Yet it does demonstrate the vice-like grasp this show holds over popular culture, and why riling its fanbase could be considered a bad idea. The story on its own is amusing but apparently inconsequential. As Harmon commented, sardonically, “It’s really funny because if you’re going to get robbed, get robbed by McDonald’s.”
McDonald’s eventually bowed to pressure and brought it back in 2017 as a full-time addition to their menu, and, in February 2018, shipped a total of 20 million packets of the sauce to its restaurants. It was eventually bought by the DJ Deadmau5, who tweeted “im getting that f_ Szechuan sauce.” Consequently, Rick and Morty’s reference to the sauce being “f_ amazing” led to hungry fans bidding more than $15,000 for a 64-oz jar of the dark-hued necta. McDonald’s, attempting to burnish their pop culture bona fides, brought back Szechuan sauce, in honour of the show’s allusion, but did so for one day, at a limited range of locations. What even they could not have anticipated was the fan reaction. It was intended as a light-hearted allusion to Roiland’s obsession with the condiment. Such promotional foodstuffs are hardly unknown, and are mainly forgotten about mere weeks after they finish, but the show’s co-creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland considered it worth a joke. In the third season’s opening episode, The Rickshank Rickdemption, the protagonist, misanthropic mad scientist Rick Sanchez, makes a throwaway remark trying to find “Szechuan sauce” nothing authentically Chinese, but a limited-edition dip that McDonald’s created in 1998, to tie in with the release of the Disney animated picture Mulan. The adult-themed animation Rick and Morty is an exception to this.
There are few television shows, no matter how successful they are, where one throwaway joke can lead to both a mass fan movement and, subsequently, to a major corporation bending over backwards to accommodate this fan movement.
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