Aqua Teen Hunger Force "Boston" (found unfinished episode of Adult Swim animated comedy series; 2008)

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One of the LED devices that sparked panic in Boston in 2007.

Status: Found


On January 31, 2007, what is now known as the 2007 Boston bomb scare took place; LED Mooninite signs (Mooninites being characters from Adult Swim's animated series Aqua Teen Hunger Force aka ATHF) that had been placed around Boston as as part of a guerilla marketing campaign by Interference, Inc. (a company who specialises in such forms of advertising) and spearheaded by Interference's John aka VJ AIWAZ and Boston artist Peter Berdovsky aka Zebbler for the then-upcoming Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters caused panic and controversy after being mistakenly identified as improvised explosive devices by both the Boston Fire Department and the Boston Police Department. The incident led to Turner Broadcasting and Interference being required to pay a combined 2 million dollars in damages, plus the resignation of Cartoon Network general manager and executive vice president Jim Samples.[1]

In response to the incident, an episode of ATHF titled "Boston" (intended as Season 5's opening episode) was produced, although it was never aired due to Adult Swim's fear of inciting any further backlash regarding the incident. Since the episode's creation, it has only been publicly discussed on a few rare occasions by ATHF creators Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro; aside from said discussions, the only other official acknowledgement of "Boston"'s existence was in an episode listing that appeared on Adult Swim's now-defunct ATHF website, where its description was given simply as a question mark. The episode is said to have gone through several re-writes and edits (due to intervention from Adult Swim, who were on the fence regarding the episode throughout its entire production period), resulting in the existence of a total of 3 different versions of "Boston", all of which were ultimately rejected; scant more information on the episode has been divulged and when asked whether or not the it was ever going to receive a release, Willis replied "Yes, as soon as Boston gives us back our money." implying that there are no plans for the episode to ever see the light of day.[2][3]

Notably, following the release of "Rude Removal" (the infamous unaired episode of Dexter's Laboratory), which came to fruition largely as a result of fan interest, campaigning and word of mouth, a campaign was organised by Pan-Pizza (a prevalent online animation commentator who had previously campaigned, via petitions and the like, to have "Rude Removal" released), though unfortunately, Adult Swim gave no response of any kind.

On January 31, 2015, exactly 8 years to the day of the bomb scare, a somewhat incomplete version of "Boston" leaked onto YouTube. It went virtually undiscovered until early April, when several news websites reported on the incident. While the original upload has since been removed from YouTube, other YouTube users have re-uploaded the episode, and several mirrors of the episode are available on various file-hosting websites.

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