and classic rock. Anything that takes him away from any one of those three things is an
annoyance. We’re ranking Carl low in the Bad category as he doesn’t really want to hurt
anyone so much as he wants to be left alone. With that said, he does show little care for the well
being of himself or others and will often try to manipulate Frylock or Meatwad if they can help
him in any way, so we can’t rank him as a Good or Gray character either. Bad, but not Evil.
Stomping into the next spot is Rabbot. Another creation of Dr. Weird,
Rabbot appeared as the antagonist of the very first Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode where he
was created to solve the world’s “vegetable problem.” Due to its size and indifference,
Rabbot tends to cause destruction wherever it goes, including breaking the walls of Dr.
Weird’s laboratory and crushing Carl’s car. It may seem like this isn’t really done out of any
ill intent but there are times where Rabbot does act much more directly mischievous. This
includes teaming up with the Mooninites, destroying the Aqua Teen’s new house and
spraying hair-growth formula on Master Shake and other objects around town. Rabbot is one of the
few characters in Aqua Teen Hunger Force to have never died due to its practically indestructible
nature. As such, Rabbot is possible their most powerful enemy but far from the evilest.
Occupying the next spot, we have Markula. If you don’t understand why this character is in the Evil
category, let us put it this way; one, he’s a vampire and two, he’s a landlord. Need we say
more? Markula is indeed the seldom seen owner that the Aqua Teens rent their house from and
that in itself is pretty scummy. He is renting out a house without a bathroom after all. Much like
many landlords… uh, I mean vampires, Markula is highly egotistical and demonstrates a strong lack
of care for the well being of those renting from him. He keeps the Aqua Teens hostage in a cave,
almost killing them after Frylock refuses to make a payment due to the house having
a gas leak. He also rents their house out to several evil beings such as three sirens and a
giant monster name Paul, all of who cause insurmountable death and destruction to
everything around them. At the end of the day, we see very few redeeming qualities in Markula.
Gentlemen, behold! Dr. Weird is up next. As his name would imply, Dr. Weird is an insane
scientist who spends most of his time making inventions in his laboratory along with his
assistant Steve. The inventions he creates often kill either him or Steve and occasionally escape
and wreck havoc on New Jersey. Dr. Weird is even the inventor of many of the characters from the
show such as the Aqua Teens themselves, Rabbot, The Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the
Future and many more. Dr. Weird’s creations are often not useful in any way and cause more harm
than good. He demonstrates little care for the well being of others, especially Steve
who he often uses to test out his experiments. Dr. Weird isn’t ranking any lower because,
to his credit, he’s not making these inventions with any sort of malicious intent like enslaving
humanity or destroying the world. He doesn’t care much if people do get hurt in the process
of these pointless experiments though so he definitely isn’t a moral character either.
The other half of the Plutonians, Oglethorpe is up next. While Emory is more or less the assistant,
Oglethorpe is the one who initiates most of the conflict caused by these aliens.
Oglethorpe seems to desire the domination of Earth although he doesn’t really seem
to have a clear plan of how he will go about doing this. He more or less is making it up
as he goes despite wanting to seem like he has everything under control. Oglethorpe is quick
to anger and is extremely stupid, even more so than Emory who wasn’t the brightest bulb
in the box to begin with. Oglethorpe does occasionally invite people onto his ship
which shows some hospitality (sort of) but really, he does this mostly to show off his
“advanced” Plutonian technology to anyone who will listen. Oglethorpe might rank even lower
if his plans to take over the world had any rhyme or reason to them but since they don’t,
it’s hard to gauge how Evil these schemes would be had they played out or even been fully explained.
Rapping his way into the next spot is MC P Pants. A demon from hell,
MC P Pants comes to Earth repeatedly in an attempt to enslave its inhabitants.
To do this, MC P Pants releases a variety of different songs with subliminal messages that
tell its listeners to do things. Unfortunately, MC P Pants’ lyrics aren’t that effective any the
only person he can seem to trick is Meatwad and maybe Carl. MC P Pants often dies and
returns to Earth reincarnated in a different form, be that a human, spider, fly, cow, worm,
or vampire. Whatever form he takes, MC P Pants’ plans to take over the world are ridiculously
complicated an ineffective so he isn’t as big of a threat as he wants to believe. Regardless,
the intent is still there and enough to land him in the Evil category.
Getting the Bronze Medal of Evil is Dr. Wongburger. Much like MC P Pants,
Dr. Wongburger takes a different form in each of his appearances. This is because Dr. Wongburger’s
backstory continually changes although is plans more or less are the exact same. In
his first appearance, he is an anthropomorphic penis who is forcibly collecting penises to
construct his Dickship to take him back to Dick Planet. This fails but Dr. Wongburger
returns once again as an anthropomorphic tooth who is collecting teeth to create a
Toothship to take him back to tooth planet. He appears once again as a giant hamburger,
this time simply abducting Master Shake and taking him to Hamburger Planet. Dr.
Wongburger’s motivation to return to his home planet is understandable but why he needs to
steal people’s teeth or genitals to accomplish this goal is beyond us. We’re also not sure what
he planned to do to Shake after abducting him but we can’t imagine it would be anything good.
The Silver Medal of Evil is going to a double ranking of the Mooninites known as Ignignokt
and Err. Out of all the villains in Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Ignignokt and Err are by far the
most iconic and recurring. While Ignignokt and Err do have different personalities from each other,
we’re ranking them together because, unlike Oglethorpe and Emory, their ethics aren’t that
different from each other. Ignignokt is extremely smug and condescending while Err is a violent,
angry trash talker. While Ignignokt is the one to come up with most of the plans, Err is more
than willing to carry them out. This includes messing with the Aqua Teens, the Plutonians, Carl,
and even the audience such as when they interrupt the story of Aqua Teen Forever: Phantasm. They
even go as far to gather the rest of the villains on the moon in a collective effort to take the
Aqua Teens down, showing they are much more proactive than a lot of villains. Thankfully, the
Mooninites are hardly a threat, demonstrated by their extremely slow bullets and constant failures
at the hands of the Aqua Teens (mostly Frylock). Still, their attitudes and commitment to their
villainous ways is enough for Ignignokt and Err to rank among the evilest characters in the series.
Finally, The Gold Medal of Evil is going to Master Shake. This probably won’t come as a surprise as
Shake’s selfish, narcissistic and manipulative attitude is the driving force for many episodes
in this series. He is the self proclaimed leader of the Aqua Teens despite the fact that Frylock
is much more mature and intelligent and he and Meatwad actually have super powers while Shake
does not. Shake is a pathological liar who is incredibly lazy and refuses to ever work,
unless it involves a get rich quick scheme that ultimately blows up in his face. While he’s
slightly more intelligent than Meatwad, Shake’s stupidity is by far more destructive due to his
narcissism and lack of care regarding the safety of others. Shake usually gets his comeuppance,
dying more than any other character in the series. Apparently that doesn’t teach him anything as he
continues acting as the same egotistical moron even after everything that has happened to him.
He may not plot to take over the world like many of the villains but we’re willing to
bet that Shake would if he wasn’t so lazy. All of this makes Shake one of the funniest
characters in television history but also one of the biggest jerks you’ll ever come across.
That does it for our list but before we sign off,
let’s award these characters with some honorary medals!
The Darwin Medal is a tough one for this list given the
number of idiotic characters. Ultimately,
we’re giving it to Meatwad due to how often he’s manipulated by Shake and the Mooninites.
The Pride Medal is awarded to Shake due to his inflated ego and demand to be the leader
of the Aqua Teens. We’re also giving Shake the Greed Medal due to his get rich quick schemes.
The Wrath Medal is given to Ignignokt and Err. These are by far the most persistent
villains given their many appearances so we feel it fitting to award them with this.
The Sloth Medal is awarded to Carl. Carl would be content staying at home to watch football
and pornography if it wasn’t for the Aqua Teen’s constantly interrupting his pastimes.
We’ll also give Carl the Gluttony Medal as he clearly doesn’t have the best easting habits.
The Envy Medal goes to Oglethorpe. This Plutonian is very defensive about his
“advanced” technology which is pointed out by many characters,
such as Frylock and the Mooninites, to actually not be very impressive.
The Lust Medal is awarded to The Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past
from the Future due to him repeatedly humping random people and objects.
But let us know in the comment section who you think the most moral Aqua Teen
Hunger Force character is, as well as what we should cover next. Make sure to hit
that notification bell and binge our other videos. But most importantly, stay wicked.