The third-season premiere of Rick and Morty, “The Rickshank Redemption,” featured an instantly memorable episode-ending rant by Rick wherein he detailed just how McDonald’s McNuggest Szechuan dipping sauce – a limited-time promotion for Mulan – is the driving force behind everything he does. The rant became viral right away, coming as it did from the wellspring of very specific randomness that drives a lot of Rick and Morty‘s best jokes. Of course, some people assumed the worst, that this was paid product placement for Disney’s live-action remake of Mulan, because that sounds like something this show would do; after all, it’s not as though co-creator Dan Harmon used several episodes of Community to lambast the corporate soullessness of companies like Subway.
As a meme, Szechuan sauce gained steam quickly and hasn’t really lost any. First there was the anonymous nerd who spent $15,000 of money that he should not have on a bottle of the sauce on eBay; then McDonald’s sent some to co-creator Justin Roiland. Well, now the meme has slipped the bounds of actuality, because Szechuan sauce it coming back – with a catch.
Framed as a promotion for the restaurant’s new line of chicken tenders, Szechuan sauce is coming back, at limited locations, for only one day. It’s all on a first-come, first-serve basis, which means that unless you’re at McDonald’s at 5 AM, some jackass is going to show up and buy about a thousand tenders so he can (and it will be a he) turn around and sell it on eBay – after all, there’s a proven market for it. (There are 9 other sauces to try, as well as collectible posters for each one, but that’s not why you’re reading this.)
Check out the McDonald’s site to see if you live near any locations that will have Szechuan sauce. It’s your series arc.
(Thanks to The AV Club for the heads up.)
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