Original air date: 9/25/2022
The family uses an insomnia machine to do various tasks while asleep, but their night selves quickly develop awareness.
Tropes:
- 20% More Awesome: The special dinner plates Rick has created are marked "110% Indestructible"
- All There in the Stinger: The Reset Button Ending, in which the Somnambulator is destroyed and the Night Family dies, only occurs after the episode's credits have rolled.
- Anything but That!: In retribution for his unwillingness to rinse the dishes, the Night Family tortures Rick by scraping off the food bits from the plate into his mouth. This is horrific to Rick, reducing him to tears, and in the morning he chugs a whole bottle of mouthwash after puking it all out.
- Asleep for Days: The Night Family takes possession of the Smiths for an undisclosed period of time until they give up. When Rick checks how long they've been asleep, he and the family are horrified to learn Choco Tacos have been discontinued.
- Attack Reflector: In a fight in the backseat with Night Morty, Rick's punch gets bounced off his abs so hard that he flies out the backseat onto the hood of the police car Night Summer is driving.
- The Bad Guy Wins: The Night Family take possession of the Smiths for an unknown amount of time, live it up on a lavish vacation that wastes all the Smiths' money. While they succeeded in taking over the Smiths' lives, they lacked the actual day-to-day skills to function in society. They finally destroy the Somnambulator by their own choice, willingly obliterating themselves and leaving the Day Smiths to deal with the consequences of their actions.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- Morty shows Beth and Summer his newly-jacked abs from his Night Person working out for him, then says "check this out" and reaches down towards his crotch area to apparently open his fly...only to unzip a bag with a bowling ball in it, which he offers to let Summer drop on his abs to prove how strong they are.
- When the Night Family runs out of money, Night Rick says he has "a device that can solve everything" and pulls out a simple revolver, implying they're going to all shoot themselves. Turns out he simply intended to shoot the Somnambulator, which does kill off the Night Family and restores the Day Family to normal.
- Immediately after the above example, the real Smiths wake up, Summer asks how long they've been asleep, Rick looks on his phone to check, and is horrified because... they killed the Choco Taco!
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Jerry is the only one to treat his Night Person like, well, an actual person, rather than just a mindless slave to do all the chores he doesn't want to do. Night Jerry is later the only Night Person who is still friendly to the Smiths and helps them escape from the other Night People.
- Behind the Black: Beth doesn't notice Night Rick until he enters the frame, even though she was clearly looking in his direction and would have had to walk past him to get to the couch.
- Butt-Monkey: Gene, the Smiths' neighbor, once again. He gets yelled at (this time by Rick) to shut up and mind his own business when he expresses concern about their car exploding, and later tries to water the plants on the property between his place and theirs, only for Beth to accidentally mow it all down with the car.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Jerry mentions that he's been using his Night Person as a pen pal, which the other family members mock him for. This turns out to be vital in allowing the Smiths to escape Night Summer, since Jerry requests for Night Jerry to help his family, and the latter obliges due to the friendship they've built. Beth even gives (Night) Jerry a kiss and a genuine thank-you for this.
- Continuity Nod:
- As the "Inside the Episode"
video shows, Night Summer is echoing Rick when she says "Sorry Rick, but your opinion means very little to me." Rick previously said this to Summer in "Rick Potion #9".note - Night Summer is motivated to seize the day or "carpe all them diems", as Summer put it in "Rickmancing the Stone". Like Summer then, Night Summer gets the wakeup call that seizing the day means more than just indulging herself.
- The blast shields from "Total Rickall" make a return while the Night Family has the Day family hostage.
- As the "Inside the Episode"
- Decoy Protagonist: Beth is the initial viewpoint character of the episode only for the story to become more about Rick, (Night) Summer, and to a lesser extent, Jerry.
- Delayed Reaction: Jerry doesn't comprehend that Summer has been taken over by Night Summer until she summons her drones.
- Didn't See That Coming:
- The main wrench in Rick's first plan to stop the Night Family, besides continually underestimating them, is that Night Summer is capable of effectively acting as her day self and going undercover.
- Rick antagonizes people who have control over his and his family's bodies while they're asleep, who are beginning to show signs of unrest. As the episode goes along he continually underestimates their basic awareness to thwart his plans.
- Disproportionate Retribution: While Rick wasn't doing himself any favors with his Jerkass antics, nearly everything that happened came down to Rick refusing to take a few seconds to rinse off his dishes.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: One of the robot drones screams at Morty to continue his situp exercise.
- Elaborate Underground Base: Summer is surprised to learn that the Night Family has taken over Rick's lab underneath the house.
- Erotic Asphyxiation: As Jerry tries to wake up Night Beth, who's currently driving the car, she fairly easily overpowers him with one hand and gets him in a chokehold while still driving with the other hand. She then looks down and sees that Jerry has a boner, to her disgust.
- Evil Is Not Well-Lit: Naturally, the Night Family live up to their name by only using low light levels, the contrast of light and dark making them look more sinister.
- Evil Sounds Raspy: The Night Family speak in hissing whispers, presumably to keep from waking themselves or each other.
- Faux Horrific: Rick gives a Big "OMG!" and a Big "NO!" at finding out that the Choco Taco has been discontinued while they were asleep, and the rest of the Smiths scream in despair.
- Force Feeding: Night Summer force-feeds Rick the grime on one of the plates he refused to rinse, while Night Morty, Night Beth, and Night Jerry hold him down.
- Foreshadowing: As Night Summer starts Force Feeding Rick, Night Jerry is shown flinching as he watches. At the time, it seems like he's wincing at the scraping sound of the fork on the plate, but later, he ends up being the Token Good Teammate who helps the family at Jerry's request.
- Forging Scene: A montage shows Rick on an alien planet forging indestructible plates with the help of an Ultimate Blacksmith.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Rick's room is only shown for about ten seconds, but is full of Continuity Nods, including pictures of Dr. Xenon Bloom, a Zigerion, a Cronenberg, a Meeseeks, and Abradolf Lincler, as well as a few genuine physics equations (and a few that are nonsense).
- Funny Robot: The robot drones that Night Summer uses to subjugate the Smiths all sound aggressive and domineering, except one that for some reason sounds like a Woody Allen impression complete with random interjections.
- Genre Shift: While still containing the many usual sci-fi elements, this episode mixes that with the horror genre, complete with creepy, suspenseful music and an ending where The Bad Guy Wins. Lampshaded by the episode summary, which simply says "Broh I'm scared".
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: When the Night Family confronts Rick in his room, their eyes glow just as brightly as the lit hallway that serves as a backdrop of Rick's point of view.
- Gratuitous Spanish: Summer starts using a lot of this after her Night Person helps her improve her Spanish.
- Halloween Episode: The episode is self-contained but notably very eerie in tone, and aired the last week before October.
- Happiness in Slavery: Downplayed with the Night Family. Whether they're actually happy doing all the Smiths' chores is left ambiguous, but they don't get mad until Rick adamantly refuses to make their jobs even slightly easier by rinsing his plates before putting them in the sink. Even after ransacking the house, forcing the Smiths to be their Night People, and having Rick at their mercy, they're all willing to go back to the way things were if Rick promises to rinse his plates. He refuses.
- Hero Stole My Bike: Night Summer hijacks a police car to chase after the family.
- High-Speed Hijack: Upon Jerry's request, Summer jumps from the police car over to the family car.
- Honor Before Reason: Typical of Rick, when forced to choose between indefinite subjugation to the Night Family or to simply rinse the dishes so their washing is easier on Night Summer, Answer Cut to Night Rick with the rest of the sleepwalking family.
- Hyde Plays Jekyll: Night Summer pretends to be Day Summer to trick Rick into deactivating the barrier.
- Impersonating the Evil Twin: When infiltrating the zombi-esque Night Family, Summer puts on their distinctive guttural slow-speed voice in order for them not to get suspicious about her.
- Instant Sedation: Night Summer equips her drones with tranquilizer darts to sedate the family. Partly justified by the sheer amount of arrows hitting the family members.
- Irony: It's not explored or commented on in this episode, but the very way "110% indestructible" is engraved on Rick's new plates proves they can be damaged, and as such aren't nearly that indestructible.
- Similarly not commented on the episode, but despite Rick warning the others about the danger of the Sonnambulator, it's entirely his fault if the night family starts revolting.
- Jerkass Ball:
- Rick is particularly hostile to Summer in this episode. Even when Night Summer possesses her day self, Rick shows no interest in saving her and even tells her to eat shit. While Summer seems to be dismissive of this kind of treatment, Night Summer shows that she's incredibly resentful about it deep down.
- Rick's Laborious Laziness is also at an all-time high, and causes a conflict with the Night Family simply because he refuses to rinse his dishes.
- Jump Scare: Early on, Beth gets jump-scared in the dark of the living room by Night Rick doing situps.
- Kick the Dog: The Night Family, through Night Jerry's messages to Day Jerry, asks their Day counterparts politely to make their tasks slightly easier by rinsing their dishes properly. Rick not only refuses but goes out of his way to make even more of a mess for them to clean up. Unsurprisingly, this leads to the Night Family revolting, and everything that happens in the rest of the episode.
- Klatchian Coffee: Rick's specially-designed suit to keep Summer awake includes a built-in straw for her to drink a mix of Mountain Dew and Dayquil. It smells and tastes disgusting, but it does the trick… at first.
- Laborious Laziness: Rick would rather take a flight to a far-away planet, cash in an old debt, and create a kitchen's worth of indestructible plates that the Night Family can't destroy than simply rinse his plate after eating.
- Laser-Guided Karma: After being forced by their day selves to do the housekeeping, the Night Family ends up leaving the house in a state of neglect while enjoying their freedoms before ending their lives, leaving the family in a worse mess than they started. Morty also lost his washboard abs because Night Morty ate too much junk food.
- Losing Horns: When the family mocks Jerry for using his Night Person as a pen pal, Beth uses her new trumpet skills to play these as he leaves the room.
- MacGyvering: Because the Night Family took away all the technology in the house, including Rick's, Rick has to resort to using garbage. He manages to rig up a barrier grid around the house that uses a carton of rotten eggs as an interface only his awake self can activate.
- Misapplied Phlebotinum:
- Summer and Beth mock Jerry for using his Night Person as a pen pal (though, ironically, this ends up saving the family later).
- Rick later calls in a favor to have an alien blacksmith forge the family's indestructible dinnerware.
- Money Dumb: After the Night Family takes over, they use their freedom to go on various trips and pay subscriptions until they go broke.
- Mundane Utility: Rick is shown to have some kind of accelerated-time chamber in his bedroom, which he uses as an alarm clock of all things. An egg drops into the chamber, hatches into a chick that grows into a rooster in about two seconds, the rooster crows once to wake Rick up, then it ages into dust that gets dumped into a trash can.
- Mythology Gag: In The Stinger Night Rick comes up with a solution to the Night Family's daytime responsibilities; a plain old handgun, just like in Bushworld Adventures.Bushworld Rick: Oi've done some soience t'me portal gun. Now it's also a real gun. OI'VE GOT A REAL GUN, MORTY!
- Never Sleep Again: The Somnambulator has been hidden and its range extended to unknown lengths, so the waking family has to either deactivate it or travel beyond its influence or else be under the control of the now hostile Night Family whenever they sleep.
- Never Trust a Trailer: In the Trailer for Season 6, the scene where Summer jumps into Night Jerry's arms from a Police Car was edited such that Night Jerry's eyes looked normal instead of him having the strained dull eyes Night People sport.
- Noodle Incident: The robotic-looking blacksmith on the alien planet in the Forbidden Zone apparently owed Rick for something, and he cashes in the favor to have them make several dozen indestructible plates so the Night Family can't destroy them like they did with the previous dishes.
- Note to Self: When captured by Night Summer and forced to sleep, Jerry writes a note to his Night Person to help everyone escape Night Summer.
- One-Handed Shotgun Pump: Night Rick reloads his shotgun with one hand during the Car Chase,
while standing on the hood of the driving police car. - Our Zombies Are Different: The Night Family look and act like typical zombies, only they're sentient and sleeping instead of dead.
- Overly Long Gag: Morty beating his newfound abs and going "pow pow" for about fifteen seconds.
- Pet the Dog: The Night Family are fully willing to accept a truce with their awake selves in exchange for Rick just rinsing off his dishes. Unfortunately for the Daymanoids, Rick is too stubborn to agree.
- Portmanteau: First there is the cocktail of Mountain Dew and Dayquil Rick gives Summer in her sleep deprivation suit to keep her awake, called Dewquil. Then there's the robot drones working for the Night Family referring to their day counterparts as "daymanoids" (day+humanoids).
- Properly Paranoid: Rick claims that the Somnambulator is too advanced for the others to mess with. It turns out he was right when Night Summer gains sentience.
- Raging Stiffie: Jerry gets one when he's being held by the neck by Night Beth, to her irritation.
- Scare Chord: In the final act of the episode, one of these plays every time one of the family members switches between their Day and Night personas. Goes to comical extremes in the final brawl between all five of them, which sees them repeatedly waking up and knocking out each other in quick succession, to the point that the rapid-fire scare chords just become constant background music for the whole scene.
- Shout-Out:
- Night Summer has Beth burn DVDs of Independence Day, Groundhog Day and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but spares Talladega Nights.
- The Night Family— alternate versions of the main "Day Family" who want to essentially take over and replace their Day Selves— is a reference to Us, which likewise has doppelgangers of the family who want to step out of the shadows and replace their surface selves, complete with the Night Family adopting matching jumpsuits like the film's doppelgangers. The Night Family also speaks in raspy voices, similar to the lead doppelganger Red. The episode also begins with a quote, which has become associated with Jordan Peele's horror films. His other work (without counting Nope which wasn't released yet when this episode was being made), Get Out (2017), also deals with people being imprisoned within their subconscious while someone else has taken over their body to keep.
- Rick and Morty call their abs-related podcast "Fab-solutely Ab-ulous", a reference to the British '90's sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.
- Summer notes that her sleep deprivation suit that Rick made her wear looks like a creation by Terry Gilliam.
- Some of Night Summer's drones speak in a matter similar to that of the Daleks.
- Shown Their Work: Rick locks Night Rick out of his tech by exploiting their biochemical differences, using his spit as a "key" and specifically mentioning cortisol. Saliva is often used to measure cortisol levels, and the difference between wakefulness and sleep can be drastic (cortisol can rise by around 800% when awake), so it's a secure choice for such a system.
- Silly Reason for War: A lethal family feud ensues over whether dishes should be soaked after use.
- Skewed Priorities: In The Stinger, Rick checks his phone to see how long they've been asleep after the family returns to normal. He's less upset about whatever amount of time this is, and more upset that "they killed the Choco Taco!", and the rest of the Smiths follow suit.
- Slapstick: The entire family subjects each other to this repeatedly: the Day selves are trying to wake each other up so they'll return to normal, while the Night selves are attempting to knock the others unconscious so their Night People will emerge. Quite a bit of punching, slapping, biting, burning, choking, and accidental needle sticks ensue.
- Sleep Deprivation: Rick wants to keep Summer awake at all costs for his plan to thwart the Night Family, so he puts her in a suit designed to that end that physically holds her eyes open, puts air horns directly against her ears, wraps her in very itchy fabrics with oven mitts on so she can't scratch them, makes her drink a disgusting mix of energy drinks (which also smell terrible), and tapes high heels to her feet to keep her off-balance.
- Sleep Walking: The Somnambulator lets the family perform tasks while they sleep. Until their night selves gain awareness and turn on the family for Rick not rinsing their dishes.
- Space Whale Aesop: Rinse your dishes to make it easier for others to wash them or else your Night Person will plot revenge.
- The Stinger: After the credits show the Night Family going on a hedonistic spending spree, in the stinger, they discover that they've gone completely broke, had their assets frozen, and their car has been repossessed. Not wanting to deal with the fallout from this, they decide to destroy the Somnambulator, instantly returning the whole family to their Day Selves for good. Rick checks his phone to find out how long they've been asleep, and the entire family is utterly dismayed to learn that it's been long enough for the Klondike Choco Taco to be discontinued.
- Stuff Blowing Up:
- Morty accidentally triggers a bomb that Night Summer and the robots planted in Rick's car, which blows it up.
- When Summer jumps to Night Jerry's arms, the police car she was driving flies off onto a gasoline factory, which explodes... which in turn detonates a dynamite museum... which in turn blows up a dry leaf storage.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: Night Jerry helps Rick, Morty, and Beth escape, and starts mentioning what a great friend Day Jerry is until Rick gets annoyed and slaps him in the face, waking him up and restoring his Day self. Which leads to:Beth: Nice, you got our Jerry back!
Rick: Uh, yeah, totally why I did that. - Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In The Stinger, the Night Family eventually go broke after spending all the Day Family's money on vacations, renting concert halls, and night-centric streaming subscriptions. The house is in shambles, the car has been repossessed, and Morty loses his abs from a poor diet.
- Swapped Roles: Night Summer explains to Rick that Night Rick isn't in charge of the Night Family, but she is. Illustrated when Night Summer has Night Rick Take the Wheel during the third act car chase and she berates his incompetence before they both accidentally get woken up. Then Day Rick calls Day Summer a dumb-dumb to take the wheel while he wields the shotgun.
- Take That, Audience!: After Rick and Morty start a podcast, Rick is pressured by the sponsors to say "Wubba lubba dub-dub". Rick says "no" in the standard Rick fashion.
- Take the Wheel: Night Summer commands Night Rick to take the wheel of her hijacked police car and starts shooting at the family's car with a shotgun. When both of them get woken up, Day Rick orders Day Summer to switch positions with him.
- Tap on the Head: The Smiths are knocked out multiple times by blows to the head and roused the same way.
- Teens Are Monsters: Night Summer is the leader of the Night Family, and by far the evilest and most vindictive of them, spurred by Rick's refusal to make her labor even slightly easier. She force-feeds Rick his own dirty dishes and is the first to possess her counterpart.
- Title Drop: Numerous times, since "Night Family" is how the normal family refers to their collective Night People.
- Token Good Teammate: Night Jerry is the only one of the Night Family to seek peace with his counterparts.
- Trash Landing: Parodied. Night Summer has a car crash and lands in a conveniently placed pile of empty cardboard boxes.
- Trust-Building Blunder: Jerry agrees to give a blood sample to the Somnambulator if someone catches him if he faints. No one actually cares and so Jerry faceplants onto the table.
- Turned Against Their Masters: Rick buys an alien device that programs your unconscious body to do tasks for you (which Rick dubs the "Night Person"). Eventually the Night People gain sentience, get fed up with the family not rinsing the dishes and with Rick refusing to do so despite them asking politely, and revolt against the Smiths.
- Ultimate Blacksmith: After the Night Family smash all their dishes, Rick goes to one on an alien planet and calls in a favor to forge indestructible replacements.
- Unusual User Interface: Rick is forced to use garbage to jury rig a shield grid to contain the household as he deals with Night Family. The main switch is activated by him licking a carton of rotten eggs.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Summer's insistence in the rest of the family using Rick's Somnambulator leads to the Night Family turning against them.
- Visual Pun: After the family starts using the Somnambulator, a calendar is shown with days crossed out in red "X"s to show how long it's been. Once Night Summer and her robots take over, the days on the calendar are instead crossed out with "Z"s.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Rick vomits into a bucket after being force-fed grime from a plate.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: In once again avoiding revealing where the Smiths actually live, a quick visual gag shows a freeway exit sign that just reads "An Airport".
- Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Rick's refusal to treat the Night People as anything more than slaves for their Day selves, even though they have complete control over his body and resources every time he sleeps, ultimately screws the entire family out of their benefit.
