42 Fun Facts About Adult Swim

In Adult Swim's original bumpers, what did the lifeguard shout through a megaphone?

'All kids out of the pool'. An adult swim is the slot when a public pool is reserved for grown-ups, and the first bumpers pushed the joke with footage of pensioners swimming and exercising.

Adult Swim's logo writes the name in lowercase inside which punctuation marks?

Square brackets. The name itself is fair game for jokes: for April Fools' Day 2021 the block posed as Adult Swim Junior and aired a Rick and Morty episode re-voiced by children.

Which head programmer conceived Adult Swim?

Mike Lazzo. A high-school dropout, he started in Turner's shipping and receiving department and worked his way up to run Cartoon Network's programming.

Williams Street, the studio behind Adult Swim, takes its name from its address in which US city?

Atlanta. The studio has been at 1065 Williams Street in Midtown since 1992, in the city where Ted Turner built the cable group that owned Cartoon Network.

Which 1960s cartoon superhero was recast as a talk-show host in the 1994 series that paved the way for Adult Swim?

Space Ghost. Space Ghost Coast to Coast put the old hero behind a desk to interview live-action guests, and the studio that made it was then called Ghost Planet Industries.

Which show opened Adult Swim on launch night with an episode that its original network, UPN, had shelved?

Home Movies. UPN had cancelled it after five episodes, but Cartoon Network bought those, ordered more, and kept the cartoon about an eight-year-old filmmaker going for four seasons.

Which anime was the first broadcast on Adult Swim, on the night it launched?

Cowboy Bebop. It went out at midnight on launch night, and three of its episodes were held back from that first run because their violence sat too close to the September 11 attacks.

In Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a milkshake, some fries and a meatball live next door to which long-suffering human?

Carl. He wants nothing more than to be left alone with his sports and his car, and most of his grief comes from finding the three of them in his swimming pool.

How did Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Sealab 2021 first reach the air in December 2000?

In unannounced pre-dawn airings. Cartoon Network slipped the pilots out with no promotion, more than eight months before the block that would turn them into hits even existed.

Sealab 2021 recycled animation from a 1970s environmental cartoon by which studio?

Hanna-Barbera. Adam Reed and Matt Thompson found a tape of its 1972 series Sealab 2020 while working as production assistants, wrote new dialogue over it, and were turned down the first time they pitched it.

Which actor voices the title character in Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law?

Gary Cole. His Birdman, a washed-up 1960s superhero, defends other vintage cartoon characters in court, among them Shaggy and Scooby-Doo on a drugs charge, with Stephen Colbert as his boss.

Which cancelled Fox sitcom did strong Adult Swim rerun ratings help revive in 2004?

Family Guy. Fox had cancelled it in 2002, but strong DVD sales and the ratings for its late-night reruns changed the network's mind, and new episodes began in May 2005.

Robot Chicken, co-created by Seth Green, is animated using what?

Stop-motion with toys. Its animators pose action figures frame by frame for short sketches, and George Lucas lent his own voice to its Star Wars special.

Which Adult Swim series about the Cuyler family of north Georgia ran for 13 seasons?

Squidbillies. The Cuylers are hillbilly mud squids in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and after twelve seasons voiced by country singer Unknown Hinson, patriarch Early was played by Tracy Morgan for the last.

Metalocalypse centres on which fictional death metal band?

Dethklok is so popular that the show calls it the world's seventh-largest economy; creator Brendon Small wrote and played the band's music.

Which Adult Swim series, created by Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer, ran seven seasons over fifteen years?

The Venture Bros. ran from 2003 to 2018, was cancelled in 2020, and wrapped up with the 2023 film Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart.

Which Adult Swim series is based on Aaron McGruder's comic strip about the Freeman family?

The Boondocks. Regina King voiced both brothers, ten-year-old Huey and eight-year-old Riley, and the fourth and final season was made without McGruder.

On January 31, 2007, Boston police mistook LED signs of which Aqua Teen characters for bombs?

The Mooninites, Ignignokt and Err, were on LED placards promoting the Aqua Teen movie; Cartoon Network general manager Jim Samples resigned over the scare.

How much did Turner Broadcasting and its marketing firm agree to pay after the 2007 Boston bomb scare?

$2 million: half repaid the agencies that responded and half went to homeland security programs, though the same signs had hung in nine other cities for weeks without alarm.

Which 2007 sketch series brought Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim's anti-humour to the block?

Awesome Show, Great Job! ran for five seasons of public-access-style sketches, and John C. Reilly's clueless Dr. Steve Brule proved popular enough to get a spin-off of his own.

Which cult 2003 film did Adult Swim air, sex scenes blacked out, as a 2009 April Fools' prank?

The Room. Adult Swim followed it with a Tim and Eric episode guest-starring its director Tommy Wiseau, then aired the film again on the next two April Fools' nights.

Which defunct anime block did Adult Swim revive as a 2012 April Fools' stunt, then permanently?

Toonami. Six weeks after the one-night prank, Adult Swim announced on Twitter that the block, shut down in 2008, was coming back for real, and it returned on Saturday nights that May.

Which comedian co-hosted The Eric Andre Show for its first four seasons?

Hannibal Buress was Eric Andre's deadpan co-host from the 2012 debut; he stepped back in season 5 and was briefly replaced by a lookalike, 'Blannibal'.

Who created Rick and Morty?

Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon. The show grew out of Roiland's crude Back to the Future parody, made for a short-film festival Harmon co-founded, which is why its leads echo Doc and Marty.

Which Adult Swim comedy from Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack follows Pim and Charlie, who work at a small charity?

Smiling Friends. Its pilot was slipped out without warning on April Fools' night 2020, almost two years before the series proper began in January 2022.

Which McDonald's item came back because of a Rick and Morty joke?

Szechuan sauce. The 1998 Mulan tie-in is what Rick says he is really after in the season 3 premiere, an episode Adult Swim sprang on viewers without warning on April Fools' Day 2017.

Which episode won Rick and Morty its first Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program?

Pickle Rick. Rick turns himself into a pickle to get out of family therapy, then has to fight his way home through a sewer full of rats; the episode won the 2018 Emmy.

Which 2014 parody of sitcom opening credits went viral after airing at 4 a.m. on Adult Swim?

Too Many Cooks. Casper Kelly's eleven-minute short keeps adding grinning cast members to a cheery theme song until a killer starts stalking the credits.

Which 2010 browser game from Adult Swim Games was set to Erasure's song 'Always'?

Robot Unicorn Attack. Its follow-ups kept the game and swapped the song: German metal band Blind Guardian for the Heavy Metal edition, and The Darkness's festive single for the Christmas one.

Primal, the dialogue-free series about a caveman and a T. rex, was created by which animator?

Genndy Tartakovsky, creator of Dexter's Laboratory, made Primal; Spear and Fang each lose their families in the opening episode, which is what turns hunter and dinosaur into partners.

Which Adult Swim block was launched in August 2023 to rerun classic Cartoon Network shows such as Ed, Edd n Eddy?

Checkered Past. The name nods to Cartoon Network's old checkerboard logo, and the block arrived with an expansion that gave Adult Swim more hours of the day than Cartoon Network itself.

Which Cartoon Network action series returned on Adult Swim in 2017 for a darker final season, 13 years after it stopped?

Samurai Jack. The original run had left Jack stranded in the future, so the final season picks him up fifty years on, unable to age and close to giving up.

Which former heavyweight champion plays himself solving mysteries with a talking pigeon in an Adult Swim cartoon?

Mike Tyson. Norm Macdonald voiced the pigeon in Mike Tyson Mysteries, and the real Tyson has kept pigeons since childhood: he says his first fight was with a bigger boy who killed one.

Adult Swim's original theme 'D-Code' remixed a tune by which Latin jazz musician?

Tito Puente. 'D-Code' remixed his recording of 'Mambo Gallego', and it wasn't his first tune to find a second life: Santana's 1970 cover turned his 'Oye Como Va' into a rock hit.

Which hip-hop collective starred in Adult Swim's sketch and prank show Loiter Squad?

Odd Future. Tyler, the Creator and his friends made it with Jeff Tremaine, the director of Jackass, which explains the stunts between the sketches.

Which rapper hosted Adult Swim's 2020 April Fools' night of surprise sneak peeks?

Post Malone. The night opened with the first minutes of an anime parody's new season, which he interrupted, and went on to slip out a surprise new episode of Primal among its previews.

Which anime about humanity sheltering behind enormous walls made its US television debut on Adult Swim in 2014?

Attack on Titan. The walls are there to keep out the Titans, giants that eat people, and the series stayed in the Saturday-night line-up until the story ended in January 2024.

How did Adult Swim 'premiere' the Aqua Teen movie on April Fools' Day 2007, days before it reached cinemas?

In a tiny corner window. After two minutes at full size, the film shrank to a comically small box in the corner of the night's regular shows, more than a week before cinemas had it.

On April Fools' night 2018, Adult Swim's anime block broke its rule by airing shows in what form?

The block ran in Japanese with English subtitles: FLCL Alternative's first episode got a stealth subbed premiere, and the film Mind Game aired subbed too.

'Bushworld Adventures', the 2018 Rick and Morty parody by Michael Cusack, sends the pair where?

Australia. Michael Cusack's short sends the pair to Bendigo in search of a green cube, and its success as an April Fools' stunt led Adult Swim to give him a series of his own.

Adult Swim's deliberately silent tribute bumpers usually show only what?

A name with birth and death years, in white on black with no sound. The format is familiar enough to parody: in 2017 the block ran one for 'the writing on Game of Thrones', dated 2011 to 2016.

Which science-fiction film franchise got an anime spin-off, Black Lotus, on Adult Swim in 2021?

Blade Runner. Where the films follow the hunters, Black Lotus takes the side of the hunted: its heroine is a replicant who wakes with no memory, and Adult Swim made it with the anime service Crunchyroll.