Rick and Morty
Rick and Morty is an American adult animated science-fiction sitcom and k-drama created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon for Cartoon Network's late-night poorly animated idiocy bloc Adult Swim. The series follows abusive alcoholic Rick Sanchez, a cynical mad scientist who perpetually abducts his grandson Morty Smith for "adventures" to other planets and dimensions, while simultaneously destroying his daughter Beth's marriage. This in particular is a focus of the show's earlier seasons, to demonstrate Rick's unrelenting hatred of Beth's husband Jerry.
Justin Roiland initially conceived the basis for the series in an animated short film parodying Back to the Future. This short film was shown at Channel 101, a film festival curated by Harmon. The two met, and after several doses of LSD, began developing the pilot episode. Six hours later, Roiland allegedly drove his car into the front lobby of Adult Swim's office in Miami, California while under the influence of LSD (accompanied by Harmon). The two then pitched their pilot to Adult Swim's executives, who agreed to produce it on the condition that they receive a portion of the LSD.
The series has garnered enough popularity to become a billion-dollar franchise and later a religion, the Church of Rick and Morty. Its fanbase is composed primarily of greasy, balding men in the 23-to-47 age range. There are numerous demographics within the fanbase, even though large portions of it joined the Church. Some examples of these varying demographics include science-fiction nerds, followers of Elon Musk, turkeys, incels, "Australians", members of the Alt-Right, defenders of incest, sentient homunculi, Reddit users, and subscribers to The Film Theorists.
Production[edit | edit source]
Writing[edit | edit source]
All details of the Rick and Morty writing process have been classified by the United States Central Intelligence Agency as a precautionary measure to placate the Church of Rick and Morty. If the actual information were to be declassified, the Church would denounce it as heresy. It would then call on its followers to track down and mail anthrax packets to the show's writers. In any interviews Dan Harmon or Justin Roiland would provide afterwards, they would deny any existence of a writing process whatsoever.
| “ | We actually used artificial intelligence to generate it for us, after we fed it three trash sci-fi novels and a few dozen Reddit posts. It puked up some good stuff for us... yeah. | ” |
Animation[edit | edit source]
Adult Swim maintains Rick and Morty as its only series where its "overpay and underwork" animation policy is reversed. Several dozen handpicked animators are first placed into a meat locker by the company. Decrepit computers with Microsoft Paint are provided to them, and they are given one week to create an episode of the series. If the episode is not completed in time, the animators would be released, and would each suffer a series of unrelated fatal accidents. The unrelated accidents, Adult Swim maintains, "were not assassinations" in any way, and did not involve "on-sight stabbings as soon as they left" the meat locker. No completion date had been unmet until Season 4, when episode five (Rattlestar Ricklactica) put too great a strain on the animators' wrists. After each of the animators encountered a fatal unfortunate accident, Adult Swim was forced to hire an entirely new animation team and train them to replicate the style of the series. This caused Season 4 to be split in half due to issues with the new staff's complaints for food, water, a salary, and other unnecessary things. Adult Swim glossed over the delay with the Season 4 tagline "half the season you deserve, all the season we could handle".
Episodes[edit | edit source]
Main article: List of Rick and Morty episodes
Unofficial "prequel season"[edit | edit source]
Seasons 1 and 2 of Rick and Morty, in addition to episodes one and two of Season 3, were unofficially re-released as a single 23-episode "prequel season" by the Church of Rick and Morty to fit its creation story. This would effectively make Pickle Rick, Season 3's third episode, the "true premiere". Adult Swim attempted to sue the Church for copyright infringement and lost before the United States Supreme Court.
“You all know how much I love religious liberty. For, uh... some people.”
Controversies[edit | edit source]
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Szechuan sauce incidents[edit | edit source]
In 2017, due to the popularization of Szechuan sauce (because of its use in the Season 3 premiere), McDonald's brought back the product for a limited time. This caused droves of Rick and Morty fans to crowd several McDonald's restaurants, demanding large quantities of the sauce be inserted into their arteries to replace their blood via dialysis. When the restaurants ardently refused to perform the task (not for ethical or legal reasons, but for a lack of sauce), the fans began violently destroying the locations. 198 people were killed and 362 were hospitalized between October 8th and 12th. This fanaticism was later reflected upon by intellectuals, most notably Oscar Wilde, as the beginnings of the Church of Rick and Morty.
Mass defecations[edit | edit source]
Following a tweet posted by Elon Musk encouraging fans of the series to "shit on anyone who shits on [Rick and Morty]", hundreds of people reported being defecated on, or near, by greasy and/or balding men in their thirties. Musk would later apologize, then proceed to delete his original tweet and apology.
Association with toxic waste dumps in Serbia[edit | edit source]
This information has been deleted for your safety.
Church of Rick and Morty[edit | edit source]
The Church of Rick and Morty is a fanatical religious cult devoted to the eponymous television series. It was established by Darren McGriddle after the release of Rick and Morty's 7th season. It currently has over 500,000 believers, called Rickles, and generates an estimated $2.2 million in revenue monthly. It is now owned by Wart McGriddle.
Origins[edit | edit source]
Established after the release of Season 7 by Darren McGriddle, a die-hard fan of the series, the eponymous Church was first rumored to be a pyramid scheme. Following this accusation by several mainstream news outlets, such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Horseshitter Weekly, the Church quadrupled in membership within days as thousands of other fans rushed to defend McGriddle. By its second month, now as a registered tax-exempt religious institution, it had over forty thousand followers. It has developed its own canon of Rick and Morty which adherents worship as "holy material". This version of the series has been marketed and distributed exclusively by the Church, earning it an estimated $2 million within its first three months of existence.
Series "creation story"[edit | edit source]
The Church of Rick and Morty denies the account that Roiland and Harmon, high on LSD, wrote the pilot in six hours and crashed their car into Adult Swim's headquarters to have it produced, on grounds of blasphemy. Despite several witnesses corroborating testimony of that night, security camera footage exhibiting the crash, and Harmon himself admitting that "maybe [he] should have driven", the Church instead promotes a far less plausible version of events. They claim that instead of LSD, Roiland and Harmon were using methamphetamine- and were also imbued by the "Great Pickle of the Heavens" with the power to write all 111 episodes in six hours.
Terrorism accusations[edit | edit source]
This section has been classified by the CIA.
Adult Swim v. Church of Rick and Morty[edit | edit source]
Six months after the Church's creation, Adult Swim sued it for copyright infringement. Asking for a total of $17 million in damages (nearly double the Church's income), Adult Swim brought their case before the Supreme Court. After they lost the highly anticipated ruling, the Church's membership swelled into the hundreds of thousands. An investigative article by Horseshitter Weekly showed that up to 89% of the Church's revenue went to Darren McGriddle, while 9% went to McGriddle's fourth wife, and 2% went towards expenses of the organization. McGriddle denounced the article as "bullshit", lamenting that "Horseshitter used to stand for something, before it was corrupted by liberal elites". McGriddle would later die of spleen failure. His will transferred ownership of the Church to his nephew, Wart.
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