WMG / Pibby

The Darkness

Someone is The Man Behind the Man for the darkness.

And given the show's nature as a crossover, it could be anyone.

• Moxy: He's tired of being completely forgotten despite being the first-ever original show for Cartoon Network, and now he's out for blood.
• Bosko. Much like Moxy mentioned above, he's tired of being abandoned by the humans despite preceding all the other Looney Tunes, and he's now going after his successors.
• The Go versions of the Teen Titans. They let the power of being Adored by the Network get to their heads and are now on a rampage to consume every cartoon in existence until they're the only ones left.
  • Here's an alternative to that: They're sick of the negative feedback they've been getting from fans for years and went insane. This makes them dark Deconstructions of The Scrappy.
  • Alternative extension, they were threatened with the possibility of being canceled, so they fought back with the Static to take all other cartoons down with them.
• Similarly, it could be the toons that live in Jimmy's brain, angsty that Appleday's cartoons aren't as popular nowadays as they used to be or to take it to a more meta level, that they were treated as a joke and among the worst of the CN Real era.
• Or, it could be Reboot Thomas (or an Expy of him) getting revenge due to how hated he is, since the show he originated in did air on Cartoon Network's preschool block and had an overwhelmingly negative reception.
• Black Hat: This is Black Hat's true form.
  • Alternatively, he had the original idea for the Static, but he just thought unleashing it himself would go too far even for a villain like him and that it could possibly even backfire on him. So he pawns the job of unleashing it off to Strike.
    • Another Alternative, since as far as this troper (who has not watched Villainous) knows, Black Hat only wants to take over the world (as opposed to destroying it) and helps the gang stop the static from destroying everything.
• Rick, who accidentally created the corruption while completely wasted.
  • The April Fools 2022 broadcast shows the Darkness invading the Rick and Morty universe, with all the characters, even Rick, being unable to perceive the Darkness while it creates glitches, putting a wrench into this theory.
• Aku, making one last-ditch effort to defeat the Samurai and consume all existence from beyond the grave.
  • Adding onto it with a backstory; after Jack destroyed Aku's form in his present time, the time bubble that was the entirety of Samurai Jack destabilized. The destabilization was so powerful, that not even Aku can handle it and reverted back to his Black Mass form. Once the bubble "popped", it granted the Black Mass the power to infect absolutely everything and to expand forever outwards, at the price of glitching it. It now is doing what it did since the beginning of the Samurai Jack Universe, but now taking over the Cartoon Verse.
• A reincarnation of The Evil Entity of Crystal Cove out to take over the cartoon verse.
• It could be a digital reincarnation of the Intruder. And if the show airs on Toonami, TOM will probably take notice of the similarities between the glitchy blob and the Intruder, and he and SARA will start to do some digging on what even is going on, and try to assist Pibby if he can, mainly in the form of well-needed emotional support out of shock that a girl as young as her has to go through all of this.
• Al-G Rhythm, out for the heads of the Looney Tunes and LeBron James for toppling his empire. He's now taking out this anger against the entirety of Warner Bros.' intellectual property.
  • Or maybe the cyber verse got corrupted by a computer virus or a hacker.
• Maybe it could be a revitalized, reprogrammed version of XANA out to rebuild its empire and finally defeat the Lyoko Warriors.
• Perhaps the darkness is HIM's true form.
  • Or perhaps an evolved, sentient variant of Chemical X that consumed Townsville, and somehow found its way into other worlds.
• It might have come from the same place as The Lich and represents his raw essence before he was mutated into a humanoid form.
• A parody of a Creepypasta monster, specifically Zalgo.
• Vilgax, having unleashed some cosmic horror he found himself unable to control.
• Strike: He's been interpreted as an Allegorical Character for cancellation and sabotaging shows, so guess how he might take revenge on the CN heroes?
• Darkseid: He has become aware of his being fictional and strives to become real. The Corruption is Darkseid's signature Anti-Life Equation made manifest and he'll assimilate all to will himself into reality.
• Pinky and the Brain: Yet another attempt to Take Over the World gone wrong... but this time with omnicidal consequences.
• Kronika, because why not? One of the Elder Gods (probably Fujin) might even offer Pibby emotional support and act as a mentor figure for her in her need for it during that time.
  • Alternatively, it could be a side-effect of Kronika's Hourglass and/or whatever teleportation methods are used to help organize the Mortal Kombat tournaments.
• Pokémon: Missingno, the infamous glitch Pokémon finally makes its grand appearance in animation, and just like in the games, its very presence causes corruption.
  • More specifically, it could be The Entity back for round three.
• The Void; it could see all cartoons as a mistake and is trying to erase them.
• Possibly one of the Great Old Ones from Lovecraftian mythology. It would certainly fit with the eldritch nature of the Glitch/Static. Or would that be too obvious?
• An Expy of Yuni putting what seems to be a Black Abyss on some glitchy data, causing the Static to form.
  • Although given my other guess, it's possible Strike would take over from the Yuni Expy not long after.
• The Omnikron, extending its destructive power from the Hanna-Barbera universe to all of animation.
• It could be an entirely new entity altogether. An entity from an empty world who grew bitter of the other vibrant worlds and decided it would take everything into the nothingness.
  • Following up on that, maybe it's an amalgamation of characters from shows that have been Screwed by the Network that spawned from their saltiness over being simply cast aside despite having good viewership, just because the executives either didn't like them, or some other dumb reason, and decided to take it out on the more well-known characters that the people like so they'll know the pain that had been festering in their hearts for a long time or the combined anger that resounded from fans of those shows because of the executives. Either way, this could lead to the story becoming a cautionary tale for executives not to mistreat shows that they're trusted to air by the creators, and to listen to their fans now and then. Otherwise, history could very much repeat itself.
• Perhaps it simply started with some suit just making terrible decisions and who doesn't realize the ramifications of their actions...that is, until it all starts spilling out into the real world...
• Perhaps a Take That! to massive corporations owning all of these franchises and either casting them aside after being done with them or not knowing what to do with them anymore, but refusing to give them up.
• A representation of the COVID-19 Pandemic and how it has damaged the entertainment industry, metaphorically, literally, physically and mentally.
• ...Nothing. Absolutely nothing. We get no answer of its origins or even if something else was responsible for its creation.
• SCP-2747
  • From what I've read, that particular SCP can generate media. There's no proof in the article that it makes media nonexistent.
    • You misunderstand. Those manifestations aren't media that SCP-2747 has created, they're references to nonexistent media, which the Foundation hypothesizes SCP-2747 has Ret-Goned.
• Makuta Teridax, because he's heavily associated with darkness/shadow, can absorb entities into himself, desperately wants to be an Anthropomorphic Personification of destruction and nothingness, and successfully took over a universe once before. He's back, and he wants his home universe, plus interest.
• The Anti-Monitor or a reborn Batman Who Laughs. Because it just totally sounds like something they could do. And post-Death Metal Superboy-Prime fights alongside the heroes as a result (or goes to the Warner Bros or the Williams Street headquarters to convince them to stop, ala Blackest Night).
• Assuming neither Strike nor an Expy of Yuni is responsible (as my other guesses might suggest they may be), then perhaps the Glitch Gremlin would be (although he wouldn't appear on-screen): he eventually got tired of glitching up just videogames and turned towards glitching up animation instead.
• Or it could be Johnny who, after years of getting milked by CN only to be tossed aside due to a lawsuit, is out for revenge against the other CN universes. Johnny might even lend some of his sisters' inventions to Strike.
  • Alternatively, it's another one of his sisters' experiments Gone Horribly Wrong.
• It'll turn out, in a heartbreaking twist, Doctor Who Flux would end with the Thirteenth Doctor regenerating... But with her Timeless Child powers unlocked with no means of controlling it, the resulting Mind Hive she's become ends up corrupting her reality to the point where it ends up consuming the very show itself and bleeds into all forms of media and even our world where Pibby opens up to the Doctor inside who then carries the burden by becoming the new Doctor whilst the Doctor we followed for sixty years resets the continuity and removes this thirteenth incarnation from canon. Pibby even shares a moment with her newly reset self and introduces herself with: 'I'm the Doctor.'
• It could be Light Yagami too: He let a friend borrow his Note and said friend specifically targeted the cartoon characters that were assimilated for obvious reasons, writing down "death by excess corruption" as the cause of death. ^note In Death Note, if a Noteholder does not write down the cause of death, the victim would die of a heart attack. Neither Light nor whoever borrowed his Note realized that the Static zombifies the toons as well. (Of course, Light wouldn't appear in person for obvious reasons.)
• X. He's tired of being seen as a joke by the fans, and now he's out to prove who's the more powerful being in the omniverse.
• The Evil Remote Control from Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion. Much like the Darkness, it consumed other worlds across the Cartoon Network library through a static-y void. Considering the given parallels between the game & what we know of the show so far, it's not a stretch to think that a Crossover-Exclusive Villain will have a chance to become a full-on Canon Immigrant. Plus, would make a great twist to boot.
• The Diamonds were never trustworthy and had been plotting to return to power from the beginning the entire time. The Static is the result of them trying to restore “Pink” with a new corruption song that mutates on contact with Steven’s hybrid physiology, jumping every possible species barrier as a result and becoming an uncontrollable viral entity.
  • Or it's the Gems' Abusive Precursors who created them to conquer the multiverse and want revenge on Steven for ruining their eons' worth of hard work.
• The "multiverse" in the show is an advanced M.U.G.E.N-Esque game setting (the "worlds" of the shows themselves are perfectly fine) and a bored coder, who downloaded characters from plenty of cartoons, made a horror-themed Cheapie for craps and giggles. Finn has his arm and the first sword because the player got a version of him based on the early episodes, etc. The Static and the overall setting are what this all looks like from the perspective of the game characters. This one's a huge stretch and it doesn't explain Pibby ending up in her credits or the live-action commercial (unless the Static has that sort of thing as part of a meme), but the concept of the Static doesn't sound that far off from something in a game mod. Pibby herself might have been downloaded to be a "punching bag" character (pre-school show characters are the Butt Monkeys of "edgy" fanworks), which backfired horribly. Very horribly if this turns into a Rage Against the Author situation.
• They wouldn't appear for legal reasons, but assuming none of my other guesses go anywhere, the ones responsible for the Static could be... the League of Super Evil: Voltar got tired of his schemes (which were often pretty petty) failing (or succeeding with a cost), and with Black Hat becoming a villain feared throughout the land, Voltar goes through his Moral Event Horizon and convinces Doktor Frogg to make a glitch blob. Voltar then unleashes it... and watches, in shock and horror, as what he intended as another one of his usual schemes instead turns out to be apocalyptic. ^note Voltar likely wanted to be capable of doing something eviler than Poke the Poodle deeds, but it's likely he didn't want to have to destroy the multiverse to do so, even by accident.
• The Batman Who Laughs, wanting to spread suffering to every Multiverse, he created The Static to cause as much suffering as possible, all while getting sick joy out of it.
• Superman, specifically Injustice Superman; in his ending of Injustice 2, he uses Brianiac's Neural Networks to create an entity to control every being in the multiverse, and it worked too perfectly.
• Bendy from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. He would likely want revenge over all the cartoons after he was left out since his debut episode and received mass hatred from fans and Lauren Faust during all the years that followed (as well as being compared to a certain demon of the same name). Like one of the Teen Titans Go! entries above, it would make him a deconstruction of The Scrappy.
• Speaking of that game, The Ink Demon got out of Joey Drew Studios, and this is him evolving into something even worse.
• We, as the fans could be the reason for all of this to happen. Aside from Dark Fics theory, it could be just some haters for specific fandoms or the whole Cartoon Network. That's why that glitch could be the embodiment of hatred from the real world, whether it was released willingly or not.
  • Seemingly confirmed in a way: a leaked pitch document described The Darkness as being a manifestation of internet meme culture.
• Scrappy-Doo himself, as a scheme to get back at the haters and WB for being neglected and made the butt of jokes at his expense for years. His uncle and friends were just the first victims to go as seen in the trailer.
  • He already did something evil and he got sacked. Perhaps this is his revenge.
• Robot, considering how he was thrown into the dumpster by Cartoon Network almost immediately after his show was canceled, though he is mentioned a few times recently.
• Judge Doom. He could've somehow come Back from the Dead and found a way to make his dip even deadlier.
• Fifi Cherish. If this is the case, the Motherbomb was far, far more powerful than she initially thought.
• Considering Father was a massive threat, even to the Galactic Kids Next Door, and Grandfather easily one-upped him and stopped pretty much every other villain in the show in a day, this glitch could be an even older and more deranged ancestor of the Unos brought back to life. Even worse, he isn't decommissionable like the other two villains, so the remaining KND operatives will have to figure out another way to stop him.
  • This could lead to some Fridge Horror, as it means the Uno family could be the only survivors of their world, Forced to Watch as everyone they ever knew was assimilated.
  • The Galactic Kids Next Door: If that teaser we saw years ago is anything to go by, they might've taken their crusade to wipe out adulthood way too far.
  • Alternatively, on a more meta level, they (at least whatever protagonist operatives they have) are steamed that their spinoff was rejected by Cartoon Network and decide that if they can't have screentime, no one can.
  • Or it could be the main Kids Next Door realizing there are Adult Tyrants in the animation industry and taking it upon themselves to take them down... only to realize doing so will destroy the Serververse as well, since the studios are the lifestream fueling it.
  • Perhaps it seems that the Toiletnator did something evil for once... well, too evil for that matter.
• Mr. Swackhammer because he went crazy after he was defeated by the Looney Tunes, and maybe his theme park got shut down or something.
• Caillou: He was so mad about being hated, having grounded videos, and being removed from PBS Kids that he came out for revenge.
• Tez was planning to plunge Monte Macabre into Eternal Darkness according to Don Jalapeno. Maybe this is it and he's now spreading it to other worlds.
• The Manipulators, angry with the Nothing's failure to erase Fantasia, decide to replace it with a far more unstoppable force. Unlike the Nothing, this force consumes whoever it comes into contact with and turns them into zombified Empty Shells.
  • See also MultiVersus, another Warner Bros. Mega Crossover where many worlds are under threat from The Nothing itself… maybe The Nothing and The Darkness are basically one and the same?
• David Zaslav, the current CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, who keeps canceling projects and removing shows and movies from HBO Max, and once said projects/shows/movies are canceled/removed, the characters from them are corrupted.
  • Alternatively, he could also be a Manipulator, fulfilling the destruction of imagination in a way the Nothing could never have done.
• Maybe it could be a fictional creator of the shows, trying to make them edgier so kids never outgrow them and they stay popular forever?
• Some edge lord kid's attempt at creating the "most powerful" imaginary friend Gone Horribly Right.
• An Expy of the Nowhere King: A character that got corrupted and imprisoned in the Void Between the Worlds, who eventually managed to escape and start corrupting everyone else.
• An Expy of Nick Jr. mascot Face, specifically his original 1994 incarnation. Similar to Moxy listed above, he's tired of being pushed to the wayside for so long, that he created the corruption to put the competition "out of commission", so to speak.
  • Alternatively, he may be the catalyst to spread the corruption into the Viacom/Paramount-owned IPs, either as a glitched entity or willingly while completely immune.
• A content creator for a Bland-Name Product version of GoAnimate, who got tired of making "grounded videos" and decided to take the punishments towards "baby show" characters up another level, only to unknowingly create a mysterious corruption. This may be the catalyst for a Save Both Worlds plot.
• Tommy Westphall's nephew. The events of Pibby took place in a series of drawings he made, thus giving an extension to the Tommy Westphall Hypothesis. After his dad finds the art, he gives his son a lecture on the power of imagination and how childhood characters can remain a mainstay of one's life forever, and tells him about how his brother "had a great sense of imagination" and enjoyed telling stories. They agree to get ice cream, and as they leave, the camera pans over to the iconic snowglobe sitting over their fireplace, then it cuts to a In Memoriam card dedicating the whole thing to Dwayne McDuffie.
• Gabriel. He's escaped his prime universe, and the Darkness is just him or one of his Alternates attempting to replicate The Great Flood.
• The Hacker. He actually managed to take Motherboard down... with a few side effects, of course.
• Danhausen. The Darkness is a result of him cursing some Cartoon Network executives for refusing to greenlight his bizarre idea for a cartoon show based on him. In other words, it's a typical bout of Danhausen hijinks Gone Horribly Wrong.
• Plankton. Yet another failed attempt to take over Bikini Bottom and get the Krabby Patty Secret Formula... only for him to release something well out of his control.
• Haruhi Suzumiya. The Darkness is possibly the result of Haruhi using her Reality Warper powers, and she might have the power to stop it as well.
• Icy, Darcy and Stormy. Another attempt to take down the Winx, but with far-reaching results.
• The Loonatics. Having grown resentful over Warner Bros.' refusal to acknowledge them (or in the rare instance they do reference them, in the form of an unflattering Take That!), their resentment manifested into the form of the Darkness.
• Pepé Le Pew, in a similar vein to the Loonatics above, though more because he was Mistaken for Pedophile via Values Dissonance rather than a drastic deviation of form like the Loonatics.
• The manifestation of Greed itself, fufilling the wishes of certain people to destroy the entertainment industry and, subsequentially, the media omniverse created and fueled by that industry, because toons are seen by those people as a roadblock to endless profit.
• A disgruntled former creator, having been working his ass off and receiving critical acclaim for his work just to get Screwed by the Network, creates the Darkness and sneaks it into one of the shows as a last middle finger to the industry.
  • He must be really mentally unstable to blow up the entire entertainment industry just because they cancelled one of his projects or fired him, especially when he has other projects released beforehand. Even if all of them were Overshadowed by a crime he committed, or the studio in question just didn't give a rat's ass about him anymore, the mass genocide of all toons is still unwarranted because they had nothing to do with his misery.
• A variant of Ultron, or at least a reincarnation of one, taking on the form of a self-sustaining virus without the need for a body. Now he's continuing his omnicide from where he left off.
• The Blot, or a reincarnation of him. Perhaps this is an alternate Multiverse where the Blot escapes Wasteland and the Darkness is him taking on a deadlier form.
• An evil Digimon, having Digivolved to the point where it can traverse across dimensions. It could also be the D-Reaper or a reincarnation or Digivolution of it.
• The spirits that made up The Core, who make themselves a new body and decide to conquer the Serververse themvelves without Andrias.
• An expy of Nyx, coming out of her can to wreak havoc on the Serververse.
• 2003 Shredder, once again attempting to destroy the Turtles in every universe no matter the cost.
• An Incursion happened in a universe or two, and the Darkness is a representation of the Serververse is collapsing in on itself.
• Dimentio, having been reincarnated and found a way to remake all worlds in his image without the need for a Dark Prognisticus.
• The meteor dropped on the Warners is actually an egg containing an interdimensional Eldritch Abomination. And now it's looking for food.
• Shin Godzilla: This could be one of his final forms, particularly from a universe where he wasn't coagulated.
• SEELE started Fifth Impact and now it's Instrumentalizing everybody in all of existence.
• The Space Ninjas finally obtained some Ninja gum and mutated into a more deadly form.
• William Afton came back, albeit as a glitchy mass in a different universe. To a serial killer like him, it's just a whole new playground.
• Jimmy, with yet another one of his inventions gone bad... Except now it's even worse than his other ones.
  • Could also be King Goobot attempting to get his ultimate revenge on Jimmy.
• Timmy screwing up yet another one of his wishes, and unfortunately, this wish isn't reversible.
  • Could also be Mr. Crocker finally obtaining proof that fairies exist... at an extreme cost.
• Lila, obtaining both the Ladybug and Cat Miraculouses and making her wish. If you can make three guesses as to what that wish was, the fact that this would be the consequences of that wish gives you a hint.
• The Phantom. He can obviously make anything with that supercomputer, even giant glitchy abominations.
• The destruction of the Realm of Magic was so straining on the Serververse it wound up collapsing in on itself.
  • Or it could be a Fusion Dance of the ghosts of the individuals affected by the Realm's destruction, seeking out the one who blipped them from existence.
  • Perhaps Mina found another source of magic and got supercharged from it, deciding to take out all who she deems to be monsters.
• The Tallest, having escaped the Florpus, but the physical strain it put on them mutated them into a massive Fusion Dance abomination, though they retained the tendency to blow everything up.
• Galeem and Dharkon, having been reincarnated as a corrupted Fusion Dance, decide to put their differences aside and conquer the omniverse together.
• Mandy finally unleashing her true form after years of being human.
  • She and Billy could also cause Grim to get replaced again, except this new Reaper does not understand that all living creatures need to die "naturally" (unless you get confused, then you reap people early), and decides to reap everything in sight.
• Belos, or at least what's left of him, who now sees all living beings to be as horrendous and corrupt as witches.
  • Expanding on this, maybe after being defeated by Luz, he decided that most if not all life is too "corrupted" to survive, and true to his implied status as The Fundamentalist, decided that a new Great Flood was needed to cleanse every world of beings he sees as unfit to live (which extends to pretty much everyone).
• Ren Amamiya, finally cracking and deciding to give the Serververse what it fucking deserves.
• A new sentient AI, having been introduced to WB and concluding that toons are a liability for profit.
• It was AGATHA ALL ALONG! Turns out the Darkness was just part of another one of her evil plans to conquer the Multiverse.
• The End. He did have many forms depending on how his victims perceive him to be. Perhaps this is the form the toons see him as.
• Ghidorah, or at least a variant of him that's way more powerful than others.
• Hexxus. If he can't rule over the polluted environment, he might as well destroy everything anyway for fun.
• The Heartless, or an Expy of the Kingdom Hearts ones. They're just as shadowy and omnicidal as their prime variants.
• The Paraphernalia Wagon, now sentient, has been opened, and the toons becoming monsters is what happens when they succumb to the nightmares in it - they become nightmares themselves.
• The spell that made the world forget Peter Parker didn't just bring people from random universes into the MCU, it corrupted them in some form of Spaghettification until the rift was sealed.
  • Or it could be MCU!Peter himself, in a variation of Spider-Carnage, having Gone Mad from the Isolation imposed on himself at the end of that movie, finally deciding the multiverse isn't worth saving if all he receives for doing so is endless, unwarranted suffering.
• One of the Glitchy Gang members, particularly Meggy or Tari, snapped after years of mental and physical suffering. They wound up becoming an Eldritch Abomination and seeking to kill everyone else out of grief.
• Freddy Krueger. After so many attempts to kill all the youth of Springwood went south, he decided to take a new approach - killing their favorite cartoon characters. The Darkness is actually a form of Freddy invading the toons' dreams, and when the toons get turned into glitch monsters in their dreams, they die in reality. Pibby ends up getting the Dream Warriors to reform so she can have reinforcements.
• Hornswoggle, in a manner similar to how he was revealed to be the Anonymous Raw General Manager. Tired of how the wrestling fandom treated him, he decided to take every fandom to task by corrupting their idols. Since he had no experience creating inter-dimensional horrors, he outsourced the actual creation of The Darkness out to Papa Shango.
• Ganon, in the most literal use of Hijacked by Ganon yet.
• Professor Morbid Grimsby. After he attempted to make all the Sunday funnies' stars disappear failed, he decided to eliminate another nuisance of his — cartoon characters.
• Dr. Claw. Yet another MAD plot, but this time with omnicidal results.
• Smoke, out for his revenge after a group of cartoon characters stopped his plans to destroy Corey's life.
• Some edgy kid's attempt to create "the ultimate Pooh's Adventures video" Gone Horribly Right.
• Giovanni. He ordered for the creation of the blob in as a final attempt to get Ash's Pikachu after finally realizing that Jesse and James were too incompetent to do so. He ends up watching in horror as it starts capturing other Pokemon... and everything else.
• The Brers from Song of the South, or some expies thereof, enraged from being slowly erased from history, with being excluded from their company's 100th anniversary being the final straw.
• Vlad Plasmius, out for his revenge after being banished to solitude in outer space.
• And the final elephant in the room - Pibby herself. Being sidelined in favor of other toons can really put a strain on your mental health. The Pibby we see here is a part of the real Pibby that separated from her, who has no memory of what she has become.

The glitch blob is a minion of Black Hat.

• Maybe Black Hat got sick of watching the other villains of Cartoon Network fail and came out of retirement to create this abomination. Alternatively, the blob is his true/ultimate form because he decided if your employees can't get the job done, do it yourself. Either way, it would explain why it's powerful enough to threaten an entire multiverse.
  • Adding a possible variation to this...

Black Hat will end up getting consumed by the glitch blob.

• More specifically, there will be a scene where the main characters are talking and discussing ideas about why the glitch is happening, perhaps observing it from a distance, only for one of them to suggest Black Hat doing it. Cue the glitch showing off Black Hat's glitched form to attack Dementia and Flug. Cue Mass "Oh, Crap!" from the main characters.

The Darkness is just an ACME-esque DIY Eldritch Abomination Kit created by Black Hat.

It just needed water. Unfortunately, some water got spilled in the box containing all the abomination seeds, creating what we know now as the Darkness.

• So this is why Wile E. Coyote is suing ACME, besides all his Butt-Monkeying.

The victims of the glitch blob are aware of what their bodies are doing under the blob's control.

Cause it's scarier that way.

The glitch blob is related to Planet Fusion

Perhaps the glitch is an evolution of Planet Fusion. Think about it: Both have blob-like properties and come from huge crossovers encompassing most of the Cartoon Network shows of their times.

Broadcasting errors are an independent phenomenon from the black blob.

The darkness itself may be heavily affected by one of these glitches and is assimilating everything else in pursuit of someone or something that can fix it.

The static has a limited ability to affect non-characters and background objects.

An attempt to capture Pibby is foiled by a shot change, and it doesn't possess background trees despite flowing around them. Character-headed static spiders also don't assimilate a bush they're hiding in. The most visually obvious cases of background objects being affected by raw static are in Funland (close to multiple consumed characters already). Non-character objects like mallets and beam weaponry seem to have much better odds of pushing back chunks of static. Background damage like felling trees and cracking mountains usually only happens in battle scenes with other characters likely to act.

Glitch-affected characters with limited reserves are far more attackable than the blob itself.

Along with this, there's only so much blob to go around. It doesn't seem to fill some scenes and hesitates to expand into the background in others, forming mobile entities rather than its initial total flow once hosting a character. Melira can directly scratch a glitch-affected Jake during the battle scene, as opposed to the distinct-from-character melee weapons used beforehand and a superhero punch resulting in a rapid grab attempt.

If corrupt characters going down takes a significant amount of blob with it, it might be why Pibby opts for a mass charge attack against the darkness. Most shown previous instances of contact were heavily centered on avoiding the blob itself and strong corrupt characters with it or losing characters in the process: maybe the mid-season turnaround is discovering effective weapons?

Only 2D characters can be corrupted by the glitch blob. 3D, stop-motion, and live-action characters are immune.

We have only seen 2D characters consumed by the blob so far.

• This troper believes that it's unlikely and that if Pibby became a full series, not even 3D cartoon characters would be safe from the glitch blob either.
• I agree with the above troper, except for one singular exception: Xavier, the Renegade Angel. It isn't his first time dealing with glitches and corruption, plus it'd be funny to watch the Static attempt to consume him, only to escape and encounter Pibby multiple times. Even then, maybe near the end of the season does the Static finally, and successfully, assimilate him and throws him out. Or he'll just be full-out immune to the effects, considering how bizarre his being is.
• Jossed as of Adult Swim's April Fools 2022 special, Eric Andre is seen glitching out.

The "Darkness" is Invictus

Since Final Space ends with Invictus being freed from his prison and preparing to end all of existence, along with the prior statement that he exists in all dimensions at once, the glitching mass could simply be Invictus evolving into a deadlier form to speed up his omnicide now that he's out of his cage.

• With the announcement of a graphic novel continuing from that point, there's a slight chance Invictus may wind up being defeated by the Crew. If that happens, the Darkness may be just an attempted reincarnation of Invictus, or at least what remains of him, trying to continue where he left off.

If the glitch blob is a metaphor, then the reason behind its indiscriminate takeover of every cartoon is just as amalgamate as its contents.

Rather than one overarching reason for correcting "mistakes", the blob instead is guided by all of them: older cartoons because of fears of becoming Franchise Zombies and distaste for nostalgia, newer cartoons because of The Firefly Effect and dissonance between themes, dramedies for being too serious and edgy, screwball comedies for not taking themselves seriously enough, and younger-skewing worlds like Pibby's for being on the channel at all. If the executives and writers are involved as well, then profitability, thoughts on tropes, and the execution of ideas are all factored in as well to what is and isn't a "mistake".

• Adding to this, when Pibby and her friends learn of this as the reason behind its attacks, they'll point out the blob is only taking in all the negative parts of cartoons as an excuse to harm them, while ignoring all the great things about them (great animation, storytelling, engaging characters, etc) that makes them worth watching and leaving alone.

If the blob is a metaphor for cancellation, then fanworks can be a weapon against it.

So far, the characters from real IPs that have been corrupted by the blob are from cartoons that have been canceled for more or less a long time (not every one of them, but the majority) and, in addition, the representations of the blob made by people were those of network executives, big corporations... but on the other hand, you still see people making fanart or fanfics of said cartoons or even talking about that on any kind of website, which prevents them to falling into obscurity and, as such, dying (metaphorically). Things that said big corporations can't control (especially the fanworks). Then, the conclusion is pretty simple: we, the fans, could be a weapon against the blob. Our creations, our drawings, and our stories could have a really damaging effect on this monstrosity. That would be interesting, right?

• There's always the fact fanworks may be assimilated too.
  • Which would be another good dose of Fridge Horror. And a warning that we're all screwed. (Funnily enough, I check the page, and even if Warner Bros is noted on the page, CN and Adult Swim are not here in any capacity. Not to make a point or something, I just think it's a fun little fact.)
  • A corporation actively banning fanworks would just likely spurn people enough that they make more fanworks, even those that weren't originally fans of the medium, out of principle or spite.

Black Hat is responsible for the blob

• It is the latest product of the Black Hat Organization, and he unleashed it on the multiverse to film the commercial for it.
  • Well it's just that Pibby is gonna be a crossover series, like how Villainous is a crossover series, considering the orientation videos. And this is something Black Hat would do: destroy an entire Multiverse in the name of filming a goddamn commercial.
    • Hell, knowing Black hat, he may even use hundreds of multiverses to EDIT the thing!
• The way we'll learn this is either A: Black Hat appears as the Final Boss of the show, or B: He'll send Pibby a letter after she saved the multiverse. In it, he'll either swear revenge on her for jeopardizing his latest product or thank her for her participation in the commercial, knowing it would make Pibby very sad.

"Wholesome" characters can't be corrupted by the glitch

The glitch will try to attack characters like Pops, Dendy, and similar "pure" characters but due to their childlike nature and/or wholesomeness, they can't be warped. This gives Pibby and her friends ideas on how to defeat the glitch.

• Considering Bun-Bun got assimilated at the beginning of the trailer (and he was originally a Cheerful Child before that), it's unlikely.

One way to defend yourself against the glitch blob is by somehow transforming into a real human

As some WMGs above already said, the glitch might originate from the void, and it sucks up canceled shows. The way Rob wanted to save everyone in his show is to turn them into live-action versions of themselves and travel to our reality.

And here is the kicker: Flapjack and Captain Knuckles turn into real humans in the finale of their series. Everyone else in their town cast them out and called them freaks, so they leave everything behind to find a new home. That "new home" might be just our reality, where Rob wanted to send everyone to save them. The glitch blob could have consumed everything in Flapjack's world, but the protagonists were the only survivors.

If the glitch represents corporate soullessness, unmarketability makes you immune

• See Xavier above. And then there's a special way a character can become unmarketable...
  • Although it can backfire on them as well: if they become too unmarketable, they might end up assimilated too.

The static can manipulate time and space to a certain extent.

The static can rewind and fast-forward the shows it invades and even takes characters along with it. After Pibby and Bun-Bun escaped, the glitch rewound the show so that they were back in the intro, leading to Bun-Bun getting swallowed up. But the static either lacks control over this ability or is unaware of it, hence why Pibby was able to escape just as the static attacked her: it unexpectedly fast-forwarded to the end credits and sent Pibby there.

The glitch represents fanfiction.

Specifically, the Dark Fics that light-hearted works like the ones featured tend to inspire, especially children's Edutainment Shows like the in-universe Pibby. (Think about it, when was the last time you read a Teletubbies fanfic that didn't involve them either dying horribly, being evil, or being evil and then dying horribly as a result?)

• This may even extend to the actual show; As it starts to develop a sizeable body of real-life fanfiction, the general nature of it may start to have an in-universe effect on the glitch.

The static is a collector entity to prepare for crossover settings.

It shows up to capture characters and then maintains a hollowed-out version of them afterward. It needs to modify the bulk of its memories (e.g. to justify knowing or not knowing certain people in a neighborhood or that locations are/aren't connected) and powers (displayed in gameplay) for use elsewhere, but then retains all leftover data for its uses. This is why certain characters appear 'off model' and don't use things available to them, instead of having substantial parts of their body patched up by the glitch and behaving all about the same way. Some characters only have mild face editing, leaving only the off-model parts for the glitch to make use of because the bulk of them is elsewhere. Others were almost entirely remodeled, leaving a nearly intact hull for the glitch to control.

• It could also be an overpowered villainous character based on crossover choose-your-own-adventure writing games, who has a similar ability to take things out of context and make use of them. They're just 'playing with their food' and being unnecessarily creepy in the acquisition process.

The static is a character from Pibby's show that normally 'corrects' things offscreen, but has gone against its purpose.

The in-universe shows Pibby may be actively trying to hold off factors that lead to corrupting and growing up even during crossover events. If some violent third party tries to go Happy Tree Friends on everyone, things go full Zalgo and are 'reset'. Whatever the subject of in-universe episode 201 was going to be, something appeared in the background that set it off and made it come out of hiding to grab everyone. Its attempts to capture characters and use Bun Bun as a confused mouthpiece are because it needs the whole cast regathered for a show or it won't be able to return everything to a template (and lots of characters more prepared than early childhood edutainment got lucky on dodging). This demand for excessive control and experience with much greater nastiness than everyone else establishes it as an evil trying to keep everyone in their roles, especially if it views actions it takes along the way as irrelevant because they'll be seemingly undone come reset time.

The static is the subject of Pibby's latest episode and learning about it will be the goal of the series.

It is repeatedly described as 'unknowable', so this may have a strong forbidden knowledge component or rely on breaking several assumptions about what the cartoon character experience is like (e.g. they may be whole universes instead of just shows, or just shows instead of whole universes and escaping the bounding box of a playable area or shot can access elsewhere).

• Nothing Is Scarier and fear of the unknown rely upon minimal appearances and great ambiguity. A persistent active onscreen threat that gets dodged long enough to have a multi-episode show about it is going to provide a wealth of interaction data for people to extrapolate off of. Pibby seems to get a better idea of how to fend it off as she tries out various weapon types before engaging in a forwarding battle. Learning about heroism may get very intense.

The static is designed to interrupt overly formulaic events.

It attacks during at least two show intro sequences. It may have caught several other characters during these as well.

The color sections of the static are parts that when composited across frames reveal some secondary picture.

Maybe it's just pareidolia, but I can sort of make out certain characters and sometimes short bursts of 'this shape is in motion' when I go frame by frame. There might be a pattern to it.

Bun-Bun IS the Darkness.

Perhaps he's tired of being in the same setting every episode when there's a vast majority of worlds to explore. Or maybe he's lonely and wants more friends. Or perhaps he saved the show from being lost to the Void forever, but he got corrupted himself and now he's a Puppeteer Parasite of sorts trying to keep the other characters in line so the show wouldn't get cancelled again. Whatever the case is, he's certainly not willing to let go of Pibby that easily.

• I can obviously see the memes coming in... HEY BAWN BAWN! GO GET EM!

The static is trying to save everyone but is horrible at communication.

Being evil but with some external motivation, it's trying to grab everyone and send them elsewhere before something worse happens (perhaps so it has dibs on doing anything awful). It's just bad at communication and is trying to appear as people's friends and recent encounters to lure them in, having been subjected to an Ear Worm about how smiling makes you approachable out of context. (This may have led to it prioritizing kids' edutainment for an alpha strike so that they're out of the way before anything worse and/or of a genre of music it doesn't like happens.) A big end-of-season reveal will be Pibby expressly spelling out things or mid-fight ranting about how the zombie-likes she's been fighting are nothing like the people they used to be (specifically the large Bun Bun being presented to her), and that getting across to the static. The use of leftover edutainment features like spelling letters might establish a more reliable point of contact than shambling assimilators, ending with a Sequel Hook as to why the static did what it did.

The static is just the most blatant phase of some corrupting effect, or it has other secondary effects first

One of the most major of these is probably suppressing or subverting certain types of Toon Physics and making 'attrition effects' like scratches take much longer to heal. This is likely why a lot more cartoonish and/or powerful shows are targeted early, while some survivors we focus on behave closer to human scope despite being repeatedly injured and worn down.

• 'Meta' effects like jumpcuts and appearing objects suddenly show up to aid the static. Off-model and toon-stretched characters become direct avatars. 'Gag weapons' are separated into those that are lethal on their own merits (mallets) and those that don't do anything right when it's needed (e.g. Melira's handgun).
• One of the signs of symptoms progressing might be an earthquake of some sort like during the Pibby intro and the camera style shifts, but this doesn't show later in the trailer. Maybe it becomes a signal later on, where a mix of knockdown and appearing right when everyone's unprepared is why so many characters end up caught by the static.
• Possible intermediate or aftermath phases to consider: inconsistency or failure of 'plotted' circumstances like someone not showing up during a transition because the static got to them early, 'empty' areas where the static has moved on leaving behind unaffected background objects but no characters, 'effect reparse' where something is drastically more or less lethal than it should be because there's no toon force backing it.

One of the static's major weaknesses is splitting the antialiased/colorful pixels, forcing them off-grid, or 'wide-area effects', with something it can't corrupt.

The static has a very distinct look and disrupting that look through physically pushing it aside (rather than perceptually or by its minions) seems to do more 'damage' than most abstract effect-beamy stuff. The black part seems slower-moving, but the colorful pixels shift frame-by-frame and might be a case of rapidly shifting vulnerable points.

• Slashing attacks like swords or claws and large surface area blunt attacks like pushing beams or mallets seem to do more than attempting to 'pierce through or crush' with relatively concentrated pressure like superhumanly strong fists or 'grip' with ropes or whips.
• Probably part of this is just the static being fluid, but a lot of the characters we see who got caught were unarmed (the Scooby-Doo cast), caught by surprise, or with limited ability to run away (Fred Flintstone, the Pibby supporting characters), straight-up tried to punch a corrupt-on-contact effect (the new superhero mentor) or involve personal-range direct stretches in a known fighting style (Amethyst, Jake, Buttercup, Taz). With some lenience for people who got caught by their friends or a knockdown surprise attack, we might be able to extrapolate what types of attacks are or aren't effective from various superheroes.
• How does Melira managing to claw down Jake during the end-of-season battle trailer fit into this? Maybe corrupted individuals are more vulnerable or contact needs to be sustained to corrupt and a few claws are harder to grab than a whole fist.

The blob virus will be revealed to be so powerful it corrupts animated Streaming Service originals as well

This means NO media is safe from it.

• Confirmed, as part of the 2022 April Fools' Day stunt involved the [adult swim] hub on HBO Max getting invaded by the Darkness.

The Static is Zalgo, or a similar abomination

Zalgo, after all, is an entity that majorly corrupts comics and cartoons. Plus, a pattern on the corrupted characters is that their eyes are affected (although majorly becoming white instead of black and oozing; but perhaps, if it's Zalgo, it could be part of the process).

The Static is a character from a canceled show.

Static is a character that went to a different show but when their show was canceled, their form got all jacked up and is trying to consume the worlds of other cartoon shows either in a hopeless attempt to restore their show and form or because simply if they can't have their world and their form, nobody else can.

The Static will end up being an incomplete character.

It's absorbing others trying to complete itself.

• Or maybe it's something more than just a single character, like an entire work/setting/cast?

The glitch is from The Dark Multiverse

It crossed from its home and is consuming other universe's heroes. The Dark Multiverse is said to be full of horrors and they can all leave their home universe, The Glitch could be no different.

The Darkness will absorb the Black Hat clone but not the actual Black Hat.

I imagine Always a Bigger Fish will take effect and Black Hat will have to form an Enemy Mine with Pibby to stop The Darkness. Due to Black Hat's immense power, he may even be the 11th-Hour Ranger that plays a pivotal role in defeating The Darkness.

The Static will eventually start creating hybrids of assimilated characters.

There will be a point in the series where the Static will start making grotesque hybrids of the characters it has already assimilated, which will be stronger than the regular ones (in a way similar to the X Parasites). This is assuming that the victims are not dead and that the versions the Static produces are Evil Knockoffs.

The corrupted characters aren't the real characters.

Once a character gets consumed by the Static, they're trapped in a dark, endless abyss, floating around unconscious, while the Glitch uses their designs and spits out wonky clones.

The Static is only a serious threat to characters from certain types of cartoons. Specifically, ones aimed at children.

• It will turn out that the creature's assimilation ability only works on characters who are terrified of it. The Static first assumed it would never experience any character who wouldn't be terrified of it because it assumed that all cartoon universes would never have anything scarier than itself in them. When it finally does encounter an adult character (who, depending on their source material, will likely have encountered much more disturbing stuff) that's resistant to its influence, it'll be completely caught off guard.
  • If I believe what has been noted in the other sub-pages about what happened in the April Fools Day' broadcast (notably with characters being corrupted at one point and then being fine after that), it could be possible. Maybe the Static managed to have a hold of them for a few seconds and then freaked out when it saw what the shows truly are. It can even extend to live-action (the moment when it's completely unable to change the Eric Andre Show episode).

• This could also tie into Pibby's Character Development, as she slowly sheds her naivete and becomes less scared of her foe, she'll slowly become immune to its influence.

The Glitch Blob is just that, a glitch.

The Glitch Blob could be the result of an error in whatever animation software was used to make Pibby's show. Possibly some kind of ghost of the machine combined with the error resulting in the abomination chasing Pibby and her friend across cartoons.

The Glitch Blob represents the toxicity of the internet and how it can ruin anything.

According to the pitch bible, the corrupted BunBun speaks in internet slang. The glitch represents how the internet makes it so easy to be toxic and just not care about anything - to give in to the darkness, as BunBun put it on April Fools Day. Only one thing can stop it...

• Seemingly confirmed: a leaked pitch document described The Darkness as being a manifestation of internet meme culture.

Reruns are "immune" from the glitch ooze

In the April Fools Day prank, the glitch ooze gets a hold of Morty, but in the next shot, he's completely fine. Here's what it could mean: If the episode the glitch ooze infects is a rerun, then the characters of the show will be fine. If the episode the glitch ooze infects is a NEW one, then the characters are in trouble. Maybe the Pibby episode playing when the glitch ooze invaded was a new one.

The reason the glitch didn't have a lasting effect on Adult Swim shows is that...

...they're already fucked up. It couldn't make Eric Andre do anything he wasn't already going to do.

The glitch stopped trying to corrupt Adult Swim early on in the April Fools event, and started doing something else.

Pibby's not the only one who can learn.

The Static couldn't make its way into Joe Pera Talks With You for some reason.

In Adult Swim's April Fool's Day prank for 2022, Joe Pera's show was one of the universes Pibby visited that the Static did not follow her to, if not the only one. This means the Static somehow wasn't able to get into the said show.

• On top of this, the only thing connecting that particular rerun to Pibby was Pibby herself walking through the snow during the end credits.

The Darkness is taking heroes before they start their adventures.

A good example is the Infected Finn. If you remember, Infected Finn still has his arm and his original sword, Scarlet, from the first couple of seasons of Adventure Time. Another example is Ben. In the poster for Pibby, you can spot the Omnitrix, the original Omnitrix in the original series, implying that the Darkness took Ben's world right as he got the watch. The Darkness is taking heroes before they even start their adventures, or at the very least before they make it out to their second seasons. It could make sense if you think about it. If the Static tried to take, I don't know, Pops from Regular Show before he knew he was a super-powered alien or Ben in Ultimate Alien, it would have some trouble dealing with a being with all that power. You could say the Static could easily take Ben, Pops, or the Crystal Gems even after they'd gone through their adventures and gained new abilities, but it's a nice theory that could explain why we have that version of Finn.

The Starklitch (which is what I'm calling this thing because none of you can seem to decide on a single name for it) is not quite as effective against live-action characters as it is animated ones.

Sure, it was Jossed earlier that live-action shows are completely immune to it, but let's not discount them having *any* resistance. When it corrupted The Eric Andre Show, yeah visuals got all fucked up, but it didn't make Eric do anything he wouldn't already. As anyone who's seen the memes can tell you, him shooting Hannibal happened in the original episode. And notice how the glitch was completely absent from the entirety of the Joe Pera episode, all we got was Pibby walking in the snow at the end.

The darkness was initially a Weedkiller for Memes

Created by the European Union, but it got way out of control.

• Notice how cruel it was to the "Who Killed Hannibal" moment which became a meme.

The glitch is an amalgamation of various apocalypses from various franchises

From Darkseid's Anti-Life Equation to The Void from Gumball, various apocalypses began occurring within numerous franchises, and they started crossing over into other franchises, due to the villains starting to work together. And the heroes from the franchises also started working together to stop them, but it only got worse, as the methods of apocalypses the villains have been using, from armies to superweapons to whatever else began morphing together, forming the glitch, and it grew to invade the franchises involved to franchises not even aware of the other franchises existence.

• Just thought this would be a cool way to reconcile all the theories about the glitch's origins.

The Darkness is an alternate counterpart to the Entity.

The Darkness and the Entity are glitch-like digital abominations and the latter has the goal of assimilating all existence into itself. The Darkness is basically trying to do just that to cartoon characters. As the true identity of the Entity is Missingno, who's to say a different version of it couldn't also become the monster we see? However, while the Entity was stopped by an existential crisis pointing out the pointlessness of its goal and what victory would entail, the Darkness either never got that lesson or did but decided it didn't care and kept on assimilating worlds.

There is a way to fix the glitched characters.

Okay, maybe this is just wishful thinking and idealism talking, but maybe the glitched characters aren’t ‘’dead’’, per se. Maybe they’re just corrupted. Perhaps towards the finale, one of the characters will find a way to undo the brainwashing, and everyone will face the glitch together.

The Darkness consumes people with high emotional stress.

The idea isn't originally mine, I just modified it a bit.

The evidence for that is:

1. "Rick and Morty": Morty was really nervous when trying to shoot Rick when accusing him of being a parasite, getting infected for a while before gaining confidence.

2. "Aqua TV Show Show": Shake's muscles have their own, VERY aggressive personality, so Shake getting infected while growing his muscles makes some sense.

3. "The Eric Andre Show": Eric is naturally insane, so yeah.

The Darkness is Simon Laurent, or rather what's left of him

He's already been traumatized and gone insane in Infinity Train, but after effectively dying three times (first he was killed off in his show's universe, then his show got canceled halfway through, then the show got removed from HBO Max)^*though technically he's only died twice at the time of the Pibby trailer's release, as the HBO Max removal hadn't happened yet at that point, that doesn't mean the full show can't allude to his third "death" as a subtle criticism towards WB—reducing him to a conscious mass of glitchy static—and somehow finding out he's a cartoon character in the process, he completely snapped and is driven to corrupt every universe he comes across, presumably starting with consuming the remains of his own world.

Simon's memory tape could potentially be the key to stopping him—if it hasn't been destroyed/corrupted already, and if it's even possible to restore at least a little bit of his humanity at this point.

Extra irony points for:

1. Him hating the Train's denizens and accusing them of being "not real" and "inhuman", as well as labeling any humans who support denizens as "voids", only to find out he himself isn't real and transform into an inhuman void-like abomination,
2. His downfall in Infinity Train is due to his absolute refusal to learn and change for the better, which could potentially make him a Foil to Pibby,^*funnily enough, Pibby is from a cartoon that teaches kids how to spell, and the reason for Simon entering the Train according to Word of God (though its canonicity is dubious) just so happens to be "he failed a spelling bee" and
3. His current form as the Darkness contrasting his past self's overall association with light (his lighter color scheme, his last name meaning "the shining one", and his whole body is covered in glowing numbers just before his death in Infinity Train).

The Darkness was originally created by the in-universe WB to remove cartoon characters' sentience

At some point before the events of Pibby, every cartoon character spontaneously developed a degree of sentience for unknown reasons (which is how they can even react to the Darkness in the first place). The in-universe WB (and possibly other companies too) found out about this and created the Darkness as a means to erase their sentience to prevent them from potentially going off-script and 'ruining' their shows, but it went out of control and started erasing the characters' entire personalities as well.

The Darkness is the result of a failed attempt at developing a way for (in-universe) humans to enter the cartoon world

Presumably, the experiment was conducted by the in-universe WB (an Alternate Universe version that's more technologically advanced than ours). Technically they did succeed in allowing people to enter the cartoon world—the only problem is that, as soon as someone steps into the cartoon world, their body would immediately melt down into a pile of glitchy goop (with their consciousness intact). The in-universe WB has yet to figure out a way to restore the victims' human forms and is either still trying (and may possibly succeed by the series finale) or has given up and left them trapped in the cartoon world.

The Darkness has something to do with Null/Baldloon

It’s either their true form, their reincarnation, what remains of them, or they are the ones behind it, as they created the Darkness and sent it out into the multiverse to construct an entire army of corrupted characters to get back at the player character after they defeated them in Baldi’s Basics Classic Remastered, in both Null style or Glitch style.

The Darkness is the result of a cosmic imbalance between hope and despair generated from children’s cartoons, Puella Magi Madoka Magica-style.

Cartoons and other TV shows produce a variety of emotions in the viewers who watch them. Laughter and joy when characters do something silly, fear when something scary happens to them or because of them, sadness when they are sad or hurt, grief when a character dies, etc. Emotions generated from the viewers keep the cartoon worlds alive, but an imbalance of viewers’ emotions flowing into the worlds would have catastrophic effects. Too much happiness would transform the entire cartoon multiverse into a saccharine Sugar Bowl where nothing ever changes. Too much sadness would reduce it to a blighted wasteland empty of all life or simply a never-ending field of TV static for miles in every direction. (The universes of non-cartoon TV shows are also affected by viewer emotions, but cartoons are affected the most strongly because their primary audience are children, who naturally have stronger emotional reactions.)

If you watch a variety of cartoons, you have probably noticed that almost every cartoon to finish its run ends on a happy note, albeit with some bittersweetness if the show is aimed at older viewers. Some eldritch god that rules over the great Cartoon Network/WB multiverse noticed this influx of happy endings, and decided it needed a little terror to tip the scales in the other direction. Way in the other direction.

Now the god was bound by the cartoon multiverse's law of equivalents: For every villain, there has to be a hero, or at least an opposing force, else there would be no conflict to push the story forward. For there to be Aku, there also has to be Jack. For there to be Mojo Jojo, there have to be the Powerpuff Girls. For there to be the Diamonds, there has to be Steven. For there to be Zim, there also has to be Dib. You get the picture. But no law says that the hero has to be capable of stopping their villain. So the god decided to play a little joke, and make a "hero" it thought couldn't possibly stop the rampaging wave of Darkness: Pibby, the cute little star of what was ostensibly a show for preschoolers and whose only role was to provide a first victim for the Darkness. It made the classic mistake of cartoon supervillains, though: it underestimated the will of its own creation to survive and grow.

(Addendum: The god is also capable of bringing hope when there is too much despair. Previously in 2007, it noticed a significant influx of viewer dissatisfaction resulting from Cartoon Network's Network Decay. Beloved animators including Lauren Faust, Craig McCracken and Genndy Tartakovsky were fired, Toonami was canceled, and the CN Real block was created to air more live-action TV shows, mostly of poor quality. When all seemed lost, divine intervention happened in the form of Adventure Time.)

David Zaslav himself is The Darkness, or at least its human form

Self-explanatory, really; his mission as CEO seems to be to destroy the entirety of the Serververse for no foreseeable reason besides obtaining endless profit for himself, and he forced Adult Swim to scrap Learning with Pibby because it was getting too close to the truth.

• He did the exact same thing (or at least is currently attempting to do so) to another highly anticipated project, Coyote vs. ACME, because it represented legal action against corporate greed, and Zaslav realized Wile E. also knew too much about the truth. Bonus if Wile E. ends up joining Pibby and the gang in this show to get back at Zaslav, and his resilience against pain and ACME products ends up proving useful against the Darkness, since he probably can't be corrupted by it like Bugs, Taz and the other Looney Tunes did.

The Main Trio

Melira is the one who will give Pibby her Eye Scream.

Not originally my idea but I noticed some details and I think it's possible.

First, look at Melira when Pibby is bleeding, while all the others are concerned or horrified, Melira looks... angry, later on in the trailer we get to see small parts of the injury that are not completely covered... And they're straight lines that could very well make someone think they're clawmarks.

• Although Melira seemed rather surprised that she (if she did cause it) managed to draw blood.

Melira has a hidden motherly side.

She is seen putting a blanket on the sleeping Pibby. It is possible that, despite being a villain of a Disneyesque cartoon (or arguably because of that, seeing as how the Wicked Stepmother was a common trope among classic Disney villains), Melira is secretly a good person underneath and was only doing her part as the villain.

• Adding onto this, it seems likely that the reason Melira would be so motherly and protective of both Pibby and Beta-Kid (who are both children) is that they remind her of the heroic doggy children back in her cartoon, and she doesn't want to lose two more; this makes her go soft, even if just a little bit.
  • To addon, maybe she also has a backstory in the cartoon that involves children… which, given that she’s a villain, most likely didn’t end well… Just a guess!

The ending will have Pibby and her friends being sent to the real world.

Pibby will try to find out what caused the glitch monsters and she and her friends end up being sent to the real world. Perhaps, she meets her creator in the process.

• Going into a different direction with this theory, perhaps the ending will instead have a twist where the glitches were all caused by a comically mundane computer error (perhaps a virus or damaged equipment), cutting to a live-action scene where Pibby's creator is messing with the computer where he's animating on in an annoyed manner. This could be a hilarious juxtaposition to the dramatic horrors taking place in the actual cartoon.

The series will end with Melira and Alloy Boy adopting Pibby

Pibby will sacrifice herself to end the glitches and stop the apocalypse.

The series will end with Pibby destroying the Glitches and saving the multiverse at the cost of her life. Similar to the Series Fauxnale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

If Pibby sacrifices, Melira and Alloy Boy will go with her

By then, Pibby, Melira, and Alloy Boy consider each other a family, and they've come a long way. If Pibby costs her life saving the world, then Melira and Alloy Boy will go with her, in a final tearful embrace as they save the world together.

The power of love will prevent Pibby, Melira, and Alloy Boy from dying when they sacrifice themselves

Turns out Melira's sarcastic thinking was Heartwarming in Hindsight because Pibby, Melira, and Alloy Boy's heroic sacrifices would involve Pibby throwing her sword into the glitchy void and as it explodes, Pibby, Melira, and Alloy Boy would embrace, presumably, one last emotional group hug, thinking they have to say goodbye. But when the light clears away, Pibby, Melira, and Alloy Boy emerge alive because of the power of one's love.

Things will get better for Pibby after she defeats the glitches and ends the apocalypse.

Pibby and Alloy Boy will have a non-romantic close relationship.

I saw Pibby sleeping next to Alloy Boy and I can see them having a close friendship.

Pibby will be able to restore her home... but find that she doesn't fit in there anymore.

It’ll be a Bittersweet Ending. The land will be returned to normal, with all her friends returned. However, due to everything Pibby had done and seen up to this point, she'll no longer feel at home there, seeing their worldview as too simplistic and/or not wanting to corrupt it with the things she had learned along the way. She'll either hermit herself away from everyone else or choose to remain a dimensional hopper to give herself a purpose again. She might even gain a mentor figure in the form of Samurai Jack or Raiden.

• When it's all over, Pibby might be emotionally scarred by the stress of what happened and the fact that she's just a cartoon, but she'll eventually get the help she needs, and come to the realization that it's not her cartoon life that mattered to people, but the impact she left on them. And who knows? She'll probably end up inspiring people to stand for good, just like many other heroes before her.
• Pibby wasn't the only one. Alloy Boy and Melira both realize they no longer fit in their homes because they are now changed people after their experience in their journey to end the glitch monsters. They decided to join Pibby in dimension-hopping and show her that she isn't alone in the world.
• Adding onto the above, Pibby will make a discovery that will terrify her to her core: a tiny fragment of the Darkness still remaining after it's been destroyed. She will immediately destroy it, and then discover Alloy Boy and Melira have come to her world because they have something to tell her. Pibby will correctly guess that they also found tiny fragments of the Darkness in their own worlds. This will lead the trio to realize that if any more fragments remain, they could grow into another Glitch Blob and the apocalypse will start over again. From there, they will decide to go dimension-hopping to track down every fragment they can find and destroy them, ensuring they can't threaten the universe ever again.
  • The Creative Closing Credits would then show a photo montage of the trio's adventures as they hunt down and destroy the fragments. They would even decide to stop and rest in the dimensions they've gone hunting the bits in and partake in some of the local flairs. It could show them actually taking time to enjoy their surroundings and having fun, which they (especially Pibby) decide they sorely need after the nightmare they've been through.
  • From then on, there could be a little Easter Egg in some Cartoon Network shows, showing a little glitch in the background of the show, which is promptly destroyed by one/more of the main trio, which goes unnoticed by the main cast of whichever show they're in at the time.

Pibby gets infected, but manages to resist it and gets abilities a la Venom

• Her arm is visibly glitched in her end-of-show appearance in the pitch bible, but she seems in control otherwise, soooo...
  • Or, alternatively, maybe she is in control for the moment, but slowly being corrupted.

Pibby will drop a Precision F-Strike at some point

It seems obvious but I just want to call it now. Extra points if the swear word shows up in giant letters like the "QUIET" scene from the teaser. And if the letters are weaponized, it can be a literal Precision F-Strike.

• Or maybe she won't, considering Bun-Bun's VA. It seems the only child characters played by actors/actresses of similar age (or characters played by adults that are in the same recording studio as the child VAs) that can get away with this are those whose VAs are voicing lines in South Park (most of the time).

Pibby feeling certain emotions applies an asymmetric pressure on how the glitch can try to pursue her or move around. This explains her glitch arm from the late-season shot.

Certain forms of concern seem to slow down the progression: the glitch swarms over the landscape while Pibby is still confused at its existence, but slows down enough for the cast to run as she expresses fear. The static seems to have a drawn-out shot grabbing Bun Bun and moving them away rapidly once out of Pibby's influence bubble. Once she's actively freaking out and on her knees the glitch wavers and forms pillars trying to get at her in a relatively longer-feeling shot before the cut-to-credits.

• Finn and Jake seem to slow down their leap around the QUIET letters as Pibby is shocked at being detected.
• The static doesn't seem to formlessly encroach an area around an angry Pibby during a backs-to-back trio shot, possibly considering its advance or being held off by a burst of emotion. A similar 'safe spot around and behind' appears during the later battle charge.
• The George Jetson monster only emerges after Pibby runs past rather than as she approaches, and moves the side of its body further away from her faster.
• Fred's capture flows quickly using a much larger grabbing tendril to cover before escape and rapidly captures the superhero mentor with more frantically-flowing blobs (though punching into range probably sped things up). Whether the static is learning and adapting or being further away from Pibby does affect speed.

Pibby will somehow have to invoke a power similar to the Static to defeat it/its manifestation of Bun Bun, or even accept some of its corruption, but in enough quantity that she remains in control

A guess on what they could have meant with her having to "harness the power of darkness inside her" to prevent the cartoon's annihilation. Could probably tie in with the theory above of her having to make a Heroic Sacrifice.

Pibby will turn out to be a Decoy Protagonist and gets killed off halfway through the series.

Very unlikely because, Pibby is the name of the show, and since Pibby is a badass girl, she will likely get touched by the glitch but also harness its powers that will boost her heroism and give her superpowers.

Pibby will have a Rage Against the Author moment near the end of the series

Like a character from a show with fourth wall awareness, Pibby eventually realizes that the thing that is creating the glitches is writers who are trying to create a massive crossover event, supported by the viewers who want it to happen. Realizing that the viewers are actively trying to make her and everyone else's lives a living Hell, she attempts to get the entire show canceled to stop the calamity, her life is damned.

Pibby will weaponize and take advantage of the meta elements of the shows.

During the sequence where the trio is hiding from the corrupted Finn and Jake Pibby tells the others to be quiet, only for the word to materialize and blow their cover, Pibby will learn to take advantage of this power to help her out in the fight against the glitchy abomination. She could say a word like say, saxophone, the word materializes, and she uses the letter X as a throwing star and the letters P and H as bludgeoning weapons.

Pibby will get a love interest.

Bonus points if it's a Queer Romance. I imagine Pibby starting to eventually start having a crush on the love interest while said love interest doesn’t know yet. I also imagine the love interest temporarily getting knocked out and Pibby trying to get them to wake up and start to cry due to it. so Pibby decides to use mouth-to-mouth CPR. The love interest wakes up and says "Were you kissing me?" making Pibby blush (probably something like this◊) only for Pibby to that she was giving mouth-to-mouth CPR and runs away. The love interest would be flabbergasted. I also imagine Pibby finally confessing their love to the love interest in the eventual final battle against the darkness.

Potential Crossovers/Expies/Captain Ersatzes

Other characters created for the series will include:

• A stop-motion character who could be immune to the static, due to existing as an actual physical object.
• A parody of those early 2010s reality shows hosted on Cartoon Network
• A Wrong Genre Savvy anime character
• A Henshin Hero. Likely a Kamen Rider expy.
• A character who is from an adult sitcom cartoon akin to The Simpsons, Family Guy and American Dad!.
• A silent 1920s inkblot cartoon character.
  • We do see a black-and-white cartoon with film grain in one of the trailers.
• A teen girl from a cartoon that is similar to Monster High, Bratz and Barbie.
• A Captain Ersatz of SpongeBob SquarePants or Rocko as a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo.
• A Rorschach Expy or the real Rorschach himself.
• A Pokémon parody, probably resembling Pikachu.
• A Stock Shōnen Hero, most likely based on Goku.
• A Captain Ersatz of Reboot Thomas who has a similar personality to Cody from Total DramaRama, before he ends up being traumatized and slowly loses his innocence and turns into a Child Soldier (albeit a train version) just like Pibby. Originating from an All Engines Go-Esque preschool cartoon about talking toy trains, his world, and his friends get assimilated by the darkness, and as he retreats, he ends up joining Pibby on an adventure to fight the glitch darkness. Although, despite his Character Development, he still acts like a Cheerful Child occasionally and has some dottiness left over.
• A My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Expy, with friendship being the key point, and maybe even expies of the elements of harmony.
• A Funshine Bear Expy who originated from a Canadian preschool show.
• A Captain Ersatz of He-Man or any protagonist from a Merchandise-Driven Action cartoon from the 1980s.
• A BB Hoopster Expy who originated from a fictional Merchandise-Driven preschool show. After his world was affected by the darkness, the character retreats and ends up joining Pibby on the quest to save the universe. However, unlike Pibby and the Reboot Thomas Expy, he didn't lose his innocence despite being traumatized by his world being assimilated and he gives out helpful advice and optimistic motivations to Pibby and her friends whenever they need it.
• A Captain Ersatz of the Happiness Bunny, who is also against the darkness and tries to fight back after his owner, a Nene Expy, and the girl's family gets assimilated, proving that deep down, the stuffed bunny loves and cares about them.
• An Expy of Guts or Denji.
• A Captain Ersatz of Psalty the Singing Songbook from a 1990s Religious Edutainment series, who uses the power of scripture to help take on The Darkness.

Potential guesses for events that go on in each universe.

• Transformers: Animated:
  • Sari tries to keep the static away by jamming the AllSpark Key into it. Naturally, the key gets swallowed up and the corruption continues to wreak havoc.
  • Sideways is completely immune thanks to being capable of turning into static.
  • Lugnut gets eaten. He inadvertently evolves the static into being as obsessed with Megatron as he is. From then on, the corruption will start to target Megatron and the blob will continuously sing the Decepticon leader's praises. For a little visualizer, anyone who's corrupted has their voice turned into a glitchy mess. However, Lugnut's voice praising his one and only Lord Megatron speaks through the victims of the static, clear as day.
    • It seems unlikely Transformers: Animated would be featured, as the rights to Transformers are owned by Hasbro.
• Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart: Mao Mao, Badgerclops, and Adorabat try to defeat the static, but it ends up assimilating all of Pure Heart Valley.
• Ben 10
  • Not even Alien X can fully stave off the static.
  • Kevin Levin of the reboot is forced to stick with characters from the Classic continuity such as Rook, Dr. Psychobos, Princess Looma, the sentient Ultimate Aliens, Magister Patelliday, Skurd, etc. after escaping from his world after it was consumed by the static.
  • Professor Paradox has been able to use the Forge of Creation as a refuge due to its inaccessible nature (the Celestialsapians temporarily dropping the 500 light-year rule due to how serious of a threat the static is), but the Static's acquiring of more powerful characters is making it less of a safe place to be.
• DC Animated Universe
  • The various Batmans of their shows attempt to find a way to fight the Static. Key-mother-psyducking-word being Attempt.
  • Various lesser heroes and villains barely escape before having to work with the main characters to defeat the Static.
  • Not even The Joker would have his trademark Joker Immunity when dealing with the Static, he just ends up assimilated.
    • In a twist, however, Harley Quinn ends up surviving. Specifically the version from Harley Quinn (2019).
• Scooby-Doo:
  • The original series' universe is already ruined, but as for other Scooby universes:
    • The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo: Everyone gets assimilated. Even the titular 13 ghosts.
    • A Pup Named Scooby-Doo: Same as the original universe, except it'd be even more horrifying considering this universe has the Scooby characters as kids.
    • Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get A Clue!: Not even that universe's Shaggy and Scooby would be safe from the Static. Neither would any other character from it.
    • Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?: Not only is that version of Mystery Inc. doomed, but so are all the guest stars.
    • Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: The gang declares "Here We Go Again!" as the glitch starts devouring everything in its path since they already defeated the Evil Entity.
    • Velma: That show's version of Velma is spared because someone that much of a repulsive Designated Hero is just a little Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth. Velma then rubs it in Pibby's face while calling her a generic Subverted Kids' Show character that everyone only likes for the Fanfic Fuel, enraging Pibby enough to kill her. And nothing of value was lost.
• Uncle Grandpa:
  • Uncle G ends up just barely escaping the Static, but Pizza Steve, Mr. Gus, and Giant Realistic Flying Tiger weren't as lucky, and since then he has been a refugee trying to look for his friends through all the different worlds.
  • Although not canon, as implied by the episode itself, "Say Uncle" implies that Uncle Grandpa has a good connection with the other cartoon characters of at least the Cartoon Network universe. If one considers this to be true, he is one of those who survived and is willing to avenge both his friends and the people from outside his universe that he knows so well.
• Craig of the Creek:
  • We already know what happened to Craig himself, but as for his friends, they're probably assimilated as well.
  • And if Jessica's Big Little World takes place in the same universe as Craig of the Creek, that could go double for Craig's sister Jessica.
  • Alternatively, Kelsey did survive (likely without Mortimer, who sacrificed himself for her), and with no one else in the Creek to go to, she joins the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits in place of this being the biggest bloodthirsty journey she's been hoping for.
• Chowder:
  • Due to how aware of the fourth wall the show is as well as the constant animation shifts, the main cast is one of the few to survive completely intact. The live-action version of Mung Daal's kitchen is a refuge for the people who are stranded due to the Static.
    • If Chowder himself can't even escape turning into a statue, then how can the Chowder characters escape the glitch blob?
    • To be fair, Strike wasn't exactly giving the heroes a fair fight. And if it wasn't for his cooking skills, Chowder's power was probably Medium Awareness.
    • Adult Swim's April Fools 2022 Special shows that The Darkness's reach extends to live-action.
• Codename: Kids Next Door
  • The moonbase is the first to fall, with Numbuh 362 sacrificing itself for other numbers (the 44 twins, 86, etc.), arriving in the yard of the Sector V Treehouse.
  • The blob is approaching faster to the treehouse, and some villains like the DCFDTL, Cree, Stickybeard, etc. make a temporary alliance with the rest of the KND after seeing villains like Father and Chad being assimilated.
  • The survivors fight well against the blob, but not enough, several characters fall until only the famous Sector V remains, Numbuh 5 tries to make time for them, but Numbuh 1 joins to fight the blob, and the 2 are assimilated while Numbuh's 2, 3, and 4 escape to other shows.
• Infinity Train: The main characters' homes are consumed, but the empty wasteland that the Train travels through is something even the Static cannot consume — as such, The Cat, Amelia, One-One, and the other denizens of the Train are the sole survivors.
  • Or maybe it's only a reprieve and the Static eventually gets to them too — but the Static can't wipe out the entire train, likely because the train is seemingly endless and the Static seems only to affect characters, not objects or backgrounds (so far).
• The Amazing World of Gumball:
  • That series ended with Elmore being sucked into a static void due to their show ending. It's not much of a jump to get from there to here. However that would mean that Rob is already assimilated.
    • We've seen in episodes like "The Void" that the titular Void sucks up things it deems "mistakes" and doesn't even bring them back (case in point: Gumball and Darwin had to go in there and save Molly from the Void). So it's likely Rob is still stuck in the Void while the Static got to Gumball before the Void did. Darwin, meanwhile, somehow got out of the doomed universe and escaped to another show, as seen at the end of the trailer. Everyone else in Elmore is either assimilated or sucked into the Void.
  • Given that Darwin escapes the static while Gumball does not, it's likely that Gumball sacrificed himself so that Darwin could escape.
• Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi: Julie barely makes it out unscathed, although Ami, Yumi, and Kaz end up assimilated, her without a plan B for her music career.
• Dexter's Laboratory: We already know that Dee-Dee has been assimilated, so it's likely the rest of the cast has been as well. However, it's possible that Dexter's computer, being mainly a background element, might have survived, and could help the heroes if they have to raid the lab for technology. Alternatively, the computer could be corrupted itself and use said technology against them.
• Victor and Valentino: All of Monte Macabre is consumed, Tez being forced to look on in horror before being the last one pulled in by the Glitch.
• Code Lyoko: Most of the Lyoko warriors were consumed besides Aelita, who flew away into safety as she sees both Lyoko and Earth get consumed.
• [adult swim]:
  • Nobody from the Adult Swim originals makes it out except for Rick who barely makes it out alive. Yep, even Morty is gone.
    • Rick and characters exclusive to Pibby might be the only Adult Swim characters that survive by the end.
    • Rick, Rusty Venture, and Quentin Quinn team up to find the source of the glitch.
    • Adult Swim's April Fool's Day prank for 2022 seems to confirm no show there is safe. However, since, in the prank, characters can appear assimilated in one shot and turn back to normal the next, whether this would be true in Pibby itself has yet to be seen.
  • Gemusetto: Makasu, Back Pocket Dimension Flying Bear (assuming she's somehow revived), and all the Incan Gods end up assimilated. For the latter, even being Incan deities does not mean they're safe. Not even Dr. Legs, Bucket, or any characters from Death Beats are safe, either.
  • Perfect Hair Forever: If Uncle Grandpa could potentially barely escape the static (see another troper's guess above), then Uncle Grandfather... can't. Neither would Gerald or any other character from that universe.
  • Space Ghost Coast to Coast: Space Ghost, Moltar, and Zorak all end up victims of the static as soon as it invades their talk show.
  • Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law: "Ha-ha, my only purpose is to get killed here!"
  • Xavier: Renegade Angel: Considering how Xavier has always survived apocalypses (Most of which he caused himself.), Xavier would be the only survivor of his world and despite all of that he's still the same person he always was as he goes around whatever world he's now in as he tries to go around helping people through the different worlds he comes across. Fortunately, his constant reality-shifting and surrealism may prove vital in fighting the Darkness. Unfortunately, he's still Xavier, so everyone else is screwed as well.
  • Moral Orel: The citizens of Moralton would likely assume that the glitch is all a part of the Book of Prophecy and would probably even assume that Orel is the one behind all this since he was responsible for some of Moralton's problems. The only person who knows this isn't the case is Orel himself. (And that's saying a lot.) While all the citizens camping out outside waiting for a savior to come and take them to heaven which makes them a bit of an easy target for the glitch.
    • Orel potentially gives the heroes a bit of hope when they're at their lowest point. Maybe he relates to Pibby's loss of innocence by telling her about all the horrible things he's been through and how, even though it's hard, he still tries to keep a positive, loving outlook. Then when attempting to flee from the glitch with the others, he falls behind because of the limp he got from the hunting trip, eventually being consumed by the glitched version of his father.
  • Metalocalypse: The band isn't responsible for the glitch, and it ends up consuming an entire concert, along with every member except Toki Wartooth.
  • Teenage Euthanasia: Not even Annie and Trophy would be safe. So in a sense, yes, even resurrected zombies can be assimilated.
  • Smiling Friends: Charlie and Pim find... something to stop the Static, but it doesn't work. Charlie's response?
    Charlie: "Welp, I'm out of ideas."
  • Unicorn: Warriors Eternal: Emma, Dimitri, and Alfie are consumed by the Darkness, leaving Copernicus to scout out new vessels for Melinda, Edred, and Seng.
• Cartoonito:
  • Not even Nito and his friends make it out unscathed. Neither would any other character from an original series for the block. ^note  Bugs Bunny Builders especially, considering the state of Bugs Bunny himself in the trailer. Plus, given how the glitch blob already wrecked Pibby's home show (and almost assimilated Pibby before she was saved by end credits), imagine what the glitch blob might do to an entire block for the same audience.
  • Pibby's fictional show is implied to be a Cartoonito show since its "credits" show the Cartoon Network logo. If that's the case, then the block itself is probably doomed.
  • Assuming the Static doesn't ignore 3D characters, Lucas the Spider and his friends would be assimilated.
  • Not even a Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go-esque children's toy train cartoon is safe, as many of the characters in this show would end up getting assimilated by the darkness. The only survivor: An Expy of Reboot Thomas (mentioned above), who joins Pibby and the others on their adventure.
• Toonami:
  • Not even TOM ^note If TOM 1 was assimilated by the Intruder, who even kills off TOM 4, that means in Pibby none of the other TOM models would be safe and SARA would be safe. In fact, every protagonist from a Toonami-produced series except for Jack and maybe Fena would be assimilated.
    • Alternate takes: When the corruption hits, TOM tries to call an anime hero to stop it (likely Goku) but is kept on hold. After the corruption is completely purified, the line finally picks up. When asked about what he needs, TOM responds, "Uh...you know what? Never mind."
  • Double points if the Intruder also gets assimilated himself.
  • Despite many of the anime broadcasts on Toonami featuring characters who are close to Physical Gods like Goku, Naruto, Luffy, Ichigo Kurosaki, and many others, they try their best to stop the static and ultimately fail. Not even overpowered comedy anime characters like Haruko Haruhara, Arale as she appears in Super and Popuko and Pipimi are safe.
  • Saitama learns that no matter how hard he punches the glitch, it will always regenerate, which makes him excited to finally see an opponent that won't go down in a single punch.
  • Spike Spiegel buys Pibby and her friends time to escape the glitch, and his last words before the glitch consumes him is, what else, "Bang."
  • My Hero Academia: Yeah, not even Quirks can stop the Static, as anyone with one would try to fight back, lose, and be assimilated.
    • Adding onto this, much of Class 1-A has been assimilated with it spreading to the U.A., the only survivors being Midnight, Tenya, Mina, Kirishima, Mei, Shinsou, and most of Class 1-B. The League of Villains was the first people outside of the U.A. unfortunate enough to come face to face with the assimilated.
    • A young Tenko Shimura and most of his family along with Oboro Shirakumo also barely make it out alive with Tenko and Oboro having to come to grips with how they were fated to become Tomura Shigaraki and Kurogiri
  • Blade Runner: Black Lotus: Elle will attempt to escape the Static, only to ultimately fail (and this is assuming the Static affects all cartoon characters regardless of whether they're 2D or not). The keyword here is "attempt". And if this is the case, then it might mean all of the Blade Runner universe is doomed (or not, depending on whether or not the Static can assimilate live-action characters).
  • Dr. STONE: It's bad enough to get petrified, but is it possible to get assimilated while petrified? If the Static doesn't count the petrified people as objects rather than characters, it is. Bonus points if Senku says (off-screen) that the static is merely the stuff of science fiction and has no merit in the real world.
  • Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Sabito and Kanae barely escape the static and end up in the show's present, this leads to many pointing out that by all accounts, they should be dead.
  • Soul Eater: The sole survivor ends up being Excalibur because even the Static finds him too annoying to be worth the time.
    • Alternatively, some other characters find him annoying enough to toss him into the Static before they flee. It doesn't work.
• IGPX: Immortal Grand Prix:
  • I'm not sure if the IGPX characters can legally be used by the creator considering that it was made for Toonami (back before the block moved from Cartoon Network to Adult Swim), it was also an anime, but here are my guesses just in case the characters are usable.
    • For the full show's universe: While Team Satomi tries to race against the Static, they eventually fall victim to it (alongside every other team we see in the anime).
    • Speaking of IGPX, might as well guess concerning the universe the micro-series is set in: Team Suzaku falls victim to the Static immediately, and so are every other character from the micro-series.
• The Big O: Paradigm City might be shown in ruins (or at the very least more post-apocalyptic than it already was before the static came), with Roger Smith, Dorothy Wayneright, and other prominent Big O characters assimilated off-screen. ^note While Cartoon Network did co-fund the second season of The Big O, the first season was produced entirely by Sunrise. The Megadeuses would in turn be completely out-of-commission; without their pilots, they would simply refuse to work properly. ^note Alan Gabriel proved that towards the end of The Big O's second season when he was deemed unfit to pilot a Megadeus.
• Space Ghost: Space Ghost would try to fight off the static, but in the end, he just ends up assimilated. As for the Space Ghost from Coast to Coast, see my other guess above.
• Animaniacs: Yakko, Wakko, and Dot (and maybe other Animaniacs characters) would end up casualties of the static as well. Not even their goofiness could render them safe. Bonus points if they're the original universe's, not the reboot's, although I'm not sure if the reboot Yakko, Wakko, and Dot would be safe, either.
  • Or Yakko, Wakko, and Dot managed to escape the glitch and become one of the many cartoons that team up with Pibby, Alloy Boy, and Melira in the final battle.
• Tiny Toon Adventures:
  • Buster and Babs (actually, any of the Tiny Toon characters) would fall victim to the static the minute it invades their show. And considering how Bugs Bunny himself was assimilated in the trailer, yeah, not even Buster or Babs is safe.
  • This goes double if Elmyra succumbs to the same fate.
• Rooster Teeth:
  • Assuming the static doesn't just affect 2D characters and that it can affect any animated character regardless of whether they're 2D or 3D:
    • Red vs. Blue: Lawyer-friendly cameos of the Reds and Blues all end up assimilated, showing not even Halo would be safe from the static.
    • gen:LOCK: None of the gen:LOCK characters would be safe from assimilation either. On a meta level, this means none of the animated shows from Rooster Teeth (currently owned by WarnerMedia) would be safe either.
    • RWBY: Team RWBY ends up assimilated as well (despite being huntresses) thanks to the static. And maybe every other team formerly associated with Beacon Academy. This goes double if even the Grimm can get assimilated.
    • Alternatively, one member of Team RWBY survives, left with her partner's weapon as a Tragic Keepsake.
  • X-Ray & Vav: Just because they became superheroes does not mean they're safe either. As Pibby put it in the trailer: "There are no superheroes left." This may mean that X-Ray and Vav ended up assimilated by the time Pibby says that line.
• WB Games/Midway Games:
  • Scribblenauts: Maxwell barely makes it out unscathed thanks to his magic notebook, but the rest of the Scribblenauts universe ends up getting assimilated.
  • Rampage: Not even George, Lizzie, or Ralph will be safe from assimilation. The other monsters created by Scumlabs won't make it either.
  • Mortal Kombat: Shao Khan, Shang Tsung, Quan-Chi, and Shinnok team up to try and tame the glitch so they can use it for their evil deeds, only for everything to go wrong and consume both the original and reboot timelines. Bonus points if the first character aside from those four to be assimilated is Scorpion, Raiden or Liu Kang to prove how hopeless everything is for this world.
  • Freaky Flyers: While a great majority of the flyers end up assimilated, the survivors are Pilot X (due to being able to disguise himself as already corrupted, similar to his disguise of himself before fighting Professor Guttentaag) and Sammy, Jack, and Sheik (as the Darkness was uncomfortable with the fact they resembled offensive stereotypes and wanted nothing to do with them).
• Mixels: Every single Mixel (whether as themselves, mixes, or murps) would get assimilated by the static. Bonus points if the Nixels get assimilated too.
  • Cue one of them saying "Not again!"
• The Powerpuff Girls:
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998): It's likely everyone in the original PPG universe except for OG Buttercup get assimilated.
  • Powerpuff Girls Z: If the Static got to 2016 Buttercup but not the 1998 one (as mentioned in a below WMG), it's likely the Z versions (or versions of the Powerpuff Girls resembling the Z girls) would be assimilated pretty quickly.
  • The Powerpuff Girls (2016): Given that reboot Bubbles was already assimilated and reboot Buttercup appears assimilated in the poster for Pibby, it's likely the rest of reboot Townsville end up assimilated too.
• Robotboy: Not even the titular character (or anyone else from the show) would be safe as they're quickly assimilated. Also, Pibby implied all superheroes were assimilated, and Robotboy could technically be a superhero, so...
• MAD: Not even Alfred E. Neuman, the titular spies of Spy vs. Spy, etc. would be safe from the Static. Bonus points if the characters' portrayals are from the cartoon series.
• Bunnicula: Bunnicula, utilizing his ability to gain Flight by turning his ears into wings, manages to escape the static, with Chester and Harold in tow. The rest of the Orlock Apartments end up getting assimilated.
• Jorel's Brother: Jorel, his brother, and the rest of their world end up assimilated before Pibby gets a chance to look at it. And since Jorel's Brother only airs in Latin America and Brazil, this can make for another case of Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros." alongside "Crossover Nexus".
• Samurai Jack: Everyone from Jack's universe excluding the samurai himself (judging by Jack appearing towards the end of the trailer) ends up assimilated. Ashi, Aku (assuming the Static affects the original run's timeline and that Aku didn't create the Static, to begin with), the Scotsman, everyone.
• Kids' WB!: Judging by the fact the block no longer exists, it's likely many of the Kids' WB series' universes (and potentially the universe for the block itself) would be assimilated.
  • Freakazoid!: Not even all the knowledge of the (1995-era) internet can save the titular character, as he and other Freakazoid characters end up assimilated despite trying to fight back.
• One Froggy Evening: The Static could potentially reach the universe of The WB ^note another Warner Bros. network that no longer exists and assimilate Michigan J. Frog. Alternatively, the Static might go into Michigan J. Frog's very first short and assimilate him that way.
• Adventure Time: We already know Finn and Jake have been assimilated, but it's likely everyone else got assimilated- Princess Bubblegum, the Ice King, everyone- and Lady Rainicorn ended up the only one who escaped.
• Steven Universe: Except for Lion, it's likely everyone in Beach City got assimilated- and we already know Amethyst already was.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: Everyone in Peach Creek (well, everyone that isn't named Jonny or Plank, at the least) gets assimilated. It would be worse if the Eds are inspired to do a scam based on it, only for them to get some Laser-Guided Karma via assimilation.
  • That said, Plank likely only survived due to being an object as opposed to an actual cartoon character- so far, the Static has not been shown to assimilate objects or backgrounds.
• CN City: It's likely the Static would take over CN City. And if it's the CN City from Crossover Nexus, yeah, not even the Noods are safe.
• Grim & Evil:
  • The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: Pretty much everyone in Endsville ends up assimilated. While characters like Grim and Irwin would be understandable cases, not even Billy or Mandy (who had already survived against many monsters if only due to their Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth status) would be safe.
  • Evil Con Carne: Hector (and by extension, Boskov), the rest of Evil Con Carne, and even General Skarr aren't safe either.
• The Problem Solverz: The Solverz notice there's a problem, so they try doing... something to the Static, only for Alfie to be assimilated. And so are the others, but not before Horace declares the problem "unsolvable" (by their standards):
  Horace (right before being assimilated): "I'm actually starting to think the problem's completely... unsolvable."
• GLITCH Productions:
  • Supermarioglitchy4's Super Mario 64 Bloopers: Everyone in the Mushroom Kingdom gets assimilated, including SMG4 and his gang, except for Mario, who becomes traumatized by losing his friends to the point where he joins Pibby and co. to stop the darkness.
  • Meta Runner: Not even Glitch’s other shows are safe from the darkness, as everyone in that show’s universe ends up assimilated, leaving Tari and Theo the only survivors.
  • Murder Drones: The humans and drones end up getting swallowed alive by the static, leaving Uzi and N the only survivors.
  • The Amazing Digital Circus: Pomni and Caine are the only survivors because the void ended up invading their universe and assimilating everyone there, including the six troubled human souls.
• Battle for Dream Island: All the contestants end up getting assimilated, including the Announcer.
  • Nonexisty is entirely unharmed by the static due to not existing, but is no help for this exact reason.
  • Battle for BFDI: The darkness ends up invading the web series’ universe and starts assimilating everything, including the TPOT contestants, Two and X, leaving Four and the post-split contestants the only survivors. Four becomes so traumatized by losing X that he ends up becoming a Blood Knight and joins Pibby and Co.
• Inanimate Insanity: Not even other object shows are safe, as the darkness ends up pouring into the show’s universe and assimilating most of the contestants, leaving a few contestants and Me Phone 4 the only survivors.
• SuperMarioLogan: The main characters (both plush and puppet) are the survivors after the darkness invaded.
• Don't Hug Me I'm Scared: The teachers and Roy end up getting assimilated by the glitch, leaving only Yellow Guy, Duck, and Red Guy the only survivors.
• Angry German Kid: Leopold Slikk is the sole survivor of his universe.
• Alphabet Lore: All of the letters and numbers get assimilated, leaving F, N, and One the only survivors.
• CliffSide: Waylon, Jo, and Cordie are the sole survivors of their universe.
• The Angry Video Game Nerd: The nerd himself is the sole survivor of his universe after the darkness invaded.
• Among Us Logic: Player is the sole survivor of his universe.
• The Annoying Orange: Everyone in the kitchen ends up getting assimilated, including Orange himself.
• The Nostalgia Critic: Not even the Angry Video Game Nerd’s rival is safe, as the critic himself is also the sole survivor of his universe.
• Lackadaisy: The Lackadaisy employees end up joining Pibby and Co. after the darkness invaded their universe and assimilated everyone there.
• Camp Camp: Max, Nikki, and Neil after the sole survivors of their universe.
• Dan The Man: Dan and Josie join Pibby and co. after the glitch invades their universe.
• Web Animation/ENA: ENA and Moony are the sole survivors of their universe.
• Happy Tree Friends: Everyone ends up getting assimilated, except for Flippy, who joins Pibby and co. to stop the darkness and save his universe.
• Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss: All of Hell ends up getting assimilated, leaving Charlie, Vaggie, Alastor, Angel Dust, Nifty, Husk, Sir Pentious, Cherri Bomb, Blitzo, Moxxie, Millie, and Loona the only survivors.
• Satina: Dave, Lucia, and Satina become a Badass Family who join Pibby and co. on their quest to defeat the darkness.
• Welcome to Hell: Sock and Jonathan are the sole survivors of their universe.
• Pucca: Pucca and Garu are the sole survivors of their universe.
• Thomas & Friends: Not even the original series All Engines Go! is based on is safe, as the Island of Sodor ends up getting assimilated, leaving Thomas himself as the only survivor.

Non-Cartoon Network/non-Warner Bros. properties/references:

• Pibby and Co. stumble upon a parody of live-action Nickelodeon sitcoms, complete with an unnecessary feet scene. The actors then get eaten by the static.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Mewtwo (or a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo resembling Mewtwo) just barely escapes but even his vast psychic power alone is not enough to stop the Static.
• Disney is accused of unleashing the static in another attempt to purchase everything in their path, only for one of their shows like The Owl House to be quickly nommed on.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Expies of Yugi, Joey, and Tristan would prove no match for the Static and be assimilated.
    • Alternatively, Yugi survived assimilation.
  • And it probably wouldn't just be them either. Not even Expies of Jaden, Yusei, Yuma, Yuya, Yusaku, or Yuga would be safe, and maybe none of their friends either.
• Wakfu: Not even an Expy of Yugo, the character such an Expy would be based on having defeated Qilby via isolating him, would be safe from assimilation with the Static, and neither would his group in general.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • The Power of Friendship isn't enough to turn the tide against The Static as Princess Twilight Sparkle has no other choice but to release Cozy, Tirek, and Chrysalis from stone after so many of the other kingdoms and her friends have been taken.
    • Before the last of their defenses is overrun, Twilight sacrifices her Magic to transfer all of her Alicorn powers to Cozy Glow and orders her to take Spike and run out of Equestria and never stop running. Cozy obeys and drags off Spike who is kicking and screaming in despair as he watches Twilight succumb to the Static. After reaching relative safety, Spike is heavily traumatized after seeing his loved ones and his entire world taken away from him blames the entire mess on Cozy Glow and tries to attack her, only for Cozy Glow to slap him in response and states that she already feels enough crap about the situation, but she will endure it because Twilight asked her to keep Spike safe no matter what. Cozy Glow's adventures with Spike during the crisis serve as her Redemption Quest as she slowly starts to become something closer to a heroic character that Cozy was denied from her home cartoon.
    • Not even Discord could fight The Static. He escapes it alongside Spike and Cozy and is just as traumatized as Spike is after he sees Fluttershy succumb to the Static.
  • Alternatively, Pinkie is the only central character to make it out. Despite everything, she manages to keep smiling, albeit with a new determined fire in her eyes. She sets out alongside whoever plucks her from Equestria, hellbent on finding a way to fix this mess and save her friends and loved ones.
  • As for the My Little Pony: Equestria Girls characters, Flash Sentry is the only one to survive and eventually runs into the others. Before he escaped, Sunset tossed him her geode, hoping that he'd be able to use it to protect himself.
• Dan Vs.: The titular character is so busy screaming "DARKNESS" up at the sky...that he doesn't see it coming until it's too late.
• BIONICLE: Alternatively, Teridax is not affiliated with the blob, and he, along with the other Makuta, has a natural resistance (But not necessarily immune) to it as as well, due to their natural affinity to shadow. The Brotherhood goes back to protecting the people of the Matoran Universe, albeit reluctantly and probably not friendly about it, (Except for Krika, who is happy to be on the side of good again, and Miserix, who was never evil.) replacing the assimilated or dead Toa.
• Star Wars: Pibby visits a Yoda Expy to learn how to fight from him.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Time-manipulating Stands like The World and Star Platinum can keep the glitch frozen in place for a few seconds. Or maybe Stands are unable to stop it.
  • If Stands aren't able to stop it, we'd get treated to DIO using The World to stop time only for the static to bypass and assimilate him.
• Bakugan: An Expy of Dan Kuso tries to fight against the Static using a Bakugan parody. He fails. Bonus points if the Expy is based on reboot Dan.
  • Alternatively, the original Brawlers (or at least expys of them) would be the sole survivors of their universe.
• Miraculous Ladybug: The Miraculous holders would likely be assimilated off-screen since Pibby implied that pretty much every superhero got assimilated.
  • Hawk Moth would even try to harness the Glitch's power, only to end up being assimilated himself as well.
• Pilot Candidate: Expies of the pilots would likely get assimilated as a nod to how bad (by Xebec standards) the anime adaptation was.
• Chaotic: After assimilating Expies of Tom, Kaz (no relation to Kaz of Puffy AmiYumi), Peyton, and Sarah, the Static would somehow make its way into what seems to be Perim and assimilate everything in there as well. This goes double for anyone who had their code there at the time. Not even Expies of the Codemasters would be safe.
• Paranoia Agent: Expies of the characters would get assimilated one by one. Not even the Lil' Slugger Expy, whose source character is a big source of horror in his series, is safe.
• Beyblade: It's likely Expies of Tyson, Gingka, or Valt (and their friends) would fall victim to the Static one by one, and their universes assimilated.
• Sailor Moon: While it would not be shown for obvious reasons, it may be implied that Usagi's world ends up assimilated, up to and including Sailor V. So she tries to fight the Static herself as Sailor Moon, only to lose and... you guessed it. Bonus points if the universe is that of the anime. Pibby did imply most if not all superheroes were assimilated, after all; the Sailor Scouts themselves could be considered superheroes.
  • Usagi getting assimilated might also make clear that not even being a Magical Girl makes you safe.
• Cardcaptor Sakura: Again, while it wouldn't be shown for obvious reasons, Sakura's world may end up assimilated as well, including Kero, the Clow Cards, and Sakura herself.
• Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: He wouldn't appear for obvious reasons, but not even Bo-bobo himself would be safe; he tries to fight it using either the Hanage Shinken or Wiggin... and loses badly for the first time, being assimilated in the process.
• Kemono Friends: The park and the friends end up getting assimilated, leaving Kaban and Serval the only survivors.
• Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Tohru and Kanna are the sole survivors of their universe.
• Popee the Performer: Popee and Kedamono are the sole survivors of their universe.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: All of Mitakihara ends up getting assimilated by the darkness, leaving Madoka, Sayaka, Mami, Kyoko, and Homura the only survivors. Cue cutie breaking up to eleven.
• Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: Panty and Stocking are both the sole survivors of their universe.
• Marvel Comics: Captain America leads the entire Marvel Universe, heroes and villains alike, to war against the glitch. Barely any of them make it out alive, but Thanos uses the Infinity Gauntlet to try and weaken it as a Dying Moment of Awesome.
• Beast Wars: The Maximals (having originally been scientists) attempt to figure out what is causing the glitch entity to appear and assimilate everything and eventually sacrifice themselves to buy Pibby and company time to escape when it inevitably shows up. Megatron, being Megatron, will abandon his fellow Predacons to their fates and escape to another universe via Transwarp. By coincidence, he ends up in the same world that Pibby escaped to, possibly becoming an independent threat.
  • Alternatively, the Maximals try to find out the origins of the glitch and, more importantly, how to put a stop to it as soon as it manifests in their world. The Predacons, particularly Megatron, use the corruption to take out the Maximals, but their hindsight proves to go right as it wipes out the Maximals and the Predacons in one fell swoop.
    • Alternatively, every Maximal and Predacon who perished (and Waspinator), can make it out alive.
  • This is, of course, assuming Hasbro lets them use their IP, but still.
• Fresh TV: While I'm pretty sure they would not want to license their characters to a show like Pibby, here are some guesses in case they do:
  • Total Drama: More than likely, Chris tried to use the static in a challenge somehow, only to learn the hard way that Evil Is Not a Toy and he becomes the first victim. Being Genre Savvy, both Duncan and Gwen manage to escape, but they are both well aware that due to their (along with anyone who escaped with them) lack of powers, they are Dead People Walking, with at least one of them having crossed the Despair Event Horizon.
    • If the Static hit the main universe around the time Pahkitew Island happened, same as above, except the Pahkitew cast all get assimilated and Duncan would still be in jail by the time the Static hit. The only reason he would get out of the show at all is likely due to Gwen somehow bailing him out.
    • As for the universe of Dramarama, no one is safe, and everyone ends up assimilated.
  • 6teen: Everyone would get assimilated, but not before Jonesy is fired (yet again) after being accused of creating the Static (he didn't).
  • My Babysitter's a Vampire: Assuming the Static can affect live-action characters, everyone would get assimilated.
• Making Fiends:
  • Everyone in Clamburg except Mr. Milk would get assimilated. Mr. Milk would later join the main trio and the other survivors and develops from his cowardly nature onwards. He may not have been able to bring down Vendetta with all the fiends around back in his original show, but he will get his chance to fight the Static.
  • Charlotte, Vendetta, and all the other students in Mr. Milk's class would show up mashed together after getting corrupted by the Darkness, and take the role of a Giant Mook or "miniboss".
• The Owl House: The Darkness assimilates most of the Boiling Isles, including Eda, Willow, Gus, King, Hooty, Raine, and Lillith. Even Emperor Belos is corrupted as well. This leaves Luz, Amity, and Hunter as the soul survivors and they must learn to work together. Luz will eventually learn that it's gonna take more than spell glyphs to stop the Darkness...
  • Luz and Amity would share similar personality traits with Pibby with all three girls facing the challenges of growing up and losing their loved ones and their homes.
• Max and Ruby: In an alternate adaptation of the episode "Ruby's Jewelry Box" after Ruby reminds him to keep out of her room, "NO! This means YOU!", in a Gory Discretion Shot where Normal Max is last seen storming to his bedroom and slamming the door and there's a flash of light from the crack of the doorway and a loud glitching sound as a dark horror reprise of the show's theme song plays, meaning that Max is unknowingly consumed by the glitch. Ruby mistakenly thinks that Max has finally left her alone at last, not before witnessing her brother becoming a mindless zombie, and has a moment when she realizes that she has shunned out her brother long enough for him to be killed. And since, according to the pitch bible, BunBun has the power to antagonize Pibby, throughout the season, Possessed Max gets his revenge on Ruby for tormenting him all these years. When Ruby, along with Pibby, Melira, and Alloy Boy, stops the apocalypse and frees her brother, Max, and Ruby finally mend their sibling war for good and have an improved relationship.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Bikini Bottom as a whole is quickly overrun by the glitch, with most of the main characters falling to it. Sandy, Patrick, Mr. Krabs, Plankton, and more eventually get consumed, with the only two survivors being SpongeBob himself and Squidward, the only one he managed to save in time. Thankfully, the two of them are also aided by Bubbles the Dolphin, whose reality-warping abilities save the two of them and help them in their quest to defeat the glitch and save survivors from other cartoons. SpongeBob, in particular, turns into a Determinator, keeping his ever-optimistic personality, yet also turning into a smart and tactical warrior, not too unlike his appearance in the Nicktoons Unite games or Battle for Bikini Bottom. The loss of friends, pets, and companions just made his spirit even MORE powerful than it already was.
  • Alternatively, only post-movie SpongeBob, and by proxy, spinoffs, get consumed, all due to their poor reception compared to classic SpongeBob, which remains unharmed.
  • Hinted in the pilot. Pibby is shown looking at her Eye Scream in the mirror in SpongeBob's bathroom
• Zokie Sparkleby: The titular character is the only survivor, the rest of the characters (including his best friends Ruby and Earl) get sucked into the corrupted glitch darkness. The loss of his best friends caused Zokie to become traumatized.
• Hamsterdale: Harry and his hamster pals were the only survivors. The rest were consumed and corrupted by the darkness.
• Mudpit: Not even an obscure CGI-animated Teletoon show is safe, as the glitch consumes everyone except for the main characters and Slime. even Slime tries to fight the darkness before he is forced to retreat alongside the main protagonists.
• Amphibia: In an alternate version of the series' Grand Finale, "The Hardest Thing", after Anne, Sasha, and Marcy say goodbye to their friends from Amphibia, they step through the portal to go home, only for the portal to explode with the Darkness assimilating all three girls. As Anne, Sasha, and Marcy, now corrupted, begin to advance towards the citizens of Amphibia, Valeriana blurts that they've opened the portals too soon and will now run for their lives. Cue everyone running away from the Darkness and Anne, Sasha, and Marcy as a Dark Reprise version of "Anne's Theme" plays.
  Valeriana: [after seeing corrupted Anne, Sasha, and Marcy as everyone else watches in horror] Perhaps we opened the portals too soon. Shall we run for our lives?
  General Yunan: Yeah, let's.
  [cue everyone screaming and running away from the Darkness, Anne, Sasha, and Marcy]
  • Eventually, the Darkness assimilates most of the citizens of Wartwood, Newtopia, and Toad Tower. The only survivors left are Hop Pop, Polly, Grime, Yunan, Olivia, and Sprig, who are joined by Mr. and Mrs. Boonchuy and Mr. X, who all now have to fight the Darkness and save their loved ones from harm.
• Sister, Sister: A typical "Sister Sister" episode begins with the theme song playing as usual. Unfortunately, the stop-motion animated opening sequence is crashed by the glitch as it infects Tia Landry, Tamera Campbell, Lisa Landry, and Ray Campbell, and it eventually takes over most of Detroit and Roosevelt High.
  • In a similar manner since Pibby, Melira, and Alloy Boy have the power to access the live-action world in the trailer, during a group shot of Tia, Tamera, Lisa, and Ray towards the end of the stop-motion sequence, Pibby, Melira, and Alloy Boy, who are not stop-motion animated, crash the sequence as they run across the screen below the characters as they watch in horror, as the glitch advances towards Pibby as she fights back while running.
• Bluey: Most of Brisbane, Australia will be assimilated, including Bluey and Bingo's neighbors and friends, as well as their extended family. Bluey, Bingo, Chilli, and Bandit, alongside one of Bluey and Bingo's friends, Indy and Lila, are the sole survivors and must work together as a family to survive and fight the apocalypse. Like Pibby, Bluey, and Bingo will eventually throw away their bubbly personalities. In addition, Lila and Indy will learn to work together as a team to help their respective friends.
• Elinor Wonders Why: Animal Town will end up being assimilated except for Elinor, Ari, and Olive, who all wonder why a big scary monster 'ate' all their friends. Like Pibby, Elinor would eventually throw away her bubbly personality. Elinor will become a foil to Pibby, with their character arcs mirroring each other, and eventually both open up to each other when they have to learn to work together.
  • Alternatively, the glitch only manages to assimilate Elinor's siblings, thus explaining why Elinor is an only child despite being a rabbit.
• South Park: Kenny is the first to be assimilated.
  • Alternatively, Kenny is the Sole Survivor of his universe.
  • Alternatively (again), The Darkness failed to assimilate South Park, as not even it would want to cross Cartman wrong.
• Tales of Arcadia: Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans is invaded by the Glitch just as Toby dies, leaving Jim even more broken than he already was once he manages to escape with help from Douxie.
  • Either that or Jim using the Kronisphere to go back before the Glitch invades and warns everyone.
  • Bellroc and Skrael could also try to manipulate the Glitch against the heroes only to quickly learn that Evil Is Not a Toy.
• Phineas and Ferb and Milo Murphy's Law: Given that the respective main casts of both shows have managed to handle similar situations to that of the Darkness (even if they had some allies helping them), it's likely that most, if not all of them will survive the Darkness. Everyone else would be assimilated unless any of the more powerful supporting/minor characters are intended to return.
• Breadwinners: Given the show's digital-esque (specifically video game) aesthetic and nature, any of the named characters could have a chance to survive the Darkness.
• The Loud House and The Casagrandes: Everyone in Royal Woods and Great Lakes City (as well as probably Loch Loud from The Loud House Movie) gets assimilated by the Darkness.
• ReBoot: The Darkness attacks at the Cliffhanger ending of My Two Bobs. However, due to his Trojan horse virus powers, Megabyte manages to gain control of it while also gaining knowledge of not just the User, but also everything beyond the User. He then proceeds to go Infinity Ultron on the entire multiverse after consuming all of Mainframe.
• Doraemon: No one, except for Doraemon and Nobita, was safe, as they all were consumed by the glitch.
• Sesame Street: It is owned by HBO, and like the April Fools prank shows, live-action shows like Eric Andre can be assimilated. This means that the Street could end up being assimilated, including the Muppets, the humans, and Elmo's World.
• Let's Go Luna!: While traveling, Circo Fabuloso will end up being assimilated. Luna is the sole survivor, being the moon and all.
• Molly of Denali: Due to being a small rural town, Qyah will easily be assimilated. Molly herself will be assimilated as well.
• The New World of Jay Jay the Jet Plane: The glitch ends up invading Tarrytown and assimilating everyone except for the child jet planes, who are forced to fend for themselves to survive.
• Barney & Friends: The titular character is so busy singing "I Love You" that he doesn't see the Darkness coming. Both the dinosaurs and humans are assimilated.
  • Alternatively, Barney, BJ, and Baby Bop are the sole survivors from their universe, being imaginary beings and all, helped by the fact Barney was in doll form at the time the Darkness passed through. Riff and the kids, however, were assimilated.
• Wild Kratts: The Kratt brothers and the villains are the only survivors, willingly forming an alliance after all the other characters and animals are assimilated.
• WordGirl: The character of the same name is the only survivor after barely escaping the Darkness that took over Fair City. Like Pibby and the other survivors on this list, she's so traumatized by the loss of her family, friends, and her own sidekick, that she can't even define enough words to describe it. Eventually, she also turns Darker and Edgier, and spends her time brooding over what happened.
• The MonsterVerse: The Darkness will start infecting several Titans, with possibly even Godzilla being consumed by it, whereas potentially Mothra and Kong might survive and even help Pibby.
• Blue's Clues: Pibby and her friends end up visiting a parody of this show, where they meet lookalikes of the supporting characters and a cyan-colored kitten that would be an Expy of Blue. Then, they end up making friends with a fun-loving and excited live-action Steve-Esque presenter (who later becomes a cartoon character after escaping his world). The darkness would consume the show's world (including the cyan cat the live-action host is friends with!), with the presenter being the only survivor. Just like Pibby and the other innocent survivors of this incident, the presenter would first be traumatized by losing his best friend and his world, and then he would slowly abandon his bubbly and innocent personality in favor of a Darker and Edgier personality.
• Scott The Woz is the only survivor of his world, along with the Blue Border.
• MeteoHeroes: The titular characters, along with Rita and Tempus, make it out alive. Everyone else, even Dr. Makina, isn't so lucky.
• Doctor Who: The TARDIS is able to provide a safe haven for Pibby and friends and any other survivors of the Darkness.
• The Remarkable Mr. King: Not even an obscure, but recent Animated Adaptation of a series of children's books is safe, as basically everyone except the titular protagonist and his friends would be consumed by the darkness. Despite all the trauma they experienced (e.g.: PJ Rabbit losing all of his siblings after they were assimilated), their personalities only changed a little. Pibby would also become close friends with PJ Rabbit due to reminding the former of Bun-Bun.
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2017): After the glitch arrives in Swallow Falls, Flint tries to use his inventions to stop it from assimilating the town, with no luck. Basically, everyone gets consumed, with Flint, Sam, Steve, and Gil being the only survivors as Pibby saves them and helps them escape. While the other survivors' personalities were unchanged, Flint was traumatized by the loss of his dad and his laboratory, and as a result he lost his innocence and became cynical.
• Kingdom Force: While trying to escape the glitch, Pibby ends up visiting other Cartoonito show universes, even acquired shows. One of them is Kingdom Force. King Cat ends up welcoming Pibby into his kingdom and gives her the title of an "honorary princess", much to the other beings in his kingdom's dismay. She ends up meeting Jabari, and they quickly become friends. All of a sudden, the titular team had to be summoned due to an emergency, but unfortunately, the emergency was the glitch arriving in their universe. They would try to fight back, but the glitch was far too powerful, and it ended up assimilating their world, so they had no choice but to escape their world.
• Gwain Saga: Teora is assimilated by the Darkness as Geo and Ami have no other choice but to join the group of survivors. Additionally, just like Pibby, Geo and Ami become edgier and more badass warriors.
• Sonic for Hire: Sonic's new job is to be a survivor. Despite being a jerk in the series, he is traumatized by the loss of his friends and helps Pibby and co. on their quest to defeat the Darkness.
• Odd Squad: Everyone, except for the main agents and Ms. O, is assimilated. They have to use their gadgets and math skills to stop the Darkness.
• Fruits Basket: No one, except for Tohru and the Sohma clan, was safe, as they were all assimilated by the Darkness.
• Work It Out Wombats!: Everyone in the Treeborhood gets assimilated except for the wombat kids, which traumatizes them.
• Clone High: All of the clones and their foster parents are assimilated, leaving Scudworth, Butlertron, and Candide as the only survivors.
• Fuwa Fuwa Foof: As incompetent or goofy as they can be, plenty of the concept show's characters aside from the main trio of Foof, Giri Giri and Kiri Kiri (who are the most obvious potential survivors) could survive the Darkness' attack to their universe and actively fight back. Foof, in particular, could serve as a major Foil to Pibby, given that she's had a not-too-different past experience as a criminal (which she still shows from time to time if provoked enough), and her cheery persona in the present is her attempt to move on from that past; traumatized or not, she'd be quick to take action in what can be seen as a temporary return to her past, even being able to team up with the rival gangs whom she's been trying to befriend.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: While everyone else in Philadelphia is assimilated, The Gang is spared because not even The Darkness would want to cross paths with them. Before Angel Xavier steps in and takes down The Darkness, Frank attempts to defeat it by shooting at it to no avail.
• Jem: The Holograms and The Misfits survived the assimilation of their dimension, as Synergy's holographic powers make Jerrica/Jem immune to The Darkness (Synergy formed a forcefield to protect the rest of The Holograms), while The Misfits only survived because they slept through it all.
• Rainbow Brite: Pibby and her friends eventually take refuge in Rainbowland, as it has numerous potential defenses against The Darkness. During one battle, Pibby and her friends view the Darkness consuming Rainbow, and just as they expect her to come out assimilated, they see a bright flash of light and Rainbow rising from The Darkness unscathed, quipping "You call that Rainbow Power?" as the other assimilated beings are spitting out rainbows, revealing that the Plucky Girl with already-existent rainbow powers is immune. Rainbow is also a major aversion of Break the Cutie, continuing to maintain her optimistic attitude, and believes those who've been assimilated can be "cured".
• Jenny Everywhere: Since Jenny exists in multiple universes at the same time, the various versions of her can help out Pibby and her crew.
• Family Guy: Brian, Stewie, Meg and Quagmire survived assimilation and end up assisting Pibby in her battle. Since Stewie has a ton of technology at his disposal, he could help find solutions to defending other worlds from The Darkness.
• American Dad!: Most of the citizens of Langley Falls survived assimilation, as Stan Smith used CIA technology to combat The Darkness, plus Roger has so many alter-egos that it confused The Darkness.
• All Elite Wrestling: A new stable is formed, comprised of "agents" of The Darkness who "assimilate" various AEW roster members. Among those who avoid assimilation is Orange Cassidy (because even The Darkness knows he's too lazy to do anything, much less be assimilated and fight Pibby) and Danhausen (considering how bizarre he is, and he might be a suspect in its creation at that).
• Inside Job (2021): Incognito Inc. attempts to cover up The Darkness, only for its staff to be assimilated.
• VeggieTales: Bob and Larry (or at least expys of them) are the sole survivors from their universe. They end up passing on spiritual advice to Pibby and her friends.
• Danny Phantom: Team Phantom manages to prevent The Darkness from assimilating the people of Amity Park, and assist Pibby at some point in their journey.
• Beavis And Butthead and Daria: Beavis and Butt-head become the sole survivors of their dimension, as, like The Misfits, they were asleep when The Darkness passed through. Daria moves in with them, as everyone else in Lawndale was assimilated.
• Trailer Park Boys: To no one's surprise, the residents of Sunnyvale Trailer Park are assimilated. However, Julian, Ricky, and Bubbles end up being spit out by The Darkness, not because they're immune, but because the trio is just too despicable and deranged for The Darkness to handle. Cue Pibby siding with them, even if they could care less about what happened or what the other survivors have faced, plus Julian and Bubbles turn out to be very Genre Savvy.
• Cyberchase: Given how the show is set in a digital environment, it could be a safe haven for Pibby and her friends. The Hacker could also be a suspect in the creation of The Darkness.
• Pee-wee's Playhouse: Everyone in Puppetland was spared, as Pee-wee Herman and the inhabitants of the Playhouse were just too wacky for The Darkness to handle.
• K-On!: Everyone was assimilated except for the members of Houkago Tea Time. Yui will be traumatized over losing her younger sister, Ui.
• Azumanga Daioh: All of the characters are assimilated, but bizarrely, Chiyo-Chichi survives.
• Lucky Star: All of Konata's family and friends are assimilated, leaving Konata to use her Genre Savvy nature to become an Action Survivor.
• Nichijou: The characters might have a chance to survive the Darkness, given the show's surreal nature. Mio will probably end up beating the shit out of it.
• Ouran High School Host Club: Everyone was assimilated except for the Host Club...and Renge, who, like Konata, will be Genre Savvy enough to figure out how to survive.
• Ranma ½: Everyone in Furinkan and China was assimilated, including Akane and her family. The only survivors are those with a Junsekyo curse (Ranma, Genma, Ryoga, Shampoo, Mousse).
• Haruhi Suzumiya: Because Haruhi is a Reality Warper, she probably had something to do with the Darkness, and is probably the only one that can make it go away, but it will be difficult because she doesn't know about her powers. As such, while the rest of the SOS Brigade survived, everyone else, including Tsuruya, Taniguchi, and Kyon's little sister, got assimilated.
• Di-Gata Defenders: The Defenders themselves survived assilimation, and are surprisingly Genre Savvy about what's going on.
• Winx Club: The Winx managed to prevent The Darkness from assimilating most of the denizens of their universe, though some didn't make it.
• hololive - Holo no Graffiti: The Darkness attempts to assimilate the members of hololive, and it probably would corrupt a few of the girls (like Gura for example), but the sheer random and chaotic nature of the series (and likely a few threats from Sora and Korone) would make it realize that it's best to leave the girls alone.
  Sora: [talking straight to The Darkness while holding Ayame's katana] Hololive is all about its friendly atmosphere, understand?
• Juuni Senshi Bakuretsu Eto Ranger: The Darkness attempts to assimilate the Eto Rangers, but their ability to erase outside changes to stories prevents it from doing so. Once Pibby defeats the Darkness, they are shown helping to reverse all the devastation... and then Bakumaru walks right up to Pibby and her friends and confronts her, telling her that he'll never forgive them for the amount of work they have to do now.
• W.I.T.C.H.: The Guardians and the Oracle sealed Meridian and Heatherfield off, preventing the Darkness from assimilating anybody in either locale. The Guardians end up helping Pibby at one point.
• Dragon Tales: Dragon Land ends up being assimilated in its entirety, with none of the dragons being spared. Thankfully, Max and Emmy weren't present at the time of destruction and thus were spared, with Pibby and company informing them of the destruction and immediately evacuate them before the entire show's universe ends up being corrupted.
• LazyTown: All of LazyTown ends up being corrupted, but four characters manage to survive, those being Robbie Rotten, Stingy, Mayor Meanswell and Ms. Busybody (I just think it would be very funny).

Potential animated film world appearances.

• Disney:
  • House of Mouse: This is to round up most of the film worlds: all the heroes and villains would fight the Darkness, only to be assimilated. Not even Mickey and his friends are safe.
  • Wreck-It Ralph: The Darkness comes in from the Internet, quickly consuming the Game Central Station as well as all the arcade worlds. Only Ralph, Vanellope, and Felix survive, them realizing this is something that even they can't fix.
  • The Nightmare Before Christmas: "What's this?" All the holiday worlds are consumed, while Jack, Sally, and Zero are the only survivors, realizing that Lock, Shock, and Barrel had nothing to do with the Darkness.
• Pixar:
  • Monsters, Inc.: It starts as a normal workday on the Laugh Floor, but once the doors are opened, the Darkness floods in and consumes everything, Mike and Sully being the sole survivors.
  • The Incredibles: The titular family is the only survivor after attempting to battle the Darkness with all the other superheroes in the world.
• DreamWorks Animation:
  • Trolls: While I'm not sure which characters would survive the Darkness, the franchise's universe features plenty of potential defenses against it, such as the wormholes.
  • Shrek: All of Far Far Away is consumed, along with the swamp. Shrek barely makes it out alive with his family, along with Donkey and Puss in Boots. Death could be a potential survivor too.
  • Rise of the Guardians: Pitch Black is blamed for the Darkness, but the Big Five immediately realize it isn't sand. They all attempt to battle it, only to be assimilated. Not even the Man in the Moon is safe.
  • The Bad Guys (2022): Mr. Wolf and his friends are in another high-speed car chase... driving away from the Darkness which keeps swallowing up police cars, Chief Luggins barely managing to escape into theirs.

Potential video game world appearances.

• Undertale: Characters like Sans and Flowey/Asriel who are aware of the multiverse manage to escape the Darkness but not before trying to save their loved ones from being assimilated. With the power of the gathered souls, they can hold off the glitch but not indefinitely. Even Flowey, who thought he'd seen it all by now is floored by this new eldritch horror consuming his world and is forced to work alongside Sans in saving the multiverse.
  • W.D. Gaster may be involved with the Darkness in some way...
• Five Nights at Freddy's: Alongside some of its fangames. Imagine Pibby and her friends trying to sneak past the animatronics, eventually witnessing them being assimilated. Not even William Afton is immune.
  • Being the godly being that he is, Flumpty from One Night at Flumpty's could be the most powerful character fighting back against the Darkness. Alternatively, he could serve as another antagonist to the main characters, mostly because he doesn't know why he does anything.
• Super Smash Bros.: Master Hand or Crazy Hand wouldn't be able to stop the Darkness, but they could damage it with their power before being assimilated.
  • The static could be a manifestation of Subspace.
  • The Darkness is what's left of both Galeem and Dharkon.
• Hello Neighbor: Pibby and her friends get caught by Mr. Peterson, but he sees the Darkness too late and gets an Oh, Crap! reaction before he gets dragged in.
• Cuphead: All of the Inkwell Isles are consumed by the Static. Even the Devil and King Dice are assimilated. Only Cuphead, Mugman, and Ms. Chalice are the sole survivors and will learn that it will take more than just finger guns to save the world...
• Spookys Jumpscare Mansion: Taking place after the events of the sequel game, Spooky's Dollhouse, just as Spooky is about to begin her new life, the glitch assimilates everyone in the afterlife, including her parents. Spooky attempts to get the protagonist to help her, but the protagonist also ends up assimilated by the glitch. This leaves Spooky as the sole survivor and must learn how to fight back, on her own, to save her unlikely friend and her friends and family from the afterlife. Spooky would end up sharing similar personalities with Pibby, with both girls facing the challenges of growing up.
• Bendy and the Ink Machine: "Wait, this isn't ink!" Even Ink Bendy and the other ink monsters get consumed.
• Dark Deception: Both Bierce and Malak attempt to fight the Darkness off, only to be pulled in.
• Amanda the Adventurer: Amanda comes out of the TV and attacks the trio in her demon form, only to be swallowed up by the Darkness before she even touches them (bonus points if she reverts back to her cartoon form and screams "Help me!" while that happens). Surprisingly, Wooly also comes out of the TV and manages to survive, running away with the others.
• Hotline Miami: Instead of exploding, the nuclear bombs that fall on Miami and Hawaii at the end of Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number serve as inexplicable spawn places for the Darkness to show up in the Hotline Miami universe. However, considering the mundane nature of the universe (putting ambiguously supernatural entities like Richard aside), it's safe to say that everyone in it would still get assimilated.
• Shin Megami Tensei: The Darkness meets its match with the Forces of Law led by YHVH and the Forces of Chaos led by Lucifer. What results is an Evil vs. Evil situation between the Darkness and the two factions and its demons. The spin-off games, on the other hand, the Darkness might have an easier time dealing with.
• Live A Live We will get a Hope Spot when we see that Oersted is immune to the Darkness giving everyone hope that he’ll be the key to stopping the Darkness … until he disappears back into his world. We get a scene revealing that the only reason he was immune to the Darkness was that he would eventually become the Darkness, in other words, The Darkness will be revealed to be another incarnation of the Demon King Odio.
• Klonoa:
  • Klonoa himself survives due to being able to travel between different Dream Worlds.
  • All of Phantomile ends up getting assimilated by the Darkness, as Lephise wasn't able to sing her Song of Rebirth in time.
  • Lunatea meets the same fate as Phantomile, save for Leorina and Tat, who make it out unscathed via their aircraft.
• NieR: The cast sees the Darkness consume a woman … just as they expect her to be assimilated like the rest they hear a voice underneath the corruption … “Get the fuck off me you slimy piece of shit” and the woman now revealed to be Kaine punches her way out unscathed revealing that the darkness can be resisted and there are people immune.
• Yakuza: While a number of the cast get assimilated, the Amon Clan not only survives but declares that, since the Darkness managed to defeat the likes of Kiryu and Majima, therefore the Darkness is more powerful than them and should not be allowed to exist as the Amons should be the most powerful beings in existence. They prove to be powerful allies, but not friendly to be around.
• Toontown Online: To the surprise of no one, the toons and cogs are assimilated. However, the doodles end up getting spit out by the Darkness, not because they’re immune, but because they’re so poorly coded (they put a massive strain on the servers when fans revived the game) that the Darkness can’t handle them. Cue everyone using doodles as weapons.
• Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing: The Truck drives through the Darkness harmlessly and continues doing its Big Rigs shenanigans as if nothing apocalyptic is happening. Unfortunately, it does nothing to help Pibby and her friends.
  • The enemy truck on the other hand, somehow does get infected. It is nigh useless to the static however because depending on the version of the game it will either be completely immobile or it will be extremely slow and whenever it does get close to infecting someone it completely stops in its tracks.
  • The Static can not affect the Fourth Track because of its ability to crash the game upon being selected which would kill the static. It can't be used as a safe haven though because again, it crashes the game.
• Danganronpa: Seeing as how his universe being destroyed would be considered quite unlucky, Nagito's luck cycle ends up saving him. The other survivors end up getting disturbed by him not seeming to care that the others got assimilated, with him just saying that the hope that will be created from something so despair-inducing will be truly wonderful. Either a confrontation from Pibby or seeing someone he knows in their assimilated state (likely Hajime, Chiaki, or both) causes his attitude to change, but not before some Broken Tears as the weight of the situation fully sinks in. When the Darkness is defeated, he says that the hope that has been created is indeed wonderful as he reunites with the people from his world.
  • Ooh, that would be really cool! Maybe Junko Enoshima could survive too, because she'd make a pretty cool rival who doesn’t want to help the main three stop the glitch because she just doesn’t give a crap and maybe even likes the despair it causes.
• DokiDokiLiteratureClub Just Monika! She, knowing that her world is a game, could potentially escape. The other three girls would most likely be assimilated, though. If that happens, Monika would likely be sad, but also at the same time not.
• Psychonauts: Not even psychics are immune to being infected by the static. When Raz and his friends confront Oleander, they discover that he's already been taken over by the static. Milla, Sasha, and Ford try to enter his mind to see what's going on, but only to fuse together to create a grotesque human-static blob.
  • Raz and Lili just barely manage to escape them, before discovering the rest of the camp has been infected as well. Soon the infected begin to corner the two, and just when things seem to be over for Raz and Lili, Pibby and co. arrive just in time to rescue them.
• A Hat in Time: Not even Snatcher is safe from the Glitch and in a massive dose of Be Careful What You Wish For, Mustache Girl is the Sole Survivor. Meaning that she finally gets to be the hero she always wanted to be and all the Mafia are dead, but at the cost of getting completely traumatized and getting faced with a bad guy, she has almost no chance of defeating. Part of Pibby meeting her might deal with her having to help Mustache Girl regain her fighting spirit.
• Kirby: Kirby defeats the glitch like every other eldritch horror he's encountered sparing everyone in Dreamland.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: Dr. Eggman attempts to use the Darkness as a weapon of mass destruction to conquer the world. Unfortunately, just like Chaos, Shadow and the Bio-Lizard, Solaris, Dark Gaia, and the Deadly Six, things go up in smoke faster than you can say "I'VE COME TO MAKE AN ANNOUNCEMENT!" Thanks to Chaos Control, Sonic, and his friends are able to escape the Darkness's rampage on their world so they can come up with a way to stop it.
• Super Mario Bros..: Everyone in the Mushroom Kingdom ends up getting assimilated, including the enemies. Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Rosalina, Pauline, Toad, Wario, Waluigi, and Bowser then join the trio on their journey to stop the darkness and save their universe.
• Cookie Run: Kingdom: All of Earthbread gets assimilated by the Darkness. Not even the Ancient Cookies and the Legendary Cookies are safe, with the sole survivors being Blackberry Cookie, Onion Cookie, Beet Cookie, Cherry Blossom Cookie, Cream Puff Cookie, Latte Cookie, Raspberry Cookie, Parfait Cookie, Moonlight Cookie, Cotton Cookie, Carol Cookie, Shining Glitter Cookie, and Caramel Arrow Cookie. With no kingdoms left, they join the survivors' team to find a plan to finish the darkness.
  • Building onto that, Latte Cookie might become a Parental Substitute to Pibby, with Cream Puff Cookie acting like an older sister figure.
  • If we're talking about Ovenbreak, then their world would be consumed as well. The sole survivors would be Cream Unicorn Cookie, Croissant Cookie, Blue Lily Cookie, Popping Candy Cookie, Shining Glitter Cookie, Pastel Meringue Cookie, Currant Cream Cookie, Black Garlic Cookie, and Blueberry Pie Cookie.
    • Alternatively, Blue Lily Cookie, Black Garlic Cookie, Shining Glitter Cookie, Pastel Meringue Cookie, and Currant Cream Cookie are the only ones who join Pibby's group.
  • As for Cookie Wars, because it has shut down, it becomes an easy casualty for the Darkness, and nobody makes it out alive. Not even the Jelly Walkers are safe, and that is where things turn From Bad to Worse for Pibby and her group...
• Bugsnax: The main trio finds themselves on Snaktooth Island but finds that a Grumpus has been glitched. This scares Filbo, causing him to run, but he runs into the static and gets assimilated. The Darkness spreads across Snaxburg. Lizbert, Eggabell, and the Journalist are the sole survivors who rescue Pibby and the trio on the balloon.
• Brawl Stars: I actually have a few theories for this one, each for a different trio, so stand back.
  • The Wild West Trio would probably not survive the static and wind up assimilated. Even Colt wouldn't be brave enough to turn the tide against it.
  • The Super City Heroes would try to deal with the thing, but even their powers aren't enough to stop it and they'd be assimilated.
  • The Stunt Trio would survive and become a family of warriors who help Pibby on her journey.
  • The Goldarm Gang would mistake the static for a valuable that they can steal, so they decide to try to steal it, only to be swallowed up, with Pearl being the Sole Survivor. Eventually, she would move away from her warm personality and help Pibby and her team fend off the darkness.
  • Even The Mortuary Trio wouldn't survive. Despite his dashing speed, Mortis can't escape, Frank isn't even strong enough to stop the Darkness and EMZ would learn that her hairspray has no effect on the glitch the hard way.
  • The Old Town Trio survives. Barley and Byron grab Piper who escapes the glitch via her flying umbrella.
  • Edgar is the Sole Survivor of his trio, joining Pibby and co. to fight the static.
  • For the Brawlywood Duo, Gray escapes the glitch via a portal, taking Lola with him.
    • Alternatively, Gray is the only survivor of his duo, with Lola being assimilated as she tries to confront the glitch all the while quoting classic movies.
  • In fact, all of Starr Park would be assimilated.
• My Singing Monsters: All of the Monster World gets assimilated, with Tawkerr and Parlsona being the Sole Survivors of their world. With their ability to speak English, they both tried to warn the monsters about the oncoming danger, but neither of them had their warnings heeded, leading to all the monsters, one by one, being assimilated.
  • If we're on the topic of Dawn of Fire, not even the Continent or the Outer Islands are safe. Yep, all those baby monsters are gone.
• Team Fortress 2: The RED Team and the BLU Team would team up to defeat the darkness with Pibby and co.
• Overwatch: Just like TF2, the characters would join Pibby and co. to defeat the darkness after it assimilated their world.
• Touhou Project: All of Gensokyo gets assimilated, leaving Reimu and Marissa the only survivors.
• Minecraft: Steve and Alex are the sole survivors of their universe.
• Helltaker: Out of all characters, Lucifer is the Sole Survivor. Her personality might drastically change during the apocalypse after seeing people like the Helltaker assimilated by the Darkness.
• Neopets: Queen Fyora was able to fend off The Darkness and prevent it from assimilating the Neopians.

Comic book world appearances

• Bigfoot & Gray on the Run: The Darkness ends up becoming the most notorious unidentified object Agents Daye and Knight ever saw, and they barely make it out of being consumed after Bigfoot and Gray were unfortunately assimilated. They then vow to find a way to bring down the Darkness with the other survivors.
• Bone: The main trio, Rose, and Red are the only survivors, barely escaping after the Darkness consumes Thorn Valley, as well as all the other dragons.
• Amulet: Emily, her family, and Trellis are the only survivors after the Glitch consumes Alledia.
• Scott Pilgrim: Even if their respawning abilities would be useless against the Darkness, plenty of the comic's characters could survive with the right skills, equipment, and situational circumstances.

Potential toy world appearances.

• "LEGO": Not many of the characters from all of Lego's themes survive as even if they could build anything, the darkness could CONSUME everything.

Always a Bigger Fish will be in effect

The static-like mass will eventually meet its match in the form of a lone individual who introduces himself with a single word: "Frittata".

• Xavier is the perfect counter to the Static for multiple reasons.
  • If the blob represents internet culture and memes, then Xavier should, logically, be immune as it's impossible to make a "Meme" out of him, due to how anything you could think of would be perfectly in character for him.
  • Xavier seems to fuck with reality even worse than the corruption can and is also shown to be capable of making the fourth wall his plaything.
  • Alternatively, Xavier could very well be responsible for the Static considering this would not be the first time he did something like this.

Some mysterious characters will show up, be immune, and be implied to be from Sym-Bionic Titan and Megas XLR

• Those shows were written off for tax purposes, meaning that without filing the serial numbers off, Time Warner can never use their characters again as long as the United States exists as a nation. Since they're filing off said serial numbers, they could use a Disney write-off too: Ned Needlemeyer.
  • Given not even Megas XLR and Sym-Bionic Titan being written off could stop OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes from having the characters make cameos, it's likely Warner Bros. only wrote off the rights to broadcast the shows, not the rights to use the characters in other projects.

Peter Griffin will be The Cavalry

Just imagine, Pibby watched hopelessly as all her friends- everyone- were absorbed into the darkness. Soon, the only ones left were Alloy Boy, Melira, and herself- the former two were quickly swept up by the glitching void. What was there to save other than herself? She felt alone as the corrupted abyss called out her name, beckoning her to accept and embrace its maw. Everyone was gone- all the friends she had made in her home world and in others. Bun-bun... she missed him deeply... So deeply, in fact, that as she began thinking about him she fell to her knees, sobbing. She had lost everything to this creature, and she couldn't even comprehend what it was, or why it was doing this. The entire cartoon universe had been swept away by it with little effort, and she was about to be its last meal. "Why...? Wh... Why are you d-doing this...?!" As she cried to herself, the darkness called out her name louder- it was using Bun-bun's voice. It was trying to abuse her memories, it was toying with her. That was the last straw.All she wanted was to go back to before everything happened- back to when she was happy, in her home world, with all her friends, Ska, Crock, Ms. Bugg, Sunny, Luna... Bun-bun... With a last-ditch effort, she picked up her sword and ran towards the malfunctioning blob using the hollow, empty husk of her best friend's face, preparing to attack it one final time. "YOU MONSTER!!!" She shouted aloud to it, yet it remained unfazed. With one fell swoop, it absorbed her, finally completing its collection. Suddenly Peter Griffin bursts out of the darkness and then engages the glitch in a network-spanning Chicken Fight.

• Unlikely. Peter probably won't be able to appear in any role on [adult swim] originals other than appearances on some short parodies on Robot Chicken, given his show is now owned by Disney (thanks to them buying out Fox in 2019- which includes this show but notably excludes the network itself, Fox News, and other over-the-air Fox ventures). Alternatively, if Peter does somehow appear, they might do what South Park did and slightly alter his appearance.
  • That's the point though. Peter was the only thing preventing the Static from coming and consuming everything. Somehow.
  • Unlikely, but I like how you made a whole scene description.

If the series gets a second season, it will start this way

Pibby, Alloy Boy, and Melira heal every single corrupted being and are about to finish off the Glitch when suddenly, the Glitch vanishes before it can be destroyed. The skies turn blood red, the clouds turn pitch-black and the screams of tortured people start assaulting everybody's ears. Suddenly, a glitchy inhumanly tall silhouette manifests in front of Pibby and says one line:"Problems with heroes...?"

Related to the theory above the characters will try to escape into the Netflix verse thinking they would be safe there but they are quickly revealed to be wrong.

This means characters from Bojack Horseman, Disenchantment, Hilda, Voltron: Legendary Defender, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and more will all be shown to be corrupted by the static blob as well. Again means NO media is safe.

Pibby will tie into MultiVersus in some way.

Maybe The Static is the villain of that game, and the events of Pibby come from The Static going haywire and escaping the game, with its goal to assimilate all the WB characters left intact. Or maybe Multiversus is the result of all the WB characters banding together to defeat The Static, a la Fusionfall.

• Jossed. The main antagonist of the game will be The Nothing.
  • Maybe they're connected somehow?

There will be a crossover with Smiling Friends…and will end with the Main Characters getting a weapon to defeat the corruption once and for all.

• Since where else would a weapon to defeat a seemingly unstoppable force be…in a show as deranged and nonsensical as Smiling Friends?
  • Alternatively, the Static is not affected by that weapon. Cue Charlie saying "Welp, I'm out of ideas." Enter Xavier, who may save the Smiling Friends from assimilation at the last minute.

Rob from The Amazing World of Gumball knew.

• In the episode The Inquisition at the end Rob laments how he was trying to save everyone by making them human, what if he knew and could see the glitch blob and noticed the real-life things weren’t affected (for example: the grape juice commercial with the kid. In short, the fact that we see Gumball in the Static could be a confirmation of what Rob was trying to do.
  • Highly unlikely, on the account of not only the Modus Operandi of both The Void and The Darkness being entirely different, if not completely opposite, from each other (removing mistakes while erasing evidence and memories of the deemed mistake, and assimilating any and everything regardless of being, respectively). But also how the April Fools 2022 explicitly shows that Live Action based things are not safe nor exempt from it. At BEST, Rob THINKS that he knows more about what's going on than everyone else. But in reality, he knows about as much as, if not EVEN LESS than, everyone else. Which is absolutely nothing until the end, even if he even makes it that far.

The events of Learning With Pibby were just a nightmare that Darwin had.

Darwin ate too many fluffernutter sandwiches before bed and had this strange dream wherein he and his family were turned into glitchy monsters by this strange ooze and a preschool show character was the universe's last hope and was going around killing other infectees. He woke up as she was passing through the strange shows that air on the cartoon channel late at night. When he recounted the dream to Gumball, he simply told him to stop eating fluffernutter sandwiches before bed.

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