SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers from “Rick and Morty” Season 8, Episode 7, “Ricker Than Fiction,” which aired Sunday, July 6 on Adult Swim.
DC Studios CEO James Gunn and fellow filmmaker Zack Snyder made surprise appearances on this week’s episode of “Rick and Morty,” lending their voices to guest star as over-the-top versions of themselves.
“They were good sports,” said “Rick and Morty” exec producer Scott Marder. “Both of those guys sort of implied that this is the show they watch when they have downtime. So they were thrilled to get to be a part of the world, and there was no pushback or bristling. If anything, they laughed at anything we threw at them. There were probably, frankly, even more digs and more silly things we could have used. All they did was laugh it off.”
Gunn, in particular, was framed as a villain in Season 8 Episode 7, “Ricker Than Fiction.” Written by Rob Schrab, the episode kicks off with Rick and Morty not happy about the creative direction of their favorite movie franchise, “Maximum Velocitree.” So they head to the Warner Bros. lot — and more specifically, they confront Gunn (the director and producer of “Maximum Velocitree”). When they’re not satisfied with Gunn’s response, Rick and Morty use Rick’s “Movie-lizer” to rewrite the franchise themselves.
In the Warner Bros. cafeteria, Gunn runs into a swole Snyder – and after some “Superman” ribbing (“Just saw your new cut of ‘Superman,’” Snyder tells Gunn, “and word of advice, he’s the ‘Man of Steel,’ not the ‘Man of Conversation.’ Do more shots of him punching!”), Snyder tells him all about Rick Sanchez: “That’s the guy who sealed Christopher Nolan in the giant bookcase to ‘punish’ him for ‘Interstellar.’ He doesn’t represent real fans. He’s just the smartest man in the universe. Don’t sweat it. He can’t do what we do. Probably.”
In the end, Rick and Morty — with the help of Jerry — manage to indeed come up with a better ending, having been sucked into the Movie-lizer, and becoming new “Maximum Velocitree” villains. When they die in the movie, Gunn tearfully proclaims: “They did it! What an ending! They out-done the Gunn!”
Rick and Morty find their way back into the real world, but Gunn steals the Movie-lizer’s hard drive and takes it to Warner Bros. He tells “Mr. Brothers”: “They cracked the code! This won’t just put butts in seats and sell popcorn, it could give people hope! It could save Hollywood, it could change everything.” Warner Brothers is impressed and tells his henchman: “Give this man a sundae!” Gunn is then killed by a gun named “Sundae.”
“I’m excited for the fans to get this one,” Marder said. “I feel like they’re always hungry for classic ‘Rick and Morty’ episodes, ones that feel like a fun plug-and-play, episode-of-the-week. This one feels like it checks that box in a big way, but then has fun surprises.”
The idea of the Movie-lizer had been floating around the writers’ room for a while, Marder said. But initially it was the “Book-alizer,” and revolved around Jerry writing a novel. Then the idea pivoted to movies. “Maximum Velocitree” was dreamed up as a wink at the “Transformers” and “Fast and Furious” franchises.
“We were like, if we’re going to do a movie and we’re going skewer Hollywood, we feel like we have to include our bosses,” he said. “So we started thinking about Warner Bros. Who’d be a good face to be kind of the villain here? James Gunn just seemed like such a good choice. We were all pretty sure that whenever Schrab reached out Gunn he would be a million percent in the middle of doing ‘Superman.’ But he not only did he respond instantly with a yes, but I think he ran it up the chain at Warner Bros. that same day. We had people on our production side who were like, ‘How is it that James Gunn and Zaslav and all these people already know about this episode?’ We didn’t think it would actually move this quickly.”
According to Marder, Gunn even made sure to find time to stop by and do his lines in the “Rick and Morty” recording booth the morning after he finished principal production on “Superman.”
“I think Gunn called people over him to make sure that this wasn’t going to mess anything up. And it looked like he got the green light pretty quickly,” Marder said. “They both came in and were really good sports. I’m a very proud nerd, I idolize both these guys. They’ve got creative freedom very few people have in Hollywood to take big swings.”
Series co-creator Dan Harmon also got excited about the idea of both Gunn and Snyder showing up — and joined in to write that “Superman” dialogue between the two. “When he heard that they were on board and they were coming in, he sort of cracked his knuckles and wanted to make sure the episode lived up to and was worthy of them, having to deliver those lines,” Marder said.
Gunn and Snyder recorded their lines back-to-back and took a picture together that day that went viral online. But luckily for the show — which wanted to keep their cameos a secret — no one picked up that they had run into each other because of “Rick and Morty.”
“I appreciate that we were able to keep it tight lips until now,” Marder said. “We’re pretty Fort Knox over here, we’re really clamped down. Anything that goes out into the public we see, and we get approval on because the fans look at everything, like the Zapruder film or through a jeweler’s lens.”
The storyline to “Ricker Than Fiction” was also meta, centering on fan discourse over franchises, sequels and long-running I.P. like both “Superman” and, yes, “Rick and Morty.”
“For sure, it’s a very high class situation to have such a passionate audience,” Marder said. “It was certainly very organic to the episode. You’re always hearing how everyone could do it better and how it seems so easy. Rick and Morty think they can make a better movie. They’re given the keys to the kingdom. And it’s not as easy as it seems. Writing is really hard. It’s a lot easier to sit on your couch and nitpick something than it is to do the heavy lifting of doing it yourself. So that was all the stuff that we tried to do in a really fun, quick, kinetic way in this episode, without being too up on a soapbox.”
Gunn is shot at the end of the episode, but who knows — he could always return now that he’s a part of “Rick and Morty” canon. As for Snyder, the filmmaker is such a fan that he almost immediately asked to do more.
“I direct all the voices, so I directed both those guys, and Snyder left, and he came back like a fan, saying, ‘I’ll do anything for the show. Throw me a tag. Throw me a thing,’” Marder said. “It was just cool to hear such enthusiasm from him.”
So how about a “Snyder cut” of “Ricker Than Fiction”?
“That would be cool,” Marder said. “I do love a good Snyder cut!”