'Rick And Morty' Once Looked A Whole Lot Different
Rick and Morty is the show by Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland (and a bunch of other talented folks) about Grandpa Rick Sanchez and his grandson Morty Smith's adventures through horrible nihilistic absurd realities of terrible moral complexity and people named Mister Poopybutthole. The Adult Swim show has become infamous due to a segment of its fanbase being complete mouth-breathing dumpster fires, the show being absolutely fantastic, and for releasing episodes roughly once every five years.
It's a bonkers beast with overly ridiculous premises like Rick ending up in a younger body while in a garage his original form is able to only communicate through song and dance, or an episode where Rick and Morty move to an alternate Earth after their Earth falls to pieces, and all of it is funny and mean as a drunk uncle.
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And if you find it odd that we're explaining all of Rick and Morty to you, it's to emphasize this next bit: the show started as a Back to the Future pastiche. So yeah, before it was Rick and Morty, it was Doc and Mharti, which … actually sounds just the exact same.
Back to the Future's down-to-Earth tale of one mad scientist helping a young rock rebel make sure his parents bang captivated minds for years and has received countless parodies, but none with quite the resonance of this latest.
The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mhartia was a short created for Channel 101, a non-profit short film festival Harmon co-founded, that started as a protest parody that Roiland made about Doc Brown making Marty give him a blowjob. Partially due to the protest part not making sense, and partially due to Roiland just liking the characters, he remade it slightly, changed the names enough not to get shot like Christopher Lloyd, and it aired at Harmon's festival before the characters reappeared as a Channel 101 commercial and then a Gatorade commercial.
Yes, this was officially sponsored by Gatorade.
Before the show that captured and promptly destroyed the minds of thousands was about a time-hopping, Doctor Who-esque madman alcoholic destroying lives and worlds on a whim, it was Doc Smith and his idiot friend Mharti fucking off through time on drunken joyrides promoting Bobby Boucher's least favorite drink.
The original short features Mharti having to suck on Doc's testicles thrice -- all three times shown in graphic detail. Once to fix the "time travel car," once to stop a man from planting a tree that Mharti's kite gets stuck on in the future, and another time to keep himself existing.
That short sprung to mind when Harmon was asked years later by Adult Swim for an animated show, and he grabbed Roiland to come in and make it again, but better.
Less ball-sucking, not none, just less.
Top Image: Warner Bros.
