Overview
- Lee Hardcastle’s Ghosts ’n Chainsaws ran at midnight on Wednesday inside a Smiling Friends marathon, then flowed back into the Season 3 Halloween episode to sell the prank.
- The film expands a 15-second black-and-white gag from the episode into an 11-minute short that Hardcastle wrote and produced on a tight two-month sprint after a one-month build.
- The story follows a British shopkeeper who finds a haunted pinball machine, using shifts between color and black-and-white to mark safety versus haunting without revealing plot turns.
- Hardcastle tapped Adam Buxton for the lead voice and brought in Wavves’ Nathan Williams with producer Aaron Rubin for the score, with longtime collaborator Tim Atkins on sound.
- Smiling Friends is ending with two final episodes set for April 12 at 11 p.m. ET, framing this prank as a farewell flourish within Adult Swim’s long-running April Fools playbook.