The Making of the Egg Butthole on ‘I Think You Should Leave’

Alec Robbins spent weeks thinking about naked eggs. It was fall 2022, and Robbins, a cartoonist and game designer by trade, had been given a curious task: design an egg character for a video game to be played on Netflix’s sketch comedy series I Think You Should Leave. And there was one part of the character that had to be just right for the gag to land. In the bit, show creator Tim Robinson was going to be playing an office worker goofing around on a (fake) vintage Mac game where the goal was to feed eggs to a bigger egg. Land enough eggs in his mouth and the anthropomorphized egg would reward the triumphant player with a peep show. Thus, Robbins’ butthole had to look like a real prize.

For anyone watching ITYSL this season, it’s clear Robbins’ design scored. After the show’s new season debuted on May 30, “Eggman Game” quickly became one of fans’ favorite goofs, with some even creating their very own browser-based version. It may not top “We’re all trying to find the guy who did this” as ITYSL’s best meme, but it’s close.

It’s unusual for a TV show to bring in someone to craft a working video game for a scene, rather than just ask an animator to make a mockup that gets added in postproduction. But Robinson and show cocreator Zach Kanin wanted something that worked, something performers in the sketch could interact with. So they asked Robbins, who had been a production coordinator on the show’s first season, to make a playable version of the “Eggman Game” they’d written for the episode. “I think the intention was that we'd give Tim [Robinson] something real to interact with in the sketch rather than staring at a blank greenscreen,” Robbins says.