Old-school YouTube poops with CD-I Zelda and/or Hotel Mario where every other word was replaced with “PINGAS”, “dinner”, “die”, or the bleep sound effect.
Your thread title caught my interest. Is that really considered the "classic internet era"?
I feel like there was a generation before that might be considered "classic". But I don't know what that term means as far as the internet goes.
For me, classic internet animation and characters, for me, goes back to Homestarrunner.com. Pretty sure it started in 2000, and it has so many loveable and super quirky characters. It also plays heavily on old outdated computers that were once ahead of their time (going way back into the 90's, and possibly late 80's). It is always the angry character Strong Bad, keeping journal/blog on super old computers.
It was such a great site to visit weekly for the next animation back then! I feel like it holds up today... it might even still be going.