'Rick and Morty' Media to Devour While Waiting for Season 3

True fandom manifests between seasons of a television show — when fans become so ravenous for canon-universe developments that they turn to alternative media. Since Rick and Morty is a show that prides itself in its complexity and multiverse approach to reality, fans can, and should follow Rick’s lead and enjoy alternate forms of entertainment from the show’s creators and affiliates as they wait for Season 3. After all, nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody’s gonna die, so just come watch TV.

There’s the popular iOS game Pocket Mortys, but that’s just the beginning.

Other games

Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty Presents: Jerry’s Game might be the most ruthless satirical game on sale in the iTunes store. It’s meant, specifically, to lambast people who buy useless mobile games and spend actual money on them.

Jerry’s Game is simply what known-idiot Jerry Smith is always busy playing on his iPad while the rest of the Smith family debates whatever trouble Rick has gotten Morty into. Users just pop the balloons that float to the top of their screen, by pressing them with a finger. That’s it. It’s a game for idiots, or, more specifically, a game for Jerrys.

Rick and Morty’s Rushed Licensed Adventure is pretty fun, too, although nowhere near as pleasant or complicated as Pocket Mortys. It’s designed to look like an NES style 8-bit game, which is part of the fun. Though the point-and-click adventure isn’t all that exciting, Justin Roiland’s voice acting — complete with belches, improvisational-sounding halts, and repetitions — makes the game’s four chapters interesting.

Speaking of Justin Roiland’s voice …

Before Rick and Morty took off, co-creator Justin Roiland lent his voice to several great cartoons, including Adventure Time. Though he plays a few characters, his turn as the Earl of Lemongrab is the stuff of cartoon-fan dreams. The character is as angry as Rick and as frantic as Morty, with an anti-social personality unique to Adventure Time.

Because of Roiland’s signature screeching, Lemongrab is perhaps the show’s best guest character, being both disturbing and immensely likable.

Roiland not only lent his memorable voice but also his comedic writing chops to Disney’s Gravity Falls, which will end in 2016. In addition to voicing Blendin Blandin, Roiland wrote several commercials that appear on the main characters’ television. To give you an idea, the ads feel like the Ants in My Eyes Johnson, The Adventures of Stealy and Personal Space clips from Rick and Morty, but cleaned up for Disney consumption.

Similarly, Roiland lent his voice to the Rick and Morty Announcer Pack for Dota 2. You can watch Roiland almost finish a thought in this Vine as Morty. There are also these wonderfully screwed up cartoons on Roiland’s website. House of Cosbys is a favorite.

You might also want to check out Solar Opposites, the fake show Roiland fake-pitched on his real Twitter account last September, publishing both “concept art” and texts from his angry co-creator. We sincerely love that man.

Roiland also lent his voice to both a couch gag on The Simpsons and a surprisingly funny Carl’s Jr. commercial last year.

A fan, likewise, animated this improvised scene acted out by the Rick and Morty cast at Comic Con, and it’s hysterical to hear the show’s actors reaching for dialogue. Notably, Sarah Chalke (Scrubs) is disappointingly the least funny person in the scene, perhaps because the show hasn’t given Beth much to work with other than to hate Jerry.

There’s always, of course, Roiland’s original proto-cartoon, which eventually became Rick and Morty, but viewers beware: It’s a weird experience watching beloved characters as ill-defined, in utero blobs. Whereas Rick and Morty is about a crotchety grandfather who really does love his dim grandson, Roiland’s The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti was just about an old man who wants a young boy to lick his balls. Yeah. There’s a reason Roiland removed it from his website while Rick and Morty was in development.

Comics

Oni Press has been semi-quietly releasing Rick and Morty comics since April. Be warned that the comics are written by Zac Gorman, not Roiland or Dan Harmon, and the art differs slightly from the show’s aesthetic. Though the comics are not as funny as the show, their multiverse arc gives Summer’s character more depth, and will satisfy all fans curious to hear more about the One True Morty.