The Rick and Morty multiverse has brought Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith to a variety of wild, and wild-looking, locations. But despite the variety in the visuals of these different planets and dimension, the animation style has, for the most part, remained consistent. But such is not the case in this new “exquisite corpse” video from Adult Swim, which sees Rick and Morty traveling through a bunch of different art styles in an inter-dimensional battle to the death.
Adult Swim enlisted a bunch of different artists to contribute to the video, allowing each new animator to seen only the very end of the segment that the previous one created. (So there is some continuity between vignettes.)
In this case, it looks like the chain was started off by the Rick and Morty creators themselves. The opening scene sees Morty, after being instructed by Rick not to drop a container of blue liquid, dropping a container of blue liquid, starting the procession of animations. You could perhaps even go so far as to say that, in losing grip of the mysterious chemical, Morty literally “dropped acid” and caused the drug-induced hallucinations that follow.
The clip is visually a lot of fun, with scenes inspired by simplistic comics, old-fashioned cartoons (notably, the works of Ralph Bakshi), claymation, Monty Python-style animation, and a bunch of others. Check it out above, and let us know in the comments below what your favorite animation style is, and catch the new season of Rick and Morty beginning on July 30!
Featured image: Adult Swim