Surreal April Fools Jokes in Mainstream Media History

Last night, Adult Swim did another in a series of surreal, Eldritch horror April Fools blocks. I won’t link the video here due to possible content warnings (it’s on YouTube).

It was really awesome to see a mainstream media outlet do something this challenging, even if it is well within the surreal Adult Swim landscape. Over the years, it’s getting rarer for established media corporations to poke fun at their properties in such bizarre ways.

For some reason, Warner Bros seems to be the exception. The first memory I had of this was the legitimately nightmare-fueled “Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers” Looney Tunes short. In recent years, they’ve gone more meta — just last year, we had TWO fourth-wall-breaking blockbusters in both Space Jam: A New Legacy and The Matrix Resurrections. And that’s from the same studio.

April Fools’ Day itself always seemed to be a time where media outlets would…get a bit goofier. The string-pulling we saw in last night’s Gizmoplex show reminded me a lot of when HBO decided to let their production designers have a bit too much fun and produce a bad on purpose “Feature Presentation” bumper in 1986. Looking back, it reminds me quite a bit of early MST3K:

(it even includes a WHITE DOT cameo! :white_circle: )

Any other examples of media outlets being a bit sillier/surreal around April Fools Day? It doesn’t happen that often, but when it does, it’s truly something awesome.

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I’m trying to remember what year it was that YouTube changed its name to “Cat Videos” for 24 hours. :thinking:

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