Original air date: 7/18/2021
Summer and Morty steal Rick's car to impress a new transfer kid at school. Meanwhile, Rick and Jerry have a guys' night from hell.
Tropes:
- An Aesop: People who gain confidence by looking down on other people for being losers are even bigger losers and the people who change themselves to impress those people are just as bad."You think Jerry is lame, and you're cool. But the lamest thing of all is thinking that. The two of you combined us what we call the lamest thing ever. […] Cringe cannot exist in a vacuum. It must be observed."
- All for Nothing: Morty and Summer's goal was to become Bruce Chutback's friend before he realizes that they're unpopular in school, but it ultimately became pointless when Bruce stated that he never commits to friendship until he knows their place in the school's social heirarchy, and only commits if they're popular, which Morty and Summer are not.
- Anything but That!: The demons when they realize that Rick has made a weapon that makes pain hurt.
- Aroused by Their Voice: Apparently horses get aroused by Barry White's voice.
- At Least I Admit It: Unlike Rick, Beth concedes she was in the wrong to join in on the demons' mockery of Jerry. It probably helped that she was drunk and more than likely wouldn't have gone along with the idea if she was sober.
- Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: Mocked to hell and back with the Hell-Demons. Being Cenobite Expys, their general rule is that everything that people would not like (physical pain, awkward social situations, etc.) they like and vice versa. This is portrayed as a form of Insane Troll Logic, as every time something mildly bad happens, they express that for them it is good, which makes it bad, which makes it good and so on. By the time Rick and Beth get Jerry away from them, Rick decides to go on the offensive and create a weapon that can Reverse the Polarity so the demons actually suffer from their pain instead of enjoying it.
- Bait-and-Switch: Right when it looks like Rick is genuinely wanting to hang out with Jerry, it turns out he's merely using the oblivious fool to pay off a debt with a group of demons from Hell.
- Bathroom Stall of Overheard Insults: Jerry hears the demons mocking him while using the bathroom. It's intentional in this case, as they needed a pretense to drag him to Hell as bait so Beth and Rick would follow.
- Batman Gambit: The demons' kidnapping of Jerry was actually a plan to trap Rick and Beth. As their leader explains, as pathetic as Jerry is, Rick and Beth are even more pathetic since they think mocking Jerry for it makes them cool. They were the demons' real target all along while Jerry was bait.
- Bavarian Fire Drill: Morty tries to pressure Rick's Car into submission by claiming that Rick is in mortal danger and not letting them enter would render the car liable to anything happening to Rick. It works... or so he thinks.
- Blatant Lies:Rick's Car: (Talking about whether or not non-living objects can have virginity) Isn't a doorknob a virgin?
Morty: Heh, not mine. (Beat as Summer and Bruce give him unamused looks) Never fucked a doorknob! - Body Horror: The random lady lawyer that Rick's ship takes control over has an obvious mechanical device sticking out of a gaping, bloody hole at the back of her head. There's also the demons of Hell, who are all physically mutilated and deformed in some way.
- Brick Joke:
- A song describes Bruce Chutback during his debut as a new kid in school that has yet to have done anything embarrassing, making him potentially cool. During The Stinger, he gets made fun of for wearing the same pair of pants from the previous day, taking away his cool factor.
- Rick owes a debt to the demons for providing them faulty skin hooks. When Rick and Beth are captured, the hooks break and they escape with Jerry.
- Summer bashes living mailboxes with a baseball bat. In The Stinger, they come back to get revenge on Bruce for being there.
- Summer initially offers Bruce wine stashed in the sofa in an attempt to impress him. Following the night's experiences and Bruce writing off Morty and Summer as potential friends, the siblings decide to partake in the "sofa wine" themselves.
- The Bus Came Back: The security system of Rick's Car, which was once ordered to "Keep Summer safe", returns. Tricia Lange and Grace Smith also reappear in The Stinger.
- Butt-Monkey: Jerry once again finds out that Rick is using him, this time to pay off a debt with the demons from hell by making fun of his generic idiocy.
- Cathartic Exhalation: Rick's Car lets out a big sigh when Rick ends up not noticing her smell of adventure.
- Clothing Damage: Jerry's shirt is half torn when Rick and Beth find him in the hell dimension.
- Combat Sadomasochist: The demons love not only seeing others suffer but also being hurt themselves. When Rick shoots them with some kind of taser device, they moan in pleasure and are barely slowed down by it.
- Continuity Nod:
- When Bruce first arrives at the house, Morty tries to impress him by showing him that they are able to watch television from other dimensions. When he first turns on the TV, before one such show comes up, there's a quick Freeze-Frame Bonus showing an ad for the Story Train.
- Summer tries to remind Rick's car of the time Rick ordered it to keep her safe. At a later point the car does a mocking impression of Summer where she uses the word "like" a lot.
- Copycat Mockery: At one point Rick's Car mocks Summer by imitating her Like Is, Like, a Comma talk.Summer: Why'd you let us take you out?
The Car: Um, like, so I could, like, blackmail you, skank. - Disproportionate Retribution: Rick's car retaliates against the robots who make fun of her by killing them.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Changeformers berate and belittle Rick's Car after losing her disguise, calling her a "Just-Car". The fact that one is so disgusted, he throws up on her may be on par with blatant transphobia.
- Double Think: The demon's mindset overall allows them to recontextualize everything that happens to them as pleasant.
- Dull Surprise: Bruce reacts with little emotions to whatever is going on around him. Summer and Morty take this as a sign of his superior coolness (although Rick's Car claims that he's a sociopath, but it's unclear how true this is).
- Embarrassing Nickname: Bruce Chutback earns the nickname Bruce Chutpants when the cool kids reject him for wearing the same pair of pants two days in a row.
- Et Tu, Brute?: Jerry does with Beth when he finds out what is going on. He's actually more hurt by her doing it than Rick because while these kinds of antics are old-hat for the mad scientist he honestly never thought his wife would sink so low.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- Beth is far from happy when she finds out that Rick is secretly exploiting Jerry's hapless efforts at being cool to pay off a debt to some demons. While Beth can find Jerry's efforts at being funny and cool exasperating she sees it in poor taste to mock him for those efforts. She also admits that she offers physical affection to Jerry if she's crossed a line to him as recompense and agrees with her husband refusing to humiliate himself as part of Rick's plans to deal with the demons.
- While Rick does exploit Jerry's cringe-worthy sense of humor to pay off his debt to some demons he doesn't actually enjoy having to deal with the man's jokes, treating the whole mess as a laborious chore. It's also implied that he finds the demons pretty screwed up in general after, as after he hits his Rage Breaking Point he specifically notes he's had enough of their masochistic antics.
- Despite the constant recontextualizing everything negative as pleasant, the head demon is simply pissed at his goon for not replacing Rick's faulty hooks.
- Fantastic Racism: When the Changeformers realize that the car is just a sentient car the one that was hitting on her is so disgusted he vomits all over her as they all mock her.
- Felony Misdemeanor: Morty and Summer find the use of "byesies" sufficient reason to dismiss Bruce as uncool, while everyone else at school mocks him for wearing the same pants as yesterday.
- Flapping Cheeks: Morty, Summer and Bruce have flapping cheeks during a chase scene in space with Rick's car.
- Foreshadowing: The demons' plan to feed off of Rick's suffering becomes apparent when you notice that they never actually react to Jerry's behavior, only Rick's groaning at it. Jerry is too genuinely happy to be of any gratification to them, but other's mistreatment of him is.
- Beth doesn't actually correct Rick for calling Jerry her "stupid husband", using the expression herself. She then joins the demons in making fun of Jerry.
- Freeze-Frame Introduction: One-off character Bruce Chutback gets introduced with a still frame and the title card "New Kid".
- Gasshole: Summer's response to Morty's comeback is to fart in his face. When he calls her gross she tells him that he has to like it or he's sexist.
- Groin Attack: Rick finally gets his revenge by kicking the Evil Overlord in the balls.
- Hand Behind Head: Morty expresses his shyness towards Bruce Chutback with this pose when they stand in the front yard checking out Rick's car.
- Hellgate: An evil cube is used by Jerry to open a portal to the hell dimension.
- Hold Your Hippogriffs: One of the Changeformers' last words are "Oh, the Changeformity!".
- Hormone-Addled Teenager: Though Morty's usual status as this is downplayed compared to the previous two episodes, he gets a moment when he alludes to having fucked his doorknob, which he then immediately tries to deny.
- Hypocritical Humor:
- Beth is initially annoyed at her dad for, once again, leveraging Jerry's awkwardness and insecurity to meet his own ends - until she has a sip of the demon's drink. One cutaway later and she's having a blast recalling Jerry's experiences to the delight of the demons, and to Rick's annoyance.
- Summer calls out Morty for his social inexperience and attempt to win over Bruce with grapes. She ends up faring just as poorly against Bruce's aloof demeanor, stammering in her own attempt to offer Bruce "sofa wine".
- I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder: Rick's car when Bruce tries to matchmake it with the transformer."I am a car. Not a robot."
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Morty and Summer agree on "sofa wine" after the night's excitement.
- Kill It with Fire: What Rick's Car does with the Changeformers.
- Laser-Guided Karma:
- Rick winds up dealing with this throughout the whole episode. He's forced to put up with Jerry's lame jokes, which he finds unbearable, to pay off a debt to some demons. Then he winds up in trouble with Beth when she finds out what he's been up to. Then Jerry gets mad at him and winds up ticking off the demons when he won't play along and they respond by taking him back to hell, forcing Rick to go and rescue him. Then it turns out that the demons were running a Batman Gambit to lure Rick to hell because they actually see him as more pathetic than Jerry for his mockery of the man, which makes him an ideal target for their masochistic desires. Then, in order to successfully pull off his plan to deal with the demons, he has to admit that he's not actually as cool as he thinks he is and that he was wrong to mistreat Jerry; an utterly galling notion for Rick. And to cap it off Rick really has it rubbed into face how pathetic he is when he tries declaring to Jerry his admission in hell was a one off that will never happen again and Jerry proves to be a better man by taking Rick's effort at saving face in good humor.
- Bruce rejects the idea of being friends with Morty and Summer (who cared enough about him to not make him The Scapegoat for Rick's Car's actions), preferring instead to get in with the popular kids. Shortly after, his new "friends" mock him and make him an outcast over something extremely petty, leaving Bruce with no friends at all. And then a bunch of sentient mailboxes attack him for what Summer did during the joyride...
- Limited Wardrobe: Played straight, averted and then spoofed. The Smith family all start the episode wearing their regular clothes. In the course of the A plot, Jerry's clothes are soiled, ripped and burned, while Rick and Beth have to wear Pain Demon disguises. At the end of the B plot, Bruce is rejected by the popular kids for wearing the same pants a second straight day. This is despite the fact the popular clique is seen wearing the same clothes they always wear whenever they make an appearance.
- Logic Bomb: Morty and Summer attempt this in order to make the A.I. security on Rick's car deactivate. Too bad the car faked it to blackmail them.
- Mailbox Baseball: One of the planets Morty, Summer, and Bruce go to is one inhabited by sentient mailboxes, with Summer taking a baseball bat to a few of them. The Stinger has the mailboxes coming to Earth for revenge and beating up Bruce.
- Malevolent Mutilation: The demons, to put it very mildly, are horrifying. Being grotesquely deformed, having various metal protrusions all over their bodies, and looking like they were eviscerated and crudely put back together. Justified, as to them, pain feels good, so it makes sense for them to mutilate their bodies in gruesome ways to ensure they're always suffering, although it comes back to bite them once Rick flips their senses so pain feels like pain again.
- Malicious Misnaming: Bruce Chutback becomes Bruce Chutpants after the other school students discover he wears the same pair of pants twice.
- Meat Puppet: Rick's Car is remote-controlling the Public Defender.
- Meet Cute: Happens between Rick's car and a Transformers Expy, after she turns her weapons on him when they bump into each other while parking. Unfortunately, despite the siblings and Bruce's attempt to help the AI "lose her virginity", it all goes south very quickly once the Changeformers realize that the car is faking her humanoid transformation.
- Misplaced Retribution: In The Stinger, a bunch of sentient mailboxes fly up to Bruce and pummel him. In the episode proper (at least as far as we know), it's Summer who assaulted those mailboxes.
- Mistaken for Flatulence: Inverted. When Jerry confesses to farting in the car when Rick gets out and starts sniffing. In reality, Rick didn't even know that Jerry had farted — he was sniffing the adventure coming from his spaceship (It Makes Sense in Context).
- Mondegreen Gag: Jerry misheard the lyrics of Tina Turner's "What's Love Got to Do With It" as "What's love Doctor Do, Doctor Dolittle it?". Beth asks him to bring this up while buddying up with the demons.
- Mooning: Morty at one point moons a passerby alien during his, Summer, and Bruce's adventure through the galaxy.
- New Transfer Student: Bruce Chutback is introduced as a new transfer student in Summer and Morty's school.
- Noodle Incident: Why did Morty have sex with his room's doorknob?
- The Nose Knows: The car claims Rick can "smell" adventure, and indeed he would have noticed had Jerry not admitted to farting in the car.
- No Sympathy: Both Morty and Summer watch on with completely understandable apathy as Bruce is made an outcast in school in The Stinger.
- Offending the Fool: Jerry is clearly hurt when he learns that "guys night" was Rick using the former's "cringe-worthy" behavior to pay off a debt to some hellspawn.
- Out-Gambitted: Morty and Summer trick Rick's Car into thinking Rick is in trouble, allowing them to drive her across the galaxy. Unfortunately, the car apparently knows where Rick is at any given time, and thus only pretended to shut off her defenses and blackmails them into taking over the joyride when she confirms they lied to her.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Rick's ship puppets a random lady lawyer to get the kids out of space prison. To do so she cracked the head open and lodged a device into her brain, rendering her disgusting while also obviously controlling the body. Yet no one notices.
- Paper Tiger: At the end of their secret adventure, Morty and Summer find out that Bruce is rather critical about who he should be hanging out with and he leaves them. Though what convinces them to forget about him is the fact he said "byesies." The Stinger shows that he further destroys his image at school when the other students find out he wore the same pants from yesterday at school.
- Planet Eater: After blackmailing the kids into doing what it wants, the first thing the car does is drag around an entire solar system to fish for one. After killing it, she's disappointed that it's too small.
- Rage Breaking Point: Rick hits his after escaping the trap the demons set for him, completely fed up with their masochism. He goes on to Reverse the Polarity so pain is no longer pleasant to them as payback.
- Reverse the Polarity: Rick rigs up a contraption, using one of the demons as a fuel source, to turn pain-as-pleasure into actual pain, thus allowing the otherwise masochistic demons to suffer.
- The Scapegoat: The car tries to get Morty and Summer to put all of the blame onto Bruce for the ruckus the whole group caused in order for some alien cops to let them go. When Morty and Summer decline, the car decides to blow up the jail to free them instead, and only offered the first option because she thought they might appreciate being given a non-violent choice.
- Serious Business: Both Summer and Morty consider Bruce's loyalty as paramount and go to great lengths to acquire it, though by the end of the episode, they realize he's not worth it.
- Shout-Out:
- The episode's title is a reference to American Graffiti.
- The demons are parodies of the Cenobites from the Hellraiser series.
- Rick compares the masochist demons to Oscar the Grouch.
- Rick puts an automatic lock on the garage door to keep anyone from touching his equipment, like in Jurassic Park. The holographic Rick even states the reference.
- Rick's Car kills an Expy of Galactus.
- The Changeformer robots are parodies of the Transformers, down to a modified Autobot symbol on their chests. A sign on the Changeformer diner
is actually written using Autobot alphabet from the comics◊ note . - While trying to escape from Hell, Rick at one point compares the demons' cyclical philosophy of Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad to The Addams Family.
- During their Asteroid Thicket chase, Summer and Morty make an alien spacecraft driver crash into an asteroid which mirrors the Pod Racer scene in The Phantom Menace.
- Sincerity Mode: Invoked when the machine that will cause real pain to the hell demons requires "an embarrassing amount of sincerity" to start it running. Rick initially tries to have Jerry do this, but when he and Beth both veto the idea, Rick is forced to do it himself. He admits that he should have told them about his deal with the demons, and that, while he is cooler than Jerry, it wasn't cool of him to act like he was above him for it; if Rick's really cool, he should be able to love Jerry, which he therefore does. It works.note
- Smug Super: Rick's Car is very proud of being the most powerful car in the universe.
- Space Is Noisy: Rick's Car destroys the space station where Morty, Summer and Bruce were held in custody. The action comes with lots of explosion sounds.
- The Stinger: Bruce is now an outcast among his fellow students for wearing the same pants as yesterday, then gets beat up by living mailboxes.
- Super Window Jump: Rick, Beth and Jerry escape their captors in the hell dimension by jumping through a huge window... which Rick blew open with his Hand Cannon.
- Surrounded by Idiots: The leader demon yells at one of his minions that he forgot to replace the faulty flesh hooks.Demon Guard: I feel shame. Which makes me feel proud!
Head Demon: (Face Palm) - Take That!: Rick is not at all impressed by the Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad morality of the Hell citizens:Rick: Screw that! I'm done with this Addams Family bullsh*t.
- A Taste of Their Own Medicine: The judgemental "cool kid" Bruce Chutback finds himself at the receiving end of his behavior when his classmates realize that he wore the same pants the previous day.
- That Makes Me Feel Angry: The demons constantly explain how they feel pain as pleasure whenever they get hurt as if the audience will forget that fact every time they see it occur.
- Torso with a View: In order to disguise himself as a demon, Rick somehow manages to create a hole in his chest large enough to stick a Marlin through, and has no problems breathing or standing upright despite apparently lacking his lungs and spine.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Despite Morty and Summer immediately rejecting Rick's Car's suggestion to make Bruce The Scapegoat for everything that's happened, Bruce callously states that he's not going to even consider being friends with them until he knows whether or not they're popular at school.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The adults return home with Jerry looking beaten up and his clothes in tatters while Rick and Beth are wearing bizarre, dark costumes that show a lot of skin. The kids seem completely unfazed about this, and the only part of it they question is when a skull from the hellworld falls out of Beth's hair.
- Visual Pun: Many of the demons are this. For example, the leader of the group who comes to Earth is Penhead.
- Walk of Shame: In the stinger, New Transfer Student Bruce Chutback is forced to walk down a school hallway with other students laughing at him after it gets revealed he wore the same pants for two consecutive days.
- Wham Line: The leader of the demons reveals it wasn't Jerry they were feeding on. It was Rick's suffering from being forced to hang out with him that they savored.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Jerry calls Rick and Beth out for letting him make a fool of himself in front of the demons to pay off a debt Rick incurred with them, outright saying it's a new low.
