Obscurity, much?/Cartoon Network

It's a little known fact that Cartoon Network actually helped make stuff that would've been popular otherwise semi-obscure at best.

While Disney only truly obscured certain series (thanks to the rise of Disney+ in late 2019), Cartoon Network did much, much worse than that. The way Cartoon Network put many shows into obscurity got them their own page.

The rules for this subpage:

* Being pulled from HBO Max doesn't automatically make a show a candidate for going on this list. Case in point: *Infinity Train* saw its digital downloads increase a lot in the aftermath of the merger of Warner Bros. and Discovery.
* With the exception of legacy examples (i.e. shows documented before January 1st, 2023), only ended/cancelled shows without much of an audience can be documented.
* Only shows produced and/or aired by Cartoon Network US, Boomerang, and/or Adult Swim can be documented here, as can games based on Cartoon Network IPs. Shows produced by the English Teletoon from before they rebranded to Cartoon Network have their own page.

Cartoon Network's treatment of *Pokémon* relating to this is covered on Pokémon's own page.

* After 5 (aired) episodes, Cartoon Network put Sunday Pants into obscurity. It recently popped up on the Internet after years of being lost.
* Ellen's Acres was obscured *worse* by Cartoon Network. It only aired for a few months, despite the fact that this show is from the same people who made Kappa Mikey and Speed Racer: The Next Generaton.
* Cartoon Network aired Pecola in America before Qubo picked it up. How ironic, considering CN rarely airs anything aimed at preschoolers.
* Even the only two Teletoon Playground shows aired by CN (Gerald McBoing-Boing (2005) and Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs) were partially obscured. Long after CN axed Tickle U, Harry was picked up by Qubo. Gerald, however, was reran on Boomerang to run that show into obscurity. It remains unknown whether or not Gerald will get picked up by Qubo.
* When CN had Small World, they *loved* running Pingu to obscurity (at least in America). This would later come back to haunt them later on, due to many memes made out of the original run.
* Peppa Pig's American dub, as Nick Jr. airs the British version.
* MetaJets in America. It doesn't help that CN only aired part of the first season.
* The CN run of the first three seasons of 6teen is this, partially because those three seasons are known in America for their initial Nickelodeon/The N run.
* Stoked never had its second season air in America, and thus, many Americans don't know that the series even *had* a second season.
* *Megas XLR*, *Sym-Bionic Titan*, and *Beware the Batman*. Doesn't help that CN wrote all three of them off. *Megas*, at the least, got picked up by CN parent company Warner Bros. in 2019, so there's a possibility that would get a physical release...
* Atomic Betty faded into obscurity (in America) when CN booted it off. The third and final season (Mission Earth) aired on The Hub.
* Robotomy and The Problem Solverz, especially the latter's second season. The most accepted reason for this was because of their short runs, and CN didn't bother airing them again after their first-run until Cartoon Planet was rebooted.
	+ The Problem Solverz is semi-obscure outside the US because because it never aired outside the US- basically the reverse of what happened concerning Jewelpet in a way.
* Speaking of Cartoon Planet, parts of the original show are on YouTube, and they're not being taken down (most of the time). Given how much less original segments are found in Cartoon Planet's reboot, though...
* Cartoon Network tried to make people forget about Teen Titans: The Original Series by over-hyping Teen Titans Go! *a lot*. Even Boomerang reruns have stopped. Then a crossover movie got released...
* Cartoon Network helped kill off Kids' WB! in the United States... and out of Kids' WB's grave, only Johnny Test and The Spectacular Spider-Man were dug up (the former by CN, the latter by Disney). Tom & Jerry Tales was later dug up... but only for the reruns.
* When Shirt Tales aired on CN, it was often unadvertised compared to its other H-B fare. It didn't take long to be removed from regular CN's lineup, and it hasn't been aired on TV since 2012.
* High Noon Toons (at least the sketches), but there's a reason for this: Adam Reed (who would go on to make Archer for FX) and Matt Thompson (who worked for Adult Swim afterwards) thought it was a good idea to drink on the job without knowing the consequences. Sometime after the two set a prop on fire, Cartoon Network gave the two the boot, and the block never aired outside the US.
* The Moxy Show, thanks in no small part to having all its promotion pulled once Dexter's Laboratory premiered on CN, not to mention that it was obscured by other Cartoon Cartoons as well. It got to the point that no other Cartoon Network show aside from *OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes* (and even then only because the OK K.O. crew made sure to mention *everything* related to CN (at the time) that they legally could in at least one episode of the show, including this series) even acknowledged it, let alone had Moxy make a cameo appearance.
* Transformers: Animated falls under this trope, and ironically anything related to *Transformers* is usually well-known. Not helping is the fact that it's one of only two series produced by Cartoon Network Studios that really isn't distributed by Warner Bros. (Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) is now distributed by Disney thanks to the Disney buyout of Lucasfilm).
* Name one episode of the original Samurai Jack that doesn't have a funny line from Aku. Chances are the Samurai Jack fandom hasn't seen it in years.
	+ Not just that, but almost nobody knows it used to air on Boomerang.
	+ When bearded Jack was revealed in a trailer for the revival, the fans were shocked, and thought the "new character" was this by believing that he looked nothing like Jack. But *then* they hear Phil LaMarr's voice...
		- As of episode 7, Jack got his kimono and sword back, making this trope obsolete for the show for the rest of its run. Ashi even commented on it.
	+ While not exactly falling under this trope (keep in mind that a typical Samurai Jack episode for season 5 pulls in *at least* a million viewers on each episode's premiere night), young Ashi (pictured above) is not as popular as adult Ashi (who was popular to the point where a good chunk of the fandom complained about Ashi disappearing completely), and for good reason too. Young Ashi only appeared in one episode.
	+ While Greg Baldwin managed to mimic Mako's voice quite well (Baldwin got the role in the first place due to the death of Mako in 2006), Baldwin's role as Aku is much less well-known than Mako's. Tartakovsky even stated that "nobody can replace Mako".
* Name one Williams Street series that had a short run. Now see if it's underrated. There are lots of them. Thankfully, you can catch some of these on Williams Stream.
* Speaking of Williams Street, Adult Swim's launch lineup (excluding any anime series) aired on Cartoon Network *before* the block launched, but almost nobody remembers the CN run of these.
* The Xtacles has a spinoff that caused 70/30 Productions to go out of business. It's no wonder said spinoff is obscure. It only lasted two episodes.
* Welcome to Eltingville, an obscure pilot for Adult Swim, is this, largely due to it never being picked up as a full series.
* The entirety of The Cartoonstitute is semi-obscure at best, save for the pilots to Regular Show and Uncle Grandpa (both of which, the former in its original form, haven't been seen since). Not helping is the fact that *Regular Show* and *Uncle Grandpa* were the only Cartoonstitute shorts to be greenlit as their own Cartoon Network series as of 2017 (an obscure prototype to Star vs. the Forces of Evil went unproduced, but Star was eventually picked up by Disney XD).
* Korgoth of Barbaria is rarely mentioned by Adult Swim anymore. Its last airing was part of the Toonami block.
* Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall subverts this in a way. After the original game was shut down, fans of the game were trying very hard to bring it back, and a few fans even decided to flat-out revive the game. Despite this, the game became semi-obscure at best and Cartoon Network gave the *Retro*/*Legacy* team a DMCA in 2020.
* The Cramp Twins is a relatively obscure show that aired on Cartoon Network (and in most markets, the Fox Box). All of the episodes are up on YouTube (and CN Europe, the channel that commissioned the show, doesn't seem like they're taking them down... yet).
* Some of the anime aired on Toonami (both the original and Adult Swim revival), such as *The Big O*, *FLCL*, and *Deadman Wonderland*, are this in their native Japan, but somewhat avert this in the US.
* *Regular Show* (which by itself averts this) appeals to fans of stuff that underwent this trope. If it's related to pop culture from the 70s or especially the 80s, chances are good they'll have covered it at one point. Heck, they even obtained the rights to use many songs from those two decades.
* Boomerang is meant to air these types of shows from Hanna-Barbera, but it eventually turned to Cartoon Cartoons and eventually *modern* obscure Cartoon Network shows. Not to mention Boomerang ran Gerald McBoing-Boing (2005), an obscure Teletoon program, for two years even after Tickle U ended. And considering that the network rebranded in 2015, dropping most Hanna-Barbera content save for the iconic content, it was becoming likely Warner Bros. is trying to make people forget Hanna-Barbera even existed... until Cartoon Network Studios Europe became Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe in 2021.
* Cartoonito *was* this for a very long time in the US, but then Cartoon Network announced they would launch a block *under that name* in 2021. And even then, most thought that it was a new thing, despite the brand existing since 2006 (UK) or 2011 (elsewhere). It especially didn't help that Cartoonito had a rebrand specifically for the US.