Rick and Morty is a wonderful, innovative show. But it has a problem: they are fans. For some reason, this animated show attracts the worst of the worst fans, both online and offline. There are many hard and solid facts to support this statement. But first let’s say #NotAllFans. Sure, not everyone who likes the Cartoon Network show falls into the toxic category, but there is something about this animated comedy that attracts a certain kind of fan.
This is the fan who sees the show not as simple satire or absurd comedy with highly unlikely characters, but as a bible for life and a handbook for how to behave, and that’s the problem. Like overly religious people who convert in front of all who can hear them, these toxic fans of Rick and Morty completely miss the point. Folks, it’s a cartoon, a television show, fictional and certainly not ambitious, and the “main characters” are never meant to be idolized.
First the basics, then we’ll get into them. Fans of Rick and Morty harassed, threatened and doxxed two female writers on the show. Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland, creators of Rick and Morty, have spoken out about the behavior of the show’s toxic fans, unafraid to mince words about how much they hate these fans. When the show had an episode about McDonald’s Szechuan sauce, the company responded by bringing back the popular condiment. Fans went wild and not in a good way — especially when a specific McDonald’s franchisee ran out of the sauce.
These toxic fans identify with Rick, which is scary because he’s not the protagonist they think he is. He’s basically a selfish, narcissistic monster. Rick thinks he can be as dumb with people as he wants, just because he’s intelligent. We all know people like this in our lives, and they are hard to get along with and bored with their self-importance.
Rick & Morty Fans Doxxed Female Writers
Fans of Rick and Morty are so intense about their feelings for the show and its characters that they often let it skip from television to real life – with some real and dangerous consequences. In 2017, the show’s fans were not happy with the direction that season three was taking. Instead of waiting like patient, normal fans of a television show, these gross creatures instead blamed their distaste for the storylines on the female writers being added to the staff after two years of an all-male writing staff.
They complained on Twitter and then went head-to-head with 4Chan, where these fans have the personal information of . place Rick and Morty’s female writers. This is called doxxing, and these pathetic fans were hoping to scare the show’s female writers into quitting their jobs and restoring their right to an all-male point of view.
szechuan port
In an episode from 2017 Rick and Mortythe show reflected on a 1997 McDonald’s promotion for the animated film Mulan. The chain briefly offered something called Szechuan sauce (it’s either deliberately and senselessly misspelled, or is simply the result of idiocy). In the episode in question, Rick said, “My mission for this season of Morty is to get that Szechuan sauce back.” That was the only real mention of the spice, and yet it caused riots thanks to the show’s truly unhinged fanbase.
McDonald’s decided to bring the sauce back in a few select locations as a playful connection with Rick and Morty. Fans flocked to McDonald’s locations across the country and freaked out when the stores ran out of stock. Police had to be called to several McDonald’s locations to calm the unruly and whining, demanding crowd. This is not normal behaviour. Rick and Morty is a television program – a cartoon.
The creators fooled their fans
Rick and Morty’s creators are well aware of the toxicity in the show’s fanbase, and how the fans are ruining their beloved show. Co-creator Dan Harmon sat down for an interview with Weekly entertainment in which he called on fans to doxx the show’s female writers and say, “I loathe these people. They are fucking bad.” He called the toxic fans buttons, saying they want to “protect the content they think they own — and somehow combine that with their need to be proud of something they have, which is often just their race or gender.” He continued: “They represent some sh*t I probably believed when I was 15.” ouch.
What’s up with Rick and Morty?
Rick and Morty is a brilliant show, no one disputes that. It is full of satire, pop culture references and sci-fi concepts. But there’s something going on that’s attracting an ignorant, hateful fanbase of whiny boy losers (it’s a minor event, hopefully; again, #NotAllFans). Maybe it’s the cynical nihilism at the heart of Rick and Morty to which so many fans react in this current, hopeless period of human history. Mostly it’s the fact that they miss the point and take the show, the characters, and the storylines as a kind of guide to life.
Rick in particular is revered by this subset of Rick and Morty fans who, to put it bluntly, are immature and have no self-awareness at all. Rick is a psychopathic narcissist and, ironically, a cautionary tale about exactly what these fans idolize him for. They mistake an antihero for a hero; it’s like a Right fan suddenly turned pro serial killer. They miss the point, and the result may be more dangerous than mere stupidity.