Do people still like McDonald’s? I was under the impression people no longer ate there because it’s gross, but I suppose that’s a discussion for a different story. In any case, McDonald’s decided to take a rather pragmatic advertising choice in profiting off of Adult Swim’s “Rick and Morty” by announcing a very brief, limited revival of their Schezwan Sauce, which was first available in the ‘90s to promote Disney’s “Mulan” and mentioned in a brief gag on the show’s first episode of the third season.

Boy were they in over their heads.

While this had the potential to be a really clever ploy on McDonald’s part, letting a popular show do the advertising for them and reap the profits, the execution was far from ideal. For starters, the event lasted only a day, and only at certain locations, meaning those restaurants were going to get traffic for the event; and traffic they got. There were reports of lines wrapping around restaurants, down streets; in some places lines went as far as miles.

While this would seem like a good thing, guaranteed raking in money that day, McDonald’s failed to ensure that they had enough sauce at every location. This translated to a lot of “Rick and Morty” fans that were angry about their inability to get their Schezwan Sauce fix. According to various news and social media accounts, the ruckus that followed included angry fans climbing on roofs, police helicopters getting involved, and even a stabbing (although it was later revealed the stabbing was not sauce related and was just a regular McDonald’s stabbing).

Fans are threatening to sue McDonald’s; McDonald’s is dealing with a really strange public relations issue, and the creators of “Rick and Morty” are forced to yet again take a look at just who watches their work. So, who is the “Rick and Morty” fandom? Are they all sauce-crazy weirdos? Or is this just an instance of a few bad apples spoiling that sweet apple pie?

Here I must admit a conflict of interest: I like watching “Rick and Morty.” I’ve seen every episode, most of them several times, and I find the show immensely funny. One could even describe me as a fan. That being said, the “Rick and Morty” fandom is a gross, shapeless mound of pseudo-intellectual schmucks who manage to miraculously miss the message of the show in favor of intellectualizing what is little more than a collection of improv and fart jokes.

While not all of them are like this, too many who engage in “Rick and Morty” tend to frame it as being this show that only smart people can get, which they then use to validate their sense of superiority. It doesn’t help that so many of them identify with Rick as a character and use him to justify their tendencies to be rude and condescending to others because they’re supposedly intellectually superior.

In a show that specifically frames that kind of behavior as unhealthy and undesirable, you’d think these people would be able to pick up on that. But no, instead they wait hours in line for a sauce that was mentioned in a passing bit and ignore the part where the narrative criticizes toxic behavior masked as intelligence. Truly brilliant