Characters / Rick and Morty: The Citadel

Rick and Morty Main Character Index
The Smith-Sanchez Family (Rick Sanchez | Morty Smith) | School | Rick and Morty: Variants (The Citadel) | Others | One Off Characters | Oni ComicBook | Pocket Mortys

---

The Citadel

"As You Know, Morty, I've got a lot of enemies in the universe that consider my genius a threat — galactic terrorists, a few sub-galactic dictators, most of the entire intergalactic government. W-W-Wherever you find people with heads up their asses, someone wants a piece of your grandpa, and a lot of versions of me on different timelines had the same problem. So a few thousand versions of me had the INGENIOUS IDEA OF BANDING TOGETHER like a herd of cattle or a school of fish or those people who answer questions on Yahoo! Answers."

— Rick Sanchez

The Citadel of Ricks is the home of all the Ricks and Mortys across all dimensions who chose to band together instead of staying in their home dimensions. In some cases their home dimensions just no longer exist so they had no choice but to join. After Rick C-137 single-handedly killed the Council of Ricks and nearly destroyed the Citadel it was rebuilt and is now governed by a democratically elected president.

All voiced by: Justin Roiland (Season 1 to 6)

Beware of spoilers!

---

General

• Alliance of Alternates: Every member is either a Rick or a Morty from across the multiverse, creating a society meant to regulate each other’s activity to keep the rest of them safe and/or content.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • The Citadel considers C-137 to be this since he's "the Rickest Rick" and too cool to bother with their rules and regulations. It's implied that he's always their first suspect when something bad happens. Rick C-137 eventually kills the Council of Ricks when they interfere with his attempt to topple the Federation. It's actually because the entire Citadel was found due to their hatred of C-137 who already killed legions of Rick, with him cooperating so as to be left alone.
    Summer: But if every Rick hates the government, why would they hate Grandpa?
    Morty: Because Ricks hate themselves the most. And our Rick is the most himself.
  • Evil Morty became this after the Council of Ricks unearthed the Android nature of Evil Rick. The former blended in with the other Rickless Mortys and eventually became Candidate, and then President Morty.
• Asshole Victim: Aside from the Mortys it's hard to pity the Ricks when they were brutally killed by Rick C-137, President/Evil Morty, the Galactic Federation and the Galactic Federation prisoners. The Ricks were self-pitying, self-serving sociopaths who separated the multiverse from the universes that had Ricks as the smartest beings in their respective universes. They were also farming and cloning Mortys as disposable sidekicks who could be replaced just as quickly.
• Badass Crew:
  • The Citadel has its own militia with one notable group being the SEAL Team Ricks who are sent by the Council themselves.
  • The whole Citadel itself being composed of Ricks (who is badass in his own right) are all capable of kicking ass as shown when Rick C-137 teleports the Citadel into a Galactic Federation prison and the two sides engage in a big scuffle of lots of bloodshed.
• City of Adventure: The Citadel is treated as one in "The Ricklantis Mixup", complete with The Eagles' "In the City" in an opening crowd montage.
• Crapsaccharine World: While the Citadel looks gorgeous on first impression and has the advanced technology that one would expect from a city created by a bunch of Ricks it doesn't take much time to figure out that it's a far less pleasant place beneath the surface:
  • Since the Citadel consists entirely of many various versions of the highly egocentric and narcissistic Rick and wimpy and submissive Morty, Fantastic Racism and Fantastic Caste System are very much in effect with Mortys being treated as the lowest-class citizens compared to Ricks.
  • Even among the Ricks themselves there are a privileged few placed in positions of power while the rest work in menial or at least relatively lower-class jobs (e.g. law enforcers or factory workers) despite having the same levels of intelligence as their more well-off counterparts.
  • Corruption runs high in the system from the cops and SWAT teams to the leaders. Case in point: the Citadel is ruled by the Council of Ricks, six particularly arrogant and self-righteous Ricks who heavily reinforce the caste system, accuse others of crimes with little evidence and hold a Kangaroo Court for the protagonists ("our" Rick the first time and "our" Morty and Summer the second time).
  • The Council themselves were apparently ruled behind the scenes by a "Shadow Council" who planned to make the newly democratically-elected President Evil Morty their Puppet King; however, this fails when they themselves are usurped by the new President, who plans to take action and make reforms while murdering Ricks and Mortys who oppose him.
• Crystal Spires and Togas: Is all gold and shiny surfaces, gleaming like a Golden Age sci-fi cover. Of course parts of the Citadel turn out to be pretty nasty.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The class-heavy Citadel with the divide between Ricks and Mortys (and even between Ricks) appears to be an allegory for Real Life class systems based on race where Mortys are representative of minority groups and Ricks are stand-ins for white people while the divide between Ricks in positions of power and those assigned to menial tasks represents the divide between the privileged upper class and larger working class.^note These parallels are most certainly intentional as the show creators themselves outright stated the episode that best showed this, "The Ricklantis Mix-up" was very much intended to have political overtones. Especially when you consider the fact that the episode was being produced during and aired after the extremely controversial 2016 presidential election.
• Fake Ultimate Mook: All Ricks are supposed to be geniuses but still soldiers are killed as easily as any type of Mook and they often attack head-on without any real strategy.
• Fantastic Caste System: Ricks are the Master Race and Mortys are the Servant Race. The latter are trained to be sidekicks to the former.
• Fantastic Ghetto: Mortytown is one for abandoned Mortys that don't have a Rick.
• Fantastic Underclass: In keeping with Rick's habitual abuse of Morty, the Mortys of the Citadel are mercilessly discriminated against by the Ricks or at the very least rarely taken seriously and sensitivity training does little to stop Police Brutality inflicted against "Yellowshirts." Most of them end up being segregated to Mortytown, a hellhole of urban decay, drug addiction and organized crime.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Despite Rick's hatred for them several were seen at his party in "Ricksy Business" and he mentioned calling a few of them up to make fun of Jerry's friendship with Doofus Rick.
• He Who Fights Monsters: They formed the Council so they wouldn't be oppressed by the government, revealed to be C-137 himself... resulting in them becoming an oppressive government.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: What leads to the Council of Ricks being overthrown/murdered by Rick C-137 in "The Rickshank Redemption". Rick is originally only planning to bring down the Galactic Federation which actually would be a good thing for the Citadel considering it was created in the first place to hide from the Federation and other oppressive governments. However, the Citadel and Council in particular earn his wrath by 1) messing up his original plan thanks to SEAL Team Ricks breaking into the Federation right before he can get the info he needs to destroy it, 2) attempting to assassinate him and 3) capturing "his" Morty and Summer when they're trying to rescue him. The result is Rick C-137 breaking into the Citadel, killing the entire Council of Ricks and pitting the Federation and the Citadel against each other, resulting in both factions suffering heavy casualties.
• Ignored Epiphany: The whole messed-up implications of the Simple Rick wafers end up lampshaded by the ad narrator for Freedom Ricks when one Rick shoots his boss and locks himself up in Simple Rick's prison. Simple Rick was kidnapped for loving his Beth purely and that meant trapping him in a Lotus-Eater Machine. Wonka Rick just recreates the wafer when Rick J-22 accidentally gets Simple Rick killed.
• Individuality Is Illegal: Mortys are taught in school to follow their Ricks without question and any attempt at standing out is immediately quashed. Mortys who can't manage this are discarded to Mortytown. Even most of the Ricks don't have it much better: in their own universes they're exceptional, wholly unique, ungovernable geniuses but on the Citadel they're average and can lose their portal guns and be forced into menial occupations that they come to find absolutely suffocating.
• Informed Attribute: All Ricks are supposed to be geniuses but most of the time their "combat strategy" only consists of attacking from the front; this allowed Rick C-137 and Evil Morty to kill a lot without any difficulty.
• Lensman Arms Race: The Citadel polices the Portal Gun technology zealously, being willing to kill anyone, even other Ricks, who might expose the secret. Within the Citadel, the technology is strictly regulated, with attempts to homebrew the fluid that makes it work being illegal. Part of the reason C-137 is on their shit-list is that his reckless adventuring and Bomb Throwing Anarchist attitude risks compromising the formula and the secret to their enemies, such as the Galactic Federation.
• The Man Behind the Man: The Council of Ricks that we meet in "Close Rick-Counters" and "Rickshank" were apparently governed all along by a Shadow Council of Ricks, who plan to be this to the newly elected president as well. President Morty pulls an Eviler than Thou by having most of them killed.
• No Party Like a Donner Party: After the Citadel runs out of food, the rescued Mortys go feral and start to eat each other.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: The Citadel isolated every universe where Rick is the smartest man from the rest of the multiverse into a "Central Finite Curve" to ensure that no one can possibly challenge their intelligence or power.
• One-Gender Race: The Citadel is entirely composed of Ricks and Mortys, with their families nowhere to be seen. Indeed, the Council considers one of C-137 Morty's crimes to be "radicalizing a Summer" which suggests that there's some rule forbidding their daughters and grand-daughters from adventures. A throwaway line from Garment District Rick even admits that "a goddamn Jerry" is capable of becoming a President, though that was likely facetious.
• Other Me Annoys Me: Neither C-137 Rick nor Morty (i.e. the Rick and Morty the show follows) like their various alternate selves that they meet, but they especially dislike the Citadel. Since they are "the Rickest Rick" and "the Mortyest Morty", this is unsurprising:
  • C-137 considers the Council to be Sell Outs who are Dramatically Missing the Point of their existence, and by "The Ricklantis Mixup", he mocks attempts to reconstruct the Citadel and dismisses them as a non-entity to his Morty:
    Rick C-137: We're done with the Citadel of Ricks. I was never on board with it in the first place. That's why I murdered everyone in charge and left it to rot.
  • The main Morty likewise doesn't like the Mortys he meets. He's especially annoyed by Lawyer Morty and the Morty captives in the Evil Dimension who blather on about him being "The One True Morty". All the ones he's met are essentially shallow parodies of himself.
• Planet of Steves: An entire city-state-sized location populated entirely by alternate versions of Ricks and Mortys.
• Pet the Dog: Considering the above-mentioned Fantastic Underclass, the fact that a good number of Ricks are willing to support and vote for a Morty when electing a President after he gives a heartfelt and passionate speech and even gives him sympathy votes after a failed attempt on his life is this. However seeing as the same person they backed and supported turns out to be Evil Morty, this ends up being something of a "Pet The Son Of a Bitch" instead.
• Super Breeding Program: In "Rickmurai Jack", it's revealed that the Citadel purposefully engineers situations where Beths and Jerrys get together in order for them to give birth to Mortys, and in order to meet supply-and-demand they take it a step further and mass-clone Mortys to produce a market of Mortys, all of them programmed to sell-out and suck-up to Rick and hide his "genius waves" with his "Morty waves". And when a Morty for one Rick dies, a spare Morty is clothed and given an implanted with the memories of that Rick's Morty, allowing them to fit right in.
• Tele-Frag: Rick C-137 teleports the Citadel right into the Galactic Federation prison. It's implied that the former location of the Federation is the Citadel's current location. In "Close Encounters", the Citadel has a brown sky whereas it has dark matter space in "The Ricklantis Mixup".
• The Worf Effect: The Rick we follow in the show has shown to be an incredible badass, able to build anything, win almost any fight no matter the odds and, if not, then able to survive any fight through determination and technological inventions like backup-bodies and cybernetics to name a couple. Meanwhile, the Ricks from the Citadel, despite being a veritable army of people with these same capabilities, still end up being Mooks that get murdered by the dozens in comparison to other foes like the Galactic Federation and prisoners and are most definitely outclassed and outsmarted by our Rick.
• Wretched Hive: Mortytown is the Fantastic Ghetto, filled with Rickless Mortys who are not allowed to go to school to be assigned to Ricks. Most of it is filled with reprobates, criminals, junkies, and crooks, who end up trying to make bootleg portal fluid.

Leadership

The President of the Citadel (Unmarked Spoilers!)

Evil Morty

Voiced by: Justin Roiland (Season 1 to 6), Harry Belden (Season 7)

^{Click here to see him as President of the Citadel}

"That's what makes me evil; Being sick of him. If you've ever been sick of him, you've been evil, too."

"This seems like a good time for a drink, and a cold, calculated speech with sinister overtones. A speech about politics. About order. Brotherhood. Power. But speeches are for campaigning. Now, is the time for action."

An evil, eyepatch-wearing Morty that realized the truth about Ricks, and how they created the Central Finite Curve. He's out to destroy it, no matter how many Ricks and Morties he has to kill to achieve this goal. Originally introduced as The Dragon to Evil Rick, he's actually the mastermind behind him, with "Evil Rick" being a robotic puppet. Much later, he becomes the President of the Citadel and eventually meets face-to-face with the main Rick and Morty to complete his goal. He's most-known for being the only Morty that can keep up, and outright outsmart not one, but countless Ricks, never facing a single loss.

---

• Alternate Universe Reed Richards Is Awesome: He’s clearly smarter than any other Morty, both tactically and scientifically. He was smart and willful enough to break the toxic relationship with Rick by tricking him into a false sense of security, then turning him into a cyborg under his control. Then he won the election at the citadel over the Ricks and beat all the Ricks by destroying the citadel and escaping. To top it off he comes back and defeats Rick Prime.
• Always Someone Better: Outsmarts a literal multiverse of Ricks to get what he wants, to get out of the portion of infinity where Ricks are always the smartest men.
• Ambiguously Absent Parent: While learning the origin of Evil Morty, it's revealed that he snapped after his Rick told him that he could just quit, which he did. But the question of his family's whereabouts is still there. In the flashback, Jerry, Beth, and Summer are nowhere to be seen or mentioned. The house Evil Morty and his Rick are living in appears to be different than the usual Smith house. It is unknown if Evil Morty was being raised by his Rick alone or if something happened to his family. And there's the fact that it's possible that Evil Morty doesn't even have a family; previously, it was revealed that the demand for Mortys was so high that Ricks started cloning Mortys; it's possible that Evil Morty could be one of those clones that never had a family.
• Ambition Is Evil: Subverted. Rick warns the main Morty that a "cocky Morty can lead to a lot of problems", and Evil Morty's vicious murder-spree during his quest for power seemingly confirms these sentiments. However, it's eventually revealed that obtaining power in the Citadel was simply a means to an end for his true plan, which was simply to escape the influence of all Ricks once and for all and to be free. So, in the end, he's not necessarily evil due to his ambition, but rather because of the selfish and cruel lengths he's willing to go to in order to free himself.
• Anti-Villain: In spite of everything he has done throughout his appearances, it all really boils down to him wanting to just escape Rick's Central Finite Curve after putting up with his Rick for so long and once he has it in a Rick-less multiverse, he never causes any further trouble unless his solitude is disturbed.
• At Least I Admit It: While he scoffs at Rick's self righteousness and being deemed "evil" for simply wanting rid of him, whenever the duo call out his equally selfish and ruthless measures in doing so, he concedes with utter nonchalance, making no pretense that he remotely cares if anyone else gets harmed in his attempts to escape Rick in any form.
  Evil Morty: None of them have to be responsible, they're all victims of themselves. "Oh, it's so hard to be a Genius!" Couldn't you just die?
  Morty: Well, what are you doing about it?
  Evil Morty: (deadpan) Jack shit. I'm leaving.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Evil Morty succeeds in every one of his appearances in some form:
  • His first appearance in "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick-Kind" is the most downplayed example since he doesn't manage to kill Rick C-137 after the main Morty's uprising kills Evil Rick and brings down the operation. Nonetheless, Evil Morty is still able to get off scott-free without anyone figuring out he was the real mastermind, and he did get the brain scan of Rick C-137 that he wanted.
  • In "The Ricklantis Mixup", he successfully gets himself elected as President of the Citadel, which is vital to enacting his true goal, then immediately has his political rivals assassinated and begins taking action to set up his plans.
  • "Rickmurai Jack" sees him accomplish his ultimate goal: to break the "Central Finite Curve" that separates the infinite number of universes where Rick is the smartest man in the universe from the rest of the infinite multiverse. The only thing that doesn't go as planned is that the main Rick and Morty and some other Mortys survive (he had intended for everyone in the Citadel to be killed), but it does destroy the Citadel (perhaps permanently this time) and possibly the production of Portal Fluid, which would make Rick's iconic portal gun worthless, and leaves him free to explore the rest of the infinite multiverse untouched by the influence of Rick.
  • Manages to win again in "Unmortricken" despite not technically being the bad guy this time. Not only does he take down Rick Prime, robbing Rick of the satisfaction of beating him (except for finishing him off), he also manages to steal the plans for the Omega Device, giving him the power to erase every Rick in existence should he be bothered.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Wears a black suit with a red tie after he takes over the Citadel.
• Batman Gambit: Takes advantage of how Ricks hate being told what to do in "Rickmurai Jack" by having the PA system on the Citadel repeat, "Nobody leave, everybody stay." Naturally, a huge amount of Ricks try and use their portal guns to leave, but since Evil Morty hacked the portal network, they and their Mortys are all instantly killed by lava, monsters and other stuff from hostile dimensions.
• Beneath Suspicion: How Evil Morty gets away with his plans. Most Ricks would never suspect a Morty could outplay them.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Evil Morty has only two lines in his debut appearance, but he's the one responsible for the dead Ricks and tortured Mortys. He's much more talkative in "The Ricklantis Mix-up", though speeches are a big part of his ploy to gain power. He's also quite talkative in "Rickmurai Jack" after meeting the main Rick and Morty.
• Big Bad:
  • Though he isn't seen often, he is a contender for the main antagonist of the entire series, as one of the few recurring antagonists who has caused the main Rick and Morty problems with the Citadel multiple times. He was the secret villain of both "Close Rick-Counters" and "Ricklantis Mixup", and finally takes this role more openly in "Rickmurai Jack". With his goal achieved, he's seemingly abandoned this role to Rick Prime for seasons 6 and 7.
  • Played With: as of "Unmortricken" he's taken out Rick Prime and stolen the plans for the Omega Device, but he only wants to use it as a threat to get everyone to leave him alone.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Shares the position of the main antagonist with the series' other major overarching villains, Tammy and Rick Prime. At least until they're killed rather unceremoniously at the end of season 4 and halfway through season 7 respectively, leaving Evil Morty as the sole main villain.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: As President Morty. First when as a candidate at a debate, he gives an impassioned speech about unity between Ricks and Mortys, then has his opponents from that same debate ejected out into space. After firing his campaign manager he keeps up the act, asking if he'd found a new job, then uses that to gain sympathy after said managers' botched assassination attempt. When introducing himself to Rick and Morty as the President of the Citadel, he acts like an affable if transparently sleazy politician only to finally drop the charade and reveal his arrogant, cold-blooded personality.
• Board to Death: His first action as President Morty is to murder a powerful and influential group of Ricks who claims he'll only be a puppet while they'll be the ones controlling things from behind the scenes.
• Boomerang Bigot: Even though he denies hating "sellout Mortys" that stay loyal to Ricks, saying there's no point because they're literally engineered to be subservient, his actions imply he hates them just as much as Ricks, if not more given his horrendous treatment of them. He captured hundreds of Mortys and subjected them to cold-blooded torture to block his brainwaves even when only a few would do, he exclusively enslaves mutated Mortys to work for him on getting the Citadel's dimensional drive operational, and does everything he can to ensure as many Mortys die as well as Ricks when he brings down the Central Finite Curve. Even at his very best, he has no empathy for them and possibly doesn't even see them as human given his comments about them being "bred for subservience".
• Buffy Speak: As a Call-Back to his (not a) speech from "The Ricklantis Mixup", Evil Morty isn't quite so eloquent when talking about his master plan in the heat of the moment. Given this only happens in one instance, he may be doing this deliberately.
• The Bus Came Back: Evil Morty shows up for one episode of the first season and doesn't appear again until the third, where he comes back in a big way. He then reappears again (canonically, at least) in the fifth season finale after another long absence.
• Card-Carrying Villain: The moment it's obvious to Rick C-137 that he's evil, this Morty just straight up accepts the moniker having expected it and goes along with the whole thing, intentionally playing up elements of his "villainy" with his apathetic snark and false congratulations. When he's forced to team up with Rick and Morty to deal with Rick Prime, Evil Morty goes out of his way to be a dick to his allies, reminding them that his whole schtick is being an Evil Counterpart.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Nonchalantly says "Uh-oh" when Rick gets free of his restraints and shoots at him only for a Force Field to generate and protect him. When Rick finally puts together that President Morty is the same person as Evil Morty and prepares to fight, Evil Morty's response is a cheery "Yay, he's all caught up."
• Category Traitor: He views Mortys who remain loyal to Ricks despite their abuse as "sellout Mortys" and despite his claims to the contrary, it's implied he hates them as much as Ricks.
• The Chessmaster: In all of his appearances, he successfully manipulates everyone so the outcome would help him.
• The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: For all he relates to Mortys living under Ricks, any sympathy he shows another Morty is pragmatism at best for the sake of his plans, and he has no qualms torturing or killing Mortys as a means to his goals or even just for pointless cruelty. As he later explains, he's as antipathetic to fellow Mortys as he is to Ricks due to how much they enable the latter, and has come to find only liberating himself meaningful.
  Evil Morty: You sellout Mortys kill me. I'd hate you more than the Ricks you worship if there were any point. But you can't help it. You were bred for it. Wanna see?
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Through Evil Rick, he engineers the Morty Dome, a giant dome covered in versions of Morty which are tortured constantly, creating a mental shield that prevents other Ricks from tracking them. C-137 Rick notes that it's barbaric in its scale; five Mortys and a jumper cable would be equally effective. This makes the hypocrisy of his campaign where he claims to speak on behalf of all Ricks and Mortys all the more galling.
• The Comically Serious: Despite being a Knight of Cerebus, he has been shown to parody known villain tropes like evil speeches, especially in "Rickmurai Jack".
  Evil Morty: Tonight, the quality of dialogue stops mattering. Tonight I do that thing I wanna do. With the curve thing.
• Combat Clairvoyance: When he finally partakes in a fight himself, it's revealed his eyepatch offers this kind of ability, being able to literally scan the brain of his opponent to analyze the next move that they will make.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Evil Morty manages to come out on top by always being a step ahead of any possible threat to his plans. He controlled Evil Rick to make sure he could scapegoat a Rick for his crimes, he already had the loyalty of many Ricks when he became president in case the Council tried to pull something, he eliminated everyone that might know of his relation to Evil Rick, and finally had his whole endgame set up in advance so Rick C-137 would have no way to derail it once it came to fruition.
  • In "Unmortricken", Evil Morty is forced to act more impulsively when he teams up with Rick to stop Rick Prime, but still shows off his ability to plan ahead even on the fly. He brings Morty along for the final battle with Rick Prime just so he'll have someone to pull a Twin Switch with if the opportunity comes up.
• Cyborg: Evil Morty's last appearance in "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick-Kind" shows him removing his remote-control eyepatch, which is hooked up to some wires coming out of his eye. It's not made clear if his right eye is real or a prosthetic, but he is accustomed to wearing an eyepatch even when he doesn't need one. "Unmortricken" shows that Evil Morty is decked out in cybernetic implants to a similar extent as Rick, such as laser weapons in his palms.
• The Cynic: Evil Morty is justifiably cynical about the Citadel and the toxic relationship between Ricks and Mortys, and has decided the best solution is to burn it to the ground.
• Darkhorse Victory: Absolutely no one initially believed he would become President of the Citadel, but after a stirring speech, he wins over enough admirers to achieve victory. It was apparently, as the guards note, a very close election in either case, and it's likely the sympathy for a candidate who was nearly assassinated before taking office tipped things in his favour.
• Deadpan Snarker: He can keep up with any Rick when it comes to dishing out dry one-liners. In season 7, his team-up with Rick and Morty is littered with Snark-to-Snark Combat between him and Rick.
• Deadly Euphemism: After having most of the Shadow Council of Ricks executed, his barber asks if the hair he just finished cutting was "enough off the top". Evil Morty then looks directly at the last two living members of the Shadow Council and asks, "Is it?" They clearly get the message and state it is.
• Dragon-in-Chief: Because Evil Rick was just a robotic puppet, Evil Morty was the real mastermind behind the rampage.
• Do with Him as You Will: How he disposes of Rick Prime, he revives our Rick and leaves the two alone in a room with Prime immobilized.
  Evil Morty: Hmmm, knock yourself out.
• Enemy Mine: In season 7, Rick's crude efforts to scour the multiverse for Rick Prime endanger Evil Morty's solitude, so he begrudgingly helps Rick refine his system to locate Rick Prime, then sticks around to help defeat him only to destroy the Omega Device, a weapon that can wipe out every single version of a person across the multiverse, and then download the plans for himself as a contingency.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • With the reveal that Evil Rick was just his puppet, there may be some Ricks that Evil Morty sees as exceptionally vile, with Evil Rick and C-137 Rick being separated by one Rick that Evil Morty (through Evil Rick) calls "super weird".
  • During Rick Prime's battle royal where he forces several Ricks to fight each other, upon joining up with Rick again, Morty immediately tells him in a panicked voice to kill Evil Morty, despite having just suggested that working together with everyone else there is their best chance of making it out of Rick Prime's trap alive, because he doesn't trust him not to backstab them later. An annoyed Evil Morty comments "And they call me 'Evil Morty'."
  • The threat of the Omega Weapon, a machine capable of killing a person across infinite timelines at once, is enough to make Evil Morty team up with Rick to destroy it. Although he keeps the plans, he states it's only as a deterrent to get Rick to stay away from him.
• Evil Costume Switch: While running for president of the Citadel, Evil Morty wears a regular suit. After he's elected and drops all the pretense, he switches to a black shirt and red tie.
• Evil Counterpart: Evil Morty wants to overthrow the Citadel, kill any Ricks he can and explore the Multiverse, making him this to the main Rick. While they're more or less even in terms of morality, Rick's reasons for turning on his own (a Rick killed his wife and daughter) are far more understandable than Evil Morty's reasons for hating his own (all the Mortys are pushovers).
• Evil Doppelgänger: To the main Morty, being equally as capable of badassery but utterly devoid of empathy or compassion, even to his fellow Mortys.
• Eviler than Thou:
  • Evil Morty turned out to have been this for his Rick, turning him into a cyborg puppet to carry out his plans. Later, Evil Morty's first act as president of the rebuilt Citadel is to kill off the members of the Shadow Council who thought they could control him just as they controlled the original Council of Ricks for the first Citadel.
  • One inversion is that he's doing more good than our Rick is while President of the Citadel. Rick explicitly states that he left everyone on the Citadel to rot. Evil Morty doesn't care about doing good, but he is at least better at pretending to appear good by enacting much-needed reforms. Also, both Evil Morty and C-137 Rick cause mass death and destruction, but while Rick does it when provoked or as an accident, Evil Morty does it on purpose. However, Rick is so careless due to junkie tendencies and wanting to avoid mundane activities at all costs, while Evil Morty's ultimate goal is to escape Rick.
• Evil Genius: He's able to outsmart every Rick in the Central Finite Curve in his first appearance, including C-137 (the main Rick of the show). The only Rick shown to get one over on Evil Morty is Rick Prime, who is himself smarter than every other Rick.
• Eyepatch of Power: Evil Morty has an eyepatch, which hides the transmitter he uses to control Evil Rick. He discards it after Evil Rick is killed, to keep from being discovered by the Ricks. He seems to prefer controlling his technology through eyepatches, as much later, in "Rickmurai Jack," he uses a computerised one to manipulate the Citadel's dimensional drive.
• Eye Scream: Underneath Morty's eyepatch, his eye is revealed to be perfectly intact except for a few wires sticking out of the socket, linking to the transmitter on the eyepatch which he was controlling Evil Rick with.
• Evil Versus Evil: Evil Morty may have a sympathetic goal on paper but the monstrous deeds he performs to accomplish it and his lack of empathy for his victims make him "evil" without a doubt. However, he's also fighting a society of Ricks who've created a system where Mortys are literally bred to serve Ricks. The Citadel and its leaders arrange for Beths and Jerrys to get together and then clone and brainwash the resulting Mortys to be sold off as disposable sidekicks/slaves to "rogue" Ricks, only to sell replacements once the sold Mortys inevitably die gruesomely. Even if Rick C-137 ends up being A Lighter Shade of Black by default, he's still a Villain Protagonist who acts out of hedonism while Evil Morty's goal doesn't seem to stretch past securing freedom for himself, if for no other Morty.
  • He kills most of The Omniscient Council of Vagueness that controlled the first Citadel through the Council of Ricks, which included The Wonka Manipulative Bastard that kept possibly the only normal, happy and content Rick imprisoned to make a mass-produced snack and replaced him with a working stiff Rick he shot in the back of the head while he was experiencing the joy of freedom.
  • A Farmer Rick who grew fruit seen in the first episode has his property being gathered by Mortys he chased off earlier as part of Evil Morty's new policies, judging by the uniforms.
  • The Head Sadist Teacher Rick is fired from a school where they brainwash Rickless Mortys into agreeing with whatever their new Ricks says, and hanging the guilt of the deaths of Ricks over the students' heads.
  • In Unmortricken he reluctantly teams up with Rick and Morty to take down Rick Prime.
• Ex-Big Bad: A self proclaimed example. When he appears in Unmortricken he makes it clear he's achieved his goal and now just wants Rick and Morty to leave him alone.
• Faux Affably Evil: Puts on a false friendly demeanor to his campaign manager, the entire Citadel, and C-137 Rick and Morty.
• Foil:
  • Evil Morty and his Rick out to be this to every other Rick and Morty in their dynamic. Whereas every other Rick and Morty team has Rick as the brilliant and devious leader and Morty as the feckless sidekick and smokescreen for Rick, turns out Evil Rick is the completely non-sapient smokescreen to Evil Morty.
  • The differences between Evil Morty and the main Morty are explored in the two-part finale of season five. Part one has Morty attempting to cut Rick out of his life, only to fail and come crawling back to him. Even after Rick ends part one deciding to keep two crows as his new sidekicks because he knows his relationship with Morty is abusive, Morty keeps trying to win him back in part two and Rick only returns after being "dumped" by the crows. Meanwhile, part two reveals all of Evil Morty's crimes were in service to destroying and escaping the Central Finite Curve, the walled off section of the multiverse where Ricks are always the smartest man in the universe. While Morty is so devoted to Rick that he's willing to be abused forever rather than cut him out of his life, Evil Morty hates Ricks so much that his entire motivation has been to cut them out of his life forever.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Rick tells Morty that a cocky Morty can lead to big trouble. He's proven right when Evil Morty becomes the new leader of the Citadel.
  • Similarly, "Rest and Ricklaxation" highlights how an apathetic Morty lacking empathy can become an incredibly successful, highly charismatic and maliciously manipulative individual the instant his moral qualms are no longer a problem. Evil Morty takes this and runs with it to its logical extremes, running circles around even every single Rick in the Central Finite Curve with no one the wiser until right at the end as he dooms nearly all of them.
• Frame-Up: Evil Rick and Morty hack Rick C-137's portal gun to make it look like he was behind the rash of Rick murders and Morty abductions.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Much like every other Morty, this one had a Rick and put up with the same egotism and abuse, leading him to loathe all Ricks and finally snapping so hard that his ultimate goal is to escape into a different part of the multiverse where he can get away from Ricks for good. However, the fact that his loathing extends even to other Mortys to the point where he's perfectly willing (and in fact, does) torture and slaughter thousands of innocent Mortys in the name of escape, no one offers him any sympathy. Rick C-137 even says the sheer excessive suffering Evil Morty inflicts as part of his plans is entirely unnecessary for his actual goals.
• Friendship Denial: After defeating Rick Prime and getting the Omega Device, he immediately stops Morty's attempt at small talking to him and lampshades this.
  Evil Morty (To Morty): We don't have to talk. This didn't make us friends.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: There's nothing (at least physically) separating him from the countless other Mortys out there, yet he's become the single most dangerous antagonist in the entire series because of his cunning and complete absence of empathy. What makes this even more impressive is that Evil Morty accomplishes this without any special abilities or even a Rick to back him up. Season 7 reveals he really was just like every other Morty, with his breaking point coming after a "mundane" adventure with Rick where he "went up another ass", causing him to turn on his Rick and begin his plans to bring down the Central Finite Curve.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: In the Season 5 finale, the Morty who's been able to outsmart every other Rick, including C-137, dons a gold spacesuit with a matching ship, and has a golden portal gun that, once outside the Central Finite Curve, fires gold-colored portals, the first of its kind seen in the show, instead of blue for planetary teleportation and green for multidimensional travel inside the Curve. He's still seen wearing the golden outfit in Pocket Mortys.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Evil Morty has presumably planned his rise to power ever since Season 1, and succeeds in Season 3 in a plotline totally separate from the main Rick and Morty. He finally loses this and becomes the Big Bad who directly antagonizes them in Season 5's finale which reveals his attempt to steal Rick's memories and rule the Citadel were just steps to pull off true plan.
• Heroic Neutral: Inverted. After all, its in the name, "Evil Morty". He slaughtered countless Ricks and tortured (and then eventually killed) many more Morties, all in the quest of escaping Rick and being left alone, making him a Villainous Neutral. He only gets involved in C-137 and Prime's fight because their fight risks him being bothered again.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Evil Morty's exact goals remain unknown even after he becomes President of the Citadel. We finally learn what his agenda is in the Season 5 finale: to escape the Central Finite Curve, a segment of the multiverse where Rick is the smartest man in every universe. Once he's accomplished that, he just wants to be left alone.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Because how could any Rick suspect any Morty?
• Human Resources: He reroutes Ricks and Mortys trying to use Operation Phoenix to escape the Citadel into clone tanks where they're then blended up and their viscera is used to power his machinery to bring down the Central Finite Curve. It's unclear whether it's necessary for him to use the remains to do so, let alone whether they needed to be conscious during it, or if he did it just to kill as many Ricks and Mortys as possible. Given the sheer pointless cruelty and excessiveness of his Morty Dome plan, it's implied it's the latter.
• Humble Goal: All he wants is to be left alone and be free of constantly dealing with Rick's abuse. It's the sheer Machiavellian lengths he goes to to accomplish this that makes him evil and one of the only truly serious threats Rick faces.
• Hypocrite:
  • Evil Morty disdains Ricks for how they treat Mortys, yet he tortured and killed many Mortys in his campaign. What's more, he murders countless Ricks and Mortys without batting an eye when he destroys the Citadel to escape the Central Finite Curve.
  • He also claims that Ricks like being seen as the underdog despite their power and use their trauma to justify their abuse and that every Rick deflects accountability that way instead of trying to be a better person. However, he himself uses the fact that Ricks are abusive to justify his own villainous actions, having the gall to compare the main Morty to himself for defying Rick, ignoring the mountains of bodies left in his wake.
• Hypocrisy Nod: Evil Morty knows and eventually admits he doesn't truly care about Mortys. In fact, he hates them because they enable Ricks' abuse. Also, he asks the question what evil truly is and claims to not be more evil than Ricks, so it's possible he is more or less aware that his methods are villainous (though that could be the point). At one point before he reveals his true identity, after he points out Rick C-137 built the Citadel, Rick fires back that he just saw an enslaved Morty murdered by his cops, prompting Evil Morty to respond with a simple, "Fair enough."
• I Hate Past Me: Heavily implied. Not only does he want to be free of Rick at all costs but he vents as much disdain and cruelty towards other Mortys who remain subservient to Rick like he did before finally snapping. He callously destroys nearly every Rick and Morty in the Citadel seemingly for no reason other than what they represent of his past.
• I Just Want to Be Free: This is Evil Morty's Goal in Life. His masterplan is to escape the Central Finite Curve, a wall in the multiverse built by the Citadel that secludes realities where Rick is the smartest man in the universe from the ones where he isn't, freeing himself from the toxic system built by Ricks to keep themselves in control. He succeeds by destroying the Citadel and killing nearly every Rick and Morty in it.
  • Emphasized in Unmortricken. When pressed by Main Morty, Evil Morty admits that while he can kill the Main versions of Rick and Morty if he wants to, Evil Morty doesn't because it'll come at the cost of not being left alone.
• I Lied: He offers the main Morty a ride off the Citadel before its destruction if he's willing to leave his Rick to die. When Morty saves Rick, Evil Morty admits he was lying anyway since the "second seat" in his ship is a toilet.
• Invincible Villain:
  • He's the only antagonist in the series capable of outsmarting Rick C-137, and has defeated him in all of their encounters fairly easily. Every episode he has a major role in ends with him getting everything he wants, completely unscathed at that, and dispatching any potential enemies with the exception of the main Rick and Morty, the only duo to have escaped from or defeated him in any way.
  • Subverted as of "Unmortricken." Although Evil Morty is as cunning and deadly as ever, the main Rick proves to be a better intellectual match for him when seeking Rick Prime, who outsmarts them both on multiple occasions.
• It's All About Me: His desire to find a life void of Rick's controlling is rather sympathetic, however, Evil Morty has reached a point he cares only of that, and will gladly step over or even kill in masses to reach that goal. He has No Sympathy for any other Mortys who suffered the same, considering them "sell outs" for being too weak to turn as evil as he did, and even adds to their pain and death toll to achieve his freedom or even just needlessly to demonstrate their worthlessness to him. Tellingly, when he has the opportunity and power to make genuine change, all he does is abandon the Citadel while leaving it to burn, damning everyone else just for his own personal happiness.
• I Work Alone: Whenever Evil Morty schemes, he tends to prefer doing it himself. In Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind, using Evil Rick as his mouthpiece, when Rick C-137 assumes that they team up to destroy the Citadel, he claims he's pretty good doing things on his own. In Unmortricken, Evil Morty outright refuses to Rick Prime's We Can Rule Together. Ironically, this trope is one of the only things Evil Morty shares with Rick Prime.
• Jerkass Has a Point: If there's one thing Evil Morty was right about, it's his views on the Ricks' treatment of their Mortys. Rick C-137 (the main Rick) is one of the very, very few Ricks to actually care about his Morty; the vast majority of Ricks have little regard for their Mortys and even kill them without a second thought, and treat them as mass-producable and replacable. And even then, Rick C-137 has abused, tortured, and traumatised Morty heavily in the past as seen in "Total Rickall" and "Morty's Mind Blowers", even as recently as the previous episode where he fired Morty and replaced him with two crows to insult him.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: There are several moments when Evil Morty teams up with Rick and Morty to deal with Rick Prime that lead one to suspect he'll eventually warm up to one or both of them. Instead he just insults them and lets Morty know that they're not friends, even warning him and Rick to leave him alone.
  Morty: You're an asshole.
  Evil Morty: Well yeah, I'm not "Good Morty".
• Karma Houdini: In all of his appearances.
  • His first episode ends with him succeeding in his Rick killing-spree and torturing hundreds of Mortys by laying all the blame on his puppet Evil Rick.
  • His second has him becoming President of the Citadel and disposing of everyone who knows his true identity or would oppose him.
  • His third has him destroying the Citadel and killing nearly every Rick and Morty on it and ending season 5 by getting everything he ever wanted: to go explore the multiverse free of the influence of any Rick.
  • His fourth has him abscond with the plans to the Omega Weapon, warning Rick that he will use it on him if he ever bothers him again. Downplayed in this episode by being his least evil appearance, helping Rick and Morty kill Rick Prime and even reviving Rick when he was close to death.
• Kick the Dog:
  • His torture of Mortys to create a psychic shield was unnecessary overkill; five Mortys and a jumper cable would have produced the same effect.
  • In his second appearance, he coldly fires his campaign manager because he lacked faith in him, and then has him executed for learning his true identity.
  • In his third, when enacting his plan, he tries to ensure that every Rick and Morty in the Citadel will be killed even though it isn't necessary for his plans.
  • Just before he escapes the Central Finite Curve, he offers the main Morty a chance to come with him if he leaves Rick behind to die. When Morty chooses to save Rick instead, Evil Morty reveals he was lying. The second seat on his spaceship is a toilet.
• Knight of Cerebus: Evil Morty becomes this full-stop once he manages to take over the Citadel of Ricks and eliminates other Ricks and Mortys that would stand in his way. In the same episode where they finally meet officially, Rick lambasts that the Citadel runs on canon and Evil Morty's appearance destroys the status quo by revealing the Dark Secrets of the Citadel, forcing Rick to show his true backstory, and ends with Evil Morty gruesomely killing practically everyone on the Citadel and bringing down the Central Finite Curve that sealed off the realities where Rick is always the smartest man in the universe from the rest of the multiverse.
• Lack of Empathy: Doesn't care about Ricks nor Mortys, having multiple versions of both murdered in gruesome ways to advance his plans. It's completely unknown if he does care about someone else besides himself or if he is even capable of doing so- IE there's been no mention of his original family or his realities' Jessica or anything of the sort. Either way, his complete lack of concern for other Mortys sticks out as particularly heinous and hypocritical, as he knows more than anybody the lengths that Mortys truly do suffer under Ricks- yet he chooses to murder and maim them all the same, as well as ultimately leave them behind at the mercy of their Ricks in favor of saving only himself.
• Leitmotif: Evil Morty has one in the form of For the Damaged Coda by Blonde Redhead. The song is usually a Musical Spoiler that accompanies the reveal that he's behind something sinister. The first time was the reveal that he was controlling Evil Rick. The second time was when he became President of the Citadel. The third time (with a remixed version) was when he escaped the Central Finite Curve while destroying the Citadel behind him. The fourth is the Cold Open to Unmortricken, when only the opening notes play as he dons his signature eyepatch, revealing that the viewer is seeing his Start of Darkness.
• Light Is Not Good: By "Rickmurai Jack", he's taken to wearing a white dress shirt with a turquoise tie, and is just as evil as ever. He ends the episode wearing a golden spacesuit with a matching ship and portal gun that fires golden portals.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Evil Morty is this compared to Rick Prime. Evil Morty may have committed his fair share of atrocities, but they were all done to find a way to get away from Rick’s influence for good and decide to no longer be a threat to our Rick and Morty once he accomplishes his goal. Rick Prime, on the other hand, committed all of his atrocities out of sheer pettiness, having wiped out every single version of Rick’s wife from existence and was about to do the same with the rest of Rick’s loved ones, all because Rick rejected his offer to explore the multiverse with him.
• The Man in Front of the Man: Evil Morty was in control of Evil Rick the entire time.
• Meet the New Boss: After the overthrow of the Council of Ricks, the Citadel of Ricks holds its first democratic election. They end up (unwittingly) electing Evil Morty, who turns out to be even worse than the Council.
• Mirror Character: It's repeatedly shown that he's in fact very similar to the Ricks he despises so much; he's selfish, egotistical, amoral, exploits the people around him, treats his fellow Mortys as expendable, and uses his traumas as a way to justify the horrible things he does. Notably, all of these are things he calls Rick out for.
  • To Zeep Xanflorp, both were born into a system created by Rick where he exploits them while giving them the illusion of free will. Both are comparable to Rick in being highly intelligent and having cynical personalities, both were disgusted by the way Rick exploited them and sought freedom but only cared about their own personal freedom and were happy to exploit others in the same way. However Evil Morty's cynical outlook developed from his toxic relationship with his original Rick while Zeep had no known Freudian Excuse and was just as bad as Rick way before he realized the truth of his existence, also Zeep claimed he was smarter then Rick but ultimately just turned out to be a Villain of the Week who eventually resigned himself to living as part of Ricks car battery, Evil Morty never stated he was smarter than Rick but repeatedly proved it by outsmarting every Rick in the multiverse and successfully escaping the Central Finite Curve and starting a new life on his own terms.
• Motive Rant: In the season five finale, he reveals his masterplan has always been to destroy and escape the Central Finite Curve and lays out why in a speech to the main Rick and Morty.
  Evil Morty: Do you know what the Central Finite Curve is? They built a wall around infinity. They separated all the infinite universes from all the infinite universes where he's the smartest man in the universe. Every version of us has spent every version of all of our lives in one infinite crib built around an infinite fucking baby. And I'm leaving it. That's what makes me "evil" — being sick of him. If you've ever been sick of him, you've been evil, too.
• Mysterious Past: When asked, Evil Morty avoids the question of who his original Rick was and which was his original reality. It's especially egregious because he looks no different from a standard Morty- who all tend to share similar histories and temperaments- but his personality and utterly unabashed hatred of Rick is so extreme compared to his other selves that it's hard to imagine he had a "standard" Morty upbringing, in any case. The glimpse of his Start of Darkness in "Unmortricken" shows the event that finally pushed him to don his signature eyepatch and usurp his Rick, as well as what he was doing during his prior appearances, but raises further questions regarding his apparently absent family from the house and what prior events he underwent that eventually solidified into his utter contempt for the entire Rick-Morty dynamic, not to mention where he learned about the Central Finite Curve.
• Nerves of Steel: It's implied that he planned for Campaign Manager Morty to shoot him, to garner the support he needed to tip the election in his favour through sympathy. But, despite not taking any preemptive measures to ease the pain for himself, he approaches his former campaign manager in public without even a hint of apprehension or that anything is wrong. That takes serious courage, even if he knew the Citadel's medical technology would save him. His return is season 7 has him at his calmest even when he's facing death multiple times, having casual conversations with Rick on how to save themselves and maintaining his stoic expression in life-or-death fights.
• Never My Fault: During his Motive Rant, he ponders the question of "What Is Evil?", during which he concludes that he is being labelled as "evil", simply because he is fed up with Rick's behavior and Protagonist-Centered Morality and wants to get away from him. He does acknowledge, however, the suffering and death he has inflicted upon both numerous Ricks and fellow Mortys as bad, though doesn't believe that is why he is considered "evil", as countless Ricks in the Central Finite Curve have done equal or worse things than him for even baser reasons.
• New Era Speech: Discussed, then ultimately defied — or possibly subverted, depending on your point of view, given that it can be seen as a pretty solid, if laconic, example of this trope anyway.
  Evil Morty: This seems like a good time for a drink... and a cold, calculated speech with sinister overtones. A speech about politics. About order. Brotherhood. Power. But speeches are for campaigning; now is the time for action.
• Non-Action Big Bad: He never gets personally involved in combat, usually delegating that task to loyal Ricks. Season 7 shows he actually can fight on his own, enough to effortlessly coordinate with Main Rick and help him beat Rick Prime.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: His defining trait. When Evil Morty wants something, he will achieve it, no matter the odds, and is smart enough to causally pre-empt any and most threats that could derail his plans along the way, especially anything a Rick throws at him. It says something that he's never once actually suffered a genuine loss in the show, and has made it clear several times that if he wanted to, he could deal with Main Rick and Morty, but that's non-essential to his overarching goal of simply living a life away from the Rick-Morty escapades — in fact, he outlines to Morty that it would actually be detrimental to him if he bothered to kill them and inspired vengeance from their family.
• Not So Above It All: Despite how serious he's played as a threat, he's not above falling into Buffy Speak or trolling Morty by offering him a ride off the exploding Citadel only to admit he was lying because the second seat on his ship is just a toilet. Also, if one were to attribute Evil Rick's actions to Evil Morty as the former was quite literally a puppet to the latter, he can be outright childish at times, saying he invented Sarcastic Clapping in one dimension and stops C-137 Rick from doing it himself, saying "That's mine!", provided that wasn't an act.
• Not So Invincible After All: While he does decisively beat Rick Prime, he does so by the seat of his pants, getting blindsided and nearly killed by him several times, and ultimately only getting the better of him due to a last second Twin Switch with Morty, knowing Rick Prime would be arrogant enough to let his guard down against an ordinary Morty. It stands out compared to every previous opponent whom Evil Morty was next to a step ahead of, showcasing just how dangerous Rick Prime is and how Evil Morty's best asset is preparation.
• Not So Stoic: Normally, Evil Morty is calm and collected, but there are a few instances where he shows emotion, like during Unmortricken, when Main Morty kills the Rick Prime's primary clone, which turns into a black goo that teleports the occupants to a station where they're forced to fight each other to the death. In the Freeze-Frame Bonus, you can see Evil Morty's Oh, Crap! expression as he along with the Main versions of Rick and Morty was taken away by the black fluid. Rick lampshades it a few minutes later, briefly reveling in the fact that Evil Morty was caught just as off-guard as they were.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Bringing down the Central Finite Curve is, on paper, the objectively right thing to do. The Citadel of Ricks built a wall around infinity so the only alternate realities they had to coexist with were all ones where Rick was the smartest man in the universe, giving them free reign to play God in their corner of the multiverse as well as literally engineer Mortys to sell to other Ricks as disposable sidekicks. Doing gruesome things in the name of that goal could be seen as well-intentioned, except Evil Morty only cares about getting freedom for himself, not for any other person who's also been victimized by the system he's bringing down, and even brutalizes other Mortys and Ricks far beyond what's necessary for his plans.
• Nothing Personal: He hates our Rick and tortures Mortys, but doesn't seem to hold any grudge against the Mortys on the Citadel, or even the commoner Ricks that voted for him. Under his new policy, Cop Rick gets a break and is allowed to resume his job after being forced to shoot his superior. He elaborates later that he's disgusted by Ricks and the "sellout Mortys" who stick with them, but doesn't actually hate other Mortys because there's really no point in doing so, considering that Mortys are bred by Ricks to be the way they are. It's then subverted when his plan to escape the Central Finite Curve involves burning the place to the ground and pointlessly slaughtering every Rick and Morty he possibly could, demonstrating that his grudge is, in fact, entirely personal. It stands in blunt contrast to his attitude toward Summer, Jerry, or Beth, whom he barely mentions and doesn't involve in his plans at all.
• Obviously Evil: Downplayed. Evil Morty puts up a facade when he needs to, but his villainy is apparent even before his confrontation with Rick C-137 in the season 5 finale. As Rick points out, good guys don't have mutant Mortys crawling out of the sewers warning of doomday weapons, which earns a simple "Touché" from Evil Morty.
• Once a Season: A variant. Evil Morty has consistently appeared once in every odd season of the show's run.
• Out of Focus: Basically disappears from the show's plot until "The Ricklantis Mix-up", when he returns as the president of the Citadel.
• Perpetual Frowner: As an extremely jaded Morty, he only smiles during rare moments of peace or when it helps him blend in with other Mortys. Subverted once he becomes President of the Citadel, where he smiles quite often as part of his persona.
• Pet the Dog: Despite his contempt for Ricks and Mortys, he is notably less hostile to the main Rick and Morty than he is to the others, even acknowledging that Rick isn't like other Ricks. He gives them a chance to escape the Citadel when he didn't have to, and he isn't immediately hostile to Rick after Rick accidentally disturbs his paradise. At one point, he even thanks Morty for stopping a blast from hitting him. After stealing the Omega Device, he leaves Rick Prime tied up and resuscitates C-137 to allow the latter his long awaited revenge... though it's implied afterwards that he knew Vengeance Feels Empty and he was just messing with C-137 out of spite.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • He honors his campaign promises, on the surface at least, by enacting popular reforms in the Citadel for Ricks and Mortys alike. His policies allow a Rick that did the right thing to remain free and remain a cop; he shuts down a school that brainwashed Mortys, giving them new jobs in the process; and spared the two Council Ricks not trying to control him, as well as the candidate Rick that didn't try to make fun of him. Then "Rickmurai Jack" proves he never cared about any Rick and Morty other than himself when he orchestrates the death of nearly every person on the Citadel to engineer the destruction of the Central Finite Curve and his escape from it; thus, him following through on his promises was probably to become a Villain with Good Publicity so no one in the Citadel would interfere with his plan.
  • He begrudgingly teams up with Rick and Morty to find Rick Prime, not out of moral reasons but because Rick's crude attempts to mine the Central Finite Curve for Prime are endangering Evil Morty's ideal life of solitude. He sticks around to help the two kill him because Prime's weapon, the Omega Device, can wipe out every single version of a person across the multiverse, meaning it and Rick Prime are a risk to him as well. Once Evil Morty downloads the plans, he destroys the weapon and says he can rebuild and improve it anytime if he ever wants to “end the Rick Experiment”. The only reason he doesn't do it now is because such a weapon will only draw attention to himself and his entire goal is to be left alone in solitude. He doesn't want, say, an army of Summers coming after him for wiping out all Ricks. He even lets Main Rick live due to acknowledging he is slightly different from other Ricks and could be useful to him someday.
• President Evil: Evil Morty becomes ruler of the Citadel of Ricks and intends to use his position for his own ends. His eventual payoff leaves the entire population of the Citadel trapped in one spot so he can wipe them out all at once.
• The Purge: He orchestrated the murder, kidnapping and torture of multiple Ricks and multiple Mortys, and in "The Ricklantis Mixup", he pulls a counter-coup on the shadow-council of the Citadel to cement his authority. He then one-ups it in "Rickmurai Jack" by attempting to purge everyone in the Citadel and mostly succeeding, with only the main Rick and Morty and a small number of additional Mortys escaping.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Evil Morty in his presidential attire wears a black suit with a red tie.
• Retired Monster: After escaping the Central Finite Curve, Evil Morty chooses to leave our main Rick and Morty alone and live his own life. That said, Evil Morty makes himself clear that he doesn’t regret the atrocities that he committed to escape the Central Finite Curve and only bothers to help Rick and Morty find Rick Prime to rid himself of Rick’s influence for good, while stealing the plans for the Omega Device and threatening to use it on Rick should they try to pursue him.
• The Reveal:
  • Evil Morty was the true mastermind; Evil Rick was nothing but a cyborg under his control.
  • The newly elected president of the rebuilt Citadel of Ricks is Evil Morty.
  • His true goal is to break the Central Finite Curve so he can access universes where Rick isn't the smartest man alive, in order to escape his influence. His interest in Rick C-137 stems from him having the information Evil Morty needs to accomplish this.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: He is fully aware and accepting of his moniker of "Evil Morty", and in his Motive Rant to the main Morty, he claims that what makes him "evil", the reason he does what he does, is simply due to being sick to the teeth of Ricks, and that any other Morty who has felt the same is "evil" too. To the audience, however, it's clear that what really makes him evil is that he remorselessly tortures and kills Ricks and other Mortys with impunity, to the point of barbaric overkill, though he also justifies this with the reveal that many, many Ricks also do messed-up things like torture and barabaric overkill.
• Sadist:
  • As Rick points out, Evil Morty didn't need to torture countless Mortys in his first appearance to create the anti-Rick Morty Dome: a mere five and a jumper cable would do the trick. It could be that Rick simply refined the process, not being willing to operate on the same scale as Evil Morty. The countless Mortys also provided a crowd Evil Morty could slip into when Evil Rick was killed.
  • He certainly didn't need to kill every last Rick and Morty living on the Citadel, as he does (mostly, excepting a small number of survivors) when escaping the Central Finite Curve. Even if a certain amount of biomass was needed to power his massive portal cannon to escape the curve, given the Citadel's level of technology (and its mass cloning facilities), making nearly every Rick and Morty on the Citadel die horrifying deaths was an entirely pointless cruelty.
• Satanic Archetype: Evil Morty is a calculating and conniving mastermind, who puts on a facade of charisma and wisdom, but works from the shadows and manipulates everyone around him, willing to kill off anyone who stands in his way. In the end, he secures a position of power purely to kill off all the other Ricks and Mortys in the citadel and escape the Finite Probable Curve. His motivation? The fact that all the versions of Rick have put a gated community around a corner of the multiverse where Rick is the supreme genius and any given Morty is bred to be a loyal servant and tool. Defying Rick is, in this sense, defying the God of the Finite Curve.
• Serial Escalation: A Villain Protagonist version. The first Rick he defeats is his own, then he becomes a Serial Killer of Ricks, then he manipulates all the Rick's and Morty's in the Citadel into electing him president, then he kills the secret rulers of the Citadel, followed by stealing the memories of the creator of the Citadel and the self proclaimed "Rickest Rick", then finally he defeats the true Rickest Rick Rick Prime.
• Shadow Archetype: He is basically any Morty if they finally got sick of Rick's crap and learned to care only for themselves.
• The Sociopath: Appears to be one, showing no real signs of emotion or empathy and is a master manipulator. Possibly Subverted considering his main goal is escaping Rick. Sure, it's selfish and he does a lot of overkilling, but it's an understandable goal and he appears very happy and satisfied when he succeeds.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Evil Morty only gets a few lines in his debut appearance, but his actions show that he's one of the evilest characters in the series. The trope still applies in his second and third episodes, where he always speaks in an even and calm tone — even when having his enemies executed on command or attempting to kill them.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: After ditching the eyepatch, he's distinguished from other Mortys by the sharp suits and dress shirts he wears. Justified though, since he was running for President of the Citadel at the time, and later holds this position.
• Speech Impediment: Very notably averted. Unlike most Mortys, Evil Morty always speaks confidently and articulately, and never stutters. In fact, apart from his clothes, this is really the only way to differentiate between him and the average Morty.
• The Stoic: Completely calm and unflappable at all times, in contrast to most Morty's neurotic anxiousness.
• Stutter Stop: The flashback at the beginning of "Unmortricken" shows that Evil Morty used to have the same anxious, stuttering voice as every other Morty. The first sign that he's snapped after putting up with Rick's abuse for so long is that he drops the stutter completely.
• Teens Are Monsters: He's one of, if not the, most evil version of a fourteen-year-old, so it goes without saying that he qualifies for this trope.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: He begrudgingly teams up with Rick and Morty to take out Rick Prime but Evil Morty rarely loses his contempt for the pair and Rick tries multiple times to shoot him to make sure his forcefield hasn't failed. He and Rick make a surprisingly efficient team but when the adventure is over, Evil Morty shoots down Morty's attempt at small talk, bluntly saying the experience has not made them friends and he will kill the pair if they ever try to find him.
• Thrown Out the Airlock: Uses the Citadel's preferred method of corpse disposal and execution on the presidential candidates that made fun of him at the debate.
• Tranquil Fury: He maintains a calm, almost bored monotone at all times, but it's steadily revealed that he is in a constant state of seething rage and hate against every Rick everywhere.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Not that the Council of Ricks were good leaders, but Evil Morty proves himself worse once he takes control of the Citadel.
• The Unfettered: Torture countless other Mortys, take control of the citadel, mass-murder countless Ricks and Mortys....all is fair game if he can escape the central finite curve and be free.
• Underestimating Badassery: Despite needing Rick's help to survive Rick Prime's traps and getting caught off guard several times, he still treats Rick as being "just the same" as all the other Ricks in both intelligence and personality. While Evil Morty does get the better of him due to the latter, Rick Prime is still demonstratably the one Rick able to match Evil Morty.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Evil Morty needed Rick's help to thwart Rick Prime just as much as Rick needed Evil Morty's. Doesn't stop either of them from acting superior to the other. He even switched places with Morty to get the drop on Rick Prime and showed no appreciation for Morty's presence making such a ploy possible.
• Unknown Rival: He is possibly C-137 Rick's greatest threat, but Rick doesn't even know Evil Rick was a puppet, much less that Evil Morty was responsible for him. Evil Morty on the other hand deliberately hacked into C-137's Portal Gun to frame him for his crimes in front of the Citadel of Ricks, and he has one-upped Sanchez by taking out the Shadow Council governing the public front of the Council that Rick assumes runs the place. He finally drops this in "Rickmurai Jack" when he confronts the main duo directly and Rick acknowledges that Evil Morty is the only person who's ever hacked his portal gun.
• Un-person: His first action after mind-controlling his Rick was deleting all records of himself from the Citadel's database so no one would know about his past.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Implied. After C-137 kills Prime Rick, Evil Morty knowingly asks if he feels "Better? No? Exactly the same?" before commenting that "It always does." Given both Evil Morty's hatred for Ricks and the sheer number of Ricks that he's killed, it's easy to guess that he is speaking from personal experience.
• Vicious Cycle: This particular Morty has seen and experienced the worst of what Ricks have to offer and actively seeks to break it by any means he deems necessary — including a long-term Batman Gambit enacted to topple an entire Alliance of Alternates.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Evil Morty gets away scot-free in his first appearance. He one-ups himself in his third appearance by escaping an entire section of the multiverse.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • Though we're supposed to believe that Evil Morty seizing control of the Citadel is a bad thing, during his campaign, he points out rightly how life on the Citadel is a broken Crapsaccharine World where Mortys and less privileged Ricks are kept oppressed and exploited by an elite minority of Ricks. Plus, even if his reforms are an act, they are making life better for the commoners in the Citadel.
  • Essentially everything he says after finally revealing himself to Rick and Morty. His belief that Ricks don't care about Mortys comes from the Citadel literally engineering Mortys via cloning and brainwashing to sell them as disposable sidekicks to Ricks. He also lays out how Ricks pretend to be underdogs when they're really Psychopathic Manchildren using the Central Finite Curve to isolate their realities, allowing themselves a corner of the multiverse where they're always the smartest man in the universe and can do whatever they want. Evil Morty's desire to just exist in a dimension free of Ricks is completely understandable, even if his methods aren't.
  • Evil Morty is unimpressed after Morty admits to feeling better after seeing Rick's tragic backstory firsthand. He says Ricks like being seen as the underdog despite their power and use their trauma to justify their abuse, then illustrates his point with images of countless Ricks abusing and killing their Mortys. When Rick says he can't be held responsible for everything his alternate counterparts do, Evil Morty just fires back that literally every Rick deflects accountability that way instead of trying to be a better person. However, this falls flat in the fact that the main Rick has been trying to become a better person (to the point of seeking therapy), and Evil Morty's disparagement of the latter is solely due to his own prejudices and seeing all Ricks as just the same.
• Villain with Good Publicity: It's because he's so charming in public that he's able to convince enough people to elect him president. They also didn't know who he actually was either, so he wasn't a "villain" yet.
• Villains Never Lie: Apart from those strictly necessary to keep his plan in motion, and apart from one petty lie to Morty in "Rickmurai Jack", Evil Morty never lies. He even keeps his campaign promises.
• Walking Spoiler: Evil Morty becomes this due to The Reveals above. Especially once he takes over the Citadel. And even more when he destroys the Citadel, and the Central Finite Curve with it.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Subverted. Evil Morty is right to hate the system that spawned him. He was basically born into slavery to serve the whims of a group of underdeveloped man-children who wall off a portion of reality that allowed them to be the smartest person in any universe they travel to. The entire multiverse he existed in was massively corrupt that had no intention of ever allowing him to develop past a particular point, and no real freedom. But in the end, his intentions are solely to benefit himself, torturing and murdering countless innocent versions of himself in the process who had nothing to do with his own suffering.
• What Is Evil?: Evil Morty argues that he is only "evil" to Rick because he is a Morty who is independent and doesn't take his ego. He doesn't see the awful things he does to pursue his own freedom as any more evil than any other Rick's actions. When Morty shows disgust at what the Citadel has done to ensure their power, and later calls his Rick out over the two crows, Evil Morty deems him an "evil" Morty as well. His speech is undermined by his murdering of Ricks and Mortys, making him no better than the Ricks due to going out of his way to be as callous as possible, while also being willing to screw everyone and everything over for his goals.
• Wicked Pretentious: Rick denounces him as such following the aftermath of his final plan, comparing his grand monologue and rampage on the Citadel more to a "throwing a tantrum while announcing he was quitting Twitter".
• Xanatos Gambit: Pulled a major one in his first appearance: he originally planned to kidnap C-137 Rick to perfect the Portal Gun and the Citadel's schematics, and constructed the Morty Dome to turn his Morty against Rick. While this failed due to Morty getting annoyed by Rick and staging a rebellion, Evil Morty is revealed to also have planned for this event by letting the Mortys kill Evil Rick and passing himself off as an ordinary Morty to escape scot-free in order to prepare for the Presidential Election.
• You Are What You Hate: Evil Morty despises Ricks as a whole for their terrible, self-serving actions across the Central Finite Curve done to feed their own ego and amusement without care for anyone but themselves, with a notable example being the breeding of countless millions of Mortys just to use them as shields and servants, treat them like garbage, and see them as expendable and easily replaceable. And yet, because he also has a hatred for most of his fellow Mortys, he too sees them as totally expendable and treats many of them just as badly as their Ricks do, including kidnapping and torturing them (sometimes to death) and subjecting them to Cruel and Unusual Deaths to advance his own plans.

Council of Ricks

From left to right: Quantum Rick, Rick Prime, Maximums Rickimus, Riq IV and Zeta Alpha Rick^note Ricktiminus Sancheziminius is just out of frame

"I'm the Rick, and so were the rest of you before you formed this stupid alliance. You wanted to be safe from the government, so you became a stupid government. That makes every Rick here less Rick than me."

— Rick Sanchez

A large group of Ricks who sought refuge from governments by becoming a government. The Rick the show focuses on has previously refused to be one of their members.

---

• Asshole Victim: There isn't much sympathy for them, after what they can actually do to their grandchildren after Rick sent them off fighting the Galactic Federation at their front doorstep.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: C-137 Rick describes the Council as this.
  C-137 Rick: I'm the Rick, and so were the rest of you before you formed this stupid alliance! You wanted to be safe from the government, so you became a stupid government! That makes every Rick here less Rick than me!
• Entertainingly Wrong: While the Council admits their mistake and apologize to C-137 when he proved his innocence in Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind, in retrospect, they were not completely wrong to be initially distrustful when he tries to defend himself when a bunch of Ricks were killed off, as Rickmurai Jack reveals that C-137 did kill dozens, if not hundreds, of Ricks in his initial attempt at finding the Rick responsible for the deaths of his Beth and Diane.
• Evil Doppelgänger: To C-137 Rick, by hiding themselves from the government by becoming the government themselves, enforcing the most atrocious rules to handle their Ricks and their respective grandchildren as their resources. This gives Rick!C-137 a good reason to wipe their Council off by warping the Citadel into the Galactic Federation Prison.
• The Fantastic Faux: They're based on the Council of Reeds from the Fantastic Four comics, which is composed of dozens of amoral versions of Mister Fantastic.
• Friendly Enemy: Even though they dislike Rick C-137, a couple of them have no problem showing up to his party in the season one finale.
• Hero Antagonist: Of "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind". They genuinely believe that C-137 Rick killed many different Ricks. And given who C-137 Rick is, it's hard to blame them (even Evil Rick/Evil Morty says C-137 Rick is marginally less evil than him). They did apologize for the mix-up, though, even if "Rickmurai Jack" confirms that Rick C-137 did in fact go on a huge killing spree of alternate Ricks to find the Rick who killed his family, including the majority of proto-Citadel.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Lampshaded by Rick as he takes advantage of the simplicity of their interface for the Citadel's mass teleporter to send them all into a Galactic Federation prison.
• Hypocrisy Nod: It's implied they might be aware of the irony of being a government despite also being Ricks, and/or why they do what they do to other Ricks.
  Summer: But if every Rick hates the government, why would they hate grandpa?
  Morty: Because Ricks hate themselves the most, and our Rick is the most... himself.
  • Also, they arrange a Kangaroo Court for Summer and Morty, and when Morty points out that they aren't fair, they admit it.
• Hypocrite: They seek to protect themselves and other Ricks from governing forces but have no problem enforcing their own rules on non-member Ricks.
• Inspector Javert: They arrest Rick in Close Rick-Counters Of The Rick Kind because he was framed for murdering their members. He claims they usually blame him when something goes wrong.
• Kangaroo Court: Their idea of a trial:
  Riq IV: Operating an unregistered portal gun, radicalizing a Summer, conspiring with a traitorous Rick. How do you plead?
  Morty: How is this a fair trial? O-Our lawyer is a Morty.
  Riq IV: It's not fair, you have no rights, and he's not a lawyer. We just keep him here because he's fun. Look at him go.
  "Lawyer" Morty: [ Laughs ] Ha ha, yeah!
• A Lighter Shade of Black: To the Shadow Council. Bad as they are, they do genuinely want to do right by other Ricks and Mortys (If by some very skewed standards) and genuinely believe their own stated rhetoric. The Shadow Council gleefully abuse Ricks and Mortys and make it clear that their personal power and comfort come above all else.
• Named by the Adaptation: Pocket Mortys gives each member of the Council a unique name.
• Oh, Crap!: Twice in the same episode. When C-137 Rick finds Evil Rick and when turns out Evil Rick was just a puppet.
  • Happens twice again in "The Rickshank Redemption". When the Council believes C-137 Rick is dead, Morty assures them that not only is he alive, but he'll be coming for every single one of them. Then it happens again when C-137 Rick teleports the Citadel directly into a Galactic Federation prison full of the worst of the worst the galaxy has to offer.

Shadow Council of Ricks

In General

"We were saying "President Morty," that we don't care who sits in that seat. A Rick, a Morty, a goddamn Jerry, doesn't matter. We've been running the Citadel since before the Council, and you'll find that we're still running it now."

— Garment District Rick

A group of rich and powerful Ricks who truly controlled the Citadel behind the scenes while the Council acted as their puppets.

---

• Asshole Victim: They ran the Citadel and kept it as a Crapsack World, so when Evil Morty murders all of them except two, nobody's shedding any tears.
• Board to Death: Their first appearance has them in a board meeting with the new President of the Citadel. When they say to his face that he'll be nothing more than their puppet, he murders all of the ones who agreed with the one who said it.
• Cosmopolitan Council: Their members include Ricks modelled off of tropes like the Arab Oil Sheikh and The Generalissimo, a sci-fi attired one, one that references Willy Wonka and two others that resemble Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.
• Eviler than Thou: Most of them were on the receiving end of this, as they were effortlessly murdered by Evil Morty. The surviving two were quickly put in their place and realized who's in charge.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The show has never really had a Big Bad that Rick and Morty fight against, so, much like the President of the Galactic Federation and the former Council of Ricks, they were powerful sources of evil in the show's setting but kept separate from the protagonists' adventures.
• The Illuminati: They are a shadowy cabal of Ricks that are rich and powerful businessmen, and control the Citadel's government from behind the scenes.
• Informed Attribute: Supposed to be the true power behind the throne since before the Council. The Council never seemed not to be in control, and in their very first appearance they get quickly and unceremoniously dispatched by Evil Morty ordering the guards to shoot them. Guards who were fellow Ricks, mind you, so they don't have the excuse of underestimating the Mortys. They also are never shown actually influencing anything in the city, even letting the whole election go by and only appearing after it was all done to talk to the president. Makes them border on Small Name, Big Ego.
• Know When to Fold Them: Two of the Shadow Council manage to survive by immediately kowtowing to Evil Morty's demands after he murders all of their colleagues.
• The Man Behind the Man: They claimed to be this to the former Council of Ricks, claiming to be the true power behind the Citadel, and they confidently assert they'll be this to the new President as well. Evil Morty doesn't give them the chance.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: One of them is dressed exactly like Steve Jobs. Funnily enough, he's one of the survivors of the Shadow Council, so he literally wasn't harmed.
• The Remnant: Between their comment about how they've been around since before the Council and the flashbacks in "Rickmurai Jack", it can be inferred that the Shadow Council are a remnant of the previous iteration of the Citadel who managed to survive Rick C-137's rampage and were able to transition into the current iteration.
• Shadow Government: They're the real authority behind the Citadel. The Council were all merely puppets. Or at least they were in charge before President Morty had them killed and sucked out of an air-lock.
• Sinister Sweet Tooth: Like many Ricks, they're fans of wafer cookies. More worryingly, they're actively flavouring them with the mental secretions of a Rick who tried to opt out of the usual Rick lifestyle, keeping him unconscious and dreaming just so the cookies can feature "the impossible flavour of your own completion." In the finale of "The Ricklantis Mixup," the Shadow Council of Ricks can be seen munching on a box of the stuff, celebrating the new flavor they've managed to acquire that day.
• Thrown Out the Airlock: Evil Morty murders most of them and then ejects their bodies out into space.
• Underestimating Badassery: They believed that the new President of the Citadel would be an easily manipulated Puppet King that they could rule through. The vast majority of them end up unceremoniously murdered for making that assumption.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: The vast majority of them only get one appearance before Evil Morty kills them all.

Rick D. Sanchez III

Rick D. Sanchez III

"Sorry I'm late, Mr. President. Had a little crisis at work."

The owner of a wafer factory, as well as the chief spokesman and leader within the Shadow Council in charge of the Citadel.

---

• Asshole Victim: He and the Shadow Council get purged by Evil Morty and get unceremoniously tossed into outer space as mere trash; considering that we see him earlier being an utterly evil factory owner who plucked a Rick that chose to live a simple life out of it and then trapped the one Rick that tried to help him to take his place, he more than deserved it.
• Corrupted Character Copy: Of Willy Wonka if he was a twisted sociopath that exploited innocents for his products^note If you feel that describes Willy Wonka already, then he's a far more shameless, self-aware, and openly cruel version. He's even referred to as "Wonka Rick" by the fanbase.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Considering that he kidnapped Simple Rick for the sake of profit, and is a member of the Shadow Council that made life on The Citadel hell for everyone else, he qualifies as this.
• Faux Affably Evil: He's more polite than the average Rick and can appeal to Rick J-22's humanity to calm him down; he's also willing to lock up fellow Ricks in a Lotus-Eater Machine for profit.
• Mad Artist: The man will go to truly disturbing lengths for unique flavors — milking Simple Rick's happiest memory and mass-producing the flavor for the Citadel is screwed-up enough, but somehow, what he does to Factory Rebel Rick — tempting him with the promise of ultimate freedom just to shoot him and make a ''new'' flavor -- is even worse.
• The Man Behind the Man: He was a member of the shadow cabal that was the real power behind the Council of Ricks, and they intended to be this again to the rebuilt Citadel's new president. Unfortunately for him and the rest of his group, Evil Morty was one step ahead of everyone.
• Manipulative Bastard: How he manages to first defuse Factory Rebel Rick, and then co-opt him to serve as the next brain to produce the special ingredient for his wafers.
• Mouth of Sauron: He is a member of the Shadow Council and the spokesman for them, being seated at the head of the table across the President, and trying to impose himself on President Morty.
• The Wonka: He is a darker take on the archetype. The owner of a factory of wafers run on fairly cold mechanized logic with promotion only given to a few, and all of it based on Human Resources.

Other Ricks and Mortys

Commander Rick

---

• Grand Theft Me: He has his body stolen by Rick C-137 to infiltrate the Citadel.
• Uncertain Doom: Our Rick Body Surfs into this Rick and then using Commander Rick's body orders his old one to be killed claiming him to be a spy. It's uncertain if this was carried out or not.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: He may or may not have died in his first scene.

Rick J19ζ7/Doofus Rick

A Rick whom the other Ricks pick on for being unlike the other Ricks: He's a kindhearted bonehead who strikes up a friendship with Jerry. Then again the guy knows a formula that makes edible brownies from non-edible chemicals without the use of an oven. He also eats his own crap. Allegedly.

---

• All of the Other Reindeer: He gets picked on by the other Ricks for being the only Nice Guy of the bunch.
• Alternate Universe Reed Richards Is Awesome: In the comics, it's revealed that he invented the Cure for Cancer in his universe.
• The Anti-Nihilist: Like other Ricks, he believes that life is "dangerous and complex and unyielding," but while other Ricks choose to use this as an excuse to inflict cruelty on whoever they need to for the brief aggrandizement of themselves, Doofus Rick does the opposite, reasoning that even just trying to get by is winning in and of itself.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Sure, the other Ricks drag him around for being stupid. He is friendly, somewhat knowledgeable and more personable than any other Rick... too bad he comes from a universe where everyone eats shit. If the other Ricks can be believed. Word of God states he does not eat shit.
• Breakout Character: He's a Rick who's actually nice for once, reasonably making him a fan favorite.
• Ditzy Genius: Less so than the other alternate versions, but he's still a Rick, as he proves when he shows Jerry how to make oven-less brownies.
• Dumb Is Good: Played with. He's the only Nice Guy Rick, and he looks, generally acts, and is treated like an idiot by the other Ricks, but if he's dumb at all, it's only by Rick standards — he's still a super-scientist, and his answer to Jerry's question about the collectible coins (which manages to be honest without hurting Jerry's feelings) shows he's a lot savvier than he seems.
• Embarrassing Nickname: "Doofus Rick" is the name given to him by other Ricks.
• Gonk: As he never fathered a Beth, Doofus Rick was given a Morty that is from a timeline where everyone had lionitis à la Rocky Dennis. Doofus Rick himself also has some less-than-flattering physical traits such as a bowl cut, a lazy eye, and buck teeth.
• The Heart: What this Rick lacks in genius (by Rick standards, he's still far more intelligent than average), he makes up for in empathy. He can do what no Rick has ever done, which is to see through to Jerry's heart and build up his self-esteem.
• Hidden Depths: As much as the other Ricks bully him for being the dumbest Rick, he's still a genius in his own right. He can make ovenless brownies simply by mixing chemicals. In the comics, he also cured cancer in his dimension though he doesn't seem to think it's that big of a deal.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Downplayed, but he considers Jerry Smith to be impressively smart and successful. Possibly justified, considering the Jerry of his dimension is smart and successful.
• Informed Flaw: Doofus Rick is treated as a barely functioning idiot by several other characters, but generally seems only a little more naive than the other versions of Rick. This may also be intentional, especially given that it's mainly the other Ricks who treat him like shit, and they tend to do that with basically everyone dumber than them.
• Kindhearted Simpleton: Which is probably why he and Jerry get along so well. However, it seems that he's only stupid compared to other Ricks, and is still a genius by normal standards.
• Lampshade Hanging: You thought the guy eating shit show in "Rixty Minutes" was too implausible? Well, Doofus Rick might be from there.
• Like a Son to Me: In the comics, it's shown that Jerry and Doofus Rick meet up once a month to have a fun time together, and at the end of the day Rick describes Jerry as the son he never had and would never abandon.
• Nice Guy: Which makes him an outcast annoyance among the other Ricks.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: The other Ricks mock him for supposedly being from a dimension where people eat their own shit. He claims this is made up, but at the end of the episode, Main!Rick says in a very matter-of-factly way that he does. It's ultimately unclear if this is the truth or not. In interviews and commentary, the creators have remarked that the "eats his own shit" thing really isn't true and is just a mean rumor circulating among the other Ricks.
• Token Good Teammate: Every other Rick we saw before him is a jerk, even the non-evil ones. This one gets along very well with Jerry, while the other Ricks are so compelled to insult/deceive him that Main!Rick counts on them doing so while he evades them. This suggests the jerkiness of a Rick is directly tied to self-esteem; each of the other Ricks are conditioned to being far and away from the smartest person in their universe, whereas Doofus Rick is conditioned to being far and away from the stupidest person in the citadel. It may also have something to do with loneliness, as this Rick never had a family.

Hammerhead Morty

"I'm more than just a hammer!"

A Morty who has a hammer in place of where his head should be. Originally one of the Morties held captive by Evil Rick, he later partakes in the Citadel's battle against the Galactic Federation after Rick-Prime teleports the Citadel into a Galactic Prison.

---

• Animate Inanimate Object: He has a hammer for a head.
• The Bus Came Back: He first shows up as one of the many captured Morties in the Season 1 finale. He later returns in Season 3 "Rickshank Redemption" where he gets used by a Rick in the Citadel's battle against the Galactic Federation.
• Human Shield: He is used by one Rick as a shield against a Galactic Federation guard's gunfire.
• Living Weapon: During the battle between the Citadel and the Galactic Federation, one Rick uses him to smash several Galactic Federation prisoners along with being a Human Shield before said Rick gets killed.
• Uncertain Doom: He sustains heavy injury when he gets used as a Human Shield, but it's unknown if he survived.

Rick J- 22 / "Factory Rick"

"All your lives are lies! Don't you get it?! They told us we were special because we were Ricks, but they stripped us of everything that made us unique!"

Soldier Rick: What are your demands?
Rick J-22: I-I-I want a portal gun. Unregistered, untraceable, with enough fluid to take me off this GOD DAMN PRISON!

A Rick who — despite apparently having the same IQ as the other Ricks — has been reduced to the role of a menial worker at a confection factory. He eventually snaps, killing his boss and holding Simple Rick hostage in exchange for a portal gun — hoping to escape the Citadel once and for all.

---

• Almighty Janitor: Intelligent enough to improvise a weapon out of broken factory equipment and devious enough to recognize the "blender dimension" trap on sight, J-22 is clearly just as brilliant as the main Rick... and yet he's trapped in a boring job that could probably be performed by a monkey. And the same goes for just about all the other Ricks doing menial work for the Citadel.
• Going Postal: The action in J-22's plot begins when he finally snaps after years of demeaning work with no opportunities for promotion, tearing a piece of machinery off the assembly line and using it to murder his boss.
• Hope Spot: After almost being arrested/killed by Rick policemen in a standoff, Rick D. Sanchez III, the factory's owner, escorts him out safely with the other citizens cheering him on. Outside, he is offered a car with the keys, and as he walks towards it while smiling, Rick D. Sanchez III shoots him in the back of the head with a stun gun, which leads to the Lotus-Eater Machine entry below.
• Improvised Weapon: Uses the industrial "hole-puncher" from the assembly line as a bolt gun to shoot his boss with. In another show of his intelligence, he's even able to modify it with a trigger and an ammo clip in the short time it takes him to run from the assembly line to the office.
• Legacy Character: After getting the previous Simple Rick killed, he's made into the new Simple Rick.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: He ends up being the new body used to create Simple Ricks wafers, reliving the very moment he was "freed" for the rest of his life.
• Oh, Crap!: Suffers one of these moments when he realizes that literally, everyone on the factory floor saw him killing his boss.
• Passed-Over Promotion: It's clear from the look on his face that he was hoping to be promoted when the position of supervisor opened up; it's his disappointment over missing out — combined with his frustration at a complete newcomer getting the job — that prompts him to snap.
• Pet the Dog: Maybe. He pushes Simple Rick through the portal from the portal gun he was given, only for it to kill him via blender dimension trap. J-22's words afterwords could mean either he suspected this outcome or is simply mad that they tried to do that to a fellow Rick, so it's hard to say if he wanted to save Simple Rick or was simply using him to test the portal.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: J-22 ends up becoming the new source of flavoring for Simple Ricks wafers, though this time the flavor's based on achieving freedom from "the grand illusion" rather than enjoying the simple pleasures in life.
• Screaming Warrior: Screams his head off while gunning down his boss. Unfortunately, this ends getting the attention of factory security.

Rick C-60/Simple Rick

"60 iterations off the central finite curve, there's a Rick that works more with wood than polarity plating. His name is Simple Rick but he's no dummy. He realised long ago that the greatest thing he'd ever create was his daughter."

— Simple Rick's Narrator

A Rick with a notable absence of lofty ambitions in science and a great love for his family. His endorphins also happen to be the main ingredient in a popular candy franchise named after him. A version of him first appeared in the false memory of C-137 during his interrogation by the Galactic Federation.

---

• Cruel Twist Ending: To his personal story at least. His dedication to his family leads to him getting abducted by the Wonka Rick and placed in a Lotus-Eater Machine, to have his brain fluids, which were perfect for use as an ingredient in his candy, drained. And then... he ultimately faces a really messy death, being killed by a trap meant for another Rick.
• Family Versus Career: He chose family over science. Unfortunately, it ended up dooming him through no fault of his own.
• Foreshadowing: His origin being stated to be off the central finite curve alludes to what the central finite curve actually is a few seasons before it becomes relevant. It's a collection of universes in which Rick is the smartest man in the universe, hence Ricks like Simple Rick only exist outside of it.
• Good Parents: He loved his Beth to a greater degree than any other Rick seen so far, and gave up on his pursuit of strange science so he could raise her.
• Human Resources: Essentially what he has been reduced to, as Wonka Rick harvests his brain fluids.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: He is hooked up to a machine that makes him constantly relive his happiest moments.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: He has been forcibly separated from the family he loved so much, as his endorphins are being drained and used for making Wonka Rick's most popular brand of candy. Even worse, he has no idea that this is happening to him as he is reliving the happiest moment in his life on a constant loop.
• Token Good Teammate: While most Ricks are immoral at best and outright evil at worst, this Rick is one of the kindest Ricks in the entire Citadel who loves his family and puts them above his job. It's also this kindness that gets him roped into a Lotus-Eater Machine and eventually gets him killed.

Rookie Rick and Officer Morty

Officer Morty: Lesson one, rookie, expect the unexpected.

Officer Morty: The election's got these yellow shirts more riled up than a picture-day Jessica.
Rookie Rick: That's pretty harsh, sir.
Officer Morty: So report me. Nobody gives a fuck.
Rookie Rick: Look, I'm just saying, it makes me a little sad to hear a Morty cop calling Mortys animals.
Officer Morty: Well, it makes me sad to hear another Rick cop buying into his sensitivity training.
Rookie Rick: Well, I'm glad to know there's more like me.
Officer Morty: Oh, there was one. Why do you think that seat was empty?

A Rick and Morty part of the Citadel's police force.

---

• Berserk Button: Do not insinuate that Officer Morty is a sidekick to a Rick.
• Boomerang Bigot: Officer Morty thinks very low of Rickless Mortys, even though he's Rickless himself, and goes ballistic when someone claims he's a sidekick to his partner Rick.
• Brutal Honesty: Cop Morty doesn't really bother with metaphors.
  Cop Morty: This is Big Morty, he helps us keep the peace in Mortytown. Think of him as "a drug lord" and us as "cops on his payroll."
• By-the-Book Cop: It's pretty clear that Police Rick is fresh out of police training and thus often tries to stick to what he learned during that time.
• Dirty Cop: Officer Morty treats his fellow Mortys like animals and takes bribes from Big Morty, a gang leader.
• Evil Doppelgänger: Officer Morty is this to Morty, being a jaded corrupt cop. Inverted with Rookie Rick, who possesses more empathy than C-137!Rick.
• Fat Bastard: Officer Morty is more heavyset than the average Morty and also colder.
• Fat and Skinny: As said above, Officer Morty is fatter than most Mortys, whereas Rookie Rick has a typical Rick build.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: Rookie Rick is the good cop while Officer Morty is the bad cop.
• Good Is Not Soft: By the book or not, Rookie Rick has no qualms about shooting Mortys in self-defense. Even if the Morty in question is his partner. Even earlier than that, while shooting at Galactic Federation bug targets during target practice, he encounters one who's on crutches and seemingly unarmed. There was a brief pause before he shoots it like the rest.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Invoked by Officer Morty, who uses this in an attempt to get Rookie Rick to get his guard down.
• Ironic Echo: After Officer Morty destroys the building with the bootleg Portal Gun fluid with the culprits still inside, he tells Rookie Rick that it's the same old story of "Mortys killing Mortys." After Rookie Rick kills Officer Morty and turns himself in, he tells another Officer Rick that it's the same old story of "Ricks killing Mortys."
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Officer Morty may be cold, but he's still shown to care for Rookie Rick and beats up Big Morty and his guards when they threaten him.
• Knight of Cerebus: Officer Morty is arguably the most straightforwardly evil and dark character in the entire series.
• Morality Pet: Rookie Rick is this to Officer Morty.
• Redemption Rejection: After Rookie Rick puts his foot down about not taking money from the Big Morty, Officer Morty takes his side, but ultimately decides to kill both the drug lord and his partner to keep his corruption a secret. Rookie Rick was too quick on the draw though.
• Suicide by Cop: Officer Morty's death could be interpreted like that, what with him shooting a disarmed and pinned down Big Morty before turning the gun on Rookie Rick, giving the latter enough time to react.
• Swapped Roles: As described in other entries, Cop Morty is bitter, jaded and amoral whereas Cop Rick is naive, caring, and tries to do the right thing.
• Token Evil Teammate: Officer Morty is not much better than the criminal Mortys running around in Morty Town and it's suggested he killed his previous partners who weren't willing to cooperate before Rookie Rick.
• Token Good Teammate: In contrast, Rookie Rick might as well be one of the nicest (or at least, the most morally upright) Ricks in the Citadel, even after Officer Morty makes him more jaded.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Rookie Rick is on the business end of two of those, once from a random thug Morty, and once from his partner (assuming his breakdown was insincere). He gets caught off-guard the first time, and catches up the second.

Rick D716, D716-B, and D716-C/Reporter Rick

A group of Ricks who report the news for the Citadel.

---

• Clone Degeneration: A dimensional variant. Rick D716 looks normal, but D716-B has a disfigured scar down his right eye. He quips that it "must be nice" when the original introduces himself as just plain Rick D716. Both of them look down on Rick D716-C, whose entire right half of his face is horribly disfigured and whose right eye is lower than the left.
  D716-B: That fucking guy...
  D716: Tell me about it.
• Deadpan Snarker: Rick is still Rick, so even when reporting the news, they'll throw in their disdain for the topic.
• Kent Brockman News: Like many Ricks, these Ricks are clearly biased against Morty, as they openly make fun of the Morty running for President. While showing footage of his campaign, they mock him by thinking his speech was about how he was clearly going to lose.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Rick D716 goes on air during an emergency just to mock his viewers, admits he was paid millions by the drug companies to say every word, and flat-out states he doesn't care whether his viewers live or die before bailing. Given that the emergency is Evil Morty hacking the Citadel's portal supply so it leads to places that instantly kill anyone trying to escape, Rick D716 is immediately murdered by a monster that emerges from his portal. Rick D716-B then nonchalantly takes his place and encourages viewers to buy prescription drugs.

Slick Morty, Reptile Morty, Glasses Morty, and Fat Morty

Slick Morty: I say we make our last day count. I say... we go to the Wishing Portal.

Slick Morty: Morty wishes never come true. Not on the Citadel.
Reptile Morty: Then why did you bring us here?
Slick Morty: Because I wish that would change. I wish anything about this life would change.

Four Mortys who journeyed into the outskirts of the newly-constructed Citadel to search for the fabled Wishing Portal.

---

• Be Careful What You Wish For: Slick Morty's wish in the Wishing Portal is for things to change in the Citadel. Then Evil Morty becomes President and takes over the Shadow Council of Ricks, which is probably going From Bad to Worse.
• Bus Crash: Fat Morty is among the many dead Ricks and Mortys floating around in space after the Citadel's destruction, as shown in the opening of "Solaricks".
• Covert Pervert: Glasses Morty, whose wish is that incest porn had more mainstream appeal. For a friend.
• Drama Queen: Slick Morty, which is justified since he's part of an experimental line of Mortys with a "drama implant".
  Slick: How do you think it feels, Fat Morty? To know that no matter where I go, I'll always be the one that makes everyone sad... and a little bored.
• Driven to Suicide: Slick Morty commits suicide by throwing himself into the Wishing Portal, in the hopes that by sacrificing himself, his wish that things would change on the Citadel would come true. Also probably because of his drama implant.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Fat Morty says that he thought he was referred to as "Left-Handed Morty".
• Fat Best Friend: Fat Morty, who thought he was Left-Handed Morty.
• The Jinx: Slick Morty has gotten five Ricks killed through various means, more than anyone in his class, though it's questionable how much of this is actually his fault as opposed to the other Ricks just blaming him.
• LEGO Genetics: Reptile Morty was spliced with reptile DNA.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Since they're all named Morty, they gave themselves nicknames to differentiate themselves.
• Overly-Long Tongue: Reptile Morty has an extremely long tongue befitting his mutation. He uses it in place of his hand when the group decides to visit the wishing portal.
• Shout-Out: Their entire premise borrows from the plot of the Stephen King novella The Body / Stand by Me. Three of the four even look similar to the actors that were in the movie. Except for Reptile Morty for... well, obvious reasons.
• True Companions: All four of them go to the same school for Morty re-education, and seem to be pretty close friends.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Slick Morty commits suicide after appearing in a few scenes of his debut episode.

Campaign Manager Morty

A Morty in charge of helping his presidential candidate Morty get elected.

---

• Conspicuously Public Assassination: He tries to kill Candidate Morty in public, but he fails.
• The Eeyore: He kept telling Candidate Morty to throw in the towel and quit since he didn't believe that he had a chance. Candidate Morty eventually fired him after he exceeded everyone's expectations and succeeded by going against his advice.
• His Name Is...: After getting fired by his candidate, he learns that the Morty he was trying to get elected was actually Evil Morty and tries to assassinate him, but fails and gets jettisoned into space before he can spill the beans.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: After receiving intelligence that Candidate Morty is actually Evil Morty, he decides to try and assassinate him in public. Not only does he fail to kill Evil Morty, but in doing so possibly got him elected out of sympathy for the botched assassination. He's then spaced before he can reveal the secret to anyone else.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: If it weren't for him botching the assassination attempt, Candidate Morty might not have gotten elected president and the entire Citadel would've remained mostly the same. He didn't even have to try and kill him; leaking the photographs to the very establishment media would have been enough.

Trenchcoat Rick

A mysterious Rick who provides Campaign Manager Morty with shocking information about Candidate Morty.

---

• He Knows Too Much: Most likely why Evil Morty killed him.
• Killed Offscreen: Sometime after providing Campaign Manager Morty with the information about Candidate Morty's identity, Trenchcoat Rick is Thrown Out the Airlock (presumably because He Knows Too Much), as his already-dead body is seen floating in space around the Citadel along with all the other Rick and Morty corpses.
• Mysterious Informant: He's the one who provides Campaign Manager Morty with evidence that Candidate Morty is Evil Morty. How and where he himself got it is never revealed.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Him giving Campaign Manager Morty the information about Candidate Morty's true identity inadvertently sets off a chain of events that would result in Candidate Morty winning the election, Campaign Manager Morty getting killed trying to warn the rest of the Citadel, and the events of the Season 5 finale.

Big Morty

A druglord Morty who runs a strip club known as The Creepy Morty.

---

• Boom, Headshot!: How Cop Morty kills him.
• If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: He threatens to kill Rookie Rick unless he takes the offered bribe money.
• Mister Big: He's called Big Morty despite being as short as most Mortys. Lampshaded in an exchange with Officer Morty.
  Officer Morty: Not so big now, are you?
  Big Morty: I never was! It was figurative!
• Porn Stache: He has a wispy mustache that's only half grown in. It helps emphasize both his sliminess and the sliminess of the business he runs.
• Slime Ball: He's a drug lord who owns a strip club called "The Creepy Morty", sliminess oozes off him even if he doesn't get much screen time.

Slow Rick/Tall Morty

A dimwitted Rick who is convinced he's a Morty.

---

• Book Dumb: Can't even pronounce "graduate" correctly.
• Held Back in School: He's never picked as a Morty. The implication from the teacher's slip in calling him "Slow Rick" is that the other Ricks dumped him there for safekeeping and don't plan to ever let him out.

---