"Rick Potion #9": When the world has gone to hell, Rick tells Morty he has one last plan to fix this mess. The scene cuts to the world apparently back to normal, everyone cured of their mutations, and Rick and Morty are working in the garage together... Only for the two to die horrifically in a huge explosion. Then, another portal opens up, and another Rick and Morty from the apocalyptic world come through, revealing that Rick planned to switch universe with an alternate counterpart that fixed his world and died with his Morty so he and his Morty can replace them.
Morty is thought to be what Rick holds dear, the platform in the final test leading to a cutesy roller coaster where a recording of Rick tells Morty how much he means to him and how afraid he was that the Vindicators would take him away. Then Rick says they barely know each other and then finally refers to the ride's intended passenger by name: Noob-Noob, the Vindicators' janitor who laughs at his jokes.
On a production level, the Adult Swim promo for this episode makes the plot look like a standard Super Team story with Worldender as the main villain, calling him "the most fearsome villain of the Rick and Morty multiverse" and "imagine Thanos fucked Darkseid and had a baby." Mid-episode, however, Worldender is killed by a drunken Rick the night before he returns with Morty and the Vindicators.
"The Ricklantis Mix-up": Played with. The initial opening suggests that we'll be following Rick and Morty on their Atlantis adventure, but instead we follow the various Ricks and Mortys living at the Citadel of Ricks. However, the switch is pretty blatantly telegraphed.
When Rick shows up to the Smiths' hiding place with a gun, Beth assumes that she is a clone after all and Rick is there to terminate her. However, after she gives a long rant that ends with her asking Rick to leave and not kill her, Rick reveals that he was never planning to do so and, whether she's a clone or not (which still isn't made clear), still sees her as his daughter; the gun was to kill Jerry (though he doesn't even try to use it to do so).
Also near the end, the narrative seems to suggest that "our" Rick followed through on his words and decided to leave to a new dimension, and a new, much-nicer Rick who enjoys fishing and is friendly with the President has moved in with "our" version of the Smiths. Then we see that he is "our Rick", who was just wearing a disguise he borrowed from Jerry to speak with the President. (Though this is probably easy for the audience to guess from the beginning, anyway.)
In Real Life, some people who read the brief teaser synopses stating that Rick would confront the President assumed that meant Rick would battle Evil Morty and felt the whole episode was this.
Season 4
"The Old Man and the Seat": After his run-ins with Tony, Rick adds some upgrades to his private toilet, and is next seen telling the receptionist at Tony's workplace that he can use it. This suggests that Rick set Tony up to be killed when he does so; however, as seen at the ending, it turns out to be a bunch of hologram Ricks cheerfully insulting Tony about using his toilet and making fun of his 'shy-pooper' status.
"The Vat of Acid Episode": The opening scene in conjunction with the episode title suggests that the episode may be a Bottle Episode, with Rick and Morty having to hide in the vat until the alien gangsters leave after having a series of casual yet complex conversations, but it very quickly moves away from that.
Season 5
"Mortyplicity": 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. Then it all turns out the real(?) family was on a space trip with Space Beth.
During a Big Badass Battle Sequence involving multiple decoy families, one that resembles a cast of muppets are sitting far from the area. Before they fly off to finish things up, they are shown to just be wearing costumes in hopes of being "too cute to murder".
"A Rickconvenient Mort": When Rick takes Summer to visit three different apocalypses, he makes her promise not to get attached to anyone and just keep it at casual hookups, and she states this will be an easy promise to keep, seemingly setting it up for her to defy this later. Instead, Rick is the one who gets attached when he brings Daphne, an alien from the first planet they visit, along to the next two, only to discover later that she was just using him to survive.
"Amortycan Grickfitti": Right when it looks like Rick is genuinely wanting to hang out with Jerry, it turns out he's merely using the oblivious fool to pay off a debt with a group of demons from Hell.
When the Statue of Liberty robot awakens in the Cold Opening, it seems like the rest of the episode will be about stopping it. Instead, it turns into a background gag and the focus is instead on the rivalry between the President and Rick, which causes a catastrophic chain of events.
When soldiers first cross the shimmer to attack the Smith home, a satellite dish on the roof takes aim at them, indicating a beam of some sort. Then the center section of the dish flips around and launches a plant at them, which then eats them.
"Rickternal Friendshine of the Rickless Mort": We're led to believe that Rick is so unenthusiastic about revisiting the Battle of Blood Ridge because it ended so poorly it traumatized even him. It turns out the battle ended in their favor; the reason Rick doesn't like remembering it is because it ended with him offering to take Bird Person on further adventures due to Rick having feelings for him, which BP rejected because he was put off by Rick's nihilist attitude about the battle they just won.
The "Rick and Two Crows" plot from last episode ends early when Rick discovers they are cheating on him with their enemy Crow Scare. He heads home to meet up with Morty.
At the start, Rick meets a much older Morty, implying that a couple of decades passed since they parted. It turns out Morty bought a faulty aging serum to become older. Part of the reason is to guilt-trip Rick into coming back.
Morty shows Beth and Summer his newly-jacked abs from his Night Person working out for him, then says "check this out" and reaches down towards his crotch area to apparently open his fly...only to unzip a bag with a bowling ball in it, which he offers to let Summer drop on his abs to prove how strong they are.
When the Night Family runs out of money, Night Rick says he has "a device that can solve everything" and pulls out a simple revolver, implying they're going to all shoot themselves. Turns out he simply intended to shoot the Somnambulator,which does kill off the Night Family, restoring the Day Family.
Immediately after the above example, the real Smiths wake up, Summer asks how long they've been asleep, Rick looks on his phone to check, and is horrified because... they killed the Choco Taco!
Season 7
"The Jerrick Trap": After Gene returns their rake, Jerricky appears to briefly change his mind about leaving. Then nonchalantly drops it, much to the family's disappointment.
"That's Amorte": You expect the cold open to be a dream or a simulation simply because the Smith-Sanchez family are seldom happy together. Turns out it's all real, but the thing that's making them all happy at the same time is where things get freaky.
The beginning of the episode sees what appears to be our Rick and Morty in an argument after another adventure. To cool off the argument, Morty offers Rick a six-pack of beer...and then comes back in the middle of the night wearing an eyepatch and puts a receiver in the brain of his incredibly drunk Rick. We just saw Evil Morty's Start of Darkness.
During the "semifinal round" of the battle in Rick Prime's trap, as Rick and the two Morties discuss their situation, an Indiana Jones Rick in the adjacent arena seeminly whips a disheveled, Badass Longcoat Rick to death, splattering so much blood on the glass wall as to obscure the protagonists' view of the fight and prompting a "Whoa, tough customer!" from Rick. Moments later, however, the blood gets cleared away by Longcoat Rick—no worse for wear—using Indiana Jones Rick like a human squeegee before brutally electrocuting him to death and turning to scowl through the glass, impatiently awaiting the final round.
The Stinger has Slow Mobius' wife go through depression after he is erased from all infinite timelines by the Omega Weapon, with her eventually setting out on a journey to apparently hunt down his killer like Rick did after Rick Prime killed his family—complete with the same melancholy music played over his flashback in "Rickmurai Jack"—a task doomed to fail since Rick Prime is already dead. Instead, she meets an alien who is going through something similar after the death of his own wife and the two bond, dropping their quests for revenge and instead raising their families together as each other's Second Love, all while the background music changes to become happier and more hopeful.
"Fear No Mort": At the very end, after Morty has told Rick that he saw Diane in the Hole but urges him not to enter, Rick agrees, but then we see him run back to the stall, looking like it's going to be a case of Here We Go Again! where Rick jumps in for his own arc just like Morty did earlier. Instead, it becomes a Pet the Dog moment as he chooses not to do it, and instead just puts Morty's picture up on the Hole's Wall of Fame.
makes the plot look like a standard Super Team story with Worldender as the main villain, calling him "the most fearsome villain of the Rick and Morty multiverse" and "imagine Thanos fucked Darkseid and had a baby." Mid-episode, however, Worldender is killed by a drunken Rick the night before he returns with Morty and the Vindicators.