The Rick and Morty multiverse has come full circle. Adult Swim got Christopher Lloyd and Bill Denbrough to play Rick and Morty, respectively, in a series of live-action season finale promo clips. Anyone who’s a fan of the hit sci-fi series probably knows that the original iteration of Rick and Morty was a short called Doc and Mharty, whose creators started as a crude parody of Back to the Future’s protagonists in order to troll Universal Studios.

Co-creator Justin Roiland on the saga of Doc and Mharty:

I actually made this as a way to poke fun at the idea of getting cease and desist letters. At the time (October 2006) I had nothing to lose and my original intention was to call this ‘Back to the Future: the new official universal studios cartoon featuring the new Doc Brown and Marty McFly’ and then I’d just sit back and wait for a letter from their lawyers to arrive. That’s actually why it’s so filthy. I was just looking to ‘troll’ a big studio. Then, as I began editing the radio play and boarding it, the two characters ended up becoming something different than just a bad impression of Doc and Marty from BTTF. They slowly became two of my favorite characters that I’ve ever voiced. I backed down on the cease and desist bait and changed the spelling of their names and whatever else I could still change. I mean, it’s still ultimately a back to the future joke/ (parody?), but to me all these years later, these two characters have become something of their own. 

Fans who have been dying to see a live-action version of Rick and Morty starring Doc Brown himself can stop imagining, because 82-year-old Christopher Lloyd has gifted us this miraculous mashup of pop culture. Though most are delighted by the cameo, some of the pickier fans have their own ideas about which actors are better suited to play the iconic duo. Sure, there are plenty of dudes out there who can do a spot-on Rick impression, but seeing the original Doc step out of Rick’s portal is just way too good for the lore.