Smiling Friends is an Australian-American adult animated television series created by Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack for Cartoon Network's night-time programming block Adult Swim, which revolves around the surreal misadventures of a small company and its four employees dedicated to spreading happiness.

Smiling Friends utilizes a variety of different styles and techniques to bring its characters to life. This includes but is not limited to stylized traditional animation, CGI, rotoscoping, stop motion, and live-action.

The pilot episode aired April 1, 2020, unannounced as part of Adult Swim's annual April Fools' Day event alongside the premiere of Cusack's other series, YOLO. On May 19, 2021, Adult Swim ordered a full season that was initially set to premiere in late 2021.^[4] A panel dedicated to the series was held during the Adult Swim Festival on November 12, 2021, where co-creator Zach Hadel mentioned the show will premiere "within a few months", pushing the release schedule ahead to 2022.^[5] The first season contains nine episodes, including the pilot and an 11-minute special.^[6][7][8] The first season eventually premiered on January 10, 2022, with Adult Swim airing all episodes of the season, except for the special, in one night despite initial plans for a weekly release.^{[9][3][lower-alpha 1]}

The series received positive reviews, and was renewed for a second season on February 9, 2022;^[10] the season premiere aired on April 1, 2024,^[11] with the rest of the season officially set to premiere starting on May 12.^[12][13]

The series follows the day-to-day lives and misadventures of a business dedicated to bringing happiness to its customers. A quartet of iconic employees: optimistic Pim, cynical Charlie, deadpan Allan, and minute Glep, along with their eccentric superior Mr. Boss, try to help out the troubled people who call their company's hotline; this usually proves to be more challenging than anticipated due to the often deep-seated nature of their clients' problems.

Smiling Friends was created by animators Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack, noted for their individual successes as content creators for Newgrounds and YouTube. Already well-acquainted with each other online, the pair conceived the idea for the show in 2017 whilst dining at Gus's Chicken in Burbank, California, where Cusack, who is based in Melbourne, Australia,^[25] was visiting at the time. Hadel stated in an interview that the pair's goal for the show was to base it around "a group of loveable characters, with a simple kind of concept, which we could take anywhere we wanted to." They settled upon the premise of a hotline for people who were unhappy, which became "the connective tissue that made it all click together." However, Hadel stated that although "the company is an important aspect of the show, it’s really the springboard. We have episodes where it’s not even about the job at all." The pair singled out South Park and Seinfeld as amongst the show's biggest influences. The duo developed the show's art style as a 50/50 blend of their own individual styles, though Cusack noted that his own drawings tend to go through a "final Zach gloss".^[26][27] Early in development, the series went under the working title Little Helpers, with an entirely different cast.

Hadel and Cusack pitched the series to Adult Swim which subsequently greenlit production on the pilot in 2018. Hadel had previously attempted to sell his and Chris O'Neill's webseries Hellbenders to the network, but the project was not picked up while an independently produced pilot was shelved during production. Meanwhile, Cusack created the Rick and Morty short Bushworld Adventures which premiered during an April Fools stunt on the network in 2018, and also created the series YOLO: Crystal Fantasy which premiered on August 10, 2020.

The Smiling Friends pilot, which the pair consider the first official episode, aired on Adult Swim on April 1, 2020, to positive reviews^[28] and became the most viewed episode of any show on the network's website.^[10] The network subsequently ordered seven additional episodes in May 2021. Serving as showrunners, Hadel and Cusack were hands on in all aspects of production, from writing, storyboards, character designs, final animation and sound design, which the duo considered unusual for an adult animated series. According to Hadel, the budget for the entire first season was equivalent to that of a single episode of Family Guy (an estimated US$2,000,000).^[27][29]

The show is primarily animated in Australia by Princess Bento Studio, which is a joint venture between the Australian media company Princess Pictures and the American animation studio Bento Box Entertainment. The studio has additionally worked on Cusack's other animated series, such as season 2 of YOLO and the Hulu original series Koala Man.

Adult Swim renewed the series for a second season on February 9, 2022.^[30]

On May 18, 2022, Hadel announced on Twitter that a special would be released sometime before the second season.^[31] A listing for an episode titled "The Smiling Friends Go to Brazil!" appeared on Rotten Tomatoes on July 21, and was confirmed by Hadel and Cusack at Adult Swim's San Diego Comic Con panel the next day. It aired on August 6, 2022. Lead-in promotion to the episode purposely suggested a more conventional vacation episode than what was actually presented, with a poster of the Smiling Friends relaxing on a Brazilian beach,^[32] and a summary suggesting that the episode would be about the gang relaxing in a beautiful Brazilian beach town.^[33]

During Adult Swim's panel at New York Comic Con in October 2023, it was confirmed that the second season would premiere in 2024, and would include a variety of animation styles, such as stylized 2D, 3D, stop motion, and live-action content.^[34]

The pilot initially premiered on Adult Swim in the United States and Canada on April 1, 2020, during the network's April Fools premiere event.^[35]

The series officially premiered on January 10, 2022, at 12:00 a.m. with the episodes "Mr. Frog" and "Shrimp's Odyssey". The rest of the series was then broadcast in an unannounced premiere marathon in its entirety starting from 12:30 a.m. followed by a repeat at 3:00 a.m. The episodes would re-air with two separate episodes airing in the intended premiere slots for the following 4 weeks afterwards, including another marathon on the night of February 13, most likely to pick up viewers tuning away from the end of Super Bowl LVI, as well as to promote the series' availability through HBO Max and the recent news of renewal for the series.^[36]

In Canada, the series premiered simultaneously on Adult Swim with new episodes airing weekly. The series later premiered on E4 in the United Kingdom on January 21, 2022, and Adult Swim in France on January 24, 2022.^[37][38]

The series was made available to stream on HBO Max in the United States and StackTV in Canada on February 9, 2022.^[39][40]

The second season began with the season premiere airing on April Fools Day 2024 during the annual Adult Swim April Fools Day prank, with three episodes from season 1, remade with various types of puppetry, shown prior. The remaining second season episodes are scheduled to premiere beginning May 12.^[12][13]

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment released the first season on DVD and Blu-ray on August 29, 2023.^[41]

Lex Briscuso of New York Magazine praised the show’s tone and animation style, particularly its use of "unnerving close-up cuts and creepy supporting character design".^[42] Margaret Lyons of The New York Times praised the show's humor and compared it favorably to Aqua Teen Hunger Force.^[43] Noah Dominguez of Comic Book Resources also made this comparison, and additionally praised the show as "unique" and commended its "bizarre humor" and "surrealist tone."^[28]