It seems there was much ado bout nothing. This past weekend, fans of the show Rick and Morty were let down when McDonald's failed to produce enough Szechuan Sauce to go around.

We'll break it down for you with a simple timeline:

April Fools Day, 2017: Season 3, Episode 1 of Rick and Morty is premiered out of the blue. Because of the timing, many thought it was a joke — but it was not. During the particular episode, Rick has a melt down about a 1996 promotional sauce McDonald’s gave out for the Disney animated movie Mulan. In the following months, fans demanded McDonald’s bring the sauce back, creating a Twitter campaign to do so. 

October 1st: The head chef of McDonald’s (yeah, that’s a thing), Mike Haracz, posts on Twitter a photo of him holding a poster reminiscent of the cartoonish style Rick and Morty is produced in — and with what appears to be the Szechuan Sauce. 

October 7th: the sauce was scheduled to be handed out with the new Buttermilk Crispy Tenders the company was introducing to the menu, along with 9 other sauce options, plus really cool posters for each. Fans drove across states, stood in long lines and documented their experiences on social media. 

The problem was, a lot of the locations didn’t carry the limited edition sauce — or simply didn’t have enough of it. Fans became irritated. Mini riot-type events were started (sort of), cops were called for crowd control, and customers shamed the burger chain on social media.

We sent our own photographer to a location in Denver, Colorado, to capture the madness. 

 

October 9th: McDonald’s now knows how passionate fans are about the sauce, which is why Mickey D's quickly planned to make it right this winter by bringing the sauce back in larger quantities and for a longer period of time. For now, fans wait.

Stayed tuned, because this sauce thing is getting out of hand. …

[words by Samantha Keller, photos by Mike Meylor]