The reason Hypnotoad works so well as a running gag is not just because of the social commentary; it’s because the noise that plays over the Hypnotoad’s stare is genuinely unsettling and trippy. While we the viewers aren’t put under the toad’s spell, no suspension of disbelief is required to understand why it works so well for the characters. That’s an impressive, difficult trick for the show to pull off. To do so, the editors had to go back to a sound recording one of them had made back in 1992, seven years before the show itself premiered.
“I was in Fort Wayne, Indiana doing this music video and, during some downtime, I was in this cavernous water treatment plant with this great, echo-y sound to it,” explained Danik Thomas in a 2022 oral history of the Hypnotoad. “I had this old analog signal generator that made all these different noises, so I hooked that up to my bass amp and recorded it with my microphone. It was the most obnoxious sound ever.” The result was a sound that feels like it’s frying your mind, melting away any independent thought you might’ve once had.
Thomas explained how, “for years” before the show itself began, he would use this noise to prank people. “It particularly seemed to annoy Paul Calder, who I worked with on ‘Futurama,’ so I would get him with that a lot,” he said. “I labeled it ‘Angry Machine,’ which just seemed appropriate.”