Story here.

I've gone from thinking RIck and Morty was a clever, if snarky, inheritor of Futurama's audience, to thinking it was fun but overexposed, to being skeeved out by the kinds of fans Roiland seemed to attract, to... well, this.

We'll see how this all shakes out, I guess, but yuck.

That's...really disturbing. I wish I had known this. I would not have played High on Life. I wonder how this went unreported for so long, or at least I didn't see any discussion of it.

Why has this taken over two years to charge him?

Hang on, he was charged 2 years ago. So .... what's the hold up?

@shindig: Impossible to say from what's in that article, but the alleged victim was granted a protective order against Roiland. Meaning a judge thought that she was credibly in enough danger to sign off on it. (ETA, for clarity: all the court and police records of the case are sealed under that order.)

I'm sure there'll be more reporting coming from various outlets now that it's public knowledge.

Yeah, that order's got another 9 months to run but presumably he won't see prison over this.

@shindig: Legal cases take a long time, especially with the pandemic. It's always a good bet that a rich white man won't see jail for hurting a woman, but cases can take a long time and expensive lawyers can draw them out longer.

In Texas, a criminal court will issue what’s called, a Magistrates Order of Protection as a condition of bond in assault family member cases (which is essentially a temporary protective order). This occurs as a matter of course and doesn’t require an evidentiary hearing. This is not the same thing as a regular protective order. Not sure what his situation is but just w as noted to point that out.

@hairyreddog: Interesting point. This stuff definitely can vary quite a bit by state.

The article refers to a protective order being "filed" which implied to me that there was an active approval process, but I don't actually know! Happy to defer to anyone who's more familiar than I am with California's process.

Anyway, one of the reporters on this is NBC's Kat Tenbarge, who has done some really thorough, detailed reporting on this sort of thing before, so I trust her to do good work here, whatever comes next.

I like Rick and Morty, sometimes more than other times, but Justin Roiland is for sure a person that has always seemed like he leans into the worst of his qualities.

That does also explain why his sister was going around being an entitled clout chaser.

Justin Roiland owns Radical Heights btw. I hope these legal battles make him sell it (though I doubt it, since the show prints money).

@shindig: Rich. White. Successful. Influential. Take your pick!

Frankly, he's always seemed like the kind of person who needs a filter to actually be funny (be that Dan Harmon, the Adventure Time folks, even the ATHF episode), anytime it's JUST him, it's like...yeah, that's a funny, fast-talking voice...oooooo...

We're all responsible for this as men.

@bronzemedal32: This is a very specific thing to make as your first post on a website.

I’m pretty sure most would agree that Jewish can mean an ethnicity and/or religion depending on the context, and saying a Jewish guy is also white isn’t a contradiction.

Either way, it's irrelevant to bring race into this. He's plead guilty to something but clearly fighting whatever charges remain on the table. I'd rather wait to see what turns up in court. As it stands, he is a twat. When this is over, he'll still be a twat but a twat with a criminal record.

Kotaku just dropped that Adult Swim fired him from Rick And Morty, not so much about the felony charges but more due to all the creepy texts he made to underage girls that have been getting shared. And they are recasting the voices in the show.

All the weird stuff about high-school girls in the show suddenly make a lot of sense. Oh wait it was always creepy as shit.

Well, Justin Roiland has officially been fired and removed from his show, despite also being the voice actor of both characters on the show. I'm glad I never bought into the Rick and Morty hype and never watched one episode of that show. For me, the last great show of that nature was Rocko's Modern Life.

No one has brought it up in this thread yet, so I’ll also point out that Roiland resigned a week or so ago from Squanch Games, developer of High on Life and other projects which prominently feature Roiland’s voice acting. Roiland co-founded the studio, and was its CEO up until the resignation.

It seems like any and all of Roiland’s business partners think these charges are quite serious and valid, and don’t want him associated with their work anymore. Ultimately he is owed his day in court, but if the case against him were flimsy I doubt this many business partners would be dropping him.

@bisonhero: I'd say that regardless of if the actual criminal case is solid, all those DM logs, and the sheer volume of them, is pretty damning. There is literally no reason in the universe to DM a 16 year old creepy sex shit, and it's really a lot of examples coming out showing a pattern of bad behavior. That alone, if I was a business partner or investor of his, is enough to want to break all ties and never work with the guy again even if he beats the criminal charges.

@tartyron: The DM logs look pretty bad, but right now that’s still only Twitter news to me. Didn’t bring it up because I haven’t seen a news outlet confirm that they’ve externally verified any or all of them yet.

Not saying I seriously doubt those DMs, more that I just don’t like treating stuff circulating around Twitter/Reddit as if anyone credible has verified it yet.

@tartyron: The dude has a history with some truly sleazy internet people, so this is sadly unsurprising.

Indicating that this dude is a white guy isn't so bad either and will be relevant when Roiland gets another shot at a show a few years from now.

I mean, it was just announced yesterday that the dude responsible for the Fyre Festival fraud is throwing another festival. White dudes do nothing but fail up.