Shark Week was a couple weeks ago. I don’t watch it, but marketing would lead you to believe its a big deal. At least, when you use HBO Max and often watch the Cartoon Network, like I do. One difference this year, however, is that several pieces of media on Cartoon Network and Adult Swim seemed to mention programs on Discovery more directly than they had in the past. 

“Teen Titans Go!”, a 10 minute comedy centric cartoon focusing on the young DC heroes, honestly had a clever way of dealing with this strong arm of Warner Bros. Discovery marketing. During Shark Week, the team is joined by King Shark (seen in both the recent videogame and film adaptations of Suicide Squad). Multiple episodes throughout the week feature the character, and they even change the theme song to let the audience know that its officially “King Shark Week”. Before I saw the other examples in this article, I simply thought they were merely poking fun. 

After the closing of Cartoon Network Studios, “Teen Titans Go!” is one of the only shows on the air still currently producing new episodes. Several other relatively recent cartoons fill the air time around it, but the ads will lead you to believe that mainly for CN’s slate, Teen Titans Go! is the only one that isn’t a repeat. 

Adult Swim felt quite a bit more direct. Beyond this year’s “Common Side Effects”, and last year’s second season of “Smiling Friends” and “Royal Crackers”, the late night block hasn’t had too much new original content. Except, of course, “Rick and Morty” and the occasional “Robot Chicken” special.

“Rick and Morty” didn’t specifically mention it being Shark Week, I believe. There is, however, a running gag about “Naked and Afraid”, the Discovery Channel show that has been running since 2013. Now, this episode in question (“Nomortland”, Season 8, Episode 7), did air the week before Shark Week started. But it being so close to the Robot Chicken special featuring Discovery shows, and “King Shark Week”, it felt quite close to be coincidental. I mean, this was the episode right after “Rick and Morty” an episode featuring James Gunn, right before Superman released in theaters (another Warner Bros. Discovery ‘subtle’ marketing tactic, in my honest opinion). I’m honestly not even sure if they are trying to hide it or make it so obvious that it’s a poor imitation of that bit from Wayne’s World. I find these deliberate references quite glaring as the last time “Rick and Morty” talked about Discovery, it was an example of a world only making content to make people depressed in my favorite episode of Season 7, “That’s Amorté”. 

The same day Shark Week began this year, “Robot Chicken” aired its first episode since 2022. It was a special, 22 minute long episode titled the “Self-Discovery” special. Get it? The episode is what you’d expect from Robot Chicken, different dated parodies of every popular Discovery reality show. Guy Fieri visits Gargamel from the Smurfs in an episode of “Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives”. The “Ghost Adventures” crew bumps into the Scooby Gang. Batman and Catwoman go on “Naked and Afraid”. I can only imagine it was a short day in the writers room. The episode ends with several of the Robot Chicken characters and the cameos throughout the episode face to face with a giant shark, with The Nerd exclaiming something along the lines of “oh no, it’s Shark Week!!”. Then the episode ends, and after it airs, an ad for watching Discovery Channel’s Shark Week directly follows. It even tells you that it’s happening right now, implying you should stop watching Adult Swim and change the channel to watch “Dancing with Sharks”. 

To me, this feels like the conglomerate giving it all they got in one last attempt to show how this was not a frivolous merger. As far as I’m aware, the experiment of Warner Bros. Discovery has mostly been a failure. From the outside looking in, they appear to be grasping at straws; HBO Max changing its name by cutting off the prestige brand and bringing it back, rebooting Harry Potter despite the natural toxicity surrounding the franchise, selling off sequels and spin-offs of their cartoons to Amazon Prime and Hulu, attempts at cancelling multiple theatrical Looney Tunes films, squeezing out content from the Sesame Street gang and then throwing them to the curb. Cartoon Network and Adult Swim’s forced marketing of Discovery was their last desperate try of making the merger make sense.