History Recap / RickAndMortyS4E1EdgeOfTomortyRickDieRickpeat

* KarmaHoudini: A more downplayed example: Morty does get arrested after killing at least thirteen people, but because he ends up emotionally scarring the judge, she drops the charges and he is free to go. Even when he takes the blame for his actions when his parents get on Rick’s case, assuming he's responsible (which in retrospect is only half-true), Jerry and Beth do not ground him and are instead focused on his safety. [[AllForNothing Though he's clearly disappointed to learn the truth about what led him to do so.]]

* AlternateHistoryNaziVictory: Spoofed by Rick getting increasingly annoyed with the many Fascist parallel timelines out there.

* CombatClairvoyance: The death crystals show you ways you're likely to die, which in a fights tend to all be very short-term, letting you know if any potential action will kill you. Rick uses it to defeat the death crystal poachers by only popping out of cover at the right time, and Morty takes this to an extreme by focusing on a singular future death and letting it guide his actions, going mad in his quest to reach it.
* ComedicSociopathy: Summer notes that Jessica's selfie with her freshly-dead grandmother looks pretty good and assumes that grieving improves one's looks. Summer then offers to put extra syrup on Jerry's breakfast, to which Beth nonchalantly tells Jessica to stop trying to prematurely kill her own father. Summer grumbles about how unfair Beth is being to her.

* EatenAlive: The NightmareFuel fate of Caterpillar!Goldenfold in another dimension is being slowly eaten alive by the Wasp!Sanchez family, biting chunks out of his body while he screams in agony and pleads to die.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: How is Morty supposed to die with Jessica at his side [[ProphecyTwist if the requirements won't allow him to stay near her?]]

* MisterSeahorse: In the wasp universe, both Wasp!Rick and Caterpillar!Goldenford give birth/lay eggs despite apparently being males.

* NotMeThisTime: Jerry automatically assumes Rick is responsible for turning Morty into a Manga/{{Akira}}. ("Eat my ass, Jerry!"). But then Morty pipes up and says it was his own fault.

* PetTheDog:
** Despite everything that Morty directly and indirectly puts Rick through throughout the episode (since Morty causes his death in the first place), when Rick saves him from the parasitic plant and pulls the death crystal out of his brain, he doesn't actually get mad at Morty or yell at him, instead gently comforting him and talking him back down, albeit while still calling him an idiot.
** In TheStinger, Jessica reveals that her career goal for the future is to become a hospice care worker and comfort dying, lonely old people who don't have anyone else. While hearing this upsets Morty because it means that the "future" he saw with Jessica wasn't what he thought it was, it's still a very kind-hearted career path.

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: When Rick wakes up in yet another clone-body after dying (this time a teddy-bear-like version of him) and sees that he has ended up in a fascist dimension once more, he immediately bashes his head in on the glass clone container and dies again to try to end up in a better dimension rather than bothering dealing with it.

* ShownTheirWork: Dying insects will often drop their babies [[FlingALightIntoTheFuture in the hopes that some of them at least will escape and live on]]. Yes, that terrifying joke with poor Caterpillar Goldenfold has basis in reality.[[note]]On that note, [[https://www.google.com/search?q=kittens&sxsrf=ACYBGNTLc-HjUeoc8lpcXJAO8KwVDnE_bA:1575040280950&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwifsc-j2o_mAhVlxKYKHRIPAf0Q_AUoAXoECBAQAw here, have some kittens]][[/note]]
* SkinnyDipping: After Morty is found innocent, Jessica invites Morty to join her and her friends in this. However, Morty's Death Crystal advises him against this.

* TaintedVeins: Morty gets them right before transforming into an AKIRA-esque abomination.

* ThreeLawsCompliant: Rick (while in the wasp clone body) assumes that Holo-Rick has [[GrowBeyondTheirProgramming gained sentience]] and [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters tries to take over]]. Holo-Rick calls this notion "A.I., racist, accusatory, Creator/IsaacAsimov bullshit". As we later see, Holo-Rick turns out [[{{Hypocrite}} not so immune]] to the [[AGodAmI pull of power]] as he wants us to believe.

* YankTheDogsChain: Morty seems to see a future in which he actually does get together with Jessica and [[GrowOldWithMe grow old together with her]]. Turns out that the future he saw was just Jessica as a hospice worker comforting him as he dies, without even knowing who he is (since she will comfort everyone else the same way).

* TookALevelInJerkass: Morty doesn't even seem to care that his actions resulted in the death of a lot of people.

* ComedicSociopathy: Summer notes that Jessica's selfie with her freshly-dead grandmother looks pretty good and assumes that grieving improves one's looks. Summer then offers to put extra syrup on Jerry's breakfast, to which Beth nonchalantly tells Jessica to stop trying to prematurely kill her own father. Jessica grumbles about how unfair Beth is being to her.

* WhyDontYouMarryIt: During her mock talk in the final scene, Summer suggests Rick and Morty get married.

* SkinnyDipping: After Morty is found innocent, Jessica invites Morty to join her and her friends in this. However, Morty is so absorbed in the visions the Death Crystal shows him he clearly doesn't hear her.

** Rick dies multiple times in his first several clone bodies before he finally ends up in a clone that works. As a normal Rick, he and Fascist Morty (and Gearhead for some reason) die after their Meeseeks [[ThrownOutTheAirlock accidentally crashes through their windshield and they're exposed to the vacuum of space]]; as Shrimp Rick, he lets slip that he's not fascist and gets caught and torn apart by fascist shrimp-people; and as Teddy Bear Rick, he just kills himself by bashing his head on the glass rather than deal with another fascist dimension.
* MistakenForMasturbating: Rick originally thought this is why Morty kept fiddling with something in his pocket.

** Despite everything that Morty directly and indirectly put Rick through throughout the episode (since Morty caused his death in the first place), when Rick saves him from the parasitic plant and pulls the death crystal out of his brain, he doesn't actually get mad at Morty or yell at him, instead gently comforting him and talking him back down... albeit while still calling him an idiot.

* PunBasedTitle: A pun on ''Film/EdgeOfTomorrow'''s tag line "Live. Die. Repeat."
* PunchAWall: The school bully smashes his head repeatedly against a locker after Morty ignored his threats.

* RewatchBonus: A closer look during Rick's vision with the death crystal shows his impalement on the rock before it happened.

* BodySurf: When Rick dies, the safeguard he built in case of his death causes his consciousness to jump into a Rick clone in an alternate dimension because he destroyed his version of the technology two seasons ago. Unfortunately, he ends up in fascist dimensions the first several times this happens. He finally finds a friendly dimension when he ends up in the clone of Wasp Rick.

* AllForNothing: Morty's [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope actions in this episode]] are spurred by the death crystal showing him that one of his possible deaths is to die old with Jessica comforting him, which he naturally assumes means he'll be married to her in the future, and Morty following what the death crystal shows him what to do to make this happen. He finds out in TheStinger that the future he was seeing didn't involve him ending up with Jessica at all; she just plans to become a hospice worker who comforts everyone in this same way.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: The Wasp dimension are based on an actual species of Parasitoid wasps.

** On the subject that Morty's plot has been resolved TV news reporter remarks that "As far as continuity goes, the ResetButton has been hit".

** Rick is confused when he first awakens in the Phoenix operation clone, noting he destroyed the equipment for it. This actually hints at what's really going on.

* {{Hypocrite}}: Holo-Rick frequently insists that holograms deserve to be respected as much as beings with mass. But when the ferro-fluid gives him a tangible body, he instantly does a 180, embracing his new, solid body to the point of [[AGodAmI going mad with power]].

* JerkassHasAPoint: While it's definitely a dick move for Morty to "sell Rick out for some trim" by not bringing him back to life in favor of a future with Jessica, most of the other futures that the death crystal shows involve Morty dying horribly as a teen on his adventures with Rick (with one other showing him falling off the toilet as a middle-aged man); the "Jessica" future is the only one where he's actually shown living to old age. However, the point becomes moot in the episode's post-credit scene, where Morty learns that Jessica wants to work in hospice to comfort every dying old person by saying "I love you [whatever their nametag says]", and he is so pissed that everything he did throughout the episode was AllForNothing that he decides to go on another journey with Rick with no hesitation.

* NotMeThisTime: Jerry automatically assumes Rick is responsible for turning Morty into an Manga/{{Akira}}. ("Eat my ass, Jerry!"). But then Morty pipes up and says it was his own fault.

* FiveSecondForeshadowing: While Rick holds one of the death crystals, his options suddenly change to only one possible death: getting shot in the back while he mines for the crystals. He uses this knowledge to avoid this death.

* CombatClairvoyance: The death crystals grant a form of this, letting you see all immediate deaths so you know when you won't be dying. Rick uses it to defeat the death crystal poachers, and Morty takes this to an extreme by focusing on a singular future death and letting it guide his actions, going mad in his quest to reach it.

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Wasp Rick. The first thing he says is expressing annoyance at Rick C-137 for using up one of his clones, and still has the foul mouth and irritability of any Rick; however, Wasp Rick then invites C-137 to have dinner with his "beautiful" family, treats said family with respect, and doesn't hesitate to help C-137 get back home and into his own body. He practically lampshades this, explaining that, due to his species' unique method of reproducing and their whole thing with eating their prey alive, they compensate by having at least a smidgen of empathy.

*** Summer's comment about Rick and Morty sucking each other off while she was mocking them may be an oblique reference to ''Doc and Mharti'', the Channel101 short that inspired ''Rick and Morty'', where every problem the two encounter is solved by Mharti licking Doc's balls.

* CrazyPrepared: Rick has two alternatives to come back to life when he dies: either have Morty clone him, with a holographic A.I. of himself guiding Morty, or have his mind programmed into an already existing clone. And in the event of his cloning technology being destroyed (which it was previously), the upload reroutes to a random Rick's lab.

* KarmaHoudini: A more downplayed example: Morty does get arrested after killing at least thirteen people, but because he ends up emotionally scarring the judge, she drops the charges and he is free to go. Even when he takes the blame for his actions when his parents get on Rick’s case, assuming he’s responsible (which in retrospect is only half-true), Jerry and Beth do not ground him and are instead focussed on his safety. [[AllForNothing Though he's clearly disappointed to learn the truth about what led him to do so.]]

* MisterSeaHorse: In the wasp universe, both Wasp!Rick and Caterpillar!Goldenford give birth/lay eggs despite apparently being males.

* AllForNothing: Morty's [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope actions in this episode]] are spurred by the death crystal showing him that one of his possible deaths is to die old with Jessica comforting him, which he naturally assumes means he'll be married to her in the future, and Morty following what the death crystal shows him to do to make this happen. He finds out in TheStinger that the future he was seeing didn't involve him ending up with Jessica at all; she just plans to become a hospice worker who comforts everyone in this same way.

** Despite everything that Morty directly and indirectly put Rick through throughout the episode (since Morty caused his death in the first place), when Rick saves him from the parasitic plant and pulls the death crystal out of his brain, he doesn't actually get mad at Morty or yell at him, instead gently comforting him and talking him back down.

* DidNotThinkThisThrough: Rick's contingency in the case of his death is to have a hologram of himself walk Morty through a process that creates a new clone body that his mind will upload to. A critical error in this plan is shown in that it is dependent on Morty being willing to follow the instructions he's given. Holo-Rick has no way of actually coercing Morty into doing what he's told, merely giving instructions and trying to convince Morty to do what he wants. Holo-Rick actually backs off when Morty threatens to destroy the genetic material necessary for the cloning.

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: In the beginning of the episode, Rick is annoyed that he has to ask permission before involving Morty in any of his adventures, having gotten away with it in the past and convinced he shouldn't have to ask anyone anything. After he is revived in the first Fascist Universe, he is immediately held hostage by an unstable Fascist Morty at gunpoint, [[ATasteOfTheirOwnMedicine being forced to go on a harrowing sci-fi adventure against his will]].

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: In the beginning of the episode, Rick is annoyed that he has to ask permission before involving Morty in any of his adventures, having gotten away with it in the past and convinced he shouldn't have to ask anyone anything. After he is revived in the first Fascist Universe, he is immediately held hostage by an unstable Fascist Morty at gunpoint, being forced to go on a harrowing sci-fi adventure against his will.

* BodySurf: When Rick dies, the safeguard he built in case of his death causes his consciousness to jump into a Rick clone in an alternate dimension, because he destroyed his version of the technology two seasons ago. Unfortunately, he ends up in fascist dimensions the first several times this happens. He finally finds a friendly dimension when he ends up in the clone of Wasp Rick.

* DrivesLikeCrazy: Morty's erradic shuttle driving under the influence of the death crystal.

* MistakenForMasturbating: Rick originally though this is why Morty kept fiddling with something in his pocket.

* PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad: A.I. Rick spends nearly ever line of dialogue going on about how everyone is being racist against him for being an A.I. and not listening to him for it.

* ATasteOfTheirOwnMedicine: In the beginning of the episode, Rick is annoyed that he has to ask permission before involving Morty in any of his adventures, having gotten away with it in the past and convinced he shouldn't have to ask anyone anything. After he is revived in the first Fascist Universe, he is immediately held hostage by an unstable Fascist Morty at gunpoint, being forced to go on a harrowing sci-fi adventure against his will.