It seems no-one is safe from the unearthing of past problematic posts or projects and the latest to suffer from a difficult recent revelation is Rick and Morty co-creator, Dan Harmon. The critically-acclaimed animation has propelled Harmon into the spotlight but he has been forced to apologise after an unsavoury video sketch he created in 2009 resurfaced.

Dan HarmonDan Harmon has co-created critically-acclaimed animation, Rick and Morty

Almost a decade ago, the 45-year-old created and starred in a five-minute sketch that saw him play a therapist who repeatedly molested infants.

The sketch, entitled Daryl, was the first of a two-part satire of US drama Dexter which followed the titular hero as he killed murderers.

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Daryl first aired in 2009 as part of the short film festival Channel 101 which was co-founded by Harmon and was said to offer "total creative freedom".

The sketch was taken down in 2012, without any public reason given; however, it recirculated over the weekend after it was posted on forum 4Chan and then shared by The_Donald, an alt-right section of Reddit.

One 4Chan user explained the video was being aired again as retribution for the firing of Roseanne Barr from her show Roseanne after she posted a racist tweet.

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"If they get to take scalps for someone making racist jokes, we get to take scalps for them making paedophilia jokes," they wrote.

Since the video’s revelation, Harmon has released an apology statement which explained he had made a pilot to "parody" Dexter but instead ended up offending.

He said: "In 2009, I made a ‘pilot’ which strove to parody the series Dexter and only succeeded in offending. I quickly realised the content was way too distasteful and took the video down immediately. Nobody should ever have to see what you saw and for that, I sincerely apologise."

Harmon has not been fired by Adult Swim - the production company that plays Rick and Morty, a cartoon about teenager Morty and his alcoholic scientist grandfather Rick. He has since deleted his Twitter which had 670,000 followers.