Kevin Brueck

''Annoying Orange'' is an American comedy web series created by Dane Boedigheimer (known online as DaneBoe). Set in a world of anthropomorphic food, the series follows its titular protagonist, Orange, who always annoys others by telling crude jokes and puns and making annoying noises until their certain demises. The ''Annoying Orange'' YouTube channel has 13 million subscribers as of 2025.

The original web series has also expanded to multiple separate series, such as ''The Adventures of Liam The Leprechaun'', '' The Misfortune of Being Ned'', ''The Marshmallow Show'', the television series ''The High Fructose Adventures of Annoying Orange,'' and a gaming channel, ''Annoying Orange Gaming'', where they upload Let's Play videos.

The channel uploads biweekly episodes including a variety of mini-series, each dedicated to covering different themes of typical YouTube genre tropes such as ''Ask Orange'', ''HOW2'', ''The Juice'', ''Foodsplosion'', ''Shocktober'', and more. The channel also frequently re-uploads older videos as parts of larger compilations, as seen with their weekly compilation mini-series ''Saturday Supercut''.

Plot

The series is centered on the Annoying Orange, who lives in a house's kitchen with other foods and objects. The formula for most episodes consists of Orange annoying other characters, hence his title. He can accomplish this by telling jokes, burping, breaking wind, repeatedly calling them names or making noises with his mouth. Despite this, he usually means well towards others and tries to keep them safe. At the end of each episode, the targeted character meets a sudden and gruesome end, usually being killed or mutilated by – most often – a chef's knife. Orange tries to warn them by crying out the weapon-in-use, such as "Knife!".

Orange has recurring mannerisms; he often begins an episode by repeatedly calling for a character's attention until the character responds. He also sometimes refers to the character as something playing on the object's name or appearance (such as calling a grapefruit "Apefruit"). If an object behaves in a way that Orange dislikes, he will often call that object an "apple" (the food equivalent of "asshole").

There are other characters that company Orange, such as his irritable and skeptical best friend, Pear (also voiced by Boedigheimer), although he rarely admits it. Other fruits include Passion Fruit, who is commonly associated as Orange's love interest; the arrogant Grapefruit, a tiny but hot-blooded Red Delicious apple known as Midget Apple (though he prefers the name Little Apple), the happy-go-lucky and slightly eccentric Marshmallow who always sees everything filled with enthusiasm, and an elderly lemon named Grandpa Lemon.

In seasons 15-17, an evil, corrupted version of Orange, dubbed Analog Orange, began to take over the channel. Whenever he is nearby, the screen gets an eerie glitch filter and he unleashes chaos in the kitchen. He first appeared in Shocktober 2023 episodes before getting an arc dedicated to him in 2024. It follows Pear and Grapefruit as they travel though Analog's home realm to try and collect the seven orcruxs – the seven things Orange loves more than anything – in order to save the real Orange, who is trapped in a glass jar by Analog's dark magic, defeat Analog once and for all, and return the kitchen to its former glory. They succeed by the halfway point of season 17.

Characters

Main

* (voiced by Dane Boedigheimer) – An orange and the namesake of the series who tries to find any and every excuse to annoy someone. He can spit seeds from his mouth and has a passion for flatulence, TNT, kazoos, making noises (such as "nya, nya" and a motorboat engine) and touching his tongue to his eye. Orange enjoys making lots of puns and jokes, usually punctuated with his signature laugh. Despite this crude and antisocial behavior, Orange usually means well and is generally good-hearted, trying to warn the other fruits of their imminent demise, while also sticking close to his friends.
* (voiced by Dane Boe) – A Bartlett pear. The only fruit who puts up with Orange (at least most of the time), and is arguably his best friend, although he rarely admits it. Other foods regard Pear as a bore, owing to his passion for reading, he is often the butt of puns and jokes throughout the series.
*Midget Apple (voiced by Dane Boe) – A small and fittingly short-fused Red Delicious apple who prefers to be called "Little Apple", as he hates the appellation "Midget Apple" for being insensitive to fruits his size. He owns a monster truck and is often ridiculed for his height, mostly by Orange. He is also ridiculed for being illiterate, which he constantly denies.
*Marshmallow (voiced by Dane Boe) – A cute, enthusiastic, squeaky-voiced marshmallow who is almost always very happy. They are given to say "Yay!" a lot and have an audacious giggle. They love unicorns (their mother herself is a unicorn), rainbows, cuddly animals, and all things cute. A running gag involved questioning their gender (although they were occasionally referred to as "he" and "him" in earlier episodes) which Marshmallow refused to disclose for personal amusement. It was later revealed they were non-binary.
* (voiced by Justine Ezarik) – A sweet, sassy passion fruit who is Orange's love interest, although Orange is embarrassed to show his true feelings towards her. Passion does, ironically, get along pretty well with Orange, being one of his closer friends. In 2025, Passion's life was put on the line as she was the final orcrux Orange had to destroy in order to stop the reign of Analog Orange, but was saved after his defeat.
*Grandpa Lemon (voiced by Kevin Brueck) – An elderly lemon who constantly falls asleep and mishears words. Despite his old age, he drives a stunt-optimized motorcycle.
* (voiced by Bob Jennings from 2010 to 2021, Jon Bailey since 2021) – A brawny grapefruit who has a short temper - and who others (often Orange) often call fat, much to his displeasure. He has a bodybuilder's personality and likes to impress others, particularly female foods, although he usually fails at this due to his foul luck. Following Jon Bailey's recast as his new voice actor, running gags of him wanting his old voice back and saying "I'm walking here!" due to his New York accent were started.

Recurring

*Apple (usually voiced by Dane Boe among others) – A feisty and earnest and apple that is often the victim of Orange. He tries to give himself peace when he can and gets fed up when anyone – mostly Orange – triggers him. Despite dying from a knife in the first episode, he has reappeared in several later episodes. This is because Apple not an individual fruit, but rather a set of clones sent to the kitchen one after another after a clone's death.
*Sis (voiced by Jess Lizama) – Orange's equally annoying sister, she was originally only a one-time character but was turned into a recurring character due to populatity and likely the noticeable lack of female main characters, and Passion's less frequent appearances in later episodes (Grapefruit even tries to hit on her as well, with little to no avail).
*Corey (voiced by Kevin Brueck) - Midget Apple's literal "half-brother", Corey is a golden delicious apple who managed to survive a knife attack, although losing his backside in the process, which he constantly talks about or tries to replace in his very frequent appearances. He tends to be over-the-top and rather oblivious or dopey at times, since the knife injury also appears to have damaged his brain (including the half of his brain that experiences fear).
*Knife (voiced by Kevin Nalty, later by Dane Boe, singing voice by Peter Coffin) – A chef's knife who often kills various foods against his will. He is extremely terrified both by the fact that he is used for mutilating food and by a cruel knife sharpener who seems to enjoy Knife's suffering.
*G.G. (voiced by Jon Bailey) – a giant granadilla from Argentina who was Passion's love interest for some episodes.
*Liam the Leprechaun (portrayed by Bob Jennings) – A short-tempered leprechaun who is always losing his pot of gold, and ever since first encountering Orange, has become among his most bitter enemies. In the episode "Leprechaun Flu", Liam dies after getting a serious case of the Leprechaun Flu, where he burps bunnies, sneezes rainbows, and explodes in coins. As such, and with Bob Jennings' departure from the series in 2021, Liam was retired as a character.
*Zoom, Zip & Zoop (Zoom and Zoop voiced by Bob Jennings, Zip voiced by Aaron Massey) – A trio of highly caffeinated canned energy drinks.
*Squash (voiced by Dane Boe) – A nervous butternut squash who invariably falls onto various foods by mistake and, to his horror and disgust, crushes them to death. Squash does not intend to hurt anyone and hates it when it happens.
*Copper Lincoln (voiced by Bob Jennings) – A miniature copper Abraham Lincoln statue who enjoys break dancing and was birthed by an ordinary penny after being swallowed and coughed up by a magic oyster. With Bob Jennings' departure from the series in 2021, Copper has been retired as a character.
*Dr. Bananas (voiced by Aaron Massey) – A banana mad scientist whose inventions have been known to be incredible achievements or to have caused certain death. Although sliced by Knife in his debut, he managed to reconnect his two halves with an invention and the side effect that electricity surges through his stitching, although this side effect appears to have gone away in later appearances.
*Nude Dude (voiced by Jack Douglass, later Kevin Brueck) – An apple who became permanently naked after being put into an electric peeler. Some episodes depict him with a censor bar over his groin area, despite him (and all other foods) having no visible genitalia.
*Captain Obvious (voiced by Steve Zaragoza, later Shannon Jones) – A sea captain onion who fittingly always points out the obvious, much to the annoyance of others.
*Lou the Tick (voiced by Michael "Mike 3D" Wingate) – A conspiracy theorist tick who lives in a tinfoil tent, always worrying about aliens possibly taking over the Earth. His name and species are a play on the word "lunatic".
*Baby Orange (voiced by Dane Boe) – Orange's nosy, disobedient, mischievous baby cousin who is often looked after by the rest of the main cast. Since he is just a baby, he doesn't know what danger lurks around and usually repeats "Why?" whenever someone warns him of it.
*Limburger Cheese (voiced by Rebecca Parham) – A block of stinky limburger cheese and a friend of Sis.
*Gaming Grape (voiced by Shannon Jones) – A grape who loves to play video games, much to the chagrin of his mother and Game Ball, his sports-fanatic older brother. He mostly appears on the ''Annoying Orange Gaming'' channel.

Episodes

The first 4 Annoying Orange episodes released from October 9 to December 23, 2009, on the Dane Boe YouTube channel. From 2010 to 2022, the Annoying Orange channel has uploaded two or three videos a week. As of late 2023, the channel uploads regular videos biweekly.

Conception

Before ''Annoying Orange'', Boedigheimer had done many talking food videos for her channel and other sites including JibJab. She said in an interview that the idea for ''The Annoying Orange'' was a combination of the talking food videos, puns and special effects she came up with and did before. The original video was planned to be titled ''The Annoying Apple'', but when she started animating the video, she found it easier to put features on orange than an apple and make it clearer. The first Annoying Orange video initially was meant to be the only one, but due to his popularity, Boedigheimer decided to make more videos and eventually turn Annoying Orange into a full-time series. She created a YouTube channel dedicated to the franchise under the same name on January 11, 2010.

Reception

The series was rated as the most viewed web series of February and March 2010 by Mashable, with over 52 million views. In April 2010, the series had amassed over 100 million views on YouTube. By August, it had received 1 million subscribers. In June 2011, the channel was ranked as the eighth most subscribed and 30th most viewed, with more than 2,000,000 subscribers. On January 13, 2012, the series hit 1 billion channel views and 2.3 million subscribers. The Annoying Orange YouTube channel currently has over 13 million subscribers and 9 billion views.

Despite the popularity of the web series with sections of the public, it has received generally unsavory, critical reviews, many citing its rude humor, obnoxious characters and poor special effects. Liz Shannon Miller considered the show to be "annoying for many reasons". In the web series column ''Pass the Mustard'', Ned Hepburn called the show "pure, pure unfunny, highly concentrated, in droplet form, just purely nonsensical riffing from an Annoying Orange." Hepburn concluded, "''the Annoying Orange'' series is one of the few that I had a physically bad reaction to. It was horrible." 411mania.com called the show "idiotic" and "creepy as hell", while other publications have referred to it as "third grade humor."

In 2014, the Annoying Orange YouTube channel was listed on New Media Rockstars Top 100 Channels, ranked at #32.

Lawsuit

The success of the series had received attention from H2M, a Fargo, North Dakota advertising agency, which in 2006 created its own "talking orange" character to be the spokesman for a North Dakota Department of Transportation ad campaign. Both characters were anthropomorphic oranges with ties to the Fargo-Moorhead area. The Annoying Orange was looked into by H2M's attorneys as an intellectual property matter. Boedigheimer stated she had not watched H2M's talking orange videos before being informed about the disagreement, and also believed that the characters were not very similar. Boedigheimer and Grove were later sued by H2M in May 2013 for allegedly copying the character. The case was dismissed with prejudice April 6, 2015 by Chief Judge Ralph R. Erickson.

Pay withdrawal lawsuit

On December 23, 2014, Dane Boedigheimer announced that ''The Annoying Orange'' had not been funded by Collective Digital Studios since that November. This led her to take legal action to get paid.

Merchandise and media

Collective merchandise

Since late 2011, The Collective has produced many accessories, toys and clothing with toymaker The Bridge Direct and clothing retailers such as JCPenney, Shopko and rue21. The Collective also announced a partnership in December of that year with costume manufacturer Rubie's Costume Company to produce children and adult Halloween costumes and accessories featuring characters such as Orange, Pear, Marshmallow, and Midget Apple from the web series.

Plushies

In 2020, Annoying Orange partnered with Warren James, LLC and has produced Memory-foam plushie toys depicting every major character. The inventory of plush toys includes Orange, Pear, Midget Apple, Marshmallow, Grandpa Lemon, Grapefruit, and Passion Fruit. The toys can be purchased on the official website individually, or in a bundle of seven.

Comics

A series of Annoying Orange comics were published by Papercutz.

#''Secret Agent Orange'' (December 11, 2012) – Reference to ''James Bond''.
#'' Orange You Glad You're Not Me?'' (May 28, 2013) – This is a reference to the joke that ends in the punchline ''orange you glad... ?'' and has other endings depending on the joke, like "that I didn't say 'apple'?".
#''Pulped Fiction'' (August 27, 2013) – Parody of ''Pulp Fiction''.
#''Tales of the Crisper'' (January 14, 2014) – Parody of ''Tales from the Crypt''.
#''Fifty Shades of Orange'' (April 8, 2014) – Parody of ''Fifty Shades of Grey''.
#''My Little Baloney'' (August 5, 2014) – Parody of ''My Little Pony''.

Television series

Because of its rising popularity, a television adaptation of ''The Annoying Orange'' was greenlit for Cartoon Network in 2010, completed under the name ''The High Fructose Adventures of Annoying Orange''. It ran from 2012 to 2014 with two seasons and a total of 60 episodes. The show was produced by Boedigheimer, Conrad Vernon and Tom Sheppard, co-executive-produced by Spencer Grove, Kevin Brueck, Robert Jennings and Aaron Massey, and produced with Gary Binkow, Michael Green and Dan Weinstein.

Video games

''Carnage''

A video game developed by Bottle Rocket Apps under the name ''Kitchen Carnage'' was released for the iPod Touch and iPhone on April 7, 2011. The game was later released in HD for the iPad on May 6, 2011, and for Android devices on October 14, 2011. The Christmas version of the game was released in December 2011 and the free version of the game, Kitchen Carnage Lite, was released March 2, 2012, the game was delisted from the App Store and Google Play Store in October 2023 along with Splatter Up and Skewerz.

The game aims to throw different items across the kitchen into a series of blenders before the time runs out. The player is given apples and bananas at the start. When the second level is reached, tomatoes (replaced by baseballs for the 64-bit version) are added. Level 3 adds cantaloupes, level 4 pineapples, level 5 strawberries and level 6 adds Fred FiggleCorns. ''Kitchen Carnage'' was renamed to ''Carnage'' in 2021.

''Splatter Up''

''Annoying Orange: Splatter Up'' is the second game by the Annoying Orange, after ''Carnage''. The game is based on baseball, and the player slides a finger while a fruit enters the home plate. The faster the player slides, the farther he gets. The game sprites are the same as the ''Carnage'' game, the only one that does not appear in this game but appear in ''Carnage'' is Fred Figglecorn.

''Skewerz''

''Skewerz'' is the most recent Annoying Orange game. The player is given fruits and vegetables to collect and they need to catch them in the skewer. When collected, the player can send them to a blender called the Froomba.

See also

* Syncro-Vox, a low-cost animation technique that has been used in the series

Notes

References

External links

The Annoying Orange official website

{{Portal bar, Animation, Internet, Comedy, Cartoon, United States
2000s YouTube series
2009 web series debuts
2010s YouTube series
2020s YouTube series
American animated web series
American comedy web series

American black comedy television shows
Black comedy web series
Fiction about confectionery
Cultural depictions of Abraham Lincoln
Fiction about sentient objects
Fruit and vegetable characters
Food and drink in popular culture
Internet memes introduced in 2009
Leprechauns in popular culture
Satirical web series
Surreal comedy web series

Viral videos
YouTube channels launched in 2010
YouTube original programming
Works subject to a lawsuit
Works involved in plagiarism controversies