An Adult Swim Writer Wrote A Defining Part Of A Twisted Nicolas Cage Movie

In Panos Cosmatos' psychedelic 2018 heavy-metal horror cult/revenge epic "Mandy," the laconic lumberjack Red (Nicolas Cage) lives in connubial bliss with his beloved girlfriend Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) in a remote cabin way out in the middle of the Oregonian woods. They spend their days listening to music and staring lovingly at one another. Rather suddenly, though, their idyll is interrupted by a local religious cult, led by the drugged-out, sex-crazed Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roach). Jeremiah is convinced that he is an actual messiah after years of taking hallucinogens and seems to have access to legitimately supernatural demonic bikers (who look like trashier versions of the cenobites from "Hellraiser"). Jeremiah kidnaps Mandy and tries to convince her to be one of his concubines. When she laughs at his naked body, Jeremiah gets mad and burns her alive while Red watches. Everything is bleak and bloody and terrible.

"Mandy" is a stylish, slow-paced, and moody film, and the audience has been watching the shadows encroach up to this point. The film begins with light. By the time Mandy is killed, there is nothing but darkness.

In the aftermath, Red returns to his home, now alone and utterly despondent. The TV is still on in his living room, so he sits and looks at it, only half-perceiving the world around him, shaken by shock and grief. A commercial appears on the screen for a kid-friendly macaroni product called Cheddar Goblin. The ad, a truly odd TV commercial, features an evil-looking green imp appearing in the pristine suburban kitchen of two hungry kids. The Cheddar Goblin proceeds to puke up copious amounts of macaroni and cheese into the kids' bowls, as well as over their heads. The absurdity of the ad shakes Red out of his reverie and throws him into a rage. He vows revenge.

The Cheddar Goblin sequence was a standout portion of "Mandy," even more so than the rest of the film's amazing heavy-metal-album-cover visuals. As it happens, the sequence was also written by Casper Kelly, the mastermind behind the cult Adult Swim oddity "Too Many Cooks."

Kelly is a cartoon luminary going back to the late 1990s, a time when he was working as a writer on the TV series "CatDog." In 1999, he also wrote and co-directed a mash-up of "Scooby-Doo" and "The Blair Witch Project" titled "The Scooby-Doo Project," which aired on the Cartoon Network on Halloween. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kelly would move on to notoriously surreal animated shows like "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," "Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law," and "Squidbillies." He also co-created the animated shows "Stroker & Hoop," as well as "Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell." It was at this point in his career that Kelly's faux sitcom intro "Too Many Cooks" took the world by storm.

Indeed, Kelly is well known to late-night stoners and lovers of off-putting, bizarre animation. Most recently, he created the outlandish and irreverent shorts in the "Star Trek"-authorized "Very Short Treks" series. In 2022, Kelly also gained notices for his work on "Adult Swim Yule Log," a whimsical distraction that was actually a full-length TV movie in disguise. Its sequel, "Adult Swim Yule Log 2: Branchin' Out," aired in 2024. If nothing else, Kelly has a gloriously off-center sense of humor.

The Cheddar Goblin sequence in "Mandy" was just another feather in Kelly's already eiderdown-encrusted cap, but it might have been the first time a work of his played a dramatic function in another story. A 2018 article in Inverse covered the filming of the Cheddar Goblin sequence, and it sounds like it was a miserable day. Puppeteer Shane Morton was interviewed by Inverse, and he recalled that the "macaroni and cheese" was mixed with lemon gelatin and pineapple-flavored soda, giving the entire set a distinct vomit smell.

The poor child actors on set had to be there for a six-hour shift, being vomited on repeatedly. Morton recalled Kelly approaching him and saying, "I know this was insane and crazy, but what do you think about shooting a crazy TV commercial with a monster puppet for the guy who did 'Beyond the Black Rainbow?'" Morton jumped at the chance and immediately began designing the Cheddar Goblin. He said that he was inspired by the poster for Luca Bercovici's 1985 horror film "Ghoulies," which featured a green-skinned, baby-like monster emerging from a toilet. "It really sums up that whole '80s thing," he remarked. "As soon as I said let's do 'Ghoulies' meets Yoda meets Satan they were like, 'Yeah, let's go in that direction.'"

The time-frame was also appropriate, as "Mandy" takes place in the year 1983. Kelly's and Morton's look for the Cheddar Goblin commercial wasn't merely retro, it was well-researched. Morton even said they looked up the way macaroni and cheese products were packaged in 1983 to make sure it seemed realistic. The surreal part was the Goblin itself, too terrifying to be the mascot of anything.

The Cheddar Goblin became a mini cult phenomenon inside of the "Mandy" cult phenomenon. One could soon buy Cheddar Goblin action figures and T-shirts (all made in small batches by specialty boutiques, of course). Nothing is better than cheddar.