A Study into the Cult-Like Obsessive Audience of ‘Rick and Morty’

The cultural domination of television has been an event in the making for decades, and each passing day - the concept of television becomes more influential. Advertisements, word of mouth, reviews, trailers, and more contribute to the growing success of TV shows – but there is one thing that separates successful television from influential television. The audience. While some shows may appear as financially successful and well-reviewed, it may have a non-loyal viewership with unenthusiastic traits.

Lately, the rise of ‘cult television’ has depended solely on the enthusiasm from fans of a television show regardless of the actual size of the audience. According to television expert Jeff Evans, the idea behind ‘cult TV’ is “more than just getting good viewing figures”. The viewership of a show must be passionate enough to create a community of their own which in turn leads a large conversation around said topic. Merchandising, conventions, fan clubs and fads are results of a community like it, with some audiences becoming loud enough to propel the show to another level of viewership.

Personally, I feel like the absolute best modern example of a cult audience for a television series is the fandom of Adult Swim’s animated comedy show ‘Rick and Morty’. The show originally aired in December 2013 and is currently on its fourth season. ‘Rick and Morty’ was co-created by Justin Roiland, a comedian and voice actor, and Dan Harmon, a producer and the showrunner of NBC’s college sitcom Community.

Since it aired, ‘Rick and Morty’ has consistently broken records at Adult Swim, becoming the network’s top show of all time and the first ever Adult Swim comedy to win a Primetime Emmy Award when it took home the Outstanding Animated Program trophy in 2018. It is one of the most successful animated programs in the past decade, and has completely excelled the careers of both Roiland and Harmon.

The show follows the two titular characters, Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith. Sanchez is an alcoholic scientist with the ability to jump between alternate dimensions, and Smith is his prepubescent grandson. ‘Rick and Morty’ has a tongue-in-cheek plot which is a parody of Back to the Future’s Doc and Marty in both name and appearance. However, the show opts to avoid time travel due to the complications surrounding it.

Similarly to other animated series, ‘Rick and Morty’ has a long overarching storyline which develops over smaller, less plot-intense episodes. Eventually, it transforms from a basic comedy to a character study on Rick and the effects of having infinite versions of himself and everyone around him. He is unique in the way that Rick assumes he knows the answer to every question in the universe, as he is the smartest man in the galaxy.

Although, the show likes to explore the negative effect of being as intelligent as Rick is by introducing the concept of nihilism, alcoholism, and his own depression and loneliness as a result of his ‘adventures’. Rick thinks he knows everything, and he assumes that the meaning of life is that there simply isn’t one at all and that all lifeforms are purely mistakes. However, the show’s other characters own personal arcs show clearly that while Rick believes that most life is meaningless and replaceable due to there being infinite timelines, the meaning of life is the effect of those around you.

We sometimes see the humanity in Rick when he subtly shows he actually cares for and loves his grandson Morty, despite his own denial of caring for anyone. It’s likely that him being so adamant on not loving Morty is his defence mechanism for trying not to get too attached to something he believes can be taken from him as easily as it was given.

His own fault in this is that his own caution in avoiding attachment directly results in Rick’s loneliness and depression. Overtime in the show, we see Rick’s old friends like Birdperson and Unity who grant him temporary happiness and yet they are taken away from him. Birdperson is murdered in the Season 2 finale, and Unity decides she can no longer be in a relationship with Rick. Birdperson’s death results in Rick’s grief that makes him decide to turn himself into prison to save his family.

Meanwhile, Unity leaving Rick devastates him to the point where we see him attempt to commit suicide in an episode, with his alcoholism saving his life as he collapses from the pain and alcohol. This specific scene which shows his suicide attempt in haunting in how realistic it is and how much it shows Rick’s state of mind at that point. Before trying to kill himself, Rick creates a creature that is clearly in pain and screaming for help, and then he comforts it and gently pets it before testing his machine and killing it.

This both signifies Rick considering death as a mercy, and a positive thing, especially for something like the creature which seems to be in immense pain. It also implies that the creature reflects Rick’s own personal feelings and state of mind, viewing himself to be in incredible emotional pain and that suicide is a mercy on himself and those around him.

You can see in the moments leading up to him going into the garage, he is calm and relaxed, pretending that everything is okay. He does not get angry with other characters, and it’s extremely out of character for him to be this way. Regardless, his family don’t check on him and he finds his own idea of suicide comforting – going into the garage one last time. It’s especially dark and horrifying for a cartoon show which is usually considered a comedy, but it just shows how emotionally invested each character is and that the showrunners consider how the adventures both Rick and Morty go on effects their state of mind and how intelligence itself can be considered a blessing and a curse.

Overall, while the show delves deep into these usually-dark topics, there is something much more toxic and obsessive which overshadows the quality of the show. Something that both benefitted and severely damaged ‘Rick and Morty’ as a television series. Its audience, or at least a vocal minority.

The show has one of the most notoriously-obsessive and influential fanbases of the 21st century, on par with audiences of cartoon shows like ‘The Simpsons’, ‘Family Guy’, ‘Adventure Time’, ‘Gravity Falls’ and more. ‘Rick and Morty’ has an incredibly large and loud audience, which is one of Adult Swim’s biggest for any of its shows.

According to Hulu, the gender split of the fandom is surprisingly equal, with a 60/40 split of male to female fans of ‘Rick and Morty’ on Hulu. The show’s Season 3 premiere episode made it the most-watched series in the history of Adult Swim, with over 11 million viewers. Its success can only be put into perspective by the fact that the network renewed ‘Rick and Morty’ for a record-shattering 70 episodes. For context, the first three seasons consist of a total of 31 episodes.

More reports claim that ‘Rick and Morty’ is the most popular television comedy in the United States among millennials, topping ‘The Big Bang Theory’ and ‘Modern Family’. But while the audience is gigantic, that isn’t what makes the show worthy of being called cult television. Its fanbase is one of the most vocal audiences in recent memory, dominating areas of internet culture through memes, videos, and even fads based off of real episodes.

A lot of professional critics and common fans of the show label the vocal fandom of ‘Rick and Morty’ as “toxic” and “a hate movement”, with criticisms hitting peak levels after a series of events that took place in 2017. After the show’s Season 3 premiere, which was one of its most viewed episodes, had a joke about an old McDonald’s limited-edition schezuan sauce – fans turned the sauce into a dominant internet meme and created enough noise for the restaurant to actually bring back the schezuan sauce for a single day.

The sauce came back for one day on October 7, 2017 and stores quickly ran out of the sauce within hours. Stock was heavily limited, and the restaurant massively underestimated its demand. As a result, fans of the show raided McDonald’s stores across the country. Videos quickly spread online of fans jumping on counters, screaming at employees and even using megaphones to try demand that they get some of the now sold-out sauce. Some McDonald’s restaurants resorted to calling the police when some situations got too aggressive, and the internet was overtaken by people both criticising and joining in on the fandom’s extreme disregard for the employees.

Instantly after selling out, some fans sold the sauce packets on eBay – with some listings selling for up to $14,000 a piece. These events propelled the ‘Rick and Morty’ fanbase to another level, and set the bar for toxic fandoms everywhere. But it didn’t stop there, and it got much worse.

In 2015, in preparation for making the third season of the show, the team behind ‘Rick and Morty’ decided to hire some female writers to join the previously all-male writers room. Two writers in particular, Jane Becker and Jessica Gao, were credited as writing the episodes “Rickmancing the Stone” and “Pickle Rick” (the latter of which won a Primetime Emmy Award). The pair were harassed on social media, with some fans hacking them and sharing their private information such as address and phone number online.

Fans backlashed against the writers room, claiming that the team only hired female writers in order to appease “diversity” and that they were “social justice warriors”. As a result to the horrific display from the show’s fandom, Dan Harmon said that he thought the attacks were “disgusting”. He tried to explain the motivation behind the fan backlash as white males trying to defend his work and he said he found it “offensive” and called them “knobs”, claiming that “they want to protect the content they think they own.”

The fandom of ‘Rick and Morty’ is one of the most notoriously obsessive cult tv audiences of recent memory, and with people describing the viewership as a “hate movement”. It’s a perfect example of how people need to begin separating content from the people who watch it, with thousands of potential watchers being put off the show due to the intimidating and vocal fanbase.

One notable feature of a large amount of ‘Rick and Morty’ fans is that they believe that people who criticise the show just don’t understand it, and claim that the show’s humour is complex and intricate, therefore requiring intelligence to find it entertaining. In reality, ‘Rick and Morty’ does indeed contain themes that only keen-eyed viewers would catch, but it also has pretty basic jokes and doesn’t require much second thought to understand.

It’s quite common with cult tv audiences to dismiss anyone who doesn’t like a show as stupid, misinformed or outright ignorant – it isn’t limited to just ‘Rick and Morty’. However, fans of this particular show seem to have gained a notoriety for being particularly arrogant and believing that only they are intelligent enough to understand the show.

A streamer and fan of the show, Casey Explosion, tried to explain the toxicity by claiming that “after years of pop culture entrenching the notion that smart people are assholes, people act like assholes to appear smart.”

Andrea Braithwaite, an employee at the Institute of Technology at the University of Ontario, studies “geek masculinity”. She draws parallels between Rick in the show and the toxic fans who look up to him, mentioning that as Rick is “a cynical narcissistic character who sees himself as superior to others and acts out of self-interest” that it may reflect on some audiences seeing that kind of personality as an endorsement.

She also mentions how some members of the audience consider themselves as “gatekeepers”, where they think of if some other fans or viewers of the show don’t understand some elements as much as them, they are superior to them. This is usually the case in most cult tv audiences. Braithwaite tries to find a motive for this behaviour, pointing out how the success of a show and its entrance into the mainstream makes fans feel like it is “less special”.

At the end of the day, it begs the question as to what extent you can blame the content of a show on the behaviour of the people who watch it, and how difficult it is to separate art from its audience. ‘Rick and Morty’ is not going anywhere anytime soon, but the hatred behind its toxic fanbase has damaged its reputation heavily and with its fourth season currently airing, it will be up to fans to judge whether to ignore the criticism of the audience or turn their back on a show they love.

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