In 1996, Matt Selman wrote a The Vindicators television pilot script for Comedy Central, revolving around "a team of super heroes with real-life problems".
[3] On the beginning of development of a third season of the adult animated science-fiction sitcom Rick and Morty in November 2015,[4] Selman's The Vindicators was re-pitched as a spec script from Sarah Carbiener and Erica Rosbe, inspired by the superhero genre and Saw franchise.
The main characters of the spin-off are the members of the superhero team the Vindicators, who band together to fight evil when it threatens to destroy the world, which consists of Vance Maximus, Supernova, Alan Rails Crocubot, and Million Ants, former members Lady Katana, Calypso, and Diablo Verde, and interns Noob Noob, Rick Sanchez, and Morty Smith.
Scrapped members included Dr. Reach, a man with stretching powers; conjoined twins, one fit and attractive, and the other not; a knitting grandmother, and Ventriloquiver, a character later incorporated into the fourth season episode "One Crew over the Crewcoo's Morty", voiced by Claudia Black.
However, a blackout Drunk Rick defeats Worldender alone the night before and sets up a series of Saw-inspired challenges for the Vindicators and his sober self to complete the next day, slowly turning the team against one another.
Written by Sarah Carbiener and Erica Rosbe and directed by Bryan Newton, "Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender" premiered on August 13, 2017, as the fourth episode of the third season of the American adult animated science-fiction sitcom Rick and Morty.
[17] Carbiener and Rosbe told io9 that the short format of Vindicators 2 allowed them to explore non-standard plots and slice of life depictions of superheroes.
[20][21] Using the franchise's established premise of alternate timelines, the first issue of the spin-off anthology series Rick and Morty Presents, written by J. Torres and titled The Vindicators: Hero Mix Vol.
[34] Reviewing the miniseries Vindicators 2: Last Stand Between Earth and Doom, Rafael Motamayor of /Film described the series as "far from groundbreaking or even that surprising", initially criticising the short length of each episode and how each episode would "mostly [amount] to a single visual joke", before ultimately finding the series as a whole to be a "fun and harmless" way to "revisit these characters, make fun superhero stories, and expand on the implications of the heroes' wild powers".