Rick and Morty has a lot of storylines that were taken out.
- The pilot originally had a different cold open. It involved Rick testing his portal gun (ending up with corn niblets and dead weathermen emerging from the portal), before Morty suddenly decides to move one thing next to the other, somehow creating a dinosaur that runs away. Then, Rick's gun begins beeping, and he asks Morty for a wrench (actually a hammer) to disarm it.
- An alternate scene for 'Rick Potion #9'
has alternate Rick and Morty explode into pieces, unlike in the completed episode. Rick also has to scrape his scrotum off of the ceiling. - An episode where Morty has to enter Jessica's bloodstream in an attempt to save her from an injury was storyboarded, but not produced for unknown reasons. "Anatomy Park" was probably inspired by this episode.
- Season 3 was originally supposed to consist of 14 episodes until production issues made them cut it down to 10. Dvd Commentary revealed a lot of unused plans for season 3:
- The original idea for "Vindicators 3: The Return of World Ender" was Rick and a girlfriend sleeping with a superhero. The B-plot of this story that was cut was Morty wanting to revisit the power suit from the episode "Look Who's Purging Now" because he has a crush on a Vindicator that was cut out of the episode, Arrowgirl/Quiver, who matures into Arrowwoman. The power suit gets upgraded with an AI. Morty, the AI and Arrowgirl/Quiver would have a love triangle that ends with Arrowgirl/Quiver choosing the suit because Morty could not keep up with her sexually. More scrapped members of the Vindicators include: Dr. Reach, the man with stretching powers; Siamese twins, where one is very fit and attractive, and the other one isn't; and a knitting grandma. At one point, the Vindicators all had sidekicks. Million Ants' sidekick was named Three Ants, and Morty and the sidekicks saved the day. Another storyline was a pneumatic tube that moves World Ender's body.
- The original idea for "The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy" was for Rick and Jerry to go to this bar and bond over a fake adventure they make up, then a real adventure happens. Then the writers came up with the idea of an immortality resort.
- The original idea for "Rest and Ricklaxation" was this concept called Shallow Morty, which was this evil version of Morty that was floating around and haunting him. Also, Jessica originally had a bigger role in this episode and was even split into positive and negative personalities.
- "The Ricklantis Mixup" was originally going to be 21 short stories about the Citadel. Originally, the Rick that runs the Citadel was going to be the Rick in the garage scene in "The Rickshank Redemption". Slick Morty was going to be shown alive on a garbage pile on a planet that Rick refuses to leave a tip on.
- "Morty's Mind Blowers" originally was going to show a memory where Rick was with baby Morty, and as he leaves, Summer sees him and tells her parents she saw an old man.
- In "The ABCs of Beth", originally Tommy was going to think he was Beth.
- "The Rickchurian Mortydate" was not originally going to be the season 3 finale, but when the season was cut down from 14 episodes to 10 episodes, it was re-written as the finale.
- The animatic for "A Rickle in Time" shows Shleemypants as customer service for the time-freezing device rather than just a cop trying to arrest Rick for stealing time crystals who hoped to be promoted for it. In addition, he even carried a "synchronisation sphere" that allowed Rick, Morty and Summer to see all the other possibilities at once before they were synchronized.
- According to the Inside the Episode video for "Mort Dinner Rick Andre", Mr. Nimbus was originally going to appear much sooner in the series and play a big part in Rick's backstory, explaining why Rick apparently knows the guy. However, Mr. Nimbus' original introductory episode got scrapped and it wouldn't be until Season 5 that he was finally introduced, albeit differently than intended.
