Adult Swim
Cartoon Network's late-night block launched in 2001 as a joke about pool rules — and became a proving ground for surreal, irreverent animation that refused to fit anywhere else. Deadpan bumpers over footage of elderly swimmers announced shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Harvey Birdman to an audience that had grown up with the network and wasn't ready to turn in.
Adult Swim premiered September 2, 2001, conceived by Mike Lazzo, Cartoon Network's original head programmer, and produced through the Williams Street studio. The block's name played on swimming-pool rules — a joke that would define its deadpan identity. Launch night opened at 10 p.m. ET with the Home Movies episode "Director's Cut" and Cowboy Bebop, immediately signaling that this was a different register. Aqua Teen Hunger Force followed a week later on September 9.
Some of Adult Swim's now-iconic shows — Sealab 2021, Harvey Birdman Attorney at Law, The Brak Show — had actually premiered in stealth launches in late December 2000, finding their audience in the shadows before the full block launch. The bumpers became as iconic as the shows: stark white text on black, cut with footage of real people swimming laps at public pools — confounding and oddly hypnotic. The late-night slot gave animators freedom that daytime Cartoon Network never could.
The real turning point came in April 2003: Family Guy reruns premiered on Adult Swim and immediately became the block's top-rated program, boosting viewership by 239 percent. Fox noticed. Nearly a year after those reruns started — March 2004 — the network that had canceled Family Guy reversed itself and renewed it. From March 28, 2005 onward, Adult Swim's Nielsen ratings were recorded separately from Cartoon Network's. The block is still running today.
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Aqua Teen Hunger Force
Adult Swim's gleefully nonsensical cartoon about three anthropomorphic fast-food items — a milkshake, a box of fries, and a wad of meat — sharing a house in New Jersey. It made no sense on purpose, and it accidentally shut down Boston.
Futurama
Delivery boy Fry cryogenically freezes and wakes in the year 3000 to join a space-shipping crew led by the sardonic Leela and foul-mouthed robot Bender. Created by Matt Groening, this sci-fi comedy was staffed with Ph.D.s—the writers brought genuine math-smart humor and surprising emotional depth. Fox premiered it in 1999, but it became a cult phenomenon on Comedy Central; episodes like 'Jurassic Bark' showed its tearjerking side, and it won six Emmy Awards over its life.
Family Guy
The Griffin family of Quahog, Rhode Island—led by bumbling dad Peter, his wife Lois, and their motley crew of kids and pets—became a Fox phenomenon after its Super Bowl XXXIII premiere in 1999. A sharp departure from typical sitcom fare, Family Guy was built on rapid-fire cutaway gags and irreverent humor. Though Fox canceled it after just three seasons, a DVD renaissance in 2003 became so successful it sparked a network reversal—the show's comeback is considered television's first revival based on DVD sales.
Toonami
Cartoon Network's action block where a generation of American kids met anime. Hosted first by Moltar, then by TOM — the robot captain of the Absolution — it made Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon after-school rituals and treated its young audience like the stories mattered.