A typical episode of Rick and Morty is larger-than-life pandemonium. If Rick isn’t using laser swords to slice up hordes of insectoid aliens, he’s whisking his nephew Morty through multi-dimensional portals that make the stargate from 2001 look like an airport people-mover. But underneath that flurry of animation is still a family sitcom about life’s minor gripes. In the season 8 premiere, that includes the annoyance of someone stealing your phone charger. [Ed. note: Setup spoilers ahead for Rick and Morty season 8, episode 1.] “Summer of All Fears” opens in a future where a grown Summer (Spencer Grammer) is the technocratic overlord of a society devoted to phone chargers. Morty is living off the grid after a life of prison time, military service, and cell-phone-related horrors. Turns out, the brother-sister duo are actually stuck in a world simulation à la The Matrix, conceived as punishment by uncle Rick after they used his phone charger. It isn’t surprising that the Rick and Morty writers found a fresh spin for a simulation-theory gag. The twist is that it’s built on the infuriating inconvenience of your phone charger going missing. Creator Dan Harmon tells Polygon he thinks he’s to blame for that plot point.  “I have tried to hoard them,” he says with despair, while recounting the origins of the premiere episode. “I’ve tried to lock them in boxes. They just disappear. They’re the new ‘sock in the dryer.’” Showrunner Scott Marder says the Rick and Morty writers are always on the hunt for relatable problems as cores for their absurdist parodies. Harmon’s gripes were felt in the room. “Every year, there’s a different hookup to the phone!” he says. “So you’ve got a bunch of them that don’t even mean anything anymore. You’re always chasing for one that works.”  While phone charger fury might be relatable, Harmon admits his relationship with the dongles goes a bit deeper. They were once the centerpiece of a notorious Valentine’s Day present he gifted his ex-wife: a “beautiful bouquet” of iPhone chargers. Harmon swears the gift actually went over really well, and he “was proud of giving it,” because unlike most disposable Valentine’s Day gifts, the phone charger bouquet could charge a phone.  Even so, Harmon says, he thought of it as a present that was probably going to have a short shelf life: “Phone chargers, like flowers, feel like you’re just giving them to someone and they’re just going to vanish.” 

Rick and Morty remains a staggering work of chaotic creativity. Previewing a handful of episodes from season 8, which premieres Sunday, May 25 with a Matrix-themed story inspired by phone charger theft, I still had that brain-melty “How do they think of this stuff?” feeling from when the show premiered more than a decade ago. The characters aren’t all the same as they were back in 2013 (voice actors aside): Morty has an edge from being around the galactic block a few hundred times, and Rick, while still a maniac, seems to carry the weight of cloning his daughter Beth that one time.  But the sheer amount of wackadoo sci-fi comedy that creator Dan Harmon, showrunner Scott Marder, and their team of writers pack into each half-hour hasn’t lost the awe. This season, that includes everything from a body-horror spin on the Easter Bunny to a “spiritual sequel” (Harmon’s words) to season 3’s beloved Citadel episode “The Ricklantis Mixup.” So where does writing yet another season of Rick and Morty begin? And what does a new season need to accomplish at this point? Polygon talked to Harmon and Marder, who wrote seasons 8, 9, and 10 all in one go, about the tall-order task of reapproaching the Adult Swim series with so much madcap history behind them. Polygon: Where do you even start writing a new episode, when your show can zip in any fantastical direction, or go completely ham on its own mythology? Scott Marder: You might be surprised that we never start off a season with “What’s the canon we owe?” That’s the heavy lifting, and not necessarily how we want to start a season off. There are always people on staff that are hyper-aware of where we are in that central arc that’s going across the whole series, but it’s like any writers room — people are coming in with ideas they’re excited about. You can just see it on their faces. You can feel their energy and just spit it out, and people just start firing off things they’re excited about. We don’t try to have any rules or any setup. Sometimes there are seasons where we owe something from the previous season. In season 8, we didn’t, and that was luxurious. Dan Harmon: I always reference the Dexter season where they tried to save the revelation that a Fight Club was happening for the end, and after the first episode, all of Reddit had decoded it. I marked that moment as sort of “We are now in post-payoff TV.” As TV writers, we have to use what the audience doesn’t have, which is a TV writers room. That isn’t 10 people sitting around planning a funhouse, because they’re not going to plan as good a funhouse as a million people can plan for free by crowdsourcing.  But we can mix chocolate with giant machines that people can’t afford and don’t have in their kitchen. We can use resources and things to make something that’s delicious to watch. So that becomes the obligation when we sit down for seasons. We never go, “What’s going to be the big payoff? What’s going to be the big old twist? What are we going to reveal?” I think that that’s a non-starter for the modern audience. You just have to hope that the thing that ends up making headlines is a “How is it still good?” kind of thing — that’s the only narrative you can blow people’s minds with. Even if “lore” isn’t the genesis of a new season, Rick & Morty still exists in an interesting middle ground between episodic and serialized storytelling. Do you need the show to have one or the other when you want a season to have impact? Harmon: It’s less episodic than Hercules or Xena. It’s not Small Wonder or something where canon would defeat their own purpose. But it is way more episodic than Yellowjackets — I walked in on Cody [Heller, Harmon’s partner] watching season 2 of [Yellowjackets], and literally there wasn’t a single line of dialogue that made sense to me, and that was how she liked it. They were all talking about whatever happened in season 1.  Referencing The Pitt, I think is the new perfect example of how you can’t shake your cane at serialization. In a post-streaming marketplace, The Pitt represents a new opportunity for old showrunners, new viewers to do things you couldn’t do before, that you can now do with serialization, and issuing the time-slot-driven narrative model. Our show needs to be Doctor Who or Deep Space Nine. It comes from a tradition of, you need to be able to eat one piece of chocolate out of the box, but the characters need to, more so than a Saved by the Bell character, grow and change and have things about them that get revealed over time that don’t then get retconned. Marder: Ideally, the show’s evergreen, generally episodic. But we’re keeping an eye on serialized stuff, moments across each season that keep everyone engaged. I know people care about all that stuff. I think all of that combined makes for a perfect Rick and Morty season. How reactive is writing a new season of Rick and Morty? Does season 8 feel very 2025 to you, or is the goal timelessness? Harmon: The show has seen such a turbulent decade, and one of the cultural things that has happened is, TV is now always being watched by the entire planet. So people often ask “Is there anything that you’re afraid to do or can’t do?” The answer to that is “No.” But then at the same time, I don’t think the show has an edge that it needs to push, or would profit from pushing. It’s almost the opposite, in that the difficult thing is figuring out how to keep Rick from being Flanderized as a character that was a nihilist 10 years ago, where across an epoch of culture and TV, Rick was simply the guy saying, “By the way, God doesn’t exist” and having a cash register “Cha-ching!” from him saying that.  How do you keep House from not becoming pathetic on the 10th season of House if House has made people go, “I trust House because he’s such a crab-ass and he doesn’t care about your feelings when he diagnoses you!” I mean, you need to very delicately cultivate a House. So if you do care about the character, and value its outside perspective, it needs to be delicately changed to balance a changing ecosystem.  What a weird rambling answer to that question. But yeah, with Rick, it’s now like, “What if you’re kind of post-achievement? What if your nihilism isn’t going to pay the rent, as far as emotional relationships?” It’s not going to blow anyone’s mind, least of all his own. Where does that leave him? A new set of challenges. He’s still cynical, he’s still a nihilist. He’s still self-loathing, and filled with self-damage. Those things are wired into him. And yet he’s also acknowledged that other people are arbitrarily important to him. And so I guess we start there — that’s the only thing we can do to challenge ourselves.  Marder: I would say, just yes-anding Harmon, that’s sort of the light arc that runs through the season. Just kind of Rick living in a “retirement state.” What does he do now that this vendetta is over? He’s dealing with the family now, dealing with the Beths. That’s some of the stuff that we touch on lightly through it.  Which characters were you excited to see grow this season? Marder: I don’t think anyone had an agenda. It just kind of happened that we ended up finding a really neat Beth arc once Beth got split in two. It made her a way more intriguing character. One part of you literally gets to live the road less traveled, and this season really explores whether either of them are leading a happier life. Rick has to deal with being at the root of all that.  When we stumble onto something like a Jerry episode, like the Easter [one], that’s a treat, or Summer and the phone charger. She’s such an awesome character. It’s cool to see how she and Morty are evolving and becoming better at being the sidekick and handling themselves. It was cool watching her become a powerful CEO, then step back into her old life. We are very lucky that we’ve got a strong cast.  Are there any concepts in season 8 you’ve tried to get in the show for years and only now found a way? Harmon: My frustrating answer to that question is that the answer to that question is one that happens in season 9! [A thing] I’ve actually been wanting to do in television or in movies forever, and we figured out how to do it.  There are definitely things in every episode, but it’s hard to tell which ones. We have a shoebox of “Oh, this idea can’t be done now,” but it’s like a cow’s digestive system. Ideas for seasons just keep getting passed down. Marder: There are a few that are magnetic that we can’t crack, and that we kind of leave on the board, hoping that maybe a new guy will come in and see it comedically. I feel like every season, a new person will come in and see that we have “time loop” up on the board, and they’ll crack their knuckles and be like, “I’m going to break the time loop.” And then we all spend three days trying to break “time loop.” Then it goes back on the board, and we’re reminded why we don’t do time loops.  Harmon: That is so funny. That is the reality, and it’s funny how mythical it is. It’s like an island on a pre-Columbian map in a ship’s galley, and some new deckhand comes in going, “What’s the Galapagos?” And we’re like, “Yarr, you little piece of shit, sit down and I’ll tell you a tale!” And they’ll either be successfully warned off, or they’ll go, “I’m going to take it.” Marder: It’s always like, “I can’t remember why that one made it back on the board… I can’t remember why we couldn’t crack it…” And then three days later, you’re like, “I remember why we couldn’t crack it.” Now an eager young writer is seasoned and grizzled. “It was a mistake to go to the time loop.”

This Sunday, Rick and Morty returns with Season 8 on Adult Swim. To celebrate, Mashable Entertainment Editor Kristy Puchko sat down with the voice cast to dig into what it's like returning to the world of Pickle Rick, Space Beth, and many, many Mortys. With a crackling team of comedy writers, this sci-fi cartoon series has thrilled critics and fans season after season. But is there ever a time the voice cast is a bit envious over a particularly killer line of dialogue? For Ian Cardoni, who took over voicing Rick Sanchez in Season 7, it's been a dream to make some of the mad scientist's catchphrases his own. Spencer Grammer, who voices Rick's surly granddaughter, Summer Smith, admits she's in the scene that's a personal favorite. But it was her thirsty scene-partner's lines she wished were hers. (If you're thinking "beekeeping age," you win a million flurbos!) As for Harry Belden, who took over voicing Morty in Season 7, he admits it's Morty's mom, Beth (Sarah Chalke), that he can't help quoting. And his co-stars agree.What kind of wild one-liners and rants about lust will come this season? You'll have to tune into Adult Swim to find out. Rick and Morty Season 8 premieres May 25 at 11 p.m. ET on Adult Swim, and streams on Max and Hulu Sept. 1. Kristy Puchko Kristy Puchko is the Entertainment Editor at Mashable. Based in New York City, she's an established film critic and entertainment reporter who has traveled the world on assignment, covered a variety of film festivals, co-hosted movie-focused podcasts, and interviewed a wide array of performers and filmmakers.

One of Rick and Morty‘s enduring charms is its opening credits. There’s nothing more pleasing than seeing the random clips at the start of every season and theorizing which scenes are non-sequitur/false start gags or actual moments from the episodes to come. With each respective season, there’s been an increasing emphasis on random gags. But you know what? We love it that way. With the start of season 8 arriving, here are our favorite non-canonical clips from each Rick and Morty season intro opening.  Season 1 – M-Preg Jerry Season one, the start of “100 years, Rick and Morty!” Alas, most of the clips from the intro are pulled from the show. However, M-Preg Jerry is the one of two non-sequiturs that’s quite funny. What makes the bit work so well is the direction. The 180-degree panned camera movement from Morty and Summer wielding guns and gazing in horror as Rick delivers the baby from Jerry’s birthing canal to Beth clutching Jerry’s hand as he is heavy-breathing in labor is such a priceless sight to behold. Meanwhile, the Smith-Sanchez household is filled with green goo across the wall, like a scene straight out of Alien. It’s funny to think of a chestburster being treated like a real pregnancy. Considering this is the first season, too, it’s the perfect tone setter of how weird and bizarre the series was to become. Season 2 – Indifference Towards a Disintegrated Rick Frankly, I wouldn’t say any of the non-canonical moments in season 2’s intro are particularly noteworthy. Hell, the funniest aspect of the intro is the pillow fight between Rick, Summer, and Mr. Beauregard pulled from the episode “Total Rickall.” The most amusing example, however, is the assembly of Rick variants engaged in a doohickey. When one is disintegrated by a machine, the remaining Ricks all react unbothered and continue to work. It is entirely in character for Rick, and given that it is the final clip, it is quite amusing. Season 3 – Rick Buying Plastic-Sealed Morty It was difficult to choose the position for the funniest season three false start. The butt-face Morty variant getting caught watching porn that features two faces on an ass is hilarious. However, I adore when a common situation is translated to a distinct setting. Rick at a store choosing between two separate plastic-sealed life-sized Morty’s as if he’s an action figure or fruit to purchase always garners a laugh. The look on the non-chosen Morty’s face when his packaging falls truly seals the deal. In 2019, House House’s Untitled Goose Game, in which you play a mischievous goose who terrorizes people in random and funny situations, blew up the independent gaming scene. So much so that it honked its way into Rick and Morty season 4’s opener. The scene has Rick and the Smiths take cover while under assault by a goose. Pardon. I mean a two-headed goose. It’s Rick and Morty: There had to be a sci-fi twist in there. Some might say it’s not a nod because both the season and game came out in the same year in such a short time span of each other (the game released in September and the season in November). Nevertheless, animation is a time-consuming process. It is possible to speculate how a three-second clip could be produced in such a short amount of time. Besides that, the Sanchez and Smith clan’s fear of a simple, two-headed goose is undeniably humorous, especially given the variety of foes they have faced up to that point. Season 5 – Morty Sinking a Punt Undeniably the funniest non-canonical clip out of the entire list if not the whole series thus far. Morty succesfully putting and waving as a crowd of onlookers clap is peak subversion. Morty’s final clip in the season five intro is nothing short of sublime. Given the sci-fi antics that are frequently depicted in the show’s intros and throughout, seeing something so basic and wholesome with a character often tortured and/or in peril always got me cackling. It’s the normality embedded in the randomness that makes the Morty golf bit work so triumphantly as it does. Nothing has ever topped it since. Season 6 – Rick and Summer Evading a Gigantic Flying Squirrel That’s the thing I love about Rick and Morty intros. I get older, the opening scene with the duo running from green monsters stays the same. It’s a tale as old as time. Yet, the shift of quality immediately after, with Rick and Summer evading a giant flying squirrel while in flight suits in a desert terrain, has a comedic aspect to it. On a cosmic level. In addition to the dynamic camera movement, the characters are textured with varied colors and hues, and the background art is picturesque and detailed. To see the roughly drawn, loosely animated sequence from 2013 immediately followed up with a fluidly animated and gorgeously lit scene from 2022 takes me out. It’s the perfect “how it started versus how it’s going” evolution. Granted, I get more of a chuckle out of Butter Morty entering a frying pan and freaking out as he slowly sizzles. It’s like if Pixar had a Toy Story series and used clips from 4 while remaining the same quality from the first. Season 7 – Jerry-Claude Van Damme We’ve done the wholesome scenes, the odd sci-fi ones, but one that references the star-turning Jean-Claude Van Damne action flick with the series’ most anxious character? Now that’s funny. In this extended shot, Jerry is depicted as perched on two chairs, exuding a sense of relaxation and tranquility, while looking JACKED! Plus, the synth-heavy theme too factors into the offbeat joke. Out of all movies, this sci-fi show pays homage to a 1988 action movie. There’s no reason for it, either. It’s just Bloodsport with Jerry. That my friends is classic Rick and Morty goodness. I Love it. Rick and Morty season 8 premieres Sunday, May 25 at 11 p.m. ET on Adult Swim.

Over a billion people experience disability globally, and many are gamers. 30% of gamers in the U.S. identify as disabled, yet 66% say they face barriers or issues related to gaming.Fortunately, this situation is starting to change.From Tribe Games and Owlchemy Labs to Insomniac and Naughty Dog, studios of all sizes are creating more accessible gaming experiences. Today, 70% of allplayers use accessibility features built into games, whether they have a disability or not. Players want flexibility, and accessible game design can provide that.Owlchemy Labs, the studio behind titles like Job Simulator,Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality, and, most recently, Cosmonious High, champions accessibility in VR. In June, they introduced Cosmonious High’s first accessibility update, with a range of updated gameplay options, including one-handed control mode, features to accommodate seated players, colorblindness enhancements, an immersive subtitling system, and more.Andrew Eiche (chief operating owl and cable slinger), Jazmin Cano (accessibility product manager), and Peter Galbraith (accessibility engineer) joined Unity’s Hasan Al Salman on Twitch to discuss the update.Read on to learn how this innovative studio built a culture of accessibility, get tips you can apply to your own games, or watch the full stream below.Their accessibility statement explains that, “At Owlchemy Labs, we believe deeply in making VR for everyone! Improving our accessibility helps us achieve that goal.” The studio has built a strong, accessibility-first culture that every Owl experiences from their first day of onboarding.“There’s a huge developer documentation page, which is fantastic. It has a fabulous guide on accessibility,” says Jazmin. “There are tools, learning resources, and examples of how Owlchemy approaches games with this thinking. From day one, it shows everyone at Owlchemy how important this is.”Conversations about accessibility at the studio aren’t relegated to specific Slack threads and channels, but are discussed openly everywhere. “It’s really important for everyone to see what’s going on in the industry and even just learn about it as we develop,” says Jazmin.Owlchemy Labs considers every gameplay element through the lens of universal design. Where possible, each feature is built to be used easily by anyone, without having to enable specific accessibility settings from a menu.“There’s a great saying that goes: ‘Design for one, extend to many,’” says Jazmin. “When you create something that’s accessible for one person, it’s likely going to benefit more people than you had in mind.”The team considers accessibility from the start and draws on learnings from previous projects, which makes it easier to implement or iterate on new gameplay features.“We do a lot to think about these things from the beginning as much as we can,” says Andrew. “We’re always improving and getting better, which is why we created the accessibility update. But having the thought process from the beginning makes the whole process significantly easier.”Accessibility options in Cosmonious High generally aren’t hidden in menus. To play in one-handed mode, you can just turn off your second controller and start playing.Peter Galbraith, the team’s accessibility engineer, shares how Owlchemy Labs adapted features like the Powers Menu, the way you select various VR superpowers, for one-handed mode. “Previously, you would have to tap the back of your hand and it would pull up a radial menu of your powers. With the new accessibility update, you can just double tap, and it opens up the menu so you’re good to go.”Players can grab objects telekinetically by gesturing towards them and pulling them with a flick of the wrist. “You don’t have to reopen your hand and get the exact timing when it hits right. It’s a really nice way to make you feel powerful, while making it easy to identify and grab what you want,” Peter says.One-handed mode obviously helps players who don’t have use of both hands, but it has subtle benefits for players who do.“When you design for one use case, you can actually end up solving for a lot of different situations,” says Jazmin. “You can play Cosmonious High while holding a drink, or a snack, or a pet. Maybe only one of your controller’s batteries is charged, so you only have one to play with. If we didn’t have this one-handed mode, in these situations, you just wouldn’t be able to play at all!“During the stream, one viewer asked what makes VR games inaccessible to players who use wheelchairs.“Imagine looking around your own room. All the things that are more than an arm’s length above your head – all of those are inaccessible,” says Andrew. “Imagine if you’re a person who is capable of leaning or moving in your chair, so literally all you can do is stick your arms out in front of you and move them. Those are the kind of things that we have to consider for wheelchair accessibility.”One-handed mode is one way to remove barriers for seated players, but Owlchemy Labs has also implemented other features to ensure players of all heights and abilities can explore the halls of Cosmonious High.For example, every surface in the game functions like a standing desk, with a handle you can adjust to change the height. Players can dynamically change their own height in-game using Small student mode, allowing them to reach areas they might not be able to reach through height sliders and other toggles.Cosmonious High has been praised for its distinctive, colorful visuals. However, Owlchemy Labs was careful to ensure the game remains completely accessible to players with different types of colorblindness.“We have these puzzles where players have to match up different crystals,” explains Peter. “Each has patterns and shapes in addition to colors. Blue triangles connect to blue triangles, yellow squares connect to yellow squares – that way no puzzle or feature is entirely reliant on color alone.”Owlchemy Labs uses Colorblind Effect from the Unity Asset Store to simulate what the scene would look like for players with the three most common types of color blindness. See the tool in action below.Owlchemy Labs has put a huge amount of work and research into the subtitling system for their games, which they believe is among the best in the industry for XR. Cosmonious High’s subtitles are embedded into the HUD, and feature the name, image, and pronouns of the speaker, as well as an arrow pointing in their direction that adjusts based on the player’s position.“The big thing is, unlike television or a 2D view where you can just pop things on the bottom of the screen, we don’t want players to be forced to look at a character when they’re playing,” says Andrew. “But we also want players to know where that character is, so that’s where that little arrow design comes from. We want everyone to have the same level of fidelity that players who hear in the game with the spatialized audio would have.”Owlchemy’s subtitling features ended up being useful for developers, too. “A lot of our developers play without the audio on because they want to listen to music – they just want to hit play, make sure that all the subtitle timings are lined up, and not hear the chaos,” says Andrew. “And now they can do that.”For more information on Owlchemy Labs’ subtitles, check out their talk, “Subtitles in XR: A Practical Framework.”Owlchemy Labs regularly conducts interviews and feedback sessions and performs user testing with the disability community. VR is a physical medium by nature, so in-person testing is ideal. “A player’s body, their range of motion, and their physicality are all important considerations,” says Peter.“In-person feedback is super valuable,” agrees Jazmin. “Not only do you get direct feedback, but you also get feedback through body language. If someone’s scratching their head, maybe they’re a little confused. There’s a lot of nonverbal feedback that you get from meeting with someone.”During the pandemic, Owlchemy Labs began conducting more player research remotely on video calls – now, they do a mix of both. Reaching out and building community online via channels like Discord means they’ve been able to reach even more players in the accessibility community.“There’s a really important saying in the accessibility community: ‘Nothing about us, without us,’” says Jazmin. “It’s important to respect that statement. Listening to people with disabilities provides feedback, and that’s a must. We have to have diverse voices for this work to actually work.”Closing out the stream, Owlchemy Labs offered advice on implementing accessibility features into your projects – and why you should consider it as part of your game design.Jazmin: “Whether you’re making a game right now, or you’re about to launch, or you’ve already launched, it’s never too late to add accessibility. Accessibility is a journey: There’s a lot to learn, a lot to explore and a lot to try out. It’s never too late! For example, Cosmonious High launched before our accessibility update. You can always do more.”Peter: “I echo exactly what Jazmin was saying: It’s never too late to add accessibility. It benefits everyone, not just the people that you assume to have accessibility needs. When you improve accessibility, you are improving your game not just for players with disabilities, but for every one of your players. And the sooner you start thinking about that, the more accessibility features you get to help everyone share virtual reality.”Andrew: “If, for some reason, you need one last bottom-line way of convincing the folks in your organization that accessibility matters, let me remind you that the entertainment market is a very crowded market: Finding a good niche is always a benefit to you. When you cater to a community and you show that you care, that community is going to respond in kind. It’s going to create a market for you, and it’s going to increase the amount of people that are capable of playing your games. But if you want to do it altruistically, which is where, hopefully, Owlchemy expresses itself – we think that it’s a really, really important goal.”Cosmonious High is available now on Meta Quest 2 and SteamVR. To learn how to make your own games accessible, check out our Unity Learn course, Practical Game Accessibility.