10 Mind-Blowing Facts You Didn't Know About The Teen Titans Cartoon

Why did the fan-favourite series have to end, and why did it change so much when it returned?

by Ewan Paterson
Teen Titans Facts
Warner Bros.

If you were growing up during the early noughties and liked superheroes, you basically had it made. VHS copies of Batman: The Animated Series were readily available, Fox Kids provided hourly re-runs of the nineties Spider-Man and X-Men cartoons, and then Cartoon Network and Toonami had such beauties as Batman Beyond, Justice League, and X-Men: Evolution running near enough every day.

Another superhero show to emerge during the beginning of the 2000s was Teen Titans, an anime-inspired animated series based on the DC comic of the same name. It was an instant success, and while unconnected to the revered DC Animated Universe, Teen Titans still manages to illicit fond memories from those who grew up watching it to this day.

The series, developed by Glen Murakami and Sam Register, may have differed in a great many ways to the other superhero shows of the time, but it was no less popular or mature. The show managed to juggle adult themes with genuine comedy to great effect, and with the advent of Teen Titans Go! in 2013, it's still going strong well over a decade later.

That said, there's still a TON of stuff Teen Titans fans may not know about the show, ranging from behind-the-scenes changes, to the elusive question of why exactly it was cancelled in the first place...

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.