What if HKO was founded in 1934?/HKO Animation Studios in 1985?/The Cyanide & Happiness Show

The Cyanide & Happiness Show is an adult animated sketch comedy series created by Rob DenBleyker, Dave McElfatrick, Matt Melvin and Kris Wilson, Based on the webcomic of the same name. Each episode consists of a few short stories that have little to no connection to each other (with the exception of six episodes from Season 3, which were a story arc). The creators described the goal of each episode to be "to extract the human excretion known as laughter from your face hole via fast-paced weird comedy."

The first episode was initially released on HKO@Nite for there MidnightToons block on January 27, 2010.

The series is currently produced by Explosm Entertainment, Polaris, Bento Box Entertainment, Parker-Stone Entertainment, and The Skeld.

The series is rated TV-MA-DLSV for Drug Content, Strong Language, Sexual Innuendo and Bloody Violence. In the UK, the series is rated 15 with some episodes being 18.

Release
The creators originally attempted to negotiate a TV series deal with Adult Swim, Nick@Nite and Fox, but due to "concerns about artistic compromise", their efforts were fruitless. One of the creators wrote:

"We walked away from the first two [networks] due to rights and creative control issues. We thought that we could settle those issues in the third deal, but things didn’t quite work out as we hoped. We’re starting to realize that TV as an industry just isn’t compatible with what we want to do with our animation: deliver it conveniently to a global audience, something we’ve been doing all along with our webcomic these past 5 years. That's just the nature of television versus the Internet, I suppose."

— Explosm

The series was then picked up by HKO@Nite for there MidnightToons block. The first episode of The Cyanide and Happiness Show premiered in an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Richardson, Texas, on TBA. Episodes of the series aired on HKO@Nite, with reruns on Adult Swim and Syfy.

In Canada, the series aired on Teletoon, for there Teletoon DeTour (later renamed to Teletoon at Nite) block until 2019, when the series moved to Global due to Teletoon at Nite shutting down, with reruns airing on Adult Swim.

In the United Kingdom, the series airs on HKO@Nite UK and Channel 4, with reruns on E4 on there Adult Swim block.

The series is available to stream on WHET Play.

In some countries outside the United States, similar to its format on Syfy, the series is aired as a 22-minute TV series, conjoining two episodes into one.

Reception
Imad Kahn of The Daily Dot described The Cyanide & Happiness Show as an "odd, but hilarious, mix of abrupt black humor that's overtly weird and doesn't pretend to be profound. It really does feel like a group of writers with free reign to animate whatever their twisted minds can think of."

Episodes
Main article: What if HKO was founded in 1934?/HKO Animation Studios in 1985?/List of The Cyanide & Happiness Show episodes

Trivia
TBA