“Rick and Morty” fans it may be time to reconsider your attachment to the show and its now fired and disgraced co-creator and animation figurehead, Justin Roiland.
Roiland has been embroiled in scandal since it was reported last year that he had been charged with felony domestic violence over an alleged incident in 2020, the charges were then dropped but he was then fired from all of his projects including Disney’s 20th Television Animation and Adult Swim’s smash hit “Rick and Morty.” He also resigned from his video game studio, Squanch Games. The charges against him were dropped due to insufficient evidence but new allegations have surfaced after the voice behind the chaotic grandfather-grandson had been accused on social media earlier this year of forming sexually inappropriate relationships with underage fans.
Months after the social media allegations, he has now reportedly been accused of countless troubling allegations of sexual assault and grooming underage fans. In a scathing exposé from NBC News, the animator, voice actor and games industry star allegedly used his clout as the co-creator of “Rick and Morty” to gain entry into fans’ lives through DMs on social media and dating apps, communicating with fans as young as 16 when he was in his mid-30s and older.
NBC’s investigation into Roiland included interviews with 11 women and nonbinary people who shared thousands of messages with Roiland spanning a decade starting in 2013. Nine of those people alleged Roiland initiated the sexual aspects of their conversation. Three of the nine people said they were 16 when Roiland began talking to them. Roiland would allegedly begin all his interactions the same way, following and interacting with numerous spellbound fans on social media and dating apps. He allegedly exploited the parasocial relationship between himself as the voice and creator of “Rick and Morty” and his fans of the show. It is reported that he’d compliment them calling them “super cute” or “hot.” Then, of course, because he’s a gentleman, he’d ask their ages, where they were from and for sexually explicit photos of them.
He’d follow up by prying into the person’s sexual orientation and then ask them to meet — sometimes offering to pay for their travel expenses. One of the women who met up with Roiland on a Tinder date said that he sexually assaulted her after she said “no” to performing oral sex on him. Another woman whom Roiland flew out to Los Angeles to meet and stay with him said that she began talking to him when she was 19 after he complimented her “Rick and Morty” artwork on Twitter. She said she was heavily intoxicated before Roiland and another woman had sex with her. She said she felt that he took advantage of her and the experience “definitely was traumatic.” Both women were 20.
“Justin targeting me made me feel like I was special and chosen,” she told NBC in an interview. “Even just being [followed by him on] Twitter made me feel special because I’d see my name next to accomplished artists and people.”
The most unsettling and eyebrow-raising allegations were one of grooming underage girls. Allegedly, Roiland talked to two then-underage 16-year-olds who shared messages with NBC News that showed Roiland calling the girls “jailbait.” One of the girls said she described she would like to stream herself playing video games and Roiland allegedly replied, “I bet you’d do good,” continuing, “Then once you turn 18 you just start cam whoring,” a reference to women who do recorded camera sex work.
In response to the allegations, Roiland’s lawyer, said the allegations are “false and defamatory.” He noted that some of them had been previously published online.
The allegations leveled at Roiland do not end there, and that is the most nefarious part about them. The exposé documents that as he was allegedly committing these violations against people, he would use the pre-established relationship he spent months, sometimes years cultivating as a way to manipulate the situation. In the texts shared with NBC, Roiland reportedly asked one of the women how she was doing after she was allegedly forced to give oral sex to him. He texted her again repeating the same sentiment until she responded that she wasn’t comfortable with what had happened.
“Awe!! Ok, I understand that,” he said. “We don’t have to do that again.”
“But I felt like you weren’t okay,” Roiland texted again. “Can I come talk to you?”
He continued when she fell asleep: “I want you to sleep with me tonight,” “I wish you were here,” and “I’m sorry.”
Roiland allegedly used the iPhone’s sticker function to send an explicitly pornographic image of a man with penises in his mouth to many of the messages. He sent the image 14 times.
“Sorry for spamming the guy with the d**ks in his mouth,” he said. “I just want you to be happy and have a fun time here, I’ll do whatever you need for that to be the case.”
Most poignantly, the woman said she was terrified of his wealth and industry connections and only shared her experience with Roiland because of the now-dismissed domestic violence charges. This sentiment is the reason why Roiland’s behavior and a clear pattern of exploitation built him into an impenetrable force field. His status and wealth as a famous animator, games designer and voice actor created a system of protection that left his alleged victims vulnerable, afraid and silenced into submission until they weren’t. Until they were brave enough to share their experiences probably with a deep fear of retaliation.
But Roiland’s actions do not just exist in his impenetrable force field of wealth and status, they are indicative of a misogynistic and violent parasite expanding larger in the culture steeped in the intersection of all the online subgenres that he himself was involved in. Whether it is the 2014 “Gamergate” doxxing of female games journalists for revealing the sexist state of the games industry or the popular female-Twitch streamers’ digital likenesses being edited onto deepfake porn videos without their consent or the podcast bros indoctrinating lonely men into women-hating internet trolls — each incident is attached to the other like a delicately interwoven spiderweb of misogyny. When you take a step back you can visualize the repugnant picture.
In these chronically online male-dominated spheres (think of the only “Ricky and Morty” fan you know in 2023. . . It’s a deeply online man, right?), Roiland is an important and integral figure. Men who are fans of Twitch streamers, men who are active Reddit users and men who are overall fans of gaming culture. Of course, liking these things does not automatically transform you into an immediate creep but it does raise slight concerns about who you are interacting with on the internet and if you are falling down the alt-right to fascism pipeline. Some of the same people that were probably posted in Roiland’s hit tweet that was viewed millions of times on Twitter, celebrating his vindication after he was cleared of domestic abuse. They were cheering that their beloved, nerdy animator that they see themselves in isn’t a domestic abuser! Yay! Gross.
Like many men who have been exposed for their decades-long sexual misconduct and abuse over the last eight years, Roiland is seemingly no different even if he created your favorite, pouty-mouthed sci-fi adventure “Rick and Morty.” The long-standing statement that you can separate the art from the artist does not even hold up in this case because Roiland allegedly lured his victims through his status as the show’s star. If that doesn’t make you throw out your Szechuan sauce I don’t know what will.
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