Regular Show

image for Regular Show

Short takes

Not recommended under 12 (Violence; Coarse language; Crude humour)

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This topic contains:

  • overall comments and recommendations
  • details of classification and consumer advice lines for Regular Show
  • a review of Regular Show completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 11 December 2012.

Overall comments and recommendations

Children under 12 Not recommended due to violence, coarse language and crude humour
Children aged 12 and over OK for this age group

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

Name of movie: Regular Show
Classification: PG
Consumer advice lines: Mild animated violence and coarse language
Length: 67 minutes

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

A synopsis of the story

The film Regular Show is a collection of six short animations from the 2012 season of the Regular Show animation series as seen on Cartoon Network. The cartoon series features two main characters in their mid twenties, a six-foot-tall blue jay named Mordecai (voiced by J.G. Quintel) and a somewhat hyperactive raccoon called Rigby (voiced by William Salyers). Mordecai and Rigby are the best of friends, who share a house live to party and are constantly getting into trouble, but somehow manage to land on their feet.

Mordecai and Rigby work for a walking, talking, gumball machine named Benson (voiced by Sam Marin) with the pair constantly slacking off and finding themselves in one pickle or another while frequently involving an array of strange friends including Pops, an eccentric man with a lollypop for a head, a muscle bound Yeti named Skips (voiced by Mark Hamill) and High Five Ghost, a packman type character with a hand sticking out from the top of his head.     

Themesinfo

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

Friendship; irresponsible behaviour

Use of violenceinfo

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

Regular Show contains slapstick cartoon violence and comic perilous situations throughout, some of which may be imitated by children. We hear some comical threats of violent acts. Occasionally characters are depicted with injuries and occasionally characters are killed in a comical manner. Examples include:

  • Throughout the film we see cartoon characters kicked, punched in the stomach and face, slapped, elbowed, pushed, shoved
  • Verbal threats of violence include: “I’ll kill you”; repeated reference is made to cartoon characters “ham boning” other cartoon character; humanised telecommunication machines threaten to “burn” and “erase from existence” two cartoon characters. 
  • Bullies on a school bus punch school children.
  • Giant cartoon icon styled videogame characters come to life and fire laser beams at each other with the characters destroying houses and property in the process including disintegrating the roof of a school bus. At one point a group of school children are surrounded by fire; no one is injured. After watching a video game a boy’s eyes burst into flames. We see two cartoon characters disintegrated by laser fire leaving behind two large piles of ash. We see characters in a video game punching each other and slamming each other against the ground.
  • A slapstick-styled fight between a group of young adults, Regular Show characters and a sea monster involves lots of punches to the face and body, with the sea monster destroying a wooden dock.    

Material that may scare or disturb children

Under fiveinfo

Children under five are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations.

Regular Show contains an array of strange, comical cartoon characters that may scare younger children including the following:

  • a giant moon monster resembling a cross between a man and a bird which attempts to eat another character
  • a giant face sitting amongst an audience of cartoon characters.
  • a video game fuses Mordecai and Rigby into a single giant character with one body and two heads
  • several giant sea monsters including a giant fish and a type of sea slug
  • a packman type character with a hand sticking out of the top of its head
  • a muscle bound yeti.

Aged five to eightinfo

Children aged five to eight will also be frightened by scary visual images and will also be disturbed by depictions of the death of a parent, a child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

Children in this age group may also be disturbed by some of the above-mentioned scenes

Aged eight to thirteeninfo

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

Children in this age group are unlikely to be disturbed by anything in this film

Thirteen and overinfo

Children over the age of thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic physical harm or threats, molestation or sexual assault and / or threats from aliens or the occult.

Nothing of concern

Sexual references

Regular Show contains occasional low-level sexual innuendo. Examples include:

  • We hear Mordecai say that he and a female jaybird named Margaret “Had a really good time last night”.
  • Margaret tells Mordecai “I thought we made a pretty good team you and me and I’m pretty much up for anything”.
  • A character says “How hot she is” in reference to Margaret.    

Use of substances

There is some use of substances in this movie, including:

  • In one scene a man dressed as a clown answers his hotel door and as the door opens several cans roll out. The man appears very intoxicated, saying that it is very bright and we see him gagging and going off to the side to vomit; the act occurs off screen. 

Coarse language

Regular Show contains low-medium-level coarse language, putdowns and some racial stereotyping. Examples include:

  • “Stupid dill, you hole, weird, looser, you drill-bit, this sucks, slackers, crazy slap jockeys, we’re screwed, what a looser, darn thing, punks, dang it, get lost, dumb suckers, butt dialled, shut up, his butt.    

There is also crude humour including:

  • One character has what appear to be a colostomy bag strapped to his stomach, which the character refers to as a “gravy bag” hand we see the character sucking the contents of the bag through a plastic tub. Later during a fight, the bag gets broken with the contents of the bag covering the man.

In a nutshell

Regular Show is a quirky, fantasy cartoon series targeting older teens and young adults. The series content of slapstick violence, characters that appear intoxicated, crude humour, coarse language, sexual innuendo, and racial and cultural stereotyping makes it unsuitable for children less than twelve.    

A few episodes have basic messages such as:

  • Being irresponsible will eventually catch up with you
  • Being with friends is more important than winning video games.  


In general the series depicts more negative values than positive ones but one of the underlying values is the importance of friendship. However, the two main characters Mordecai and Rigby repeatedly display irresponsible attitudes and behaviour with no negative consequences. Parents may wish to discuss how in real life irresponsible behaviour has consequences that can be disastrous and far reaching