When Tourism Comes to You (But You Still Have to Go Get It, Dawg): The Rickmobile and Transmedia Tourism/Fandom

Abstract

This paper analyses the Rickmobile, a mobile, pop-up merchandise car themed and designed around the eponymous Rick Sanchez (voiced by Justin Roiland) from Cartoon Network's Rick and Morty (2013-), as a site of transmedia mobile pilgrimage and fan-tourist destination. As a material fan object and as an object of fan tourism, the Rickmobile becomes a site of overlapping discourses surrounding the historical contexts of cult merchandising, media pilgrimage, and fans' social media reporting. Reflecting aspects of the show, it can be seen as a transmedia brand extension. At the same time, the Rickmobile encourages a particular type of fan engagement, harnessing active fan agency and encouraging fans to create their own Rick and Morty experience-but in doing so, fans become simultaneously imbricated within authorized, top-down and commercially-aligned structures.