History Recap / RickAndMortyS4E1EdgeOfTomortyRickDieRickpeat

* ContrivedCoincidence: For the punch line in TheStinger to work, we have to assume that Jessica would be assigned to nurse Morty in every future we see him live to old age.

* IJustShotMarvinInTheFace: Happens to Gearhead when a shot fired in his direction during the GunStruggle between Fascist Morty and Meeseeks in the shuttle.

* MagicalComputer: Rick asks his ship's computer to hurry up its analysis of the snake planet and the computer confirms that it's now cutting corners. It brings up the history of the planet's culture and synthesizes an instantly working antivenom for Morty.

* NormalFishInATinyPond: Morty on his AKIRA rampage. Morty is normally shown to be totally out of his depth on his adventures with Rick, facing off against dangerous adversaries in space or alternate dimensions. It turns out, however, that even Morty's comparatively limited knowledge of Rick's advanced technological gadgets (he at least knows how to use the basic ones even if he can't build them on his own) can make him an unstoppable force shrugging off attacks from the mundane Earth military.

* EyeGore: Wasp!Summer casually rips out and eats the eyeball of Caterpillar!Goldenfold while he's still alive and screaming.

** In the Inside the Episode featurette, Dan Harmon cryptically remarked on this by saying that Rick essentially can't die "by conventional means" due to his various backup plans like this, but also that "he's like a vampire or a werewolf": they can't die by conventional means, but there are special ways that in fact permanently kill them. Harmon concluded by saying that there are ways to actually kill vampires, werewolves, or even Rick, "but I won't tell you".

Morty sees a future where he dies old with Jessica, and will do anything to make it happen.

* AssholeVictim: In Rick's case, every Naziesque facist alternate dimension Rick and Morty duo he unfortunately reincarnates across. In Morty's case, the violent and mentally unstable bully and his gang who wanted him dead all for accidentally bumping into him in the school hallway.

** Rick tells the first Fascist Rick that he destroyed his Operation Phoenix (cloning) technology "a couple seasons ago".

*** 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 Website/Channel101 short that inspired ''Rick and Morty'', where every problem the two encounter is solved by Mharti licking Doc's balls.

* ContrivedCoincidence: In order for the punch line in TheStinger to work, we have to assume that Jessica would be assigned to nurse Morty in every future we see him live to old age.

* HypocriticalHumor: After the death crystal poachers show up and get into a shootout with the main duo, Rick expresses disgust that there are people like them who would want to steal the crystals...even though this was apparently exactly what Rick and Morty themselves were doing when the poachers showed up. Morty lampshades this by asking what this makes the two of them; Rick just replies "We're Rick and Morty" in a "duh!" tone of voice.
* IJustShotMarvinInTheFace: Happens to Gearhead when a shot fires in his direction during the GunStruggle between Fascist Morty and Meeseeks in the shuttle.

* 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 a 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.

* JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: Morty. When he sees what he thinks is a future where he gets to be with Jessica and grow old with her, he goes to some downright sociopathic lengths to make it happen, such as not reviving his own grandfather (whose death Morty was responsible for to begin with), attacking and even killing some school bullies and a whole fleet of cops, and allowing himself to be possessed by an alien ferrofluid. Thankfully, though, Rick brings him back down, and Morty decides to live in the moment more often from now on rather than worrying about his future.

* LiteralGenie: The preemptive clairvoyance powers of the Forbodulon Prime death crystals when used by Morty. Being reliant on them to get to an achieved death of choice may require doing some lifebound things that are contrary to the results and to not see the forest for the trees.

* LoveMakesYouEvil: Morty kills a total of at least thirteen people all so he could die with Jessica. It turns out be AllForNothing.

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

* ObliviouslyEvil: Overlapped with AffablyEvil. The Wasp!Sanchez are much nicer and more functional than the human Sanchez family. Even Wasp!Beth and Wasp!Jerry seem HappilyMarried in this reality. But they have no issue with slowly devouring their version of Goldenfold (and his young) alive while he lies on the table screaming and pleading for a quick death.

* OminousObsidianOoze: Morty's attempts at following the crystal's predictions come to a head when he steals some ferrofluid from Rick's lab and uses it on himself. Essentially a oily black semi-liquid that continuously sprouts roots and tentacles, it envelops Morty in a monstrous techno-organic tree in which he's determined to wait until the crystal shows him the next step to dying in Jessica's arms.

* OneManArmy: Morty loads himself up with stuff from Rick's armory and easily dominates the police and the military. The only reason they stop him is because he lets them.
* 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.

* RuleOfThree: Three times, Rick [[BodySurf body-surfs]] into a clone version of himself in a fascist dimension: the first time as a normal human, the second time as a Shrimp Rick, and the third as a Teddy Bear Rick.
* ScrewDestiny: The entire underlying theme and aesop of the episode, and perhaps more accurately, "Screw fearing the inevitability and all consuming occurrence of death." As the death crystals show, death is cheap, be it coming at you right now or later on, and fearing it while not living life as not as who you are will have you dying unhappily and living like shell of a living being. Rick may have died, but he's long lived to explore the vastness of the multiverse and gained such massive knowledge to effectively cheat death with both middle fingers up by everyone of him and his alternate existences at the reaper itself. Morty on the other hand seeks "normalcy", but he ends up literally being controlled by the death crystal he snuck away and implanted on his head, and would have died alone in a cold hospital room having spent the rest of his life potentially stuck in a ferrofluid construct and having never took the chance to ever get together with Jessica.

** The school bully makes a reference to the afterlife in ''WesternAnimation/{{Coco}}'' when threatening to kill Morty.

* 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.

* 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, Rick gets to taste how it feels to be ordered around when he is held hostage by an unstable Fascist Morty at gunpoint, being forced to go on a harrowing sci-fi adventure against his will.

* UnnervinglyHeartwarming: Played for laughs in the Wasp dinner scene, which ''should'' be a heartwarming moment: Wasp!Jerry and Beth are shown to be Happily Married, Wasp!Rick respects Beth's decisions without trying to manipulate her, his relationship with Wasp!Morty is a lot healthier, and overall, everyone seems perfectly happy. It's just that the meal is a caterpillar version of Mr Goldenfold - who is screaming in agony as the family devours him alive. And Morty eats the poor bastard's larvae as well. All while sentimental music plays in the background.

* YourHeadAsplode: How Holo-Rick dies. He becomes a giant, solid being thanks to the ferrofluid taking over him, but Wasp Rick defeats him by stinging him in the eye, causing his offspring to hatch inside Holo-Rick's head and exploding it from the inside-out.

* MagicalComputer: Rick asks him ship's computer to hurry up its analysis of the snake planet and the computer confirms that it's now cutting corners. It brings up the history of the planet's culture and synthesizes an instantly working antivenom for Morty.

* 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]]

* 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 he has 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 hospital worker who comforts everyone in this same way.

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: When Morty does impress and woo Jessica, the death crystals then guide him to reject her offer to go skinny dipping with her and her friends. Later, the visions are revealed to be merely the result of him on his deathbed gaining pity from her as a nurse.

* LiteralGenie: The preemptive clairvoyance powers of the Forbodulon Prime death crystals when used by Morty. Being reliant on them to get to an achieved death of choice may require doing some lifebound things that are contrary to the results.

* ScrewDestiny: The entire underlying theme and aesop of the episode.

* 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 he has 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.

* TakeThatAudience: Fascist Morty is a jab at fans that just want "fun, classic Rick and Morty adventures" from the show and don't want to be challenged by the show, something that seems to cross over with alt-right people that say they don't want politics in tbe things they watch when they really just don't want liberal politics in them.

* TakeThatAudience: The episode is basically an excuse for Harmon and Roiland to take the piss out of the complaints against Season 3. Fascist Morty kills his universe's Rick for being "too political", then forces Rick to go on an "old-fashioned adventure", something which he isn't actually able to define. The only specific thing Morty can come up with is bringing back Mr. Meeseeks, which ends up getting everyone onboard killed.