The internet is a weird and wonderful place. It changed so much about the world, for better or worse, and soon we had collectively created an unstoppable beast of constant information that presented humanity laid bare. With increased anonymity and a lack of authority the cap was removed. Everyone now had a voice, and everyone had an audience out there somewhere.
Years before YouTube, before we even knew there’d be more numbers after 1999, the growing online community was already embracing the freedom of this new platform when it came to video content, and animation started to undergo a bizarre and sometimes terrifying metamorphosis. From catchy music videos to straight nightmare fuel, here are 10 of the most insane and iconic animations the internet gave birth to:
Happy Tree Friends (1999)
13 years before that underwhelming Dumb Ways To Die video, a short flash animation featuring adorable frenetic woodland creatures accidentally murdering each other in gruesome ways was already taking over the internet. Happy Tree Friends hooked people of all ages with its hilarious and shocking use of extreme violence and gore in the style of a fun cartoon for kids, with the popularity of the original spawning 5 series – including a run on something called tee vee – and a spin-off. You could credit the coining of the genre to Aardman’s classic 1995 short Pib and Pog, but that didn’t have BLOOD.
Rejected (2000)
This gem from the enigmatic Don Hertzfeldt actually began life on the big screen, touring theatres and showing at various film festivals, winning numerous awards and even bagging an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short Film years before it became a cult internet hit.
With a series of crudely drawn sketches that were hilarious, creative, random (of course), and beautifully meta, it quickly found a new home when it was uploaded to Youtube in 2007. Hertzfeldt went on to make many popular videos in this vein of high-brow randomness.
Xiao Xiao (2001)
Animating amateurish drawings is one of the themes of this list, and Xiao Xiao may be the purest incarnation, turning the classic 2d stick man into an action hero. The simple style allowed for long sequences of outlandish action worthy of the greatest kung-fu movies, with that warm Toy Story/Lego Movie vibe of the child’s imagination, come to life. One of the great things the internet is known for is providing fun ways to kill several hours. The Oscar for that has to go to Xiao Xiao. The formula never gets old and spawned many imitators.
The Demented Cartoon Movie (2001)
At this point in history, there seemed to be some kind of global epiphany where everyone suddenly realized random = funny. Before infiltrating Hollywood and the advertising industry, Randomness was dominating the internet, discovering an even funnier bone within our mental anatomy. Once the money-men got wind of this new style, they quickly proved the formula was more complex than simply random=funny. There’s an art to it.
For proof, look no further than Brian Kendall’s truly demented python-esque masterpiece of the form: 30 minutes of beautiful nonsensical destruction in the city of Qrrbrbirlbel, provided by an ensemble of MS Paint fever dreams. When you look back it’s disturbing how influential it seems to have been…
Weebl and Bob (2002)
The legs on this abstract series about 2 egg things with South Park Canadian style mouths who like pie were impressive. It was just as random and silly, but much more laid back than most other ‘random’ comedies, with long aired out dialogue scenes, idly mumbling about pie, or other things, sometimes just gibberish. It was funny and full of charm and made for a unique watch.
As the series continued Weebl and Bob got more ambitious, with the likes of their Sexyback and Portal parodies, as they were forced to compete with rivals from their own website, which was growing in notoriety thanks to a certain animal and a certain fungus…
Badgers (2003)
Jonti Picking, also affectionately known as Weebl, went on to find success with many videos independent of Weebl and Bob. The one that put him on the map, and helped shape the definition of a ‘viral video,’ took the form of a very literal music video. The profound lyrics are as follows: “Badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, mushroom, mushroom,” repeat 3 times, then “A snake, a snake. Snaaake! A snaaake. Ooh. it’s a snake.” Picking went on to release more musically sound nonsense, and now boasts a respectable discography boasting timeless classics such as Magical Trevor and Hot Tamales.
Red Vs. Blue (2003)
But why bother with actually having to draw? With the technological leaps and bounds the video game industry was making it made a lot more sense to just use a pre-existing game engine to create your animations. This process would later become more streamlined and widespread, helped along by the likes of Gary’s Mod, but in 2003 it was a cool gimmick, and the fun Halo spoof became a huge hit with the online community.
A lack of oversight led to a convoluted mess of a story, but it started very strong. It’s reminiscent of the tone we’d later see in Archer: armed wisecracking badasses juxtaposed with the surprising mundanity of their day-to-day job. And just like Archer, the best episodes weren’t the explosive ones, just slow days at the office.
Fat Pie (2003)
When it comes to randomness, David Firth is something of a hero. His website flaunts numerous classic animations that already count as old school. Burnt Face Man was a popular one, following the weird adventures of a terrible superhero as he faces off against villains such as Bastard Man and Man-Spider. Jerry Jackson was another, that was like a more relatable Demented Cartoon Movie. The titular character’s gibberish was a lot closer to home, like when he “got an X-Box… four ‘undred and… a million games,” or spewed side-spitting tasteless nonsense he thought was wisdom on topics like race, religion and Linkin Park.
Salad Fingers (2004)
But David Firth’s Salad Fingers was such a unique creature it gets its own entry. The show, and titular character, were overtly written and animated in a way that was designed to make you uncomfortable. It was great for shock value, but it also let us explore a different side of our psyche. Tonally, it was very dark and bleak right off the bat, and there was no comedy to let you laugh it off. There is no punchline to “I like it when the red water comes out…” You’re just forced to absorb it and let it percolate while you continue to stare into those magnetic, childlike, soulless eyes. He may have nailed randomness, but Firth also gave birth to a new genre of deliciously creepy animation that would later bring us the likes of Slender Man… Let’s talk about something else, shall we?
The ASDF Movie (2008)
You could call the coming of YouTube in 2007 the beginning of the 2nd age of internet content, and it will probably remain the greatest, thanks to more and more restrictions on privacy, and words like monetization and algorithm taking over the creative process and turning the content itself into an afterthought and farmed out commodity. So perhaps the ASDF Movie came too late to really count, but while it was rather derivative, it ticked all the boxes of the new genre of comedy the internet had cooked up then, with the help of YouTube, brought it into the mainstream for a new generation.
