These characters were originally inspired by Stephen King's miniseries The Langoliers.[5] This version was cut because they deemed it too "basic" with nowhere to go for a potential second act.[6] One deleted element of the splitting time was referring to it as a "time quake"; an early version featured Rick berating Morty for wearing "shorty shorts", which caused time to split.[7] The reason for the fractured time was ultimately re-developed into something more specific to the characters.