Today is the anniversary of the first episode of Invader Zim first airing on Nickelodeon. The show is a true oddity. The show was created by the horror cartoonist Jhonen Vasquez, who at the time was best known for his comic "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac" which is exactly what it sounds like. Anyway Nickelodeon wanted a cartoon based off the relatively kids friendly JTHM spinoff "Squee", but took the original concept of a hapless but determined alien invader instead.
The other big deal with this cartoon is it has freeze frame easter eggs of character "Gir" covered in blood hidden in a good chunk of the show's episodes. Known as "Bloody Gir", the image would appear small and transparent for singular frames of animation and is said to be present in the last 14 of the show's 27 episodes. There is an urban legend that this easter egg got the show canceled, but the show's crew says Nickelodeon didn't know about it till the show was already canned and nobody from the network gave a hoot.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: While it seems bizarre for Nickelodeon to approach a cartoonist known for mature content to adapt their work for kids, this wasn’t the last time Nick would do this– and the second time it actually worked. The cartoon “Catscratch” uses the main characters of creator Doug TenNapel’s comic series Gear, albeit in a very different setting. In Catscratch, three cats are living like goofy aristocats in an inherited mansion. In Gear, there’s no mansion, but there is a fourth cat who is slaughtered in a gang war in issue #1. Fun times!]
You already know this is my favorite cartoon. But yeah I don't know what was in the water at Nick where they wanted a JTHM spinoff cartoon, but boy did they technically get it and then the budget was runed by cgi nuts. So that's something