Rick And Morty / Tropes Q to Z

Rick and Morty Trope Examples
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Q-R

• Rain of Blood: The result of Reuben's enlarged corpse exploding in "Anatomy Park".
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: As mentioned under "Black Comedy Rape," the show has a strict rule regarding this subject, both In-Universe and among the writers: comments about rape can be jokes, but depictions are treated 100% seriously, regardless of gender. Even when the would-be rapist is an anthropomorphic jelly bean.
• Raptor Attack: Photography Raptor from "Total Rickall" is your standard oversized Jurassic Park raptor covered in scales instead of feathers. Justified, in that he's an alien parasite in the guise of a velociraptor.
• Rated M for Manly:
  • Alien Invasion Tomato Monster Mexican Armada Brothers Who Are Just Regular Brothers Running In A Van From An Asteroid And All Sorts Of Things: The Movie. (Or, just Two Brothers.) The sequel Three Brothers, though never shown, likely matches or exceeds the manliness level of the original.
  • Ball Fondlers.
• Real Fake Door: The Trope Namer is Rixty Minutes, where one advert is for "Real Fake Doors", doors that just open to a wall.
• Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: Averted. Characters surprisingly speak realistically, filled with stutters, mumbling, and belching. Some of the alternate-dimension TV especially falls into this, with Harmon and Roiland improvising it on the spot.
• Real Trailer, Fake Movie:
  • One episode had a trailer for "Alien Invasion Tomato Monster Mexican Armada Brothers Who Are Just Regular Brothers Running In A Van From An Asteroid And All Sorts Of Things: The Movie", alternatively titled "Two Brothers."
  • In that same episode, a trailer for "Weekend at Dead Cat Lady's House II", written and directed by Alternate Universe Jerry.
• Recursive Reality:
  • In "M. Night Shaym-Aliens!", some aliens try to trick Rick into giving away his formula for concentrated dark matter by trapping him in a multi-layered simulation.
  • In "The Ricks Must Be Crazy" it's revealed that Rick's spaceship is powered by a small universe. It turns out that a scientist in that universe is also developing a smaller universe to use as a power source. Then it turns out that a scientist in that universe is also developing an even smaller universe to use as a power source...
• Red and Black Totalitarianism: In "Edge of Tomorty: Rick, Die, Repeat", when Rick dies and Operation Phoenix reroutes him to other universes, those universes turn out to be fascist empires, complete with red and black flags and symbols.
• Red Herring: In "Total Rickall" The concept of "mind parasites", creatures that telepathically insert false memories into people to convince them that they know the person, and can therefore trust them, is introduced during the cold open shortly before we meet a never-before-seen character, Mr. Poopybutthole. The intro then shows Mr. Poopybutthole throughout the entire sequence, spliced into every scene as if he was always a main character. Finally, at the end of the episode, Mr. Poopybutthole sits down with the family after they have slaughtered dozens of mind parasites, and Beth, remembering only good memories of the character, fires a blast at his chest...only to have red blood gush out like a gunshot wound instead of dissolving the disguise and causing the "parasite" to explode. The Stinger reveals Mr. Poopybutthole survived and is now undergoing physical therapy, and is not pressing charges, but does not wish to associate himself with the Smiths anymore.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Rick is a mercurial and self-centered alcoholic with a very strange set of priorities. He has the technology to become extremely rich and powerful but doesn't seem to care. The fact that he's technically in hiding from the Galactic Federation might be at least partially responsible. His occasional profit schemes tend to be subverted in some way:
  • Rick opens a store that removes the curses from magical items that Satan has been giving people. As soon as Satan admits defeat, Rick loses interest in the whole thing, not even caring that the store seemed to be making a good profit.
  • He gets a bunch of money from an underworld deal so that he can blow all of his profits at Blips and Chitz, an arcade.
  • He drunkenly rambles about cornering the market on Nintendo 3DS consoles, which never goes anywhere, then turns to the audience and asks Nintendo to send him free stuff.
  • Justified in the episode Rickmurai Jack. Rick's every decision for decades was focused on his end goal of avenging his family. He invented portal tech to hunt down Weird Rick, he built weapons, clone backups, energy shields, vehicles, etc all to defend himself and aid his goal. Even waging war on the Gromflamite Federation was a means to an end of recruiting Bird Person to assist him. Then he discovered Weird Rick's home dimension, only to find even there his target was absent. He evidently lost the will and motivation to keep pursuing Weird Rick and opted to settle in the dimension and see if Weird Rick would return
• Remember the New Guy?:
  • Mr. Nimbus is apparently Rick's arch-enemy, yet he only appears in season 5's "Mort Dinner Rick Andre" and was never mentioned before. Funnily enough, the Smith family didn't know about him either. Out of universe, the writers planned to introduce the character in earlier episodes and give him more backstory, but didn't manage to do so for one reason or another.
  • The infamous "Rickdependence Spray" introduces the CHUDs, a race of anthropomorphic horses who have been living in a medieval-style society under the Earth's surface for a long time, are violent and apparently a threat to the human race, and Rick even had an affair with a female of their race. Despite this, they were never mentioned before and probably won't be again. Out of universe, the episode had a Troubled Production and CHUDs were not introduced until later versions of the script, and this might explain the inconsistencies.
• Replacement Goldfish: Rick and Morty, (along with the other Smiths at times) hop into new dimensions every few seasons thanks to destroying whatever version of Earth they're on at the time… meaning every single reoccurring character that appears after each dimension-hop is actually a different person. Not that it matters in the long run though since they essentially share the same history as their other versions.
• Reset Button: An incredibly grim example appears in "Rick Potion #9". When Rick's cure irreversibly turns everyone into monsters, Rick "fixes" the problem by finding a parallel universe where that version of Rick somehow fixed his screw-up, but immediately afterwards, both of he and that version of Morty died in a freak accident. Rick then makes Morty help him dispose of the corpses, allowing them to resume normal life in place of their dead parallel selves, leaving their own universe destroyed.
• Ret-Gone: Inverted with the parasites; they retroactively insert themselves into the cast's memory.
• The Reveal: A few major ones throughout the series:
  • From "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind": Evil Rick, the apparent Big Bad of the episode, was actually being controlled by his apparent Dragon, Evil Morty, the episode's true mastermind.
  • In "The Wedding Squanchers": Tammy was actually The Mole for the Galactic Federation, and only pretended to be in love with Birdperson to get close to him so she could eventually kill or arrest him and his friends (who are so-called terrorists rebelling against the Federation).
  • "The Ricklantis Mixup": The newly-elected President Morty, who just had quite a few of his dissenters killed (some of whom were Asshole Victims, others because He Knew Too Much), is actually Evil Morty from the first example.
  • Season 6 episode 1 "Solaricks" reveals that Morty's actual grandpa Rick from his own original dimension, Rick Prime, was the one who killed the main Rick's version of Beth and Diane and sent him down his path of revenge that resulted in him creating the Citadel of Ricks and everything that followed.
  • Played for laughs in Mortyplicity, where every family that appears on the episode until the end at least is revealed to be a decoy.
• Rewatch Bonus: Most episodes contain a line or two that seems like a throwaway but ends up being crucial or really illuminating upon rewatching the episode, and sometimes entire seasons.
  • In "Meeseeks and Destroy", Rick assures Summer after one Meeseeks dies off that "Trust me, they're cool with it", which really foreshadows later on what happens when a Meeseeks stays around too long.
  • Throughout the show, Rick is constantly mad at Jerry discounting his Butt-Monkey and makes various swipes at him and Beth sticking together merely for obligation, even (temporarily) managing to divorce them. Season 5 finale reveals that the Council of Ricks manipulated Beth and Jerry through the Central Finite Curve to marry, and the versions of Beth and Jerry we see all throughout the show are heavily likely to be manipulated by them. Rick was most likely trying to break them up so that they don't have to stick together and make their own futures free from the Council of Ricks.
  • All throughout season 5, there are numerous throw-away lines, usually once in almost every episode, in direct reference to Beth's mother or Rick's former wife. There's no focus of context on these lines until the season finale, where Morty and the audience learn that Rick's wife Diane and child Beth actually were killed by a rogue Rick as shown in his memories in "The Rickshank Redemption" from season 3.
  • "Rickternal Friendshine of the Rickless Mort" in Season 5 reveals that Rick has actually been in love with his Best Friend Bird Person for decades, who politely responded with a Let's Just Be Friends when Rick essentially admitted his feelings (in not so many words). This offers a lot of new context to many of Bird Person's previous appearances, but especially "Wedding Squanchers", explaining why Rick was in such a foul mood (even by his standards) at BP's wedding to Tammy.
  • The Council accusing C-137 Rick of killing off the others from different realities in "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind" takes a new light when you learn his past in Season 5.
  • The big reveal in “Solaricks” that main Morty is the grandson of the Rick who killed our Rick's family certainly explains a lot of Rick’s actions in the first half of season one, especially casually fucking up the planet with his Cronenberg serum. After all, why would he give a shit about the timeline of the guy who murdered his wife and kid? It also sheds new light on his line in “Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind” that “the Rickest Rick would have the Mortyest Morty.”
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: After the Galactic Federation is kicked out of Earth, aliens are drawn-and-quartered in the school courtyard and it is considered patriotism.
• Riddle for the Ages: Which Beth—Earth Beth or Space Beth—is the original one and which is the clone of her that Rick made in "The ABCs of Beth"? It turns out that none of the characters, not even Rick, and not even the writers know.
• Right Through The Ceiling: When Morty is, uh, playing with the sex-bot Rick bought him.
• Robot War: The show briefly reveals one called the Robolution is ongoing in a region of the galaxy called the Midland Quasar, and was initially making its Last Stand. Rick arrives to search for a specific robot who has information on the location of one of his enemies and in the process kills so many lizard soldiers that they surrender to the Robots.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The second half of "The Rickshank Redemption" is one for Rick. He exploits a device that transfers the user's consciousnes to bring down the Galactic Federation, the Council of Ricks, and Jerry.
• Rube Goldberg Hates Your Guts: The Gazorpians try to save face by claiming this after realizing that simply crushing Rick with a boulder is too simple.
• Rule of Three:
  • Morty could accept the bun being placed between two hotdogs and the old woman walking her cat on a leash. But the Pop-Tart living in a toaster oven.... ok, something weird is going on.
  • In "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick-Kind", Rick and Morty run through a dimension where pizzas sit on chairs and use phones to order people, a dimension where phones sit on pizza and use people to order chairs, and a dimension where chairs sit on people and use pizzas to order phones.
  • Rick actually lampshades this in "The Rickshank Redemption" ("Comedy comes in threes!"), and sure enough, he Body-Surfs three times throughout the episode.
  • Similarly, in "Edge of Tomorty", which involves more body-surfing shenanigans, Rick ends up in fascist dimensions the first three times he does it before finally getting one that isn't fascist.
• Running Gag: The writers seem to intentionally make alien names and terms sound like random sounds made up on the fly, leading such creations as Doctor Glip-Glop and planet Gazorpazorp.
  • A lot of the aliens and otherworldy flora tend to have designs that are incredibly phallic, or testicle-y, or both.
  • Also recurring are Hope Spots between Morty and Jessica, which usually result at the moment being ruined by Rick's doing.
  • Every official episode description for Season 4 addresses the reader as "broh".
  • The series mocks the use of pop culture-referencing episode titles by giving episodes increasingly awkward and forced punny titles, going from "Ricksy Business" and "Total Rickall" to stuff like "Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktim's Morty" and "Rickternal Friendshine of the Spotless Mort".
  • There's a semi-recurring gag where Rick and Morty (and sometimes Summer) will make plans to go to a place called Boob World, only for something else to come up and postpone their plans.

S

• Sadistic Choice: In "Morty's Mind Blowers", at one point a villain held Beth, Morty, and Summer hostage, and told Beth it would spare one of her children, but she had to choose. Without even thinking about it, she immediately blurts out Summer with absolute certainty. Rick shows up at the last minute to kill the villain, but apparently, the experience was so traumatizing for Morty that he begged Rick to erase the memory.
• Safety in Indifference: This is the main reason Rick is as heartless as he is. Even if you ignore the countless amount of people and creatures that die whenever he's around, having access to The Multiverse makes attaching to people borderline impossible, what with the fact that there's trillions of copies of them out there that are, for the most part, identical.
• Sand In My Eyes: When Evil Rick is looking through Rick's memories, seeing memories about Morty makes Rick start to cry. Evil Rick makes fun of him, and Rick says that he isn't crying, he's just allergic to dipshits.
• Sarcasm-Blind: Rick, willfully:
  Summer: Careful Dad, jealousy turns women off.
  Jerry: Well, isn't that convenient.
  Rick: Not for the men they cheat on, no.
• Sarcastic Clapping: Done by Evil Rick in "Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind", and referred to as the "Slow Clap". Lampshaded by Rick, who points out how Cliché the gesture is, though Evil Rick counters that in this alternate dimension, he's the one who invented it.
• Scenery Porn: Rick takes Morty to a bizarre dimension in the pilot that's very colorful and bizarre with phallic imagery and hanging sacks. Like actual porn.
• School Is for Losers: Rick believes this. He is a very intelligent Mad Scientist who cares about Morty, so there might be some reasons.
  Summer: Grandpa, can you help me with my homework?
  Rick: Sure....don't do it.
• Screw Yourself: Done on-screen by Beth and Space Beth in "Bethic Twinstinct", where Rick also claims to have done similar things with his interdimensional counterparts.
• Script-Reading Doors: Rick's portals open and close when it's narratively convenient, in addition to simply appearing whatever surface works for the scene.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Evil Morty reveals, in the fifth season finale, that the Central Finite Curve functions as this, because, as part of a bargain to stop the war between themselves and "our" Rick, the Citadel and Rick collaborated to seal off a section of the infinite multiverses, so that all the universes containing Ricks were sealed away from the rest of the cosmos. Evil Morty claims this was because they wanted to be guaranteed to be the smartest person in every universe they could travel to. Given Rick's view of himself, though, this trope may be what he intended by it.
• Secret Test of Character:
  • In the pilot, when Morty stops Rick from going through with his plan to wipe out the human race and start over, Rick unconvincingly claims he was doing this and Morty passed. This confession is immediately followed by a "Sure, why not, I don't know."
  • One interpretation in "M. Night Shaym-Aliens" suggested says Rick suddenly started acting uncharacteristically playful with important science stuff as a test to see if Morty would notice and say something. Morty didn't and just played along, confirming Rick's suspicion that he too was a simulation.
• Seen It All: Rick was already in this territory well before the series started. Over the course of the series, Morty gradually becomes this more and more as well:
  • When Summer accidentally sort of causes a race war between two groups of aliens (who look exactly alike, nipple shapes aside) in "Auto Erotic Assimilation", she is horrified. Morty, however, just chuckles and says "Oh, Summer. First race war, huh?"
  • In "Pickle Rick", when Morty sees that Rick has turned himself into a pickle, he isn't particularly impressed or amazed by it (much to Rick's annoyance), and instead is just trying to figure out why Rick would bother with this.
  • "Vindicators 3" has Morty able to correctly guess the answers to Drunk Rick's questions and disarm his neutrino bombs. In fact, he's apparently disarmed so many of them by this point that he knows that there's a 40% chance of it being a dud anyway.
    Rick: Morty, how many of these—?
    Morty: TOO MANY, Rick! Too many!
  • In "The ABCs of Beth", when introduced to Jerry's new girlfriend Kiara, Morty is familiar with her culture and able to greet her in her native language.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Morty and Rick, respectively.
  • Summer's crushes and ex-husband^note Frank Palicky, Toby Matthews, and Hemorrhage are all more masculine than her actual former boyfriend, Ethan.
• Sequel Episode:
  • "Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate" to "Rixty Minutes", with Rick even Breaking the Fourth Wall to lampshade it.
  • "The Ricklantis Mixup" to "The Rickshank Redemption", showing how the Citadel of Ricks is faring after Rick practically destroyed it in the latter episode. It also turns out to be one to "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind" (which was the first episode to feature the Citadel, while "Rickshank" was the second), in that it shows what Evil Morty is doing now after his plans in that episode were thwarted by "our" Morty.
  • "Rise of the Numbericons: The Movie" to "Get Schwifty" or at least The Stinger to the episode.
• Serial Escalation:
  • The parallel dimensions in "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind" become increasingly absurd variations on a theme, from a world where slices of pizza order human delivery, to a world where phones sit on pizza and order chair delivery on human phones, to - finally - a world where chairs sit on inanimate humans and order phone take-out on pizza. Rick and Morty even visit an Italian restaurant and purchase some edible phones for themselves.
  • Arguably the entire show, on a high concept sci-fi scale. The first episode starts with the most ridiculous thing being that Rick has created a flying car from garage junk, and introduces the concept of the multiverse. By episode six of the first season, the titular characters have replaced alternate universe versions of themselves who managed to solve a problem our Rick and Morty couldn't, and also coincidentally died around the same time. The Citadel of Ricks in Episode 10 escalates this even further, and by the beginning of Season 2, we're in full-blown mind-fuck territory if we weren't there already. And it escalates further from there.
• Servant Race: Meeseeks, who are created by one of Rick's devices to serve a single purpose and die in a puff of smoke after they're done. However, if they take too long to get a task done then they'll end up going murderously insane until it gets accomplished.
• Sex Bot: Rick buys one for Morty in "Raising Gazorpazorp". As it turns out, the robot is actually a Gazorpian breeding chamber that results in a half-human half-Gazorpian baby.
• Sex Sells:
  • In the Fan Art Contest promo, Rick promises bonus points for "scantily clad artwork of Summer!"
    Morty: W-what!?! Th-th-that's disgusting, Rick!
    Rick: Hey, look, Morty, I agree. But, uh, sex sells, you know? We gotta push product, right? Just don't look at it.
  • The "Turbulent Juice" commercial in "Rixty Minutes".
    Morty: What in the hell?!
    Rick: Sex sells.
    Morty: Sex sells what?! Is that a movie, or does it clean stuff?!
• Sexy Dimorphism: The Gazorpians. Male Gazorpians are large, stupid, brutish beings driven by violence and lust, while females are much more human-looking and are empathetic, intellectual, and telekinetic.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story:
  • In "Mortynight Run", Morty disobeys Rick to save the life of a gaseous creature targeted for assassination. In the process, he endangers himself and Rick and causes the injury or deaths of dozens, if not hundreds, of innocent bystanders. Just before the creature makes it home, however, it reveals that it's going to return with reinforcements to purge all organic life like a disease (including Morty), and Morty has no choice but to kill it himself, so despite his best intentions, he has only succeeded in making things objectively worse.
  • In "The Ricks Must Be Crazy", Rick claims at the beginning of the episode that the parallel universe they're in has "the best ice cream in the multiverse", but when the family finally gets to the ice cream shop at the end of the episode, all ice cream has been declared to be for all beings, including telepathic spiders, meaning that it has flies in it now.
  • In "Look Who's Purging Now", Rick and Arthricia kill all of the rich leaders of the planet to stop the Purge, but it's implied it will happen again, regardless of their influence.
  • In "Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat", Morty spends most of the episode following a vision that will lead to him dying old with Jessica declaring her love for him. He learns in The Stinger that, in the vision, Jessica was a hospice worker comforting Morty so he wouldn't die alone, and presumably didn't even remember him personally.
• Shaped Like Itself: While reporting a robbery of a Mortymart in Mortytown (which was committed by other Mortys) to Cop Rick and Cop Morty in "The Ricklantis Mixup", the shopkeeper describes the robbers as "about 14 years old, about my height and wearing yellow shirts." This is lampshaded by Cop Morty.
  Cop Morty: Yeah, make sure you get THAT one down.
• Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: When the President takes a shrinking pill, Morty pokes fun at how his clothes aren't shrinking with him. Rick makes a shirt for him that grows with him when he enlarges again, but intentionally left out pants just to rile him up.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: The third season, billed as darker than usual, sees Jerry divorced from the rest of the family and not appearing at all in several of the episodes, and suffering more than usual on average when we do see him. He returns to the family at the end of the season.
• Short Teens, Tall Adults:
  • Morty is at least a head shorter than the adults in his family, and Summer is slightly shorter than her mother.
  • Rick's teenage version of himself is a head shorter than his adult version and appropriately dubbed Tiny Rick.
• The Show Must Go On: Rick's and Summer's party in "Ricksy Business" hits a few speed bumps, including the entire house being accidentally teleported to an alien planet, but for the most part, everyone just keeps partying.
• Shown Their Work:
  • In "Anatomy Park", the tuberculosis/scar tissue relationship is described correctly.
  • In "Rick Potion #9", Rick tells Morty that he got his vial of oxytocin from a vole, an animal that mates for life. Not only is the chemical correct - oxytocin is a neurotransmitter that is basically the closest thing there is to love in chemical form - but voles (prairie voles specifically) do indeed mate for life and are well-known for their aid in the study of this chemical.
  • In "Something Ricked This Way Comes," one of Needful's cursed objects is a beauty cream that makes women beautiful and blinds them. Radium cream and eyeshadow were once prized for making women literally glow before the radiation blinded and killed them.
• Shouldn't We Be in School Right Now?: Averted, as Morty is, indeed, missing school to go on adventures with Rick. Rick at least made sure to brainwash Mister Goldenfold into giving Morty an A, but that doesn't really cover all his other classes.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• Show Within a Show:
  • Pregnant Baby
  • The Life and Times of Mrs. Pancakes (Rick's a fan, but a season behind watching).
  • There are loads of these in the episode "Rixty Minutes," and again in "Interdimensional Cable 2."
• Silence Is Golden: The show utilizes this a couple of times in later seasons, using background music to set the mood but not containing dialogue.
  • In "The Vat of Acid Episode", while Morty is on a do-over spree with the remote Rick gave him, we see him meet, fall for, and start a relationship with a Bespectacled Cutie, before getting into a harrowing, life-threatening situation with her, and getting out alive...before, unfortunately, Jerry accidentally hits the remote and resets all of it. There being no dialogue also means that we never learn the name of Morty's girlfriend. This montage is one of the primary factors behind this episode winning an Emmy.
  • In "Rickmurai Jack", Morty uses information downloaded from Rick's brain to learn about his Dark and Troubled Past backstory, showing how he lost his wife and daughter, killed hundreds of Ricks in a failed effort to avenge them, and eventually spiraled into cynicism and nihilism before going to live with an alternate, grown-up version of Beth and her family (the versions we see at the start of the show) and partnering up with Morty. The only sounds from the characters come from Rick and Morty laughing at the end during a montage of their adventures together, and the downcast music makes the montage all the more powerful.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis:
  • Jerry and Rick toward each other; see Obnoxious In-Laws. Despite this, they actually grow closer in later seasons once Jerry and Beth reconcile, even if Rick is loathe to admit it, overlapping this trope with Vitriolic Best Buds.
  • Later seasons see Rick and the POTUS, President Curtis, become this as well. They're Friendly Enemies and Worthy Opponents who enjoy their rivalry and one-upping each other, to the point that multiple other characters snark that they should "just fuck and get it over with already".
• Sixth Ranger: The first four seasons of the series features the five members of the Smith-Sanchez family—Rick, Morty, Summer, Beth, and Jerry—as the main characters. Then the Season 4 finale confirms that Rick did indeed clone Beth in "The ABCs of Beth" as speculated, and in addition to the one the audience has seen since then (who may be the original or may be the clone, nobody knows), there has been a second version of her traveling through the universe, having left her family to find herself and go on adventures just like her dad did when he was younger. While "Space Beth" is a recurring character, since she spends most of her time off-planet as the Hero of Another Story, when she's present, she's treated as the sixth member of the family, with Rick seeing both of the Beths as his daughters and Summer and Morty addressing both of them as "Mom".
• Skewed Priorities:
  • When Rick is explaining to Summer that he and Morty are stuck on a planet that is currently undergoing a purge and needs her help before they get killed, her first action is to express her opinion of the movie.
  • Rick's morality results in a lot of gags like this. In "Get Schwifty," he uses his portal gun to get snacks but not to get the rest of the family in case Earth is destroyed because it's "planning for failure." In a flashback in "Total Rickall," aliens are performing experiments on Morty, and Rick runs in to steal their medical equipment.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Easily the most nihilistic cartoon on television. With that said, the series can actually subverts both its cynicism moments and overly idealistic ones. Despite all its chaos, the series still present some positive notes and insightful ideas.
  • The show subverts its cynicism this with Jerry and the family as a whole. The creators are quick to point out that Jerry who has had a really tough life and is consistently being dumped on by the universe, is still somewhat content with how his life is going. They point to the scene where Rick is on the verge of suicide while Jerry is happily trimming his lawn. Rick who is an all-powerful omni-scientist, who can create almost anything is left feeling bitter and depressed whether by the burden of his knowledge or his really awful outlook on life, while by contrast, Jerry who has no prospects and has had many many awful situations heaped upon him is still trucking along. Both creators admire Jerry for his tenacity and optimism.
  • The episode The Rickchurian Mortydate eventually calls out Rick's nihilistic attitude and shows that for all of their negative qualities and despite Rick's rantings about the futility of existence the Smith family finally finds some contentment with their lives. Ultimately they tell Rick either to stay or go and to stop acting like such a nihilistic ass to Jerry all the time.
  • This is taken to an extreme in A Rickconvenient Mort, where it is shown that all hope for the planet is lost and humans, even the ones who don't want to do harm, are a cancer on the world. The Tina-teers now only care about profit and Planetina begins murdering people when she sees her activism isn't working. However, the very next episode, "Rickdependence Spray" reverses this scathing cynicism with surprisingly genuine idealism given by RICK of all people, where he says the human race's purpose is to learn from their mistakes and be better, citing Robert Downey Jr. as an example.
• Slow Clap: Done by Evil Rick as Sarcastic Clapping in "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind". Apparently, he invented it in that dimension, and no one has ever done it there before him.
• Smart People Build Robots: In the pilot, Rick mentions that he builds robots for fun. In "Something Ricked This Way Comes", he built one for the specific reason of passing butter on the table. Note that this robot is advanced enough to be horrified when Rick told him what his only purpose is.
  Robot: What-is-my-purpose?
  Rick: You pass butter.
  Robot: (looks at its hands) Oh-my-god!
  Rick: Yeah, welcome to the club, pal.
• Smurfing: Discussed and justified, in a rather surprising turn. Squanchy the talking cat uses "squanch" and variations thereof for everything, including auto-erotic asphyxiation; when Beth lampshades that this is "like the Smurfs", Rick explains that Squanchy's language is more contextual than literal. When Beth tries to do it (by saying that she squanches her family) both Rick and Squanchy start cringing in disgust.
• Snap Back: Pretty much every episode that has a B-plot about Beth and Jerry ends with them reconciling their marriage. They're back to fighting by the next episode.
• Somewhere, an Entomologist Is Crying: In "Rick Potion #9", one of the most serious and dramatic episodes in the series, the show remains very persistent that Praying Mantises cull one another during mating. Even the matching genders.
• Space Orcs: Male Gazorpians are large, sex-obsessed primitive brutes who spend their short lives trying to kill each other and impregnating artificial birthing machines distributed to them by the more civilized females. Rick theorizes that the males used to be just as civilized until the invention of birthing machines allowed them to focus more on war and building weapons, eventually causing their society to devolve back to the stone age and become more savage and violent as a result.
• Spinoff Babies: For April Fools 2021, Adult Swim's official YouTube channel posted an opening for Rick and Morty Babies, a Lighter and Softer alternate universe where everyone (except Jerry) are babies.
• Split-Personality Takeover: In "Big Trouble in Little Sanchez", Rick transfers his mind into a younger clone body. His teenage hormones cause a different personality to develop and take over. The real Rick communicates through Tiny Rick's subconscious, causing him to beg for Morty and Summer to save him from himself through Tiny Rick's artistic endeavors.
• Split Screen:
  • Used extensively in "A Rickle in Time", representing different timelines.
  • Also occurs during the phone conversations in "The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy" and "The Rickchurian Mortydate".
• Springtime for Hitler: Heavily implied that "Weekend at Dead Cat Lady's House II" was this for Jerry C-500a, as at the end he has a complete breakdown and admits he hates everything to do with being a celebrity.
• Spock Speak: Birdperson speaks in this manner, and veers into The Comically Serious.
• Spoof Aesop: In "Raising Gazorpazorp" Summer saves the day with a seemingly heartfelt speech that amounts to "Straight men are terrible, but gay men are alright." It only works because the Gazorpazorpians are brutally sexist against men (understandably so given the ways their sexual dimorphism differs from humans, but still).
• Squick: So, so often. Some examples:
  • Morty and Rick have this reaction in-universe when Summer appears in BDSM gear and acts seductively towards them in Mr. Goldenfold's dream world in "Lawnmower Dog".
  • Any time Rick appears completely in the nude, doubling as Fan Disservice, such as in "Big Trouble in Little Sanchez" and "Rest and Ricklaxation".
  • In "The Ricklantis Mixup", one of the businesses in "Mortytown" is a strip club called The Creepy Morty. The only denizens of Mortytown are, well, Mortys. So, this is a strip club where Mortys dance...for other Mortys.
• Stacy's Mom: Summer's friend Tricia professes an attraction to Jerry in "Promortyus".
• Status Quo Is God:
  • Both averted and played straight at the end of "Rick Potion #9". After infecting the entire planet with a Body Horror virus, Rick ultimately solves the problem by taking himself and Morty to an alternate universe where their counterparts invented a successful cure for the virus and but died on the same day so that he and Morty can take their place. Rick tells Morty not to think too hard about it all, but Morty is visibly traumatized by the events.
  • The ending of Season 2 resulted in Earth joining the Galactic Federation. The opening of Season 3 results in Rick escaping from prison through Body Surfing his mind from his body into a GF agent, and then into another Rick who was part of an assault force tasked with killing Rick himself. He surfs from one Rick to another, eventually destroying both the Galactic Federation and the Council of Ricks in succession. Earth restores itself to normal by the end of the episode.
  • No matter how many episodes end with Beth and Jerry rebuilding their marriage, expect it to be falling apart again by the next episode. It's played with at the end of Season 3: while Beth and Jerry do get back together and call off the divorce after spending all of Season 3 separated, seemingly playing this straight, there is also the implication that their marriage will be more solid and less unhappy in the future.
• Stealth Pun:
  • At the end of "Meeseeks and Destroy", the family comments on how the Meeseeks destroyed the room. All five then proceed to break the fourth wall.
  • Pluto's society is controlled by the wealthy. In other words, it's a plutocracy.
  • The Moonmen that Fart sings about in "Mortynight Run" turn into asses.
• Steven Ulysses Perhero: "Big Trouble in Little Sanchez" has Tiny Rick, Morty and Summer kill the vampire in their school, who turns out to be Coach Feratu. The Stinger lampshades this, with a vampire elder getting really annoyed at how vampires infiltrating human society always like using obvious identity-blowing references as their names rather than regular human names.
• The Stinger: Not counting the pilot, every single episode of the series has one after the ending credits.
• The Stoic: Subverted in the first episode in which Rick assures Morty that he's seen it all and will keep him safe, only to be interrupted by a fierce alien creature. "Run Morty, I've never seen one of those before! This is bad, we're going to die, Morty!"
• Story Arc: Downplayed, which is enforced in-universe by Rick heavily disliking serialized drama and preferring to keep things episodic, but there have been a few:
  • Rick's past fighting the Galactic Federation with Bird Person, Squanchy, and others, and the ramifications it has in the present day when their past catches up to them. Naturally, the G-Fed as a whole acts as the Big Bad to this story, with Tammy and, for a while, Phoenix Person acting as The Heavy. So far, this arc has gotten central focus in "The Wedding Squanchers", "The Rickshank Redemption", "Star Mort: Rickturn of the Jerri", and "Rickternal Friendshine of the Rickless Mort".
  • When Rick manipulates Beth and Jerry into divorcing at the beginning of Season 3 so he can become the new patriarch of the family, the season as a whole focuses on how his self-destructive, nihilistic worldview serves as a Toxic Friend Influence and negatively affects the rest of the family, culminating in all of them realizing this by the finale, deciding they don't want to be like that, and choosing to work on bettering themselves, complete with Jerry and Beth getting back together and unseating Rick as head of the family.
  • The conflict between Rick and Morty and the Citadel of Ricks, and the enormous negative ramifications that the Citadel's actions have had on the Ricks, Mortys, and the rest of the Smith Families of The Multiverse. This plotline has a Big Bad Ensemble consisting of both the Council of Ricks (plus other major leaders of the Citadel) and of Evil Morty, and takes center stage in "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind", "The Rickshank Redemption", "The Ricklantis Mixup", and "Rickmurai Jack".
• Straw Feminist:
  • The female Gazorpians have a society that's practically built on straw. It's so extreme that they'll automatically kill any male who enters their domain, even if he isn't a threat. Their behavior is actually understandable because female Gazorpians are intelligent and empathetic whereas male Gazorpians are incredibly violent and dangerous, but their hatred spreads to males of all species, which winds up making them pretty intolerant and hypocritical.
  • Summer showed signs of this as well in the same episode as she refused to objectify herself even though her life and her chastity was threatened. Though that was more of a reaction to Rick being a Jerkass.
• String Theory: In one episode we see Rick's bedroom. One wall has notes connected this way.
• Stronger Than They Look:
  • Summer proves to be a pretty good shot with a laser pistol in "Total Rickall." In fact, once she starts going on adventures with Rick, she proves to be a competent fighter anytime they're forced to battle.
  • Invoked with Beth a few times. She is shown kicking just as much Cronenberg ass as Jerry in "Rick Potion #9" and again in "ABC's of Beth" as she walks back into the garage liberally soaked with blood.
  Beth: "So.... Tommy gave me his finger."
  Rick: "He gave you his finger?"
• Stylistic Suck:
  • The full version of the flu-hatin' rap from "Rick Potion #9", with lyrics that sound like they're made up on the spot.
  • The Lighthouse Keeper from "Look Who's Purging Now" allows Rick and Morty to use his lighthouse if, in return, the latter listens to him read his screenplay. Said screenplay is a massive invokedCliché Storm, and is made even worse by the stilted, dull monotone the man speaks with when reading it.
  • The stories Morty tells in "Never Ricking Morty" to break the story barrier, the second of which is purposely designed to pass The Bechdel Test, both featuring the characters talking in flat, dull monotones with little genuine emotion. Many of the other non-canon short story snippets qualify too, bringing back characters and storylines that fans are interested in in the most cliche, generic, corny way possible.
• Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: Rick is smart enough to analyze magical items from the devil's shop, then remove the curse while still retaining the magical benefits.
• Summon Bigger Fish: This happens several times in the "Two Brothers" trailer in "Rixty Minutes". Tornadoes push away cat monsters, a UFO sets aside the tornado, and so on.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Being a Deconstructor Fleet, a lot of plot points and punchlines are centered around this.
  • Rick succeeds in besting Satan by opening a new store. Afterwards, faced with the responsibilities of running the shop, he announces he's bored of it and closing, douses it in gasoline and sets it on fire during regular business hours.
  • After Jerry successfully pacifies the Meeseeks in "Meeseeks and Destroy", he tells the chef that he and Beth will take their dinner to go (presumably, to go home and have sex), but the chef replies that the cops are on their way and will have a ton of questions for him, which makes sense considering that the Meeseeks attacked the restaurant and took people hostage while trying to get to Jerry. Jerry himself even acknowledges this with "Fair enough."
  • In "Ricksy Business", Summer, seeking to get in with the cool kids, blows off one of her nerdy friends and essentially throws her out of the party to get her out of the way...and then finds out that when you do un-squanchy stuff like that, no one wants to hang out with you.
  • Rick's alcoholism and Morty's constant brushes with death, which are usually played for laughs and brushed aside, are occasionally shown to weigh on them heavily.
  • "Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate" features the TV show "Man vs. Car", in which a man tries to fight a car. The man is quickly run over, and the chuckling announcer asks, "Wouldn't the cars always win?"
  • Other ways to destroy the Galactic Federation? Why not disrupt their credit economy by reducing their spending power to zero?
  • At the end of "Rick Potion #9", Beth, Jerry, and Summer of the show's original dimension appear to have found happiness despite being the last humans on a post-apocalyptic Cronenberg earth. Skip ahead 2-3 years to "The Rickshank Rickdemption", and the family has devolved to the level of cavemen due to the brutal realities of living in such a world. Furthermore, in "Rick Potion #9", Beth and Jerry don't seem to mind that Rick and Morty have disappeared. (In fact, they feel as if it has made their lives better.) However, by the "The Rickshank Rickdemption", Jerry smashes the portal gun to keep Morty C-137 from leaving and is ready to kill the current version of Summer because she admires Rick. It stands to reason that the original-version Smith family would come to loathe the man who stole their son and destroyed their world, the Season 1 happy ending notwithstanding.
    • This universe is re-visited in the Season 6 premiere, where it is revealed that just because your weapon causes Harmless Freezing doesn't mean it's in any way merciful. Two members of Morty's original family "thawed wrong".
  • What happens when you try and outsmart the smartest man in the universe (maybe multiverse?) You lose....badly. As the Federation agent trying to interrogate Rick finds out when he attempts to get Rick to reveal the secret of the portal gun.
  • In the B-plot of "Rixty Minutes", Summer is annoyed that while her parents' alternates are doing amazing things like movies, surgery, cocaine and Kristen Stewart, her alternates all seem to be playing board games with her family. Of course, since time-travel isn't a thing, of course she's not going to see some life-fulfilling self — all her alternates are still teenagers. Generally speaking, one doesn't become a movie star or a surgeon while they're still in high school.
  • After "The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy", Jerry finally realizes that he can't keep using his bad experiences to deflect responsibilities and consequences. However, this isn't an overnight change, as he still has moments where he relapses in his judgement, like when he uses Morty and Summer to break up with his alien girlfriend in "The ABCs of Beth" rather than just coming clean to her that he's the one who wants to break up.
  • When Morty joins a miniverse forest tribe in "The Ricks Must Be Crazy", he's quickly terrified and infuriated by the tribe's rituals. The tribe lacks personal hygiene and one of their rituals includes eating babies to make their fruit grow bigger. Morty is from a time where nature and science have been understood and Morty is well-adjusted to using technology to entertain himself.
  • It happens in the Rickchurian Mortydate. The President of the United States reveals that the only reason the government doesn't prosecute Rick and Morty for their regular lawbreaking — several thousand violations a day— is that Rick is too valuable as the dimension's only citizen that can handle alien threats. When Rick and Morty blow off helping with an alien under the White House who ate a janitor, the President yells at them for lying to him and terminates their relationship, promising to treat them as foreign enemy agents if they interfere violently in government affairs. Sure enough, when Rick murders Secret Service agents trying to escort him peacefully out of the White House, he may win the subsequent tech fight with the President but is labelled as a domestic terrorist. Rick eventually realizes he went too far in Bullying a Dragon and has to fake dimension-hopping to ensure he's not arrested and implicitly apologize. Even if he can break out of prison easily, it's too much of a hassle for him and his family, especially Beth.

T

• Take Our Word for It:
  • In "Meeseeks and Destroy" Summer's Meeseeks makes her popular by delivering a speech to the entire student body in the auditorium. We only hear the very end of the speech, but it was apparently really convincing.
  • Despite the episode name, we never actually see Rick's and Morty's Atlantis adventure in "The Ricklantis Mixup", which instead focuses on the Citadel of Ricks, but in The Stinger, they make a point of gushing on and on about how awesome it was and how they plan to go back many more times.
  • Whatever Rick and Jerry see in the Talking Cat's brain scan from "Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktim's Morty" is not shown to the audience, but it's apparently so terrible that Jerry vomits and is reduced to a Troubled Fetal Position in tears, even Rick almost eats his gun in horror, and Rick erases Jerry's memory of the incident so he won't have to live with it.
• Take That!:
  • Rick says that a chorus of Morties screaming in agony is better to listen to than Mumford & Sons.
  • In "Lawnmower Dog", Rick tells Morty that entering dreams will be just like Inception, except "it'll make sense."
  • Rick's big rigged escape area in "Vindicators 3" is very blatantly a Saw reference. When Morty points this out, Rick initially denies it and replies "I'm a drunk, not a hack." Then his drunk self contradicts him.
  • The Vindicators episode itself is one long, rather mean-spirited "screw you" to the superhero genre in general, peppered with plenty of vitriolic jabs that would make Garth Ennis proud.
  • According to "Something Ricked This Way Comes", Mark Zuckerberg's name is literally synonymous with betrayal.
  • "Rest and Ricklaxation" fired off a subtle blink-and-you-miss-it one at the Sbarro pizza restaurant chain. When the Earth is "toxified" (i.e. making everyone act on their worst traits and impulses), patrons of Salad Works leave the restaurant and enter Sbarro instead, and the lone Sbarro patron leaves the store and eats out of the dumpster.
  • In "Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat", Rick complains that Morty has taken all of his normal Meeseeks boxes and left him with only Kirkland-brand boxes. The Meeseeks spawned by the Kirkland boxes are red instead of blue, rude and surly instead of polite and cheerful, and smoke cigarettes.
  • "Rattlestar Ricklactica" is a scathing and over-the-top satire of the Terminator franchise. Having learned the secrets of time travel, the alien snakes start indiscriminately sending countless assassins and bodyguards into various points in the past, causing chaos in the space-time continuum to the point where the Time Police have to intervene.
  • In "Rickfending Your Mort", the pair gets busted for murdering their own counterparts. Rick defends the act by saying that the variants in question were the ones who appeared in Space Jam: A New Legacy and that they were begging for death.
• Take That Us: When Rick reveals the idea of Morty's stored memories in season 3's eighth episode, "Morty's Mind Blowers", he states that they won't be doing an Interdimensional Cable episode this time. The Interdimensional Cable episodes are always situated as the eighth episodes in seasons, and the last installment, "Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate" wasn't well received.
• Technicolor Science: Many of Rick's inventions and much of the alien tech emit all manner of glowing light and strange energies, but this often just goes with the brightly colored nature of the show. More straight examples of the trope occur when the characters are playing with chemicals. The test tubes seen in "Rick Potion #9" and "Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind" are filled with brightly colored liquids, and weirdly, this makes them seem mundane in comparison to the rest of the show's science.
• Teen Pregnancy: Beth got pregnant with Summer when she was seventeen, and inwardly resents Jerry for impregnating her and supposedly robbing her of her dream to become a human surgeon rather than operate on horses.
• That Came Out Wrong: When Jerry, Beth, and Summer use Rick's goggles to look at alternate timelines of themselves, Summer says that she doesn't see anything. Beth responds and realizes what she said without even pausing to breathe.
  "Well, you should select a different timeline. I mean, if your father and I achieved our dreams, there's a chance you were never born — that came out wrong, that came out very wrong."
• The Theme Park Version: Played with in "Anatomy Park". The "Pirates of the Pancreas" ride is a ride through a pancreas with pirates, but Rick claims that they don't whitewash it and the pirates are "really rapey". Rick is proud of that ride since it was his own creation. "The Rickchurian Mortydate" later reveals that Rick is afraid of pirates, so it was probably supposed to be his "scary ride."
• There Are No Therapists: Played with in "Pickle Rick". It's averted at first when Beth is forced into a mandatory family therapy session by the kids' high school after both Morty and Summer have separate problems at school, and they visit Dr. Wong. She makes several comments about the fact that their issues might come from using intelligence to justify their problems rather than dealing with them directly and notes that building healthy relationships with others is hard work, while also correctly noticing Beth's tendencies to put her father on a pedestal and let him do whatever he wants to her family and house while only ever minimally calling him out on it. However, it's then played straight at the end when, despite both Summer and Morty wanting to return to see Dr. Wong again, Beth and Rick gleefully ignore her advice and the kids' wishes and make it clear that they don't intend to ever come back. Thankfully, though, it becomes subverted as of the "Star Mort: Rickturn of the Jerri," wherein it is established that the Smiths have started consistently attending sessions with her, which is further confirmed in the next episode, "Mort Dinner Rick Andre."
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: This is the main reason Rick is so mentally disturbed: humanity was clearly never meant to have access to The Multiverse, encounter the horrors therein, and most importantly, face the existential nightmares it causes. Just look at how Morty reacts to having to find and bury his Dead Alternate Counterpart in "Rick Potion #9" and compare it to Rick.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!:
  • Scary Terry can't help but end his sentences with "bitch".
    Morty: Wow, he sure says "bitch" a lot!
  • After screwing over Summer, Mr. Needful declares "I'm the Devil, BIATCH! What-what!" before he busts out a solo on his fiddle.
  • Near the end of "Close Rick-Counters", our Rick calls one of the Council Ricks to get them to come to his location to arrest the real Rick-murdering culprit, saying, "I caught the real killer, BIIIIITCH!"
  • In "A Rickle in Time", when Beth is trying to save a deer that Jerry accidentally hit with their car, the hunter who was tracking it spitefully makes it clear that he hopes she's not a good surgeon and fails to save it, and she answers with "In your dreams, bitch."
  • In "Total Rickall," one of Rick's random catchphrases is "RikkiTikkiTavi, biiieeeaaatch!"
  • When Jerry is messing with a drugged Rick in "The Whirly-Dirly Conspiracy", he acts like he's about to punch him, and when Rick flinches: "That's what I thought, bitch."
  • This bit of dialogue in "The ABCs of Beth":
    Beth: I was traumatized, Summer! Your generation wouldn't understand that.
    Summer: Bitch, my generation gets traumatized for breakfast.
• This Was His True Form: The parasites in "Total Rickall" revert to their original appearance when they are killed.
• Thousand-Yard Stare:
  • Morty has this by the end of "Rick Potion #9". Given the events of the episode, you can't blame him.
  • Summer ends up with this by the end of "The Ricks Must Be Crazy".
• Throwing Out the Script: Parodied, and provides the current page image. Rick's "script" for his best man's speech at Birdperson's and Tammy's wedding in "The Wedding Squanchers" consists of two and a half sentences, then some notes telling himself to crumple up the script and start ad-libbing.
• Title Drop: Go ahead and count the number of times Rick drops it in the page quote alone.
• Title Montage: The series subverts this by updating the title sequence every season, but having several clips that are fake and created solely for the intro.
• Toilet Humor: It isn't guaranteed in an episode, but it shows up now and then. The episode "Mortynight Run" features a gaseous alien being that Rick dubs "Fart", and Rick farting loudly is something of a Running Gag.
• Training Montage: "Something Ricked This Way Comes" has Rick and Summer working out and taking steroids set to "X Gon' Give It To Ya" by DMX so that they can go beat up Mr. Needful (and after the credits, assorted assholes).
• Tranquil Fury:
  • After putting together what happened between Morty and the Jellybean King, Rick simply wears an expression of silent rage.
  • Rick and Morty both enter into this at different points in "The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy": Rick when he realizes that Jerry betrayed him to assassins who wanted to kill him, and Morty when he's confronting Summer's now-ex-boyfriend Ethan about breaking her heart.
• Tricked-Out Shoes:
  • Rick gives Morty a pair of grappling shoes that will allow him to walk down a cliff. Unfortunately, Morty tries doing this before Rick tells him that they need to be turned on.
  • Mr. Needful gives one of his customers shoes that offer superhuman speed, but they're also cursed so the user can't stop once they started, which would force them to run until they drop dead. Rick manages to remove the curse.
• Troll: Beth refers to a Noodle Incident in which Jerry was trolled online and responded with a flippant "takes one to know one" and spent the rest of the night refreshing the browser while crying.

U-V

• Unable to Retreat: Rick's Portal Gun is a frequent victim of this. The worst instance is when it becomes entirely inoperable during the climax of season 5, forcing the duo to wait for weeks until rescue.
• Undercover Cop Reveal: Summer's friend Tammy reveals herself to be an agent from the Galactic Federation during her wedding with Birdperson in "The Wedding Squanchers".
• Underside Ride: Lucy clings to the underside of the Smiths' car while cackling "I'm doing Cape Fear!" right before she loses her grip at the first bump and gets mortally wounded from being run over by the back tires.
• Unfulfilled Purpose Misery: The Meeseeks box summons a creature called Mr. Meeseeks, who obeys one command of their summoner before disappearing. If the task is too hard or takes too long (in this case, helping Jerry get better at golf), they start breaking down but still can't disappear until it's done, so they might find alternate solutions like summoning more Meeseeks or killing their summoner.
• Unseen Character: Beth's mother is not seen in the show but is mentioned several times. Whether or not she is deceased or simply not around is unknown. She seems to make her apparent first appearance in the Season 3 premiere, but since this a fabricated flashback inside of Rick's mind, it's unclear whether or not this is actually her. However, in the season 5 finale it's revealed that the flashback (or at least parts of it) was actually true.
• The Unreveal:
  • We never find out which Beth is the original and which is the clone, as when Rick cloned her he turned his back when mixing up the stasis vats to not know himself. This is pointed out directly by Morty, Summer, and Jerry where they make it clear that they don't care to know which one is the clone, as both Beths are equally badass and their mother/wife in their own ways. In the end, only Rick is left caring to learn which is which, and once he remembers that he looked away to never know, he mutters to himself about what an asshole he is.
  • The talking cat from "Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktim's Morty" apparently hides in its mind something so horrible that almost drives even someone as jaded as Rick to suicide, but we never learn what it is.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight:
  • It seems this extends to the entire show when it comes to human/alien interaction. None of the human characters seem fazed or bothered by having to interact with multiple alien species.
  • In "Big Trouble in Little Sanchez" everyone who learns that Tiny Rick is just Rick having transferred his consciousness to a teenage clone of himself reacts completely casually to it.
  • From the same episode, Rick arrives naked and covered in blood to pick up Jerry and Beth from marriage counselling. Neither of them comment on it at all, and in fact, don't even seem to notice or care.
  • At the end of "The Wedding Squanchers", Earth becomes a member of the Galactic Federation. Aliens are integrated with human society, and nobody thinks anything of it.
  • In "Edge of Tomorty", Gearhead is in the backseat of the ship with Rick and Fascist Morty for unexplained reasons. He doesn't say anything, and neither of them gives any indication that they're even aware of his presence.
• Unwanted Harem: In "Rick Potion #9", after Morty's love potion backfires and goes airborne, it results in everyone on the planet that isn't related to him biologically desperately wanting to have sex with him. Then Rick adds in some mantis DNA and they want to kill him after the fact.
• Uplifted Animal: Snowball and his dog army.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: If Rick's younger clone can be considered, Rick was cheerful and nice in his younger days. No doubt the horrors he was exposed to later in life made him into what he is as an old man.
• Uterine Replicator: Female Gazorpians use a combination Uterine Replicator/Sexbot to go and "mate" with the male Gazorpians and then give birth to babies since the females don't want to do either.
• Vast Bureaucracy: In "The Wedding Squanchers", we get a glimpse of both the scope (6,047 other planets) and yet the inefficiency of the Galactic Federation, when Earth is added within a day, and the ensuing news report summarizes humans as a species "who love to eat spaghetti and pray to kangaroos."
• Verbal Tic:
  • Rick continually addresses Morty by his name when talking to him. This is toned down in the second episode but is still present. You could also count the constant belching Rick does in mid-sentence whenever he's drunk, which is most of the time.
  • In "Lawnmower Dog", Scary Terry constantly ends his sentence with "bitch!"
  • "Hi, I'm Mr. Meeseeks! Look at me!"
  • Female Gazorpians are always telling each other "I'm here if you need to talk", to the point that it may just be a casual greeting.
  • Mr. Poopy Butthole is constantly saying "whoo-wee!"
• Villain with Good Publicity:
  • Frank Palicky in the pilot. Despite being a sadistic bully to Morty, Summer had a crush on him, and after his death, the rest of the school held a memorial in his honor.
  • As of the end of "The Ricklantis Mixup", Evil Morty. The members of the Citadel of Ricks (or, at least, those still living) see him as their benevolent newly-elected President who cares about all the Ricks and Mortys living there and plans to make life better for them...unaware that he was once the mastermind of a plot that involved killing a couple of dozen Ricks (and framing another Rick for it) and kidnapping and torturing hundreds of Mortys.
• Violence Is Not an Option: Rick has no problem with just shooting whatever ails him, so typically, he's only not killing things when doing so wouldn't solve his problems. A specific example comes with the Cromulons, giant floating space-heads that force Earth into a musical reality show, where they explicitly state the losers' planets will be destroyed by a plasma ray. Rick plays along, but a nuke-happy General tries to blow up the Cromulons instead...to predictable results.
• Viral Transformation: In "Rick Potion #9", Rick's attempt to cure everyone of Morty's love potion turned them into Mantis Men. His attempt to cure everyone of that turned them into "Cronenbergs".
• Visual Pun: In "Morty's Mind Blowers", we see Rick owns a device that can magnetically attract whatever is programmed into it. When Morty toys with it, dozens of horrified girls (all redheads) start flying towards the garage: a literal babe magnet.

W

• Was Just Leaving: In "Something Ricked This Way Comes", Rick accompanies Summer to the Devil's shop. There, Summer announces that Rick was "just leaving" in the hope he would get the hint and leave. But Rick decides to stick around.
• We Have Forgotten the Phlebotinum: In "Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender", Rick/Morty and the Vindicators arrive at Worldender's stronghold, only to find him already dying, and a "Saw" trap left for the Vindicators by Rick himself while blackout drunk the night before. While more-sober Rick would normally be able to resolve the situation with his portal gun, he accidentally leaves it on the Vindicator ship.
• We Really Do Care: In "Ricksy Business", Birdperson questions why Morty cares if he no longer can have adventures with Rick if he thinks Rick is just a huge asshole and notes that, if Morty truly is fed up with Rick's shenanigans, fate has presented him with a way out. Morty realizes that Birdperson is right and that he does still want to go on adventures, and wakes Rick up in time to prevent his parents from seeing the house trashed.
• We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: Downplayed in "The Ricklantis Mixup". The assembly line Ricks and construction worker Ricks and plumber Ricks and so forth on the Citadel of Ricks are working-class rather than slaves, and they're technically living in the present, but they're part of a society half composed of super-geniuses. Having robots handle the unpleasant jobs would make more sense, but of course, it would also undercut the citadel being used as a parody of present-day society.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy:
  • Rick is implied to be this, as he wanted a stadium of men who even remotely resembled his father to watch him have sex with Unity. They're heard chanting "Go son go!"
  • It becomes clearer and clearer as the series goes on that Beth is this as well; a combination of wanting Rick's love and approval and desperately not wanting him to leave her again makes her willing to put up with way too much from him and very reluctant to put her foot down even when she really needs to. Luckily, she seems to grow past this by the end of Season 3.
  • This mindset is deconstructed thoroughly throughout the series and reaches a head in season five's Gotron episode: Rick is a cynical man with incredibly eccentric interests, which is why his praise is so rare, and people mistake that rarity for value. Conversely, the fact that Jerry is so easy to please is why nobody cares if he is.
• Weirdness Censor: This happens quite a bit throughout the series (see Unusually Uninteresting Sight)
  • None of the people Summer invites to the mutual house party seem at all fazed by the extra-dimensional oddities Rick keeps company with. Nor do they seem to notice the entire house has been suddenly teleported to another world or dimension. (At least one of them is later revealed as an undercover galactic cop, so...)
  • In "Pickle Rick", Rick finally shows up to family therapy still in his pickle form, while also wearing his Power Armor that's partially made up of the body parts of rats. Naturally, his family doesn't find anything weird about this, but Dr. Wong, the therapist, also doesn't act as if this is anything remotely out of the ordinary.^note This could be because she's used to having some pretty "out there" patients, since many of the people that she treats have issues with eating poop, or possibly also because, by this point in the series, Earth was already temporarily part of the Galactic Federation, and after having aliens of all different kinds visiting their planet for months, a guy who's turned himself into a pickle is relatively mundane in comparison.
• Wham Episode:
  • "Rick Potion #9": Rick accidentally dooms Earth beyond repair, and he and Morty abandon the entire universe (including Summer, Beth, and Jerry), hopping dimensions to an alternate one where the Rick and Morty of that dimension fixed the problem and died shortly after. The main Rick and Morty bury their dead counterparts in their backyard and take their places, meaning that they're living with new, alternate versions of their family members, who become the new "main character" versions of Jerry, Summer, and Beth from now on. This episode establishes that, ultimately, there are infinite versions of all of them in the universe and nobody is truly irreplaceable if they die. Morty's Thousand-Yard Stare at the end says it all.
  • The Season 2 Finale, "The Wedding Squanchers", where Rick's best friend Bird Person is murdered at his own wedding by his new wife, Summer's former school friend Tammy, who's revealed to be working for the Galactic Federation that Rick, Bird Person, and others fought against many years ago. Rick and his family become fugitives, but he eventually turns himself in to protect them and is thrown in prison. The rest of the family returns to Earth to find that it's been invaded and taken over by the Federation.
  • "The Rickshank Rickdemption" resolves the Season 2 cliffhanger. Rick successfully escapes from the Galactic Federation prison and destroys both the G-Fed and the Citadel of Ricks, including killing off the entire Council of Ricks. Morty shows Summer the doomed version of Earth he originally came from in "Rick Potion #9", and in the aftermath of Rick's return, Beth decides to divorce Jerry when he makes her choose between them. Tammy also has rebuilt Bird Person as an evil cyborg.
  • "The Ricklantis Mixup" ends with a Morty becoming the President of the now-rebuilt Citadel. However, it's revealed that he's Evil Morty in disguise as he seizes complete control of the station.
  • "Star Mort: Rickturn of the Jerri", Season 4's finale, confirms that Rick did indeed clone Beth back at the end of "The ABCs of Beth", with one version of her staying on Earth with her family and one going out in space to have adventures, but he's very cagey on which is the original and which is the clone. Tammy and the New Galactic Federation return to capture Space Beth, and Rick learns the fate of Bird Person being transformed into Phoenix Person. By the end, the New G-Fed is defeated, Tammy is dead, and Rick is going to try to restore Bird Person back to normal, but there's one last twist in terms of the Beths: Rick doesn't even know which one is which because he erased it from his memory, and even after viewing it, he still doesn't find out, since he purposely made sure he could never know who was who, leaving it a Riddle for the Ages for the rest of the series.
  • "Rickternal Friendshine of the Rickless Mort" has a rare dive into Rick's past, and confirms at least part of the "Rickshank Redemption" flashback was true. Rick C-137's (AKA our Rick) Beth died young, before she gave birth to Summer and Morty. In the process of Rick trying to save Bird Person, it's revealed that the former has harbored unrequited feelings for the latter for many years, and Rick also discovers that BP and Tammy have a daughter together. He is able to convince Bird Person to live for her sake and fully brings him back to life, but their friendship is strained, and BP leaves to go find his daughter, who's being held in a Federation prison.
  • The Season 5 finale, "Rickamurai Jack" is the biggest one of the series so far, chock-full of reveals and game-changing events, including revealing the actual truth behind Rick's past and bringing Evil Morty back into the storyline.
    • Morty sees a full-on flashback of his Rick’s past and learns Rick C-137’s “fabricated backstory” from “The Rickshank Redemption” was almost entirely true: his Beth was murdered in childhood, along with Rick’s wife Diane, by a rogue Rick. Rick then became the boogeyman of Ricks by slaughtering hundreds of them on his quest to find his wife’s killer, until the other Ricks call a truce, leading to the creation of the Citadel of Ricks. Main Rick abandons it due to disagreements with the proto-Council before going to a certain alternate reality and settling down with the now-adult Beth living there and her family; this is the version of them from the first half of S1, and the Morty of that dimension is the main Morty of the series.
    • Morty also gets another very dark reveal: The Citadel has been “farming” Mortys for years—first by ensuring Beth and Jerry get together in most universes (sometimes through manipulation, sometimes even by drugging them) to eventually give birth to him, and then through cloning these Mortys to make more. The Ricks also built the Central Finite Curve, which is a wall separating the infinite universes where Rick is the smartest thing alive from the rest of the multiverse.
    • The episode ends with Evil Morty destroying the Citadel (killing almost all of the Ricks and Mortys there) and the Central Finite Curve and escaping to a new multiverse outside of it using his own portal gun, while also rendering portal travel inoperable and Rick's portal gun useless, leaving the main Rick and Morty stranded in space in the remains of the Citadel with seemingly no way home.
  • The next season’s opener, “Solaricks”, builds on this further by revealing the main character Morty that Rick has been hanging out with since day one isn’t just any Morty; he’s the grandson of the Rick who killed Main Rick’s family (known as "Rick Prime"). Rick came to live in the dimension he did, with the Beth and family he did, in the vague hope their reality's native Rick—Rick Prime—would show up one day, though he never did. This particular twist casts many of Rick’s actions and offhand comments from prior episodes in a new light. Furthermore, Rick's flawed attempt to reset the portal network sends him, Morty, and Jerry home to their original dimensions, and Morty discovers that his original Summer and Beth died after the events of "The Rickshank Redemption". Later, Rick Prime, having been reset and sent home there as well, kills the original Jerry. And finally, thanks to the alternate "Season 2 Jerry" releasing an alien virus that renders this version of Earth (the one where Rick and Morty have lived since "Rick Potion #9") uninhabitable, the entire main Smith-Sanchez family is forced to hop realities this time, once again burying their dead alternate selves in the backyard.
  • Unmortricken: The Cold Opening begins with the Start of Darkness origin for Evil Morty. How he came to desire to get away from all ricks, started his scheme to escape, etc. Then it picks back up in the present as Evil Morty pulls a Pragmatic Villainy to help Rick C-137 FINALLY confront Rick Prime in Person. After a grueling battle, Rick Prime is killed, but not without some gruesome reveals and foreshadowing. Namely, Rick Prime used a device to erase all Dianne Sanchezes throughout the multiverse so Ricks could never have that love again, and Evil Morty takes the blueprints as a kind of nuclear deterrent so Rick will never bother him again. Thus, ending that plot thread on a bittersweet note, and forcing Rick to move on because he literally has nowhere else to follow that part of his life.
• Wham Line:
  • From "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind:"
    Morty: Oh, my God, Rick, look! There's a bunch of people strapped all over that building!
    Rick: Not people, Morty, Mortys.
  • Some occurs with "Rixty Minutes".
    • This argument between Jerry and Beth, regarding Summer's birth:
      Jerry: All this time, you've been thinking, "What if that loser Jerry hadn't talked me out of the abortion?"
    • An in-universe one for Summer (but not for the audience, who already knows this):
      Morty: (points to the graves in the backyard) That out there? That's my grave!
  • Tammy's speech at her wedding reception in the season 2 finale:
    Tammy: But then I think, y'know, in a lot of ways I'm not a high school senior from the planet Earth. In a lot of ways what I really am is a deep cover agent for the Galactic Federation and you guys are a group of wanted criminals and this entire building is, in a certain sense, surrounded.
  • Not a spoken line, but a song at the end of "The Ricklantis Mix-up." "For the Damaged Coda" begins playing once the newly-elected President Morty has the shadow cabal of Ricks killed, revealing just who we're really dealing with.
  • In “Solaricks”, this dialogue between Rick and Morty, which confirms that the series' main Morty originates from the same Earth as Rick Prime, the one who killed Main Rick's family.
    Morty: Where are we going?
    Rick: To kill your grandpa, little buddy.
    Morty: (...) My original Rick killed your family?!
• Wham Shot: A giant one for "The Ricklantis Mix-up". At the end of the episode, Candidate Morty has finally become President of the Citadel, and he has disposed of some Ricks and Mortys who have disagreed with his rule, even his presidential campaign manager. As their bodies are ejected into space, contents of classified documents that Campaign Manager Morty had are shown to the audience while they are drifting in space: pictures of the Candidate Morty with a familiar eyepatch and a robotic Rick. The real Wham? The Rick that gave Campaign Manager Morty the pictures is floating in space too. Nobody left alive on the Citadel knows who Evil Morty actually is.
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: A character on Pregnant Baby says this when she decides she doesn't need protection since she's already pregnant.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: In "Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender", Rick gets so blackout drunk that he single-handedly kills the Worldender character threatening the universe and makes matters worse by creating an even bigger threat. He acknowledges that he officially had too much to drink last night.
• What Did You Expect When You Named It ____?: Inverted. One episode featured a Titanic (1997)-themed ship which is designed to hit an iceberg and sink every time it sails. It misses the iceberg completely.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • All the people who had bought cursed items and were waiting to be served when Rick got bored and closed. Enjoy your curses everyone.
  • Subverted in "A Rickle in Time." The neighbor that Summer forgot to put a mattress under takes a nasty fall off his roof and is then forgotten about, until the very end of the episode, which offhandedly reveals that he survived the incident, but is now in a wheelchair.
  • In "The Ricklantis Mixup", the ending shows short epilogues for all of the surviving characters except for Rick J-22, who was last seen still hooked up to a Lotus-Eater Machine so his brain fluid can be used to make wafer cookies. Since President Morty killed the factory owner, it's unknown what's become of J-22 or any of the other Ricks working there.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Morty sometimes tries to take a stand with his grandpa after the situation inevitably devolves into chaos and horror. In "Rick Potion #9", Rick turns it back on him, rightly comparing Morty's love-potion request to a bid for date rape.
  • The entire family pretty much calls out Rick in "Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri" for secretly cloning Beth without telling anybody. Even worse, he doesn't even know which Beth is the original or clone, because he deliberately hid that knowledge from himself. Everybody finally accepts what a terrible father figure Rick is.
• What Measure Is a Mook?:
  • Rick tells Morty in the pilot episode that it's okay to shoot the spaceport security guards because they're "robots". They aren't, but Rick contemptuously refers to them as such because of his hatred for bureaucracy.
  • The last thing the Zigerian leader mentions before mixing the chemicals that destroy the entire warship in a massive explosion is how all of his staff members have families.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Constantly abused and exploited for comic effect. Of course, it's not like the series places a great deal of emphasis on human life, either.
• What Were They Selling Again?: Discussed in "Rixty Minutes" after a very confusing ad for "Turbulent Juice" featuring hordes of shirtless men.
  Morty: What in the hell?
  Rick: Sex sells, Morty.
  Morty: Sex sells what? Is it a movie? Does it clean stuff?
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Toxic Rick drops a hint as to the location of the "mid-western town" where the Smith-Sanchez family lives in "Rest and Ricklaxation" when he builds his world-toxifying beam on top of a "moonlight tower". They were built in a few cities across the midwest, but they still exist in one location: Austin, Texas.
• Whole-Plot Reference:
  • Owing to its origins as a parody of Back to the Future, multiple episodes pastiche sci-fi and speculative fiction works, oftentimes blatantly lampshaded in a very tongue-in-cheek manner.
  • "Lawnmower Dog" is one for Inception. The act of entering someone's dream is even referred to as "Incepting".
    Morty: But I-it's been like a whole year!
    Rick: It's been six hours. Dreams move one one-hundredth the speed of reality, and dog time is one-seventh human time. So, you know, every day here is like a minute. It's like Inception, Morty, so if it's confusing and stupid, then so is everyone's favorite movie.
  • The "Lawnmower Dog" plot itself is a reference to The Lawnmower Man, a movie about a mentally challenged man who gains intelligence through the application of technology, and it turns him toward malevolence.
  • "Anatomy Park" is a hybrid of Fantastic Voyage and Jurassic Park.
  • "Something Ricked This Ways Comes" initially starts as one to Needful Things, down to the storeowner being named Mr. Needful. And then Rick blatantly references The Twilight Zone (1959), Ray Bradbury, and Friday the 13th: The Series when he comes back with his device that scans and analyzes what each object's Jackass Genie twist is gonna be.
  • Invoked in-universe by the Titanic-themed cruise ship that Jerry and Beth go on in "Ricksy Business". People can live out their Jack and Rose fantasies by recreating scenes from the movie.
  • The main plot reference of "Ricksy Business" itself is rather obvious.
  • "Raising Gazorpazorp" cribs much of its A-plot from the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "The Abandoned", in which the crew deal with a fast-growing infant Jem Hadar boy left on their station. Its B-plot is based on the somewhat-comprehensible parts of Zardoz.
  • "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind" is this to the Tom Baker era Doctor Who serial The Deadly Assassin, where the president of the Time Lords is assassinated and the Council of Time Lords blames the Doctor. It turns out the killer was The Master.
  • The Time Cop in "A Rickle in Time" is a Langolier, only with skinny arms and fewer teeth.
  • "Look Who's Purging Now" is one for The Purge, in which society has achieved world peace through a night of wanton cathartic murder. Rick even references the film itself and states that multiple civilizations across the universe have their own Purges under different names.
  • "Rickmancing the Stone" serves as one of the Mad Max films, taking place in a post-apocalyptic version of Earth where "Death Stalkers" scrounge for supplies. Summer even kills an Immortan Joe Expy near the beginning.
  • The second half of "Rattlestar Ricklactica" is basically a Terminator movie, but with snakes instead of humans.
  • Promortyus is a clear reference to Prometheus and the Alien franchise in general. The entire plot only works due to Rick and Morty being stupid enough putting their faces right in front of a clearly suspicious egg, allowing themselves to be attacked by facehugging parasites.
• A Wild Rapper Appears!: Parodied in "Total Rickall" when Summer goes into a Sugar Bowl music video and suddenly a very aggressive rapper who is incredibly out of place shows up and changes the entire tone of the song.
• Wild Teen Party: In "Ricksy Business", Summer immediately plans one of these while Jerry and Beth are away. Rick decides to one-up her party idea by inviting hordes of his own "friends and acquaintances" to his party, and whoever they know. After Morty has a small mishap with one of Rick's inventions while attempting to woo his would-be girlfriend Jessica, the party becomes literally "out of this world", teleporting the house to another universe entirely. Despite the nonsensical and dangerous events therein, one notably involving a human teen getting "lucky" with a bunch of gargantuan creatures lurking outside the house's perimeter after it had been teleported, the odd mixture of guests find the time to mingle with each other, and have fun, regardless.
• Wimp Fight: Rick gets into one with the Devil in "Something Ricked This Way Comes".
• With Due Respect: "Rick, with all due respect—what am I saying? What respect is due?"
• Womb Level: All of Anatomy Park, which exists inside of a homeless man named Reuben. The main attraction of the park happens to be all of Reuben's many diseases.
• Women Drivers: Invoked in "A Rickle in Time". Jerry was the one driving when he hit a deer, but insists that Beth say she was at the wheel because he was eating rum-raisin ice cream.
• World of Snark: Not every single character introduced on the show is a straight Deadpan Snarker, but they all get their moments. At the very least, the main cast certainly have had at least one good sarcastic comeback. Even Jerry.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • In the pilot, Rick freezes a teenager threatening Morty with a knife. This ultimately kills him when he tips over and shatters (although in Rick's defense, Rick didn't intend for this to happen... but he didn't appear to care if it did).
  • All of the adventures he takes Morty on can be counted too. He isn't above risking Morty's life or having him be a mule for him.
• Wraparound Background: Jerry drives through this when he's in a simulation running at low capacity. Rick has the same three people passing behind him as he talks on the phone in the same episode. Neither notice, but Rick knew what he was in from the very start, so it's completely beneath him.
• Writer on Board:
  • In one episode parodying Inception, Rick makes a point to mention how overrated that film is, which follows Dan Harmon's comments about it in his podcast Harmontown.
  • In "Look Who's Purging Now," Morty criticizes screenplay gimmicks like the use of How We Got Here. Dan Harmon often complains about clichés he hates in screenplays.
  • Played with in "Interdimensional Cable 2". When Summer complains about juvenile violence in the media, Morty becomes enraged and rants that people shouldn't have to communicate through the filter of her comfort. It's immediately undercut by Rick implying that Morty is just sexually frustrated.

X-Z

• Yank the Dog's Chain:
  • Done with Jerry in "M. Night Shaym-Aliens", where he has the perfect day and wins an award right before Rick comes in and reveals that the whole thing has just been one giant simulation. When Jerry tries starting his next day the same way in real life, it stops as soon as it started in the simulation.
    Rick: Don't worry about it, Jerry. Who cares if the greatest day of your life was just a simulation running at minimum capacity?
  • Also happens to Morty in "Lawnmower Dog" when Rick shows up to reveal the life of luxury he had been living as Snuffles' pet was just part of a dream.
    Rick: Right before I incepted you, you crapped yourself. I mean, real bad, Morty. It's a total mess out there, Morty. Of all the things that you thought happened, you crapping yourself is the only real thing.
  • In "Edge of Tomorty", Morty uses a death crystal to see possible ways he might die, and sees that there's apparently a future that involves him ending up with Jessica and growing old with her. After an entire episode of going way too far in his efforts to make this future happen, he finds out that Jessica wants to be a hospice care worker after leaving school, and the future he saw just had her comforting him when he was old and dying without any kind of special connection to him in particular.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside:
  • The nesting Pocket Dimensions in "The Ricks Must be Crazy" have time which runs progressively faster the further down you go. A period of months spent three dimensions down equates to a few hours outside. The minutes-long final fight lasts a few seconds for Summer.
  • The same thing happens in "Lawnmower Dog" as a spoof of Inception, where time moves faster the deeper they go in Goldenfold's subconscious. Snuffle's All Just a Dream apocalyptic scenario at the end goes on for a year, despite everyone involved only being asleep for six hours, which Rick chalks up to the dream being measured in dog years:
    Rick: "And if that doesn't make any sense, then neither does everyone's favorite movie!"
• You All Look Familiar: Both parodied when Jerry fails to notice he keeps passing the same simulated background people and played straight when Rick uses the fact to get large numbers of people to work on the same problem at the same time, thereby freezing the program in "M. Night Shaym-Aliens"!
• You Can Run, but You Can't Hide: Parodied in "Lawnmower Dog". Scary Terry keeps saying this as he stalks Rick and Morty. The duo then discusses why they are listening to him, pointing out that since Scary Terry is the villain, he probably wouldn't offer them advice that would actually help them, so they decide to try and hide from him anyway. It turns out to be very effective; Scary Terry spends hours searching for them unsuccessfully before giving up in frustration and going home.
• You Do Not Want To Know: After Rick locks down the house in "Total Rickall":
  Beth: Dad, why does our house have blast shields?
  Rick: Trust me Beth, you don't wanna know how many answers that question has.
• You Monster!:
  • Morty calls Rick a monster before comparing him to Hitler. He then takes this last part back, saying that at least Hitler cared about Germany.
  • Zeep Zanflorp calls Rick a monster after the latter destroys his pocket universe.
• Your Mom: Morty discusses his feelings for Jessica with Jerry, and Jerry says that he used to feel that way about a lady named "Your mom"—and then specifies that he's speaking literally and not as an urban diss.
• Yo Yo Plot Point: In some episodes, Jerry and Beth's marriage is on the verge of collapse before some event in the episode brings them closer together, rekindling their interest in each other and making them determined to give their marriage another try... until the next episode shoves them back into square one and they have to work through their failing marriage all over again. "Rick Potion No. 9" also justifies the trope by having Rick and Morty jump to another dimension, where Jerry and Beth never repaired their marriage as we saw them do earlier in the episode. "Big Trouble in Little Sanchez" lampshades their ever-waffling relationship and explains that they're codependent. Given Rick's presence constantly traumatizes them and destabilizes ... reality... pretty justified. Also, they're not really great people and their marriage has a pretty shitty foundation.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Rick occaisionally compliments a member of his family for their ideas or actions. They typically react with entirely appropriate self-hatred.