Aqua Teen Hunger Force Theory - Carl's Life

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All right, everyone has seen Aqua Teen Hunger Force at some point. Whether you watched the series or saw the promos, you definitely know that the series stars three food characters known as Master Shake, Frylock, and Meatwad, often having the oddest adventures you could think of (Like Dr.Wongburger stealing dicks to make a dickmachine to get back to his home planet). They also had a neighbor next door (Carl) who was often less than interested in them but seemed to be dragged into their odd adventures from time to time. We all know who Carl is, or we know someone like him in real life. He was basically the stereotype of a person from New Jersey, who loves to live for today by eating fatty foods, watching football, and getting laid with prostitutes. But with this in mind... why is he so unhappy and so bitter?
== Carl's Life ==
Let's think about it back to Carl's childhood, say around 1968. His family wasn't exactly all ritzy, in fact you couldn't even consider them to be a middle class family. They lived in a shady apartment, had two jobs, and at one point, their family ate carpet for dinner (no joke). Young Carl tried to make the best of this, often using his imagination to make any sadden scenario a bit happier. You wouldn't say that Carl's parents were abusive or uncaring, but you could say that they were more strict and more truthful with the facts then other parents would be, whether that's for better or for worse.
Carl still went to public school despite their low funds, but just couldn't seem to find anyone he could relate with. Many kids were often rude based on his scenario and at times would make fun of him because of it. Carl was completely miserable, but kept it to himself because he knew that his parents didn't need the extra stress. Carl would use his imagination whenever he was depressed because of this.
Despite the fact that they were poor, Carl's family would often go out to eat at any random fast food joint that was near their apartment. While waiting in line for their food to be made, Carl was fascinated by how their food was being produced. Every time they went to a fast food place, he would order the same thing every time, A medium shake, a large fry, and a hamburger.
Often times or not, he would take the buns off the burger and the eat the meat by itself and even at one point tried to roll it into a ball shape, like how he saw the frycook do before placing it onto the grill, although no often because his parents would get annoyed at him for somewhat ruining his food. With this in mind, he always kept his favorite food in his imagination, but as if they were actual living beings in his mind. To him, they were his best friends. And typically being a kid, he also wanted more "friends", so he thought up other stuff with his "Food pals", such as aliens (Oglethorpe and Emory), talking objects ("Dummy Love", "Dumber Dolls") and so on and so forth.
Carl thought about what the "Food Pals" personalities should be like. In the end, all three "Food Pals" each had a characteristic of himself. The Milkshake character had a selfish arrogant attitude and would often do bad things. With Carl, he wasn't a horrible person, but considering that he was a kid, from time to time he would often do stupid stuff, like swearing out of term and even act a bit cocky at times. The French Fry character represented Carl's intelligence, as Carl had good common sense and did pretty well at school, despite the teasing by other kids due to his overuse of using his imagination at his age.
The Meat character represented his innocence. Carl was a sweet child who often mistook other peoples meanings and even at times can be annoying as result of being so sweetly naive. As for him himself, he actually imagined himself as a balding fat man that lived next to the "Food Pals". Carl thought it would actually be more interesting if the way he portrayed himself in his imagination was more of a jerk then friendly in real life. That probably goes back to his fathers personality. Carl's father was a pretty sleazy guy. He loved fatty foods, watched football whenever it was on, and always loved to read dirty magazines in his spare time, which to a degree was a bit of an influence on him.
As the years passed by, his interest in the "Food Pals" were starting to deteriorate as Carl started to become more active with his classmates and do new things. Granted he did average in high school and he didn't have the best major in education (He claimed that at one point, he studied in "Elevator Repair"), but he seemed to had an interest in computers.
Around the early 80's, he worked for Atari.Inc, months before the "Video Game Crash Of 1983". In the months prior to that, Carl designed new characters for a new Atari Game (Ignignokt & Err). But because "The Video Game Crash Of 1983" was taking effect and with Atari becoming bankrupt, Carl was laid off in March of 1983 and said Atari 2600 game that he was working on, didn't even pass the prototype stage. Gradually over time, Carl went through a major depression, becoming bitter and lonely. He started to avoid contact with his friends and his family as he had given up on trying to better his life and settled for less.
Also over the years, Carl seemed to become very displeased with his parents and often tries not have any contact with them, even when his mother questions him about her food/medical check not being paid. Granted, considering what Carl's gone through, he's doing pretty well for himself. He has a decent income, he's not mainly focused about his appearance, and is satisfied with receiving the basics in life. Every now and then though, his childhood thoughts of his "Food Pals" pop up in his mind and Carl often thinks this over as he also looks over the decisions he has made over his life.
== A Unneeded Plot Twist (Just For The Hell Of It) ==
So now I bet you might be wondering how I know all this about Carl. Well recently, I had developed a machine that can search through the darkest depths of your brain. I found and knocked this Carl guy out and found a vast amount of interesting characters. With what Carl has thought up, I'm going to bring these characters to life so they can buy property under my name, so when my plan unravels and they all fight each other to death, I'll be able to inherit all their real estate in order to create the "Insano-Gym." I'm almost done constructing my "Insanoflex" robot and within a few weeks, I will be planning to sell it to Carl. And very very soon, my "Insano-Gym" will become a reality... as long as this "Dr. Weird" fellow isn't as wacky as Carl had imagined before... - Walter Melon
Category:Adult Swim
Category:Theory
Category:Historical Archive