History Recap / RickAndMortyS5E2Mortyplicity

* CallingTheOldManOut: Throughout the episode, Beths tear into their Ricks for not learning his lesson after Space Beth and continuing to create fully sapient clones of the family that are unaware they're clones, intended to be expendable. Near the climax, one observes that even though he treats his family as so burdensome, he's indirectly created "oceans" of them because he couldn't bear losing them. Her Rick concedes that she has a point.

* CloneDegeneration: {{Discussed|Trope}}. Rick directly mentions the loss of quality when decoys make a copy of themselves by referencing the loss of quality when copying a copy[[note]]Like when you xerox a xerox, you lose definition with each iteration[[/note]]. In the second half of the episode, a poorly-made burlap-and-straw Rick brings up how Ricks get lazy and each generation of decoys is made with less care and quality (as each new Rick clone is less competent than the last, as well as lazier), demonstrating a sequence of flayed Ricks with increasing mechanization before simply being made of wood and straw, like scarecrows. The straw Rick and his family are the worst-made clones, but many of the decoys are obviously artificial despite being of better quality, like a family made in the perfect likeness of the real ones but made out of wicker.

** After Rick mentions CloneDegeneration and make [[CheapCostume poor looking Squid costumes]] for his family the first set of squids they take out are revealed to be Decoys in more convincing disguises. This shows the poorer clones are the result of the latter generations of Ricks becoming increasingly lazier.

* IgnoredEpiphany: The Season 4 finale made Rick realize that he was a horrible father for willfully erasing his own memories about which Beth was the real one and which one was the clone. Come this episode, he reveals that he deliberately created clones of his entire family as expendable decoys for any aliens that might want him dead, with the clones none the wiser.

* KillItWithFire: More than once does a Smith clone family get wiped out with the use of a flame thrower.

* MyFriendsAndZoidberg: When a clone Beth holds a RousingSpeech in front of a group of survivor decoys, she addresses the "Ricks and Morys, Beths and Jerrys. ({{Beat}}) Or also Summers". The Summer decoys are not amused.

* RevolversAreForAmateurs: Invoked by Rick. When he equips his family with weapons for the final clone battle, Beth gets a huge [[EnergyWeapon laser gun]], Summer a [[LaserBlade double-bladed light saber]], Morty a LightningLash and Jerry a revolver.

** Rick reminding his Morty that the clones are not [[SexBot for fucking]] like [[Series/{{Westworld}} done]] on [[Film/ExMachina TV]].

** Similar to the Space Beth situation, Rick compares the clones going rogue to ''Film/BladeRunner''.

* SpotTheImposter: Subverted. Two fighting Morty clones ask Summer for assistance but instead of trying to figure out which one was ''her'' Morty, she turns away and asks them to fight it out themselves.

* StrawCharacter: There is a Rick determined to kill clones to harvest their organs in order to make himself more real, lamenting the plight of the more degenerate decoys, who is eventually defeated by another Smith family, but the Rick in question is not only a figurative straw Rick, but literally made out of burlap and straw.

* TreacheryIsASpecialKindOfEvil: For betraying his family and the clone society, Wooden Jerry lives the rest of his life in a torturous state where he's unable to die and forced to watch humanity be replaced by another species.

* KarmaHoudiniWarranty: Wooden Jerry leaves his family to die out of cowardice. At the end of the episode, he has escaped all the carnage unscathed, only to run afoul of a group of beavers. It only gets worse for him from there as he's forced to endure decades of life-threatening situations but finds himself unable to die.

* BaitAndSwitch: The beginning of the episode starts with the family slaughtered by squid-like beings before it turns to the real one alive; Rick gets an alert that his "decoy family was murdered and has everyone pack up to leave... Only for the squids to kill them too. It then switches to another family with their Rick getting the alert and has his family prepare to leave before they too are killed. The entire episode soon makes it incredibly unclear which decoy family is the real one, which isn't helped by how some of them last longer in the spotlight than others as well as CloningBlues from having more than one decoy family become self-aware. Then it all turns out the real(?) family was on a space trip with Space Beth.

* CloningBlues: Many versions of the family, at least the ones that actually look human, slowly begin to wonder if they are decoys or not, especially when those decoys create their own decoys. A handful fight or run to survive while others either kill themselves or await being killed by another family who may or may not be decoys themselves.