[2] Debuting sometime in 2000, Happy Tree Friends has achieved a cult following on Mondo's website and YouTube channel and expanded into a multimedia franchise, which includes the television series of the same name.

[3] While working with Mondo Media, Rhode Montijo drew a character on a piece of scrap paper who would later become Shifty.

He then drew a yellow rabbit that bore some resemblance to Cuddles, writing "Resistance is futile" underneath it on a spreadsheet poster.

Although the first episodes of Happy Tree Friends were produced in 1999, it debuted online sometime in 2000 and became an unexpected success, getting over 15 million hits each month[1][5] along with screenings at film festivals.

"[14] It was announced on August 17, 2023, that a new Happy Tree Friends episode would be released on September 27 to tie into the downloadable content for the shoot 'em up video game The Crackpet Show (titled The Crackpet Show: Happy Tree Friends Edition), which was released on the same day.

It intentionally misleads first-time viewers into thinking it is a children's animated edutainment series, with the show's regular opening and closing sequences being in the form of the Little Golden Books,[17] and all main characters (except Lumpy and Sniffles) sharing a Care Bears-esque design (pie-eyes, heart-shaped noses, mitten hands, and boot-shaped feet).

[citation needed] The Canadian channel Razer (now MTV2) aired the show in syndication with then-sibling television network Citytv,[19] and then OLN.

An example of this happened in 2005, when American author and journalist Katherine Ellison expressed her feelings about it to The Washington Post after witnessing her six-year-old son watch it.

"[26] Fall Out Boy's 2007 music video for their song "The Carpal Tunnel of Love" was directed by Kenn Navarro and stars characters from the series.

In 2014, Kenn Navarro created D_Void, a show similar to Happy Tree Friends; only 2 episodes had been produced for the series.