New ‘Rick and Morty’ Episode Features Two Big Hollywood Guest Stars

The latest episode of Rick and Morty included a surprise cameo from two major Hollywood stars.

In celebration of the new Superman movie, the adult animated series brought on Superman director James Gunn and Justice League director Zack Snyder.

On Sunday’s episode, “Ricker Than Fan Fiction,” fans were treated to a brief cameo of Gunn and Snyder appearing as themselves in animation form, with one scene in particular bumping into each other in the cafeteria at Warner Bros. The scene involves Snyder giving Gunn, who is also DC Studios’ CEO, some advice about the Man of Steel, and Gunn worries that they might be losing touch with the audience.

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“They were good sports,” Rick and Morty executive producer Scott Marder told Variety. “Both of those guys sort of implied that this is the show they watch when they have downtime. So they were thrilled to get to be a part of the world, and there was no pushback or bristling. If anything, they laughed at anything we threw at them. There were probably, frankly, even more digs and more silly things we could have used. All they did was laugh it off.”

In the episode, written by Rob Schrab, unsatisfied with the creative direction of their favorite movie franchise, Rick and Morty head to the Warner Bros. lot to confront Gunn, who is the director and producer of said franchise. Following Gunn’s response, the titular characters end up using Rick’s “Movie-lizer” to rewrite the franchise instead and wind up with a better ending. But by the end of the actual episode, after things are said and done, Gunn is killed by a gun named “Sundae.”

“We were like, if we’re going to do a movie and we’re going skewer Hollywood, we feel like we have to include our bosses,” Marder. “So we started thinking about Warner Bros. Who’d be a good face to be kind of the villain here? James Gunn just seemed like such a good choice. We were all pretty sure that whenever Schrab reached out to Gunn, he would be a million percent in the middle of doing Superman. Not only did he respond instantly with a yes, but I think he ran it up the chain at Warner Bros. that same day. We had people on our production side who were like, ‘How is it that James Gunn and Zaslav and all these people already know about this episode?’ We didn’t think it would actually move this quickly.”

Not only was Marder able to get both Gunn and Snyder on board, but it was pretty perfect that they were able to get the episode out the week of Superman’s release, making it all the more perfect.