Synopsis

Radiohead's fully animated video follows Robin, a small, permanently intoxicated everyman, as he wanders through a hostile and surreal city. He encounters grotesque politicians, predatory businessmen, mermaids, an alien presence and a series of bizarre acts of violence, all rendered in bright, deceptively simple cartoon imagery. Robin's detached reactions give the chaos an unsettling comic edge. The video mirrors the song's shifting moods without offering a literal narrative, presenting a world that is absurd, cruel and strangely entertaining.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video uses Robin, a character from Swedish animator Magnus Carlsson's animated series. Radiohead had become fans of the character and felt his combination of vulnerability, cynicism and resilience suited the song.

• The band deliberately chose animation instead of another dark, performance-free clip in the style of "Street Spirit (Fade Out)." Thom Yorke said they wanted the new video to be funny as well as "sick."

• Carlsson was not given the song's lyrics. He reportedly listened to the track repeatedly while writing down the images it suggested, which helped prevent the video from becoming a literal illustration of Yorke's words.

• Radiohead do not appear as themselves. Colin Greenwood later explained that showing the band performing would have felt too much like a parody of a conventional rock video, while the cartoon approach allowed the clip to remain more colorful and twisted.

• MTV placed the video in heavy rotation, but its handling of the mermaids' nudity became a point of controversy. The US broadcast version blurred or altered those shots, while an uncensored version circulated elsewhere.

• The unsettling animated world helped make "Paranoid Android" one of the defining visual statements of the *OK Computer* era. Its deliberately flat, limited-motion style contrasted sharply with the expensive, effects-heavy videos common on MTV at the time.