Richard Daniel "Rick" Sanchez is one of the two eponymous characters from the Adult Swim animated television series Rick and Morty and resulting franchise. Created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon, and voiced by the former in the first six seasons of the series and promotional media, and Yōhei Tadano in Rick and Morty: The Anime, Sanchez is a misanthropic, alcoholic scientist inspired by Christopher Lloyd's Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown from Back to the Future and Reed Richards / Mr. Fantastic from Marvel Comics. In September 2021, Lloyd portrayed Sanchez himself in a series of promotional interstitials for the series.Known for his reckless, nihilistic behavior, pragmatic moral ambiguity and pessimistic personality, the character has been well received. Rick C-137 is a sociopathic mad scientist who seems to know everything in the universe and thus finds life a traumatizing and pointless experience. Following the murder of his wife Diane and daughter Beth Sanchez in his native reality (C-137) by his parallel self Rick Prime, Rick dedicates his life to hunting Prime down, developing inter-dimensional travel and building a wall around the segment of the multiverse where Rick is "The Smartest Man in the Universe", dubbed the Central Finite Curve, to narrow his search, massacring countless alternate versions of himself in the process of hunting down Prime before resigning himself to failure, founding the Citadel of Ricks out of the survivors, and retiring to move in with the family of an adult version of Beth (Smith) from Prime's own native reality (whom Prime had abandoned when Beth was a teenager) out of the slim hope of Prime one day returning so Rick could complete his vendetta, consisting of his son-in-law Jerry and teenage grandchildren Summer and Morty Smith, going on a series of adventures with the latter, over the course of which events in the first and fifth seasons lead to Morty and Summer having two children of their own, Mortimer Junior and Naruto.
The first three volumes of the Rick and Morty comic series follow the Rick and Morty of Dimension C-132 while most issues of subsequent volumes (following the "Head-Space" arc in which Rick C-132 is killed) follow the main Rick (C-137) and Morty (Prime) from the television series, with the final volume ("The Rickoning") and Rick and Morty Go to Hell following another alternate Rick (and Morty) identified as Devil Rick in the latter series, and featuring a Girl Rick designed after cosplayer Santana Maynard by series writer Kyle Starks; the video game Pocket Mortys meanwhile follows the Rick and Morty of C-123. The main character Rick of the franchise and their alternative selves have received a positive critical reception.
