In October 2006 Justin Roiland released a satire of Back to the Future titled “The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti” on Youtube.  The animation was popular in the Youtube community and caught attention of Adult Swim higher ups, later on Roiland and his partner Dan Harmen, were working on a new show based off the animation Roiland released years ago.

In December 2013 their new show “Rick and Morty” aired and received very good response.  Soon the show had a large fanbase, and the overall popularity of the show had increased.  In October 2015 Rick and Morty’s second season came to a close leaving fans on a cliffhanger.  The next season of the show wouldn’t start for 546 days.  During the dans wait time for the next season they grew eager for any Rick and Morty news.  Finally, on April fools day 2017 the shows creators released season 3 episode 1 on Social Media.  The fans were surprised that they had actually released it on April fools day.  The overall hype of the fans and their support promoted the show to the mainstream audience and soon everyone had heard of Rick and Morty.

In the first episode of season 3 one of the main characters Rick makes jokes about a sauce released in 1998 by McDonalds as a promotional tie-in to the movie Mulan.  This joke about Szechuan Sauce was blown up by fans of the show and soon the fans were demanding the sauce.

Fast forward roughly 6 months and the Szechuan Sauce craze is still going strong as well as the shows other gags such as Pickle Rick, and Wubba-Lubba-Dub-Dub.  On October 7th McDonald’s would finally join in the craze by releasing a small number of Szechuan Sauce packets to the public at select locations across the country.  The fans of the show went crazy trying to get their hands on sauce.  Some fans would even go to the extreme of camping outside of McDonalds so they’d be first to get the limited sauce.  Not too soon after McDonald’s opened its doors that Saturday would they run out of sauce which sent some of the fans into a frenzy.

The frenzied fans would chant “We want sauce” and would scream the shows other gags.  The reaction to the sauce showed how devoted some of the viewers of the show were and how far they’d go for the show.  These devoted fans would threaten McDonald’s, disrupt store business, and would make a joke of the show.  

Justin Roiland spoke out saying the show creators had nothing to do with the sauce incidents and he did not want the shows fans to disrespect employees because it wasn’t their fault they weren’t better supplied.  McDonald’s also spoke out about the sauce incident and apologized for their lack of supplies and they said they would be bringing the sauce back for Holiday 2017.  This calmed the frenzied devoted fans.  

Rick and Morty season 3 finale hinted at a Christmas special which might be tying in with McDonald’s bringing back Szechuan sauce this winter.  With the Holiday season approaching we are sure we will see many dress up as Rick and Morty characters for Halloween and Szechuan sauce will definitely be found under all the fans shows Christmas trees.  In 2018 there is planned to be a live action remake of Mulan which also excites fans of the show for yet another opportunity to get that Szechuan sauce.