Side-by-Side Breakdown: How '2 in the Am Pm' Characters Transformed into Regular Show Icons
By Marcus Vance
Q1: Is '2 in the AM PM' an official Regular Show episode?
No. 2 in the AM PM is an independent, non-commercial student film created by J.G. Quintel at CalArts in 2006. While it features the visual prototypes and voices for Mordecai and Benson, it was produced years before Cartoon Network greenlit the series.
Q2: Why did the characters change from humans to animals and objects?
Quintel used the drug trip in the student short to animate an extreme physical mutation. When developing the television pitch, he realized the non-human forms were visually distinctive and iconic, deciding to make them permanent rather than temporary hallucinations.
Q3: Where does Pops fit into the '2 in the AM PM' timeline?
Pops does not appear in 2 in the AM PM. He originated in Quintel's 2005 CalArts short film The Naive Man from Lolliland. Quintel merged characters from both student projects when assembling the park grounds crew for the 2009 pilot.
Marcus Vance is a cybersecurity auditor and technology writer dedicated to educating the public about online safety, data privacy regulations, enterprise security, and emerging cyber threats.
