How did old mate Michael Cusack — the ciggy butt brains behind YOLO and Damo & Darren — end up making an officially endorsed Ricky and Morty short?

Turns out the Australian animator was on the radar of Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland off the strength of the aforementioned internet classics. After having previously exchanged a few kind words on Twitter, Justin got in touch to ask Michael if he’d be down to do some April Fools’ clowning. According to Cusack, who triple j spoke to this morning, the brief was to basically just do whatever he wanted.

At first Michael thought it was he who was the April fool. Surely it was too good to be true. “I feel like I was being pranked,” says Michael. “And then Adult Swim got in contact with me a few weeks later and were like ‘Yeah, this is happening. It’s a paid gig’, so I started doing it.” He never heard anything from Dan Harmon, though (“I don’t even know if he knows it exists to be honest”).

From that point Adult Swim asked him to submit a script and then left him alone to just hit them up once he was done. “The best part of that network is they let you do pretty much what you want. I had a really good experience working with them. I don’t even think they understood what was going on with the episode but that’s the whole point because it’s a prank episode. It’s supposed to be confusing and stupid.”

With Damo & Darren videos, Cusack started with a voice and then that would evolve into a rough script which he improvised as he went. But for this Michael had some help from a couple of mates – they bounced ideas around and then smashed out the script. “It happened pretty quickly. It was over a few days – we didn’t want to focus on it too much because we wanted it to be pretty raw, so it wasn’t too overbaked… It was like, first take writing – a first draft, which is abnormal for a TV thing.” Not only that, as per Justin’s suggestion, Michael ended up doing all the voices himself.

“With Rick I was gonna try and do the burping that he does but I couldn’t do it. When I tried do it I nearly vomited.”

With nary a pickle or schwifty in sight, Michael did realise that without signature Rick and Morty ~bits~ the characters might not land. Also, Cusack’s Rick is weirdly jacked. So, was it a conscious decision to also not include any of the more futuristic elements of the show? “Yeah, I just wanted to piss off the hardcore fans a bit,” jokes Cusack. “Especially the bit where Rick is like, ‘Let’s go to the bush dimension’ and they just walk into the bush. Like, they’re not even going to get any cool sci-fi stuff. I kinda like that. There’s no dimension hopping. Nothing.”

“I was doing an Australian warped version.”

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Whatsapp Bushworld Adventures by Michael Cusack.

It is obviously here where his intentions and a lot of fans’ expectations diverge. When this was going online Michael did wonder, “Are people going to expect a new Rick and Morty episode? Because if they are it’s a slap in the face [laughs].”

And now here we are. The video has been released to an unsuspecting world. “I think people were expecting something good,” laughs Michael. “Like, they wanted season four, episode one. So Adult Swim totally went and flipped their expectations but I feel like Australians liked it.”

If you haven't already seen it, you can watch Bushworld Adventures here while it’s still up.

Australian audiences are definitely more likely to have known what to expect when they saw Michael’s name or recognised his particular brand of animation. As opposed to our American counterparts, who do seem to be struggling. International media have covered the episode, describing it alternately as “confounding” (Vanity Fair), “strange” (Complex), “bizarre” (VICE) and as a “gross out” (CNET).

“Those are the funniest ones, when you’re reading Newsweek or Vanity Fair report on it. They have no idea what just happened.”

For his part, Michael isn’t too fazed by his 'episode' getting lost in translation. “I’m actually lovin’ the negative reaction. That’s the funniest thing. Usually when I make a cartoon I don’t like seeing the reactions.” He was only really anticipating negative responses to this particular cartoon. “It’s more what I expected and what I was after, just people being like ‘wot the fuck is this?’”

Plus, you know, revenge has been a long time coming*. “I think it all stems from that Simpsons episode that was set in Australia,” says Michael. “It didn’t feel like Australia, so it’s more fun when Americans have to be confronted with actual Australian stuff.”

But for all that, Michael was just happy that Justin Roiland was happy: “Justin was keen. He really enjoyed it. Hearing that, from the man himself, that’s all you need really.” Also, he’s in a great place in his career, with lots of new projects on the go and having just worked with the one show he’d wanted to work with. “I feel like I’ve just peaked,” says Michael. “There’s not much else that’s big at the moment, besides Rick and Morty, [that I’d want] to be associated with.”

So yeah, he’s a Rick and Morty stan. We're not talking, like, hoarding Szechuan Sauce levels of fandom, though. And he did admit to not having watched it all yet. “I haven’t even seen all of season three," says Michael. "I’ve got to catch up on it ‘cause, like [pause for effect] I was really busy working on Rick and Morty.”

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*Bart the General notwithstanding.