Rick and Morty Commercials Are Actually Written By Co-Creator Justin Roiland

You know you’ve hit the big time when your fictional characters get asked to advertise real-life products. For several years now, the titular “stars” of Rick and Morty have been at the center of original commercials promoting a wide range of products, from Carl’s Jr. hamburgers to the Playstation 5 to video games to… well, it’s pretty endless, just how many different things have looked to the Adult Swim show to promote, as you can see in the compilation below:

In addition to voicing both the characters of Rick and Morty, show co-creator Justin Roiland revealed to Collider in a recent interview that he also writes these commercials, with a specific focus on making sure that while touting an upcoming film or Old Spice body spray, the ads remain to the show’s anarchic spirit.

“When I’m writing those commercials, I try to just poke fun at the concept of advertising and I try to stay true to the show’s tone and the characters,” he said. “It can be really difficult with some partners because it’s not like they come to us and say, ‘Hey, here’s all of the pitches we have. Which one do you guys want to do?’ We’re just told, ‘Hey, so we did a deal with Pringles.'”

While Roiland’s not involved with the dealmaking (though, he said, “I’d like to be. I’d like to be in the room negotiating those rates, because I think that they’re underselling the IP. I think they’re giving it away”), he does use his position as writer to do one thing:

My whole goal with writing those commercials is trying to stay true to the characters, trying to keep Rick cynical. Rick is the type of person that would see right through any fucking advertisement and who these big corporations are, the whole corporations weighing in on socio-political stuff. It’s just so fucking ridiculous. It’s funny to me, and Rick is somebody who would see right through that shit. It’s like they just want money. That’s all they care about. So I’m trying to keep all of that in mind while writing these commercials. It’s a bit of a tightrope act, especially when you’re submitting to the ad agency, they’re showing it to the client and you’re going to get notes from both, and trying to maintain that level of cynicism and staying true to the characters while also getting those notes implemented. It’s a nightmare in some cases.

Prior to a thriving career in animation, Roiland actually did have some experience with making commercials, specifically, a series of ads for the Mantica, California-based store Replay Records, which he produced from 2001-2003 and you can watch now on Vimeo. “They would run them all around the central Valley. People knew those commercials. It was really cool. I would meet people and they were like, ‘Oh my God, you made those commercials.'”

As he continued, “It was a fun time, and I was thinking about weird advertisements — how do you play in this space in an innovative way? It’s been fun to do those ads because it’s like I’m getting to role-play as an ad agency writing these spots and coming up with weird stuff to market, coming up with ideas I’m floating to them to help them sell their product, I suppose.”

rick-and-morty-old-spice-ad — Image via Adult Swim

A formula that Roiland landed on for writing these ads involved making sure that Rick, being the savvy mad scientist he is, was aware of what was happening:

For a while I was just doing this bit where Rick just bursts into Morty’s room with a bullhorn. I kept going back to that bit, and he’s got all these anthropomorphized versions of the products they’re trying to sell. What made that work for me was, it’s like, ‘Oh, Rick’s in on the take and he’s also torturing Morty with it.’ There’s something really funny about that. He’s justifying this selling out by counting money. Or you can tell he’s done on the take, and then also he’s using it as a means to torture Morty.. It all is just an ad for some product, but anyway.

It might not be the reason why Roiland wanted to make the show, but it is an aspect of the Rick and Morty phenomenon he enjoys, even if he doesn’t necessarily know what to make of it. When I mentioned to him that there aren’t a lot of people out there who can say they’ve written a Super Bowl commercial, he agreed, noting that “That was very surreal. I feel like all the biggest events that we’ve had in the show’s history, I’ve had this weird disassociation from their reality. The reality of the Super Bowl commercial, the Simpsons couch gag that we did — that’s another one that’s just super surreal and sort of… I have this weird dissociation from the reality of those things. It’s bizarre, for sure.”

For plenty more on the making of Rick and Morty, look forward to our full interview with Roiland soon. The show returns for Season 5 Sunday, June 20 on Adult Swim.