Rick and Morty's 50% boost to Jan-Michael Vincent's popularity

     In September 2015, "Rick and Morty" released their episode "Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate" in which they reference 80s heartthrob Jan-Michael Vincent in one of their improvised cable skits. This makes them one of the few relevant media sources to mention Vincent in decades. After seeing the episode, I was curious as to how this reference affected his popularity, as Rick and Morty reaches a young audience who has likely never heard of him before. 

     Upon looking at Google Trends data, it's clear that there is a spike in searches in the week of September 20, 2015 when the episode first aired. There is also a large spike in the week of November 2, 2014 when the National Enquirer ran a piece detailing Mr. Vincent's struggle with addiction and his then-recent leg amputation. 

USA Google Trends for Jan-Michael Vincent, August 2013 to August 2018

     By looking at the graph, it appears that the National Enquirer interview caused a brief spike in Vincent's popularity which did not last, but after being referenced on Rick and Morty, interest in Vincent appears to be permanently higher. Let's crunch the numbers and see exactly what happened. 
____________________________________________________________________________

     Google Trends' public data is indexed to 100 to mask the actual number of searches done for a particular topic, so without special access there is no way of knowing exactly how many curious Rick and Morty fans searched for Jan-Michael Vincent when the episode was released. However, using a quickly-made Python script available on my Github page, we can calculate that on the week the episode came out, search interest for Jan-Michael Vincent was 5.4 times higher than the total average from August 2013 to August 2018. Searches for Jan-Michael Vincent remained over 1 standard deviation above average for 3 weeks after the release of the episode.
     Following the Rick and Morty spike, Vincent's search interest has consistently been 54% higher than it was before the National Enquirer spike, and 44% higher than it was after it.

Analysis of worldwide Google search interest data by jan-michael_popularity.py

     These trends hold when looking specifically at search interest from Canada and the United States. Canada appears to have seen the largest increase in interest, with searches for Jan-Michael Vincent soaring by 71% after the release of the episode. However, these trends do not exist in Australia, the UK, Mexico, or any other region I've examined – most likely because the show is less popular and less widely aired outside of Canada and the USA. 

     While it may be hyperbole to say that Rick and Morty single-handedly launched Jan-Michael Vincent from irrelevance back to superstardom, Jan-Michael can live his new life sober, one-legged, and happy that people now care up to 71% more about him than they once did.