The Elephant: Our Preview of Tonight's Adult Swim Animation Event

Posted in: Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, Current News, TV | Tagged: The Elephant

The Elephant: Our Preview of Tonight's Adult Swim Animation Event

Check out our preview for tonight's Adult Swim's The Elephant - with Rebecca Sugar, Ian Jones-Quartey, Patrick McHale, and Pendleton Ward.

Published Fri, 19 Dec 2025 20:37:03 -0600
by Ray Flook
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Article Summary

• Adult Swim's The Elephant premieres tonight, uniting animation stars in a bold storytelling experiment.
• Rebecca Sugar, Ian Jones-Quartey, Patrick McHale, and Pendleton Ward each craft separate acts in secret.
• Acts are combined to reveal one unpredictable narrative, guided by game masters Jack Pendarvis and Kent Osborne.
• The event is followed by a behind-the-scenes documentary, exploring the creative experiment’s unique process.

Tonight, Rebecca Sugar (Steven Universe), Ian Jones-Quartey (OK K.O.!), Patrick McHale (Over the Garden Wall), and Pendleton Ward (Adventure Time) roll out the end result of a very cool animation experiment known as Adult Swim's The Elephant. But what is "The Elephant"? That's the cool part, because we kind of know, yet we also kind of don't know (and neither did the major creators involved). The animated special event features one team being responsible for one of three acts… without any knowledge of what the others were creating. We have Sugar and Jones-Quartey working as a duo, with McHale and Ward each taking on a chapter. With Titmouse producing, Jack Pendarvis and Kent Osborne serve as the "game masters," with the storytelling experiment culminating in a single, surprise narrative that's set to hit TONIGHT at 11:00 p.m. ET/PT on Adult Swim (next day on HBO Max).

Here's a look at what Ward and McHale had to share about tonight's animated event, along with the official trailer (above) and preview images throughout the post.

Pendleton Ward on Getting Involved with "The Elephant": "Well, it's cool to be involved in experimental art. I think it all started the beginning of this past year. It all happened pretty quickly. It wasn't hard to pull me back in. All they had to do was just ask me if I wanted to collaborate on an Exquisite Corpse project [a collaborative game where players add to a drawing without seeing previous contributions, creating wild and bizarre artworks] with my friends.

My assignment was to do the first part of the three-part project. I got to work, and I burned out and needed some help, so I asked my friends Thomas Herpic and Abby Magno to help me out and do the rest of the boards. After that, I was able to just hand it all off to Beto Irigoyen and Pato Bauza (aka Pato Aqua) — I was a big fan of their collective online, and they wanted to work with Studio Ruda in Argentina, and I wanted to work with them. They all just went to town, and made it beautiful."

Patrick McHale on What the Best Part of "The Elephant" Was? "The amount of trust given to me by the executives (and the other directors) was really special. It's a very strange and unnerving experience to be in a position where the executives know more about the story than the director does. It would have been impossible for me to defend my decisions against harsh notes because they actually knew more than me about the full story. But luckily everyone was up for this weird game and very supportive of letting me succeed or fail on my own. It was also just a great opportunity to hire some really fantastic artists — a mix of friends, people I've always wanted to work with, and lots of new lovely people I met along the way."

Following the animated event, Adult Swim will also debut the behind-the-scenes documentary "Behind the Elephant," alongside an encore airing of the special on December 20th, and on HBO Max. Viewers will be offered a rare look into the creative process behind the event, featuring interviews and footage from the production. The documentary highlights the unique challenges and discoveries that made the project a truly original experience — for both the audience and the creators themselves.

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