“Smiling Friends” is highly recommended for enthusiasts of shows like “Harley Quinn,” yet it distinguishes itself with unique attributes. Each episode runs for a concise 11 minutes but is packed with humor, gags, and nods to obscure internet culture. Before joining Adult Swim, Hadel and Cusack honed their talents on YouTube, creating independent animations. The show cleverly integrates modern YouTubers as guest voices, adding a layer of authenticity to the characters who often require cheering up. For those curious about the faces behind the voices, this series provides a fascinating glimpse.

Zach Hadel not only co-created “Smiling Friends” but also lends his voice to a variety of characters. His most notable portrayal is that of Charlie Dompler, a central figure at Smiling Friends known for his more cynical outlook compared to his upbeat colleague, Pim. Hadel’s natural voice shines through Charlie, but he also showcases his versatility with other roles, including the diminutive Glep, the video game character Gwimbly, the SoundCloud rapper DJ Spit, and even Satan.

Michael Cusack, the other visionary behind “Smiling Friends,” also voices a range of characters on the show. He brings life to Pim Pimling, Charlie’s enthusiastic co-worker with an unwavering commitment to helping others. Contrasting Pim’s optimism is Allan Red, another Cusack character, who is notably indifferent to the fate of those seeking assistance. Cusack also voices the erratic Mr. Frog, and any character sporting an Australian accent is likely his handiwork, reflecting his roots in Melbourne, Australia.

Hadel was working in animation well before “Smiling Friends” was a thing, on his psychicpebbles YouTube channel. An early video that helped him gain traction was a short sketch making fun of the overused “Arrow to the knee” meme that became popular following the success of “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.” He also joined the YouTuber coalition OneyPlays where a bunch of content creators get together to play video games and joke around. In fact, many OneyPlays regulars would wind up coming aboard “Smiling Friends” to voice various characters, bringing their darker comedic sensibilities along with them. 

The other half of the “Smiling Friends” creation team, Michael Cusack, also voices a who’s who of characters on the Adult Swim show. He plays Charlie’s friend and co-worker, Pim Pimling, who’s far more dedicated to helping others than his cohorts. In stark contrast to Pim’s positive demeanor is Allan Red, also voiced by Cusack. Allan’s far more callous about whether people get help or not, and he also brings Mr. Frog to life. Plus, anytime you hear a character on the show with an Australian accent, there’s a good chance it’s Cusack, as he originally hails from Melbourne, Australia. 

Cusack also got his start making animations for YouTube, but he’d also appear in front of the camera as the character Lucas the Magnificent, a parody of online “neckbeards,” a term used to describe guys who are seen as pretentious, picky nerds with unattractive features (and personalities). Lucas has been immortalized in several of Cusack’s other projects, including “Smiling Friends.” 

In the pilot episode, the character Glep is seen watching one of Lucas’ videos from his tablet. Lucas even became a full-fledged character in Cusack’s other Adult Swim series, “YOLO.” Cusack would also create the short-lived Hulu series “Koala Man,” bringing his Australian upbringing truly full circle. 

Joshua Tomar is another OneyPlays regular who has voiced myriad characters throughout “Smiling Friends.” There are far too many to list here, but the highlights include voicing an older version of Glep who reads to his future grandson the story of Charlie’s death and resurrection in the Season 1 episode “Charlie Dies and Doesn’t Come Back.” He also has some prominent roles in the Season 2 premiere as Count Groxia, the former nemesis to Gwimbly. He is also Troglor, a hulking Master Chief-esque character who has replaced all of the pitiful platforming video game characters from the days of old. 

That only touches on the bare minimum of who he’s played on this series, but he also does voiceover work on other projects. He’s done some English dubs for anime, including playing Kaoru Yoshida on “That Time I Got Reincarnated as Slime,” which belongs to the immensely popular isekai genre of anime (we keep a guide to help explain what isekai is). 

Tomar is also a co-owner of Studio Yotta, which has provided animations for a variety of shows, including Cartoon Network’s “OK KO” and “Sonic Mania.” Throughout all this, he’s even managed to make “Smiling Friends” a family affair. His wife, Tina Tomar, works in the show’s art department, and she directed the Season 2 episode “Mr. President.”

With so many ridiculous characters and voices throughout “Smiling Friends,” it helps to have people who are more down to earth. Erica Lindbeck brings a necessary sense of normalcy to some of the show’s female characters. She voices Jennifer in Season 1’s “Shrimp’s Odyssey,” whom Pim falls in love with, and she also plays the nameless princess in “Enchanted Forest.” She’s played other characters for the series, but “Smiling Friends” represents a small portion of her resume. In fact, Lindbeck has well over 200 acting credits to her name, making her arguably the most prolific voice actor on the show. 

Lindbeck has lent her voice to numerous video game characters, including Cassie Cage in “Mortal Kombat 11” and Black Cat in 2018’s “Spider-Man.” Even if you aren’t a gamer, there’s a good chance you’ve heard her in cartoons. She can be heard on “Arcane,” “Helluva Boss,” and the gritty Netflix anime, “Pacific Rim: The Black,” which more than makes up for the dire film sequel “Pacific Rim: Uprising.” 

According to an interview she did with Dignitas, Lindbeck’s favorite role is an little-known anime import: “There’s this really sad anime series I was in called ‘Your Lie in April.’ I play Kaori Miyazono in it, and I love her. It was so heart wrenching to do that show but I really loved doing it.”

The first “Smiling Friends” adventure sees Pim and Charlie try to help out a severely depressed man named Desmond, who threatens to end his own life if the pair can’t cheer him up. It’s a dark way to open a new series (albeit one that does have a fairly positive ending), and the show brought in Mike Stoklasa to sell the character’s anguish and despair.

Stoklasa is best known for his YouTube work on RedLetterMedia, where he co-hosts the film review series “Half in the Bag” with Jay Bauman. The duo aren’t afraid to eviscerate movies they hate. That’s especially true within the “Mr. Plinkett” review series on the same channel where Stoklasa adopts the murderously cantankerous Mr. Plinkett persona, who dedicated seven full videos to hating on “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace,” Still the worst “Star Wars” movie on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s a fair takedown.

Stoklasa has become a regular presence on “Smiling Friends.” You can actually see what he looks like in person during “Charlie Dies and Doesn’t Come Back” when he appears as the man screaming during Charlie’s death sequence. He also voices the Purple Alien on Season 2’s “Charlie, Pim, and Bill vs. The Alien.” RedLetterMedia cohorts Bauman and Rich Evans also voice aliens in the same episode. 

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org

The name David Firth may not mean much to most people, but if you were into alternative online animation in the 2000s, you probably know who he is. He voices the eponymous Shrimp in “Shrimp’s Odyssey,” who desperately wants to get back together with his ex-girlfriend. There’s a melancholy to Shrimp that Firth’s voice deftly captures, and the actor has earned plenty of time to hone more offbeat voices thanks to his “Salad Fingers” series.

“Salad Fingers” encapsulates what made the early internet great. It utilizes an absurdist style of humor that successfully went up against traditional comedy media, while also showcasing an experimental animation style that was deliberately rough around the edges. Similar oddities like Skibidi Toilet weren’t a phenomena that came out of nowhere, either. There is a history of strange animation capturing people’s attention since the early era of shorts like “The End of the World” by AlbinoBlackSheep and Filmcow’s “Charlie the Unicorn.” Firth was a huge inspiration for both Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack, so it’s probably safe to say “Smiling Friends” wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for Firth and his “Salad Fingers.” 

“Smiling Friends” doesn’t always pull from the depths of the internet to find its voice cast. They also managed to get one of the stars of Netflix’s biggest pop culture blockbuster shows ever to swing by. That’s Finn Wolfhard of “Stranger Things” in the series premiere, voicing a squatter hiding in the walls. Allan is trying to find the mouse stealing his cheese, instead stumbling upon a completely random guy living back there who doesn’t want Allan to see what’s on his computer. The squatter returned for the Season 3 premiere “Silly Samuel” when Allan looks back behind the wall, only to find the guy is now dead. It’s understandable if “Stranger Things” fans never realized that was him, since the creators pitch-shifted his voice down to further deliberately obscure him. 

Nick Wolfhard, Finn’s brother, also voiced a character for the pilot. He plays Graham Nelly, Pim’s cousin who loves Tech Deck skateboards. Nick spoke with Collider about how they came to be involved so early in the show’s existence: “We were talking to Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack at a dinner. They wanted to do a project together, they weren’t really sure what … We got involved because we’re huge fans of Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack.”

Chris O’Neill has done a lot of his own Flash animations and goes by the online moniker of Oney. That makes him the originator of OneyPlays, a popular YouTube channel that brought multiple online personalities together. Several of them would go onto work on “Smiling Friends.” O’Neill himself has voiced a few characters on the show, including the short-lived fifth Smiling Friend, Smormu James Carter, as well as the yeti who appears in the Season 2 finale, “Pim Finally Turns Green.” 

O’Neill has a more in-depth role in making “Smiling Friends” into what it is today. Every episode begins with chaotic, circus-like music while bright colors flash across the screen. A similar tune plays during the credits, and both of these tunes come courtesy of O’Neill. He also contributed some of the 3D animations, like the creature that bursts through the TV set at the end of the pilot episode. 

Charlie coming back to life at the end of “Charlie Dies and Doesn’t Come Back” could only be possible through divine intervention, with God Himself going to Hell to personally rescue him. Finding the perfect voice for God can’t be easy for any animated series, but “Smiling Friends” made perhaps the best (certainly the wildest) decision possible by giving the role to Gilbert Gottfried, whose grating voice (actually different from his real voice) makes this version of God stand out from the rest.

The performance would be one of Gottfried’s last. The episode first aired on January 9, 2022, and Gottfried died only a few months later on April 12. That makes “Smiling Friends” his final performance to air while he was still alive, although several more roles would be released posthumously. 

Gottfried left behind an impressive legacy in terms of both stand-up and voiceover, as many listeners would recognize his voice as Iago in Disney’s “Aladdin,” as well as Mr. Mxyzptlk on “Superman: The Animated Series.” These kid-friendly roles clashed with Gottfriend’s famously subversive stand-up routines filled with off-color jokes, a routine that regularly landed him in hot water. He was even fired from voicing the Aflac duck after tweeting insensitive jokes following the 2011 Japan tsunami. 

One of the many quirks of “Smiling Friends” that fans adore is how it incorporates different animation styles. The character Doug Psychotic from Season 2’s “Brother’s Egg” is a great demonstration of rotoscoping. That’s where an animator will trace over live-action footage to create something more stylized. It’s the same technique that was used in “A Scanner Darkly,” and providing the voice for Doug in all his rotoscoped glory is a master of the animated art, Joel Haver. 

Anyone interested in more rotoscope examples can check out Haver’s YouTube channel, which is loaded with finished projects to study. In fact, in 2024, he managed to produce 12 feature-length movies that were all uploaded to the platform. They’re completely free to watch. 

Haver has multiple claims to fame, including making a viral digital short about one of the Charmin Bears wanting to do something more in life than wipe their butts with toilet paper. An eerily similar sketch aired on “Saturday Night Live” on Season 48, and Haver responded to upset fans by saying parallel thinking was likely to blame. The resemblance is uncanny, sure, but even he thinks it’s an innocent oddity.

Dana Snyder’s voice should be recognizable to anyone who’s watched Adult Swim for the past couple of decades. He was the voice of Master Shake on “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” before he brought his unique brand of screaming to the character of Rotten the Snowman on the “Smiling Friends” Christmas episode, “Pim Finally Turns Green.” Rotten is no Frosty the Snowman. This entity comes to life for the season, but realizes that eventually he and everyone he knows is going to die, sending him into an existential spiral. 

Snyder’s tenure with Adult Swim doesn’t end there, though, as he’s also lent his iconic voice to “Squidbillies,” “The Venture Bros.,” and “12 oz. Mouse.” While adult animation is his bread and butter, he has more child-friendly voiceover credits, like playing a variety of characters on “SpongeBob SquarePants” and its spinoff “The Patrick Star Show.” 

When he’s not doing voiceover work, he’s hosting a new podcast called “None of This Matters.” This project began at the start of 2025, where he and rapper/comedian Christopher “mc chris” Ward talk about whatever mundane topics they choose, like what they enjoy having for breakfast.

Few actors have perfected the art of acting while continually yelling as well as Conner O’Malley. He got his start posting funny videos on Vine back in the early 2010s, which were often clips of him yelling at people in nice cars. Today, he’s the voice of Silly Samuel in the “Smiling Friends” Season 3 premiere. Silly Samuel just wants to be taken seriously and it bothers him deeply (and noisily) that everyone cracks up at his cartoonish appearance. 

O’Malley’s schtick should be familiar to anyone who enjoys the comedy of Tim Robinson. He’s appeared on some of the best sketches featured throughout “I Think You Should Leave,” including as an annoyingly horny guy in the aptly-titled “Honk If You’re Horny” sketch from Season 1. He also had a memorable role in 2025’s “Friendship” as a guy who gets into a heated shouting match with Robinson’s character in a garage. Fans may be interested in watching the extended cut of the bizarre sequence, where you can tell Robinson is trying his best not to burst out laughing at everything O’Malley says.