Here Are the TV Episodes That Adult Swim Pulled Because of All the Plane Crashes Last Week
A recent string of aviation accidents has forced Adult Swim to do the unthinkable: They’re censoring Eric André.
The last week of air travel in America was so disastrous that even adult animation felt the aftershocks. Following deadly crashes in Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim are scrambling to ensure that their entertainment options aren’t of the “unintentionally macabre” variety as the country searches for answers. But while the White House wages a war on the FAA and all other federal agencies, the most popular programming block for teen-and-adult-focused comedy shows is more worried about the FCC as they scrub certain episodes of hit shows from their upcoming schedule.
As it turns out, a surprisingly high number of upcoming airings on Adult Swim would have featured plane crashes and problematic imagery during this difficult time in aviation. Here is each episode that Adult Swim kicked out of the programming pool, starting with…
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The Eric André Show: “Hannibal Quits”
Season Five of the surrealist shock-comedy talk show The Eric André Show featured co-host Hannibal Buress' farewell episode, but the reason Adult Swim bumped this off the schedule has nothing to do with hurt feelings over the Emmy-nominated stand-up and TV writer's final farewell — this episode features a scene where Eric Andre pretends to have fallen out of a plane mid-flight.
Family Guy: “Boy (Dog) Meets Girl (Dog)”
In this 2018 episode, Stewie helps Brian become a competitive show dog in order to win the affections of a well-bred bitch (biologically speaking) voiced by Amanda Seyfried. Like so many Family Guy episodes before it, “Boy (Dog) Meets Girl (Dog)” contains a joke about the September 11th terrorist attacks, but even long before the second-most stressful week for the American aviation community in its history, Stewie knew this gag didn’t land right.
Family Guy (Again): “Yug Ylimaf”
In this Tenet-before-Tenet episode from 2012, Brian misuses Stewie’s time machine to go on unique, historic and score-worthy dates, but the selfish experimentation leads to time flowing in reverse for the whole world besides Brian and Stewie. As such, we got arguably the most unique chicken fight in the show’s history, one that featured an airplane reverse-crashing, rubble first.
Robot Chicken: “Happy Russian Deathdog Dolloween 2 U”
To be fair to animated comedy magnate and stop-motion union-buster Seth Green, this 2021 Halloween special featured a now-censored joke that was more of a punchline about Donnie Darko than real-life plane disasters. At the end of this installment, a falling airplane engine flattens Frank the Bunny — presumably, Donnie Darko isn’t going to air on Adult Swim anytime soon, either.
As the Cartoon Network and Adult Swim news account CN News/Schedules noted on Twitter/X following the schedule shake-up, this kind of move is common for a cable network to make following a tragedy, let alone several. And, unfortunately, Adult Swim does have a history of letting some darkly ill-timed jokes make it to air. In 2013, for instance, the network had to give a public apology after running a Family Guy episode featuring a tornado gag the same day as the deadly tornado in Moore, Oklahoma.
Don’t get it twisted — sometimes, even Adult Swim has to pull their punches.
