Rick & Morty Season 5 Villain Was Partly Inspired by David Bowie

During Rick and Morty‘s Comic-Con @ Home panel, showrunner Scott Marder explained how one of season 5’s villains, Mr. Nimbus, was partly inspired by David Bowie. Rick and Morty is certainly no stranger to having a plethora of colorful and unique characters drawn from across science-fiction, fantasy, and pop-culture. Season 5 has been increasing that exponentially with references to Captain Planet, Hellraiser, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 

In the first episode of season 5, “Mort Dinner Rick Andre”, Morty accidentally crashes their spaceship in the ocean, provoking Nimbus, the King of the Ocean and Rick’s supposed nemesis. This move forces the pair to have a sit down meeting to re-establish an ancient treaty between them, much to Rick’s chagrin. Describing him as a joke, Rick is deeply embarrassed to have Nimbus as his nemesis in part due to the character’s flamboyancy and overt sexuality, as well as Nimbus’ attempt to establish a canonical backstory for Rick, something he has deliberately avoided.

Discussing the episode during the panel at San Diego Comic-Con @ Home, Sarah Chalke, who voices Beth, praised the design for Nimbus, recalling how she was “blown away” when she first saw it and asked Marder where the inspiration came from. Marder responded by saying that on a physical level: “We certainly took a page [from] David Bowie. [He] was definitely an inspiration there.” This revelation should not be greatly surprising considering Nimbus’ striking appearance, flamboyant cape and slicked back hair all appear to be deeply reminiscent of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust persona.

Interestingly, Marder also noted that when he started as showrunner, “Nimbus was just in this lost Rick and Morty episode but everyone was like internally ‘there’s this character, he’s amazing,'” which is surprising considering his apparent long history with Rick. Moreover, while Rick usually takes everything in his stride, Nimbus appears to be one of the few individuals who Rick is actually frightened of, although this could be more a result of the embarrassment Nimbus causes him.

While Nimbus’ design may be heavily inspired by Bowie, co-creator and executive producer Dan Harmon added that the character himself arose from aquatic superheroes, specifically Namor the Submariner, which is certainly the more obvious reference. Harmon, who also voices Nimbus, stated: “I think it started with the question: how could you be into Submariner in high school without getting beaten up every day? And then we asked ourselves, what if the goal was to get beaten up?”, which certainly goes a long way towards explaining the character’s frustrating demeanor. Nimbus’ overly sexualized demeanor certainly fits with Namor’s history within the Marvel Comics, but his sensuality and posturing also fits with Bowie’s on-stage personas and glam-rock style from the ’70s.

Rick and Morty has a tendency to blend references together, so bringing both Namor and Bowie together is by no means an unexpected combination, and actually in the case of Nimbus, seems to mesh together incredibly well. While the Namor reference is certainly more overt than the Bowie one, it’s still interesting to approach Nimbus with this new information in mind and certainly helps to explain the character’s unique design. Nimbus has proven to be one of the more popular character’s from this season, and while the show doesn’t tend to bring too many characters back for multiple episodes, hopefully he will make a return in a future episode of Rick and Morty, even if just in a cameo role or throwaway scene.

Source: SDCC @ Home

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