1) The series was created, sold and written in just one day
Once they came up with the idea for Rick & Morty, Don Harmon and Justin Roiland received the OK from Adult Swim for the pilot and immediately began working on the script for the episode. All in the same day!
Once Nick Weidenfeld, Adult Swim’s head of programming, agreed to do the show and left Harmon’s (unfurnished) office at Universal Studios, Harmon and Roiland went to work. “We were sitting on the floor cross-legged holding our laptops and I was about to get up and go home and he [Roiland] said, ‘If you go home now, we can take three months to write this. Stay here now and we can write it in six hours,'» Harmon described in an interview.
2) Originally, Rick and Morty were parodies of Doc Brown and Marty McFly
Dan Harmon is the creator of Channel 101, a monthly festival in Los Angeles where all short films submitted can be a maximum of 5 minutes in length. Rick & Morty came about as a short film for this festival. When Adult Swim asked Harmon for show ideas, he worked with Roiland to create the series.
The original short, however, was a parody of Back to the future called The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti. This short was even heavier than Rick & Morty usually is, including a scene where Doc demands Mharti lick his balls.
“I had just come out of a job as a producer on a series where I was creatively handcuffed. I just had all this agony and anger and I wanted to make something that was gross,» Roiland told IGN in an interview. “For some reason, I tied everything around these two horrible imitations and Doc and Marty. The idea that licking his balls would fix any problem – that’s ridiculous. But yeah, I kind of fell in love with these characters and they kind of took on a life of their own. Dan has always been a fan of these shorts. When he called me to say ‘Do you have something? Adult Swim wants to work with me’ was the first thing I mentioned. ‘Well, how about those guys? Are you interested?’ and he said ‘Yes, it’s perfect!’”.
3) The episode inspired by A crime night it was done impromptu and no one had seen the movie
According to the newly released art book about the series, the penultimate episode of season two, Look Who’s Purging Now, was created entirely at the last minute. This is because the team intended to make the final episode in two parts and only at the end of production did they decide to turn the second part into the first episode of the third season. With that, they were left with a hole in the grid to fill. Dan Harmon wrote the entire script in one day. It worked so well that Roiland describes this episode as his favorite of the second season.
The funniest thing is that, although the episode is based on A crime nightnone of the crew had seen the film at the time.
4) The series was one of the first to premiere an episode on Instagram
The eighth episode of the first season, Richty Minutes, was uploaded on the social network before officially airing. However, at that time, Instagram videos were limited to 15 seconds. Because of this, the episode had to be cut into 109 pieces. You can still watch them if you search the @rickandmorty account.
This was the first episode showing commercials from other universes. A curiosity is that Justin Roiland improvised all the sketches in the commercials with his own voice, and you can see that when he laughs at the end of some of them. Some voice actors were called to record Roiland’s interpretation, but they were instructed to follow his version as faithfully as possible.
5) The team uses a legal loophole to keep inserting sexual formats, such as penises and vaginas
Have you ever noticed how Rick & Morty does it have dozens of aliens, plants and creatures with a phallic shape or with hanging balls that look more like scrotal sacs? In the newly released artwork book for the series, the team explains what the “Color Rule” is and how it is used to prevent it from becoming an issue.
“The art team learned early on that in order to get network approval to show all these risky things, we simply had to make sure they weren’t colored with skin tone. It’s the old Color Rule. So if an alien’s face looks like a vagina or balls, as long as we put it in blue, that’s fine.”
6) Creators were inspired by Ren and Stimpy, Beavis and Butt-Head, South Park and others
In an interview in 2013, Justin Roiland described his influences: “I was only 12 when Ren & Stimpy premiered and the series had a huge impact in changing my perception of what could be done in animation both in style and tone. Of course Beavis and Butt Head it was also really funny and it established these two idiotic protagonists as they walked around the world and everyone else was playing straight – and of course, Mike Judge voiced them both, which is something I also do in Rick & Morty”.
About South Parkthe Comedy Central animation that has been going strong for over 20 years, Roiland said: “South Park It was also a great role model because you could see how far they could push the envelope, not only in terms of tone but also legally, where they could get away with using characters that look like someone else or product names.”
Other influences cited in interviews are The Simpsons, Doctor Who, Animaniacs, Adventure Time It is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
7) Adult Swim gives creators complete freedom
Mike Lazzo, the president of Adult Swim, loves the show and personally reads every script. Afterwards, he talks to Roiland and Harmon to give their feedback. When needed, he even fights the censors to protect the show’s jokes and the creators’ vision.
“He has the autonomy, humility and mental power to take a script, recognize it for what it is, a document with written words, read it and tell you what his reactions were as an individual. Those are his notes,” Roiland described in an interview. “He says, ‘On page 17 I got lost in the story. Maybe it was because I was driving to work while reading, or eating a sandwich, or maybe I just don’t have the right sense of humor.’ He never says, ‘I don’t think people are going to like this.’ He never dares to speculate while we create. He never says, ‘People are going to react this way when that part happens.’ And he never confuses the script with the final product either. It evaluates the script as script. He passes editorial notes on the animation. And then he passes closing remarks. Every now and then he has something we don’t agree with, but [essa relação] makes us want to make him happy.”
This does not, however, prevent Lazzo from being criticized. In 2016, it was reported that Adult Swim has fewer female writers than any other network. Lazzo defended himself by saying that «when you put women in the writers’ room, you get conflict, not comedy».
8) The inspiration for Mr. Meeseeks came from a cat
In a video, Harmon and Roiland commented on the origin of Mr. Meeseks, the multiple character who grants wishes and then dies, shown in the episode Meeseeks And Destroy. The inspiration came from a friend of Roiland’s named Mike Gillian, who had a cat named Skeeseks.
Cut to years later, when Roiland was at a writers’ meeting for Rick & Morty listening to ideas and commenting «That’s not funny!» as she rolled on the floor. Out of nowhere, he started screaming «I’m Mr. Meeseeks!» while the others tried to finish the job. The team ended up including the character in the story.
The concept of the character, however, already existed and, according to Harmon, it was “stolen” from a comic called Scud: The Disposable Assassin (Scud: The Disposable Killer) in which robots called Scuds are hired to kill people and, after fulfilling their missions, kill themselves.
Oh, and the design came from a Mr. Show skit:
9) There was an idea of inserting a secret that would only be revealed at the end, but it was abandoned because a fan discovered it
The creators, at the beginning of the series, thought of inserting a big secret that would only be revealed at the end, like the fact that Bruce Willis was dead in The sixth Sense or the fact that the Narrator is Tyler Durden in The Fight Club. But this idea – which the creators are keen not to reveal – ended up abandoned because a fan managed to anticipate it and posted his theory on Reddit.
Harmon shares, “When we wrote the first episode, we had a conversation where I think it was Mike McMahan. [roteirista] who said, ‘Let’s decide if we have a secret that we keep hidden from the audience forever?’ I won’t say what it was. We said, ‘How about this?’ and we agreed, ‘Yeah, that’s cool.’ I was kind of obsessed with it for a while. But what I think is really interesting about this new golden age of TV is that, halfway through the first season, someone made a post on Reddit presenting a theory, and it was exactly what we had been discussing. We were like, ‘Oh, thank God we didn’t do anything with that plot.’ (…) You can no longer write TV based on big reveals because the audience is essentially a calculator. They have an infinite calculation limit. There is no writers room that can think of more than 20 million people dedicating an hour a day”.
10) The mind parasites were inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer
In the season two DVD commentary, Roiland and Harmon reveal that the inspiration for the episode Total Rickallin which alien parasites invade the family home and create false memories in their brains, came from the famous series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
In the fifth season of that show, it is revealed that Buffy had a sister, Dawn, who did not appear in previous seasons. Despite this, the show’s characters accept her as if she has always existed. One of the screenwriters Rick & Morty, Ryan Ridley, elaborated on the subject in a podcast: “They are all faking it. I mean, they’re not pretending, but they’re treating her like she’s always been there. And you know, as a viewer, that Buffy didn’t have a sister for four seasons. So you look for a supernatural explanation for it.”
11) All of Rick’s burps are real
When Justin Roiland records Rick’s voices, he marks the lines he wants to include burps. He drinks a low-calorie beer so he can build up gas in his stomach and then tries to speak the sentences while burping in between.
In a season one episode, Harmon also suggested to Roiland that he record Rick’s really drunk lines. The voice actor then drank several shots of tequila and got to work. The entire process can be seen in this Adult Swim video:
12) Tracks on the soundtrack are always by bands Justin Roiland is a fan of
One of the most…