Rick And Morty‘s Justin Roiland facing felony domestic violence charges
Justin Roiland was charged with domestic battery and false imprisonment in connection to an incident from 2020
Aux News Rick and Morty
Rick And Morty co-creator and star Justin Roiland is currently facing criminal charges in California, in relation to a complaint filed in May 2020.
NBC reports that the voice actor has been charged with “one felony count of domestic battery with corporal injury and one felony count of false imprisonment by menace, violence, fraud and/or deceit.” The charges are in relation to an as-of-yet unnamed woman who was dating Roiland at the time.
Most of the court records related to the case remain sealed, but NBC reports that Roiland pleaded not guilty to both charges in 2020. Since then, there have been a number of pre-trial hearings, including one in which Roiland appeared this Thursday. An official trial date has not yet been set.
There was also a protective order filed in October 2020, stating that Roiland is “not to harass, threaten or surveil the person named in the protective order” and must “turn in any firearms he owned or possessed.” He is also not allowed to be within 100 feet of the person named in the order.
Roiland was initially charged in May 2020 and was arrested and released in August on a $50,000 bond. He was arraigned in October 2020.
Rick And Morty finished up its sixth season this past December. The show currently has plans for a seventh season, but a release date has not yet been set. It is unclear how the trial may affect the show.
Roiland’s other major project Solar Opposites, which he co-created with Mike McMahan (Star Trek: Lower Decks) and also voice-acts on, has already been renewed for seasons four and five at Hulu. Both seasons have yet to air. Roiland’s status on this project also remains unclear.
76 Comments
I can’t say this is surprising. Disappointing yeah.
Yeah. Sometimes you can just tell. I think most people can see you abuse women based on the things you type.
“The show currently has plans for a seventh season…” didn’t Adult Swim order 70 episodes as a joke to make the “Rick and Morty 100 years” thing come true? How many episodes into that are we yet?
That was May 2018, and there’s been 30 episodes since then.
As mentioned, we’ve got about four more seasons’ worth left. They’ll probably still have Roiland voice the episodes he can while he’s on trial, assuming he doesn’t take a plea deal. After that, it just depends on whether he goes to jail or how long – if it’s more than a year or two, they’d probably recast the voices for Rick and Morty rather than putting it on hiatus (the show is still big enough that I doubt they’d just cancel it outright over this).
He’s not going to prison for something like this.
He’s got two felony counts. That’s jail time unless the judge gives him probation, he goes to trial and gets off, or he takes a plea bargain with no jail time.
Not for a first time offender in California. He’ll get a couple years of probation and a large fine if convicted.
He can smuggle his voice recordings on a usb drive up his ass.
If he gets probation instead of jail time (which is quite possible if they’re offering a plea bargain deal), then he’d just record the lines from his home. He might already have a home studio where he can record dialogue for Rick and Morty – I know some voice actors have that.
Pretty sure almost all professional voice actors do – all you need is a soundproof booth the size of a phone booth, microphone and computer.
It wasn’t a joke. Animation can take a lot longer to produce than live-action television. The longer an episode and the higher the quality of animation, the longer it takes to produce.
That’s why shows like Bob’s Burgers, Family Guy, The Simpsons, South Park, etc. are renewed in batches of three or four seasons instead of being renewed at the end of every season.
AS’s practice has always been to renew their shows a season at a time. That works fine for Aqua Teen Hunger Force or Squidbillies because they’re only 13 minutes and the animation is intentionally rough. But for something like Rick and Morty, which runs the standard 25 minutes and has some pretty elaborate SF scenes, that was creating problems. It was taking the team two or three years to finish a season because they couldn’t start work until they got their renewal and creating the show took a lot of time.
So Harmon and Roiland got AS to break their model and agree to ordering roughly seven seasons upfront. That means the production is well ahead and they’re able to put out a season a year like other animated sitcoms.
A rough day for fans of scream-stammering.
This article doesn’t really make it clear what’s new now as compared to 2020.
Apparently he went to one of several pre-trial hearings today. I guess that’s sort of like news, in the same sense of someone posting their lunch on Instagram is news. A thing happened, and now we know it.
What is different is that his name is attached to a fairly popular game release that came out late last year so this article will draw more attention and get more clicks even if it has absolutely no new information. Gotta feed the clicks baby
You got any links from The AV Club’s or other outlets 2020 coverage of this news?
Was this known before? I can’t find any reference to charges, allegations, or mention of an arrest before today’s articles.
This wasn’t know before. It was kept quiet until today.
I think the files were sealed until recently.
Bingo!
I did a search around May of 2020 and a few months after, and I gotta say it seems like this was heavily suppressed before now. There are a couple of small, moderately reputable outlets that reported on it in May, and a few mentions throughout that year, but that was it. AV Club definitely didn’t cover it. Really shows how craven certain people are here that they’ll pretend like this was already big news in order to dismiss allegations against someone they like.
Somebody spotted his name on a court docket, basically.
Fortunately he can always move to a new dimension where this never happened.
He just needs to give the impression that he’s been dissolved in a vat of acid.
Cool, so he can basically become a rapper now.
Man, just yesterday I was thinking, “Hm, maybe it’s finally time to check out Rick and Morty.”
Even if another episode is never made, it’s definitely worth checking out. Some of the funniest lines and bits I’ve ever seen, combined with a surprising amount of pathos.The show hits much better as long as you recognize that, as it unfolds, it’s very clear that Rick is *not* a hero; he’s pitiable, not admirable.
In terms of jokes-per-minute, I think Solar Opposites is actually funnier, but it’s interesting to watch what looks to me in Rick and Morty like creative tension between wanting to be funny and aspiring to be the closest to “prestige TV” an animated show has been, aside from Bojack Horseman, anyway.
The show hits much better as long as you recognize that, as it unfolds,
it’s very clear that Rick is *not* a hero; he’s pitiable, not admirable.
The problem is that by season 4 the show has forgotten that part and Rick is now jsut a typical super cool asshole.
That’s part of what makes S4 the weakest, IMO. S5 builds to its climax literally being a repudiation of that.
Solar Opposites is underrated, IMO. More people should check it out.
Agreed – I think it’s consistently funnier and less nihilistic than R&M, and it’s specifically called out that it tries to hew more toward traditional high-concept sitcom plotting, aside from the Wall.*spoilers ahead*There’s also the serialization of the Shlorpian species, and as I thought almost immediately in the first season, they’re basically the galactic equivalent of slime mold. 99 Ships was the highlight of the series for me for that reason, though I most enjoy the Emergency Urbanizer episode from S2. My wife pointed out that whoever gets the music for the show is on point – and I agree – though I suppose having Disney money through Hulu helps in that regard.
I mean you still can. Right now he is only accused of a crime and not actually found guilty. Plus a lot of non-terrible people work on that show as well.
I tried it once. Couldn’t get past the first 30 seconds. I suppose it just wasn’t my thing.
I got through two episodes I think? I was honestly baffled that it had such ardent fans.
Well clearly you are just much wiser and more cultured than everyone else, and we are all very impressed.
Probably because you’re so smart and brave.
It is always smart to judge something based on 30 seconds. Gives you a real thorough and comprehensive understanding. Super intelligent comment.
Same here when I tried starting from the beginning. I actually got into it in the fourth season, and then started watching future episodes and past ones. I’m really not a fan of those first season episodes.
It gets better and better for a while. The pilot is one of the weaker episodes. Maybe start with season 2 and then go back. Or start with the first regular episode after the pilot of season 1.
Worth a try, I suppose.
This last season which AV Club completely ignored was actually one of the best in years.
Right?!!
Even if he is found guilty and is basically off the show, they could recast the voices for Rick and Morty too. The nature of the show itself even makes that easier – it could literally do a deeply meta episode about the voices being different, etc, etc.
Lukewarm take: It’s a super-smart show that got bored of itself long before it even went into production, hates its viewers above all else, and does whatever it can to punish them for giving marginally more of a shit about anything than they do. (Disclaimer: the last time I checked in was maybe 2-3 years ago.)
(I tried to edit this with the standard “Hot Lukewarm Whatever take:” preface—but I guess I was too late? So let’s call it a packet of Mild Szechuan Sauciness.)
The first couple seasons are hilarious but then it tried to do a bunch of deep family drama stuff which was all stupid.
This kinda sums it up. Once the show got so recursive and meta that it kind of became about ITSELF, it was clear that the creators didn’t really have all that much interest anymore other than in some kind of increasingly elaborate trolling scheme.
I agree with you (although I think it got bored of itself somewhere around season 3 or 4)). But the latest season was pretty good. It reminds me of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Not in the humour, but in the way it develops the sci-fi elements seriously, even if only to make fun of it.
“NO, YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO LIKE RICK, YOU’RE MISSING THE POINT, HE’S AN ABUSIVE ASSHOLE, YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO PITY HIM, GAH, DON’T YOU IDIOT FANS KNOW ANYTHING???” Says the guy that turns out to be an abusive asshole LOL.
my main takeaway is that I want that New York Roots t-shirt
“Turn in any firearm I own or possess? But, your honor, I am the firearm!”-Justin Roiland, presumably
I never want to see anyone hurt, and if it happened it’s not worth my smugness, but I’m feeling smug for knowing better than to like his stuff.
“Ah, geez”
this is the proper response.we would also have accepted:“your opinion means very little to me.”
I suppose you might say he’s in a pickle. HE’S (in a) PICKLE JUSSTIIIN!kill me please
lol!
Not to be cruel but I would have expected Dan Harmon to be the Rick and Morty co creator who’d get caught doing something terrible.
Why?
“Not to be cruel” doesn’t really soften this sentiment
Well, Harmon had that whole “credibly accused of sexual misconduct” thing from his Community days (look up the name Megan Ganz, the former Community writer who now works on It’s Always Sunny).
Which he publicly addressed, apologized for, and she accepted his apology
…OK, great? My comment still stands that he did some shady shit himself.
You’re soooooo brave and such a good person.
Also, there was nothing about harmon’s misconduct that was “sexual”. That’s just some bullshit you added to make it seem worse than it was.
This.I can’t stand it when people put this subject within a binary of yes/no, good/bad, etc. His apology and efforts towards accountability don’t erase the thing from the ledger.
Despite Gantz accepting his apology, it always struck me as “me, me, me, me, me, my journey, my trauma, my struggle blah, blah, blah”.Roiland’s alleged behaviour off set (and apparently on) would make a joke of Harmon’s “journey towards accountability”.
Oh I don’t need to remember, that’s why I expected it to be him. Sure he did the entire admit to fucking up and I think Ganz eventually forgave him, but that did happen. Sucks that this event even transpired frankly.
Even if it weren’t something criminal like this, I wouldn’t be surprised if stories came out about him being an insufferable boss/showrunner. He seemed pretty mercurial working on Community and iirc, the actor who played Garrett would occasionally comment on AVC back in the day and it sounded like a difficult environment at times.
Wait that actually was Garrett? I remember those comments, shit. Also I fully believe he can be miserable, he was fucking awful on some commentary tracks and he always struck me as someone who arguing with wouldn’t go well.
I don’t think it was ever “verified,” but the username was his name and I’ll take his word for it was really him.I was going to bring up the commentary tracks too! I remember on the Christmas musical one he loses his shit about a song being a half-beat off and can’t get over it for several minutes, and thinking to myself, “Jesus Christ.”
Horrible cartoon character made by horrible person. This makes sense.
You’re sooo brave.
Posting the same six word sentence over and over again isn’t a rebuttal. Why do you feel the need to defend abuse? You know you can change your thought life right? Here’s a good fact. Abuse isn’t good.
The guy who voices Rick Sanchez arguably the biggest toxic male mascot received felony charges? What’s wild is this kinda sounds like a good thing for society.