Fridge Brilliance / Rick and Morty

Rick and Morty/Fridge Brilliance

Season 1

• In the very first episode, Beth tells Rick that Morty needs to go to school because "He's not a hot girl. He can't just bail on his life and set up shop in someone else's." Cut to 5 episodes later...
• Why wasn't Morty interested in seeing the alternate timeline version of himself in "Rixty Minutes"? Because the last one he saw was a bloody corpse.
• It really should have been obvious that Rick, Morty, and Jerry weren't out of a simulation yet when Rick and Morty find Jerry on the ship; he's still wearing the tuxedo that he only could have gotten in the simulation.
  • Rick pauses for a second of his frantic escape attempt to question why Jerry is "dressed like a waiter", so it's not surprising that he was completely aware that they hadn't left the simulation yet.
  • Also, Rick briefly gets very playful and giggly with Morty. This is actually because he's starting to suspect this is a simulation of Morty and he's testing to see if Morty will say something about him acting out of character.
    • At the very start of the episode, Rick nonchalantly makes remarks that would be addressed to the Zigerions and their predictable work, until 'Morty' bumps into the side of the garage, then he plays along with the layered-simulation scam. He realized that if they were putting in the effort to add natural imperfections, then they were done playing around. That's why he finished them off rather than rob them like normal; they wanna get serious? He can get serious.
• Rick's recipe for concentrated dark matter consisting of photonic quarks, cesium and a bottle of water, is pretty obviously a bomb.^note Cesium is the most reactive of all metals, it is pyrophoric and reacts with water even at −177 °F. Rick's trap was actually a test to see if the low achieving aliens would be aware of basic chemistry. To the extent that they mixed it up without any prior evaluation or safety precautions justified, in Rick's mind, their fate. Of course one can assume that Rick would also be fairly confident as to the result of his "test".
• In the fourth episode of season 1, there's a good bit of Trope Telegraphing when the Zigerions are about to blow themselves up. Two episodes later, about the same level of telegraphing is applied when alternate universe Rick and Morty blow themselves up, but it's far less likely to be picked up on because the scene is set up as if they're our Rick and Morty, who have too much Plot Armor to be considered for such a gag.
• In "M. Night Shaym-Aliens!", if the scammer aliens were really that stupid, chances are they didn't build the simulation machine themselves and didn't know how to use it right. This would make it trivially easy for Rick to notice something was off or what layer of the simulation he was in.
• In "Meeseeks and Destroy" Rick bets Morty the chance to lead 1 in 10 adventures if Morty's adventure is a success. 10 episodes are about the length of a Rick and Morty season, implying there will be one Morty adventure per season.
  • If this theory is true, the Morty adventure in Season 2 is probably "Mortynight Run", where Morty convinces Rick to kill Krombopulos Michael and rescue Fart, and in Season 3 it's "Vindicators 3: The Return of World Ender", where Morty is the one who Jumped at the Call and he drags Rick along.
    • "Vindicators 3" showed Morty turning in a punch card, so this appears to be in force.
    • In that episode, they mention the first Vindicator adventure, which involved Rick and Morty, and the second, which did not. It was likely "Vindicators 1" that was Morty's adventure.
• How did the Meeseeks get their hands on all those weapons (and a horse!) in "Meeseeks and Destroy"? And how did they know where to find Jerry? They were designed for the sole purpose of solving problems of all sorts, so it was probably child's play for them to figure out how to get the tools and info needed to solve their own. According to the commentary, the idea was that they had robbed a mounted cop for his horse and his gun.
• Rick warns the family to keep the Meeseeks requests simple, so one might think that Beth and Summer's requests, to be popular at school and be a more complete woman, respectively, would be more than they can handle and Jerry asking his Meeseeks to take two strokes off his golf game is the more rational request, right? Wrong! Beth and Summer's requests are broad enough that their Meeseeks simply giving them advice would mean success, whereas Jerry's golfing request is so specific that, unless he figures out exactly what he needs to do, the task is left incomplete.
  • Furthermore, Beth and Summer asked their Meeseeks to simply accomplish tasks, their requests boiled down to the skill of the Meeseeks: Summer's Meeseeks talked her up in front of others while Beth's told her what she wanted to hear. Jerry asked his Meeseeks to teach him a new skill/improve himself, which made success heavily dependent on Jerry regardless of the Meeseeks' skill. Jerry's task was the hardest as it was the only one that the Meeseeks could not do for him.
• The Meeseeks have some truly annoying voices. This is most likely an intentional design flaw since their ability to produce an infinite number of servants with no personal needs would cause a person to become lazy and dependent over time.
  • Not to mention the fact that Meeseeks all want to die, and having a more pleasant voice would make people reluctant to allow their Meeseeks to die.
  • On the topic of the Meeseeks' voices, one of their Verbal Tics is to announce themselves, followed by a "Look at me!" They want to receive their assigned task so they can finish it as soon as possible, and this is one way of ensuring their creator doesn't fail to task them as soon as possible.
  • The Meseeks mention that “existence is pain to a Meseeks! And we will do anything to alleviate that pain!” Their annoying voice is most likely caused by the infinite endless pain they feel from the minute they are spawned.
• The first appearance of Rick's "wubba lubba dub-dub!" catchphrase (you know, the one that means "help me, I am in great pain") comes shortly after his grandson nearly gets raped. There's no way the two weren't related.
  • This is also the first time Rick ever directly addresses the audience through the fourth wall. He knows the audience saw what happened to Morty while Rick was unable to affect the situation because he was off-screen.
• In "Anatomy Park" Rick and Morty spend most of Christmas day apart from the rest of the Smiths, showing their distance from the rest of the family, which they end up abandoning when they switch in "Rick Potion No. 9." However straight after that one we get our first episode where Rick has an adventure with Summer while Morty stays with his parents, which foreshadows him and Rick forming stronger and more lasting bonds with their new family.
• "The Ricks Must Be Crazy" gives us a very odd inversion of Clone Degradation, Rick made the Microverse, and he's...well, Rick, then the Microverse has Zeep, a cynical asshole, but one willing to make a new power-source for his people, and swallows his pride when he's faced with possible oblivion, then the universe he made has a similar scientist, but one that seems a lot more friendly than either of them, despite the questionable work he's doing. He also takes the origin of his universe a lot worse than Zeep did.
  • It's possible the batteries go both ways; Rick could be trapped in a universe created by an even more vicious "God" than himself. Knowing that your entire universe only exists to power somebody's lawnmower would be enough to turn anyone into a nihilistic anti-theist.
• The deer that Beth and Jerry ran into with their car? That was actually Bambi! That's why Bambi survived getting shot by the hunter because before he made it back to Faline, while she was waiting, he ran into the middle of the road and got saved by a vet.
• A brief glimpse reveals that the TV show the hivemind creates for Rick is identical to Community. What's her name? Unity. Comm-unity.
• Why did Mr. Needful turn against Summer? Well, she made a wish to help him, and twisting wishes to make people suffer is what he does. It's in his nature.
  • Mr. Needful says "I'm the devil... but Rick IS the devil!" After Rick gets bored and closes shop, he leaves people stuck with cursed items after promising them happiness — Just like the Devil was attempting to do!
  • Why is Rick an atheist even though he met Satan? Rick demonstrated that he was able to both detect "evil" and remove "curses" using science. Therefore even if supernatural beings and effects exist, Rick can always discover the science behind them.
    • Later episodes show Rick interacting with various apparently supernatural beings, some of whom are god-like in one way or another, and is never impressed, he even ends up killing some of them. To Rick, these are all just various lifeforms with varying abilities, and he's smart enough to figure them all out.
  • It’s also worth pointing out that Summer saves the Devil from hanging himself using a monkey’s paw. Given that that artifact is known for introducing an ironic twist after fulfilling the wish, it’s likely to blame for Summer getting Zuckerberged.
  • When Mr. Needful says the microscope he gives Rick "reveals things beyond comprehension" he wasn't lying. It's just that the microscope would have rendered the viewer unable to comprehend the mundane things it was revealing.
• Why do the students think that a Latino student froze Frank? Because Rick is possibly Latino. His last name is Sanchez. It is even confirmed in the commentary for "Auto Erotic Assimilation" that Rick is Hispanic.
• In "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind," the dome of tortured Mortys isn't to hide a Rick from the Council. It's for when the Council turns up, it reinforces their belief that an Evil Rick is behind this. it doesn't matter it is an inefficient way to generate Morty-waves because no Morty-waves are needed. Only the horrifying visual is.
  • Why are all the other Mortys, save one notable exception, so much wimpier than ours? Look at their Ricks. Their very decision to join the Council reflects a fundamental restraint and willingness to cooperate that our Rick lacks. C-137's "mave-Rick" ways likely lead him into adventures they would never consider. Consequently, our Morty has been through mind-bending, life-altering experiences and come out of them a stronger person. Look, too, at the way the enforcer-Ricks' Mortys behave—quiet and obedient, where our Morty's seen Rick's feet of clay and is much more willing to question him and call him out on his behavior. It's even possible ("Ricks don't care about Mortys") that at least some of the council-Ricks barely interact with their Mortys unless they have to, so they haven't received the encouragement and mentoring that our Rick gives Morty (on his better days).
    • It's also possible that the other Ricks are much kinder to the other Morty. After all, they are willing and capable of cooperating with each other to achieve a functioning society, that C-137 has absolutely no respect of, it makes perfect sense that they are also more willing to cooperate with their Morty, so finding one who'll treat them horribly leaves them in horror, while for C-137 it's the norm.
    • Evil Morty was giving a form of mentorship to the Morty's of his Morty-dome; don't trust Rick because he doesn't care about you and wants to hurt you. When Evil Rick claims no Rick cares for their Morty, it comes from Evil Morty's perspective. He wanted the Morty-est Morty to come and prove to the Morty's that they can beat Rick. And now there are a hundred versions of Morty who remember the way they were treated, to be later created into an army by Evil Morty (the Rickiest Morty)
  • The fact that it turns out to be Evil Morty who speaks through Evil Rick, lends new meaning to him wistfully calling the agonized screams of the multiple Mortys "my symphony". It is made from sounds of other hims.
    • Not only that, but Rick's last words screaming at the Morty to kill him? It looks like he's being Defiant to the End, but that' actually Evil Morty instructing the other Morty to kill Ricks.
  • Evil Rick says he kidnapped Rick because they are so much alike, only separated by one other Rick. But Rick refuses to join him. Why? Because Evil Rick's data for the Rick that died and was replaced in Rick Potion #9. The Rick the show follows is probably farther on the good side of the Rick Spectrum as shown by his memories and actual care for Morty.
    • Or Rick is actually that one other Rick, having hopped to the most similar universe, and thus the Rick most like him. In other words, he's the super-weird one because he's evil but actually cares about his Morty.
    • Maybe it's not about how evil a Rick is, but how willing to defy the social order. Most Ricks don't care about conventional society's rules, but they'll restrain themselves for the Citadel society. Both Evil Rick and his counterpart are perfectly fine with treating the Citadel the same way they treat everyone else: poorly. And as we've seen, the Citadel Ricks treat Mortys like shit, but they expect better for Ricks. So their definition of good and evil is not to be trusted.
  • Rick comments on the Dome's poor craftsmanship, a pet peeve of his, and just like in another episode where he complains about such things, it's a clue that something is off. The Dome isn't built the way Rick would have done it because it wasn't designed or built by a Rick.
• Why does Rick say in "Rick Potion Number 9" that they can only change universes three times, four tops? Because as we see in "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind", there's a council of Ricks (and possibly others) keeping track of exactly this sort of thing.
  • This would also explain why he went for the extremely specific "Universe where the problem was resolved, and then Rick and Morty died shortly afterwards" instead of the easier alternative of going to a universe where the problem is resolved and then just killing that Rick and Morty himself.
• When Evil Rick tries to show how he and the main Rick are not so different using his scale of Rick evilness, it's somewhat underwhelming. Although the two are in fact very close to each other on the scale, it doesn't look like they're especially close to being the most evil of all the Ricks. But that makes sense- the Rick we know is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold that genuinely loves his Morty, and this so-called "Evil Rick" is just a puppet for a much eviler Morty. You would probably expect both of those profiles to only be middle of the road in terms of evilness, and that's exactly how they show up on the chart.
• Rick hesitates when calling them "Morty waves". The gag is that he's trying not to call them "moron" or "idiot" waves to avoid offending Morty, but Rick's never had a problem calling Morty stupid and he ends up just landing on Morty's name to define them. Why? Because he literally doesn't know what else to call them, being incomprehensible to him is exactly the point of Morty Waves in the first place. He knows what they do, he knows they come from Morty, but if he could understand exactly what about Morty's brain actually creates those waves the way the brain of a Rick produces "genius" waves, they wouldn't cancel his brain waves out.
• In "Something Ricked This Way Comes" Rick and Summer beat up a variety of prejudiced and abusive individuals. One of them was a Westboro baptist member protesting their famous slogan "God hates Fags" Rick is later implied to be pansexual so no doubt this gives him an extra amount of hatred for them.
• The Plutonians have a lot of stealth puns going on in their world. They're lead by the ultra-rich, who control everything. Plutocrats, in other words. And there's vast mineral wealth that they lay claim to. The reason Plutocrats are called that is that Pluto was a god of vast mineral wealth, buried underground. It's layers within layers.
  • It should be noted that this is a case of mixing up two different mythological gods with similar names — Pluto is named after the Roman ruler of the underworld, while "plutocracy" is derived from the Greek god of wealth, Plutus. They are frequently conflated, though.
    • Technically speaking, Plutus was a name for Hades in his role as the god of Wealth, while Hades was his role as Ruler of the Dead and Lord of the Underworld or the Land of Erebus. Wealth came from underground, be it metals and minerals or seeds. At the time calling the guy in charge of the dead by name was a fearful prospect and often avoided. So Hades has many names, Plutus is one of then.
    • Pluto, Plutus and Hades are all the same God, Pluto is just his Roman name.

Season 2

• Jerry is able to get the Coldstone Creamery involved in an elaborate scheme to save Bambi. Typical cartoon contrivance? Not quite - If you do the math, Jerry spent $480 at the place and was implied to give out enormous tips.
• At the end of "Mortynight Run", Fart says to Morty, "You said yourself that life must be protected, even through sacrifice. You haven't changed your mind about that, I can sense your thoughts." What happens next? Morty sacrifices Fart to protect all carbon-based life. Fart did in fact sense Morty's thoughts, but did not realize where his convictions had changed.
• In "Total Rickall" we eventually learn the parasites can only create good memories and alter memories to seem good that's perfect foreshadowing that Mr. Poopybutthole isn't one of them considering the first memory he's featured in is the elevator memory which is generally unpleasant between, Beth and Jerry's arguing, Rick's exasperation of not bringing his portal gun, Morty in desperate need of a bathroom and Summer pissing herself the second she learned they were stuck. Notice that while not a bad memory specifically about him it only gets better at the mere presence of Cousin Nicky.
  • Mr. Poopybutthole not being a parasite is also shown in the opening credits, since he is inserted into all the clips and all but one are "bad memories".
  • "Total Rickall" spoiler: Considering the Smiths had to actually check each other for bad memories to be sure that they're real, it stands to reason that at least one of them actually has bad memories of Mr. Poopy Butthole, considering he survived the shootout at the end. Rick is an obvious candidate, for obvious reasons, and Morty and Summer might have some, too, if he's ever joined them on their adventures. The "sorry for not having bad memories of him" was obviously only pointed at Beth, who might've not even known him all that well.
    • Also to reinforce this, neither Mr. Poopybutthole nor Beth had photos of each other in their phones.
  • Another subtle hint about Mr. Poopybutthole is that Mr. Beauregard slaps his hands away from his tray of hors d'oeuvres.
    • And Cousin Nicky gets his name wrong, but that could just be Nicky's style of talking.
  • The first parasite, Jerry's 'Goofy Brother Steve', buys the Smith family airline tickets for a holiday to Paris. Why? Well, why else would a parasite want to leave the house and get on a plane to France?
  • Sleepy Gary vaguely resembles Jerry, as well as the fact that he took Jerry's place as Beth's husband
    • Why does a parasite replace Jerry as Beth's husband? They create happy memories. And "Interdimensional Cable" revealed that getting married led to the couple's unhappiness.
    • It's also clear that Sleepy Gary is far more intelligent than the other parasites - not only does he take what is, arguably, the least outlandish form and alters the family's memories in the most complex way, the first memory he plants in the family's heads is him interrupting a pillow fight - a happy memory.
  • Thinking about it, some of the parasites are true masters of manipulation. While most of them are just going for generic good memories and taking on any shapes or personalities, some are really targeting the psychological weak spots of various members of the Smith family and trying to exploit those weaknesses. Some examples:
    • Jerry, who is constantly unsure of himself and seeks attention, validation, and approval from others, is closest to two parasites: one taking the form of his kindly, encouraging big brother Steve, and one who poses as his longtime best friend and secret lover Gary. Both stick up for Jerry at various times and give him the support he doesn't get otherwise, resulting in him willingly embracing them.
    • Summer craves popularity and to be more than just the mistake child that ruined the lives of her parents. The parasites that target her take on the form of many magical friends, who take Summer away to a world without her real-life troubles and insecurities where she can be a central human character in a strange world.
    • The parasite Rick is most reluctant to shoot is Pencilvester, who is basically acting like a cheerful, voice of reason type Kid Sidekick. He's basically the parasite's version of Morty! No wonder Rick ultimately fails to bring himself to shoot Pencilvester and has to leave it to Morty.
    • Lastly, this isn't an example of preying on the Smiths, but is another sign of how good the parasites are at turning a situation in their favor: Reverse Giraffe is first seen in Rick's barbecue flashback, but isn't heard speaking until he tries to convince the Smiths to kill Rick and let the parasites out of the house. What voice does he use when he does this? The President's voice, a voice that is (usually) guaranteed to get extra respect and deference to authority, even when that authority is suggesting something as horrible as killing somebody for the greater good. (Particularly when that voice is Keith freaking David and his famous baritone.)
  • Rick spent the whole episode singling out Summer to the point that him trying to kill her became a running gag, which seems odd since Rick's least favorite member of the family has always been Jerry who Rick didn't accuse of being a parasite or try to kill once in the episode. But then remember why Rick dislikes Jerry, he got his daughter pregnant in high school and ruined her life, and Sleepy Gary had brainwashed Rick into thinking he was Beth's husband so Rick would have spent the whole episode thinking Jerry was just one of his daughters loser friends.
  • How did Morty find out that the parasites can only create good memories? Rick got accused by the real parasites that he is actually one, but Morty has tons of bad memories with him. Morty was suspicious about a parasite, who can alter memories and wants to take control over you would create bad memories. Also, Rick was the one who constantly told anyone to beware the parasites, if he was an actual parasite he wouldn't have done that. In the garage, when Morty was pointing the gun at Rick, the latter insulted the former and said he has bad memories with him. Morty knew that he himself was real and also someone else had a bad memory with him. Morty knows that if you know someone for a long time you will have a bad memory with them sooner or later, even if it's their fault or not. Rick's statement confirmed to Morty that parasites can only create good memories. He probably had other reasons to come to this conclusion as well.
• Why did "Greatest Ice Cream Earth" suffer from eleven 9/11s? It's likely that the telepathic spiders were also using their mind control powers to get pilots to crash their aircraft into buildings. Seeing as they are not depicted with any other weapons or technology, offensive mind control would be their most effective mechanism to counter the human bombing campaign.
• In "The Ricks Must Be Crazy", Rick mentions that his microverse battery should be putting out 20 terawatts of power. Earth's total electricity generation is currently around 2 terawatts, and his battery is powered by aliens manually cranking generators. This may seem like a case of Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale, but it actually makes sense. Power is a function of energy divided by time since the battery explicitly uses time distortion, Rick is getting all the power generated throughout the civilization's history, packed into however many years it's been since he made the battery. 20 terawatts aren't implausible.
• Zeep giving Rick the middle finger, which in his world is a gesture of peace and welcome. Seeing as Zeep is just as smart as Rick and that he did the same thing with his microverse, teaching them a gesture and lying about its meaning, Zeep probably realized the middle finger was actually an offensive gesture in the universe Rick came from.
  • The gesture Zeep teaches his microverse people seems like Peace Sign to American audiences, but the V-Sign was originally an inverse of how Brits flip people off, meaning it's still kinda Flipping the Bird.
  • Why did Zeep repeating Rick's comments about slavery cause him to jump to the realization that he was in a microverse? Because he was being completely hypocritical and disingenuous and recognized that Rick must have been trying to manipulate him as well.
    • That Rick underestimated Zeep's ability to figure out what was going on establishes Zeep as a Formidable Opponent. Well, that and the Mini-Mecha Zeep built that was an even match for Rick's.
  • Everything Rick says about the lives of the people living in his microverse being a lie is put in a new light when you consider that Rick himself is a character in a cartoon and frequently demonstrates that he is aware of that fact.
• The device at the heart of "The Ricks Must Be Crazy" is consistently called a Microverse Battery, despite it seemingly being a generator instead because Rick is getting the energy generated by the inhabitants. But Rick had to use a lot of energy to induce the Microverse's Big Bang - per the Law of Conservation of Energy, the only energy that will ever be in the Microverse. It's a battery, that Rick charged when he first created the universe, and he uses the inhabitants to draw the stored energy from it.
• When "keeping Summer safe", the AI in Rick's space car demonstrated a propensity for carrying out its commands in the most direct and efficient way possible. Therefore it should not have been surprising when the auto-navigation landed the car directly on top of Krombopulos Michael.
• The song that Summer has Tiny Rick listen to in order to get him under control is about using alcohol to cope with depression.
• Bird Person said he doesn't know what humans eat, yet Tammy was somehow alive. It turns out she might not be human after all.
• Despite Tammy's assertion, Rick could use the term Bird Person instead of Bird Man because most birds don't have dicks^note it saves weight.
• In the VR game Roy: A Life Well Lived Morty finishes with a score of "55 years" but the Roy character appears to be older than that when he dies. Remember that Morty started the game as a young Roy somewhere between the ages of 8 and 12, not a newborn Roy. It would for the score to exclude these unlived years, so Roy's "biologic" age at death was closer to 65, matching his appearance.
  • Although clearly a Wide-Open Sandbox, Roy, the game, clearly has a finite number of paths to take. Morty chooses the "high school football star" path at a branch point with the teacher telling the class to think about their future with the other kids throwing a football outside the window. When Rick dumps on Morty going back to the carpet store after beating cancer, it's clear that the branches are known and might even push the character into certain outcomes once a branch has been selected. Roy's unexpected and seemingly random death is likely the game playing out the end of one of the branches.
  • Morty's decision to pursue sports and get the girl left him with limited job prospects and ultimately a lower score. This might be an example of a Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards design element in the game, especially since many players would be inclined to get the girl.
  • Why would aliens be interested in a VR sim of a human life? Simple, in that season Earth was not yet part of the Galactic Federation and therefore would provide an exotic setting and genuine challenge to most alien gamers who would have no idea how to live as a human or thrive in human culture. Remember, arcades make more money when players die quickly and have to keep playing to gain experience.
• Mr. Poopy Butthole's watching of the season 2 finale could just be another bit of fourth wall breaking meta-humor, but as one of Rick's long time friends, it stands to reason that he would have been set up with inter-dimensional cable and can watch a version of his own reality presented as a show on TV. If Mr. Poopy Butthole is actually Medium Aware or is simply goofing off due to the show he was watching remains to be seen.
  • He might be watching a show from our reality - this very show.
• In "Auto-Erotic Assimilation", Unity has another suitor, a hive mind named Beta 7 whom she blows off in favor of Rick. In Pickup-Artist Terminology (which lists men in order of their attractiveness to women,) "Beta Male" refers to a stable, yet boring chump who's more likely to be friend-zoned than the more dynamic and jerkish "Alpha Male." In the love-triangle between Unity, Beta 7, and Rick, Beta 7 is literally the Beta of that relationship, while Rick is the Alpha.
• The reason why Unity find the will to leave Rick again was because he charmed it claiming that he changed by reconnecting with his family, but when Unity saw how badly Rick treated Morty and Summer, it realized that Rick not only will never change but that he lied to it just to use it for endless orgies. Unity might be attracted to Rick but it also has some self-respect.
• Morty not noticing Rick's predicament in "Big Trouble in Little Sanchez" makes more sense when you remember him sending Morty for some crystals in "Ricksy Business" which Morty thought would help send them home when actually Rick used them to get high and improvise a dance. Morty probably didn't take Rick's cries for help seriously because he thought it was another one of Rick's weird dance improvs.
• In the same episode, it seems weird that Beth and Jerry patch things up and promise to stay together until Morty graduates from high school, only to divorce in Season 3. But we don't know if they're the same Beth and Jerry who went through that life-changing experience! A later episode reveals that Rick and Morty had to hop dimensions to avoid the squirrels, which means they possibly left another timeline with a reconciled Smith family.
• Rick being arrested and charged for "everything" makes a whole lot more sense if the Galactic Federation is aware of Rick's ability to cross alternate universes because if there's an infinite amount of universes then there's an infinite amount of Ricks who perform even worse crimes against the government than our own Rick. If Rick's word on the Federation is true than what is to them charging Rick with every possibility of what an alternate version of him does and there's always a chance a worse Rick can take his place so might as well throw on the possibilities too.
• In "Auto Erotic Assimilation" it's implied Rick had an issue in his relationship with his father. He wanted men who remotely resembled his father cheering him on as he had sex with Unity. So it can be assumed that Rick never got much support from his father.
  • The men who remotely resemble his father all have something in common, they are all wearing collared shirts and ties. His father was exactly what Rick hates, a bureaucratic type of person. He probably got his hatred of authority from his relationship with his father.
• Why do Birdperson and Squanchy have such basic, generic names, especially considering their homes are 'Birdworld' and 'Planet Squanch'? Because they're not their real names. Like Gearhead says, it's akin to calling a human 'Asia Face'. However, they're galactic terrorists, it makes sense they wouldn't share their real names with each other or Rick so that they could continue to live their lives on their respective planets (which are likely in Federation territory) in peace, being impossible to find with such generic names. Rick wouldn't need such a code name because his planet isn't in Galactic Federation territory, and he's covered by Morty wherever he goes.
• In "Wedding Squanchers" Beth is told that squanchers can tell the difference between each usage of the word "squanch", because they can read a person's true intentions. When Beth says "I squanch my family", Squanchy reacts with disgust. Given that Beth resents Jerry, was at one point willing to sacrifice Morty without a second thought, has unhealthy feelings of dependency on Rick and only seems to favour Summer through process of elimination, her usage of the word "squanch" likely translated to something horrible.
  • This might be the case. Maybe the squanchers are masters at reading peoples' feelings. But also notice that Rick and Squanchy don't use squanch as a verb at the wedding and at one point Squanchy did use the verb to squanch to referr to masturbation while asphyxiating himself. Maybe the verb 'to squanch' is an exception of the language and only means that. Or maybe it has multiple meanings but the way Beth said it made it sound like that particular meaning. Or maybe the way she said it wasn't the problem, but the fact that this verb can have that meaning was enough to make Squanchy and Rick feel disgusted.
• Tammy's "parents". They seem like perfectly normal, functional parents at first glance. But a lot of parents wouldn't be that supportive in their teenage daughter marrying a 40-something-year-old, interdimensional animal hybrid. That should be minor evidence that they are actually robots and Tammy is not who she seems.
• Why is the sapient sun screaming all the time? Maybe because it is on fire and can feel pain.
• When Rick overhears Jerry encouraging his family to abandon him for constantly putting them in risk in "The Wedding Squanchers", he responds in kind by seemingly abandoning the whole family in return. It might seem unfair for Rick to punish the whole family for something only Jerry is responsible for while the rest explicitly rejected his suggestions in his earshot. But this is actually probeably intended as an excellent Foreshadowing on the show's part. We later learn in "Rickshank Redemption" that Rick's entire plan here was to just punish Jerry and Jerry alone by getting him divorced from Beth and kicked from his house for having dared to oppose him.

Season 3

• Why does Beth allow Morty to accompany Rick on his adventures? Because she would rather Morty be influenced by his brilliant grandfather than his idiot father.
  • It might also be partly out of fear. Rick is clearly extremely unstable, and the very first scene of the series showed that one night of drinking too much is all it takes to get him to try and start a nuclear war. Beth probably figures that keeping Rick from the one thing he truly cared about would lead to Rick going even more insane and committing either suicide, mass murder, or both.
  • It looks most like another consequence of Beth's extreme fear of losing her father, she is too happy just to have him around to risk losing him by saying no.
  • "Morty's Mind-Blowers" implies that Beth might just not care that much about Morty, although Summer does start going on adventures with her father too.
  • This was covered by the very first episode: Beth thinks that Morty is learning more by traveling with Rick, as Rick claimed Morty was 'special'. He is, by dint of being a stealth device for Rick's brainwaves. The megaseeds in that episode gave Morty a brief boost in brainpower, allowing him to quote the Law of Thermodynamics by rote, which made Beth think Rick was being honest with her.
• The Guard Ricks that capture Summer and Morty say that Rick C-137 will have to assassinated to prevent Citadel secrets from falling into the Federation's hands. Given how he built the Citadel in the first place, this fear was not unfounded.
• In "Rickshank Redemption", Rick does a now-memetic bit about Mulan Szechuan Sauce, available from McDonald's in 1998. While Rick is recalling the fake traumatic memory of the invention of his portal gun, Cornvelious Daniel comments that the sauce is "fucking amazing". This should be a clear tell that Rick is fabricating the memory and is assuming control of the program, as Cornvelious wouldn't be able to taste something from someone else's memory.
  • Either way it was created from Rick's mind/memories. That doesn't really prove this is a fabricated memory.
  • There is a theory that the Szechuan sauce was the medium for the transmission of the virus that allowed Rick to gain control of the system. Sense of taste would vary wildly from species to species, and it is hard to imagine something that is palatable to mammals like Rick would have the same appeal to insect-based creatures (such as the interrogator). By making the sauce taste 'good' to the agent, the agent is enticed to consume it, which since this is all in a mental mindscape hides the true purpose of the hacking code. Rick proceeds to then show the alien more scenes, allowing the program to take hold. The final scene in the mindscape has Rick show a formula, which is the activation code for the virus. Note the lack of the sauce in the interrogator's hands at that point. The sauce is gone because it had served its purpose.
• It should have been clear from the get-go that Rick's memory of creating the portal gun in "Rickshank Redemption" was fabricated when he casually mentions that the memory takes place in 1998- the same year when the Mulan szechuan sauce was available. Why? Because assuming the show's present takes place in our current year, there's no way that Beth, whose age is established to be 34 at the beginning of the series, could have been as young as she looks in the "memory". She would have been born around 1983, making her at least 15 in 1998.
  • Given the revelation in season 5 that the memory was in fact real apart from some details, Rick could've lied about the date of the memory not wanting to really think about that day, but knowing that a timestamp would make the interrogator more likely to believe what he was seeing.
• In "Rickshank Redemption", C-137 Rick hands Morty a pistol before confronting one of the Council Ricks, who has Summer hostage. C-137 Rick tries to bait Council Rick into letting Summer go, but Morty aims his pistol at Rick for brushing off Summer, at which point both Ricks and Summer berate him, causing him to shoot C-137 Rick. This lets Council Rick's guard down enough for C-137 Rick, who gave Morty a fake pistol with a cardboard note on it, to shoot him. However, C-137 Rick knows Morty has a LOT of pent-up aggression from the episode "Look Who's Purging Now", and reassured Morty by saying he ate a chocolate bar with Purgenol. C-137 Rick probably put the note on the fake pistol because either Morty would read it, and use it as part of C-137 Rick's double bluff, or the situation would spiral into Morty getting angry enough to shoot someone, making an opening for C-137 Rick to shoot. Regardless, C-137 Rick kills Council Rick without harming Summer, and Morty gets an excuse for his actions. Because C-137 Rick loves his grandkids.
• In "Rickshank Redemption" we see Rick testing the bounds of his simulated world by asking Jerry to (literally) "fold himself 12 times". He then casually mentions to the bug agent that since Jerry was only able to manage 6 folds that he must be subject to a low cost "Series 9000" brainalyzer, which the agent implicitly confirms. Since the first step in any computer hack involves the hacker learning about the environment they are dealing with, this actually constitutes very subtle foreshadowing as Rick is learning the necessary details that he is then able to employ in creating exploit code that gives him full control over the Brainalyzer.
  • Doubly brilliant in that the lower cost Series 9000 probably lacked the same security features or quality assurance found in the higher-end models. The bugs basically put the smartest mammal in the galaxy in a mental prison with shoddy locks.
• A meta example In "Rickshank Redemption" is just before Rick transfers his mind into the body of the alien agent, he tells the agent that he's leaving him with only a few parts of his brain, including "six years of improv workshops: comedy comes in threes!" For the rest of the episode, whenever Rick needs to leave a secured area, he uses the same poor excuse, rather than any of the witty reasons he used in the past: "I'm gonna go take a dump". And how many times does he use this excuse? Three times.
  • Don't forget that in that action Rick also lost his general ability to improvise. It's likely the best/only thing he can think of to do after initiating a new round of mayhem.
  • I interpreted Rick saying I'm going to take a shit as him wanting to check out his new "equipment" has he said he wants to give his "new insect dick a test drive" and by saying I'm going to take a shit he has an excuse to drop his pants and see what he's working with.
  • Or he used it because "I'm gonna go take a shit" is such a mundane excuse, that nobody with a digestive system would call it into question.
  • There is every possibility that the transference machinery causes this effect through an adrenaline rush. The human body undergoes all manner of changes during stress, having to empty one's bladder after a mind-switch may just be a side-effect.
• Why is Rick C-137 so easily able to own the Citadel/Council of Ricks in "Rickshank Redemption" when, in theory, all the other Ricks should be his equal? It was previously stated that Ricks exist along a continuum of personality traits and also that Rick C-137 is the most like himself, aka the "Rickiest". Therefore from the pool of hyper-intelligent, omni-skilled humans known as "Rick", Rick C-137 is still a cut above.
  • In "Close Rick Counters Of The Rick Kind " it's mentioned that Rick C-137 refused to join the Council of Ricks, i.e the ruling group of Ricks who stood out from the rest.
  • In season 5 we learn that Rick helped build the Citadel as part of the peace agreement between him and the other Ricks. Of course he'd know it's every weakness, and even if he hadn't, he had decades of experience killing Ricks. The only reason he didn't wipe them out years ago was because he realized he would gain nothing from it. When they broke the peace, all bets were off.
• The Citadel of Ricks has a surprising number of "blue collar" Ricks doing basic jobs for the council like guarding things or operating consoles. There are also Ricks who make their living doing mundane stuff like selling "Morty dazzlers" or "Morty Insurance". Why would a significant number of Ricks seem to fail to live up to their potential? In "Rickshank Redemption" we see the possibility that Ricks will give portal gun technology to alternate Ricks who haven't invented it yet. It is a common trope for people who have not had to work hard for success to then underachieve.
  • Or, perhaps they're taking a page from Bioshock: "Everybody wants to be a captain of industry. No one's thinking they're going to be scrubbing toilets." Every Rick's a genius, but some have visions, and some are just like every other Rick. So, they get by as best they can.
    • There's a lot to imply that the Citadel is essentially a giant scam: Ricks come to the Citadel because it's presented to them as a paradise, a 'nonstop party where all the guests are the only person they like', but it's still a functional city-state that still needs the trappings of a modern society to function. Candidate Morty even asks Plumber Rick if he came to the Citadel to be a plumber, and the answer is, obviously, no, but because the average citizen on the Citadel is a Rick, that means every Rick is an average citizen. It's downright chilling to think about.
    • What separates the "successful" Ricks from the "regular jackoff" Ricks on the Citadel? Social skills and vision. Since all Ricks are equally qualified for every job because they're all geniuses, the ones who can get ahead are the ones who either have unique ideas and passions (like Rick D. Sanchez III, who owns the Simple Rick cookie factory), or the right social skills to endear themselves to their superiors ("Cool Rick", who gets promoted despite being new to the job). This is also why so much of the Citadel's social structure depends on the Citadel removing everything that makes an individual Rick unique: the Citadel needs those work-a-day Ricks to function as a society and there aren't enough suitably prestigious positions for every Rick to have one. It's the same reason why the "I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and so can you" myth is horseshit: yes, anyone could be capable of it, but only one person can actually get it no matter how hard they all work. Without creating a new position so that he can be the Rick to fill it or having the social skills to convince other versions of himself to give a position to him, it's entirely arbitrary.
    • This entire round of logic falls on its face when you realize they are all, or most of them, are capable of creating near-sentient robots, thus capable of automating every single menial job there is. The only reason those sucker jobs exist is so other Ricks have something to lord over someone else. It's entirely pointless when the manual labor parts of the economy should be entirely automated. Things are kept that way not for economic reasons, but for societal control reasons. Its makework to keep as many Ricks and Mortys imprisoned and helpless as possible.
    • So, why don't blue-collar Ricks just move to planets where their genius is exceptional again? There are references to "unlicensed portal guns", and we see one criminal Rick making bootleg portal gun fluid. That implies that ownership and use of portal guns are strictly controlled by the Council, meaning that normal citizens can no longer freely move between realities. There's a real possibility that the Ricks who move to the Citadel are literally trapped there.
  • Rick C-137 described Ricks in general as having problems with "the Government", so they formed an equally unpalatable (to him anyway) Government (The Council/Citadel) to protect themselves. Also, while Rick C-137 may be a genius, much of the time we see him stealing critical resources he needs or engaging in other criminal activity for money and the Council repeatedly describes him as a criminal/terrorist. It appears likely that the cost of living under Citadel protection is a reduced ability to engage in profitable criminal activities. Combined with Ricks living in a society of "equals", as mentioned above, Ricks lacking the resources to adventure would be forced into mundane vocations.
• Depending on how much of Rick's "origin story" memory was fabricated, the Citadel of Ricks seems to recruit new Ricks by selling it as "a nonstop party where all the guests are the only person we like." So, why is life in the Citadel so miserable? Because Rick doesn't like himself! It's consistently made clear that Rick is his own worst enemy, so it makes sense that Ricks would be constantly in conflict with other Ricks. It also makes sense that most Ricks would be too arrogant to realize that a world full of Ricks would be unpleasant. It took "the Rickest Rick" to recognize that being the smartest guy in a mediocre world is the best option for him.
• When Rick collapses the value of the single galactic currency, many of the characters start fighting over pants as a new store of value. In the later days of the Soviet Union, foreign goods in general and blue jeans in particular were used as currency in an informal barter economy due to the Ruble having little practical value.
• Why does Mr. Goldenfold eat shit? Because he's been in a sewer for God knows how long.
  • This might explain why Dr. Wong specializes in getting people to stop eating shit.
• Why would Blue Collar Ricks be engaged in menial jobs that could be easily automated, like stamping a design on individual cookies? The industrial Ricks saw wage slavery as a useful tool to keep the other Ricks under control. Blue Collar Ricks would be so busy trying to make ends meet, they wouldn't have time to plot against the upper classes or possibly invent ways to supplant them.
• In a Fridge Moment of Awesome, Pickle Rick can build a new body, create a machine that can put him into a different new body, exterminate a nest of sewer rats and take down an international terrorist with 34 armed guards in the total time it takes his family to drive to the therapist's office and sit through most of a session. Rick can do more in two hours than most people can accomplish in a lifetime!
  • PS: Rick also managed to make it to the therapy session before it ended.
• The answer to the second "Drunk Rick" question could never have been Dorian V. Despite all of Crocubot's "mechanical and reptilian logic", he failed to remember that Rick and Morty were not summoned for the second Vindicators mission that resulted in Dorian V's destruction, and thus would not have known what happened and why the Vindicators avoid the subject.
• It makes sense that Rick doesn’t take responsibility for his actions when black-out drunk and basically considers "Drunk Rick" a different person, considering his greatest antagonists for most of his life were literally other versions of himself with different mentalities. For all intents and purposes, it might as well have been a straggler from the Council of Rick.
• Speaking of "Vindicators 3", the main room of the ride features a city made of cardboard cutouts with heroes and monsters fighting. The three cutouts at the center of the city are a lady holding a katana, a large green horned figure with bloody fists, and a mummy with a blue flame in hand. It seems random at first, but they're supposed to be Lady Katana, Diablo Verde and Calypso!
  • Their design in Vindicators 2 take cues from the cutouts, further reinforcing the connection.
  • Notice how none of the other cutouts represent the other vindicators? Considering he reacts genuinely bummed out when Morty tells him they're dead, Rick might have a soft spot for the missing vindicators.
  • Alternatively, since "Drunk Rick" often gets emotional according to him, he wanted to make an homage to the dead.
• Rick's hatred of superheroes as a concept, aside from his cynicism and Jerkass nature, might also come from his origins as a character. Rick Sanchez is basically a supervillain in everything but name—he's a Mad Scientist, Demiurge Archetype, with a body count measured in trillions at least. He's also an unstable near-sociopath without any regard for anyone but himself with more power than anyone should ever have. He borrows a lot of ideas from the likes of Doctor Sivana, Reed Richards, and Lex Luthor's Mad Scientist days. Of course he can't stand heroes—if he wasn't the Villain Protagonist, he's the kind of person that would be someone's Arch-Enemy.
• It seems odd that Rick would Throw the Dog a Bone by giving Jerry a pity adventure, considering he's spent most of the series hating Jerry's existence. However, considering the main reason Rick hated Jerry was cause he married his daughter, Rick doesn't have any real reason to outright despise Jerry now that he's a pathetic divorced man. Thus, Rick would be more willing to hang with Jerry since he is already out of his family's life.
• Why would Rick willingly walk through a scanner when he had cybernetic implants that would trigger it, causing him to be hit with a mental dampener that nearly got him killed? It's because Rick didn't realize he had cybernetic implants because the body he's inhabiting is not his original one, but one he stole from an alternate Rick in The Rickshank Rickdemption.
  • It wasn't just any alternate Rick. It was a Rick serving as a high-ranking officer in the Council of Ricks' military. This Rick didn't need to hide his implants from the space-TSA, because his rank and status gave him carte blanche from a higher power that superceded the space-TSA.
• Rick tends to say "Don't think about it!" whenever something incredibly disturbing happens. It's entirely possible he's also telling himself not to think about it. Given that Rick is the smartest man in the universe, thinking about something is much much worse for him than somebody else.
• Rick's WMD of choice appears to be the Neutrino Bomb, which is generally understood to be a device that emits lethal levels of Neutrino radiation. As explained here, neutrinos are so insubstantial despite billions flowing through a person's body every day, a neutrino will only succeed in hitting one of that person's atoms on average of once a decade. Since even planets are opaque to neutrinos there is pretty much nowhere to hide from such a weapon. As Rick prefers technology to other people, a weapon that is lethal to biologic beings yet leaves technology mostly unharmed is perfectly in line with his character.
  • Of course, a level of neutrino radiation that would kill a human would probably NOT leave other things intact.
• Jerry's Butt-Monkey status is tuned way up, waaaay up in season 3, after his divorce. By episode 5, Rick finally states that his hatred of Jerry comes from his act of making himself as miserable and pitiful as possible in an attempt to get things out of pity. It explains how pitiful Jerry is this season: he is deliberately making himself as pathetic as humanly possible to see if anyone in his family will take pity on him.
• Season 3 has put a lot of emphasis on the psychology of the main characters, especially Rick. What have we learned so far during the season? He admitted that he sees most of his family as expendable since he can just jump into an alternate universe as he pleases to get a new family (said in "Pickle Rick"). He loves his grandkids but hates the fact that Jerry is their father, seeing him as someone who uses the pity of others to get anywhere ("The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy"). He sees his attachment to his family as a weakness that hinders him (in "Rest and Ricklaxation"). All three involve his family in a way or another; is it any wonder he didn't want to go to therapy, where he could have ended up revealing any of this, with Beth, Morty, and Summer also present? Just imagine their reactions. All three revelations open up their own Fridge Brilliance, too:
  • He felt more at ease admitting these things to Jaguar precisely because his family wasn't there to hear him. Unknowingly, he did do some therapy. Just not with an actual therapist.
  • Jerry is a problem to Rick, as there's no way he can escape him; in just about every single alternate universe where Morty exists, he looks like regular Morty, and likely has the same two parents, indicating that Jerry is the father of most Mortys in most universes. Even jumping between universes won't remove Jerry from the picture, and with Rick's disdain towards the guy, is it any wonder he despises him so much? Most alternate universe Beths fell for the same guy he sees as an utter loser!
    • This might also explain why most Ricks treat most Mortys like complete garbage. Morty is a constant reminder of what Rick sees as Jerry ruining his daughter's life. Rick C-137 ended up bonding with his grandson and genuinely caring for him. Most of the other Ricks didn't. This is also probably why Morty C-137 seems smarter and more assertive than the other Mortys.
  • Him seeing his attachment to his family as a weakness: With the reveal in "Pickle Rick" that he sees them as expendable, he doesn't see why he should care about them - yet he does. Even if he can just replace them as he pleases, he cares too much to allow himself to have complete apathy towards them.
• In Morty's Mind Blowers Rick is actually flattered to be asked to kill the alien and allow him to go to heaven. Rick is usually disparaging to the religious, even in a situation where it glorifies him. So what could get him to act nicely in this situation? When the Flip-Floopian dies dishonorably, he is visibly dragged to hell by demons, it is the one thing that could get Rick to respect a religion: Hard proof of its beliefs.
• It makes perfect sense that Toxic Rick is the Rick that cares about Morty. The first thing he does after thinking the spa machine exploded? Call out to Morty, either in anguish because he thought Morty died, or in a panic because he couldn't see Morty.
  • Toxic Rick stops the fight in the house the second Beth shows up, either because she could get hurt in the crossfire or he had already realized that Healthy Rick would be willing to hurt her to beat him if he realized his Toxic self's weakness (as he did moments later), and he decided that wasn't worth the risk.
  • There's a very quick moment which also foreshadows this. As he's trying to predict his counterpart's plans, regular Rick pauses for thought and then slaps Morty. That tells Rick that Toxic Rick cares about Morty because one of them does and it sure as hell isn't him and that he can therefore use Toxic Morty as leverage.
• The reason why Rick considers Morty one of his most irrational attachments and one of his most toxic traits: how else would you describe an attachment to the grandson of your family's murderer?
• In "Pickle Rick," we find out that the reason Mr. Goldenfold is seeing a therapist is that he eats poop. Earlier in the season, "The Rickshank Redemption" shows him leading some human rebels out of the sewer. Makes his problem not seem as disturbing if he only ate poop out of necessity.
• Immediately following "Rest and Ricklaxation", which shows how independent and capable our Morty is without a moral compass, we get an episode where Evil Morty manages to take over the entire Citadel of Ricks as their beloved, tyrannical leader
• The new flag for the Citadel of Ricks shows an M stabbing through an R from the top. A little clue about a returning character who's in charge
• "The Ricklantis Mixup" seemingly is a misleading title, given the episode pretty much completely ignores the Atlantis adventure C-137's Rick and Morty go on. But what if the titular mixup was showing us what was happening in the Citadel instead of the main Rick and Morty's adventure?
  • There's even a small detail at the beginning that hints at this. Both our Rick and Morty and the Census Rick and Morty hop through portals. Implying that the show quite literally mixed up the portals and followed the wrong one.
• It might seem stupid of Campaign Manager Morty to try and assassinate Evil Morty instead of just leaking those documents to the press, but remember, Evil Morty doesn't have any features that discern him from any other non-gimmick Morty. Leaking the documents wouldn't prove anything.
• Part of why Campaign Morty's assassination failed? Remember, Fat Morty thought the trait that set him apart from the other Mortys was that he was left-handed ("I thought I was Left-Handed Morty"), meaning most Mortys are right-handed. Campaign Morty shakes Candidate Morty's hand with his right hand, and thus has only his left hand free to shoot the gun. He was shooting with his weaker, non-dominant hand; had he held the gun in his right hand, the shot would have been more on-target, and most likely lethal.
• Evil Morty using the Morty Dome was originally thought to be about making every think it was a Rick who was trying to hide, in addition to disturbing the Citadel. But with the revelation that he wanted to control the Citadel, capturing a bunch of Mortys, torturing them in a way that would make them hate Ricks, then letting them be sent to the place he wants to take over is a brilliant move. He has an army he could get together with little persuasion. Or a population crisis he could take advantage of to gain power, which is part of what he did when Rick trashed the Citadel and ended up creating a way to gain absolute control of the city through the election.
• Evil Morty fires Campaign Manager Morty despite him not really doing anything wrong. Which puts him in perfect position to get 'secrets' from a Rick who could've just done the assassination himself rather than try to include more variables. An assassination that, had it come from a Rick, would've been viewed as being about the Rick-Morty divide. but when done by a Morty, reinforces Evil Morty's point about the division being between the Citadel and it's opposers. Evil Morty holds Campaign Morty's hand long after the handshake is done, meaning he has to shoot with his non-dominant hand (see above). And as seen in episode 4x10, it's possible to protect the heart (and presumably all other organs) without anyone seeing that it's protected, so he didn't have to worry about actually dying if things went wrong. At the end of the episode, the Ricks executing Campaign Morty mention that the ultimate vote was almost close enough to trigger a recount, and since Evil Morty was losing at first, that assassination 'against a united Citadel' would be necessary to get him the support he needed to win. Truly a plan worthy of the Rickest Morty.
• The "specialty" Ricks are more than just a joke when you consider Dr. Wong's speech on "doing the work" in "Pickle Rick." Wonka Rick, Fashion Guru Rick, and all the other Ricks are Ricks who did the work. Any Rick could make an awesome candy factory, but they'd get bored halfway through and burn it down, like Rick C-137 and his successful business he built to screw with the Devil.
• It’s mentioned in the recap for “The Ricklantis Mixup” that We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future and states that the Ricks in the Citadel could have easily created an automated workforce instead of using blue-collar Ricks. But it makes sense because this is exactly what the Shadow Council Of Ricks ‘’wants’’. They’re a group of the wealthiest and most influential Ricks in the citadel, and by keeping most of the other Ricks stuck in boring, dead-end jobs, they won’t be able to pursue their own aspirations and will allow the Shadow Council to retain their status. Automated labor would be detrimental to this goal, so the Shadow Council has probably been keeping the Citadel from embracing it.
• All the women that came flying to the item magnet after Morty programmed it are probably all named Jessica.
  • Take a closer look: every one of those women was a pretty redheaded girl. Morty has a type, it seems.
    • Just like grandpa...
• In "The Ricklantis Mixup", the donation-collecting Rick and Morty are surprised to come across C-137 as if they were expecting a different Rick in that reality. "Morty's Mind Blowers" reveals that our Rick and Morty had to move again due to Morty learning a Milkman Conspiracy run by squirrels.
• Rick is initially described as being 60, but is described as 70 in "Rest and Relaxation". Continuity error? Not necessarily; he did freeze time except for him, Morty, and Summer in "A Rickle in Time" for six whole months, and other universes he visits don't necessarily have to follow the same flow of time(like the microverse and its smaller iterations). It's possible stuff like this are to blame for the supposed age inconsistency for him, along with other Ricks and Mortys in the multiverse.
• More of a Fridge Heartwarming but while Rick revealing Beth's "childhood toys" is disturbing, this means that:
  • Rick still made the gifts despite how disturbing they are.
  • Rick still kept the gifts after all these years.
• The reason Jerry was given a Pet the Dog in The Stinger of "The ABCs of Beth" is because for once he owned up to his mistake. It could imply the reason he's a Cosmic Plaything is, as pathetic as his life is, he doesn't admit that most of it was his own fault.
• In the 3rd season finale, the US government seems to have access to quite a bit more sophisticated tech than we last saw them, however after the Federation's invasion and subsequent collapse/departure from Earth they probably left a lot of their tech behind for the Pentagon to reverse engineer!
  • The President has also been frequently calling on Rick and Morty to solve problems while simultaneously monitoring what they do (even at home). This means they'd have some idea of what kind of weapons Rick had access to, and (being the US government) would insist on developing their own counter-measures. This is heavily hinted at in the episode.
    POTUS: We've been preparing for a Rick-level event for some time now.
• The final Season 3 episode artfully leaves Beth's clone status ambiguous as everything Rick does in relation to the Smith family getting back together could be an elaborate ruse to convince a Beth clone she is the real Beth while sparing the kids and Jerry the act of killing and recreating clone-Beth....or it could be taken at face value.
  • Especially since Rick's previous attempt to reassure Beth only made her freak out. Clone Beth or not, family re-unification may have been the only method to calm Beth down.
• The fact that Rick is afraid of pirates at least strongly suggests that he was intending the Pirates of the Pancreas ride to be some sort of scary thrill-ride. It would also explain why his business partners in the Anatomy Park project didn't get the concept of the ride.
• One major sign of Beth accepting how much like her father she is? The episode after she comes to terms with it, she mentions that the family reuniting will make the show like season one, only more streamlined. That's right, for the first time Beth reveals that - just like Rick - she's aware she's in a TV show.
  • Or, she accepts that she's like her father in many ways, but refuses to cross certain boundaries that he had crossed before. If this is the original Beth and not a clone, it would mean she chose not to ditch her family to go on adventures across space and universes - which is what Rick did when she was young.
• No wonder Rick and Morty only have a limited number of times through which they can jump and settle into a new universe after destroying the last. Not only do they need to find universes where their selves from that universe died right after solving the current crisis (which is already a very rare thing to happen), they also need to find a universe that has seen roughly the same things unravel as they did in the universe they just left, another very rare case. This severely limits their options. You know what else limits their options? The Citadel of Ricks. Having so many Ricks and Mortys in one place means just as many universes in which Rick and Morty haven't been seen in a long while - which would make it suspicious for the C-137 originals to suddenly show up. Due to the sheer amount of Ricks and Mortys living in the Citadel and how Ricks and Mortys die every day there, it gets increasingly difficult to know which universes still have their Rick and/or Morty alive somewhere in the multiverse. It's also not like they can jump into any universe previously inhabited by a Rick and Morty that joined the Citadel and both died there, as that universe's events had to have differed greatly due to the scientist and his grandson missing for so long. The solution to this would be to completely ignore any home universe of Ricks and Mortys that have left to live in the Citadel, which shaves off a large number of possible universes to run away into. Oh, and for added creepy factor, it also means taking out of the equation any universe that was irreparably damaged in the exact same way as the one they've just run away from.
  • And that's not all - if the comic books are canon to the show (and if some theories are confirmed in future seasons), then there's an implication that our Rick and Morty aren't the only ones who jump to another universe when the one they lived in gets damaged, further reducing the options when untouched universes are taken by other Ricks and Mortys fleeing their mistakes.
  • The Season 5 finale revealing the Central Finite Curve enclosing all the "Rick's the most intelligent" universes off from all the rest adds another layer to this. Massive as it is in absolute terms, the available pool is, well, a finite one. No matter how long it takes, eventually you'll run out of options.
• Every time Rick swaps bodies with a different Rick on the Citadel, there's a running gag about him going to take a shit. It's a dumb excuse for him to just leave the room with nobody asking questions, but of course he'd need to use the bathroom every time: they're all anal retentive.
• Rick says Jessica's lying because she kept asking whether he got a new Morty yet, except Jessica is explicitly there to get the old Morty back. She has no way of knowing that getting a completely new Morty from another timeline is an option. Aww.
• Why are Mortys so prevalent on the Citadel, and why does almost every Rick have one? Why isn't there a population of Summers, Beths, or even Jerrys? Morty-waves! The vast majority of Ricks in universes without Mortys didn't survive long enough to join the Citadel. They were all tracked down and captured by the Federation. The only Rick we KNOW didn't have a Morty, Doofus Rick, probably survived by never having been a threat to his universe's Federation. Also, most Ricks on the Citadel seem to have been adventuring with their Mortys a bit longer than C-137, since the Citadel is up and running with a thriving Morty exchange when we first see it, only a few months into Rick returning to his family's life.
• Mortys have a knack for manipulating others: our Morty tricks Rick into taking his dad on a pity adventure, Evil Morty literally remote-controls his Rick and engineers an attempt on his own life to boost his approval rating and win the election. The Citadel Mortys are even better at it: Cop Morty feigns sympathy and support to get Cop Rick to leave the building so he can blow the building up, then fake-cries (with real tears!) to get him to drop his guard, and it's apparently a known tendency of Mortys in Mortytown to play up their youth and vulnerability to the point of keeping cribs and mobiles in their home to make Ricks feel bad when they're caught breaking the law. Why? Because of Jerry. Jerry is sort of naturally weak and pitiful, it's not that he consciously decides to be weak and pitiful, it's that being weak and pitiful works for him, so he only toughens up when he's got nothing to lose, and he has the people skills to know whether or not he's really in danger or not...and he raised Morty, the son of a highly intelligent mother. The end result? A boy who's had a lifetime of training in how to appear vulnerable, with enough brains to consciously weaponize it.
• Continuing from the part about Cop Morty: We find out in the season 5 finale that Mortys are cloned and often purpose-bred on the Citadel. When Cop Morty talks about wanting to go back to life as an ordinary high school student, there's a non-zero chance that he's one of said clones so it's possible he'd never be able to have a normal life. And do Mortys ever realize that they're clones?
  • Cop Morty says "Mortys are raised to be sidekicks", so it's possible that he knows their cloned. It would explain his attitude towards them and himself; every time their brought up in the show, clones are usually regard as less valuable than those naturally born, and Cop Morty has that view of his whole kind.
• "Morty's Mind Blowers" reveals that Rick can remove memories from his family members if he wants to. Recall in "Total Rick-call" that the way to identify the parasites was that you'd have no unpleasant memories of them, and you have a potential explanation why Beth wouldn't have any unpleasant memories of Mr. Poopybutthole: Rick removed them.
• Why was Morty so paranoid about Mr. Lunas? Keep in mind his school had already been infiltrated the vampire Coach Feratu. It would be easy for Morty to assume that someone else with a Meaningful Name might also be up to no good.
• Something "Jerry-Built" is something cheaply and shoddily constructed. Rick sees Jerry as a shoddy, sorry excuse of a man who uses what makes him pitiful and badly made to make people pity him.
  • Additionally, the phrase "Jerry-Rigged", it can mean it's something put together cheaply and shoddily with what materials one has on hand. Jerry and Rick seem to get along well enough on their adventure, at least at first, despite not getting along well normally. However, like many Jerry-Rigged contraptions, it's not meant to last and falls apart not long after it's formed. "Jerry-Rig", "Jerry-Rick".
• Its shown that the more in pain or afraid a Morty is, the stronger the Morty Waves that protect Rick are. That's why Rick makes his adventures seem so dangerous and precarious and lets Morty get in so much danger. To make his Morty Waves stronger and therefore keep Rick safer.
• It is shown in Issue 46 that the Rick that made Jerry Land also made a theme park for every member of the family including himself.
• In "Mortys Mind Blowers" all the memories shown portray Jerry and Beth as not being together implying they were all recent memories, this seems weird until you remember they changed universes again after the squirrel incident, all the older memories belonged to that universes original Morty.

Season 4

• It seems to be Rule of Funny that the first couple of dimensions C-137 Rick bodysurfs into are all fascist. It's possible most of the Ricks went through the same events of "Big Trouble in Little Sanchez" and subsequently destroyed their clone bodies as well. So how come the fascist Ricks kept their clones? Well, a fascist would be all for keeping clones of themselves, either because they don’t know about the side effects or are confident they can stay in control. Also, the reason why Wasp Rick might've kept his clone body, despite not being a fascist, was because he had more empathy being a wasp and possibly didn't go through the events that made Tiny Rick.
• Why can Rick be reborn in a different universe whenever he dies and isn’t brought back to life after a certain amount of time? It was probably a feature he put into Operation Phoenix in the case he died in a different universe but didn’t work on the feature any further so rather than only accepting the original Rick, it accepted any version of Rick who died in a different universe.
• The Wasp!Smith family having a strong, healthy bond makes sense when you think about it: they aren't just a family, they are a hive!
  • Also, Wasp Rick asks Wasp Beth if Wasp Morty can go and help C-137 Rick to get home. Beth says that Morty has homework to do first. Wasp Rick accepts this without argument. Who runs a hive? The Queen.
• Why would Wasp!Rick help our Rick (in a wasp body clone), and treat his family so well but still be willing to eat Catepillar!Goldenfold (who is clearly sentient) alive, despite having "empathy"? He wasn't lying, it's just that that empathy only extends to other wasps.
• Funnily enough, Morty learns a real-life lesson at the actual end of “Edge Of Tomorty Rick Die Rickpeat”, the lesson being “Context Matters!” One downside to the death crystals is that they don’t provide any context to one’s death, only how one dies.
• The nearly Instant Emergency Response that takes place after Morty starts fighting the bullies could be seen as a writing shortcut, however, it has been established that the US Government is aware of Rick and Morty and has prepared for unspecified "Rick Level Events" with methods that include constant satellite surveillance. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that police and armed forces are stationed nearby in case Rick or Morty goes rogue.
  • The lack of Rick likely encouraged the commitment of conventional military forces as Morty alone could be seen^note incorrectly as someone the government could handle.
  • The description of Morty's sci-fi fight as an "AKIRA type situation" is both a Shout-Out and makes sense given that knowledge about Rick and Morty is likely classified and local law enforcement was probably given training that would map strange sci-fi phenomena into simple-to-understand cultural references.
• Morty asks the Meeseeks to "shield him from the law" and they vanish as soon as the Army shows up and displace the fleeing police. This is because the military is distinct from law enforcement.
• Of course the death where Morty dies with Jessica comforting him in a hostel is certain when he follows a certain path. Along the way he mutilates, murders and emotionally destroys many people before becoming a horrific monster. If he hadn't been stopped, dying alone in a hostel where Jessica has to comfort him because he has no friends was the only way his life would progress.
• Why weren't Rick and Morty attacked by Sanchez's 3329 when Miles Knightly's death was apparently an unforeseen consequence? Simple, Miles Knightly was part of Heistcon (Featured Guest/Keynote/Founder), Rick and Morty were just attending.
• You'd have thought Morty would have remembered the consequences of "Mortynight Run" and not tried to 'help out' the snakes in "Rattlestar Ricklactica" based on emotional impulse. But based on the Freeze-Frame Bonus of the tickets, that was a different Rick and Morty, therefore our Morty never learned the lesson.
• Dan Harmon has been vocal about his dislike of Time Travel stories and the entire episode artfully demonstrates his point that, in Rick's words, it is "universe destroying". Because the number of dimension hoppers per reality is set up to be low, the average reality is not swamped by Ricks. With time travel, any one point in time can be the target from an unbounded number of potential futures. The result is what we see in the episode, swarms of time travelers descending on specific points in time. Basically moving between alternate possibilities, like Rick does, is as interesting and useful as changing the one possibility you are in (and eliminates most of the plot holes).
• The "Stay in the Car" lesson of the Snake episode at first seems to be a bit of a Hard Truth Aesop about not helping others^note The Star Trek franchise is notorious for espousing this same thing. as the unintended consequence, time-traveling snakes appears completely divorced from Morty's action of delivering Slippy as a replacement astronaut^note Typically this sci-fi scenario is set up by an accidental or intentional technology transfer.. Rick, with his space car scanner, could easily tell that any interaction was likely to cause as many problems as it might solve and therefore knew better than to get involved. As was stated with Glootie's App, Rick is generally too lazy to explain the exact reason behind his warnings. In this case, the snakes were in a position to create AI and/or time travel in responce to the mysterious appearance of Slippy.
• While at first the Time Police could be interpreted to have metaphorically sent the snakes "back to the stone age" by beating up some "original" tool-using snake, we can see in the cave art that the snakes are already hunting prey in groups with spears and the female is wearing clothing, so the "prevent tool use" ship has clearly sailed. The key detail is that the male "tool using" snake was dragging the unconscious female back to his cave, implying a desire to mate with her. When the Time Cops intervene she slithers away, preventing the mating and thus creating significant changes to the timeline that prevents the discovery of Snake Time Travel.
• If "Wubba Lubba Dub-Dub" is supposed to mean " I am in great pain, please help me", it's possible that another reason Rick used it as a catchphrase is that it could also mean something similar like "Man, what a pain!" That would make it a more fun catchphrase without actually twisting the meaning of the words.
• Why does the disabling magic spell actually work on Rick? If magic is indeed distinguishable from science, then it is 100% in character for Rick to use it. Hell, he may not actually know the difference between magic and science since it exists. Case in point, this quote from episode 9 of season 1:
  Rick: Hey, Morty, let me *urrrrp* let me *urrrrp* let me ask you a question real quick. Does evil exist, and if so, can one detect and measure it?
  Morty: Ummm—
  Rick: Rhetorical question, Morty. The answer's yes, you just have to be a genius.
  • He knows how to bloody detected Evil, which is a man-made concept. Rick thinks that if something such as magic exists, then you only have to be smart enough to be able to detect and measure it.
  • Alternatively, he may not be aware that his new body is a magic-user.
• The dragons being portrayed as sluts makes a lot more sense when you realise they're making fun of Dungeons and Dragons and in that game, dragons can interbreed with anything.
  • It's also why Rick's technology fails to activate. In-universe gods and rules of magic enforce D&D's Competitive Balance to allow wizards, sorcerers, and other spellcasting classes to exist. Part of that is restricting what technologies and sciences can and can't be used in any given setting. A device that doesn't conform to those restrictions will fail to work, and even self-destruct.
• In the same episode, Summer spends most of her time as the party's ranger nailing shot after improbable shot...until she has to make a precision aimed shot to free Balthromaw. At which point she hits him in the eye instead, causing Rick to yell in pain and alert the wizard. Many a story exists of D&D players being humiliated by rolling a Critical Failure on an important skill check after a long string of high rolls and Critical Successes.
• Throughout Season 4 Rick and Morty have had a lot more animosity between one another, in particular when dealing with adventures led by Morty. It was only by The Vat of Acid episode that this became apparent why: Rick and Morty have become an Author Avatar and Audience Surrogate respectively in regards to how they want the plot to go. Anytime Morty comes up with an idea, Rick will brush it off as stupid unless it aligns with what he thinks is a good idea, and Morty either going along with it anyway or browbeating Rick into doing it ends up causing nothing but problems, proving Rick right in the end.
  • In Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Repeat, Morty gets his hands on a death crystal and tries to follow its visions so he can achieve what he thinks its showing him: growing old and dying with Jessica, to the point that when Rick is killed by his reckless driving, he refuses to bring him back and ignores Hologram Rick. This causes no end of bloodshed ranging from a bully being sent into the atmosphere, cops being disfigured, military being liquefied, and even a judge being Driven to Suicide, with Morty being a walking Shout-Out to AKIRA by the end of it. It takes Rick coming in with Wasp Rick to stop Morty, and then Hologram Rick becomes corporeal and goes mad with power, requiring Wasp Rick kill him. By the end, Morty learns Jessica is planning on working in Hospice, making him realize he misinterpreted the visions and the events of the entire episode All for Nothing.
  • In One Crew Over the Crewcoo's Morty, Rick concocts the entirety of the events of the episode after learning Morty is writing a Heist Movie script for Netflix and being forbidden from telling him no by Beth. By the end of it, Morty is disillusioned and left none the wiser to Rick's actions, and is all set to keep adventuring with him.
  • In Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktim's Morty, Morty only agreed to go with Rick if he was given a dragon, even throwing a tantrum when Rick says no and causing their car to crash, and still wanting one after waking up in the hospital. Rick gives him one, but it backfires when Balthromaw doesn't really want to do anything with him and binds with Rick instead, leading Morty being disillusioned with dragons, and both Rick and Summer blaming Morty for what they consider the "Worst Adventure Ever".
  • In Rattlestar Ricklactica, Morty's refusal to stay in the car causes him to get bit by the snake alien, and even when told not to get involved with its planet, Morty buys Slippy and sends her there to replace it. All this does is start a parody of a Terminator Time Travel plot requiring they get the Time Police to fix it, with Rick repeatedly telling him to next time "Stay in the fucking car!", marking this adventure as the last of Morty's freebies, and then landing Morty a black eye to preserve the Stable Time Loop.
  • In The Vat of Acid Episode, after Morty acts as an Audience Surrogate and disparages Rick's titular idea when it doesn't work, he gets into a heated argument over Rick never suggesting his ideas, Rick angrily deciding to actually do Morty's Save Scumming idea, Morty all too excited to use it without asking Rick about the details. He later learns that Rick, being an adamant hater of Time Travel, didn't actually make him a Save Scumming device, but one he directly compares to The Prestige, with everything Morty did having consequences. He then goes on to reveal the entire reason he did this was to prove how wrong Morty was and make him admit the Vat of Acid was a good idea, and that Morty wasn't even speaking to his Rick, and that the Vat of Acid idea was a multiversal constant among Ricks. Rick seemingly going ahead at first can be seen as a blatant case of Pandering to the Base, only to then show why that plot wouldn't work and being petty over the fans dismissing the original plot by making it the thing that resolves the problem.
  • The one episode Morty has an idea that isn't disparaged by Rick is in Never Ricking Morty, where Rick praises Morty for buying the Story Train. This idea Rick supporting still fits because the Story Train is a blatant reference to Dan Harmon's "Story Circle", and fittingly, when it breaks by going Off the Rails, Rick derides Morty for wanting to return it, instead telling him to just throw it away and buy another one. In the train itself, the characters fulfill their own, more blatant, Meta Commentary:
    • Rick represents Harmon, as he repeatedly lambastes the passengers for being so obsessed with him and points out the flaws in their stories. Similarly, the way he defeats Story Lord is a microcosm of his relationship with Morty when acting as an Author Avatar to Morty's Audience Surrogate: by taking the story Story Lord tried to tell and hijacking it so that it fails, allowing Rick and Morty to jump ship while the bad idea is left behind.
    • Morty represents the average fan, confused by the meta nature and questioning how much of whats going on is canon. Similarly, his questioning of whether the things Story Lord is draining out of them were canon is representative of the fans wondering about said characters, with Ricks response of "They could've been" being the Shrug of God Harmon has been known to use, and he's been on record as saying he tends to not make a decision about canon until it actually happens, and that he tries to avoid fanon so that it doesn't corrupt the ideas he has for the series.
    • The passengers represent the toxic fans. They constantly gush about how they had adventures with Rick and we get little vignettes to represent them, representative of the ideas they want to see. Similarly, they assume everyone else on the train has something to do with Rick, representative of how they assume others will agree with their ideas, and when someone challenges their ideas, much like how Rick in disguise did with Goomby's story, they either ignore him or tell him to tell a better story, representative of Let's See YOU Do Better!.
    • The "Tickets Please Guy" represents the Ensemble Dark Horse, a character fans end up liking so much and think things would be better if they were more involved in the story even though they're just a One-Scene Wonder, with the two aliens watching and talking about "Floaty Blood Man" representing the fans who engage in fanon to the point they consider it canon, specifically acting as if "Floaty Blood Man" is this all powerful god, when he's really just an old man spewing blood while speaking nonsense, who is himself just the delusion of the "Tickets Please Guy" as he floats in the vacuum of space, or as Rick calls it: non-canon.
    • The Story Lord represents the network executives that work with Harmon. He is the conductor of the Story Train and plans to "propel it to its final stop", representative of the show being owned by the network and its greenlighting of 70 more episodes for the show, and his incapacitation of Rick and Morty to "extract their story potential" could potentially represent what happens when the network gets full creative control over the show. Similarly, the vignettes he shows involving many Fandom Specific Plots (such as the return of Lincler, Tammy and Phoenix Person fighting Summer and Rick, and Evil Morty leading an army of Ricks) look like they came out of a bad fanfiction, representing the executives Pandering to the Fanbase as much as possible with no regard for the spirit of Rick and Morty; this in turn showcases both its pursuit of maximum money and viewership and its failure to grasp what the fanbase truly loves about the franchise. Even the way he's beaten by Rick (by having his story hijacked to the point that the train grinds to a halt) is representative of Harmon pulling a Torch the Franchise and Run on the executives by deliberately killing his own franchise so badly that it simply cannot continue, and therefore cannot be used and twisted by the network anymore.
    • However, despite this, the Story Lord also reasonably serves as a parody of Harmon himself for some of those same reasons, as well as the fact that his "Story Circle" serves as the layout of the train, and his Villainous Breakdown when beaten is reminiscent of Harmon having a Creator Breakdown if he was forced to make a story he didn't want to write. Furthermore, while stuck there, he proceeds to deconstruct Jesus' religious origin, turning a story he didn't want to write into one he would write to show why it doesn't work.
• In Rest and Ricklaxation, it may seem strange at first that Morty, when freed of the aspects he considers toxic, becomes a flat out sociopath. However, there are many indications, both before and after this episode, that Morty is fairly sociopathic by nature, and it's only his neurotic guilt that usually keeps him in check. By removing the neuroticism, the spa removed the only thing keeping him in check.
  • In Rick Potion #9, Morty becomes so desperate to go out with Jessica he sets off the plot by having Rick make him a love potion, with Rick directly comparing it to a "roofie" potion when Morty tries to lay the blame for the world being Cronenberged on him.
  • In Get Schwifty, Morty is perfectly willing to abandon the Earth after the Cromulons conscript it into "Planet Music", and when Rick reveals that his Portal Gun was charged, Morty accuses him of being lazy rather than the more reasonable not wanting to abandon Earth. Bird Person even lampshades that In bird culture, this is considered a dick move.
  • In The Ricks Must Be Crazy, after he, Rick, and Zeep are trapped in the Tinyverse, he abandons Rick to go live in the woods after getting fed up with his feud with Zeep, only to return months later, capture the two of them, and threaten them into working together because he's sick of living there.
  • In Big Trouble in Little Sanchez, he's willing to remain blissfully ignorant of Tiny Rick's rather blatant signs of problems just so he can get with Jessica, only stepping in after seeing Summer be humiliated and right before Tiny Rick can kill regular Rick, Rick lampshading how eager Morty was to sell Rick out.
  • In Look Who's Purging Now, Morty reaches his Rage Breaking Point after being forced to listen to the Old Man who Can't Take Criticism, then not only kills him with no remorse, but then proceeds to slaughter dozens of purgers, as well as people who were just hiding, even threatening to purge Rick just for telling him to calm down. Even Rick is unnerved by this enough to lie to Morty and claim it was just purgenol making him act like that.
  • In The Rickshank Redemption, during the standoff between Rick C-137 and one of the Council of Ricks, Morty ends up shooting Rick C-137 after being berated for screwing up Rick's plan, his only response to doing so being to ask what he thinks is Rick's corpse "Who's stupid now, bitch?!" While Rick had given him a fake gun with the instructions to shoot him, Morty wasn't aware of this, meaning Morty was completely willing to kill Rick just for being insulted one too many times.
  • In Rickmancing The Stone, Morty proceeds to vent his issues of the divorce with Armothy by murdering various fighters in the arena. He takes obvious joy in taking his anger out on other people, as long as it's not really him doing it. After Armothy passes on, though, he hesitates to finish killing the slaver because it's now clearly his decision, which means he's accountable for it.
  • In The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy, he tricks Rick into taking Jerry on an adventure so he can have a day off, then proceeds to berate Beth for how similar she is to Rick after her trying to fix Summer ruins it. Later, after Summer goes to where Ethan is and Beth and Morty meet up with her, he uses the Morphizer and casually disfigures Ethan for breaking up with Summer for someone with bigger breasts, even when he's going only off what Summer thought.
  • In Morty's Mind Blowers, one of the mind blowers showed Morty was perfectly willing to torture an alien just because Jessica almost got caught in the crossfire, something even Rick was against.
  • In Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat, the A-Plot only occurs because Morty is shown a vision of dying with Jessica thanks to a death crystal, and he becomes so obsessed with making the vision a reality that he becomes an AKIRA, kills numerous people including cops and soldiers, has a judge Driven to Suicide, and even got Rick killed at the beginning and refused to revive him. By the episodes end, he exhibits no remorse for any of his actions and is more just pissed off it was All for Nothing.
  • In Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktim's Morty, Morty basically throws a tantrum when Rick refuses to give him a dragon, and despite their car crashing, the first thing Rick hears from him when they wake up in the hospital is him still demanding a dragon. When he finally gets Balthromaw, he treats him more like a pet and gets pissed off when he finds Rick spending time with and soul-bounding with him.
  • In The Vat of Acid Episode, Morty does a lot of Kick the Dog moments while using what he thought was Save Scumming, including pantsing Goldenfold in the middle of class, pushing a wheelchair bound old man down and stealing his wheelchair, and numerous noodle incidents that land him several angry mobs and the S.W.A.T. force by the end, including doing something to the whales, N-Word Privileges of some kind, pissing off the NAARP, and something involving Gamergate, demonstrating again a willingness to abandon any semblance of morality if he feels he can't be held accountable.
  • In Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri, Morty stops Rick from using the invisibility belt to get out of therapy only because he hates that Rick never lets him use it, even saying "Why should I let you use it? You never let me use it." When Rick lets Summer use it just to piss Morty off, he repeatedly fights with her while trying to take it, even attempting to trick Summer into giving him back the goggles he was using while giving her a normal belt. And after finally stealing it, he proceeds to use it to try and spy on the cheerleaders while they're showering and while he's masturbating. Yet when Summer steals it back after exposing him he calls her a monster just for stopping him.
• Gaia's offspring all say "I am" upon being spawned. Given that "I am" is how God introduces himself in Judeo-Christian mythology, it's a big clue as to who their true father is.
  • "God the father" ends up being a "Zeus" but still he was meant to evoke an offbrand Yahweh vibe. Ultimately it's probably meant to combine the imagery of Yahweh and the imagery of Zeus(who also probably inspires the personality) with the role of Ouranous (who sired children with Gaia and was the sky so to speak).
• Despite both Beth and Rick laughing off therapy sessions with Dr Wong, the Smith family is still shown attending it by Season 4 finale. It may seem a bit odd, unless one remembers "Morty's Mind Blowers" where Rick and Morty escaped their universe, so it just might be a different version of the Smith Family who thought Dr Wong had a point.
• It may seem odd that the Federation's laser destroys everything except Wrangler jeans, but then you remember the season 3 opener where Rick destroyed the galactic economy and everyone fought over what they believed was the new legal tender: pants.
• Rick's seeming cold and ambiguous reaction to Beth's concerns about being a clone in "The Rickchurian Mortydate" makes more sense when you discover in the Season 4 finale that not even Rick really knows if Beth is a clone or not.
• Using a fascist version of Morty to personify fans who want Rick and Morty to be like how it used to be may seem like nothing but a needlessly mean-spirited joke, but obsessing over tradition and rejecting modernity are major traits of fascism - they're literally number one and two on Umberto Eco's list of signs and potential seeds of fascism.
• Rick being despondent upon the discovery that he really did clone Beth and that he really is as terrible of a father as everyone else says he is might seem out-of-place given that he was pretty blase` about it before- take "The A-B-C's Of Beth", for example. However, this was back when he had erased his own memory of actually doing so. It doesn't take a dimension-jumping genius to suggest something that you haven't done or seen before and be desensitized to it- it's another to have actually done or seen something and understand its full ramifications. Not to mention the realization that he might have killed his original daughter if he had guessed wrong.
• Rick's voice-activated escape contingency is: I need to take a long look at myself." In his fake memory of Diane in Season 3 he used a very similar phrase: "I just took a long look at myself and I don't think this science thing is gonna pay off. With the revelation that the memory wasn't so fake after all, it makes even more sense as something he's not very likely to say.

Season 5

• Rick's fear of Mr.Nimbus makes sense when you take into account that Nimbus can control the ocean and the police. That gives him control of 75% of the Earth's surface and then a lot of power to harass Rick in his civilian life. Fighting Nimbus would require Rick to use his science to ruin the biosphere and destroy a large portion of the government. So Rick appeases him to avoid having to move to another dimension.
  • Likewise, Nimbus by all accounts shouldn't be Rick's worst enemy given the number of sworn foes that we have seen for four seasons and counting. After all, as Jerry pointed out, Rick got into a tussle with Zeus in the previous season. But what does Rick hate more than violent people? Beings that understand him, and get under his skin. Nimbus hurts Rick more by bringing up Diane, and how she wouldn't like that her husband became a washed-up alcoholic nihilist that takes his family for granted. Heck, Nimbus overheard the fight where Morty refused to be a witness for Rick's treaty and Morty says that he is tired of being his grandfather's errand boy.
  • Mr. Nimbus is probably the origin of Rick's fear of pirates - If he were ever caught by pirates, he'd probably be taken onto an ocean-going ship, thereby breaking the treaty between land and sea.
• In the first episode of the season, the Narnia dimension is attacked by a mysterious being from a portal, who ruins their lives for seemingly no reason. They devote their lives to slaying the invader, develop incredible technology in their quest to do so, and eventually use their own portal to try and hunt him down. In the last episode of the season, we find out that in Rick's past, a being came from a portal, destroyed everything he loved on a whim, and he devoted himself to finding him and getting vengeance.
• In "Mortiplicity", all the decoy families have different reactions to their situations. Some choose to kill other decoy families, some commit suicide, and others hide. Why do people who are basically the same five people have such wildly different reactions? Clone Degeneration might be why. The big picture might be the same but the little details in their brains that are affected by being copies of a copy can explain why they pick different choices than another decoy Smith Family.
• The ease at which the Squids are able to kill the decoy families is a major clue to their true identities, however the audience is itself decoyed by the decoy family's status as decoys until the reveal. In hindsight there is naturally only one real adversary that is able to so casually take out a Rick.
  • Becomes even more brilliant after Rick's backstory is revealed. Our Rick can so easily kill other Ricks that he's become bored of it and since these decoys are clones of that Rick, it's obvious the real deal should be able to kill an entire army worth of Rick decoys.
• Wooden Jerry is even more of a Dirty Coward than regular Jerry... Because he was programmed by an already-degraded Rick. Rick has a notoriously low opinion of Jerry, and since the decoy Rick that programmed Wooden Jerry already got lazy with the design, he could have let his personal biases get in the way, making this version of Jerry worse than the real one would ever be.
• Mr. Always Wants To Be Hunted was found in a cryo pod and if you don’t hunt him, he hunts you instead. It’s also implied something bad happens if you successfully hunt him as well. It’s possible he was in that cryo-pod because the last person who hunted him shoved him into it to end the hunt.
• In the first episode of Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Gaia mentions that the Heart is the most powerful and most important of the five rings. Planetina and the Tina-Teers are missing their version of Ma-Ti and his Heart Ring. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that the Tina-Teers are horrible people who see Planetina as a product rather than a person and Planetina herself becomes an ecoterrorist willing to murder hundreds of people and more in order to save the planet.
  • In Captain Planet and the Planeteers the emphasis in the title is on the Planet. With Planetina and the Tina-Teers the emphasis is on...Tina.
• When the asian Tina-Teer wanted to produce a continuous stream of dirt, she said "dirt" multiple times. When Morty wanted to produce a similar effect with the air ring, he simply said "Airs".
  • ...what does that mean?
    • The rings accept either the singular noun multiple times or the plural of the noun to create the same effect of multiple elemental blasts. Meaning the rings are far more versatile than the users give them credit, not surprising with how little Tina-teering they seem to do anymore. Morty, with more experience under his belt with weird quasi magi-tek than them, is able to realize that and much more efficiently use the rings than their original wielders.
• The fifth season premiered on June 20, 2021. A certain other adult-oriented cartoon, South Park, had its fifth season premiere on June 20, 2001. How coincidental is it that these two shows had their fifth seasons begin on June 20th of the first year of their perspective decades? This had to have been intentional.
• At the end of "Mortiplicity", the (presumably) real Rick in space receives an alert that the decoy family has died. "Decoy family", as in, only one family. Rick only ever made one decoy family before leaving for space and was never aware of the Azimov's Cascade that followed suit. This makes sense, as decoys who made decoys were also unaware that their decoys made more decoys. The fact that he gets this alert at the end of the episode means the original decoys were the last to die. This also makes sense, as the last two decoy families—the Beacon and Muppet families—were smart enough to create a beacon and draw all other decoys in one place and disguised themselves as obviously fake but harmless decoys, which makes it the most likely that they are the most free from Clone Degeneration and closest to the originals.
• Rick and Morty, both turned into turkeys, automatically turn back into humans after a certain amount of time. Looks like Rick learned his lesson when he turned himself into a pickle and was stuck as a pickle since Beth took the syringe that contained the serum that would've turned him back into a human.
• A running gag in the Thanksgiving episode is that characters keep mistaking Thanksgiving for "America's Birthday", ie the 4th of July. However according to the backstory with the aliens, in a way it really is.
• In the Go Tron episode the stinger "revealed" that the "monsters" are just size expanded, cross dimensional insectoids trying to inform others about the cure for AIDS. One might recall that the first monster the Smith family defeated was perceived to be attacking an alien Golden Gate Bridge^note San Francisco was ground zero for the AIDS crisis in the United States.
• 'Rickternal Friendshine of the Rickless Mort' reveals that our Rick's original Beth was killed by Prime Rick when she was a child, which is confirmed two episodes later; and following his failure to find Prime Rick, ours has been transporting himself into universes where Beth is alive. With someone like Prime Rick on the loose, potentially killing Dianes and Beths, the creation of Froopyland, an entirely harmless world for the child Beth to live in, makes a lot more sense. It's unclear how true it is that Beth was a danger to other kids (after all, our Rick never saw a Beth grow up from childhood to adulthood), but every Rick that created a Froopyland likely wanted some way to protect their Beth, were Prime Rick coming to kill theirs as well.
  • It would also explain why Rick made all those dangerous inventions for Beth even though it freaked him out. If Prime Rick appeared to kill her, having her always be armed meant she could protect herself, and constantly agreeing to make her weapons instead of saying no would encourage her to be violent, so she wouldn't hold back if he ever attacked her. That fact that Rick was knowingly turning his daughter into a killing machine would definitely freak him out, even if he avoids those thoughts by saying it was just how Beth was.
• In hindsight, Rick choosing Walter White’s house for his “fabricated” origin story makes total sense. As one tumblr user put it:
  His entire life has been about family this entire fucking time. Burning, horrible loss and family. I honestly think Rick is the most misunderstood character on television...he was always talking about how family didn't matter. When this entire time, it was all his life revolved around.
• It’s said it’s impossible to fabricate memories in the Brainalyzer in “The Rickshank Redemption” and with Rick confirming the backstory he showed in that episode actually turned out to be true, it likely is true that one cannot fabricate memories in a Brainalyzer. But they can alter small details as well as not reveal the whole memory.
  • Plus it's established that Rick hates canon, especially in relation to himself. Of course he's not going to admit to showing the worst day of his life to anyone, much less one of the biggest headaches in his life. Knowing Rick he lied through his teeth about the whole memory being fake.
• Rick's backstory as shown in "Rickmurai Jack" explains why he was the Citadel's first suspect in the Rick serial killings in "Close Rick-counter of the Rick Kind": the entire Citadel's existence was predicated on Rick's prior murders of his alternate selves.
  • Even when Rick was helping to build the Citadel it was clear he wasn't all that enthusiastic about the whole deal. The Council probably defaulted to always making him the prime suspect whenever trouble happened to other Ricks because they knew how tenuous the peace they had with him really was and anytime trouble cropped up they were likely worried that Rick finally snapped and decided to pick up where he left off.
• It may seem odd that the special anime intro for "Rick and Two Crows" is only 30 seconds long. That's because it's not a parody of traditional anime intros, which tend to be 90 seconds long, it's a parody of the shortened Toonami versions of anime intros!
• The title of the episode "Rickmurai Jack" might at first seem to refer to Rick's anime-esque adventures as a sword-wielding adventurer with his two crows in the first part of the episode, but what is Samurai Jack about? A lone wanderer sent through a portal into a strange alien world, trying to go on after having lost everything, on a futile quest to either defeat the one who destroyed his home, or somehow return there. That describes Rick's revealed backstory, too.
• Fridge Heartwarming. Despite everything and everyone in the universe saying Rick shouldn't care about Morty (that he's replaceable livestock to Ricks and that he isn't even his real grandson) it's amazing our Rick still loves his Morty as much as he does.
• The comics recently revealed the origins of both Rick and Bird-Persons friendship and The Council of Ricks, both of which were completely contradicted in the last three episodes of season 5. Why? In one issue of the comic Rick and Morty travel to a world where Morty is a genius and Rick is his Bumbling Sidekick, this Morty even metions the existance of a Citadel of Morty's. The "Central Finite Curve" ensures that TV!Rick and Morty could never access a universe where a Morty would be smarter than a Rick, and any Rick and Morty that could would never have access to any world TV!Rick and Morty would ever go to. So to access this world Comics!Rick and Morty and their Bird Person and Citadel of Rick's must exist outside of the "Central Finite Curve".
• Evil Morty's new portal is yellow instead of the standard green of Rick's portals. Rick's dominant colour pallette is blue—his shirt, his hair, even his skin has a cool undertone. Morty's pallette is warmer, with a yellow shirt, brown hair, and even his skin has a warmer tint to it. Green is the colour associated with Rick and Morty adventures, because it's what you get when you mix blue and yellow—a Morty without a Rick is a yellow without a blue.
• Almost all the Ricks we've seen being treated like crap or in dead-end jobs are the ones that don't have a "C-" designation — The D-series Ricks, Doofus Rick, the factory worker. With the reveal of the Central Finite Curve, now we know why: these Ricks are the loser Ricks who aren't the smartest beings in their universe, and at best are refugees in a multiverse surrounded by those that are.
  • Alternatively, we don't know the algorithm that decides what puts the universe on Central Finite Curve and what makes Rick the smartest being in the universe. It is possible that D-series Ricks all have the potential to become "the smartest being in their universe" but that potential was curbed, cut in the bud and undernurished like a bonsai tree. Maybe by giving them a portal gun instead of letting them develop it themselves?
  • Back in season 3, the Rick used to make the Simple Rick's cookies, the one that wasn't an inventor, was described as hailing from "16 iterations off the Central Finite Curve''. It seems the further out of the Curve you go, the less genius Ricks there are.
• Evil Morty calls the Central Finite Curve a crib. That is exactly what it is. A place where Ricks can play with their friends without worrying anything bad is going to happen to them. A C-level Rick is the smartest man in any universe he enters, with enough preparation time he can solve any problem and kill anyone. And if he dies? He will just get resurrected in one of the alternative universes where he is also the smartest man thanks to one alternative Operation Phoenix, as we see in "Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat". And if he dies in that universe, he will resurrect in another. This brings another level to Evil Morty's sabotage of Operation Phoenix: the first universe every Rick will wake up will be above Evil Morty's blender, every next one is unknown. It might take a long time for other "murdered" Ricks to get home and with the destruction of the Central Finite Curve, it is not a certainty they will wake up in Operation Phoenix of a "Rick friendly", if fascistic, world.
  • This also explains why no matter which universe we see throughout the show, we never see a Rick that doesn't have the ability to be the smartest being in the universe. The Central Finite Curve ensures that they cannot travel to universes without this deciding trait.
• It makes total sense why Rick is so different from the other Ricks of the Citadel — he didn't want to be a super-smart scientist, he was forced down that path by other Ricks, and slaughtered untold legions of them trying to find the Rick that killed his family. The Citadel was created out of this chaos and he wanted no part of it, and thus he galvanized his multiversal selves into uniting against him. And then they began manipulating Beths and Jerrys together to create Mortys. The Citadel is a symbol of everything that Rick hates about existence and a reminder of the loss of his family and his failure to avenge him, and he's so bitter and cynical compared to other Ricks because he's the only Rick among them that was forced down this path in life instead of choosing it.
• The Morty Market also explains why Rick hates Jerry — he's only with Beth because the Citadel made it happen, and Rick knows that on some level, he's responsible for hooking his daughter up with a man like Jerry just for the sake of giving him a sidekick for his adventures. At the same time, it explains why he never tried to kill or remove Jerry outside of season 3: he knows Jerry is just another victim of the Citadel, manipulated down this path, so he doesn't hate Jerry as a person so much as what he represents. Causing the divorce and his ultimate attempt at killing Jerry in season 3 is because Jerry tried to take away the family Rick wished he had. And that's also the reason why Rick stopped interfering with Beth and Jerry after Season 3, they got above the Citadel's influence and got back together of their own volition.
• Since it’s likely Bird Person knows some or most of Rick’s backstory, Memory Rick hating what his future self becomes is more understandable. In his eyes, Rick not only became a cynical suicidal alcoholic but also gave up on getting revenge for their murdered family and just replaced Beth by going to a universe where Rick abandoned her. Of course he’s going to hate what his future self becomes.
• Rick decision to do both when Beth gives him an ultimatum, to either be a part of her life or let her go, gets more sad when it’s revealed this Beth isn’t his actual daughter and that it was only thanks to a drunken bender that he came back into her life. Rick making the choice to try to have both, to continue having Beth in his life while also letting her go to realize her potential, was likely made because of his conflicting emotions, knowing he has no right to be a part of this Beth’s life but also not wanting his daughter to leave him again.
• Rick helping out Jaguar back in season 3 makes more sense after the reveal. Rick didn't want Jaguar to lose his daughter like Rick did (not knowing she was already dead). Him also blatently lying about only Rick having infinite daughters is also because Rick didn't want Jaguar to experience the same guilt Rick feels for replacing his deceased daughter.
• "Rickmurai Jack" answers a long-standing question: why did the Ricks in "Rickshank Redemption" seem so confused by the fact that Morty identifies himself as "Morty C-137?" Because there never *was* a Morty C-137. Beth C-137 died as a child, therefore, he was never born in that universe.
  • It also explains why the Council are so eager to blame Rick for Evil Morty’s killing spree back in "Close Rick-Counters Of The Rick Kind" — Rick has slaughtered other Ricks en masse before, and he was scary good at it.
  • His aversion to taking women on adventures, first mentioned in "Raising Gazorpazorp", may stem from the trauma of watching his wife and daughter get murdered in front of him.
  • His multiple-season-spanning arc about supposedly not caring about his family? Makes complete sense when you learn they literally aren't his family — and not just in the "infinite multiverse" sense, but literally none of them are "his" family because his Beth never even got the chance to grow up, let alone marry and have kids.
  • This also shines a new light on his contempt for Beth & Jerry's marriage, since it's (in most universes at least) manufactured entirely by the Citadel to ensure every timeline has a Morty.
• The Planetina episode opens with an acid rain villain. This helps further the reference to the 80'sness of captain planet as acid rain is one of the few environmental issues humanity has ever really solved.
• Of course fascist Morty likes Mr. Meeseeks - a wilful slave who disappears as soon as he stops being useful.
• In "The Old Man and the Seat", Tony tells Rick about his wife recently dying to garner sympathy before he killed him. Rick became furious and found a version of Tony who's wife didn't die who still used his toilet then gave him a speech about not using his dead wife as an excuse. As first it was just presented as using Rick's bathroom being a Berserk Button but given recent revelations this reaction makes sense. While running the Citadel of Rick's, Rick was forced to spend time with other versions of himself who's relationships with Diane and Beth deteriorated naturally due to their ego and selfishness. As much pain as he was in due to losing his family, he was given no choice but to accept that his most negative traits were deeply ingrained in his personality and didn't develop as a result of their deaths. Him finding another version of Tony who's wife didn't die was the first of many "Not So Different" Remark's betweeen them.
• The Ricks' portal guns were the tool that let them become the smartest and most dominant beings in their universes. How does Evil Morty beat all the Ricks? He turns the Citadel, the ultimate symbol of the Ricks' authority, into a giant portal gun that uses the Ricks as fuel.

Season 6

• The revelation of main Morty's timeline being Weird Rick’s timeline casts many events of the first season in a new light, such as why Rick is so cavalier about destroying the entire world with random animal DNA. Why should he give a shit about the home planet of the guy who killed his family? It also creates a case of “Schrödinger's Asshole” vis-à-vis Main Rick’s treatment of Morty; does he subconsciously resent Morty for being the grandchild of the man Rick hates most? Or was this just Rick being Rick?
• Weird Rick shows no animosity towards the Jerry of his universe and is even polite towards him, despite most Ricks hating Jerry so much that our Rick planned around their inability to stop bullying him. Why is this? It’s because according to our Rick, Weird Rick doesn’t give a single damn about his family, including Beth. Most of Rick’s hatred towards Jerry stems from him impregnating his daughter and chaining her down with his sorry ass. Since Weird Rick doesn’t care about Beth, he has no underlying hatred of Jerrys and just like everyone else, he doesn’t give a crap about them.
  • Prime Rick does however mention that he has heard of the concept, likely from other Ricks. He's never been invested in his family or any other version of it across the multiverse, so he may have some knowledge of what Jerrys represent to Ricks, but he hasn't experienced it himself. Even if he did know why he should spite Jerry, Prime Rick's thing is that he does not care about anything, so would he even care enough to do so?
• The revelation that "our" Rick isn't the native Rick of Main Morty's timeline but a dimension hopper who took his counterpart's place after Prime Rick killed his own timeline's version of his daughter actually explains a lot of Rick's Jerkass attributes. For starters, it neatly explains his cynical assertions that no individual is special and can easily by replaced by any of their multiversial counterparts; it's a philosophy he's using to justify using "our" Beth and her offspring as Replacement Goldfish. It also explains why he'd go to the trouble of setting himself up to take another Rick's place as main Beth's dad, only to then neglect her; not only is Rick just inherently a toxic person, but in this Rick's case, he's also being a massive hypocrite, and there's only so much of that he can take.
  • Building on from that, "our" Rick probably has idealized his own timeline's version of his daughter, since she was killed when she was a little kid. This would contribute to why he's so passive-aggressively abusive to the mainline characters; whilst Rick would hate Jerry as unworthy of his daughter in any case, for reasons he's spelled out, he's also got reasons to see mainline Beth as an Inadequate Inheritor. Firstly, the fact she was dumb enough to have sex with a loser like Jerry. Secondly, the whole Froopyland debacle; once he realized that this replacement Beth was so crazy, he almost certainly would have started demonizing her, especially since there's no evidence that her counterpart in Dimension C-137 acted in such a way.
• “Solaricks” puts some throwaway gags into a new light. Since it’s finally confirmed that the main Rick wasn’t from C-137, a couple of his jokes (specifically, about there being a movie similar to Cocktail called “Cuisine”, or a song sounding like “Tutti Frutti” by a guy named Tiny Rogerts) make more sense - he was probably mixing up his original reality with the one he was living in.
• In "Mortyplicity", the future Wooden Jerry wakes up looks like a dry wasteland. When Mr. Frundles spread to the planet itself, it's shown the ocean drains into its giant mouth. Looks like we've just seen why the future becomes the one Wooden Jerry first wakes up in.
• Things like soldiers attacking Rick's meeting with other Morty fragments for not doing religion right can possibly be explained away by Morty himself believing the government itself would attack other religions without good reason, thanks to Rick's own rants about government and religion. Whatever way Morty believes society works is how the population of the Roy game acts like the world works.
  • Furthermore: The relatively small number of countries that Rick meets up with can be linked to Morty's probable Global Ignorance.
• After Marta convinces some soldiers to embrace Mortyism, the Morty fragments start chanting "Oh Geez", which is their unified self's catchphrase. But furthermore, "Oh Geez" is a minced oath form of "Oh Jesus", making the chanting all the more appropriate for a "religion" like Mortyism.
• The Roy game world is clearly based on Earth. It's interesting that Rick says there are 5 billion NPCs in the game, since the current population of Earth is over 7 billion. But 5 billion was the population of Earth in 1987, which not only represents the in-game player starting point, but is quite possibly the year the Roy game was created, and on a meta level is a reference to the 80s being the golden age of video arcades, an atmosphere that Blips and Chitz is clearly trying to emulate.
• At the end of "Bethic Instinct", after all the instances of Screw Yourself that have been going on or discussed in the episode, Jerry goes to the Jerryboree to partake in some of it of his own; however, he ends up keeping it to a simple kiss to another Jerry. A possible reason may be that Jerry is an Amazon Chaser (we've only seen him with strong women - Beth and Kiara). As a result, a Jerry might be the last type of person a Jerry would feel sexually attracted to.
  • Also, going by the interpretation that Beth fell in love with Space Beth due to them being both incredibly narcissistic, it can also be inferred that Jerry didn't feel a strong sense of attraction to the other Jerry because of his lack of self-esteem.
• In "Solaricks", after Rick reveals that he secretly enhances Morty for defense purporses, the latter wonders why he doesn't do the same for Jerry. Two episodes later in "Bethic Twinstinct", we find out that Rick has given Jerry his most wanted feature, the pillbug protocol, the ultimate emotional defense mechanism.
• When Jerry finally comes out of his pillbug defense shell, he explains to Beth that instead of killing himself, he would "cry while looking for a job in Starbucks Wi-fi". This provides an excellent reason for why Jerry is still jobless 6 seasons in. While he is perfectly capable of getting a new job, he has no need to do so, being financially supported by Beth's job. Here, since he would no longer have that luxury, he would finally attempt to find a job.
• Night Jerry at the end of "Night Family" plugs his ears when Night Rick shoots the machine. He has a good relationship with Day Jerry and is trying to preserve his hearing.
• The Night Family doesn't really go off the deep end until Night Summer's influence kicks in, which can be put down to a few factors:
  • They don't really seem to gain much awareness until later in the episode. Given how the Night Family Grew Beyond Their Programming it's likely there weren't problems at the start because they hadn't been active long enough to develop their own sense of individuality.
  • The family was tasking their Night selves with things that they were genuinely invested in so the Night Family wouldn't mind doing those things too much due to shared interests. And in Beth and Summer's cases they were learning skills such as language and music, which would be less physically tasking for their Night selves. The dishes though were a task the Night Family got saddled with just because their awake selves didn't want to deal with it, which crossed the line for the Night Family.
  • Night Summer being the forerunner to turn the family against their awake selves makes sense when you stop and think on their personalities. Morty and Beth are pretty subservient to Rick even if they've become less willing to put up with his crap, Jerry loathes Rick on a good day but is too timid usually to really do anything about it and Rick himself has an ocean of self-loathing issues that go hand in hand with his stubborn pride. Summer on the other hand, while she has sought Rick's approval in the past, doesn't put up with her grandfather's garbage like the rest of the family. If anyone was going to snap over something ultimately minor because of Rick's Jerkass behavior it would most likely be Summer. And because of the above issues it would actually be pretty easy for Night Summer to win the rest of the Night Family over to her side.
• The Night Family offering a truce to Rick makes more sense when you remember that Rick said he was going to keep going until he won against them. Much like his actions against the President at the end of Season 3 Rick goes stomping around like he has the moral high ground when he really doesn't and winds up needlessly escalating a conflict when he doesn't have to. The Night Family cared far less about just getting the dishes washed and far more about getting Rick to concede he was being a stubborn ass for no reason other than his own pettiness.
  • It also once again reflects Dr. Wong's assessment of him. He simply cannot accept anything mundane, like taking a few seconds to rinse his dishes, he has to escalate everything into a death-defying adventure, and when pushed on it, he pushes back hard.
• In "Final DeSmithanation", Morty and Beth get "empty" fortunes that say "Family time is time well spent." But what do they do in the episode? Spend time with their family at the Zoo (and Morty spends time helping Summer mess with Jerry).
  • Summer's says "Hard work often pays off." In this episode, she (along with Morty) works hard at making fun of Jerry's fear of his fortune.
  • Why did Rick apologize for hitting Jerry? Because it wasn't Jerry's fault; the fortune forced him to declare Rick his friend, as it's shown the cookies force fate, and Jerry had no control over that.
  • The episode's whole premise is basically one massive expansion on the old "Help. I'm being held hostage in a Chinese cookie factory" joke.
• The Smith-Sanchez family bounced back from them being broke in "Night Family" seemingly pretty easily. In "Final DeSmithation", Rick hacks into bank accounts and transfer billions of dollars of assets like it's nothing. No wonder they're completely fine now.
• The episode "Final Desmithation" is even more similar to Final Destination than you think. Namely, just like how Death's victims can't die until it is their turn in Final Destination, Fortune Cookie Users won't die until their fortunes are resolved. ^*  In Final Destination 2, Eugene tries to kill himself using Officer Burke's gun so he can go out on his own terms and not give Death the satisfaction. Since his turn has not yet arrived, all the bullets turn out to be duds, an extreme coincidence as noted by Officer Burke, who kept his gun fully loaded at all times.
• How is that the guy who sticks to walls gets his insides sucked out, but not Rick, Jerry or Mrs. Smith ? Well, all three of them had unfulfilled fortunes at that point (Rick making a friend, and the last two having sex). Meanwhile, the guy who stuck to walls already fulfilled his fortune of well... sticking to walls.
• Jerry fulfills Rick's "you will make a new friend" fortune, that by extension made him unable to die until it was fulfilled. When you stop to think about it, haven't we already met a Rick who has no interest in friends and does whatever the hell he wants? Rick is rightfully peeved that his immortality is gone, but Jerry may have unwittingly saved him from becoming just like (or even worse than) Rick Prime.
  • We also know from "Solaricks" that Rick Prime has Healing Factor. Given this and him looking younger compared to Series!Rick, it can be believed he has some sort of Immortality Immorality. This makes him an excellent foil to the mortal and relatively kinder Series!Rick.
• The portal gun the Dinosaurs give Rick is supposed to be superior to Rick’s version but all it can do that Rick’s portal gun can’t is just show the user where the portal goes. The only times Rick didn’t know where the portal went was only when something was wrong with his portal gun or somebody else used the portal gun. Having the ability to see where the portal goes is thus a useless feature to him.
• While the three "dino improved" worlds lean heavily into the Future Imperfect trope with both the "skull foot" and "basket" configurations, we should not forget dinosaurs evolved on Earth. As alien life forms, the native species would have to take a lot of liberties slotting them into the native fossil record. Moreover, as much as this trope was present in Real Life Earth's history concerning paleontology, the show has incorporated the most recent science related to dinosaurs with the sauropods having pseudo-beaks and the Tyrannosaurus having feathers on her head and tail, but otherwise being predominantly scaly.
• Why did it take so long for Rick to fix the portal network? Why was he leaving the rift? He wanted to leave Rick Prime trapped in the Cronenberg-verse so he'd always know where to find him, to a degree.
• In the Never Ricking Morty stinger we learn that, in typical Rick fashion, the Story Train comes with living characters, but customers need not worry because those characters "have no souls". How did Story Lord seem to Become a Real Boy and escape to Meta Reality? Fictional Rick and Morty trapped him in a Bible story with Jesus Christ which probably helped out with his lack of soul, thus making him a threat to the "real life" owners of the Story Train (which is not a surprising outcome for a Rick designed/produced toy).
  • Although the premise of the episode is highly self referential to the Real Life show, Jan's job does make sense in universe. Based on what we learn in the Never Ricking Morty ad, the Story Train characters needed some sort of pre-loaded demonstration story or establishing framework to help the customers create their own Story Train stories. The Ricks would have needed to hire a writer (at low cost) and would have provided them a basic concept of what was technically needed to make the Story Train work, ie a Rickibury Tales or Batman Poker style anthology.
• In Analyze Piss the Pissmaster's long simmering depression presents a plausible explanation for his desire for a showdown with Rick. He somehow wins and turns his life around, thanks to the notoriety, or is killed in a form of Suicide By Rick.

Season 7

• Why was Rick with Jerry's body, including brain, so quick to kill himself in "The Jerrick Trap"? Because even without the intelligence of a "Rick", he still has all the emotional issues like his self-loathing and narcissism, just made worse by the fact that Jerry's brain likely has much more intense emotional centers compared to Rick's brain. Without his own brain's ability to numb the pain or emotionally detach himself, the issues become too much for him and he goes to blow his brains out.
• It seemed out of character for Dr Wong to pin all the blame on Rick, even though as he himself pointed out, he's well within his rights not to want to take the calls of the person who dumped him. But in the scene right before that, Rick tells Dr Wong to lie to Unity if that's what it takes to get her to help. She's taking Unity's side to make Unity more open to listening to her input, she doesn't actually believe that Rick is the one (or at least not the only one) at fault.
• Just like how "Rattlestar Ricklactica" showed the problem with time travel where time travelers will inevitably all go to one place to change time, creating utter chaos, "Unmortricken" shows it's the same with interdimensional travelers. Because infinite possibilities exist, so do infinite interdimensional travelers. And just like time travelers, they create utter chaos in places of interest.
• The bit on the Vatican using "a sharp stick to poke dead bodies", actually works twofold. Yes, it's great for making certain there isn't anyone sneaking in by pretending to be dead, but it's also a kind of theological cheat. Part of Jesus's crucifixion involved the romans sticking his side with a spear to make sure he actually died after an abnormally (relatively) short time to death. Hence why the militant Vatican might carry the practice over as a precaution.
• Why did the hole make Morty believe he'd escaped but was really still in it? Aside from the hole apparently giving people a false sense of security to let their guard down, since it wouldn't work if they still believed they were in it, Morty himself had few fears due to his many adventures with Rick. The hole had to bring Morty in really deep in order for him to truly face his fears.
• A closer look at the three photos on the wall of people who succeeded in getting out of the Fear Hole shows that all three photographs were taken by someone else. Like Morty, these others most likely had friends or family who went with them to the Fear Hole and took their picture after they got out and were too mentally exhausted to take the picture themselves (and then warned their loved ones to not to go into the Fear Hole).
• The Fear Hole being located in a Denny’s could make some sense as after one escapes the Fear Hole, they might want some comfort food while they process what happened to them in the Fear Hole.
• Diane was essentially a Distaff Counterpart of Rick in "Fear No Mort", it was even implied when she and Rick discussed their first meeting that she was a scientist of some sort and possibly just as intelligent as him. While this could have been Diane's actual personality, since Morty was the only one really in the hole and he never got to meet his grandmother, also with Rick being ridiculously unwilling to talk about her even to someone he knows is seconds from death. It's possible the hole was just filling the blanks in Morty's knowledge of her by giving her Rick's attributes, similar to how Rick convinced Birdpersons memory of him he wasn't real by pointing out that all his memories from before he met Bird Person felt "weird and bird themed".
• In Air Force Wong (episode 3) Rick casually blows off the advice of an alien seer that he will face "great danger" as shown via a child's crayon drawing of Rick being mauled by a large shaggy bipedal creature. In episode 9, Mort Ragnarick, Rick is mauled and sent to Valhalla by an angry bigfoot.
• Mr. Poopybutthole's post Season 5 musing about if an Evil Mr. Poopybutthole existed somewhere or if he could become "Evil" (in a similar fashion to Evil Morty) turned out to be largely correct with the Season 7 stinger showing him forcibly hijacking the life of one of his alternates to regain the family life that had been lost in his divorce and downward spiral.