Rick and Morty's Surprise Episode Inspired a Petition Aimed at McDonald's

Adult Swim made April Fools Day great again on Saturday when they pulled a reverse Rick Roll—call it a Sanchez roll—releasing the aggressively anticipated season premiere of hit show Rick and Morty online out of nowhere.

Fans thought creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon were taunting them when official Rick and Morty social media channels tweeted and Instagrammed the message, "Come watch TV." It would have been an appropriate punishment for the incessant barrage of nerds constantly asking about Season 3's premiere date if Adult Swim linked to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." Instead they provided an adrenaline-pumping three-hour block of the Season 3 premiere on repeat, revealing the long-awaited mystery of how Rick would escape from galactic prison.

While there was a veritable crap-ton of goodness, including a bunch of puppet-based, 8-bit, and stop-motion goodies on Adult Swim's YouTube channel, we're not going to waste time analyzing it in-depth—you can go to the Rick and Morty subreddit for that.

The biggest takeaway from the episode has been a grassroots movement to bring back an obscure Szechuan chicken nugget sauce McDonald's offered to promote the release of Disney's Mulan in 1998. Not only is a renewed desire to eat the Szechuan sauce oozing all over Twitter, but McDonald's has actually responded to tweets asking them to bring back the sauce.

McDonald's probably recognizes a lucrative social media stunt when they see it. If pure self-interest isn't enough motivation, a Change.org petition has already cracked 15,000 supporters attempting to light a fire under the food industry giant's ass.

The new episode of Rick and Morty is airing on Adult Swim every night this week, and the rest are coming this summer, according to a graphic at the end of the episode. But who even knows what that means anymore? Maybe they'll do another one on 4/20.

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