Dan Harmon Breaks Down the Biggest 'Rick and Morty' Moments Ever | GQ

[Music] sighs is it life-size I think oh you know what's amazing about this is that it's actually life-size for a pickle hey this is Dan Harmon and here are the most viral Rick and Morty moments or Rick and Mormons turn myself into a pickle Morty boom big reveal I'm a pickle what do you think about that I turned myself into a pickle I'm pickle Rick I remember being in the writers room and I remember someone saying Rick turns himself into a pickle I do just remember kind of immediately leaping on it and saying well because that sounds like such a dumb innocuous thing like why would Rick do that and the answer has to be the most complex thing the concept for the episode really is the entire first act as opposed to an idea like Morty makes a robot the idea of pickle brick really was everything that you see in the at least the first 10 minutes of the pickle Rick episode the way I was thinking about it was it was thick the RV breaks down in the desert episode of Breaking Bad these cool episodes where you take an icon and you say well what makes them tick on the inside and you do that by depriving them of of everything and then you so you learned so much more about them pickle rick has said it's great emblematic of what I love the most about rick and morty because my partnership with justin gives me this really fun license to go yeah like let's take this really dumb thing incredibly seriously i took a really freeing thing he just retains his innocence about stuff like he just likes what he likes and he just has these thoughts that are crazy and childish and treating that as if it's as important as a nuclear power plant is like my favorite activity only at the very end of putting the script together realized that there was only one reference to Rick's drinking in the entire episode even though the idea of being pickled and the actual metaphor itself is like that episode is so much about alcoholism and yet it's the only episode of wicked Marnie where the words alcohol or references to booze are completely gone because I noticed that right at the end and pulled the one reference to to him being an alcoholic out so that it's it's like this pure metaphor the fan reaction to pickle Rick I'll always have a fraud complex about because we teased it at Comic Con and everybody that loves Rick and Marty knows that you have to wait really really really long periods see like Rick and Marty so I don't know if we cheated by showing a clip of pickle Rick as an animatic at Comic Con and then if you love Rick and Morty all you could do was think about pickle Rick for like a year maybe that's cheating I don't know so it's like that then the episode happens and it's like all red clay as long as it didn't suck that episode it was gonna be a hit maybe but that's like that's what writers do themselves they trying to figure out why they suck the courtroom transcript I don't care I know you don't and I sentence you to 20 days for that and if you say anything else I'm gonna add 20 days for everything you say you forty days you again 60 go yourself a year your mama ten years suck my something this is gonna be an interesting trial I woke up one day and checked my phone I think it might have been a guy that works at my animation studio starburns head dropped into a group text this transcript that had gone viral already just the transcript of this crazy court case so when I got to work it was the only thing I was thinking about I wanted to impart to everyone how insane it was and then that turned into two writers reading it out loud and as we were reading it out loud to the writers room I think that's what Justin walked in Justin's enthusiasm for that thing just took over and that was the Latin that's the only thing I ever had to do was be fascinated with that thing as a text message I will murder you your whole family your kids I am not supposed to be in jail I was framed that mother asked me to eat his ass for a bag of coffee the guy that leaked that that transcript I think emailed me and said hey I'm the guy that put that online do you want more court cases the answer is I don't know are any of them ever gonna be that insane again and probably not so that and the next one would be about a fender bender maybe it would be great I don't know the Carl's jr. thing Justin said is it okay if we do this and I was like yeah if you want to make cuts go ahead and he did like yeah there was all these notes going back and forth and one of them was the burgers aren't allowed to say anything funny I can't remember what it is but if you watch the commercial and listen to what the burgers are saying I think one of them is saying like I'm not funnier I have no jokes characters thickburger el Diablo [Music] the introduction to the world of the word schwifty big audience with me you gotta get swifty in here it's time to get you in get schwifty it's our world's best effort that's what the beginning of that story is justin was doing voice work for a video game version of Rick and Morty one of the items in that game is summers iPod Justin therefore recorded think five very improvised like free flowing music tracks to be on summers iPod huh I wonder which one of these songs is gonna be the most effective tool in which to wake him up with [Music] so those were on mp3s that I I heard them and for the next like several months everyone kept saying to Justin like we have to do something with this stuff and I think we just came up with the idea of well let's what if the whole episode was about music in some way and I can't remember who's pitched the American Idol planet was truly that episode was built around the excuse to to do get schwifty it was written backwards from the moment where they do get schwifty kind of a fickle I'm worried about no earth blowing up man what why not yo this is why yeah there's a thing about the the ice-t thing I think I'm allowed to say this and it's a good thing there's a weird aspect to doing impressions of people which is that if you just do it it's okay because it's parody but if you ask them to be on your show and they say no and then you do an impression of them it's called ripping them off and they can sue you I really want to say to ice-t like who I know saw the episode cuz fans sent it to him and he was like he was like man these people are on drugs or whatever like he I think he liked it I love ice-t and like I would like it would be a fantasy come true to like have him come and do ice tea or water tea or any other character he could be vice president or whatever like it would be great to work with him sometime I I love his voice like that's why I do a dumb impression of it my store begins at the dawn of time in the far away realm of alpha be trium their every being is a letter of the alphabet but I was frozen and exile to the cosmos by my elders as punishment for not caring enough about anything ice tea this is my missus my personal appeal to you please come to a voice for Rick and Morty the surprise season 3 April Fool's Day premiere people had been waiting forever for for the premiere of Rick and Morty there was no date announced ever and and then on April Fool's Day it started airing just the the new episode of Rick and Morty with absolutely no promotion and no no announcement was just airing an Adult Swim I think this is about the third or fourth time that I heard an idea from Adult Swim leader Michael as know that I just thought this is a horrible idea but the previous three or four times that had happened it Lazo is always right because for a year I had been suffering a lot of kids tweeting me going like where's the where's the new episode where's that where's the new season and not being able to say anything i I did get to give me license for one I got I got to pick one kid waited like five minutes before the premiere and he tweeted me and said come on where's the season and I responded to him going like what do you want me to do wave a magic wand and just make the premiere of Rick and Marty happen just cuz you asked and knowing that he'd go yeah I do and I'm like alright you get this one turn on your TV and I have a feeling that kid's gonna grow up to be either president or a serial killer the goodbye moon men song we created a character that was a gaseous cloud that would be named for it was like an omnipotent kind of all chemical being it was pretty standard story breaking stuff the whole writers room coming up with the idea that if it engulfed you it could get in your head and that the way we would represent its friendship with more tea and bonding with him would be like a cool music video went from that to cosmic went from cosmic the David Bowie I think that's probably the seventh time David Bowie was asked to work on something that I had ever worked on because who wouldn't want David Bowie you just expect to know and we got it and moved on and I that made me think of the flight of the conchords they had their amazing David Bowie song where they did dueling Bowie's and their thing I was like let's just get one of those guys two should do it that's pretty pretty pretty basic stuff sitting down for this is the first time I heard of the these covers of that song so I'm actually really excited to go dig them up I like that it was it hombres lunara's is that is that the approximate pronunciation Bray's Luda raised at such a way more beautiful title and wait wait oh it's a it's a yeah so is it was the full title arrivederci hombres alone Aires [Laughter] [Music] it would be a crime to not mention Ryan elder the composer of Rick and Morty for yeah I mean that's he you know creating music worth celebrating about the dumbest stuff in the world all the time evil morning fan theories I have never read a single one of them I let fan theories trickle back to me because you've got a room full of writers you chitchat there are people who are less afraid than me of going into the subreddit so I sometimes things get back to me about like certain theories about Rick and Morty in general and then I imagine there's a million evil wordy theories we have fan theories of our own in the writers room they're called ideas that go in a shoe box like we have these discussions but we don't we don't decide anything that becomes canon until until we have to I don't consume record Marti fan theories because that would be a bad idea what if I saw a theory that was real it would eliminate me being able to do something that I was cooking up because I'd go well that person guessed it and even worse like well do you want me to steal your fan theory and use it as an idea Wubba lubba dub dub is pretty funny origin Rick goes into like a kind of like fourth wall breaking conniption fit and he goes down to the ground and starts like hamming it up ryan Ridley had written into the script Rick parentheses a la Curley for you kids out there there was this guy named curly and there was this thing called The Three Stooges it was like there was this thing where curly would like go down on the ground and like run in the circle on the ground and a clockwork fashion and go so Ryan Ridley tried to represent that in text vice by typing maniac Justin roiland who may or may not have been drunk or in any case is Justin like he he just he's just riffing through the lion Samee he he read it as wobble of a dub dub which we thought was hysterical and and from there it just became yeah it became the thing that he that's my catchphrase remember it's a monument to catchphrases we're part of the problem well point yeah that's a problem I don't know what I'm the most proud of is something else I think Ryan Ridley wrote which was that's the that's the follow-up to it which is after brick has now said wobble of a dub dub a few times is finding out on the finale of that season courting a bird person that's bird person language for I am in great pain please oh my god oh wow did you mean I am in great pain please help me that's insane and can you explain to me is that something that they intentionally did at the switchboard at Google or is that the result of either there's like Oh someone at Google is like a huge fan that makes me go I should tweet less because when you have that much influence over the people that control the government you should just hang back and like I could like like why am i tweeting about my politics I should like sit in my bedroom and think about how to influence everyone [Music] the videos that I see on YouTube whether they're remixes or theories or analysis of stuff and record morning it's it's it's amazing I know it's a dumb meme the the it's representative of a bad thing but that that meme of like to be fair you have to have a very high IQ to understand Ricky Moore on one hand that's emblematic of like bad elements of fandom but on the other hand like it does make me proud it's a show that is clearly loved by among many other people some of the most creative funny smart people available to view your stuff like it's it's if it makes you feel like you did something right it's great [Music] thank you for watching those incredibly viral Rick and Mormont's no you didn't watch them you watched me talk about them thank you for watching that you actually are owed more gratitude for that because how is it entertaining to watch someone talk about things that are entertaining I digress if you like the show keep watching it if you don't like the show force yourself to keep watching it whether you watch the show or not buy some of the merchandise and if you make the show share some of that merchandising money [Music]

Channel: GQ

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Keywords: rick and morty, dan harmon, rick and morty 2018, rick and morty funny, rick and morty gq, dan harmon interview, dan harmon rick and morty, dan harmon 2018, dan harmon gq, dan harmon rant, dan harmon writing, rick and morty season, rick and morty episode, rick and morty theories, rick and morty conspiracy, season 3 rick and morty, pickle rick, dan harmon pickle rick, fan theories, rick and morty fan theories, rick, morty, dan, gq, gq magazine

Id: vfHd8MF0ExU

Length: 18min 8sec (1088 seconds)

Published: Wed May 30 2018