What is The Amazing World Of Gumball?

It's a British animated Cartoon Network series created by Ben Bocquelet about a blue cat named Gumball and his adopted goldfish brother Darwin, known for mixing 2D, CGI, live-action and puppet elements in the same frame.

Where did The Amazing World Of Gumball come from?

The pilot was pitched to Adult Swim between 2008 and 2010 and rejected for being too cute, then retooled for Cartoon Network and premiered on May 31st, 2011.

What does The Amazing World Of Gumball mean?

As a meme reference, it usually points to the show's fan edit scene, especially anime restyles, humanized redraws, and out-of-context clip reposts of surreal moments like The Void dimension.

How do you use The Amazing World Of Gumball?

Fan versions typically keep a Gumball scene's original audio and swap the visuals into a new style, like Mike Inel's anime recreation of The Tape, so the humor comes from the clash of styles.

Is The Amazing World Of Gumball still popular?

The regular series ended in June 2019 with specials wrapping in 2021, but the show kept generating fan edits and reposts on DeviantArt, YouTube and 4chan's /co/ board after that.

The Amazing World Of Gumball

2011animated series / fan edit memeclassic

Published October 1, 2026

The Amazing World of Gumball is a British animated series created by Ben Bocquelet that premiered on Cartoon Network in May 2011 and ran six seasons before wrapping in 2019. Beyond the show itself, its mixed-media art style and quotable scenes spawned a sprawling online fandom that produced some of the 2010s' most-shared cartoon fan edits, including a viral anime-style recreation that racked up millions of views.

cartoon network memes fan art memes animation memes childrens media memes deviantart memes

Overview

The show mashes 2D animation, CGI, puppetry, stop-motion and live-action backgrounds into a single frame, which gave fan artists an unusually rich palette to remix. The main cast is Gumball Watterson, a 12-year-old blue cat, and his adopted goldfish brother Darwin, whose troublemaking drives most episodes1. Common Sense Media described it as a cartoon full of silly laughs and scrapes aimed at the 8-and-up crowd1.

The meme-adjacent legacy sits mostly in fan edits: anime restyles, humanized character redraws, out-of-context clip reposts, and screencap reactions pulled from the show's more surreal moments like The Void dimension1. 4chan's /co/ board and DeviantArt built up massive archives of this material over the show's run2, and specific scenes like the episode The Tape kept getting recut long after they first aired2.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Cartoon Network (series) / YouTube and DeviantArt (fan edits)

Creator

Ben Bocquelet

Date

2011

Ben Bocquelet pitched the original pilot, titled simply Gumball, to Adult Swim between 2008 and 2010; it was reportedly turned down for being too cute for the block's tone3. Bocquelet retooled it for Cartoon Network, and the first two episodes aired on May 31st, 20112. The show ran for six seasons and 240 episodes, with the final regular episode airing June 24th, 2019 and specials following into 20212.

As a meme object rather than just a show, the big inflection point came on January 18th, 2015, when YouTube and DeviantArt user Mike Inel uploaded a video reimagining the episode The Tape as a Japanese anime, humanizing the entire cast2. The clip pulled in millions of views within months and set the template for the fan art wave that followed2.

How It Spread

The subreddit r/gumball opened on May 2nd, 2011, the day after the premiere, and grew steadily alongside the show's run2. The fandom's center of gravity sat on DeviantArt and 4chan's /co/ board, where thousands of threads and keyword hits built up over the following years2. The series also picked up critical attention, including a BAFTA Kids award and strong user scores on IMDb and TV.com2.

Mike Inel's anime recreation of The Tape is the single clip most responsible for pushing the show into general meme circulation. On the same day as the full recreation, Inel posted a side-by-side comparison video breaking down the shot-for-shot work, which also pulled over a million views2. Both clips kept resurfacing on YouTube compilation channels and anime-reaction accounts for years.

The show's own gag-heavy style, where background characters range from dinosaurs to disembodied limbs, gave edit-makers a bottomless supply of reaction frames. Clip reposts of Richard's unhinged lines and Nicole's wall-punching rages kept Gumball in regular rotation on cartoon meme accounts well past the 2019 finale1 4.

Timeline

2008

Ben Bocquelet begins pitching the original Gumball pilot to Adult Swim.

2011-05-02

The r/gumball subreddit is created the day before the show's premiere[2].

2011-05-31

The first two episodes of The Amazing World of Gumball premiere on Cartoon Network[2].

2015-01-18

Mike Inel uploads the anime-style recreation of the episode The Tape, which hits millions of views within months[2].

2019-06-24

The final regular episode of the sixth season airs[2].

2021

The last specials wrap up Cartoon Network's original run of the show[2].

How to Use This Meme

Fan versions typically take a specific Gumball scene (The Tape, a Void sequence, a Richard freakout) and recut it in another visual language: anime restyle, live-action lipsync, horror edit, or shitpost caption. The common convention is to keep the audio from the show intact and swap only the visuals, so the joke is the clash between familiar dialogue and a new art style.