Awesome / Cartoon Network

• From 1998 to 2001, CN's promo department skewered modern sports telecasts- and especially the Super Bowl- by broadcasting The Big Game; each year featured a bunch of shorts with classic rivalries edited together to seem like a football game. And each year, it ramped up in absurdness and parodies. 1998, with Tom vs. Jerry, was fairly simple. But the 1999 matchup, Sylvester vs. Tweety, really took things to a new level- corporate cousin HBO loaned out the crew at the time from Inside the NFL to make a fake pregame show; also added to the mix were fake commercials and an Acme Corporation-sponsored halftime show. 2000 took it even further- in addition to fake commercials for the Robotic Way, Wayne Enterprises and Spinach, and a bungled Spacely Sprockets halftime show (we ended up seeing Fred and Moltar manning master control for 10 minutes, but the pregame show was now backed by the Slate Rock and Quarry Co., and John Madden and Pat Summerall were the main commentators, with Bubba Smith and Scott Hamilton as the sideline guys at Chuck Jones Stadium. Not only that, but the scripts were peppered with parental bonuses galore (ie. referencing how they had started telecasting "Desert Division" games back in October of 1999- when CN finally nabbed the rights to the Wile E/RR Toons from Nickelodeon). Not only that, but the late great Harry Kalas voiced a recap of the previous Big Game, and even a "Look Back" special on the other Big Games was produced. 2001 and Bugs vs. Daffy saw the return of the Inside the NFL crew, plus Harry Kalas; supplementing it was a tailgate party on Cartoon Cartoon Fridays. Unfortunately, it came to and end after that, but the CN promo dept. did their absolute best to parody everything people take for granted in sports coverage and the Super Bowl, and yet make it so serious.
• Managing to sneak in Screwy Squirrel on April Fools Day 2012, marking the return of Tex Avery cartoons since April 11, 2004.
• What the network did on its 20th birthday, October 1, 2012. It ran birthday-themed episodes of their favorites past and present, an original music video featuring over 100 characters, the 100th episode of Adventure Time and a special half-hour Regular Show.
  • Their music video and their poster◊ for the occasion.
• Big Bag, a show produced by the Childrens Television Workshop produced episodes for Cartoon Network from June 1996 to June 1998. One of the episodes featured Elmo from Sesame Street as a pen pal of the main character as seen here. Now that's just awesome!
• On October 13, 2017, Cartoon Network had a little ghost possessing your TV that changes New New New New promos into channel changes, creating spooky puns like changing Teen Titans Go! to Teen Titans Ghost!, Changing dance sequences to x-ray skeletons, and of course, switching voices.
• Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade 2008. It seemed normal at first–their float for the year was one based off of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, with the characters singing. As it turns out, they had a special guest onboard to perform one of his hit songs. This special guest? None other than Rick Astley. Yes, Cartoon Network managed to Rickroll the nation.

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