In a promo spot that appeared alongside Sunday’s premiere of season 6 of Rick and Morty, the duo kind of took on the roles of Kratos and his son Atreus to promote this year’s God of War: Ragnarok.
In the ad, Rick shaves his head and smears his face with red paint to imitate Kratos’ iconic facial tattoo, before handing an ever-hesitant Morty a toy bow and arrow and pushing him through a portal to the Nine Realms (the worlds of Norse mythology in which the 2018 God of War and this sequel take place). There, Morty suffers the indignity of a crow attack while Rick gets his hands on Kratos’ Leviathan Axe “and other unannounced upgrades.”
Why is any of this happening? Good question. “Why do we have to do anything, Morty?” asks Rick. “Money?” suggests his grandson. “Yeah, but not this time,” says the scientist, unconvincingly.
Rick and Morty have done promo duty for PlayStation before; in 2019, they appeared in a clip spoofing Death Stranding. Morty is also currently available to play in the Warner Bros. fighter MultiVersus.
God of War: Ragnarok is one of vanishingly few major video games to stick to a late-2022 release date. It’s out on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 on Nov. 9. I suspect that, like Rick, we’ll be glad enough to throw ourselves into the Nine Realms when it arrives.