Season 2, Episode 2:
Mortynight Run
Written by: David Phillips
Directed by: Dominic Polcino
Directed by: Dominic Polcino
Rick: Hey, Morty, remember when you said selling a gun was as bad as pulling the trigger? How do you feel about all these people that are getting killed today because of your choices?
Morty: I did the right thing, Rick!
Rick: Tell that to Gearhead's gearsticles.
Morty: You did that!
Rick: Wrong! I'd be playing "Roy" right now. At a certain point, my hands are tied, Morty.
Morty: I did the right thing, Rick!
Rick: Tell that to Gearhead's gearsticles.
Morty: You did that!
Rick: Wrong! I'd be playing "Roy" right now. At a certain point, my hands are tied, Morty.
Original air date: 8/2/2015
Rick and Morty drop Jerry off in a daycare made for Jerrys; Morty tries to save a gaseous lifeform.
This episode contains examples of...
- Affably Evil:
- Krombopulos Michael is very nice and friendly for an assassin who claims to have no code of ethics and will kill anyone for money, even children.
- The gas organism, Fart is equally polite and gentle to the solid life forms he considers a disease and has every intention of "cleansing".
- All for Nothing: After a rescue attempt, the deaths of tons of innocent people, and a lot of trouble, Morty ends up killing the gas life form anyways because he learns that they're out to kill all carbon-based life forms.
- All Just a Dream: Morty's playthrough of the "Roy" video game begins with Roy waking up from a nightmare, telling his mother that he dreamt he was with an old man who put a helmet on him (I.E. what happened to Morty immediately before the game).
- Anti Matter: The gun Rick sells to Krombopulos Michael is specifically called out as firing antimatter, because the target "cannot be harmed by normal matter." It seems to fire purple energy bolts, though.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Fart is revealed to be an extremist who is intent on cleansing the universe of carbon-based life forms. He is not outwardly malicious, however; he maintains a personal bond with Morty, and even shares his intent nonchalantly to him, convinced he would understand the importance of his cause. He is shocked and betrayed when Morty kills him in response, not understanding what would provoke such a backstab.
- Book Ends: The first time Fart sings a song to Morty, it is interrupted by an angry Rick. The last time it sings to Morty again, it is interrupted by Morty himself, who used his song as a distraction to end him.
- Borrowed Biometric Bypass: During his assassination coup, Krombopulos Michael forces a guard's hand on a scanner to open a door.
- Break the Cutie: Morty (again). His idealism is completely crushed when Fart is revealed to be genocidal and he is forced to kill him, making the entire endeavor All for Nothing. Rick unintentionally rubbing this in his face helps him none.
- Call-Back: "Human Music" from "M. Night Shyam-aliens" plays in the background at Jerryboree.
- Chekhov's Gun: The Antimatter Gun Rick sells to Krombopulos Michael at the beginning is used by Morty to kill Fart at the end.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Rick keeps telling Morty that he should have stayed out of trying to save the Fart. Morty is silently forced to admit that Rick was right on this one.
- Disaster Dominoes: Fart manipulates a cop into committing suicide by crashing his car into a Federation fighter. The fighter spins out of control and knocks the others off course, one of which smacks into a crane holding a large gear, which breaks off and flies back to disable the large cruiser.
- Disney Acid Sequence: Fart can induce these.
- Dodge by Braking: Rick pulls this trick on his pursuers.
- Everyone Has Standards: Despite being the type of person who'd casually sell a gun to a contract killer just to make some quick money to blow at an arcade, Rick is visibly disturbed when Krombopulos Michael hands over his business card to Morty.
- Exact Words: After revealing his genocidal intentions to Morty, Fart reads his thoughts and concludes that he still agrees that "life must be protected, even through sacrifice." As it turns out, Morty wasn't thinking about protecting Fart, but everyone else.
- False Friend: Gearhead double-crossing Rick.
- Fatal Family Photo: Krombopulos Michael looks at his girl's photo. A minute later he gets smashed by Morty's vessel.
- Fictional Currency: Early on, Rick is handed a money bag with 3,000 flerbos by Krombopulos Michael.
- Final Solution: Fart wants to bring peace to the universe by destroying all solid life forms.
- Foreshadowing: Fart's song at first sounds like Word Salad Lyrics, but if you listen closely, you'll hear that it's actually about how intergalactic peace can be achieved by killing all humans.
- For Want Of A Nail: Rick and Morty encounter parallel selves who didn't try to save the Fart and had fun at the arcade.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: As Rick loads green rocks into his car, one of them appears to have a small lifeform attached to it.
- Funny Background Event: While Rick and Morty talk in the arcade, a Mr. Meeseeks can be seen watching an alien play an arcade game. The alien wins the game and Mr. Meeseeks promptly dies as a result.
- Gazorpazorpfield can also be seen later on. Well, an episode of it.
- Hard Truth Aesop: You should know when to not get involved in a situation, even if it seems bad; otherwise, intervening can just make things worse. This is especially the case if you're relying purely on righteousness and don't have a solid understanding of all the facts involved.
- Hates Being Nicknamed: Or at least, hates the nickname he's commonly known by. Gearhead asks if Rick even knows what his real name is (it's "Revolio Clockberg, Jr."), and reveals that calling him "Gearhead" is a highly racist nickname akin to calling a Chinese person "Asiaface".
- Hope Spot: Inverted. After learning of their genocidalnature, Morty is terrified when he learns Rick opened a portal and more Farts will be coming in soon. Morty tries to warn him about this, but before he can, Rick loudly passes gas revealing his claim was just a joke.
- Innocuously Important Episode: This is mostly a one-off episode, but does have one subtle-but-significant impact on the series, and gets numerous references in Season 6:
- It's heavily implied that the main Jerry the audience has been following in the series since Rick and Morty moved to his dimension in "Rick Potion #9" is accidentally traded away to a different Rick and Morty at the end of the episode thanks to a receipt mix-up, and the Jerry that the main protagonist duo brings back with them is a different one. "Solaricks" later confirms this to be true. While the new Jerry has had almost all of the same experiences with his own version of the family as the previous Jerry (at the very least, the events of "Something Ricked This Way Comes" did happen to him too, since Rick makes a mention in Season 4 of Jerry going to Pluto), and is exactly the same in terms of personality, this means that the "Main Jerry" who appears for the rest of the series after this episode is the third version of him that the audience has followed, unlike Rick and Morty (the originals) or Beth and Summer (the second versions).
- The video game "Roy: A Life Well Lived" reappears and becomes central to the plot of an episode in the sixth season (the title of which—"Rick: A Mort Well Lived"—is a reference to it), and the Jerryboree also appears or is referenced multiple times in the same season.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Rick assures Morty that he is not doing any shady business out of the Parking Garage. Cue Krombopulos Michael knocking on the car door to do a weapon deal with him.
- Jaw Drop: Rick and Morty both have them after Fart uses his powers to cause the above-mentioned Disaster Dominoes, leading to a ton of destruction and death.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: The "Roy" video game in the arcade has the player put on a VR helmet that puts them in the shoes of the eponymous Roy, and the goal is to live the longest and most interesting life possible. Morty nearly forgets who he is when he's put into the game without warning and Rick has to snap him out of it, while Rick can play the game and argue with Morty at the same time because he's ready for it.
- Low Clearance: Rick maneuvers the shuttle through a clockwork while the pursuers crash trying to follow.
- My Car Hates Me: Morty can't get the aircraft to start while the guards converge.
- Never My Fault: As Rick points out, Morty stated that selling a gun to an assassin is just as bad as pulling the trigger yourself. Later, dozens of innocent civilians get killed because Morty saved Fart instead of just letting him get killed, but Morty insists that it is different because unlike Rick he did the right thing. Rick also has shades of this in the episode by not caring what K. Michael does with the gun he sells him and later blames Morty for what he himself did to Gearhead's gearsticles.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: By leading Fart to the wormhole back to his universe, Morty very nearly gives the gas organisms the information they'll need to invade his universe and wipe out all carbon-based life. To say nothing of how his entire quest to save Fart from an assassin resulted in more deaths than if he had just stayed out of it.
- Not in Front of the Kid: Implied when Krombopulos Michael shows up to meet Rick, who has Morty with him, and purchase the anti-matter gun from him. He starts talking about his plans for killing, and Rick quickly and pointedly introduces Michael to "my grandson, Morty" in an effort to get him to stop talking. Unfortunately for Rick, Michael—who will kill anyone for money, including children and the elderly, with no qualms—has zero problems with telling a kid about his profession, and even gives Morty his business card, to Rick's annoyance.
- Parking Garage: Morty wonders what shady business Rick is doing out of a garage.
- Pet the Dog: Rick is seriously annoyed that Morty insists on going to save Fart rather than the two of them just hanging out and having fun at the arcade like Rick wants to. At one point, when Morty gives him the option to bail while he rescues Fart himself, Rick does indeed ditch him...for all of a minute, before he portals back Just in Time to save Morty, and subsequently sticks with him for the rest of the episode in his goal to rescue Fart, despite repeatedly complaining about it.
- Portal Cut: Rick opens a portal right in the middle of a guard, cutting him in half.
- Slice of Life: The alien video game Roy: a Life Well-Lived, detailed under Lotus-Eater Machine, which shows the life-and-times of a normal American man named "Roy." It's considered a bad move to go back to selling carpets after beating cancer, by the way.
- The Stinger: An advertisement for Blips and Chitz, which Rick appears in.
- Stock Money Bag: Rick is handed the sum of 3,000 flerbos in a money bag with a huge flerbos symbol on it that resembles a dollar sign.
- Take the Wheel: Rick tells Morty to take the wheel so he can get a shot at his pursuers.
- Unfortunate Names: After Rick calls the gas entity a fart, he adopts Fart as his name, despite Morty's protests.Morty: I'm gonna miss you, uh... Fart. I'm really sorry your name became Fart.
- Villain Song: Once you learn about Fart's true intentions, his "Goodbye Moon-men" song becomes this, where he explains in metaphors how he wants to destroy all solid life forms.
- Vomiting Cop: Two of them when Rick swaps Gearhead’s mouth gears with his testicle gears.
- Would Hurt a Child: Krombopulos Michael cheerfully states that he'll kill anyone for money, including children and old people.
