The Untold Truth Of Toonami

Remember TOM 4? According to DeMarco, TOM's smiling, blinking incarnation was conceived by Akins as an attempt to reconnect with Cartoon Network's primary viewership, since Toonami had begun attracting an older demographic. Yet the changes to TOM and the block, including swapping SARA out for the energetic, yellow TOM lookalike Flash and his mellower green counterpart, D, were controversial, to say the least. Still, this TOM lasted long enough to see Toonami through until the emotional end of its original run. 

When Toonami returned in 2012, however, it wasn't TOM 4 who greeted fans, but his predecessor, TOM 3. More shocking still was the Toonami segment revealing TOM 4 existed independently of the other TOMs, rather than being an upgrade of a previous model. Furthermore, in that same video, TOM 3.5 (who is TOM 3, but upgraded) promised fans would one day learn about an untold TOM 4 adventure. In 2015, TOM 3.5's words became reality when an online comic published on Toonami's web site (now archived on the Toonami Fandom page) shows TOM 4, Flash, and D fending off a surprise attack by classic TOM nemesis the Intruder, who leaves D's body temporarily destroyed. In "The Intruder II" TIE, however, the villainous blob boasts of having destroyed TOM 5's "other self," suggesting the Intruder may have returned to finish TOM 4 off, after all.