Recap / Rick and Morty S3 E1: "The Rickshank Redemption"

Original air date: 4/1/2017 ^note Originally aired as an April Fool's joke.

Rick goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the Galactic Government, the Council of Ricks and Jerry.

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Tropes:

• Absurd Phobia: Rick mentions he has a fear of wicker furniture.
• Anachronism Stew: Although McDonald's did issue a special Schezuan sauce to promote Mulan, in 1998, Rick orders it alongside a ten-piece order of McNuggets, which were only available in six-, nine-, or twenty-piece orders at the time. Justified, since Rick made up the memory in the first place.
• And the Adventure Continues: During his concluding rant, Rick says he and Morty will go on more adventures—sometimes with Summer or Beth, but never with Jerry.
• April Fools' Day: This episode was the prime focus of [adult swim]'s 2017 prank, with it showing up unannounced after a more traditional gag in the early evening and running on repeat for the entire night. This spilled over onto McDonalds' April Fools' Day gags, with fans ignoring the official ones to demand that McDonalds re-issue the Schezuan sauce.
  • Even better, this airing proudly showed their Carl's Jr. commercial during breaks, featuring Carl's Jr. creations messing up Morty's room and rifling through it for stuff to steal. Not only did the show essentially trick McDonalds's into advertising Rick & Morty for free, the Carl's Jr. commercial also worked hard at making Carl's Jr. look unappetizing.
• Armor-Piercing Response: Morty gives an epic one to the Council of Ricks that's enough to unnerve them:
  Oh yeah? If you think my Rick's dead, he's alive and if you think you're safe, he's coming for you!
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Summer gives this based on the Galactic Federation occupying Earth, with Jaywalking preceding Murder.
  We're miserable, Morty! We have a mandatory curfew, their weird calendar made me 47, and they weaponized the Eiffel Tower!
• Artistic License – Economics: Rick turning the Galactic Federation currency to nothing. While not impossible in real life, it would be highly unlikely that any currency could be made to value absolutely nothing as supply and demand are a factor as well as with other forms of currency. A treasury is far more complex than a single computer so there isn't one source that could make the value worth nothing and it certainly couldn't be done by one person. This is Downplayed, though, since this is counting human currency and not the currency of an intergalactic empire of Insectoid Aliens, and their economics probably work different from humanity's.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: When the leader of the Council of Ricks tells Summer and Morty that they will break into the prison to get to Rick...and assassinate him.
• Batman Gambit:
  • One of the Federation leaders wonders why Rick turned himself in. Apparently, Rick anticipated being thrown in that prison containing sensitive Federation information and planned his breakout to destroy the Federation from the inside. Unfortunately, SEAL Team Ricks crashes the party, forcing Rick to improvise.
  • Also, during the standoff with the Council Rick holding Summer at gunpoint, our Rick ends up goading Morty into shooting him with the stun gun he handed him, knowing it would get the other Rick to drop his guard and allow Rick a clear shot at his enemy.
  • Given his knowledge of Federation tactics, it's conceivable Rick knew they'd stick him in a hackable brain machine, which he could use to escape, or maybe his escape method was always going to be an Indy Ploy.
• Big Brother Is Employing You: Jerry doesn't mind working for the Galactic Federation. Although, he is actually employed to do nothing.
• Big "NO!":
  • Young Rick when his wife and kid die in the explosion. Accompanied by a Futile Hand Reach.
  • Later the interrogator screams "Nooooo" when Rick leaves him behind.
• Big Sister Instinct: After Summer refuses to renounce Rick herself, she tells the Council of Ricks that they can do whatever they want with her, but demands that they let Morty go, insisting that he's already renounced Rick anyway, but Morty then inverts this and shows Little Brother Instinct by clarifying that he wasn't really renouncing Rick, and never has; he was just trying to protect Summer, who has a hero-worship for Rick and, unlike Morty, doesn't seem to recognize the full extent of how destructive a presence Rick can be. He was trying to get her to give up on him in an attempt to help Summer have a normal life.
• Blatant Lies: Rick gives Morty a fake gun with instructions on its side, so he can use it to fake a breakdown and shoot Rick in the head. One standoff later, Morty is getting belittled by everyone in the room, snaps at Rick and executes the plan perfectly. Without knowing there was a plan to begin with.
  Morty: (hesitant) Ha, yeah... G-good thing I saw that note...
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Morty more or less describes Rick as this to Summer, saying that while Rick's not a villain he's also not a hero.
• Body Horror: Rick makes Jerry fold himself twelve times to demonstrate that he knows he's in a simulation. Jerry gets to six before the simulation can't keep up, and Rick mocks his captors for cheaping out on the hardware.
• Body Surf: Rick hijacks the Brainalyzer to move his mind into the body of his interrogator to gain high-security clearance. When SEAL Team Ricks screws up that plan and kills his original body, he hijacks one of them to escape, then moves through two more Ricks to get revenge and breach the high-security area.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: During his rant at Morty at the end of the episode, he says that he will get that dipping sauce, even if it takes 9 more seasons.
• Brick Joke: Summer, desperate for any tech to help save Rick, starts rearranging dead flies on a table thinking they're a key to redeploy Rick's lab. After Rick returns home, he rearranges the same flies, which turn out to actually be a key that redeploys his lab.
• Brief Accent Imitation: When Morty takes the portal gun so he can show Summer Cronenberg world, he stretches out her name in the same fashion that Rick says "Morty" whenever he's annoyed with Morty.
• Call-Back:
  • Remember the Rick and Morty that died and got replaced by our Rick and Morty? That Rick still had his portal gun, and because he wasn't C-137, its destruction was detected by the Citadel.
  • Cronenberg Earth is back, and Morty's old folks are still alive, although not exactly in the same state of mind.
  • Rick's rant at the end of this episode strongly mimics his rant at the end of the pilot. The same "inspirational" music is even playing in the background.
• Calling Your Bathroom Breaks: Every time Rick transfers his consciousness into a new body and is done using it for the next step of his plan, he excuses himself by saying he has to take a shit.
• Captured on Purpose: By way of Batman Gambit. Rick turning himself in at the end of the last episode turns out to have been a gambit to infiltrate the Galactic Federation and destroy it from the inside.
• Character Shilling: Several times Rick is called the smartest man in the universe.
• Chekhov's Gun: A literal one in the form of the portal gun that belongs to the original Rick of this dimension.
• Cliffhanger Copout: The episode initially appears to start with this. Rick is eating with his family in a Shoney's, and had just finished up telling how he escaped from Federation Prison. Then he tells Jerry to take off his clothes and fold himself 12 times, revealing that it's actually a simulation based on Rick's memories... and Rick knew immediately that he was in a Virtual-Reality Interrogation.
• Did Not Think This Through: Rick left his improv classes behind when he transferred himself to the insect cop... and then ranted that he'd lost the ability to Indy Ploy when the Citadel Ricks showed up and messed up his plan.
• Disproportionate Retribution: As revenge for suggesting that he turn himself in to the authorities, Rick breaks up Jerry's marriage to his daughter.
• The Dog Bites Back: During the standoff, Morty is insulted one time too many by Rick, and blasts him in the head. Rick had actually planned for Morty to shoot him to break the standoff, revealing that he had written instructions for Morty to shoot him. Instructions that Morty probably didn't read...
• Dramatic Thunder: Rolls when Summer unearths Rick's bones and picks up the portal gun.
• Driven to Suicide: Upon learning that their money is now completely worthless, the president of the Galactic Federation shoots himself in the head.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Remember when Rick and Morty replaced the dead versions of them? Remember when Morty explained all that to Summer later? Summer does and thus, knows that the dead Rick still has his Portal Gun.
• Evil Is Petty: Jerry wanted to hand Rick off to the Federation and have Rick pay for his crimes so his family could be free. Rick, in turn, infiltrates the galactic federation by turning himself in, allows them to turn Earth into a police state which assigns Jerry a job, then topples it from the inside out just to cost Jerry his job and look like a hero in the process, then gaslight his daughter into divorcing him. And even that was all because he wanted some McNugget dipping sauce!
• Exotic Equipment: After Rick swaps out of the body of his alien captor and slaughters the SEAL team sent to assassinate him, he laments that he didn't even get to give his captor's "insect dick a test drive".
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Past Rick had a tidier haircut on a full head of hair.
• Fascists' Bed Time: Summer complaints about the mandatory curfew imposed on citizens by the Galactic Federation.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Rick first switches bodies with the Galactic agent, he remarks casually that anyone with access to Level 9 could collapse the government. That's exactly what Rick does when he gains access during the ending.
  • Several clues tip-off that Rick's memories of inventing the portal gun are fake, or at least not 100% accurate. Starting with Young Rick talking with one of his alternate selves and the alternate self saying that Rick is the only person Ricks like. In truth, Rick has deep-seated and severe self-loathing. There is no one he hates more than himself.
  • In Rick's rant at the end of the episode, he insists to Morty that he's not motivated by avenging his dead family, and only by getting Szechuan sauce, despite having no real reason to say this since Morty never even saw that supposedly-fake memory of Rick's family dying, and not much in the memory hinted that Rick was trying to take revenge, since the focus was on his invention of the portal gun. With later revelations in Season 5, this stands out a lot more in hindsight as a Suspiciously Specific Denial from Rick.
    • In the memory itself, Rick collapses in despair when he see's Diane and Beth get blown up, while the interrogator polishes off the Szechuan sauce. Contradicting the claim that the sauce was all that mattered to him.
  • Morty introduces himself to two Council Ricks as "Morty C-137", remembering how Rick was identified as "Rick C-137" in "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick-Kind", and the two Council Ricks look at each other in confusion about this. We later learn that not only is our Morty not from C-137, there in fact never was a Morty C-137, as that universe's Beth was killed as a child.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • When Rick hands Morty the pistol, you can see a piece of tape with the message scrawled on it.
  • When Rick body surfs into someone else, he gains some drool on his lip. When one of the Council of Ricks runs in to warn the others, he has some drool on his lip.
• Gambit Roulette:
  • Rick claims to be responsible for breaking his daughter's marriage as revenge for Jerry intending to sell him out, but does so little (asking Jerry for booze) it's difficult to buy.
  • Also, teleporting the Citadel into the Galactic Federation prison to save Morty and Summer and access the control room where he causes the collapse of the Federation. Even though the act of teleportation into the facility sends it exploding in pieces, none of the above are destroyed, which would have resulted in an instant fail.
• A Glitch in the Matrix: Rick betrays the illusion of the Brainalyzer by telling Jerry to take off his clothes and fold himself, causing him to derezz when the software can't handle the order.
• Greed: The Galactic Federation leadership is so insanely greedy that they refuse to do anything at all when they aren't being paid. Rick disabling their currency collapses their entire government in hours.
• Grew a Spine: Jerry finally has the courage to insist Beth choose between him and Rick. It doesn't turn out as he hopes.
• Happy Ending Override: For a given value of "happy." The original Smith family left in Cronenberg World, who were quite happy when we last saw them, have become feral.
• He Knows Too Much: Upon being informed that Rick has been captured, the Council of Ricks dispatches SEAL Team Ricks to assassinate him so their knowledge won't fall into Federation hands.
• Hero-Worshipper:
  • Summer confirms before the Council of Ricks that (her) Rick is her hero.
  • Beth knows that Rick is bad not just for her or her family. She still needs his approval and affection.
• Hope Spot: Rick thought his plan to destroy the government was in the bag the moment he was told the Level 9 access code. Then SEAL Team Ricks show up and wreck havoc of the place.
• I Lied: Rick gloats that he lied and hacked his memory of inventing the portal device not only to plant the code to hack the machine but also to cover up the truth about the events. However, we'll learn later that that was a lie, except for the part about the code. The agent's ploy to get Rick to revisit that memory in order to see his wife and daughter again worked, or at least Rick allowed it to work.
• Indy Ploy:
  • Discussed by Summer when she mentions that Rick, like all heroes, makes things up as he goes. He does indeed end up doing so later when SEAL Team Ricks shows up and disrupts his original plan.
  • While it's possible Rick could have known that they'd stick him in a brainalyzer to interrogate him, it's also possible it was an Indy Ploy and he took advantage of his ability to hack the machine to escape.
• Injured Self-Drag: Played for Laughs. After the Galactic Federation collapses and pulls out from Earth, a confused Jerry crawls all the way from his workplace back home to avoid being injured and is surprised to find out it worked.
• Insane Troll Logic: Part of Rick's plan to topple the galactic government relies on aliens immediately freaking out and turning on each other when he collapses their unified currency.
• It's All About Me:
  • Jerry is the only one who actually likes the fact that the Earth is under a Police State, as he is working in a job that makes him feel rewarded for doing nothing. Later, he immediately blames Rick for the problems that the collapse of the Galactic Federation causes for him alone. He demands Beth choose between them when Rick returns, even when it appears that Rick acted selflessly for the family. Beth herself decides to talk him out of backing down on his threat to divorce her over Rick.
  • Rick's no better, toppling governments, crushing marriages, and enslaving Morty, all so he can find a discontinued condiment. Provided that last part wasn't just him ranting off-topic.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Rick destroying his son-in-law's marriage as revenge for threatening to turn him in to the authorities was certainly a petty thing to do, but considering Beth's and Jerry's unwillingness to accept how toxic they are for one another, it almost feels like a relief.
  • Jerry demanding that Beth chooses between him and Rick is an It's All About Me mentality for sure, but Rick did cause all sorts of trouble for his family (both this version of them and the version in the previous world he Cronenberged). Jerry wasn't wrong that continuing to follow Rick would just increase his toxic influence on their family.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: The end indicates Rick has gone full-blown mental. Later revelations about his family suggest that reviewing the "fake" memory of their death is what pushed him over the edge.
• Kangaroo Court: Morty and Summer are dragged before the Council of Ricks and put on a trial that the Ricks openly admit is blatantly unfair, including giving them a "lawyer" in the form of a Morty in a suit that they keep around because he's funny.
  Riq IV: Operating an unregistered portal gun, radicalising a Summer, conspiring with the traitorous Rick...How do you plead?
  Morty: How is this a fair trial?! 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. (Lawyer Morty starts dancing) Look at him go!
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: At the end of the episode Rick says he'll have 97 years of adventures. A nod to the fact that three of the 100 years have gone by since he said he'd have 100 years back in the first season.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: Rick going through with the capture gambit after the Galactic Federation infiltrated via the wedding in the second season finale.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Rick and Birdperson were considered terrorists by the Galactic Federation. Now that we see the Galactic Federation in detail, Rick's violent contempt for them proves well-founded.
• Loophole Abuse: How do you fool a device that literally reads your memories? Make up a fake memory and have it read that.
  Agent: What are you talking about? This is a memory. You can't alter details of a memory.
  Rick: True. But you can alter anything you want about a totally fabricated origin story.
• Mêlée à Trois: During the climax where Rick transports the entire Citadel to the Galactic Federal Prison, the three factions that have it out are the Citadel of Ricks, the Galactic Federation, and Rick C-137 himself.
• Mood Whiplash: One happens at the end of the episode. Everything is going great as the Federation is destroyed, Rick is free and the family reunited. The only downside is that Jerry wants to divorce Beth, but when Morty expresses concern about it, Rick angrily reveals he planned for the divorce to happen ever since he overheard Jerry suggesting that they turn him into the Federation, Morty can only express horror and shock. And then Rick rants on about how it and everything else he does is for delicious McDonald's promotional Schezuan Teriyaki McNugget dipping sauce for the 1998 Disney film Mulan. Morty can only respond to that with complete confusion.
• Motive Rant: Rick's rambling at the end has him declare his reason for his actions as the McNugget dipping sauce.
• Mundane Solution: Rather than nuking the Federation or turning their tech on them, Rick simply reduces the value of their currency to nothing, causing a complete and total societal collapse that drives the aliens off of Earth. The aliens themselves expect to be paid to do even the smallest tasks (one is paid to yell at an agent), so Rick's plan was simplicity in itself.
• My Skull Runneth Over: Rick claims his vast intellect won't fit in the mind of his interrogator, so he leaves behind some useless information like his improv comedy experience.
• Myth Arc: Parodied, when Rick mentions everything he's done is simply to gain access to a discontinued dipping sauce.
  Rick: That's my series arc, Morty! If it takes nine seasons, I want my McNugget dipping sauce!
• Never My Fault:
  • Morty apparently blames Rick for destroying the previous world when showing it to Summer. While Rick did do that, it never would've happened if Morty hadn't asked Rick to make a love potion for him. Of course, there was no way for Morty to know the danger while Rick should have known and taken precautions. He could also just be telling Summer the short version since he doesn't explain how it happened, and probably doesn't want to.
  • After Morty shoots Rick when he's insulted one too many times, Summer is heartbroken and yells they just got Rick back, ignoring she was insulting Morty along with Rick and the Council Rick.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Not only did SEAL team Ricks' arrival to assassinate C-137 Rick fail, but they also gave the Main!Rick a spare body to live in instead of his interrogator, and effectively straightforward access to take over the Council of Ricks' commander-in-chief, which ultimately led to their downfall.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: The Federation, the Council of Ricks, and Jerry — the show's three primary antagonists for Rick — are all defeated by Rick, leaving just Tammy and Phoenix Person as major threats, who themselves get taken out in their next appearance, one season later.
• Not So Above It All: Morty tries to murder Rick after being insulted one too many times, showing he can be just as cruel as his grandfather. Fortunately Rick knew he would react as such and gave him a fake gun to throw off the Rick holding Summer at gunpoint. Or rather, Rick gave him a fake gun with a note attached telling Morty what to do. Morty was just too pissed at Rick to notice.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Subverted: the episode opens just as Rick finishes telling his family how he escaped from the Galactic Federation's prison, while they eat at a Shoney's restaurant. Morty points out that he wishes he could have seen it... then it turns out that Rick is still imprisoned, trapped inside of a virtual reality simulation as part of his interrogation. The rest of the episode then shows us exactly how he manages to escape, and it's as awesome as it can be.
• Oh, Crap!: Cornvelious Daniel, when he realizes Rick has sabotaged the interrogation by uploading a virus and leaving him stranded in the virtual world, and Rick's comatose body.
  Cornvelious Daniel: It's a trap! Abort! I'm still in his Shoney's! Repeat — we never left his Shoney's!
• Pajama-Clad Hero: Morty is forced into the adventure while preparing for sleep. We see him in his yellow pajamas for the rest of the episode.
• Pass the Popcorn: The interrogator enjoys some McNuggets with Szechuan sauce while watching a (fabricated) memory of Young Rick losing his wife and daughter to a bombing.
  Cornvelious Daniel: Wow. This sauce is fucking amazing! You said it was promoting a movie?
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Rick taking down both the Galactic Federation and the Citadel of Ricks, the latter of whom tried to kill him.
• Police State: The Galactic Government turns Earth into this, with humans being given pills as currency and even force-fed them to keep them complacent. The scene with Mister Goldenfold also indicates many humans were either forced to live or chose to hide in the sewers.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: When playing "Rick, Laser, Scissors" for getting Morty as a hostage, our Rick produces a remote control. The other three Ricks ask what that was, upon which Rick replies "Payback" and starts shooting his counterparts.
• Punny Name: SEAL Team Ricks.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: This entire episode. Rick proceeds to dismantle the Galactic Federation, destroys the Council of Ricks, and gets Jerry to divorce Beth all in one fell swoop.
• Rule of Three: Invoked by Rick when he explains to the interrogator that he'll be leaving behind his fear of wicker furniture, desire to play the trumpet, plans to buy a hat, and six years of improv workshop.
  Rick: Comedy comes in threes.
  • After taking over the interrogator's body, Rick tries to get the level 9 access code under the pretense of using the bathroom. Later, he hijacks the commander-in-chief of the Citadel of Rick's militia, orders his former host to be blown up and then leaves, claiming that he's "gonna go take a shit". He uses the same line again after teleporting the Citadel into the prison.
• Sanity Slippage: Morty's family in Cronenberg world. Beth has become feral, as Summer puts it, while Jerry barely speaks. Alternate Summer seems a little better but still joins her family in deciding to destroy the current Summer because she "stinks of Rick".
• Sarcastic Confession: When one government agent wonders aloud why Rick would turn himself in, the interrogator (who is actually Rick in the interrogator's body) gives a possible explanation that he would do it to get Level 9 access to a government facility so he can topple it from within, and then asks for the Level 9 access code directly afterwards, and essentially receives it.
• Self-Deprecation:
  Morty Smith: How is this a fair trial?! Our lawyer is a Morty!
• Shoot the Hostage: One member of the Council of Ricks takes Summer hostage, and dares Rick to do this. Rick counters by claiming that shooting Summer would "add recoil" and only make the Council Rick's death more painful, so he should let her go for a quicker death. Subverted in that Rick was bluffing about shooting Summer and just trying to trick his counterpart.
• Shout-Out:
  • Summer calls the version of herself from the universe Rick "Cronenberged" a Hunger Games version of herself.
  • Rick also makes one to Mulan and talks about the McDonald's dipping sauce used to promote the film.
  • In the Council of Ricks, one of the background Mortys can be seen wearing Dipper Pines' hat, with a Morticia next to him standing in for Mabel.
  • The house Rick lives in his memory of creating the Portal Gun closely resembles Walter White's house from Breaking Bad. It also doubles as a hint that the memory is actually faked by Rick.
  • Rick's phony Origin Story includes a scene where Rick is given interdimensional travel technology by an alternate version of himself who had already developed it. This is exactly what happened to Quinn Mallory in the Pilot Episode of Sliders.
  • The alien interrogators celebrating receiving the portal-gun formula is very similar to the "Mission Status: Sick◊" meme.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • The entire point of Rick's obsession with McDonald's Szechuan sauce. The fact that he's willing to let his brain melt in a simulation, bring down an entire intergalactic, multi-dimensional government, slaughter millions and break up his daughter's marriage all to get a fast-food condiment shows just how utterly petty and insane he is.
  • Jerry meanwhile actually enjoys life under the Galactic Federation. He gets paid for doing nothing, but the planet is turned into a Police State by aliens who impose their norms upon humans.
  • Summer from Cronenberg world reacts to facing Summer from another universe with, "Oh my God... I have that same top!"
• Space Opera: Has shades of this.
• The Stinger: Tammy's back. And so is BirdPerson.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: While looking for Rick's secret lab, Summer guesses that arranging the flies on his lab bench will open it. Turns out, she was right.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: When Rick congratulates Morty for following the instructions pinned to the laser gun, Morty seems confused first but then decides to pretend he actually read the note.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: At the end of the episode, Rick gives a deranged Motive Rant to Morty that everything he did was to replace Jerry as the only patriarch in Beth's house, and he only rescued Summer and Morty so Beth would let Rick come back... And that his series-long motivation was not to avenge his dead family, but to get the Mulan McNugget dipping sauce. Morty, who wasn't even present when Rick showed his memory of his wife and daughter dying to the alien agent, is naturally confused.
  Rick: I'm not driven by avenging my dead family, Morty!
• Tele-Frag: Rick teleports the entire Citadel right into the Galactic Federal Prison.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Traveling through his memories, Rick can be seen reacting to 9/11 and overheard lamenting that it'll be used as an excuse to crack down on people's freedoms.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • The G-Fed government are so greedy that they'd rather let their state fall to ruins than work without pay until they can repair Rick's interference with their currency... just as Rick planned.
  • The lone guard who gets the jump on Rick blows his chance to attack Rick by telling him to freeze. Rick easily picks him off.
• Underestimating Badassery: The Federation and the Council of Ricks both underestimate C-137. He destroys both organizations.
• Unreliable Expositor: Rick gives petty reasons for his escape and revenge, but he is after all a Consummate Liar. His past protectiveness of Morty and Summer and his actions in the episode indicate that he might really be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who makes sure nobody ever believes it. His extreme contempt for Jerry is genuine, however. His Suspiciously Specific Denial to Morty that he saved earth and his grandkids only to get back on Beth's good side, not because he cared about his family, and that his series long motivation is not to avenge his dead family but to get some more McNugget dipping sauce, adds further credence to this idea.
• Unwitting Pawn: Rick played the interrogator like a fiddle.
• Vichy Earth: The Galactic Federation turned Earth into one of these, with Gromflomites meddling in human customs and even their rights.
• Virtual-Reality Interrogation: The Federation uses one to interrogate Rick and sift through his memories. Rick quickly takes advantage of the fact that the world responds to anything he thinks up to escape.
• Virtual-Reality Warper: Though the Federation agents apparently hold all the power over the simulation, Rick demonstrates an early ability to warp things in his favour by somehow conjuring a human anus from the interrogator's coffee cup and having it repeatedly fart in his face. By the end of the interrogation, Rick has extended this ability to creating fake memories, hacking internal communications, and even taking over his interrogator's body in the real world to break free.
• Voices Are Not Mental: When Rick takes over the interrogator's body, his voice sounds distinctly different.
• Weaponized Landmark: The Galactic Federation apparently weaponized the Eiffel Tower.
• We Can Rebuild Him: The Stinger shows that Tammy has revived BirdPerson into a half-robotic "PhoenixPerson".
• Wham Episode: Rick apparently destroys both the Galactic Federation and, after Morty and Summer bungle an attempt to rescue him, the Council of Ricks, too. For a chaser, Rick destroys his daughter's marriage, points out that he's now the center of Morty's universe, AND that he cares more about dipping sauces than his own family.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Morty's original family from dimension C-137 is last seen being frozen by the Ricks that are investigating the destroyed portal gun. They are not seen or referred to for the rest of the episode so it is unknown if they were left frozen to die or if they were unfrozen before the Ricks took Morty and Summer to the Citadel of Ricks. Their fates are revealed three seasons later in "Solaricks".
• Who's Laughing Now?: Morty after shooting Rick.
  "Who's stupid now, bitch?"
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Rick's original plan is: Get captured by the Galactic Federation, get level 9 access, electronically devalue their currency, destroying the Federation from within, and thusly get Beth to divorce Jerry for crossing him. His chance to get the codes arrives when they use a brainalyzer on him. He gets to re-experience the McDonald's Sczuchen dipping sauce, falsify his memories of creating the portal gun, trick the aliens into uploading a virus that would give him control of the brainalyzer, and hijack the alien's body with the brainalyzer. Unfortunately, in the meantime, Summer and Morty bungle a rescue attempt, alerting the Council of Ricks that Rick C-137 (our Rick) has been captured, and they send an assassination Rick team to bust the interrogation, just as Rick is about to get the level 9 codes. Rick manages to redirect the brainalyzer beam into one of the SEAL Ricks and hijack his body. Having lost his chance for the level 9 codes, he takes the brainalyzer and steals the SEAL Team's ship, using them to hijack a Rick with a high-security clearance and thus infiltrating the Council of Rick's space station, uses its teleporter to teleport it right back into the space prison he escaped from, rearms himself with armor and weaponry, disguises himself as a member of the Council, assassinates the Council, gives Morty a fake gun to shoot him with later, has a stand-off with the surviving Council member who had taken Summer hostage, piss Morty off to the point of trying to shoot him, play dead long enough for the Council member to release Summer, kill the Council member, uses the ensuing chaos to get past the Federation's level 9 security systems, THEN electronically devalues their currency, destroying the Federation from within, and thusly gets Beth to divorce Jerry for crossing him.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The interrogator decides to leave Rick plugged into the Brainalizer until his brain melts, as he has the portal gun formula and no longer needs Rick... Or at least he thinks that's the case until it becomes clear that Rick tricked him into uploading a virus that allows him to take full control of the system and Body Surf into the interrogator.
• Your Worst Memory: Rick claims that it's the moment that his wife and child were murdered, and acts every bit as devastated at reliving it as you'd expect... but then the simulated memory turns out to be false.

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