Recap / Rick And Morty S 4 E 3 One Crew Over The Crewcoos Morty

Original air date: 11/24/2019

Rick goes on a tear against heists when an adventure with Morty is ruined by someone stealing the treasure before them.

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Tropes:

• Adam Westing: Elon Musk voices an alternate version of himself, Elon Tusk.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Zig Zagged. Heistotron is programmed by Rick to always seek out bigger heists, which includes double-crossing recruited allies along the way, which it does to its creator Rick, except it was only a part of a bigger setup and was never operating outside his intent.
• Ambiguous Situation: With the knowledge that the entirety of the episode was a Gambit Pileup from Rick, it is left ambiguous if Miles Knightly actually stole what Rick wanted, if him being killed as part of the plan (since Rick at least seemed genuinely disturbed with how it happened), or if anything related to HeistCon was real or just a fabrication of Rick's for the sake of his plan.
• Answer Cut: Parodied. Characters repeatedly ask Rick how to accomplish a certain task. Cut to a close-up on Rick sucking his lollipop while uttering "With a little help from some old friends". Cut to the next scene where Rick hires yet another crew member.
• Anti-Climax: After their Team Power Walk into HeistCon, Rick tells his crew that there's nothing else and just walks off with Morty.
• Apocalypse How: Planet Gramuflack undergoes a class X when Heistotron robs it of its core, leaving its shattered remains and dead population drifting in the void of space.
• Argument of Contradictions: The Overly Long Gag of Rick and Heistotron arguing who manipulated who.
  "I programmed you to believe that." - "I programmed YOU to believe that".
• Asshole Victim: Averted. Even though Miles Knightly was a heist artist, Rick and Morty are horrified when the brainwashed HeistCon attendees tear him apart after he told them to steal everything at the convention.
• Avengers Assemble: Rick mentions how much he hates the crew assembly part but manages to collect two groups of Ragtag Bunch of Misfits for his coups.
• The Caper: Deconstructed with a vengeance.
• Chekhov's Gun: It's mentioned multiple times during the episode that Morty is working on a screenplay for a heist movie, which Rick expresses his usual mocking, cynical disinterest in. Then, near the end of the episode, Morty gets to meet with Netflix executives who are interested in hearing his pitch for it but realizes how unoriginal and generic his script is and gives up on it. And then it turns out the reason that the plot of this entire episode even happened was due to this screenplay since Rick engineered the adventure just to manipulate Morty into abandoning it.
  Netflix Producer: It's like... someone stole his passion... without him even realizing it.
• Cliché Storm: In-Universe, Morty himself realizes that his heist script is this when he pitches it to the Netflix executives and sees that it's just like the long, overly-complicated adventure he just had with Rick. In fact, this is exactly what Rick intended to happen.
• Collapsing Lair: The temple Rick and Morty attempt to loot in the Cold Open begins to collapse when they leave. The mummy in the crypt rises to seek revenge on her graverobbers but stops to wonder why a temple would be built to collapse when the whole point was to protect the entombed before a piece of debris knocks her head off.
• Confusion Fu: Rick builds a randomizer bot to make a plan so off the walls that Heistotron can't counter it. Heistotron already planned for that, however, and has secretly taken over the other bot so it would send Rick's team to Heistotron.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Morty having some kind of disability is once again brought up, with Rick calling him a getaway driver "with Asperger's [Syndrome]".
  • Rick's Cool Shades at the end of the episode cause him to heavily resemble "Cool Rick" from "The Ricklantis Mixup".
  • When Rick and his assembled crew plan to kill time for a little while, Rick decides to play Minecraft, which he started playing and decided he liked in "The Rickchurian Mortydate".
• Contrived Coincidence: Mr. Poopybutthole's class students all happened to be very adept at martial arts that Rick absolutely had no input on.
• Cool Shades: Rick wears cool-looking sunglasses.
• Curse of the Pharaoh: The mummy rising from its grave when Rick and Morty try to loot its crypt.
• Deflector Shield: Rick and Morty wear anti-booby suits which deflect all the traps in a tomb they're looting.
• Devoured by the Horde: The brainwashed HeistCon attendees take Rick's command to steal everything at HeistCon a bit too literally, and tear Miles Knightly limb from limb, even yanking his spine out and pulling his skull out of his face, because his bones are made of gold. Even Rick gets completely grossed out by this.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Rick as usual:
  • In his defense, the most disproportionate part of the first example is unintentional. Miles Knightly beat Rick and Morty to the punch on a tomb they wanted to grave-rob. In response, Rick goes through no small amount of trouble just to get into HeistCon to humiliate Miles and upstage him by beating him in a heist-off and brainwashes all of the attendees to steal everything at the con. This includes Miles's bones and body parts, resulting in him getting literally torn limb from limb by the con-goers, much to Morty's and Rick's horror.
  • There's also the fact that Heistotron, as a part of Rick's plan to disillusion Morty to his screenplay, destroyed and/or kidnapped multiple planets, Earth included.
• Durable Death Trap: The Temple of Doom Rick and Morty visit during the Action Prologue has a couple. Deadly darts being fired, Spikes of Doom dropping from the ceiling, a boulder rolling in and a Snake Pit being emptied overhead.
• E = MC Hammer: Rick presents his complicated counterplan to his crew on a whiteboard. It consists of a long string of advanced formulas (which probably mean nothing).
• Everyone Has Standards: Sure, Rick is petty and showed up at HeistCon just to upstage Miles Knightly, but even he is freaked out when the fans he brainwashed end up literally tearing Miles apart, quickly making it clear to Morty that he did not plan for that to happen.
• Exact Words:
  • Rick tells the HeistCon attendees he brainwashed to steal "everything" at the Con. They end up interpreting this to include Miles Knightly's bones (many of which are made of gold) and literally rip him apart, up to and including ripping his skull out of his face, which Rick did not plan for and is totally grossed out by.
  • After hearing that Morty is planning to pitch a heist movie, Rick is reprimanded by Beth who warns him not to get in the way of Morty's dreams just because he dislikes heists movies, but she will only allow Morty to drop out if he himself feels disillusioned by the genre. Rick goes ahead with it by indirectly causing Morty to give up in his own terms.
• Face–Heel Turn: Double-crossing is a staple in the heist genre, according to Rick.
• Foreshadowing: In the post-credits scene, Mr. Poopybutthole says that there is a "big storm coming", and Rick comments on how it "could be a twister", hinting at the return of a certain Morty...
• Gambit Pileup: Taken to Rick-diculous extremes. Rick plans a counter-heist to the heist-off, his Heistotron robot goes rogue and starts stealing planets, Rick reveals he planned all of that, and the final scene reveals it was all an overly-complicated gambit to get Morty to give up on his dream of writing a heist movie and pitching it to Netflix.
• Genre Blind: Rick is surprised that his humiliation of Miles Knightly and his Exact Words culminate in the latter's horrific and undignified death.
• Gentleman Thief: Miles Knightly checks all the boxes for this trope. He is a handsome Man of Wealth and Taste with a Classy Cane who does heists for the art of it instead of the material rewards (even leaving an origami horse as a Calling Card) and treats his rivalry with Rick as a sport between Friendly Enemies. Rick thinks he is just pretentious and genuinely hates him.
• Glad You Thought of It: It's revealed that the entire plot was just Rick trying to manipulate Morty into deciding to give up on his heist film idea.
• Grave Robbing: The opening scene has Rick and Morty attempting to loot a grave inside a Temple of Doom. However, heist artist Miles Knightly came before them and left his Calling Card.
• Harmful Healing: Rick has a topical cream he gives to Morty to heal his injuries but warns him not to leave it on for more than twelve minutes or else he'll have to hunt what he becomes. Sure enough, Morty leaves it on for too long and mutates into a winged, horned monster.
• The Heist: The entire episode is a giant satire of the trope.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: For once, Rick invents something to fix a problem the easy way without someone else provoking him into doing it and it blows up in his face. In this case, he invents an AI to pull off a heist for him just to spite Miles Knightly, only for that AI to go rogue and turns the entirety of HeistCon into its own universe-spanning The Heist plot. Subverted by the end when it was revealed to be one giant, super-convoluted plan to get Morty to give up on his screen-writing idea.
• Hollywood Glass Cutter: Required for entrance to HeistCon, with a booth just outside selling them. Rick is less than amused, using a laser on his wrist to cut a hole rather than go along with the bit.
• Honor Before Reason: When Morty suggests just buy the guest badges for HeistCon instead of having to assemble a crew for the professional's badge, Rick refuses out of Pride.
  "Guests are fans, Morty, which we're not."
• Hypocritical Humor: Rick thinks heist plots are stupid... so he sets up an overly elaborate and contrived heist scheme for the ultimate purpose of robbing Morty of his enthusiasm for the genre.
• Hypocrite: Rick is horrified when Miles Knightly gets killed as a consequence of him telling the mind-controlled hosts to steal everything... And doesn't even blink when his plan to get Morty to give up on developing a heist movie causes at least one genocide.
• I Know You Know I Know: Rick's and Heistotron's Gambit Pileup involves a whole lot of this from both sides, which devolves into the two of them shouting "I programmed you to think that!" at each other for two hours. Rick finally gets the upper hand after those two hours.
• Impersonating an Officer: At HeistCon, Miles Knightly mentions this to be one of the tricks he used in a previous heist of his.
• Incredibly Obvious Bug: Heistrotron's heists increase in scale, but not subtlety, so the "hidden" camera it leaves is not only global news on whatever planet it targets but also kills thousands just from being placed. Even after killing an entire planet while being the subject of its every news story, it behaves as if it's hastily escaping stealthily.
• The Infiltration: Spoofed with Heistotron heisting an entire planet. First, he does the common routine inspection maneuver as a front to plant a Spy Cam, except the camera is the size of a few city blocks and it becomes the topic of global news for crushing thousands. Then he executes the heist by pretending to deliver a pizza to get to the planet's core.
• Instant Expert: In The Stinger, Rick explains that it didn't take long to train Mr. Poopybutthole's grad students to be able to put up a good fight against him since they all shared a high aptitude for martial arts. Rick wonders if it's a coincidence or if it's related to their passion for African-American Women's Studies since Maya Angelou did personify both acquiescence and perseverance (both important traits in martial arts training).
• Killed Mid-Sentence: The mummy in the opening scene gets beheaded by falling debris while complaining about the fact that a Collapsing Lair makes little sense in-universe.
• Mama Bear: Beth makes it clear that she will not allow Rick to force Morty to give up on his dreams to better suit his needs. Unfortunately for Beth, Rick manages to figure out a way around her by instigating a massive Gambit Pileup to manipulate Morty into giving up his dream on his own.
• Manipulative Bastard: After Summer notes that Rick might lose Morty if the latter successfully turns his heist screenplay into a Netflix movie, Rick states that he'll just nip it in the bud to end that dream before it starts, but Beth angrily nixes this, telling him that if Morty ever gives up on his dreams, it had better be of his own volition, not Rick's. Thus, Rick sets up the plot of the entire episode just to make Morty decide to stop pursuing this goal and think it was his own idea, playing the role of the supportive grandfather in the process. Best part? It was a heist; he stole Morty's passion.
• Mind-Control Device: Heistotron is equipped with mind-controlling nanobots that it can deliver in either hypodermic dart or aerosol form. The latter is transmittable, leading to exponential enthrallment.
• Mind Screw: Randotron derived the algorithm for his Confusion Fu plan from the plots of three David Lynch movies. Brainwashed crew members Ventriloquiver, Hephaestus, Elon Tusk, Mr. Poopybutthole, and Morty later act out the plan, which consists of a string of completely non-sensical activities.
• "Mission: Impossible" Cable Drop: Angie Flint is seen doing this stunt during a heist sequence.
• Mummy: One appears inside a coffin in the Temple of Doom that Rick and Morty attempt to loot in the Cold Open. When they trigger the Collapsing Lair, the mummy wonders why a temple meant to protect her would be set to collapse, and then gets decapitated by a falling piece of ceiling.
• Never My Fault: When Miles gets torn apart by the HeistCon attendees Rick brainwashed, Rick tells Morty that he didn't know this would happen, so "That's not on me." While it may be true that the results were unintentional, this was caused by Rick's actions, so it pretty much is his fault. He's just serious about how he didn't mean for it to happen.
• Once More, with Clarity: As part of the ridiculous Gambit Pileup, past scenes are shown again, and again, and again with extra details that supposedly happened to show how Rick or some other character supposedly out-smarted the other party.
• Out-Gambitted: Rick eventually wins the gambit battle with Heistotron, although that was part of the plan all along.
• Out-of-Character Alert: When Morty tells Rick that he has a meeting with Netflix executives about a pitch for his heist movie, he fully expects Rick to think it's dumb and make fun of it, and is pleasantly surprised when Rick is actually very supportive and enthusiastic and makes sure Morty gets to the meeting even if it meant to put saving Earth on hold. It's later revealed that all of this was part of Rick's plan to get Morty to give up on the idea himself.
• Phrase Catcher: All the band members Rick contacts refer to him as "Sanchez, you son of a bitch".
• Physical God: One of the people Rick recruits to stop Heistotron is Hephaestus, the Greek God of blacksmiths. True to myth, he's horrifically scarred with half of his head looking like it's been melted, and Rick and Morty first find him forging something within a volcano.
• Pivotal Wake-up: The mummy in the Cold Open rises from her grave this way.
• Planet Looters: As Heistotron seeks out bigger heists, it starts stealing planetary cores, followed by entire planets.
• Product Placement: The sandwich Rick is eating at the start of the episode is from Arby's like the bag shows.
• The Reveal: The events of the entire episode were a Gambit Pileup by Rick to get Morty to give up on his heist script he'd been writing, all so Rick wouldn't lose Morty but also wouldn't incur Beth's wrath by forcing Morty to give up on his dreams.
• Running Gag: Everybody that is called for a job greets the other with "You son of a bitch, I'm in!", even those that are mind-controlled by Heistotron.
• Sarcastic Clapping: Heistotron initiates a "slow clap" sequence after his Assumed Win over Rick in their Battle of Wits.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Temple of Doom with its snakes, a rolling boulder and the Collapsing Lair are a nod to the Indiana Jones series.
  • Miles Knightly's appearance is inspired by Freddy Mercury, particularly his iconic 1980's look.
  • A lampshaded one to Doctor Strange, with Rick commanding his lab coat to take out the security guard about to attack him (in the same fashion that the Cloak of Levitation did with Strange's enemies in that film) by telling it to rip off the movie.
  • Rick uses Wayne Gretzky's famous line near the end of the episode: "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."
  • Rick calls Morty the getaway driver with Asperger's Syndrome.
  • "A most curious algorithm. It appears the only perfect heist is one that was never written".
    • Also Professor Poopybutthole's "He's learning" line during the Argument of Contradictions that precedes.
  • The variations on "Rick Sanchez, you son of a bitch", complete with an epic handshake, are references to Predator.
• Special Guest: Elon Musk as his Alternate Self Elon Tusk.
• Split Screen: Used for showing snappy heist sequences.
• The Stinger: Morty, Rick, and Mr. Poopybutthole sit on the roof of the Smith home, watching an incoming storm, with the former trying to solve a Rubik's Cube while the latter two talk about Rick getting Mr. Poopybutthole's students to attack him.
• Take That!:
  • The entire heist/caper genre, which Rick thinks is overly cliche, formulaic and predictable, with the crew assembly sequence claim to be the worst part. In particular, he mentions sleeping through the Ocean's Eleven films and calls out Ocean's Twelve as the worst one in the bunch.
  • "It's showtime, Morty. And I don’t mean a cheap imitation of HBO."
  • At Netflix original series and movies, with Summer stating that five of her friends have Netflix series and it's "a very achievable goal", and the unspoken implication that the content that they turn into shows is very derivative and unoriginal, given that they are very interested in a pitch that Morty realizes is an Invoked Cliché Storm. Given that Rick and Morty is a series hosted by Netflix in many countries, it also counts as Biting-the-Hand Humor.
  • Elon Tusk is a slight jab at Elon Musk. Rick would have recruited the main Elon Musk if it weren't for his Control Freak tendencies. Unfortunately for Rick, Elon Tusk is literally just Elon Musk with tusks, so he's just as much of a control freak. Given that Elon Tusk is voiced by Elon Musk himself, there's a bit of self-deprecating humor there.
  • Apparently, Rick doesn't like David Lynch movies.
• Take This Job and Shove It: When Rick asks Glar to join his team, the latter is more than happy to quit his current job and tosses his piano into the cocktail bar.
• Team Power Walk: Rick and his team of Ragtag Bunch of Misfits walking into HeistCon.
• Teeth Flying: This happens during the fight scene between Mr. Poopybutthole and his students.
• Unexplained Recovery: Despite Rick saying that he will have to hunt down what Morty has become when he applies the cream for too long, it's never revealed how Morty managed to return to normal for the rest of the episode.
• Unfolding Plan Montage: The episode uses several of these. Natural, since cutting between the plan's creation and execution is a staple trope in heist movies.
• The Unreveal: We don't know how many of the events were set up by Rick and how many were things already happening (Heist-Con?) that he just took advantage of.

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