'Rick and Morty' Creator Prank Called Joel Osteen's Church Following Harvey Backlash

Joel Osteen faced significant backlash after refusing to open his Houston megachurch to victims of Hurricane Harvey while the storm was devastating the area. In an apparent dig at the wealthy televangelist, “Rick and Morty” creator Justin Roiland prank called the Texas church’s prayer line as none other than Rick Sanchez, the show’s genius antagonist.

Roiland — whose voice for the alcoholic scientist is immediately recognizable to fans of the Adult Swim series — was a guest on a recent episode of the H3 Podcast, a pop culture and comedy channel from husband-and-wife co-hosts Ethan and Hila Klein. Following news that Osteen refused to welcome Harvey victims to his 16,800-seat Lakewood Church — which many argued could have been a needed refuge for many who were left homeless after the hurricane — the show appeared to attempt pulling a fast one on the pastor.

“Hello, I have a prayer I need to get off my chest,” Roiland told a prayer line operator during the prank. “My prayer is that I, uhm, I just was curious about Joel Osteen. And I just wanted to pray for him. Is he around right now?”

As the podcast’s hosts attempted to conceal their laughter, the operator told Roiland that he’d contacted the prayer line and that Osteen could not immediately be reached.

“Explain to me how this works. I’m new to this,” Roiland said. “My name’s Rick.”

From there, the prank call escalated. Roiland as Rick told the woman he had “over $83,897” for the multimillionaire pastor. The operator told him to call back the following day before she began speaking unintelligibly. The conversation — while it had devolved completely closer to its end — lasted approximately four minutes.

Osteen came under fire this week for his Sunday sermon, during which he told his parishioners not to have a “poor old me” attitude about losses suffered in the wake of Hurricane Harvey’s destruction.

“You know I really believe in these times of difficulty it's, for me, certainly not the time to question your faith but to turn to your faith because God is the one that gives you the strength to make it through the difficult times,” Osteen said.

“We are not going to understand everything that happens but, you know, having a ‘poor old me’ mentality or ‘look what I lost’ or ‘why did this happen,’ that's just going to pull you down,” he added. “Like we've been talking about all night, you’ve just got to turn it over and say ‘God you're still on the throne.’”