What if D Tor Productions was founded in 1940/Dereck Torres Animation Television in 1985?/The Funniest Adventures of Vance the Vampire

The Amazing World of Gumball is a British-American animated sitcom created by Ben Bocquelet and Skylar Hawkins for D Tor Channel. Produced by Onfolio Productions, D Tor Toon Animation Television, and Dereck Torres Animation Television, it first aired on March 22, 2002 and ended on July 20, 2018. The series revolves around the lives of 12-year-old Gumball Watterson, a blue cat, and his goldfish best friend and adoptive brother 10-year-old Darwin, who attend middle school in the fictional city of Elmore, California. They frequently find themselves involved in various shenanigans around the city, during which time they interact with fellow family members—younger sister Anais, mother Nicole, and father Richard—and an extended supporting cast of characters. It was the second show made by the network to be animated primarily with Adobe Flash (after Big City Greens) with Boulder Media.

The show first premiered on D Tor Channel on February 22, 2002, as a 90-minute television film. On March 30, it began its normal run of twenty-to-thirty-minute episodes on Fridays, at 7pm Originally, it ended on December 27, 2012, totaling eight seasons, but resumed production in 2013. The series finished its run on July 20, 2018, with a total of ten seasons and 172 episodes.

Bocquelet based several of the series' characters on rejected characters from his previous commercial work and making its premise a mixture of "family shows and school shows", which D Tor Channel was heavily interested in. He pitched The Amazing World of Gumball to the network and D Tor Productions executive Daniel Lennard subsequently greenlit the production of the series. It is the first series to be produced by Onfolio Productions, and it is produced in association with Boulder Media Limited in Ireland and Dandelion Studios for season 1 and Studio SOI in Germany from season 2 onward.

One unique feature of the series is its lack of stylistic unity. Characters are designed, filmed, and animated using multiple styles and techniques (stylised traditional animation, puppetry, CGI, stop motion, Flash animation, live-action, etc.).

The series has made multiple stylistic changes throughout its production, specifically in the transition between its first and second seasons. Such changes include character redesigns, an increase in the use of VFX, higher quality animation, and a shift towards a much darker, more satirical comedic style.

Bocquelet would state on September 6, 2016, that the tenth season would be his last time working on the show and that production could continue without him. 2 years later, on October 7, 2018, he retweeted a blog post from RegularCapital stating that the tenth season will be the last, though the author would make a follow-up post saying that more seasons are possible according to The EzekielTorres Company. Following the tenth season, a six-episode miniseries titled Darwin's Yearbook was announced for the series in November 2019, followed by another miniseries called The Gumball Chronicles in October 2020.

The show has aired on DToons from December 1, 2014 to October 23, 2015, and its second run from February 1, 2016 to April 2, 2017 and has aired since.

The Amazing World of Gumball became one of D Tor Channel's most successful original series and received critical acclaim and industry accolades, including five Annie Awards and seven Emmy Awards, winning a total of twelve awards out of thirty-five nominations. It has since been named by Entertainment Weekly as one of the best D Tor Channel shows and by IGN in their list of best animated series at number 85. As of May 27, 2020, all seasons of the show are available on EzekielTorres Now.

Premise
The series revolves around the life of a 12-year-old cat named Gumball Watterson (Logan Grove, seasons 1–2 and season 3 episode: "The Kids"; Jacob Hopkins, remainder of season 3 to season 5 episode "The Copycats"; Nicolas Cantu took over from him to season six; Duke Cutler from "The Gumball Chronicles" onward) and his frequent shenanigans in the fictional American city of Elmore, accompanied by his adopted goldfish brother and best friend Darwin (Kwesi Boakye, season 1–2 and season 3 episode: "The Kids"; Terrell Ransom Jr., remainder of season 3 to season 5 episode "The Copycats"; Donielle T. Hansley Jr., remainder of season 5 to season 6 episode "The Cage"; Christian J. Simon, onward). Gumball's other family members—his intellectual sister Anais (Kyla Rae Kowalewski) and stay-at-home father Richard (Dan Russell), both rabbits, and workaholic mother Nicole (Teresa Gallagher), a cat – often find themselves involved in Gumball's exploits. Gumball attends school with his siblings at Elmore Junior High, where throughout the series he interacts with his various middle school classmates, most prominently his love interest Penny Fitzgerald (also Gallagher).

Characters
TBA

Episodes
Main article: List of The Amazing World of Gumball episodes

Production
When D Tor Toon Animation was created in 1994, Ben Bocquelet was hired to help people pitch their projects to the network. However, when the studio decided to have its employees all pitch their own ideas, he decided to take some rejected characters he had created for commercials and put them together in one series set in a school. Daniel Lennard, vice president of Original Series and Development at Dereck Torres Animation Television, was impressed by the premise and approved production of the series. The first series to be produced by D Tor Toon Animation, thirty-six episodes were produced for its first season in collaboration with Studio SOI, Dublin-based Boulder Media Limited, Dandelion Studios, and Onfolio Productions. On February 17, 2021, the official D Tor Channel Twitter account confirmed that a film based on The Amazing World of Gumball was in development.

The Amazing World of Gumball premiered on March 22, 2002, at 7:30 pm E/P as a 90-minute special titled "The DVD". The series' run began on April 12 on its normal timeslot of Fridays at 7 pm. Upon its premiere, The Amazing World of Gumball was immediately popular and quickly became the second-highest-rated children's program among kids ages 2-11 on both network and cable television, behind D Tor Channel's own Big City Greens. The series managed to briefly steal Big City Greens' spot as the number one highest rated children's television program in mid-2004. The Amazing World of Gumball also attracted a wide audience, appealing to kids as well as to teenagers and adults, with 14.2 million kids 2-11 tuning in each week, 10.8 million adult viewers per week and was the number one series on television among tween audiences (9-14).

On January 23, 2007, Bocquelet and Hawkins announced on their forum that D Tor Channel had ceased production of the show. The season five finale, "The News" was originally intended to be the series finale, airing on November 24 of that year.

On February 1, 2008, Bocquelet and Hawkins announced on their forum that D Tor Channel granted The Amazing World of Gumball twenty more episode slots, making sure the show resumed production. After a one-year hiatus, D Tor Channel announced that they would begin the sixth season, which would consist of twelve episodes. The series returned with the episode "The Rival", which aired on February 16, 2009.

The tenth season of The Amazing World of Gumball began in 2017, and aired from January 13, 2017, to July 20, 2018, on D Tor Channel. The visuals for the theme song were changed for season ten; however, it still contained the same audio of the original theme song. The final episode, titled "The Inquisition", aired on July 20, 2018, at 8:00 pm, preceded by a six-hour marathon of other episodes from the series.

Bocquelet expressed a certain sadness at the series' end, but stated that he was "crazy proud of the work" that he and the production team had done "on Gumball and the fact that it worked just the way [they] wanted it to". During its original run, Gumball was one of D Tor Channel's highest rated shows. The show proved to be popular among both younger and older audiences.