Like DC Studios and Superman, Rick and Morty falls under the Warner Bros. Discovery banner. Last night's episode, "Ricker Than Fiction," was corporate synergy at its finest, but surprise roles for filmmakers James Gunn and Zack Snyder still proved to be a lot of fun.
In that, an unhappy Rick and Morty head to Warner Bros. to express unhappiness with the creative direction of their favourite movie franchise, Maximum Velocitree, and it's there they run into Gunn, the episode's antagonist.
The biggest talking point, however, has been the meeting between Gunn and Snyder in the cafeteria. The Man of Steel director tells the DC Studios co-CEO, "Just saw your new cut of 'Superman,' and word of advice, he's the 'Man of Steel,' not the 'Man of Conversation.' Do more shots of him punching!"
Snyder proceeds to explain slow motion to an unhappy Gunn, and they both lent their voices to these animated versions of themselves (Variety has confirmed that the viral photo of them together was taken after they recorded their lines for Rick and Morty).
"They were good sports," Rick and Morty executive producer Scott Marder told the trade. "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."
Marder continued, "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. 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," he noted. "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."
Unsurprisingly, Snyder was every bit as enthusiastic when it came to starring in an episode of Rick and Morty. "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 revealed. "It was just cool to hear such enthusiasm from him."
You can watch a clip from the episode featuring Gunn and Snyder's back-and-forth in the player below.