The 20 best Adult Swim shows ever

While this wasn’t the first Adult Swim show, it was the first original cartoon that grabbed many people's attention. It became one of the first cultural forces in the Adult Swim world. Aqua Teen Hunger Force is about three sentient foodstuffs — Frylock, Master Shake, and Meatwad — and their adventures. Are they superheroes? Maybe sometimes? Mostly, they just hang out and annoy their neighbor Carl. And yet, they remain number one in the hood, G.

We do not have any Tim and Eric shows on this list, which we are sure will rub some folks the wrong way. Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim have very specific sensibilities that aren't for everybody. While Check it Out is spawned from the Tim and Eric universe, we’re still fans. Perhaps it’s because of John C. Reilly's weird, pitch-perfect performance in the lead role.

Medical dramas are a dime a dozen, so it stands to reason some parodies would arise. That’s especially true in the wake of shows like Grey’s Anatomy, where everybody is seemingly sleeping with everybody. Childrens Hospital is an insane parody of soapy, melodramatic medical shows that features a man dressed like a clown caked in blood much of the time.

Jon Glaser and Adult Swim have quite a good working relationship, as he’s had a couple of shows on the network. The best show he’s done is Delocated, which takes a limiting premise and stretches it to its limits. Glaser plays a man in the witness protection program who is also a reality show star, which means he’s always wearing a mask and disguising his voice.

In a way, Adult Swim owes a debt to Chris Elliott’s Get a Life, a sitcom that espoused the comedic sensibilities of the absurdist block years before it came around. Also, somehow he did it on network television. Eventually, Elliott found his way to Adult Swim with a new show, Eagleheart, which is something of a parody of a show like Walker, Texas Ranger. Even well into his career, Elliott could handle this kind of material in his sleep.

If we were to name a particular favorite Adult Swim show, it might be Harvey Birdman. This is a show from the early era of Adult Swim, when shows were primarily about taking old Hanna-Barbera cartoons and repurposing them. Birdman was once your typical cartoon superhero. In this show, he’s Harvey Birdman, a lawyer who does things like represent Scooby-Doo and his friends when they are accused of marijuana usage. It’s about as sharp and clever a riff as you can do on this premise. Plus, Stephen Colbert was in the voice cast!

OK, so technically, Home Movies began life on UPN in 1999. However, only five episodes of the show aired on that network. It moved to Adult Swim, where it aired the rest of its 52 episodes. Squigglevision animation isn’t for everybody, but this fairly silly, sometimes sweet show is more palatable to a broader audience than most Adult Swim programming.

Joe Pera Talks To You is both easy and difficult to explain. On the one hand, it’s just Joe Pera playing a fictionalized version of himself talking to the audience about stuff. On the other hand, well, everything else. In truth, this is simply one of those shows you have to see to “get,” and you will either be on its wavelength or you won’t.

Brendan Small made a fairly gentle Home Movies. His Metalocalypse, however, is brutal. The show revolves around an aggressive heavy metal band and their various misadventures. They tend to involve a ton of violence and gore for whatever reason. Definitely not a show the kids from Home Movies should be watching.

In terms of the highest ceiling versus the lowest floor, Moral Orel might take the cake when it comes to Adult Swim. The stop-motion animated show about an extremely religious boy was pitched like a raunchy riff on Davey and Goliath. Sometimes, it worked amazingly. Other times, it fell flat. Pretty killer soundtrack, though.

No, we did not use incorrect punctuation. There really is an extra colon at the end of the name of this show. As you may have guessed, it’s a parody of other colon-heavy shows like CSI: Miami and NCIS: Los Angeles. Something of a more anarchic spiritual successor to Police Squad!, it’s wild to think now that Karen Gillan was in the cast of this show. From Adult Swim to the Marvel Cinematic Universe!

Even by Adult Swim standards, there’s a lot of weird stuff in Perfect Hair Forever. It’s kind of a parody of anime, which means knowing anime would help but isn’t necessary. There’s a character named Action Hotdog, and the late, great MF DOOM voiced a giraffe named Sherman. Episodes aired sporadically, but this was a wild journey.

If you can set aside some of the qualms with the Rick and Morty fan base, you can find a lot to enjoy in Rick and Morty. Right now, it’s probably fair to call it the most popular Adult Swim original ever. Not bad for what started as a Back to the Future parody. It’s sci-fi and comedy blended with a heavy dose of nihilism, yet it works.

If you love pop culture — and if you’re watching Adult Swim late on a weeknight, there’s a decent chance you do — then Robot Chicken is probably up your alley. Well, depending on your age. Like, if you are Seth Green’s age and appreciate all the things he grew up appreciating, Robot Chicken is basically made for you.

Eventually, Adam Reed would go on to create Archer, an immensely popular show on FX. Before that, he was cutting his teeth on Sealab 2021. When the show started, they were literally taking animation for Sealab 2020, adding new dialogue, and editing the action a bit. And yet, it was still funny. As the show continued, the animation became more elaborate but remained funny.

Adult Swim all began, generally speaking, with Space Ghost Coast to Coast. The show technically existed well before Adult Swim debuted. It basically set the template for what was to come on Cartoon Network. Space Ghost, a forgotten superhero, was repackaged as a talk show host. They would tape real-life interviews with celebrities, then splice their remarks around Space Ghost’s quips and questions, editing things for comedic effect. If you love Adult Swim, you have to at least tip your cap to Space Ghost.

Based on a comic strip, The Boondocks was different from a lot of what Adult Swim had to offer, and not just based on the racial makeup of the show. A lot of Adult Swim programs were cheap-looking, but The Boondocks was pretty richly animated. While it’s comedic, it’s not absurd and beholden to no rules of logic and reason. The Boondocks stands out when discussing Adult Swim shows, a welcome change of pace in the lineup.

The Brak Show is effectively a spinoff of Space Ghost Coast to Coast. (So is Perfect Hair Forever, in a way.) However, instead of being a talk show parody, The Brak Show riffs on family sitcoms. Brak is a doofus even by the standards of the Space Ghost landscape, but at least he had Zorak as a foil.

They only made four episodes of this show. Also, the shows were really all building up to detailed parodies of the opening credits of shows like Hart to Hart. It was goofy and wasn’t even a “show” in some ways. When it comes to Adult Swim, it’s still a ton of fun and worthy of this list.

No show has as rich or lush of a look as The Venture Bros in the Adult Swim landscape. It’s every-so-slightly a parody of Johnny Quest, but not really. Quickly, it built up its own mythos, which grew a devoted fan base. Even when waiting for years for a new season to show up, people patiently waited and were happy when new episodes arrived. Go Team Venture!