Origins of Rick and Morty Explored

Screen Rant

Explore the Origins of Rick and Morty in this Adult Swim Video

By Dan Zinski

Published Aug 13, 2017

Adult Swim goes back in time with a new video to explore the origins of Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon's animated series Rick and Morty.

Go back in time to explore the early origins of Rick and Morty in a new video from Adult Swim, the first part of a series looking back on how collaborators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon came to create the cult favorite animated show. After a long delay, season 3 of Rick and Morty kicked off in April, and in July more new episodes were finally delivered, much to the joy of the series' dedicated (but somewhat impatient) fans.

In Rick and Morty, an aging alcoholic mad scientist armed with a portal-gun drags his bewildered teenage grandson and angst-ridden granddaughter on a series of adventures across, though, and sometimes around the space-time continuum, meeting a vast array of truly bizarre characters along the way. The time-and-space hopping concept affords plenty of opportunity for Roiland, Harmon, and their team of creatives to explore all manner of science fiction tropes, while also delving into the more twisted and dark recesses of human behavior (and occasionally using their power to make McDonald's revive long-dead varieties of McNugget dipping sauce).

A new video from Adult Swim heads back to the formative days of both Roiland and Harmon, detailing their humble beginnings as content creators. Roiland talks about meeting friends Abed Geith and Sevan Najarian and beginning to produce crazy animated videos with dreams of escaping Stockton, California. Harmon then talks about his own early collaborations with noted partner Rob Schrab, and how after seeing little success submitting their material to Hollywood the two came to form the legendary Channel 101, an on-going monthly film festival hosted in Los Angeles in which folks from around the country would submit short pilot films that are then voted on by the audience, with the winning films continuing as series.

Rick and Morty get attacked by facehugger aliens in Rick and Morty

Roiland discusses how he began submitting material to Channel 101, which is where his work first caught Harmon's eye. Though audiences didn't initially take to Roiland's work, Harmon and Schrab were impressed. The very earliest origins of the crazed animation style and maniacal sense of humor that would characterize Rick and Morty can be glimpsed in clips from some of Roiland's submissions to Channel 101, including his wacky House of Cosbys film, which shows off his nimble vocal talents as well as his flair for jittery and expressive animation.

Harmon explains the Channel 101 experience in glowingly sentimental terms:

"We did feel like we were underdog legends, we were nerd barbarians, we had made what we were into cool. And that was paradise."

Thankfully Harmon and Roiland are still able to reach down into their nerd barbarian souls and find enough inspiration to continue making Rick and Morty, even if their creative process has seemingly become more difficult over time.