The Cyanide & Happiness Show

The Cyanide & Happiness Show is animated comedy web series based off Cyanide & Happiness which ran from 2014 to 2019 for 4 seasons. The show consists of 10-15 minute episodes consisting of different segments.

The first season was initially released on YouTube. The show was later acquired by Seeso, which produced second and third seasons before selling the show to VRV, wich renewed the show for a fourth season.

Production

When the Explosm team sat down to plan the first season, they realized 50% of the writing for it was already done, with some ideas being over 5 years old. Many of the stories used in The Cyanide and Happiness Show resulted from the team trying to make each other laugh while in a bar. Due to Kris Wilson living in Fort Collins, Colorado, numerous plane rides and Skype calls had taken place during this process. As the show began to take shape, the team drew out management positions for themselves.Dave McElfatrick was put in charge of art, Rob DenBleyker covered animation and Kris Wilson managed sound design and voice acting, but as the project went on, these roles loosened up. The team hired contributors from the United States, India and South Korea for various processes.

The Cyanide & Happiness Show was funded by the means of a Kickstarter campaign in early 2013, where it collected a total of $770,309. This was more than 3 times the initial goal and broke the record of most money ever funded for an animated series on Kickstarter. Among the "zany gift offerings" given to Kickstarter backers was an "all-expenses-paid trip to Dallas for a Banana Bar Crawl replete with a banana costume, scepter, and crown".

Release

"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 comics these past eight years. That's just the nature of television versus the Internet, I suppose."

―Explosm

The creators originally attempted to negotiate a TV series deal with cable networks, but due to "concerns about artistic compromise", their efforts were fruitless.

The first episode of The Cyanide and Happiness Show premiered in an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Richardson, Texas, on 12 November 2014. Episodes of the series are released on YouTube, but are also available for DRM-free, low-price download. These downloads were released shortly before the episodes are uploaded to YouTube. According to the creators, once bought, people are free to copy, edit and spread the material to their liking.

The second season of The Cyanide and Happiness Show, which started in December 2015, was made available through the Seeso streaming service instead of YouTube. NBCUniversal Cable senior vice president Parra Hadden noted that, shortly after the announcement that The Cyanide and Happiness Show would be hosted at Seeso, the site saw a huge increase in traffic. Seeso renewed the series for a third season in late 2016. Before Seeso closed in late 2017, The Cyanide & Happiness Show was also made available on the VRV streaming service, where it was renewed for a fourth season.

The series debuted on cable television in February 2020, on Syfy's dawn programming block, TZGZ.

In some countries outside the United States, similar to its format on Syfy, the series is broadcast as a 22-minute TV series, as a double episode.

Episodes

Season 1 (2014–15)

1. A Day At The Beach
   1. Ultrasoldier
   2. Weird
   3. Magician Liferaft
   4. Bugs
   5. Being Ugly
2. Why I Hate Summer Camp
   1. The Noise
   2. Buttshark
   3. Bathtub
   4. The Proposal
3. Grandpa's War Stories
   1. Baby Bowling Ball
   2. Clawford
   3. Teleporter
   4. The Quest For The Most Ancient Joke In The Book
4. The Meaning Of Love
   1. Not Doing That
   2. Star Spangled Bastard: Gun Control
5. Dirty Dealings
   1. Ketchup Cowboy
   2. I Love Nature
   3. Hot Dog Bed
   4. The Quest for the Most Ancient Joke in the Book: Part 2
6. San Diego Breakfast
   1. Astronauts
   2. El Reverso
   3. Firemen
   4. The Quest for the Most Ancient Joke in the Book: Part 3
7. The Elusive Mr Wimbley
   1. Captain Party
   2. God and Satan
8. The Depressing Episode
   1. Alone in the Universe
   2. The Bird
   3. No Legs
   4. Peas
   5. Suicide Note
   6. The Tree
   7. Tiny Face
9. Tub Boys
   1. Curse Victim
   2. Seatbelt
10. Episode Schmepisode
    1. Fetch
    2. Lunk
    3. Man Snail
    4. The Spider
11. The Christmas Episode
    1. Bat
    2. Airplanes
    3. Baby
    4. Let's Get Fucked Up Grandma
    5. The King
    6. They

Season Too (2) (2015–16)

1. Too Many Trains
   1. Math Problem
   2. The Ballad Of Railroad Man
   3. Chip Chapley's Late Breaking News
2. Episode Too
   1. HumperDink University
   2. It's All Just Horse Play
3. Too Tall a Tale
   1. Officer Pedals
   2. Hunk Fu
   3. Coach Murphy
4. Too Much Time
   1. Time Travel PSA
   2. Demonetized in 60 Seconds
   3. The Tolerator
5. World War Too
   1. The TRUTH About War
   2. WW2 - Secret Ending
6. Too Deep Too Furious
   1. Blind Date Gone WRONG
   2. Four Girls One Squid
7. Too Many Hats
   1. They Took Our Jobs!
8. Too Many Cops
   1. The BEST Detective
   2. 2 Cops 2 Furious
   3. Bob Ross's Dark Secret
9. Too Many Superheroes/Some More Superhero Bullsh*t
10. Too Much History/Cartoon History X

Season 3 (2017)

1. Now That's What I Call Pain/C&H SHOW SEASON 3 - EPISODE 1
2. Now That's What I Call a Good Space Time/C&H SHOW SEASON 3 - EPISODE 2
3. Now That's What I Call a Story/C&H SHOW SEASON 3 - EPISODE 4
4. Now That's What I Call Spooky/C&H SHOW SEASON 3 - EPISODE 3
5. Now That's When I Call These Guys/C&H SHOW SEASON 3 - EPISODE 5
6. Now That's What I Call The News/C&H SHOW SEASON 3 - EPISODE 6
7. Now That's What I Call A Musical/Cyanide & Happiness: The Musical
8. Now That's What I Call Depressing/Cyanide & Happiness: The Depressing Episode
9. Now That's When I Call Those Guys/THE ARSENIST RETURNS
10. Now That's That/C&H SEASON 3 FINALE: All Holes Filled!?

Season 4 (2019)

1. Yo-Ho-Ho and a Nautical Bum/Big Booty Fishes - Season 4 Episode 1
2. Strongbird/Strongbird - Season 4 Episode 2
3. Chip Chapley Unscripted/WHERE'S THE SCRIPT!? - C&H Season 4 Episode 3
4. The Man-Marryin' Candidate/The Man-Marryin' Candidate - C&H Season 4 Episode 4
5. The Animator's Curse
6. Lunk's Awakening
7. The Nine Ryans
8. The Good, the Butt and the Tumbling
9. Mega Prom
10. High, Robot/High, Robot - C&H Season 4 Episode 5

Promotional Comics

Carrot Man

Buttshark

Mega Mom

El Reverso

At home with God and Satan

Reception

Imad Kahn of The Daily Dot described Cyanide & Happiness videos 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 [sic] to animate whatever their twisted minds can think of."

Trivia

• According to the creators, the goal of each episode to be "to extract the human excretion known as laughter from your face hole via fast-paced weird comedy."
• Season One was, for a long time, the only one available on YouTube, with Too Many Trains also available as a teaser for the Season Too.
  • Subsequently, most of the episodes from Season Too would be released on YouTube as clips from shorts, with the last two episodes (Too Many Superheroes and Too Much History) and Seasons 3 & 4 being released in their entirety.
• The Cyanide & Happiness Show generally doesn't show plot links with the shorts. The only exception is the short The Homestead and the Season 4's episode The Good, the Butt and the Tumbling.