The Sexual Assault and Abuse Allegations Against Justin Roiland
Justin Roiland — creator of Rick and Morty, High on Life, and Art Gobblers — faces multiple accusations of sexual assault, abuse, and grooming. Were the red flags present in his work all along?
Content Advisory: In addition to abuse and sexual assault, this article discusses portrayals of incest and pedophilia in media.
Justin Roiland, co-creator of Rick and Morty and founder of the gaming studio behind High on Life, faces several public accusations of predatory behavior including sexual assault and grooming of high school girls.
The accusations span a timeframe of at least a decade. New accounts emerged as recently as this present year. They appear on various forms of social media and are often accompanied by screenshots of texts or private messages exchanged with Roiland.
Some of Roiland’s accusers state that he first made contact with them while they were in high school — and in some of those cases, while they were under the age of 18.
The accusations against Roiland received effectively zero coverage from mainstream media despite alleged patterns of severely abusive behavior. Those who come forward are often chastised by Roiland’s fanbase, pushing their voices further into silence.
It’s well past time that the victims of Justin Roiland receive a platform to express their experiences.
How did we get here? Art Gobblers.
Last month, Justin Roiland launched an NFT project known as “Art Gobblers” with the support of crypto-focused investment firm Paradigm.
The project quickly drew controversy after Andrew Wang, a prominent NFT influencer and artist, revealed his hidden involvement with commercial promotion of Art Gobblers. Wang and Roiland are both associated with United Talent Agency.
In collaboration with Roiland, Wang developed the character of a 13-year-old boy named “Balthazar Crumps.” Over the course of a couple months, Wang posted tweets in character using the Balthazar Crumps profile.
Wang identified himself as a 13-year-old in Balthazar’s profile bio (now removed), but did not include any clear indication or disclaimer that the profile was controlled by an adult.
In an appearance on Rug Radio on October 31st, Wang explained how he helped to promote the project by creating Balthazar: “we were like alright, 13-year-old kid, really weird, likes to masturbate.”
The same day, Wang tweeted a sexually crude joke in reference to the project from the Balthazar child account. He tweeted out: “I also like the smell of my own goo!”
By the end of the day, Wang proudly revealed that he had secretly been running the account for two months in official support of Art Gobblers. The fictional character was created in conjunction with Roiland and Dave White from Paradigm.
Wang’s covert roleplay as a minor quickly received pushback from some who called it out as “weird behavior.”
“This is not anything to tweet you are proud about,” said one reply. “Posing as a child on the internet is legit fucking disgusting.”
Wang published an apology on November 6th, acknowledging that “it became clear a teen character should not have been included.”
During the run-up to release, the project made jokes about nonconsent, with a lot of thinly-veiled sexual references to “goo.” One character profile associated with the project made a joke alluding to child sexual assault. Yet another character tweeted: “The aliens wake me up, force me to watch them make goo, then knock me out again. It never ends…and I think I like it?”
Shortly after controversy emerged, the Art Gobblers artwork was revealed. Some of the artwork was clearly NSFW as some of the character traits for the NFTs include animated genitalia and sex toys — content concealed to the public up to that point.
The artwork reveal came as a shock to many on social media, as the fact that the project would be sexually explicit was not widely known by the public or directly acknowledged in the marketing campaign.
Prior to the art reveal, some people had made five-to-six figure investment choices without knowing that they were investing in a NSFW project.
The project’s marketing also targeted many members of the NFT art community, with many receiving allowlist privileges to mint an Art Gobblers NFT in exchange for interaction with the marketing campaign. Some artists expressed they were uninformed of the NSFW content before promoting the project pre-reveal.
Once the full story started taking shape, it became hard to ignore the uncomfortable reality.
“Let’s just pause for a moment and recognize how weird it is for an adult to be proud of pretending to be a 13yr old kid promoting a collection filled with penises,” one reaction read, quoting Wang’s thread.
Millions of dollars had already changed hands.
The Gobblers Backlash: “Pedophile Propaganda”
While controversy brewed over the artwork and Andrew Wang’s child character, people in the NFT community began whispering about reports of predatory sexual behavior from Justin Roiland. One story included an individual who claimed that Roiland established a relationship with her when she was 17. According to her Tumblr post, Roiland sent sexually explicit messages and attempted to hook up with her “frequently.”
"Seeing [Rick and Morty] explode in popularity is beyond weird to me because [I] just know this dude was super creepy and has probably done this with other young girls,” read the post.
Folks were also shocked to learn that the premise of Rick and Morty was originally contrived from a cartoon short called “Doc and Mharti.”
In Roiland’s original sketch, Rick repeatedly forces Morty (“Mharti”), a young boy, to perform fellatio. These acts are shown in graphic detail. The short centers entirely around attempting to make comedy out of child sexual assault. The Doc and Mharti characters Roiland created and voice acted for these sketches were then developed into the duo known as Rick and Morty.
Adult Swim VP Mike Lazzo apparently never saw the “Doc and Mharti” shorts before helping launch the first season of Rick and Morty, as apparently Roiland wanted to avoid showing the abusive content to producers on the show. But once the show’s popularity solidified, Roiland started sneaking in sly allusions to the CSA jokes from the original sketch.
Combined with concerns about Roiland’s unaddressed behaviors and the explicit child sexual violence in origins of Rick and Morty, this series of revelations caught fire across the NFT community. Many drew a hard line against Art Gobblers, citing Roiland's involvement and the project’s bizarrely offensive marketing tactics.
Seemingly in response to Art Gobblers, David Horvath, creator of Bossy Bear, wrote: “Zero tolerance for pedo anything, will not pass. End of line. Web3 is on pause until that shit leaves.”
“At this point if you’re still pushing Art Gobblers, you’re knowingly supporting pedophile propaganda,” said Crypto Bitlord, a prominent crypto personality.
In his apology, Wang explained that he didn’t know the artwork would be sexually explicit when working with the team: “I wasn’t made aware that the Art Gobblers NFTs were NSFW until the public saw it with me. I didn’t know about the components of the universe. If I’d known the art carried explicit themes, I would have never introduced the character.”
There was no public apology from the Art Gobblers team for excluding information about the sexually explicit artwork. Nor did the team explain why the marketing campaign allowed someone promoting their project to employ sexual innuendo while embodying the character of a teenage boy.
Despite chaos in the social sphere, Art Gobblers soared at the top of NFT marketplaces, already a tremendous financial success for Roiland and Paradigm despite neglecting to disclose the NSFW nature of the product and the marketing campaign’s obscene violations.
There is still nothing on the project’s website, FAQ, or “green paper” that I can identify that acknowledges the sexual innuendo of the project or provides any disclaimer that the project is sexually explicit.
Unfortunately, the practice of embedding sexual content in thinly-veiled jokes involving incest and pedophilia is a longstanding practice in Justin Roiland’s artistic works.
Dan Harmon’s Sex Scandals
Dan Harmon, Roiland’s co-creator of Rick and Morty, was facing two major scandals in 2018. In one case, he targeted an employee with sexual harassment. In the other scandal, a 2009 video resurfaced in which Harmon simulates sex with an infant doll. Harmon apologized for “making a video that involved the assault of children.”
The emergence of this video led many in the fan community to reflect on some of the pro-incest themes that had been worked into Harmon’s previous show, Community.
At the time, many Rick and Morty fans wondered if a video of the co-creator with his pants down pretending to rape a plastic baby would threaten the show’s continued existence. But after a negative news cycle or two, the scandals generally fell out of the public eye. Harmon’s role with the show might have reshuffled, but he remains intimately involved through present day, recently commenting that the show could go on “forever.”
Despite the widespread media coverage of Harmon’s wrongdoings, the messaging of Rick and Morty has scarcely been questioned. Even less has been said about how the content of the show’s attitude towards the sexualization of minors may be reflective of Justin Roiland’s behavior, although many fans seem to be reaching a boiling point of frustration given the content of recent seasons.
Incest and sexual violence featured in Rick and Morty starting with the first few episodes, but the creators and their fans always cited narrative purposes that framed these as negative and traumatic events. Yet, in more recent episodes, any intellectual pretense justifying involvement of children in sexualized content and scenarios seems to be evaporating.
Roiland and Harmon: Incest Obsession?
Rick and Morty is an animated sci-fi sitcom starring a mad scientist known as Rick Sanchez and his 14-year-old grandson Morty Smith. Harmon and Roiland created and produced the show together. Both characters are voiced by Roiland. Rick and Morty live with Morty’s parents and his 17-year-old sister, Summer.
Many of the episodes revolve around the family’s absurd problems, which often happen to be sexual in nature.
Kayla Cobb wrote for Decider: “There’s also the not-quite-incestual-but-pretty-close tightrope walk this show has balanced on for years … Most families try to separate their sex lives and their family lives. When it comes to the Smith household, that line is very thin.”
Back in August of 2015, controversy arose over incestuous fan art involving Morty, Summer, their parents, and Rick. On Twitter, one person asked Justin Roiland if he was aware that communities celebrated explicit material shipping the family members into romantic/sexual contexts.
Roiland took a stance in support of the incestuous fan art, responding: “in many realities, Morty and Rick ARE in a passionate healthy romantic relationship. Maybe we'll do an episode about it.”
Roiland’s insinuation that any sexual relationship between a 14-year old child and his grandfather is “healthy” or “passionate” or functional received heated criticism.
"For me, and for most others, it's the framing that's troubling. These relationships are portrayed as sexy and star-crossed,” one fan told VICE, speaking about the fanmade incest porn featuring Rick, Morty, and the other members of their family. “I'm not against these ships because they're vulgar. I'm against them because they romanticize something that happens in real life far too often."
Harmon rebuked fans who spoke out against the incest and pedophilia in fan art, saying: “I hope that nobody ever gains so much more power over the other that taboo thoughts are forced upon people or that they’re policed by roving drones that zap you for thinking a certain thought… Anything close to kink-shaming, no matter how taboo, I can’t abide.”
The issue isn’t about “kink-shaming” sexual preferences. The issue is about two grown men constantly hypersexualizing minors via incest and pedophilia to the extent that they literally brag about getting children to have sex on television.
“Maybe don’t tell your parents we did this”
After this clash with fans, Roiland and Harmon seemed to take criticism about their incestuous endorsement as a challenge. Arguably, the show pushed further towards normalizing pedophilia and incest.
Incestuous sexual assault became a recurring trope in their show. At various points in the series, Rick exposes himself to Morty. Rick demands that Morty take off his clothes to take a shower together. Morty wishes that incest porn had “more mainstream appeal.”
One of the first episodes to receive widespread blowback from fans was an episode in season 4 in which Rick, Morty, and Summer must participate with “slut dragons” in a “soul orgy” to defeat an evil wizard. Despite Morty’s protests, the dragons proceed with the “soul orgy.”
“Maybe don’t tell your parents we did this,” says Rick, as he and the other characters begin convulsing and moaning from the implied group sex.
Reuben Baron expressed criticism for this episode:
The "soul orgy" scene, then, feels out of character and extra wrong because rather than fighting back, Rick not only goes along with it but tells his grandchildren to keep this "adventure" secret from their parents. That blase attitude about a forced incestuous assault that clearly traumatizes Morty feels more akin to Doc in "Doc and Mharti," whose whole goal was trying to get Mharti to lick his balls, rather than the Rick we've come to know over the past three and a half seasons. … Yes, a "soul orgy" might not be literal rape, but it sure comes close enough to be disturbing without being explicit. It's not really a joke, either, since there's no punchline beyond the disturbingness, but it's not built into the story enough to serve as a serious plotline.
In another episode of season 4, Rick and Morty are controlled by “face-huggers” that cause them to end up deeply kissing each other while repeatedly confessing that they want to “suck on” each other. Season 5 had possibly the most controversial episode, in which Morty’s sperm fertilizes Summer’s egg, creating the inbred biological child of Morty and Summer or “giant incest baby.”
Season 6 continues such patterns: one of the subplots involves Morty’s father, Jerry, trying to avoid having sex with his own mother. For many fans, the recurring incest and pedophilia jokes are wearing thin and feeling less and less like a joke at all.
“Rick and Morty, I love ya but that’s enough incest episodes. You’ve hit your quota for incest episodes, no more please,” remarked one user on Twitter.
Justin Roiland, Summer, and “Underage Girls”
Rick and Morty gets marketed to children via video games like Fortnite and Warner Bros MultiVersus and corporate promotions such as Wendy’s meals and McDonald’s Szechuan sauce. At any elementary school, you’re sure to see at least a few Rick and Morty shirts or backpacks. High on Life was advertised heavily on Xbox Games Pass, and quickly became one of the most widely played games on Microsoft’s service.
Roiland has a demonstrated pattern of trouble when it comes to recognizing appropriate boundaries with minors. For instance, in an old Reddit comment, Roiland responded to show writer Ryan Ridley, referencing a trip to “Death Valley” that included “underage girls.”
The comments he makes in real life about minors is reflective of the attitude carried by the show, such as in the Harmon and Roiland’s portrayal of the 17-year-old Summer.
In one episode, Summer appears in her teacher’s dream in a pink bra and panties along with fishnet stockings. She attempts to seduce her brother and grandfather. Crawling on her hands and knees, she tells them: “let’s make an intergenerational sandwich.”
There are a discomforting number of references to Summer urinating in her pants. There’s jokes about her breast size. Despite being underage, she uses an app to hook up with grown men. In a recent episode, Rick brings Summer to an orgy and the two have a sexually explicit conversation about their plans.
“By the way, I wanna fuck Summer’s ass,” says Roiland on one of the DVD commentaries, during a scene where Summer bends over a table while facing away from the viewer. “I’m attracted to cartoons.”
“She’s 17,” another voice objects.
“I drew her!” responds Roiland.
“Justin Roiland raped/sexually assaulted me”
Earlier this year around March, a thread on h3h3’s subreddit was posted with the title: “Justin Roiland raped/sexually assaulted me and I can’t handle watching Ethan talk about Rick and Morty.”
Ethan Klein is a famous influencer who runs a YouTube channel and podcast under h3h3Productions. Klein happens to be friends with Roiland. The individual posted the allegations on h3h3’s subreddit because they found Ethan’s continued association with Roiland to be personally devastating.
I confirmed the existence of the now-deleted thread. I viewed the images the author posted as supporting evidence of her claims (reproduced below this article). Some of the details shared in this person’s experience also appear consistent with experiences reported by others.
Via the Reddit thread and its associated images, here is what the allegations claimed:
Justin Roiland matched with her through Tinder.
The two met up for dinner where he purchased alcohol for her, as she was 20 — under the age required to purchase or consume alcohol. (She provided a video of herself at dinner with him as evidence.)
She was intoxicated.
Roiland repeatedly asked her to perform oral sex on him.
She verbally declined multiple times.
Despite the absence of consent, Roiland physically coerced her into performing fellatio.
Later at some point, someone (unidentifiable to me) contacted her via a group message on Instagram. The message appeared to refer to Justin as a pedophile and seemingly threatened possible doxxing to recipients of the chat.
When she reached out to Justin via text about the Instagram message, he commented that: “They should focus on changing the age of consent laws.”
Roiland asked her to defend him against the accusations.
She expressed to him that “the sexual stuff that happened with us was not handled by you in the best way” and “verbal consent is v important.”
There are two additional messages expressing an absence of consent.
The Reddit thread samples the defensive vitriol that can accompany a rabid fanbase like Rick and Morty and the challenges of speaking out against a celebrity with power, influence, and status.
I recognized a lot of victim-blaming in the Reddit comments: Why didn’t you go to the police? Why are you telling us instead of the authorities? Are you just posting this for clout?
Yet, many other comments were affirming and validating. Some offered resources and support. One commenter even mentioned that they also matched with Roiland at the age of 18 and that he wanted to drink together, too.
Still, this is just one of the allegations shared publicly over the past decade. This isn’t even the only allegation from this year. There are multiple allegations that allege Roiland groomed girls in high school, at least one accusation stating contact started with him at age 16.
It is well past due that those who are trying to come forth with their stories are provided a safe platform to share their experiences.
For Justin Roiland, there are some serious questions at hand. His behaviors also raise big questions about society, culture, and speech.
How is it possible such serious allegations have gone completely unreported and essentially ignored?
Why has Roiland’s cultural messaging on teenage/child sexuality gone basically unchallenged?
When it comes to building new cultures and communities in web3, what kind of reckoning is needed with sexual violence, internalized misogyny, and abuse?
And who holds the conch when it comes to conversations about sexuality in media?
Presented below are the images associated with the March 2022 Reddit thread. They are cropped from their original version.
Not his two ugly fans proving your point in the comments
bullish