Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith, are based on Doc Brown and Marty McFly from the Back to

the Future franchise. And that's actually how it all began. Back in 2005, Justin Roiland

produced an animated series known as House of Cosbys. This bizarre show is about a guy

living with a hundred clones of Bill Cosby. It premiered at the non-profit short film

festival Channel 101 which was co-founded by Dan Harmon who quickly took a liking to

Roiland's sense of humor. But in June of the same year, they received a cease and desist

letter from Bill Cosby's lawyer and where thus forced to end House of Cosbys. Because

of this Roiland decided to make a very obscene and crude parody of the Back to the Future

movies as a sort of joke or protest against Universal Pictures. He called the short:

"The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti".

It was never intended to be anything more than a joke but Roiland became really fond

of his own impressions of the two characters

and decided to explore this idea further. Many years later, in 2012, Harmon was approached

by Adult Swim to create an original animated show for the network. But Harmon, previously

creating and working on Community, didn't have any real experience with animation at

this point so he immediately thought of Roiland. He gave him a call and Roiland promptly pitched

the idea of using the Doc and Mharti characters to produce a shown titled Rick and Morty.

In the episode "Meeseeks and Destroy" we meet a disturbing character known as King Jellybeen.

This character, like Rick and Morty themselves, is actually from a previous animation that

Roiland produced called "Unbelievable Tales".

In this animation the character is known as

"Crumply Crumplestien" and is even more grotesque than the version in Rick and Morty.

During the show you might have noticed a character with rainbow colored suspenders and an American

football on his shirt. The stitches on the football also appear to be in the form of

Roman numerals spelling out 18, 3, and 5. If you use the numbers for the corresponding

letter in the alphabet you get RCE. So what does that mean? Well so far it means nothing

and it will likely remain that way. You see, Roiland explained in an interview that he himself,

the creator of Galaxy Falls Alex Hirsch, and Jason Ruiz who was working on another animated

show called Murder Police, got together one day and talked about including parts of a

secret code in each of their shows. So if someone found all three codes and put them

all together it would make a word or a sentence. But for some reason Roiland was the only one

to follow through with this Rainbow Suspenders guy and thus the secret code makes no sense.

One of the main reasons for the show being made in the first place was Roiland's distinct

way of voicing both Rick and Morty. Long before the show began, it was a sort of inside joke

among friends for Roiland to make these voices. It's been said that something that really

makes the show unique is the way he's able to quickly switch between the two characters

and improvise new lines and situations by essentially talking to himself. But this almost

didn't happen because, at first, Adult Swim didn't want him to be the voice of Morty.

Instead, they were looking into other famous voice actors like Billy West and Tara Strong.

But Roiland kept pushing his idea of playing both characters and eventually he got schwifty..

eh.. he got.. he got his wish.

The theme song for Rick and Morty actually comes from

another animated show that Roiland also produced called "Dog World".

It's about humans living in a world with intelligent talking dogs.

It was supposed to air on Cartoon Network but the project was never completed

as Roiland simply had too many things in development at the time. All that remains today is the

animatic version available online. The episode Lawnmower Dog in Rick and Morty also makes

a lot of references to this incomplete pilot. For example, the family in Dog World has a

human pet named Ruffles and in this episode, the dog known as Snuffles (eh.. I mean, Snowball)

is "mistakenly" called Ruffles by Rick.

The father in each show is named Jerry after one of Roiland's real life dogs.

And then at the end of the episode, Rick and Morty makes a

very clear and direct reference by saying this..

Considering that it's a heavily sci-fi themed show and that the initial idea is based upon

the characters from Back to the Future, you would assume that the show is about time travel.

But so far, we haven't really seen anything regarding that topic. Sure, they travel through

different dimensions and even stops time between season 1 and 2, but they never actually travel

trough time. This is because, both the creators think that time travel is simply too powerful

and makes everything way to complicated. This is also why they made the first episode of

season 2 about manipulating time. They wanted to show the viewers how chaotic and confusing

everything becomes, and has described the production of that specific episode as

"a fucking nightmare" because of all the different realities. The fact that they will never create

a time travel episode is also highlighted by the box inside Rick's workshop which is

labeled "TIME TRAVEL STUFF". It's supposed to be a metaphor for time travel stories being on the shelf.

It's possible that Rick and Morty and Gravity Falls are somehow connected. In the episode

"Society of the Blind Eye" of the animated show Gravity Falls, a character accidentally

drops his pen, notepad, and mug trough a portal. In the episode "Close Rick-Counters of the

Rick Kind", these very same items can be seen emerging from a portal. It's also interesting

that the Rick and Morty episode was released long before the Gravity Falls episode. Which

means it was either planned all along or the animators of Gravity Falls saw an opportunity

to sort of complete the easter egg. And it isn't that surprising considering that Alex Hirsch and

Justin Roiland are long time friends. Another connection to Gravity Falls can be found in

the episode "Big Trouble In Little Sanchez" in which the character

Bill Cipher from Gravity Falls is briefly seen.

In the episode "Get Schwifty" of season 2, co-creator Justin Roiland actually makes a

cameo appearance as himself.

Many of the episodes titles or entire plot lines are allusions to various forms of mainstream

media. Some are quite obvious like "Anatomy Park" being a reference to "Jurassic Park"

and "Look Who's Purging Now" being a parody of "The Purge". Then there's more obscure

episodes like "Lawnmower Dog" being a reference to the movie "The Lawnmower Man". In the same

way that a dog becomes super intelligent in the episode, a mentally handicapped person

becomes super intelligent in the movie. "Meeseeks and Destroy" is a reference to the Metallica

song "Seek and Destroy". The title and premise of the episode "Mortynight Run" is a reference

to the movie "Midnight Run". In both cases, the main characters are being chased the government

after helping a wanted criminal. The title of the episode "Raising Gazorpazorp" is a

reference to "Raising Arizona" while the episode itself is a parody of the movie "Zardoz".

Unlike many other animated shows, everyone working on Rick and Morty seem to really strive

for continuity. Let me give you some examples. In the final episode of season 1 we see the

family house being teleported away and later back again creating a giant crack around the

entire house. This crack remains visible for the entirety of season 2 and in one episode,

Jerry can even be seen using a weed wacker because their weed is wack yo.. I mean, to

cut the grass growing out of the crack in the pavement. There's an episode called "Total

Rickall" in which alien parasites infiltrate the memories of the characters. The person

who brought the parasites into the house in the first place was of course Rick and how

that happened is actually covered two episodes prior. Rick can be seen loading these green

rocks onto his spaceship which also happens to be covered with these pink parasite pods.

And at the beginning of "Total Rickall" he can be seen throwing pieces of these green

rocks into the trash including the pods. This was also confirmed by Roiland himself. In

"Look Who's Purging Now" they accidentally create a hole in the roof of the house. In

the next episode, the now repaired hole is still visible. Another minor detail that remains

true in every single episode so far (believe me I checked!) is that Rick never wears a seatbelt

even though most other characters do. And there's of course numerous

minor details like just these which haven't been discovered yet.