"Dexter's Laboratory" was created by Genndy Tartakovsky as a student film during his second year at California Institute of Arts in 1991. The short featured the tall dancing, free-spirited, little girl named Dee Dee, and her short, temperamental, scientific-minded little brother, Dexter.

     Four years later after the short was made, Turner Broadcasting's Cartoon Network was starting its "What A Cartoon" Show, a collective of fresh, new animated shorts by some unknown artists. The first "Dexter" short was titled "Changes" and aired on the What A Cartoon Show in April 1996. While receiving positive feedback from the nationally broadcast short, Genndy decided to submit another cartoon. Using the same characters as the first, the second short was titled "The Big Sister" and debuted later that same April.

     In Cartoon Network's attempt to create some original programming, they pulled talents from the What A Cartoon show to fund the network's first original series, "Dexter's Laboratory." Touted as the first "World Premiere Cartoon," Dexter's Laboratory took off in 1996 with the first full season of 13 half hour episodes. In 1997, the series blasted off with 39 new episodes, which also included the adventures of his lab monkey in "Dial M for Monkey", and Dexter's favorite super hero team, "The Justice Friends". By 1999, Dexter's Laboratory was popular enough to have its own made for television movie, titled "Ego Trip", which pitted Dexter against his rival Mandark.

     By 2001, the Dexter's Laboratory property was still well-loved, and well-watched by fans young and old. Genndy Tartakovsky had already stopped production of the show two years ago and was well into the development of his other project, Samurai Jack. So, Cartoon Network gave the thumbs up to bring back Dexter under a new creative team at Cartoon Network Studios, with director Chris Savino, the artist from the comic book version of Dexter's Laboratory, taking command.

On November 18, 2001, Cartoon Network in every country it was broadcast in, held a "Dexter Goes Global" marathon in which foreign countries voted on their favorite Dexter’s Laboratory shorts, followed by two new episodes of the redesigned Dexter’s Lab by Chris Savino and David Smith. Savino also used aspects from the Dexter’s Lab comic book in the show; issues comic stories “Chicken Scratch” and “Momdark” becoming animated shorts. Savino has also worked on such Dexter’s Lab comics as "Mother's Day Monstrosity" and “Eye-Yi-Yi.”

    Dexter's Laboratory is the story of a boy genius that lives with his parents and wild sister in suburbia. Hiding a secret lab underneath his house is only half of his secret. In his efforts to save the world, delve into science, and just being a little boy, Dexter's Laboratory is a light-spirited adventure into the mind of a child with super intelligence and an imagination with no limits.