Original air date: 8/1/2021 note
Summer enables Rick's addiction to collecting giant combining robots, and the family becomes The Family.
Tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Rick is at his worst here. He starts by getting Summer to boob world, but only since she counts as a free ticket, and has no issue telling her that. Then he immediately cancels the plan, despite having promised Morty, once he finds something that interests him more, and when confronted by Morty about how he promised he would have let Morty chose he even guilt-trips him by saying Morty was breaking his heart. While the family is at first happy to be brought in his hobby, it's quickly obvious he doesn't care about it in the slightest and starts leaving them behind to pursue his obsession, quickly discarding them in favor of total strangers just to speed things up, eventually kicking out even Summer, despite her utmost loyalty to him through the episode.
- Abusive Offspring: Summer through the whole episode, first using emotional blackmail to rope her family into Rick's project, then demeaning them and firing them as soon as they begin to raise even the slightest question and don't feed their ego anymore. Finding herself on the receiving end of the same treatment, she guilt-trips her parents and Morty into easy forgiveness telling the story of the incest baby and how she felt like she had no one, despite her never trying to ask for help before. It doesn't help that she doesn't try to express sympathy for the incest baby or defend it the other times his existence is brought back in the episode, only treating him as a people when it becomes her "get out of jail for free" card.
- Acquired Situational Narcissism: Summer enabling Rick's habits results in her becoming Rick's favorite, which starts to make her act like a bitch and alienate the rest of her family.
- Alliance of Alternates: Rick forms one with alternate Ricks and their families to combine their GoTron collections and make even bigger GoTron Mechs. The end result ends up strongly resembling a mafia crime family, especially with Rick's alternate selves having personality and appearance quirks that wouldn't be too out of place in such a setting. Averted with Morty, who feels alienated from his alternate counterparts because they've all gone to Boobworld and he hasn't.
- An Aesop:
- You can't stay at the top forever and if you have to be a worse version of yourself to get there then maybe you were never really at the top to start with.
- Animesque: The GoTron pilots play this straight, from Big Anime Eyes to anime-style expressions. They try to reclaim the robot ferrets from Rick near to end of the episode since, as Kendra lampshades, they are literally designed for the role of their pilots.
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: Somehow, Naruto can move and breathe in space.
- Big Anime Eyes: Kendra has these. Lampshaded by Morty when he describes her to his family.
- Bilingual Bonus: In this Japanese-anime-inspired episode, the "GoTrons" are made up of five smaller mechs (originally driven by the five members of the Smith-Sanchez family) that assemble together to make a larger one. "Go" means "five" in Japanese.
- Bittersweet Ending: The family goes back to normal, except Morty's voiceover explains they don't care about destroying giant bugs anymore, who kill millions of people every day.
- Blunt "Yes": Morty frustratingly throws this at Rick a couple of times when asked if going to Boobworld is more important than collecting the GoTron ferrets. Not that it matters to Rick, but it's not the first time Morty is denied a trip to the theme park.
- Both Sides Have a Point: Morty is right to ask why the GoTron Ferrets were scattered and buried across the universe if they are so culturally significant to their pilots. The pilots never answer if they were or weren't looking for them, since they only contacted him after the Smith family became pretty high profile using them again. That said, their accusations of cultural appropriation aren't too shallow, because Rick is ultimately only using them for self-gratification, after the deaths or outright murders of the previous pilots, with none of the motives they were created with or understanding past being a cool project.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Summer is excited about getting her first own Inner Monologue. The last scene reveals that her and Morty's voiceovers were caused by parasites called Voiceovaerians.
- Brick Joke: Throughout the episode, Morty and Summer frequently narrate their feelings or whatever was going on in the episode (with the two of them actually being able to hear each other's voiceovers). At the very end of the episode, it's revealed that the siblings had parasites called "Voiceovarians" inside their skulls, which Rick exterminates in disgust.
- Briefcase Full of Money: A briefcase full of Boob Bucks is offered to Morty in exchange for betraying his family. He declines the offer despite how he was treated all episode.
- Call-Back:
- Morty's trip to Boob World.
- Beth uses the giant incest baby as an excuse not to do a family activity together. Hot-headed Rick uses it as an excuse to convince the other Ricks to refuse an alliance.
- Following the above, Summer angrily and jokingly brings up her baby, the fact Beth may or may not be a clone, and that she knows her parents wanted to abort her.
- Celebrity Paradox: An earlier episode had an explicit Voltron reference, making the In-Universe existence of the GoTrons this.
- Cement Shoes: The fate given to one of the monsters, keeping with the mafia theme. Given that the monster is based on a centipede, it takes a lot of shoes to complete the job.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Morty's and Summer's giant incest baby, from "Rickdependence Spray", was shot up into space shortly after the egg was conceived. Rather than a one-off from that episode's stinger, he returns to help Summer and Morty save the day, and it's revealed that Summer named him "Naruto" after she freed him from the US government.
- Collector of the Strange: Rick and many of his alternates collect GoTron Ferret Mechs in the hopes of being able to form the combined GoTron Mech with the complete collection, entirely for the awesomeness of piloting one against giant monsters. Accomplishing this, he and Summer later bring alternate versions of the Smith family to help complete their own GoTrons by any means necessary. After facing the consequences of being Drunk with Power, he finally gets over his obsession.
- Combining Mecha: The GoTron which is an affectionate parody of Voltron, taken up a notch when the alternate Smith Families gather their own GoTrons to form their own GoTron Mechs, so Rick can modify them to fuse into an even larger "GoGoTron". At the climax of the episode, Rick Sanchez' operation was able to acquire enough GoTrons to fuse those GoGoTrons into a single ridiculously large GoGoGoTron.
- Corrupted Character Copy: Like the Tina-teers, the GoTron pilots aren't really the heroes they claim to be when push comes to shove and try to outright murder the Smiths, specifically Rick, simply to reclaim their robots.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- The GoTron mech easily defeats the bug monsters, and it only gets easier when Rick makes the GoGoTron.
- Ironically, the biggest, baddest GoGoGoTron is nothing compared to Naruto, the giant incest space baby, who tears the mech apart in just a few swipes.
- Cure for Cancer: According to the post-credit scene the monsters are trying to spread the cure for AIDS, which consists of at least one part lemon juice, four bay leaves and a pinch of sea salt.
- Dare to Be Badass: Summer delivers a speech to motivate her parents to join the GoTron project. Rick is impressed with her performance.
- Didn't Think This Through: Invoked by Morty upon bringing Naruto to save Rick against a GoTron equipped with a laser sword. Luckily, the baby is too big to be threatened by such matters.
- Dig Your Own Grave: During one of the montages, we see the Smith family during an homage to mafia movies, with GoTron forcing two giant space bugs to literally dig their own graves. One is already dead, but the other just finishes digging with a giant shovel, at which point they promptly shoot him.
- Drunk with Power: Rick goes through this literally and figuratively after managing to complete the GoTron robot, further enabled by Summer. Summer is not much better, as Rick's approval has her Took a Level in Jerkass.
- Easily Forgiven: Morty holds no grudge against his parents after Summer fires them and is implicitly the same way with his sister once she gets fired. He lampshades that his parents will be the same way in just a bit and is proven right when Summer gets fired and they instantly go from pissed off at her to comforting her over it. Rick doesn't get off quite as easily but the family does go to rescue him and there's little vitriol between everyone once everything is over with.
- Entitled to Have You: The surviving GoTron pilots view Rick's operation and ownership of the GoTron Mechs as an affront to them on the grounds of "appropriation". Even though we're shown the Sanchez family killing alternate universe pilots to acquire their mechs, Morty rightfully points out the mechs of this universe were found scattered and buried. They deflect with the aforementioned accusations of appropriation, so their claim is rather dubious as well.Black Pilot: We're the rightful owners of these Mechs.
Morty: Than why were they scattered and buried across the universe?
Kendra: We mean in a more general, cultural sense.
Yellow Pilot: What your Grandpa did is called "Appropriation". Not cool! - Escaped from the Lab: It turns out that the giant incest baby roaming in space was captured by the US government. Originally intended to be used as a bioweapon, he escaped from the secret lab on Mars thanks to Summer.
- Everyone Has Standards: Morty is offered a bribe to turn against his family and return the GoTron robots to their rightful owners (at least the ones who survived), but declines the offer. His family treated him like crap, but decides not to betray them regardless. The pilots admit that if he was part of their team, they would have rewarded him for honor instead of attempting to kill him right there.
- Eye Am Watching You: Summer pulls this gesture on her brother after taking his position as Rick's sidekick.
- Expy: GoTron is a ferret-themed parody of the original lion-motif Voltron/GoLion. Like the latter, the former is scattered to five separate areas until they are needed for battle.
- Flag Diaper: Naruto Smith is no longer naked and was given a patriotic diaper by the U.S. government.
- Foreshadowing: The benevolent nature of the giant space bugs is foreshadowed in the very first appearance. While the bug is standing very close to the bridge, it isn't actually bothering anyone on it, and it isn't even trying to be destructive.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Summer's incest baby is still wearing the wristband the government gave him.WEAPON I
META 80085
MADE IN LAS VEGAS - Freudian Excuse: Summer admits that the reason she kept butt-kissing Rick throughout the episode was that she feels like the odd one out who doesn't have another family member to connect to (Beth and Jerry are a married couple while Morty serves as something of a Morality Chain to Rick). This is also the reason why Summer grew attached to the giant incest baby despite being just as uncomfortable as everybody else was about its existence.
- Genre Savvy: Summer, apparently, has watched enough anime to know that children aren't immune to antagonists attacking them, or how badass they are to kick butt.Beth: They're not actually gonna attack a space baby, are they?
Summer: I never thought I'd be the one to say this, but you need to watch more anime, mom. - Genre Shift: What originally started for Ricks' family as a generic Sentai vs. Kaiju Episode, quickly turned into a Crime Family drama just several minutes later.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: As far as the anime team are concerned, the Smith family having a truly enormous (dwarfing even GoGoGoTron) incest space baby is this.
- Girl Friday: Summer assumes this role for Rick.
- Hero of Another Story: Possibly. Kendra, the Black and Yellow GoTron Pilots who claimed they were the original Team GoTron in this dimension (a team that was likely broken by the death/disappearance of the original Blue GoTron Pilot and the Blue GoTron Ferret that started the plot of the episode). With the acquisition of the Blue GoTron Ferret and the other four GoTron Ferrets, it saw Team GoTron mobilizing to kill off the Sanchez Family in order to reclaim their mechs.
- His Name Is...: In The Stinger, the alien arriving on Earth gets Killed Mid-Sentence before it can finish reciting all ingredients for the remedy against AIDS. Not that anyone would have understood it to begin with.
- Humongous Mecha: The titular GoTron Ferrets, which are five multi-colored ferret-shaped mechs that can combine into a single humanoid GoTron mech. Summer and Rick form a crime family-style operation with other Ricks to complete their own GoTron collections so Rick-C137 can modify their GoTrons to combine to form an even larger GoGoTron (made up of 25 of the smaller GoTron Ferrets). Near the climax, Rick has made five GoGoTron mechs and modified them to form a super-massive GoGoGoTron (125 GoTron ferrets), with the resulting cockpits being the size of a hotel lobby. Even with all that size, the resulting GoGoGoTron mech is barely larger than Naruto Smith's arm.
- Hypocrite: Morty spends the episode complaining about how he is mistreated and discarded once he is not useful anymore, but he had no problem treating Summer that way at the beginning of the episode, only showing issues with how Rick acts once he starts getting the short end of the stick.
- Hypocritical Humor: At the end of the episode, Morty tells the audience in a voiceover about how family always comes first. This despite him and the rest of the family forgetting they left Jerry outside the barricaded house when a monster starts attacking.
- Inner Monologue Conversation: Summer's Inner Monologue interrupts Morty's once she begins taking focus for enabling Rick's desires, making his question if she can hear his inner monologue. Her voiceover denies it, because that's telepathy, not a voiceover. The two voices clash and interact with one another until Rick puts a stop to it, revealing that a pair of "Voiceovarians" parasites are the culprits before killing them.
- Jerkass Ball: Pretty much the whole Smith family (even Morty, who acts as the Only Sane Man through most of the episode, is first shown ok to use Summer just to get to boob world for free and loudly complains about how he is annoyed they can't just kick her out once they get the free pass) once they start piloting the GoTrons, though they snap out of it by the end of the episode.
- Kill the Poor: Apparently the Smith family got paid a large sum of money by "the Deep State" to stomp on a trailer park, offscreen. Beth gives Morty the money as a severance pay of sorts.
- Kirk's Rock: The rock formations on the moon early on where they find the blue GoTron Ferret, as well as the ocean area of the red Ferret later on, look suspiciously like the original Kirk's Rock.
- Language Barrier: The giant bugs only want to tell people the cure for AIDS, but no one speaks Buganese. One of the bugs brings this up before they travel to their destination.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Summer got her brother fired in order to be Rick's favorite, causing her to be horrible and fire her parents as well, only to then be fired herself by Rick.
- Leader Forms the Head: When the family first assembles a Go-Tron, Rick pilots from the head. Later, when they start combining Go-Trons from multiple universes and turn it into a lucrative business, each family member's position in the mecha's members' members mirrors their position in the organisation's hierarchy, with Rick at the top.Rick (to Summer): The head of my right arm.Morty's Voiceover: Me? I ended up the left foot of the left foot.
- Mecha Expansion Pack: As part of "The Family" business, Rick utilizes the ferrets of other realities to combine five GoTrons into an even larger GoGoTron, and then combine five of those GoGoTrons into the massive GoGoGoTron.
- Morality Chain: At some point, Morty was appointed as this for Rick so that he doesn't let his adventures spiral out of control. Unfortunately, Summer conspired to replace him as a Toxic Friend Influence that enables him, resulting in the disaster the episode devolves into.
- Motherly Scientist: Justified. The military forces Summer to train her giant baby into becoming a Tyke Bomb. However, despite the knowledge of him being born from her enlarged egg fertilized by Morty's mutant sperm, she starts developing feelings for her offspring and ultimately helps it escape.
- Naked on Arrival: The Insectoid Alien arriving on Earth in The Stinger is ashamed of being stripped off its uniform, though it valiantly tries to complete its mission before being blown up.
- Name-Tron: The GoTron and its derivatives.
- Never My Fault: In typical Rick fashion once the GoTron thing inevitably turns sour, largely from his own antics mind you, Rick goes from a fanboy about the robots to bitterly deriding and insulting them. The implication here is that he's blasting the mechs rather than concede he's the one who screwed things up.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: When Morty gets briefly kidnapped by the real GoTron pilots, he refuses to betray his family to them despite them treating him like crap the whole episode, resulting in him getting tossed out of the car and having to walk back. When he gets there, the family blames him for the rampage of Hothead Rick and the death of Little Ricky because he was gone (despite this being completely out of his control), and Rick fires him.
- Non-Standard Character Design: The real GoTron pilots have cleaner and slightly detailed animesque designs, unlike the more heavily simplistic designs that the rest of the human characters sport, though it is a deliberate choice since they're anime parodies.
- Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: An entirely literal Misunderstanding. It is revealed in The Stinger at the end that the various Kaiju that are seen and talked about destroying millions of lives throughout the cosmos that the GoTrons were fighting against turned out to be "Normal-Sized Bugs" that have been traveling through interdimensional portals to try and teach the "Tiny People" on the other side how to effectively cure AIDS. It's just that their version of interdimensional travel unknowingly causes the Bugs to appear as Kaiju and become unintelligible.
- Not So Above It All: While Beth is usually exasperated by Jerry's antics and sense of humor when he comes up with the idea of killing themselves so they can get to hell before Summer in order to surprise her at the door when she gets there, she actually likes the idea quite a bit.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: The incident with the creation of the Giant Incest Space Baby is brought up by one of Rick's alternative selves causing Rick to ask whether they are ever gonna live it down. Beth and Jerry also bring it up.
- Only Sane Man: Morty for the rest of the Smith-Sanchez family once they become GoTron pilots. He tries to do his appointed job of being Rick's Morality Chain until Summer gets him fired, and when Beth and Jerry are angry with Summer for firing them and talk about wanting to kill her, Morty lampshades how negatively they've all been affected by the GoTron incident, but adds that reality will set back in soon and they'll drop their grudge against Summer (which happens just seconds later when she returns home after being fired as well).
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- Beth is surprised when Rick wants to use the GoTrons to go save an alien world, noting that he can barely be bothered to care about Earth on most days.
- Jerry is usually apathetic, dismissive or upset about the various sci-fi shenanigans that happen in his life but he actually has the time of his life piloting one of the GoTrons and wants to stay a part of Rick's latest scheme. A good way of showing just how corruptive the lifestyle and Rick's approval really are this episode.
- Otherworldly Communication Failure: Played for laughs while parodying Mech vs. Beast-type shows. The post-credit scene reveals that the giant alien bugs that routinely attack the world are actually sapient and entirely benevolent, having come to Earth to help humanity cure AIDS. Unfortunately, their language sounds like roars of anger, the portal disintegrates their clothing, and their world is comparatively gigantic.
- Parental Favoritism: It all starts when Summer supports Rick's obsession for GoTrons and she gains his favor over Morty being against it.
- Pastiche: The GoTron Lock-and-Load Montage and Transformation Sequence are done as in GoLion
and Voltron. Same goes for the corny 1980s soundtrack. - People Puppet: Summer controls Naruto by pulling strands of his hair.
- Person of Mass Destruction: Summer explains how the military tried to turn their giant incest baby into this.
- Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Rick before kicking Kendra into space:"Welcome to the Smith family!"
- Precision F-Strike: Summer and an alternate Jerry throw this at each other.
- Purple Is Powerful: The Black Ferret has a strong purple undertone and lighting, and since it's always the head of a Go-Tron, sporting the black-and white suit in a purple-lit Go-Ferret is a shorthand to being either The Don (Rick), The Dragon (Summer) or just a section's capo.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: The surviving GoTron pilots believing that Rick should not have access to the GoTron ferrets is given a shallow reasoning of "Cultural Appropriation", but the fact that Rick has turned into a Mafia-style boss obsessed with obtaining and combining ever-larger numbers of ferrets — which entails stealing them from other universes and killing the rightful pilots in some cases — while also treating everyone around him as expendable shows Rick shouldn't be trusted with them regardless.
- "Rise and Fall" Gangster Arc: Parodied. Rick's obsessive collection of GoTron ferrets to make ever-larger combining robots is portrayed like a crime drama, complete with Rick making deals with "the heads of the other families" (alternate-universe versions of himself, each representing a different crime boss stereotype), Morty and Summer providing narrative voiceover or the parasites in their heads doing so, anyway, and the various multiversal Sanchez families' lives growing increasingly opulent as the inevitable fall approaches. Things implode violently at the end when Rick unwisely hires on the original GoTron pilots, who are out for revenge and attempt to hijack Rick's ridiculously oversized GoGoGoTron combiner.
- Rule of Cool: The entire Smith family gets sold on piloting the GoTrons after experiencing the awesomeness of piloting the combined mech against giant monsters.
- Running Gag: Morty is once more denied a trip to Boob World. As if to twist his arm further, his alternate selves, who also become GoTron pilots, had gone to the amusement park.
- Sequel Episode: To "Rickdependence Spray", where the Smith family uses the Giant Incest Baby created in that episode to rescue Rick.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog Story: The New Blue GoTron Pilot seen at the end of the episode working with Kendra was probably brought in as a replacement following the untimely death of the original Blue Pilot, only for her to wind up getting blown into the vacuum of space following an attack by Naruto Smith.
- Shout-Out:
- The episode is basically parodying GoLion and Voltron with GoodFellas thrown into the mix.
- One particular shout out to GoLion is at the beginning of the episode, Rick, Morty, and Summer find the Blue Ferret, and Rick promptly dumps the corpse out the cockpit. This is a reference to Takashi Shirogane's fate in GoLion, where he was killed early in the series, and then had a Suspiciously Similar Substitute in the form of Ryo (Sven from Voltron was Spared by the Adaptation, and Takeshi and Ryo were made into a Composite Character).
- The concept of combining already combined giant robots to form an even bigger giant robot is similar to Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
- After their first GoTron adventure, Beth jokes that she "was a foot", which is a joke made in Voltron: Legendary Defender
- The episode's title is a clear reference to Neon Genesis Evangelion.
- Continuing with the anime theme of the episode, Summer has named her and Morty's giant incest baby "Naruto".
- The various mafia Ricks are based on Don Corleone and his children Sonny and Fredo, as well as on and Tony Montana.
- Speaking of Scarface, Rick decks out the interior of his ferret like Tony Montana's mansion. When the other pilots attack him, he recreates the "Say hello to my little friend" scene.
- Rick, Summer, and Morty shouting "Go Team GoTron" in unison is reminiscent of The Venture Bros. rallying cheer of "Go Team Venture!"
- The theme of family overcoming every obstacle, even their own egos, is not unlike The Fast and the Furious franchise.
- Summer stands on her giant baby's head and controls him by pulling two strands of his hair, the same thing that Rémy the rat did to Linguini in Ratatouille.
- Rick wants to be shown all the blueprints, shown ALL the blueprints!
- Single-Stroke Battle: The first battle the Smith GoTron fights against a giant Insectoid Alien is done in this fashion, with a single stroke deciding the bug's fate.
- Spiteful Spit: Hot Head Rick spits on the floor after telling Rick in no uncertain terms that he won't join his cause.
- Standard Snippet: Also sprach Zarathustra plays when the giant space baby floats in at the end to save the day for our heroes.
- The Starscream: Kendra, one of the original Red GoTron Pilots, disguises herself and her GoTron team as workers from a Temp Agency to help out Rick in his GoTron Operation after having pushed out the rest of Ricks' family from the operation all in order to complete the GoGoGoTron and assassinate Rick Sanchez afterwards.
- The Stinger: The monsters are revealed to be peaceful explorers from another world trying to spread the cure for AIDS. Unfortunately, going through the portal strips them naked and they're gigantic, plus they've been instructed to scream loudly to make sure they're understood, which isn't helped by the fact that their language is incomprehensible to others. They don't get why no one ever comes back.
- Suicide Mission: The instructor briefing the Insectoid Aliens in The Stinger on their mission notes that no one has ever returned from it.
- Summon Bigger Fish: To combat the GoTron pilots seizing control of the GoGoGoTron, the Smiths bring in Summer and Morty's giant incest space baby, which completely dwarfs the exponentially combined mecha in size and utterly trounces it with ease.note .
- Take That!:
- Morty and Summer compare bringing Summer to Boobworld for free entry (due to rebranding in response to non-specific protests) to bringing a specially marked Coca-Cola can to Six Flags for a discounted entry.
- The original GoTron pilots justifying that Rick should not have access to the GoTron ferrets merely because of "Cultural Appropriation" despite Morty pointing out the first five GoTron ferrets found were left scattered and buried is a jab at those who are quick to use the accusation of "Cultural Appropriation" for works without fully considering the circumstances linked to the work (getting input from members of that culture, the writers properly researching the culture, etc.).
- If you look carefully at the magazine Kendra reads, the magazine says Gundumb, complete with RX-78 head.
- Tempting Fate: The instructor in the stinger:"It's not like interdimensional travel strips us of our clothes and makes us screaming monsters."
- Thicker Than Water: The Smith Family are very forgiving of the various slights and betrayals they commit against each other in this episode because they are family and the implication is that this is why throughout the series they're so willing to keep Rick in their lives.
- This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: Morty throws this at Summer once as she continues to treat him like dirt.Morty: Bitch! When are you going to stop breaking my balls?! You win, okay?!
- Toxic Friend Influence: Summer gains Rick's favor by going along with anything he wants and enabling his worst habits, even getting her brother fired from being Rick's Morality Chain and later firing her parents as well. She snaps out of it after Rick eventually fires her, too.
- Twinkle Smile: Whenever Kendra smiles, there's an audible sparkly noise that plays. Summer gets annoyed by it.
- Tyke Bomb: Naruto Smith, Morty and Summers' space-dwelling incest baby, was originally captured by the government and sent to a secret base on Mars to turn him into one of these. Summer was brought in to try and tame him, only for her to bond with and later help him escape.
- The Unfavorite: Morty is on the receiving end for undermining Rick's obsession for GoTrons while Summer gets all the praises, though Morty knew full well that it was bound to fail in the end eventually.
- Verbal Tic: The real GoTron pilots have a weird way of finishing their sentences, similar to early localization for anime like Speed Racer. Lampshaded by Morty:"[She] ends sentences with weird sounds that don't fit?"
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: After being fired and replaced by Rick, Summer runs crying to the rest of the family, apologizing that she got addicted to making him happy. Beth consoles her with the fact that Rick fosters an obsession with making him happy because he's so hard to please. Jerry adds that conversely, because he's so easy to make happy no one could give a shit if he is. The episode deconstructs the trope. Because Rick is so difficult to please, people treat it as an achievement when they manage to gain his praise but, as Morty points out, as nice as it is to gain his acknowledgment it's not indicative of your character or capabilities. Rick is a petty and capricious jackass whose interests are so bizarre and random that it's a coin toss if anything that anyone does will impress him or not. Even if you do manage to get any praise, it doesn't mean he actually holds you in any sort of regard and he'll drop anything the second something more interesting comes along. He'll gladly turn right around and denigrate whatever he's praising the moment it's more convenient or entertaining for him to do so, showing that as difficult as it is to gain any sort of approval from Rick, there's still little value in it because he truly doesn't value the people or things he's giving compliments to. It's especially unhealthy because Rick's interests usually lend themselves to amoral and dangerous behavior, so chasing after his respect is likely to make you a worse person with nothing to show for it in the end.
- What You Are in the Dark: The (supposedly) rightful GoTron Pilots want Morty to betray his family and help them take over the operation from the inside, even offering him Boob Bucks from Boobworld as an incentive. Despite the way his family treated him throughout the episode and the owners assuring him that nobody will know it was him, Morty refuses, citing that Summer is still his sister.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Spoofed. In response to Summer's assumed pregnancy, Jerry asks which state they are actually in.
- The Worf Barrage: Lampshaded when Rick insists on having the five individual GoTron Ferrets attack the monster to no effect because it will make the big payoff when they combine that much sweeter.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: This is Kendra's reaction to the fact that the Smiths just happen to have a giant incest baby on standby.Rick: Welcome to the Smith family.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: A non-fatal example when Rick fires Summer. Despite Summer agreeing with him through the whole episode and encouraging his behavior, as soon as Kendra enters the picture and provides useful recruitment from outside the family, Rick doesn't hesitate in cutting Summer loose. He just looks annoyed when Summer doesn't pick up on the fact that she is being replaced by Kendra until he outright tells her she's fired.
