Rick and Morty fans confused by coronavirus joke in latest episode

Viewers have questioned how the hit animated series seemingly ‘knew about coronavirus nine months ago’

Fans of the hit animated series Rick and Morty have expressed their surprise after a joke about the coronavirus pandemic made it into the latest episode.

The episode, entitled “Never Ricking Morty”, features a scene in which Morty (voiced by Justin Roiland) says he wants to buy a train. Rick responds by saying: “Buy another one, Morty! Consume, Morty! Nobody’s out there shopping with this f***ing virus!”

Given that episodes of Rick and Morty typically take around nine months to produce, fans were baffled how the show’s creators were able to sneak in such a timely joke.

“So we just gonna ignore how Rick and Morty knew about the coronavirus nine months ago?” asked one Twitter user.

“Holy s***, a coronavirus line? When’d they record that?” asked another.

Chris Parnell, who voices Jerry on the series, even remarked to Games Radar that he had not known about the joke before the episode aired.

“I’ve only seen the trailers so I did not know that had been put in - that’s amazing,” he said. ”I guess obviously very late in the game they can add that stuff.”

The dialogue was likely just added to pre-existing animation within the last several weeks, through a process called post-synchronisation.

Post-synchronisation – known in the US as ADR, or Automated Dialog Replacement – is the process by which new dialogue is inserted over existing footage, and has been commonly used in animation for decades.