Rick & Morty Become Batman in New Adult Swim Bumper

The cartoon duo of Rick & Morty sure do get around. Over the last decade, the multiversal duo have become extremely popular, thanks in part to popping up in films, live-action, video games, and different forms of animation. The next universe they’ve jumped to? None other than the DC Animated Universe, sort of.

Recently, Adult Swim released a TV bumper featuring Rick and Morty in the style of the intro for Batman: The Animated Series. And it looks…pretty good, actually? From start to finish, it really commits to the bit as much as it can in under a minute. Seeing Rick & Morty characters in a cleaner art style definitely makes the show look more distinct and eye-catching, ditto its theme when done in Danny Elfman style.

The bumper was directed and executive produced by Aron Fromm (who already works for Adult Swim as an editor on Smiling Friends) and animation studio Open the Portal. In an interview with Animation World Network, Fromm and OTP creative director David Braun explained they’d met key BTAS writer Paul Dini last year at a screening of Fleischer cartoons. When Adult Swim contracted them for a Rick & Morty promo, the duo went with the classic show in part because it was “one of the biggest influences on our work,” said Braun. “Many a man has tried and failed to recapture the magic of the original series, and we love a challenge.”

Despite how it may seem, the pair stressed this bumper is currently just a one-off and not some herald of another Rick & Morty spinoff. Still, Fromm admitted he can easily imagine an “elaborate and gothic” trailer for a hypothetical series, which he thinks could last at least 40 episodes. Stranger things have happened, particularly on Batman’s end, so maybe don’t rule it out just yet.

You can read AWN’s full interview with Fromm and Braun, which also goes into nailing the bumper’s design and the evolution of animation, here.

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