Recap / Rick And Morty S 5 E 4 Rickdependence Spray

Yes, this is technically Morty and Summer's child. Prepare your barf bag.

Original air date: 7/11/2021

A failed experiment by Rick creates monsters that threaten the entire country as well as himself.

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Tropes:

• Age-Gap Romance: Between Rick and Poneta, much to her father's concern.
• The Alcoholic: Once Rick learns that Poneta is bearing his child, he says this:
  Rick: I have a substance abuse problem...
• All for Nothing: By the end of the episode, the humans and CHUDs band together to wipe out Morty's Space Sperm to prevent any from fertilizing Summer's enlarged egg. Unfortunately, Morty's pet sperm, Sticky, enters it shortly after killing the Queen, rendering the effort pointless.
• And Knowing Is Half the Battle: Spoofed. At the end, Morty attempts to summarize the lesson they learned only to be interrupted by Rick calling for his own epilogue.
• Androcles' Lion: Sticky helps Morty for freeing him when he's trapped by a rock and then not letting Rick kill him, right up until he fertilizes Summer's egg.
• And Show It to You: The Amazing Johnathan rips out a sperm's "heart", then explains how sperms are single cells and therefore don't really have organs, but rather organelles; however, whatever he ripped out is similar enough in form and function to a heart that it doesn't really matter.
• Bait-and-Switch Accusation: When Blazen suspects why Morty is acting so weird, Morty gets worried that Blazen knows his dirty secret, only for Blazen to smile and say he was kidding.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: The giant incest baby appears in The Stinger heckling an unfortunate astronaut. Despite being completely naked in the depths of space, the baby appears to be just fine.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Sticky helps Morty because the latter didn't kill him when he had the chance to.
• Big Bad: The Queen of the Space Sperm.
• Big Badass Battle Sequence: The Smith-Sanchez family (minus Jerry) + the CHUDs vs the sperm monsters.
• Big Damn Heroes: When the Smith family runs out of ammo and is about to be killed by a Space Sperm, government agents come in to save the day.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • Blazen has the Japanese kanji for "fire/flame" on his left shoulder.
  • Poñeta sounds like it's named after "Pony", but Spanish speakers will recognize it as a play on "Puñeta", or masturbation.
• Bizarre Alien Locomotion: The sperm hover above ground like they would do in a liquid without any explanation how.
• Blatant Lies:
  • In the opening scene, Morty claims to be very interested in Beth's work just so he could get that after-school job at the lab.
  • When Morty learns that Rick obtained horse semen from Beth's hospital, he realizes that the canister's contents have been contaminated with his sperm. When it mutates into "Space Sperm", he decides to keep it to himself. Unfortunately, his secret is eventually exposed thanks to a "Sperm Queen".
  • When Professor Shabooboo brings in a Space Sperm to study its biology, Morty panics and shoots it because "it had a gun!" The President somehow buys that and blames Shabooboo for bringing a monster with a gun.
• Brain Bleach: Perhaps the most disgusting Rick & Morty episode where not even the characters are spared of how disgusting and weird things get.
• Breather Episode: This is arguably the season's most outrageously humorous episode, which came right after arguably its most emotional and saddest one.
• Brick Joke:
  • Rick mentions to Morty that he has been finding a way to counter against the CHUDS in The Teaser. We later see them as they capture the duo halfway through.
  • When Blazen is impaled with his own katana, he asks Rick and Morty not to tell his wife he was wearing her thong...and the picture he shows them of his wife is Kathy Ireland on the cover of Sports Illustrated. The duo naturally assumes that he's just delusional, but at the end of the episode, Kathy Ireland does indeed walk up to Morty and confirm that Blazen is her husband, asks if he was wearing her thong, and figures that he probably asked him not to tell her.
  • The President initially scoffs at the idea that they'd need female soldiers to fight the mutated sperm, or the idea that there would be female sperm to get into a stereotypical female vs female "kickboxing fight" like in an action movie. Sure enough, there actually is a queen of the mutant sperm, and she specifically mocks Rick for not bringing a woman to get into a kickboxing fight with her.
  • Two episodes ago, Rick says that one of the most likely reasons for aliens to try and kill him is that he probably had sex with their queen. Cue the CHUD's who want to kill Rick for sleeping with their princess.
• Brother–Sister Incest: An indirect example. After Morty accidentally supersized his own sperm, the government tries to lure them all at once with a giant unfertilized egg from Summer of all people. Everyone is appropriately horrified when they realize what their plan will result in and, despite their best efforts to prevent it, one of the sperm managed to reach the egg resulting in a giant incest baby that would later be taken in by the family as Naruto Smith.
• The Bus Came Back: The first episode since "Rick Potion #9" back in Season 1 to feature the St. Equis Hospital, though how Beth got her job back following the events in "The Rickshank Rickdemption" we'll never know.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: The CHUD's reason for going to war with Rick? He slept with the King's daughter and got her pregnant. Upon hearing it, Rick doesn't initially remember doing so until he thinks about it longer.
• The Cavalry: When all hope seems lost, Rick shows up with the CHUD army ready to defend against the sperm. Bonus points for the CHUD being anthropomorphic horses.
• Comically Missing the Point: To once again establish Jerry as an absolute idiot, he is confused on how Prof. Shabooboo killing himself is helpful in stopping the Space Sperm.
• Darkest Hour: Name-dropped by Jerry as the Space Sperm overrun Vegas.
• Designated Girl Fight: Discussed. When Summer asks to join the Marines in their fight against the sperm, the President rejects noting that there is no Sperm Queen to pit Summer against. Turns out there is a Sperm Queen and she mocks Rick for not bringing a woman to fight her.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: All the males at the base grin knowing the Space Sperms are congregating at the Grand Canyon, AKA the vagina of the world in their eyes. Beth doesn't get it and scolds them for thinking it's something so obvious that she doesn't understand at first.
• Dramatic Drop: Jerry drops the water jug after it's revealed that they are making a giant incest baby.
• Dramatic Irony: The President says that the Space Sperm don't have a Queen, then it turns out at the end of the first act that they really do.
• Driven to Suicide: Prof. Shabooboo decides to jump to his death to escape responsibility when the egg plan is at risk of ending in disaster.
• Epic Fail: At the cave, Blazen's attempt to buy Rick and Morty time fails when his katana gets stuck in the ceiling only to come down in an inappropriate moment to impale him.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: In-Universe. Rick decides he wants to settle down with Poneta and raise their Half-Human Hybrid horse baby together after being fed up with Morty's chaotic sperm. However, it burrows into the ground upon being born as CHUDs do not care for their children as humans do, and Poneta no longer feels attached to him afterwards. Rick is left stripped of the future he envisioned, although the feud between the humans and CHUDs has ended peacefully.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: The military takes and enlarges one of Summer's unfertilized eggs as bait, in order to attract the Space Sperm and launch them all into space. When they all learn that they were made by Morty, they drop everything to prevent the sperm from reaching it and make a giant incest baby.
• The Farmer and the Viper: Lampshaded by Rick, who calls Morty "a scorpion in a Navajo fable" when the latter says he can't change his nature, and played straight by Sticky at the end, who fertilizes Summer's giant egg after helping Morty for not killing him.
• Flipping the Bird: Shabooboo gives this to the President and the Smiths when he commits suicide.
• Girlfriend in Canada: As part of the Humiliation Conga before his death, Blazen's picture of his 'wife' that he hands to Rick and Morty turns out to be a photocopy of Kathy Ireland on a cover of Sports Illustrated. Subverted in the end when it turns out she really was his wife.
• Glad I Thought of It: Summer suggests using a giant egg to lure out the sperm, but everyone ignores her. Shabooboo then suggests the exact same plan as his own, and it's accepted. Beth assures Summer that this is just part of being a woman.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Discussed. The President refuses to let Summer blow up her and Morty's giant incest baby while it's still an egg... because it's an election year.
• Go Through Me: Morty puts himself in front of Sticky so Rick can't kill him.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Blazen stupidly gets impaled by his own katana right before being eaten by Space Sperms.
• Honesty Aesop: Because Morty didn't own up to masturbating with the breeding mount, Rick ends up accidentally creating an army of giant man-eating sperms. Spoofed at the end where Kathy Ireland very bluntly delivers the moral: "Always be honest. Sometimes it will hurt people, sometimes it will help. But always be honest." Morty then admits that her husband was indeed wearing her thong when he died, and despite having said just a moment before that he needn't have been ashamed of it, she promptly reacts with disgust.
• Hope Spot: Morty's loyal sperm Sticky ends up killing the queen just as she's about to fertilize Summer's egg... except it quickly fertilizes it instead, much to Morty's chagrin.
• Horse of a Different Color: Beth and Summer end up riding on sperm across Vegas.
• Humans Are Special: From Rick of all people; when Morty defends his action with the space sperm as being due to his unchanging nature, Rick points out that the entire human species is about changing and improving.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • Rick's rant towards Morty on how people can change rings hollow to some in that he's been a mostly amoral Mad Scientist for years (that's not to say he hasn't gone through some Character Development, it's just been very subtle). Also, calling out Morty for selfishly jerking off and starting the current crisis while not owning up to his part in starting the conflict with the CHUDs by shagging their princess.
  • Kathy Ireland says that her husband Blazen didn't need to be ashamed of wearing her thong, but she's disgusted when Morty tells her he was.
• Idiot Ball: Rick doesn't seem suspicious at all when Morty is insistent on him not testing the horse semen, and agrees not to test it just because of Morty's pestering. If Rick was naturally suspicious, the sperm monsters wouldn't have been created.
• If My Calculations Are Correct: Prof. Shabooboo uses this phrase.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: Rick invites Morty to make a bet about which of the Marines in their helicopter will live the longest. Morty states he's not going to bet on people's lives... before adding "But, obviously that guy," pointing at Blazen.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • After landing, the Marine leader gets impaled by a Space Sperm. His last action is to use a hand grenade to take some of the sperm with him.
  • Blazen gets impaled by his own katana after it gets stuck in the ceiling, then falls back down on him while he tries to get it back.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: When Morty claims that no one knows the difference between a catapult and a trebuchet, a Marine steps up warning his comrades about the "textbook" trebuchet.
• Interspecies Romance: Between Rick and the horse Princess, though it doesn't last long.
• Is That the Best You Can Do?: During their melee, the Sperm Queen asks Sticky if that's all he got.
• It Can Think: Soon, Rick and Morty find out that the wild Space Sperm can actually use machines and are able to tell what bombs are all because their queen gives them orders.
• It's What I Do: Morty describes his libido as being in his nature. Rick defies this, stating that a major part of being human is being able to change oneself.
  Rick: What are you, a scorpion in a Navajo fable? Everyone can change their nature, Morty.
• I Want Grandkids: The Chud king is in awe when Ponyetta reveals she is pregnant.
  "I have an heir."
• Karmic Death: The astronaut in The Stinger laments about having abandoned his wife and son. He then gets killed by a giant space baby.
• Karmic Jackpot: Rick ends up hitting this. He agrees to stay and help the CHUD princess, that he accidentally knocked up, with her child. However, after she gives birth, it's revealed that CHUD foals are fully independent right from birth, so all Rick ended up having to do was hold her hand as she gave birth, which doesn't take very long due to the equine nature of the CHUDs.
• Last Request: Spoofed. Blazen's last wish is for Morty to find his wife and tell her that he wasn't wearing her thong.
• Liar Revealed: Morty tries to hide the fact from everyone that the Space Sperm came from him for the first half of the episode until he was outed by the Sperm Queen to Rick about their true origins.
• Lured into a Trap: The President plans to bait the sperm with a giant egg.
• Motive Rant: The Sperm Queen is infuriated by the millions that died desperate to go to an egg, only to find a sock or toilet paper.
• Mook–Face Turn: Sticky turns against the Sperm Queen to help Rick and Morty escape.
• The Morlocks: The cannibalistic horse people living underground.
• Never My Fault: Zig-Zagged Trope throughout the episode.
  • Both Rick and Morty are equally responsible for the Space Sperm incident (to clarify, Morty for contaminating the horse sperm and Rick for seducing the CHUD royalty) but they go back and forth at accepting and denying responsibility. Rick is more downplayed since while he does blame himself for the Sperm, his reaction to the CHUD king saying he slept with the CHUD Princess suggests Rick genuinely didn't remember doing so, along with his reaction to hearing that he got her pregnant.
  • Shabooboo takes credit for Summer's plan to enlarge an egg to lure out the giant sperm. When the plan is revealed to likely create a giant incest baby, however, Summer is quick to point out the plan was all Shabooboo's. Though the way she says it hints that it could just be her way of rubbing in how stealing her idea has backfired on him and the President.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Morty starts the killer sperm problem by refusing to admit his sperm are in the container or even let Rick test it to discover as much.
• Not So Above It All: When Morty is revealed to be the source of the sperm, an utterly disgusted Rick does ask, "How was it?"
• Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat: Morty's face is all sweaty when the scientist suggests analyzing the DNA of a captured sperm to find out about its creator. Morty then proceeds to kill the sperm in order to cover his tracks.
  Morty: It had a gun!
• Paper Tiger: Blazen, who Rick and Morty immediately see as the most badass looking member of the troops and bet on for being the sole survivor. While he does survive the plane crash, the facade begins to slowly crack. When he finally gets in on the action to allow Rick and Morty time to get away and destroy the lair, he unsheathes his katana right into the roof of the cavern. His attempt to retrieve it causes his pants to fall down, revealing he is wearing women's lingerie. Finally, he is impaled by his own sword and spends his final moments trying to prove to the duo that he can perform autofellatio before being devoured. Both Rick and Morty admit they had him pegged wrong and Rick points out he didn't even buy them time, as his Humiliation Conga allowed the sperm to surround the duo and disarm the bombs.
• Parody: Of an action movie. The president insists on sending an all-male squad of marines, because the enemy are sperm and there won't be a queen to be defeated with sexy lady kickboxing (he's wrong on that last count). The marines spout cheesy catchphrases and one-liners and have a katana-wielding extra-badass member, Blazen. The marines all quickly die except Blazen, except he dies, too, impaled by his own sword with his pants around his ankles wearing a pink thong.
• Phallic Weapon: Beth makes a snarky comment about the soldiers and their guns.
• Pin-Pulling Teeth: The impaled Marine pulls the pin of his hand grenade with his teeth.
• Red Shirt Army: Rick gets Morty to bet which soldiers accompanying them will live the longest. They are right to believe Blazen - who ironically and literally wears red - will achieve that.
• Running Gag: Morty once again dooms the planet because of his temptations.
• See You in Hell: Line said by Prof. Shabooboo before committing suicide.
• Selective Obliviousness: The President gives a scientist named Prof. Shabooboo credit for Summer's idea of using a giant human egg to attract the sperm. Laser-Guided Karma ensues when the President realizes the plan will backfire when it's revealed that the sperm is Morty's.
• Semper Fi: The Marines sent to kill the sperm.
• Serious Business: No one wants to have a giant incest baby born from Morty's mutated Space Sperm and Summer's unfertilized egg. The humans are backed up by the underground CHUDs/horse-people to deal with the Sperm.
• Shout-Out:
  • The episode's title is a reference to Independence Day.
  • Beth says that the movie she and Morty are seeing in the Cold Opening is "Marvel shit," referencing the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Black Widow was finally released the same weekend this episode aired.
  • When Rick talks to Morty about how people can change because it's the nature of their species, he mentions "the actor who played Iron Man" (Robert Downey Jr.) as an example, citing the many issues he used to have in the '90s and early 2000s before getting his act together to become who he is now.
  • Rick calls himself 'Hand-Job Solo' since he's frozen like Han Solo and his hands are the only part he can move. He also uses Morty's pants to strangle the Sperm Queen in a similar manner to how Leia used her own chains to strangle Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi, though in this case he just chokes her unconscious rather than killing her.
  • The term "Chud" is a reference to the 80's monster movie C.H.U.D.. In that film, it stands for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers.
  • The giant incest baby appearing in space during The Stinger is a clear reference to the starchild in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  • Dr. Shabooboo is a pastiche of Dr. Newton Geiszler from Pacific Rim.
  • After Rick gets off the hook for raising his CHUD son, he pulls out and presses an Easy Button, a product from the office supply store chain Staples.
• Skewed Priorities: When Sticky enters the giant egg, the president stops Summer and Beth from firing on it because "That's a human life, and this is an election cycle". An obvious Take That! to politicians who flip flop on hot button issues when they are up for election.
• Space "X": Rick coins the term "Space Sperm" because he merged off-world material with Morty's sperm to create them.
• Squick: In-Universe. Everyone gets this reaction once they find out about Morty's sperm incident.
• Stewed Alive: The Chuds try to cook Rick, Morty, and Sticky in a boiling cauldron of soup.
• The Stinger: Summer's giant egg that was fertilized with Morty's living sperm has become a giant incest baby, which manhandles an astronaut.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: First Summer ponders about the size of the Space Sperm "owner". Later the President does the same. Lampshaded by Summer: "Same page club!"
• Straw Misogynist: The President ignores Summer just because she's female while giving credit for Summer's ideas to his scientist because he is a man. Also the marine who tells Beth to let the men do the thinking.
  Beth: You just became a woman.
• Surprise Vehicle: The helicopter with the government agents saving the family from certain doom. Its surprise appearance is helped by the lack of noise it produces.
• Sycophantic Servant: Jerry falls right into this role as The President's personal Water Boy. He ignores the sexist treatment of his daughter and treats the loss of his water jug as worse than the death and destruction going on around him.
• Time Skip: After Morty discovers the breeding mount the story skips a week ahead with him Sitting on the Roof and resting from his "hard work" at the lab.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: The President ignores Beth and Summer throughout the episode and takes Summer's "egg plan" and gives a male doctor credit. He also still has a grudge against Rick.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The episode starts with Morty using a medical mount designed for masturbating horses to collect sperm samples for his own pleasure, and Rick then collecting a horse sperm sample from Beth's clinic to create a doomsday bomb against the CHUDs they occasionally fight against. Next thing all of humanity knows, they're fighting off against giant toothy man-eating sperm creatures. Morty tries his best to prevent anyone from finding out it's his own seed.
• Virile Stallion: This episode has a lot of sexual imagery with a strong presence of horses. Morty causes the invasion of giant mutant sperm by using a horse breeding mount to masturbate, the episode introduces the Chuds, a species of cannibalistic horses that have been at war with humans, and Rick drunkenly got one of their princesses pregnant and she orders a truce to save his life. The princess is called Poñeta, a Spanish term for masturbation, and one of the chuds proclaim that the pregnancy was all part of the prophecy that would unite the chuds and humans.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Prof. Shabooboo is, once again, a character killed off in the same episode he is introduced.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Rick rightfully gets on Morty's case upon finding out that he is responsible for the Space Sperm's sentience since he's been using Beth's breeding mount to jack-off.
  • When Morty finally confesses that the Space Sperm were born because of him, everyone in Vegas reacts in disgust. The president calls him out for lacking enough self-control.
• The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): Morty and Rick believe Blazen to be a professional Marine but he gets squashed by the sperm (or rather himself) in no time.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The Sperm Queen plans to use the breeding machine to jack Morty off and extract more semen from him to create an army and then murder him. While she does add a few more to her ranks, Sticky arrives to save Morty.
• You Shall Not Pass!: When they get trapped by sperm in a cave, Blazen tells Rick and Morty to go on while he would hold the critters off. He fails miserably.

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