'Rick And Morty' Parody Portrays Bendigo As Wasteland; Mayor Reacts

The "Rick and Morty" parody episode on April Fool's Day made one municipality known.

Adult Swim featured Bendigo in "Rick and Morty" as a barren wasteland on Sunday. This caused a sudden spike in internet traffic as fans started to search for the place.

Bendigo is a population of over 110,000. The mayor of the Australian city, Margaret O'Rourke, admitted that she was not familiar with "Rick and Morty" and welcomed the growing popularity of their community.

"I guess any publicity is good publicity," she told The Guardian.

However, she wanted to stress that the place where they live is not a wasteland as how it was depicted in the show. "Bendigo is a very vibrant and beautiful place and nothing like what has been displayed," O'Rourke added.

"Obviously there are different tastes for everyone," O'Rourke continued. "But I believe the Google searches have soared ever since it was released, and people would know by those searches that Bendigo is nothing like what's in the parody."

The "Rick and Morty" episode was created by Australian animator Michael Cusack. It showed two protagonists "Reek" and "Mordi" who went on a 12-hour road trip to Bendigo. Cusack confessed that he has not visited the place personally.

"For some reason, Bendigo sounded funny to me, I don't know what it is, but it's something behind that name, that it seemed right to use, so I went with it," he told ABC.

Others enjoyed the "Rick and Morty" parody. However, some were not pleased with what they saw.

For Corey Plante, the said episode was the "most problematic and unsettling aspects of the show while omitting the charming humor and fun-loving sci-fi. The end result is total nightmare fuel drawn with some janky animation that makes the whole thing hard to watch."

"It looks like the network is trolling the Rick and Morty fanbase harder than ever by giving us a totally unpleasant anti-Rick and Morty," he added.

"Rick and Morty" has not been renewed for season 4 yet due to contract negotiations problems. However, fans are hoping to see more of the series.

"The reason we're not working on 'Rick and Morty' right now ain't because I figured out that I don't need to impress you," Dan Harmon said. "It's because of a little something called contract negotiations and it's gotten complicated this time around."