Meta fourth-wall breaks work when viewers stay emotionally invested
Ryan Ridley · Rick and Morty Writer: Ryan Ridley · Y Combinator · Jun 7, 2017 · at 30:08
Rick and Morty writer Ryan Ridley discusses storytelling techniques and breaking the fourth wall in animated comedy.
0:00 / 0:06exact quote · 6.8s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I think that's one of the funniest parts of the show is that you can weave in and out of the fourth wall, but still, you're still invested in the story.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Ryan Ridley
Creators must make content specifically for an audience of one
“That's the number one advice, is just make the stuff that you want to watch, and you really, you have to just make it for an audience of one, and of course hope that, that ends up resonating with an audience of millions”
Rick and Morty has a darker sensibility than Futurama ever possessed
“Rick and Morty is like, it's sci-fi, fantasy, comedy, and it's dark, as dark as my sensibility is, which featurama never really was, as dark as I think ultimately I liked to write, and then just doing it with your friends.”
Ryan Ridley gave Kumail Nanjiani his first acting role in a sketch
“I gave Kumail Nanjiani his first role. In fact, I confirmed that. I hung out with him a couple weeks ago, and I was like, was Vive, this video Danny and I made, was that your first acting role? He's like, yeah. So you can look that up.”
Rick and Morty writers consider Anatomy Park one of their weaker episodes
“Anatomy Park is, is, you know, is considered maybe one of the weaker episodes, at least by us, because it's just a Jurassic Park spoof meets a Fantastic Voyage trope spoof that's been done a thousand times.”
Unlike Futurama's staff, Rick and Morty writers have no science backgrounds
“Admittedly, unlike Futurama, none of us on the staff have, we are barely educated. We're not mathematicians. We don't really know that much about science. We're writing from the point of view of tropes and genre stuff, and we want to tell good stories.”