Someone Bought Story-Trains.com & Redirected It to Trump After ‘Rick and Morty’

Rick and Morty feature photo

Adult Swim Rick and Morty

Last week’s episode of Rick and Morty, Season 4 Episode 6, caused a lot of people to look up Story-Train.com, which was advertised at the end of the episode. When it first aired, the website didn’t go anywhere. More than a day after it aired, the website was finally redirected to a Rick and Morty website. But before that happened, someone else bought the very similar Story-Trains.com and redirected that site to DonaldJTrump.com


Although Story-Train.com Goes to ‘Rick and Morty,’ Story-Trains.com Goes to Trump’s Website

Story-Train.com redirects to RickandMorty.com, but Story-Trains.com now redirects to DonaldJTrump.com. Here’s a look at Story-Train.com first, followed by the WhoIs information and more details about Story-Trains.com.

When Episode 6 first aired on May 3, visiting http://www.Story-Train.com, which was listed in the end credits, only brought an error message. Here’s how the site was advertised at the end of the episode.

Adult Swim

At first, visiting the site only brought this message:

www.story-train.com

This caused people to look up the WhoIs information and try to figure out if the domain had been purchased — which it had been. According to WhoIs registries, the website Story-Train.com was purchased back in 2019 and is on Time Warner’s name server. (Rick and Morty is distributed by Warner Bros.) WhoIs shows that the website story-train.com was created on March 6, 2019, updated on March 2, 2020, and expires on March 6, 2021. A more detailed WhoIs registration showed that Turner Broadcasting System owns the domain. Turner owns Adult Swim, the network that airs Rick and Morty. They registered the domain Story-Train.com back in 2019 for Episode 6.

But sometime before the website Story-Train.com was redirected to RickandMorty.com, someone else registered the very similar Story-Trains.com. This site now automatically redirects to DonaldJTrump.com.

The website Story-Trains.com was purchased on May 4, 2020 according to ICANN information — the day after the Rick and Morty episode aired.

The domain doesn’t expire until May 4, 2021, and it was registered through Google Domains. The contact information for the person who registered the site has been kept private.

ICANN

According to Redirect Checker, this was a “301 Moved Permanently” redirect. But it also used a 302 redirect, which isn’t recommended.

Since Dan Harmon has been quite vocal about his dislike of Trump, there’s no shortage of irony in this very similar website’s redirect. It looks like it was created by a Trump fan who also watches Rick and Morty. They’re certainly not capitalizing or profiting off Story-Trains.com, at least not at this time.

While you’re waiting to see if that Story-Trains website is ever redirected anywhere else, here’s a look at what we can expect next on Rick and Morty. Below is the schedule for Season 4B.

  • Never Ricking Morty – Episode 6
  • Promortyus – Get off my face broh – Episode 7
  • The vat of acid episode – “The one with the acid vat, broth.” – Episode 8 (May 17)
  • Childrick of Mort – “Miracle of life broth. Whole family in this one broh.” – Episode 9 (May 24)
  • Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri – “Parenting is crazy broth. Stuff straight disappearing in this one.” (This was referred to as being Season 4 Part 2, which doesn’t make a lot of sense given the episode numbers.) – Finale, Episode 10 (May 31)

Yes, unfortunately this means there are only three episodes left this season.

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