Screaming Sun / Squanch Spoofs

About

“The Screaming Sun”, also known as Squanch Spoofs, is a series of parody videos featuring a screaming sun from the season 2 finale of the cartoon seriew Rick and Morty, in which a sun from another source material (or other round objects) is replaced by the screaming sun for comedic effect.

Origin

On October 4, 2015, Adult Swim aired the season 2 finale of the show Rick and Morty. The episode revolved around Rick Sanchez and his family travelling to the Planet Squanch to attend the Wedding of Rick’s best friends: Bird Person and his girlfriend, Tammy. After Tammy reveals she is an undercover agent of the Galactic Federation sent to arrest Rick and all of his friends and family for crimes against the galaxy (and shoots Bird Person dead), a shoot out ensues between the Galactic Federation and Rick’s Freedom Fighters. Rick and his family escape during the shoot-out, and begin looking for a new planet to settle, hidden from the Galatic Federation. After seeing two planet choices (a tiny planet and a planet where everything is on the cob), they finally seem to find the ideal planet. Morty points out that the sun of the planet is rising, only to reveal that the planet’s sun has a face and is constantly screaming when it is in rotation. A clip of the screaming sun planet was posted on Youtube on October 5th, 2015, and has gained 156,679 views in less than a month.

The “Squanch Parody” name comes from the episode’s title, “The Wedding Squanchers”^[1], which itself is a parody of the tile of the film “The Wedding Crashers”.

Spread

On October 7th, shortly following the episode’s premire and the clip being uploaded to youtube, a video tiled “The Circle of Life” by the user NoodleLu was uploaded.^[2] The video features the screaming sun, where it replaces the rising sun from the opening of the Disney film “The Lion King”. The video has since gained 591,390 views.

It was then featured on the Official Rick and Morty Facebook page on the same day, with the post gaining 25,575 likes, 6,403 shares and 1,932 comments.^[3]

Various Examples

Since the first video was uploaded to Youtube, many other videos have followed,^[4] where a sun is replaced by the screaming one, or other round objects are replaced by the screaming sun.