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April Fools' Day is a holiday that occurs on April 1. The day involves pulling pranks on other people, followed by a April Fools'! after the victim gets pranked. Adult Swim has an annual tradition of celebrating April Fools' Day by tricking and fooling their audience by altering programs or airing different and obscure programs. This section is based on this holiday.

List of April Fools' Day Jokes[]

  • 2004: Starting in 2004, all of the regularly scheduled episodes were aired with random mustaches drawn on the characters; however, the next night the episodes were aired again this time without the random mustaches.
  • 2005: At 12:00 A.M., Adult Swim aired an early, unfinished version of Squidbillies instead of Robot Chicken. At 12:15 A.M., they also aired the Special Presentation Space Ghost talk show featuring Early, Meatwad and Sharko that originally aired after Adult Swim first announced Squidbillies but aired Perfect Hair Forever in November 2004. In the repeat slot at 3:00 A.M., they aired Perfect Hair Forever instead of the Squidbillies pilot.
  • 2006: Adult Swim aired old re-runs of Mr. T, Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos and Boo Boo Runs Wild, but also aired the regularly scheduled episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist and Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex with fart noises added to the dialog. The Ghost in the Shell episode aired again that night at its normal 12:30 A.M. timeslot without the fart sounds since it was a premiere episode. All show intro bumps however were in correspondence to the shows that were originally supposed to air that night (For example, the InuYasha bump aired before Chuck Norris and the Neon Genesis Evangelion bump aired before Boo Boo Runs Wild).
  • On March 31st, 2007: Adult Swim aired every episode of Perfect Hair Forever in reverse order. The episodes were digitally degraded to look like several generations-old videotapes with grammatically incorrect subtitles in Engrish. At one point, the subtitles shown on screen were actually for an Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode. The bumps that aired were sexual pictures of various female characters from anime that aired on Adult Swim such as Faye from Cowboy Bebop and Haruko from FLCL with a caption saying Fan Service Moment.
  • On April 1st, 2007: In a rare prank two-fer, Adult Swim had been advertising that it would be airing Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters in its entirety on April Fools' Day. Technically, they made good on their promise by showing the first two minutes (Which had long been available on the movie's website) full-screen and the entire rest of the film in a very small picture-in-picture window with its sound played over SAP.
  • 2008: Adult Swim aired a night of unfinished sneak peeks of future upcoming shows in place of their typical programing. These shows include Fat Guy Stuck in Internet, The Venture Bros., Delocated, Superjail!, Young Person's Guide to History, Metalocalypse, Robot Chicken and Moral Orel. Some of these premieres included introductory segments hosted by Robert Osborne from Turner Classic Movies. The repeat block did air Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters as hinted at the year prior, with bumps teasing viewers about missing the premieres.
  • 2009: Adult Swim aired The Room, the critically panned 2003 independent film that is considered a cult classic, with sex scenes obscured with black boxes. This was followed by an airing of the Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! episode Tommy, which featured the films star and director, Tommy Wiseau.
  • 2010: Adult Swim aired The Room for the second time, with bumps featuring Tommy Wiseau being interviewed on Space Ghost Coast to Coast. Sex scenes remained censored, but the parental rating was raised to TV-MA.
  • 2011: The Room was aired once again with the TV-MA rating and was followed by a 15-minute special titled Earth Ghost, a CGI version of the Lowe Country pilot shown on Adult Swim Video in 2007.
  • 2012: Adult Swim initially showed the first 20 seconds of The Room, before it switched to Toonami, a former Cartoon Network programming block, where after first playing the opening sequence of that film, the scene switched to the Toonami host TOM noting that it was April Fools' Day before introducing that week's scheduled episode of Bleach. The Toonami bumps and programming would continue throughout the night, featuring Dragon Ball Z, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki,Outlaw Star, The Big O season 1, YuYu Hakusho, Blue Submarine No. 6, Trigun, Astro Boy and Gigantor. TOM also presented a review of Mass Effect 3 and promoted the recent DVD releases of the series featured. Subsequently, on May 16, 2012, Adult Swim announced via Twitter and later by a press release that Toonami would return to Adult Swim on May 26, 2012 as a regular weekly Saturday night programming block.
  • 2013: Adult Swim featured images of cats throughout much of its programming. All of the bumps contained videos and images of cats, while the episodes of the live action shows aired that night had cat faces covering up the faces of the actors. The [adult swim] logo was replaced with [meow meow].
  • 2014: Adult Swim premiered an eighth episode of Perfect Hair Forever, seven years following the series finale. This was followed by an unannounced Space Ghost Coast to Coast marathon featuring creator-chosen episodes, including the full version of Fire Ant, which has rarely been shown on TV. During the marathon, bumps were included between episodes showing outtakes and commentary from the writers and staff. The entire stunt was replayed all day the following day without advertisements on the network's live feed webcam on adultswim.com.
  • 2015: Adult Swim aired a marathon of Aqua Teen Hunger Force with coins superimposed on the screen. This was a version of the Coin Hunt game from adultswim.com's FishCenter streaming program, in which the main characters of the show collected points by hovering over the coins during the episode, which were counted and tabulated throughout the night. This stunt was paired with a 6-hour-long broadcast of FishCenter Live, streaming from midnight to 6:00 A.M. eastern time on adultswim.com. The live all-nighter featured special guest Trixie Mattel, Zach White, a guitar music performance and several call-ins from confused viewers.
  • 2016: Advertisements were shown for the April Fools broadcast, recapping their 12-year history of pranks and hyping up that year's prank. When midnight did occur, regular programming played, with the implication being that the prank for 2016 was that there was no prank.
  • March 31st, 2017: All of the regularly scheduled episodes were aired, but this time, the voice switching gimmick was used in which the proper voices for those shows were replaced with added laugh tracks, Seinfeld stings, robotic and pitch-shifted filters added to particular voices, various sound effects and alternate musical tracks.
  • April 1st, 2017: In another rare prank two-fer, the evening portion of Adult Swim was replaced with the first episode of Rick and Morty's yet- unannounced third season, The Rickshank Rickdemption, which aired repeatedly from 8:00 P.M. until midnight (Shortening Toonami's run for the night and preempting premieres of Samurai Jack and Dragon Ball Super in the process) and also streamed on a loop on the adultswim.com streams all night.
  • March 31st, 2018: Adult Swim stealth premiered the first episode of FLCL, FLCL: Alternative, in Japanese with English subtitles (Even as the show's second season, FLCL Progressive, had not aired yet), breaking Toonami's policy of exclusively airing English-dubbed anime. This was followed by an airing of the film Mind Game, also in Japanese with English subtitles. Most of Toonami's scheduled shows for that night (Featuring JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, Hunter × Hunter, Naruto: Shippuden, Space Dandy, Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG) were pushed back to 2:45 A.M. after the film and all aired subbed instead of dubbed. The block aired special bumps featuring TOM and SARA and a game review of NieR: Automata, all dubbed into Japanese with English subtitles and pink colors instead of the usual green. The Adult Swim logo was changed to Japanese (Stylized as [アダルトスイム]), affecting both bumps and the channel bug. The short Scavengers finished off the block at 5:45 A.M. Block runner Jason DeMarco confirmed on Twitter that all original scheduled programming that was affected by the English subtitle joke after Mind Game would air the same episode dubbed the following week.
  • April 1st, 2018: On April 1, 2018, in yet another rare prank two-fer, Adult Swim aired normally until 11:00 P.M. when it started airing a animated parody of Rick and Morty titled Bushworld Adventures, created by Michael R. Cusack. It looped three more times until midnight, pre-empting Rick and Morty and two Mike Tyson Mysteries reruns in the process. All of Adult Swim's nature-themed bumpers that aired throughout the hour were Australian themed. This special short was also simulcasted on a loop in a marathon stream on adultswim.com all night.
  • 2019: Regular programming was replaced, beginning at midnight, with the debut of Gēmusetto Machu Picchu, a 6-hour-long anime parody. It was simulcast both on TV and on Adult Swim's online livestream. Also, this was the date that the Canadian [AS] Channel launched, replacing Action.
  • 2020: Regular programming was replaced again. The intro for a second season of Gēmusetto Machu Picchu was played, but it would be interrupted by Post Malone, who would host several bumpers (Along with Adam and Swae Lee later on in the block) introducing stealth premieres of new seasons of Primal, Dream Corp, LLC, Tigtone, The Shivering Truth, Robot Chicken, Lazor Wulf, 12 oz. Mouse and Tender Touches. The stealth premiere block also showcased pilots of new shows YOLO, JJ Villard's Fairy Tales and Smiling Friends. Malone would also make silent cameos on said shows via green screen.
  • 2021: From midnight to 12.45 A.M., Adult Swim became Adult Swim Jr. (A prediction of Cartoonito, the programming block aimed from kids aged 2-6) with kid-friendly versions of programming and bumps redubbed using voices of young children and most swear words edited out. It started with a preview of Gēmusetto Machu Preschool and it would soon be followed by an episode of Rick and Morty Babies (Redubbed from Total Rickall), Aqua Child Hunger Force (Redubbed from Revenge of the Mooninites) and then a repeat of those two episodes. Every landscape bump was related to a child setting and text bumps were educational.
  • 2022: The second airing of Rick and Morty of the night (At 12:00 A.M.) started with the first few seconds of the Come and Learn with Pibby! proof-of-concept short, previously shown in October 2021. It then transitions to the beginning of Total Rickall, with Pibby and BunBun outside the Smith house, before the corruption from the short appears on the screen and appears outside the window from inside the house as the two characters run away. For the next two hours, most bumpers and shows (All of which were reruns) had an occasional appearance of Pibby or BunBun interacting with them, often having the characters or environments affected by the corruption. As time goes on, BunBun himself becomes more corrupted.
  • 2023: Adult Swim announced that the block would be taken over by AI, followed by an uncanny clip of the Smiling Friends episode Frowning Friends reanimated and reinterpreted through generative artificial intelligence. After about 90 seconds, the network cut it off and admitted it quickly got out of hand, only for the network to lose its remote and start fast forwarding, showing previews of the new series Royal Crackers and new seasons of both The Eric Andre Show and Teenage Euthanasia. Afterwards, the network rewound to an airing of the Space Ghost Coast to Coast episode Fire Ant. Afterwards at 1:00 A.M. ET, Adult Swim aired Unedited Footage of a Bear and Broomshakalaka! as [as-], promoting it as featuring all the commercials you love minus all the annoying shows. Afterward, in apology for the previous hour and a half, Adult Swim aired footage of a train travelling through Norway as Adult Swim Train (Represented on air as [as] followed by the image of a train.

Gallery[]

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