Adult Swim's Surprising Behind The Scenes Secrets

Typically, in a live-action performance or an animated series, when a character plays a musical instrument, it's fake. Even if they are the original artist, they don't perform the piece on camera for various reasons, but it's largely to do with the complex nature of sound recording. In animation, it's not unusual to avoid the complexity of animating the proper hand placement and use of frets on a guitar, but that's not how Metalocalypse works.

The series spends an insane amount of time and work animating the precise fretting for each song. When a character places their fingers on a particular spot on the guitar, it corresponds to the note playing at that exact moment. This is not even remotely necessary for an animated series, but Metalocalypse is all about accuracy and properly portraying musical performances. It's not something most viewers would notice, but for the musically inclined fans, it's definitely appreciated.

At the very end of each Family Guy and American Dad! episode on its native Fox network or Adult Swim, there's a brief clip of a man who says something like, "Bye! Have a beautiful time!" The clip is rather inexplicable and unusual, to say the least. As it happens, that man is a real security guard who worked at the building where both of those programs are produced.

Security officer Peña once worked at the building, and he found his way onto the Underdog Productions title cards seen at the end of the episodes. Over the years, his catchphrase changed to any of the following:

• "Bye, have a great time!"
• "Bye, have a wonderful time!"
• "Bye, have a beautiful time!"
• "Bye-bye, see you real soon!"
• "Bye, have a beautiful day!"
• “Have a great night!”

Futurama is filled with jokes and innuendo related to numerous fields in science and mathematics, likely due to the writing staff's education credentials.

Collectively, the Futurama writing staff had three doctorates, seven master's degrees, and more than 50 years of education at Harvard University. Futurama writer Patric M. Verrone said of the staff, "We were easily the most overeducated cartoon writers in history."

Billy West is one of the hardest-working voice actors in the business, and over the course of his career, he's portrayed everyone from Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny to Ren Höek and Stimpson J. "Stimpy" Cat. These days, he's most recognized for his voice work on Futurama, which began on Fox but ultimately made the transition to Adult Swim for its final seasons from 2003 until 2007.

On the series, West voiced Philip J. Fry and many others, but his favorite, by far, is Fry. When he first came onboard to voice the character, he came up with Fry's unique voice by making it as close to his natural speaking voice as possible.

He did this for one rather simple and understandable reason: He wanted to guarantee his employment by making him difficult to replace. Seeing as Futurama came from the mind of Matt Groening, and the voice actors from The Simpsons are all disgustingly wealthy, it wasn't a bad business decision to make.

Stop anyone on the street and ask where they know Mark Hamill from, and the ones who don't say "Luke Skywalker" will undoubtedly mention his work voicing the Joker. Of course, the man has done far more than that, and over the years, he's lent his vocal talents to a plethora of animated characters. Tons of those characters found their way onto Adult Swim programs.

He's voiced the pirate captain Stickybeard in Codename: Kids Next Door, the evil Skeleton King in Super Robot Monkey: Team Hyperforce Go!, several characters on Metalocalypse, and the groundskeeper Skips on Regular Show.

Mark Hamill breathed life into more than 380 characters behind the microphone over the years. In addition to the Joker, he's voiced the Hobgoblin on Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Gargoyle in The Incredible Hulk, Maximus in Fantastic Four, Klaw in Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, and several characters on Ultimate Spider-Man. He hasn't worked solely for Marvel; he voiced Solomon Grundy and Trickster in Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. Other shows he's done voices for include The New Woody Woodpecker Show, Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Simpsons, Futurama, and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

He's been nominated for and received several awards for his voice acting work, including the best-animated character performance for playing the Joker in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. He earned the British Academy Games Award for best performer in Batman: Arkham City and many more honors.

Originally, Cartoon Network had no original programming, as its sole purpose was to air animated series developed by other networks. This worked well for the network for years, but that changed in 1993 with the release of The Moxy Show. That anthology series was the first exclusive, original content the network aired, but Cartoon Network didn't produce it.

The first series produced exclusively for the network was Space Ghost Coast to Coast, released in 1994. The series consisted almost entirely of recycled animation cells from Hanna-Barbera's library, so it wasn't entirely original. Still, it introduced some of the adult-oriented themes that continued with the network's development of additional series that followed. Adult Swim wouldn't debut for another seven years. Still, when it did, it had Space Ghost to thank for its existence.