20 Best Adult Swim Shows Ever Made, Ranked

The best Adult Swim shows ever made prove that animation doesn’t have to be solely for kids. On September 2, 2001, Adult Swim launched. It was a new programming block on Cartoon Network, but whereas the channel as a whole focused on kid-friendly fare, Adult Swim asked kids to get out of the water so that grown-ups could have some fun. 

In the time since its debut, Adult Swim has been responsible for producing some of the best animated shows for adults, whether it’s “The Boondocks” or “Home Movies.” There was finally an avenue where bold, experimental animation could take center stage, and even to this day, there are some Adult Swim shows that feel like they couldn’t find a home anywhere else. 

Adult Swim has offered such an broad mix of shows over the years that it’s tough to figure out what the best ones ever are. However, going from our own personal preferences as well as a general consensus from online critics, here’s the list you should start with to see what Adult Swim is all about. 

The visual style of “Superjail!” is akin to something like “Fritz the Cat” or “Yellow Submarine.” It feels like something you may have seen as a kid that you weren’t supposed to see, but “Superjail!” makes no qualms over its very adult, hyper-violent nature. 

The Warden (David Wain) uses the eponymous superjail to meet all of his sadistic desires. A typical episode will see him engage in some scheme, only for it to end in a total bloodbath for various inmates. Extreme violence is par for the course for many adult animated series. It often feels like it merely exists for shock value, but “Superjail!” turns each death into a surrealistic hellscale you can’t help but stare at like an oncoming train.

Animation can be known for taking shortcuts, like reusing the same backdrop to save time. But no two frames of “Superjail!” are the same, as the background is constantly shifting and psychedelic imagery can overtake any scene. It’s like “Superjail!” was made in a lab to be specifically watched at midnight, when you already have a loose grasp of reality. 

“Sealab 2021” is one of the few shows to technically predate the existence of Adult Swim. It debuted in 2000 alongside “The Brak Show” and “Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.” These series are much cruder compared to what Adult Swim would get later. In the case of “Sealab 2021,” it reuses footage from the 1970s environmental series “Sealab 2020,” but with new dialogue, often with characters going on nonsensical tangents and engaging in petty bickering.

This gives “Sealab 2021” a surreal quality, especially if you grew up watching “Sealab 2020.” It’s like watching a Hanna-Barbera cartoon without messaging or morals. In these environmentally trying times, a modern, earnest reboot of “Sealab 2020” may not be a bad idea, but we’re lucky to have “Sealab 2021” in the meantime. 

“Sealab 2021” was created by Adam Reed and Matt Thompson, who would go on to make “Archer.” And you can see a lot of that DNA in “Sealab,” with all of the characters’ meandering conversations.

Adult Swim is mostly known for its animated projects, but it’s also known to dip its toes into live-action fare. And “Childrens Hospital” is one of the most bonkers, bizarre titles the programming block has ever gotten.

“Childrens Hospital” begins as a straightforward parody of shows like “ER,” except with the most unhinged people possible running the hospital. Dr. Blake Downs (Rob Corddry) wears John Wayne Gacy-esque clown makeup in an attempt to bring humor into patients’ lives. But Corddry’s only the beginning, as there’s a genuine murderer’s row of comedic talent in the cast, including Ken Marino, Lake Bell, Rob Huebel, and Megan Mullally, to name a few. 

“Childrens Hospital” defies any semblance of logic. Characters die only to come back. Certain episodes completely change genre, like Season 4’s “Childrens Lawspital,” which suddenly pivots to being a send-up of courtroom dramas. “Childrens Hospital” operates by the logic of “If it’s funny, do it,” and it’s all the better for it. 

Many Adult Swim shows are loud, colorful, and profane. They can be downright existential with their philosophies of how nothing matters, and characters die gruesomely with no shortage of gore. “Joe Pera Talks With You” feels like it belongs on another network, as it trades high energy for a calming meditation where comedian Joe Pera walks you through various things he enjoys. 

When first watching “Joe Pera Talks With You,” knowing it’s on Adult Swim, you keep expecting some kind of switch. Everything may seem delightful now, but since it’s an Adult Swim show, you keep anticipating the horrors to appear, but they never do. It’s a genuinely earnest, sincere show that’s still plenty funny, but isn’t meant to be overstimulating.

Many people likely watch Adult Swim late at night when they’re trying to fall asleep. “Joe Pera Talks With You” feels like the kind of show that could actually help you sleep rather than keep you up with visions of bloodshed and sex jokes. 

“Haha, You Clowns” defies what people typically think an Adult Swim show can be while still maintaining a subtle weirdness to every episode. The series, created by Joe Cappa, follows a dad raising his three dim-witted sons in the aftermath of their mother’s death. He’s just trying to hold them together, and episodes often maintain low stakes, like Preston (Cappa) losing his favorite bomber jacket at a restaurant.

“Haha, You Clowns” upends expectations for anyone who grew up on schmaltzy ’90s sitcoms like “Home Improvement.” To add further heightened sentimentality to an emotional beat, an episode will offer an extreme close-up of a character’s face to show their eyes red and watery. But while watching these smaller-scale stories, you can’t help but feel like something sinister is lurking in the background, as though Tom’s deceased wife is haunting over the narrative as a metaphorical (or maybe literal) ghost. 

One thing’s certain: Tom really raised those boys right. 

“My Adventures with Superman” feels like the kind of superhero project that could’ve aired on Cartoon Network proper. As it stands, it’s firmly in the Adult Swim slot, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It shows that Adult Swim isn’t just about firmly adult-oriented programming. There are things younger viewers can enjoy as well, but honestly, “My Adventures with Superman” is so good that adults can get a lot out of it, too. 

It’s one of the best “Superman” animated shows ever, offering a modern update on the Man of Steel (Jack Quaid) while still keeping all of the traits that have made the hero so iconic over the decades. Superman fights plenty of his classic villains, and there are many adaptations of classic stories, like Season 3’s take on the “Reign of Superman” arc that introduces Cyborg Superman (Max Mittelman). 

But what really sells the show is the interpersonal dynamic between Superman, Lois Lane (Alice Lee), and Jimmy Olsen (Ishmel Sahid). Superman and Lois’ relationship is so fleshed out that when you get to Season 3, they’re already talking about marriage and future children (even meeting said future children). It’s the kind of comic book adaptation we wouldn’t mind seeing more of on Adult Swim. 

When “Robot Chicken” debuted in 2005, many people were still figuring out what the internet was capable of. It would take a while for memes and YouTube (which debuted the same year) to reach their full potential. For the time being, people could turn to “Robot Chicken” for highly referential humor that parodied movies, older cartoons, and pop culture at large. 

“Robot Chicken” is still going strong and has become a cornerstone of Adult Swim’s programming. Each episode is only 11 minutes long and consists of a quick series of scenes that leap from one idea to the next. 

Sketches would be separated by static to mimic flipping across channels, but honestly, the show’s fast-paced nature came to represent how many people scroll on social media, encountering an array of sketches that hopefully make them laugh. And if they don’t, they’re short enough to forget and move on. As long as there’s pop culture, there will be a place for “Robot Chicken.”

Adult Swim isn’t afraid to dedicate entire shows to relatively niche subject matter. In the case of “Metalocalypse,” it’s a series centering on Dethklok, a famous melodic death metal band that has become so big, it’s the seventh-largest economy on the planet. 

Unlike a lot of shows that parody music or celebrity culture, there’s rarely any malice toward death metal as a genre. You can tell there’s a lot of respect for that world here, and as a result, “Metalocalypse” and Dethklok are responsible for producing some genuinely awesome tracks that have charted pretty high among quote-unquote “real” musical acts. 

As is the case with a lot of Adult Swim shows, there can be many non-sequiturs and gross-out gags. But even when the show ended in 2013, it maintained a solid fanbase, allowing the series to get a proper send-off with the direct-to-video film “Metalocalypse: Army of the Doomstar.”

Parodying late-night talk shows is integral to Adult Swim’s DNA. “Space Ghost Coast to Coast” pioneered the set-up, but years later, “The Eric Andre Show” would pick up the mantle. This is a live-action talk show that utilizes anti-humor to great effect. Andre, along with his co-host Hannibal Buress, have real celebrities on the show, and these guests are utterly baffled at what Andre says and does. 

It feels like the kind of thing that could easily come off as try-hard if it seemed like the celebrity guests were in on the joke. But amazingly, most of the time, they had no idea what they were walking into. This led to some iconic moments, like Lauren Conrad walking out of the interview after Andre fake-vomits on his desk and slurps it back up. Sequences like that exemplify why “The Eric Andre Show” remains one of television’s best cringe comedies. 

That’s not even getting into Andre’s man-on-the-street pranks and sketches. Once again, he captures unsuspecting victims’ real reactions to his insanity. Stripping away the veneers of celebrity and dismantling the very nature of what makes a talk show work allows “The Eric Andre Show” to thrive, inspiring numerous memes in the process. 

“Moral Orel” is one of the most perfect bait-and-switches in TV history. In Season 1, it’s a straightforward, perverse parody of Christian shows like “Davey and Goliath.” Except here, Orel (Carolyn Lawrence) is a naive boy trying to live his life according to God’s teachings, only to find that society isn’t always a nice place. It doesn’t help that his father, Clay (Scott Adsit), is a bitter, hateful man who’s abusive toward his entire family.

If it sounds like it would be hard to mine abuse for comedy, that’s probably a reason why the show gradually started pivoting away from jokes starting in Season 2. Season 1 mostly follows an episodic format where characters and moral lessons are reset at the end of every entry. But later on, the show becomes more serialized, and the audience begins witnessing the long-term effects of the Puppington family enduring Clay’s abuse.

By Season 3, “Moral Orel” has become a full-blown psychological drama. Few shows have ever attempted something so daring, and it’s widely speculated that this massive shift is the reason for its premature cancellation. But for those willing to descend into madness and question ever laughing at dark humor, “Moral Orel” remains a cult favorite. 

When most people hear “adult animated show,” they probably think of something along the lines of “Rick and Morty.” Namely, they think of a comedy with a lot of crude humor and jokes only people over the age of 18 would understand. But the genre should be so much more, and “Common Side Effects” perfectly encapsulates the kind of projects studios should invest in.

There are many funny moments in “Common Side Effects,” but it primarily functions as a conspiratorial thriller. Unassuming Marshall Cuso (Dave King) discovers a blue mushroom that can heal anything, which makes him a target of the pharmaceutical industry and anyone with a vested interest in keeping the public sick.

But what makes “Common Side Effects” really stand out is how it refuses to paint anything in black and white. Marshall is idealistic, but his goal of giving the mushroom’s powers to everyone is unrealistic. Unfortunately, his plan needs to be compromised a little, which could mean working for a major corporation so he can do the most good. Ideals are great until it’s time to put them into practice. “Common Side Effects” raises difficult questions that more animated shows should be willing to tackle. 

Genndy Tartakovsky is responsible for creating “Samurai Jack,” one of the best Cartoon Network shows of all time. It’s a surprisingly mature action show geared toward kids, but he ramps up the intensity with a series aimed squarely at adults — “Primal.”

Whereas “Samurai Jack” would go long stretches without any dialogue, “Primal” has entire episodes where no one speaks. Instead, audiences are forced to pay attention to the subtle changes to a character’s expressions to understand their mindsets. The sound design is impeccable, as you’re dropped into a strange prehistoric world where Spear (Aaron LaPlante) and Fang (Frank Welker) are forced to work together to survive after each undergoing their own tragedies.

“Primal” is a truly beautiful show to behold. And while a lot of other adult animated shows use violence for violence’s sake, you feel every hit and stab within “Primal.” When a character gets slashed and hit with an arrow, you feel the damage they take and wonder how they could possibly make it out alive.

“Harvey Birdman, Attorney At Law” is another wonderful experiment around Adult Swim’s genesis. Like “Sealab 2021,” “Harvey Birdman” takes characters from old Hanna-Barbera cartoons and puts them inside of a legal drama. Harvey Birdman (Gary Cole) represents a litany of cartoon characters against various offenses, like Shaggy and Scooby-Doo, who are facing drug charges.

“Harvey Birdman” could’ve been a perfectly serviceable show for the late-night crowd if it stuck to mere parody. Watching the likes of Fred Flintstone take the stand is funny enough. But “Harvey Birdman” captures that Adult Swim spirit early on in its run. It doesn’t stick to just parodying properties, and it also utilizes surreal humor. Characters deliver their lines a bit too awkwardly, or a scene stays on some frozen characters just a couple of extra seconds too long.

The show doesn’t just parody tropes seen in old cartoons. It deconstructs the very nature of these series from years past. “Harvey Birdman” is a wonderfully dumb show that circles back around to being smart. 

Some comedies with 22-minute episodes don’t have nearly the kind of joke density or satisfying stories as “Smiling Friends” is able to pack in 11-minute chunks. When “Smiling Friends” premiered in 2020, it represented the dawn of a new era for Adult Swim, one that cast aside the nihilism that had defined so many adult cartoons for the previous decade. “Smiling Friends” still has crude humor and gross-out gags, but underneath it all is a show about two little critters who just want to make the world happy.

Most episodes follow roughly the same format. Pim (Michael Cusack) and Charlie (Zach Hadel) get an assignment to cheer someone up, and by the end of an episode, they do it. But that’s oversimplifying what “Smiling Friends” does. In any given episode, the show would incorporate numerous types of animation styles outside of traditional 2D, including rotoscoping, stop motion, and Flash animation, to name a few. The show also isn’t afraid to lean heavily into internet humor with references only people in very niche online communities could understand.

“Smiling Friends” ended far too soon after just three seasons. But hopefully, it’ll return one day to make us smile again. 

“Space Ghost, Coast to Coast” began in 1994 before Adult Swim was even a gleam in the eye of some Cartoon Network executive. The goal was to have some animated programming that appealed to adults, and “Space Ghost, Coast to Coast” set the template for so many shows that followed. 

As would become Adult Swim’s bread and butter early on, the show takes old cartoon footage (in this case, “Space Ghost”) and awkwardly inserts celebrity interviews. It’s lo-fi, surreal, and utilizes deadpan interactions for laughs. To be honest, “Space Ghost” didn’t just lay the blueprint for Adult Swim; it laid the foundation for internet humor as a whole. Sites like Newgrounds, Homestar Runner, and even sketch comedians on YouTube seemed to take the abrasiveness and roughness of “Space Ghost” and apply it to their own comedy.

“Space Ghost, Coast to Coast” proves you don’t need huge budgets or big stars to get laughs. In fact, making something as janky as possible would become a defining feature of 2000s-era comedy, whether it was online or on TV. 

For the first few years of Adult Swim’s existence, there were plenty of funny shows, but none you could really call “important.” “The Boondocks” changed all of that in 2005 with a level of biting social satire the programming block hasn’t seen before or since. 

The show follows two young Black boys — Riley and Huey (both voiced by Regina King) — who live with their grandfather (John Witherspoon) in a mostly white neighborhood. Through this fish-out-of-water dynamic, the show satirizes modern racial relations, 2000s-era politics, and the role the media plays in stoking racial tensions. 

“The Boondocks” isn’t afraid to tackle sensitive topics. In fact, arguably the show’s best episode, “Return of the King,” drew the ire of notable figures like Al Sharpton. The episode presents an alternate history where Martin Luther King Jr. survives his assassination and awakens from a coma in the 21st century, where he’s dismayed at the lack of social progress. Plus, he turns into a social pariah after preaching nonviolence following the September 11 attacks. “The Boondocks” is a truly fearless show, and we desperately need more series like it in today’s landscape. 

“Rick and Morty” has become Adult Swim’s golden goose. It’s the perfect show that bridges Adult Swim’s zaniness and emphasis on alternate comedy while also being accessible to the mainstream. No, you don’t need an advanced degree to understand all of the jokes. You just need a fairly good grasp on pop culture and a willingness to dive into full-blown nihilism when the opportunity presents itself. 

“Rick and Morty” literally has infinite possibilities for episode concepts. Rick (Justin Roiland, later Ian Cardoni) takes his grandson Morty (Roiland, later Harry Belden) on various adventures through the universe and multiverse. They encounter all sorts of aliens, monsters, and even alternate versions of themselves. Some episodes aim to take a silly premise to its most absurd conclusion. 

But the most essential episodes of “Rick and Morty” thread the needle between ridiculous comedy and depressing pathos. You might be laughing one minute and then reckoning with the fact that Rick is truly all alone in the universe. His genius separates him from everyone, including other versions of himself. “Rick and Morty” can be hilarious and existentially terrifying all in a single episode to the point where we wouldn’t mind getting new seasons forever.

If David Lynch ever decided to make a sketch comedy show, it would probably look like “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” Spearheaded by Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, each episode consists of various sketches, often taking the form of late-night infomercials or low-budget local commercials. 

The show eschews many common modern comedy conventions, like relying too heavily on pop culture references. Instead, the characters take their given situation to the most absurd degree, often diving headfirst into horror. For example, the show’s free real estate sketch specifically targets one man, as Tim and Eric yell at him about how they’re giving him free land until it devolves into full-blown screaming.

The series takes the kind of programming you would most expect to find on late-night TV and ramps it up to its most ridiculous extreme. When watching for the first time, you may not think anything is even amiss until something happens that no reasonable human would ever put into an actual commercial. 

“The Venture Bros.” was the natural next step in Adult Swim’s evolution. Whereas the programming block’s early shows put Hanna-Barbera characters in silly situations, “The Venture Bros.” is an original show that parodies those old-school cartoons. The series riffs on “Jonny Quest” most heavily while also including parodies of everything from “Scooby-Doo” to “The Fantastic Four.”

The show easily could’ve had a classic adventure-of-the-week format with ample jokes, and most fans would’ve been fine. But “The Venture Bros.” refined its approach as the years went on. It actually tackles what it would be like for two young men to encounter such perilous situations on a regular basis, and they deal with the emotional and psychological ramifications. 

“The Venture Bros.” has everything. Not only is it funny, but the adventures are genuinely thrilling. There’s also fleshed-out love stories, chilling moments of horror, and exciting cliffhangers that’ll leave you wondering what’ll happen next. “The Venture Bros.” works amazingly as both a parody of adventure shows and an awesome adventure show in its own right. 

Determining the best Adult Swim show ever made is difficult. So many have premiered over the years with vastly different comedic styles. Some shows may be someone’s favorite while rubbing another demographic the wrong way. But when it comes to the show that’s not only hilarious across the board but also represents everything Adult Swim does best, “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” takes the cake. 

The show defies all explanations of logic. Three roommates — narcissistic Master Shake (Dana Snyder), intelligent Frylock (Carey Means), and dumb-as-rocks Meatwad (Dave Willis) — represent an ideal sitcom congruence. They play off one another for every adventure, which might end with all of them dying or even the entire planet getting destroyed. By the next episode, everything is reset like nothing happened. 

The show’s crude and violent, with the characters often getting into ridiculous arguments about banal situations. It’s a show you can pick up with several seasons down the line and not feel like you’ve missed a step. From its nihilistic nature to its use of ad-libbing for a looser feel, “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” laid the template for many Adult Swim shows (and other adult-oriented programming) to follow.