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Making an animated show is hard. Making one based on one of the most popular video game series of the past decade, with its own time capsule of memes, is an unenviable task, made all the more perilous when you’ve been beaten to the punch and its timeliness (or lack thereof) calls its very existence into question. Yet somehow, Paramount Plus’ Among Us show floats where others would sink, delivering an animated video game adaptation that’s easily one of the funniest cartoons we’ve gotten in a long time.
Based on Innersloth’s mega-popular murder mystery game and animated by Titmouse (Star Trek: Lower Decks), Among Us follows a crew of colorful astronauts hauling ore across the galaxy for their corporate overlords. But as they sprint around the ship keeping everything running, crewmates start turning up dead—reduced to bloody chunks with a single comedic bone poking out of their jellybean‑like bodies like an anime meat gag. Turns out there’s an alien imposter among them, and the crew has to suss out who it is before they all wind up dead. The imposter, meanwhile, has their work cut out for them, because this crew wastes no time succumbing to The Thing-inspired paranoia, resulting in a mélange of the goriest deaths and sharpest jokes a cartoon—let alone a video game adaptation—has delivered in ages.
Many video game adaptations have succumbed to the pitfall of justifying their existence to day-one gamers and newcomers by treating their narratives as reference checklists. This checklist invariably leads shows to contort themselves, dutifully cramming in every meme, Easter egg, and non sequitur for their fandom, making gamers point at their screens like Leonardo DiCaprio. It’s a dogmatic approach that’s good for a cheap pop with audiences and a low-effort social media post pointing out parallels that follows, but it also ages fast.
Among Us, a multiplayer title released in 2018, didn’t explode in popularity until the pandemic locked everyone indoors and thrust it into prominence. Its resurgence was comparable to Doechii’s mainstream rise in rap. Because of that, there was a real fear that by the time the animated show rolled around, three years after its 2023 announcement, it would’ve become a Johnny-come-lately show that’d lean on stale memes to keep itself hip with the kids who’d already moved on a hundred times over to new multiplayer game flavors of the month.
What showrunner Owen Dennis’ (Infinity Train) Among Us series does to hit hard as a phenomenal animated series is deceptively simple: it just makes a funny, character-driven show. Yes, it’s still a product of its time, with anti-corporate humor baked into its DNA, but it never feels tacked-on or corny. Nor does its politically tinged humor feel like a desperate plea to escape the margins of its source material. Instead, it expands those margins, treating the game as a sandbox to play in, build out tempestuous character dynamics, and to tell its own story. And what it has to say is as surprisingly moving as it is spit-take hilarious.
When I say Among Us is one of the best video game adaptations we’ve gotten in a long while, I’m talking The Cuphead Show!-level greatness. Its secret is that it’s not a video game adaptation that resigns itself to being on-rails commercial to convince Paramount Plus subscribers to play a video game. Rather than regurgitating memes as if crossing off obligatory reference fodder, Dennis’ show weaves an interesting, tightly constructed, and frequently unhinged adventure about a crew not long for this world. It’s that choice that gives the series room to breathe inside its claustrophobic floating coffin, and its stacked voice cast takes full advantage of that space, transforming Among Us into a riot of snappy, character‑driven comedy.
It’s evident from the first episode of Among Us‘ bite-sized, ten-episode season that its voice cast—mixing big-name Hollywood stars like Elijah Wood and Randall Park with veteran game and cartoon actors like Debra Wilson and Ashley Johnson—is having an absolute blast. Which makes the reality that they weren’t sharing a voice booth recording together shocking because everyone plays off each other with tight timing, delivering a cavalcade of funny quips and asides in such a rapid-fire volley that it’s almost impossible not to hit “next episode” before its outro finishes to see what happens next.
FYI 🤭🍑 pic.twitter.com/hKZjQ6Uypk
— Among Us (@AmongUsGame) June 8,
The animators are clearly having just as much fun. Whether they’re updating the opening credits to reflect which crewmates died in the previous episode, switching to first-person, or dropping hyper-detailed SpongeBob SquarePants-style visual gags, the show constantly reinvents itself without ever losing momentum. What’s more, the developments in its murder mystery never feel like they’re pulled from its crewmates’ generous asses; the show’s got sharp attention to detail, allowing viewers to play a guessing game along with its ensemble with little hints playing out alongside many, many red herrings.
Although Among Us‘ surprise drop on Paramount Plus might feel like it arrived long after its cultural moment, the combined strengths of its art direction, writers’ room, and cast elevate it into a series that doesn’t have a shelf life. It’s a delightfully funny show that vents the notion that video game adaptations have to be riddled with reference fodder to justify their existence and earn longevity in kind.
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