Rick and Jerry attempt to perform a "Freaky Friday" Flip to settle an argument about the nature of intelligence, only to horribly botch it and end up with their memories and personalities mixed together.
Tropes:
- Aesop Amnesia:
- Apparently Rick forgot about the repercussions of what happened the last time he put his mind into a body that is not his such as that episode with Tiny Rick.
- This also occurs within the span of the episode: Jerry and Rick start to respect one another while combined, but once they're returned to their original bodies they go right back to squabbling.
- Alien Blood: Like with many other aliens we've seen in this series, the blood of Chuxly and his men is purple.
- And I Must Scream: Downplayed example. Memory Rick is trapped in Jerry's brain, where he discovers escape is going to take a while since Jerry thinks everything complicated runs on gears and springs. Rather than lament his situation, he makes the best of it by living in the Smith house, making gear and spring sculptures and treating Gene like crap.
- A God Am I: Rick refers to himself as a god when discussing how The Mafia (surely) sees himself as one and that they should never be given a chance to be able to take down god (himself) so they can continue kissing his ass.
- Bait-and-Switch: After Gene returns their rake, Jerricky appears to briefly change his mind about leaving. Then nonchalantly drops it, much to the family's disappointment.
- Barred from Every Bar: Downplayed. The end of the episode shows Rick and Jerry having been barred from ever coming back to a space bar (Technically Rickbody and Jerrybody were responsible for the banning, but they no longer exist and were using Rick and Jerry's bodies in the first place).
- Be Careful What You Wish For: When Rick and Jerry accidentally get their brains mixed together, Beth is initially happy at how they are getting along much better than they usually do. Unfortunately, they take bonding together way too far, to the point of leaving their family behind to go have adventures together, and eventually even fuse themselves into a single entity who plans on leaving for good to be themselves.
- Big "OMG!": Morty shouts "Oh my god!" after the shootout starts, and then the rather stronger "Jesus fucking Christ!" when he's covered in blood spatter and pieces of gut after his dad's/grandpa's Impaled with Extreme Prejudice attack on Chuxly.
- Bloody Hilarious: Rickbody (the Rick/Jerry combo in Rick's body) using his conehead to impale Chuxly with a big grin on his face, Jerrybody happily landing front-first in the resulting pool of blood, Morty screaming in horror as he's left covered in blood and gore, and Rickbody being stuck inside Chuxly's body and needing Morty and Jerrybody to pull him out are all completely Played for Laughs.
- Blunt "Yes":Morty: Oh my god! Am I really about to die because you botched a Freaky Friday?!
Rickbody and Jerrybody: (in unison) Yes. - Bulletproof Human Shield: Jerricky grabs a couple mooks as shields to block the rest of the gang's laser fire.
- Bullying a Dragon: Chuxly initially tries to subvert this when he berates his goons who brought in Morty, knowing very well what Rick would do if he knew his grandson is in danger. He tries his best to assure Rick that Morty is perfectly fine and is even willing to throw in a bribe for good measure. But when he sees the confusing state Rick and Jerry are in when they get their minds mixed up, he decides to take the chance to try to kill them, which leads to them mowing him and his gang down. In the end, he laments this poor decision, thinking he could kill "God".
- The Bus Came Back: Memory Rick from "Rickternal Friendshine of the Rickless Mort" returns in The Stinger, ending up trapped in Jerry's mind and laments how he is unable to scrounge for parts to attempt to escape due to Jerry thinking all technology contains springs and gears.
- Calling Card: When hunting down space criminals, Rickbody and Jerrybody (who've taken to calling themselves "Burger and Fries") leave burgers in the mouths of their victims.
- Casual Danger Dialogue: Rickbody and Jerrybody find time to discuss their appreciation for the movie Coneheads while being under fire by Chuxly's men.
- Chain-Link Fence: Rickbody and Jerrybody have to climb a chain-link fence while running from a pursuing crime mob during one of their heists.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- Literally. The gun Rick hands Jerry in the opening scene ends up being used by Rick-in-Jerry's-body to commit suicide.
- The rake that Gene stole in the cold open. Jerricky ends up accidentally whacking both of his heads with it once Gene gives it back, disrupting the gestalt entity's mind merger and allowing Morty, Summer, and Beth to subdue them so they can be turned back to normal.
- Commonality Connection: What ends up making Jerrybody and Rickbody finally stop being antagonistic towards each other after the botched mind swap and start finding common ground. They both realize they love Morty, and from there, discover more and more that they are two halves of the same two people, until they decide to become a duo. They ruminate on their family being what brought them together when they're in danger again.
- Continuity Nod:
- As Jerricky prepares to leave for good, Summer asks if this is like the time "with the crows", referencing "Forgetting Sarrick Mortshall".
- Memory Rick, Rick's 35-year-old memory self who's been living inside his mind since "Rickternal Friendshine of the Rickless Mort", apparently saved Rick's and Jerry's consciousnesses inside Jerricky's mind to keep them from being permanently fused, but ends up inside Jerry's brain instead of Rick's once the two of them are properly separated back into their bodies.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- Rickbody and Jerrybody prove that Chuxly made a grave mistake by taking their scrambled state as a sign of weakness, easily cutting down all his forces during the shootout. Even Morty, with just a gun, is able to fight his way back to the ship all by himself before Chuxly grabs him.
- And once Chuxly and co. use Morty, Summer, and Beth as hostages against Burger and Fries, Jerricky (a Fusion Dance version of the two) shows up and effortlessly mows down him and his men once again without taking any damage whatsoever.
- Death of Personality: Rick and Jerry with both their brains scrambled and put in their bodies eventually realize they're original people and start calling themselves Burger and Fries. Jerricky is even more blatant about it, referring to Rick and Jerry as "them" instead of "us".
- Deus Exit Machina: Considering that Morty, Summer, and Beth have to travel the universe to different planets to search for Burger and Fries, you'd think they'd ask Space Beth, whose regular life is traveling across the universe, for help, but she doesn't appear at all in this episode. This is probably because, if she'd been there, she could have easily kicked Chuxly's and his goons' asses and prevented the family from being taken hostage, which is what gets Burger and Fries to stop their crime spree to come save them. Also justified since she's usually busy with her own adventures when she's not on Earth visiting the Smiths.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: During the climax, Chuxly gets an Alas, Poor Villain death moment in Jerricky's arms.
- Distressed Dude: Morty is captured, with his hands tied, by one of Chuxly's subordinates for selling drugs on their turf. It's downplayed, though, because once Chuxly sees who he is, he has an Oh, Crap! (realizing Rick will strike back) and promptly unties Morty, treating him more like a guest than a prisoner. Though Morty ends up as this again during the shootout when Chuxly Neck Lifts him, needing Rickbody and Jerrybody to save him.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: If Chuxly's underlings had kidnapped Morty on any other day, the whole plot would have been solved in two minutes, as Rick would have shown up and wiped out all the gangsters easily, or maybe accepted the bribe and left peacefully if he was feeling merciful. But because it just so happens to occur at the same time that Rick and Jerry screw up a "Freaky Friday" Flip, neither of them is fully Rick and both have elements of Jerry as well, and they soon provoke the gangsters' ire and end up in a dangerous shoot-out, though they do still win.
- The Dreaded: Apparently criminals all over the universe fear Rick Sanchez (and rightfully so).
- Driven to Suicide: After the mind swap, Rick in Jerry's brain and body (for some reason) blows his own brains out in horror. The garage (sorta) puts him back together after Jerry in Rick's body accidentally kills himself as well with Rick's implants.
- Dumbass Has a Point: Jerry thinks Gene stole his rake because he denied it far too quickly when asked about it. Despite Rick's dismissiveness, the midpoint of the episode shows that Jerry was absolutely right and Gene did steal it, and the latter admits when he gives it back at the end that he did so as a way to continue forcing the family to pay attention to him.
- Emerging from the Shadows: Chuxly emerges from the shadow of his shuttle when he reveals himself as alive to Morty and the rest of his family.
- Everyone Is Armed: When Rickbody, Jerrybody, and Morty fall into the alien restaurant by accident after briefly escaping from Chuxly, everyone in it points a weapon at them and starts shooting.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip:
- Defied. Rick claims that he's only swapping minds rather than switching bodies, making a comparison between hardware (the brains themselves, and the intelligence levels that come with it) and software (their minds/consciousness, which is what he actually switches).
- Further subverted after the garage has fixed the duo, as their brains have been scrambled so both bodies have parts of both minds, with Rick and Jerry retaining elements of each other while lacking parts of the original selves, such as Jerry getting Rick's paranoia, aggression, and ego, while Rick gains Jerry's empathy, curiosity, and impulsiveness. These mind-scrambled versions are called in the script "Rickbody" and "Jerrybody" before they eventually decide to go by "Burger and Fries".
- Fruit Cart: A fruit cart gets knocked over in Rickbody and Jerrybody's escape from Chuxly's goons on a crystal heist.
- Fusion Dance: Rickbody and Jerrybody decide to fuse together, surgically combining their bodies to become "Jerricky" to save their family. They also perform a Split-Personality Merge, with each of their jumbled minds joining as one and speaking in a Voice of the Legion together.
- Futile Hand Reach: Jerry in Rick's body reaches his arm out and gives a Big "NO!" to Rick in Jerry's body from across the garage when the latter is about to shoot himself in the head, to no avail.
- Genre Savvy: Morty immediately recognizes that Rick and Jerry have "botched a Freaky Friday".
- Green Rocks: Discussed when Morty tries to hide his drug dealing from Beth by claiming the crystals he's been selling could be anything, only for Chuxly to scupper that by clarifying the crystals he's dealing are specifically drugs. Burger and Fries are seen snorting them like cocaine.
- I Have Your Family:
- Chuxly's first call to Rick is very much not intended to be this, because his subordinate took Morty against his wishes and he knows Rick is likely to violently retaliate and is trying to placate him. Unfortunately for Chuxly, Rick (both versions of him in his own and Jerry's bodies) still take it as this anyway and do promptly come to confront him, inciting him to throw in a 10,000-kruton bribe as well.
- The second call, however, plays this totally straight, as Chuxly and his men have kidnapped Morty, Summer, and Beth and have them Bound and Gagged, demanding that both versions of Rick/Jerry come face him in exchange for their family's safety.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The mind-scrambled Ricks and Jerrys use Rickbody's conehead to stab Chuxly straight through the gut to make him let go of Morty. Rickbody actually gets stuck in the hole he just made and needs Jerrybody and Morty to pull him out.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: As pointed out below, Rick insists that his intelligence doesn't depend on his "hardware" (physical brain), but the result of his efforts, and decides to switch with Jerry to prove it. However, he proves to be the one incapable of dealing with the change, killing himself right after and proving Jerry's point.
- Ludicrous Gibs: Rickbody using his conehead to stab through Chuxly's chest leaves an entire pool of blood, and he, Jerrybody, and Morty end up covered in both the blood and pieces of guts and gore.
- Make Some Noise: At one point during the climactic fight against Chuxly's men, Jerricky uses sonic waves as a weapon.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: Rick hands Jerry a gun when the latter asks him to help him solve the rake issue with Gene. Jerry naturally finds that a bit much, and his criticism of Rick wasting his genius kickstarts the main plot.
- Nature vs. Nurture: When Jerry claims Rick was "born smart", Rick furiously denies that logic. He was born a screaming, crying baby same as Jerry, but he worked to become smart. He decides to prove it by swapping his consciousness with Jerry's, only to then undermine his point by killing himself less than ten seconds after the swap.
- Neck Lift: Chuxly to Morty when he grabs him during the mafia shootout. Rickbody and Jerrybody save him by stabbing Chuxly with Rickbody's conehead.
- Noodle Incident: Apparently, Morty has been regularly selling drug crystals offscreen for Rick—to Beth's complete dismay—and even claims to like doing it. This is what got him captured near the beginning by Chuxly's underling for doing so on his alien mafia's turf.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
- Infuriated by the incompetence of his addled father and grandfather, Morty grabs a gun and says he'll shoot his own way back to the ship, runs out from behind the bar, and next we see him he's fought his way up to the office. Unfortunately, his badassery is entirely offscreen, as it is at this moment that Chuxly does a Neck Lift on him.
- Memory Rick apparently fought a whole battle inside Jerricky's mind to save Rick's and Jerry's individual consciousnesses and prevent their Split-Personality Merge from being permanent. Rick even calls it a "whole action film."
- Oh, Crap!: Chuxly freaks out when he realizes his goons have grabbed Morty, treating him like a guest until Rick arrives.
- One Last Smoke: Jerricky hand the dying Chuxly a burger for a final meal. The crime boss accepts and dies after taking one bite.
- Papa Wolf:
- Invoked by Morty when one of Chuxly's men captures him while he was running an errand for Rick, warning the guy that he's made a big mistake because he knows Rick will react like this, and indeed, Chuxly panics, tries to make Morty comfortable, and attempts to kiss Rick's ass.
- Sure enough, both versions of the combined Rick-and-Jerry—whose bodies and brains each contain some parts of both of their minds—are furious to hear that Chuxly has Morty, with Rick's body calling it out as kidnapping and Jerry's body furiously threatening him not to touch his grandson. And once the attempted rescue devolves into a shootout, the two of them are able to stop fighting when they find the Commonality Connection that they both care for and want to protect Morty, and are able to start working flawlessly together for the sake of keeping him safe.
- And after they've basically ditched the family to go on adventures together as "Burger and Fries", once they learn that Chuxly has not only abducted Morty again, but this time Summer and Beth too, to use all three of them as hostages, they decide, out of love for their family, to end their current existences and fuse their minds together into one being, "Jerricky", to go rescue them.
- Parental Sexuality Squick: Inverted. Beth, nonplussed that Rick and Jerry haven't returned to their proper bodies yet and are still "Burger and Fries", refuses to allow either of them to get into bed with her until Jerry's back to his regular self. Since both men are still part-Rick, they're immediately grossed out at the thought of it.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Subverted for laughs. Chuxly's mob are rather taken aback when Jerrybody protests about Rickbody giving him a gay persona. Both even feel the need to apologise to the mob over this.
- Power Incontinence: Jerry has no idea how to mentally control Rick's implants, so he ends up bashing his head open when he accidentally activates the jet boots. When the pair are scrambled, the resulting two people using Rick's and Jerry's bodies are smarter, but the mixed-up Rickbody still can't quite control the implants properly, forcing Jerrybody to manually activate the boots with a fork.
- Rake Take: Before trying to leave into space, Jerricky steps on his own rake, causing both Rick's and Jerry's original personalities to wake up and get the family to help rescue them.
- Reasonable Authority Figure:
- Chuxly is about as reasonable as a mob boss can get. He doesn't spend a lot of time berating his subordinate for making the mistake of bringing in Morty Smith. He tries his best to keep Morty comfortable and make it seem to Rick as if the situation he is in is just one big misunderstanding. He even attempts to just bribe Rick with a fortune of drug crystals to let them off of the hook. The only mistake he makes is reverting back to the usual Mafia Boss tactics when he senses Rickbody and Jerrybody might be weaker together than Rick Sanchez is whole, a mistake he pays for with his life, but even then, he only blames himself for making that roll of the dice against Rick in the first place, and recognizes that he lost.
- Jerrybody is initially this. While instantly rushing in to rescue Morty over his incident with Chuxly, he is willing to accept their excuse and politely take their original barter of 100 crystals and leave with Morty as quick as possible rather than haggle for extra like Rickbody, and similarly only resorts to blasting people when both Chuxly's mob and the restaurant try to attack them first.
- Scenery Censor: Rickbody and Jerrybody snorting crystals is blocked by conveniently placed objects right in front of them.
- Sheet of Glass: Rickbody and Jerrybody, now fully embracing their new "Burger and Fries" personas, break through a sheet of glass when escaping from a gang of aliens chasing them. It was a dying kid's wish, for some reason.
- Shovel Strike: During one of their heists, Jerrybody offs a criminal with a shovel.
- Shown Their W Ork: "Mind is what the brain does" is part of the current medical lexicon (consciousness is a product of the complex physical process of the squidgy pudding that is brain). Rick makes it a point to say he will not be doing a "Freaky Friday" Flip, but instead swapping minds, not brains.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Gene doesn't even properly appear until the end of the episode (minus being briefly seen through binoculars at the midpoint), but him stealing the Smiths' rake is what indirectly kicks off the entire adventure for the episode.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: "We Are Gonna Be Friends" plays while Rickbody and Jerrybody kick ass as their new personas, "Burger and Fries". Ironic, considering the violence, but appropriate in regards to Jerry and Rick's relationship in this episode.
- Split-Personality Merge: The Jerricky fusion also combines the shattered minds of Rick and Jerry into a single consciousness, at least until they step on a rake and wake the originals up.
- The Stinger: 35-year-old Memory Rick navigates Jerry's mind looking for parts, but is stymied by the fact that Jerry envisions all technology to run on gears and springs, so he just builds sculptures out of them.
- This Is Gonna Suck: The garage AI scans the room to find Rick and Jerry dead, and their brains splattered all over some nearby shelves. Owing to the mind swap, when she scans the brain pieces, she can't tell what's Rick and what's Jerry.Garage: There goes my Thursday.
- Torso with a View: Chuxly gets a hole gouged through his stomach, but is patched up and is able to survive for a while despite the visible hole. Then he dies from blood loss at the end of the Final Battle because he pulled his stitches.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Thanks to spending so much time hanging out with Rick, Morty is apparently now on his way to becoming a full-blown criminal; selling drugs, garnering contacts in the underworld, and unconcernedly shooting his way out of situations. Nobody even comments on this, apart from Beth who seems disappointed about the drug dealing part.
- Unwilling Suspension: Chuxly has Morty, Beth, and Summer suspended over an Acid Pool.
- Use Your Head: Rickbody and Jerrybody defeat Chuxly the mob boss by having Rickbody grow a Conehead and then having Jerrybody rocket his body through Chuxly's stomach like a missile. Somehow, he doesn't die from blood loss from this until the end of the episode.
- Villain Ball: Despite being terrified of Rick's wrath, Chuxly manages to quickly placate Rickbody and Jerrybody and convince them Morty's "kidnapping" was a misunderstanding, only to become brazen when he notices them bickering and senses a moment of weakness to ambush Rick. He acknowledges this was a mistake in the end.
- Villains Never Lie: Beth asks Chuxly if Morty sells drugs for Rick, hoping that he would actually be honest with her. He is, as when Morty tries to downplay it by saying, "Crystals can be anything!", Chuxly clarifies that these particular crystals are indeed drugs.
- Voice of the Legion: Jerricky has the heads of both Rick and Jerry, and both heads speak all of Jerricky's lines in unison with both voices.
- Voiceover Letter: After Rick and Jerry leave to have their own adventures, Summer wonders if they should read it in either of their voices. Beth opts to read it aloud.
- Workaholic: Chuxly didn't give himself time to heal from his grievous injury through his stomach and defends his priority to try to screw Rick by saying he's a workaholic.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Morty's reaction once he gets the gist of what's going on with "Rick" and "Jerry".Morty: What have you two assholes done?! ... Am I really about to die because you botched a Freaky Friday?!
