Season Seven's Clip Show in the vein of Morty's Mind Blowers. Rick calls upon the Observer to audit all of Morty's adventures from his punch cards. When Rick and Morty get tired of him, he takes it personally and messes with the whole family's daily lives with random clips.
Tropes:
- Accidental Murder: When Morty pushes the Observer into the street for him to get crushed by a truck.
- Aesop Amnesia: Played for Laughs. As Rick and Morty are flying off to their next adventure, Rick tells Morty to look in the glovebox. He's excited to find yet another weird gun.
- Angst? What Angst?: In-Universe. Morty finds Rick on the garage floor with several beer bottles around him, obviously drowning his sorrows from the previous episode that was the assumed culmination his whole life was aiming for, only Morty brings up his adventure tickets to force Rick into a Morty-picked adventure, which causes Rick to quickly forget all his sorrows and go back to being his stubborn old self messing with Morty for the rest of the episode. Indeed, Morty purposely invoked this to try to shake Rick out of his funk, which the latter acknowledges and thanks him for at the end.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Deconstructed; One adventure is Morty having Rick animate a churro for him to have as a friend. When Morty comes back to Rick asking to make Churry a normal churro again, Rick explains that to bring Churry to life without needing any internal organs he had to make him functionally immortal; he can't turn him back into a normal churro. Morty, not happy to learn this, abandons Churry on a barren planet, which leads him to swear vengeance.
- Appeal to Inherent Nature: When Rick uses tech to reveal some of the Observers' own immoral actions, including watching a man drown, bribing homeless people to fight in front of them, and selling bootleg DVDs, the Observers protest that watching is their whole point of being. At least until the evidence becomes personal between themselves...
- Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: Summer's embarrassing memory shows the family seeing a story on the news about the most attractive people on Earth (anyone 7 or higher on the scale, to be precise) being abducted if they go outside. She goes outside and isn't taken, believing it to be a prank, only for her more attractive male and female neighbors across the street to be grabbed by mechanical tentacles within seconds of stepping outside, prompting her to break down in tears at not being considered beautiful enough. It only makes her feel worse when Principal Vagina tries to reassure her that she'll get used to being unattractive.
- At Least I Admit It: Rick's counter towards the Kangaroo Court of Observers, using his own Observer tech to demonstrate that, yes, he and Morty can be pretty damn unheroic, but the Observers commit all sorts of equally sketchy or downright immoral actions and still feel obliged to judge and execute people.
- Breather Episode: Considering all the emotional turmoil Rick went through in the previous two episodes, this episode is far more lighthearted in nature.
- Bribing the Homeless: Rick shows footage of an Observer approaching two homeless guys around a Trashcan Bonfire and trying to get them to fight each other for money.
- Brick Joke:
- Rick repeatedly giving Morty a gun, and his grandson misunderstanding what it does and accidentally misusing it. In addition to the three we see, it apparently went on "for several more guns" offscreen. Morty also finds another one in Rick's ship at the end.
- In The Stinger, Morty finds a churro in his locker and mistakes it for Churry, then finds a message from Churry promising to come after him soon.
- The Bus Came Back: Jessica briefly appears in one clip after not being seen since "Mort Dinner Rick Andre" in Season 5. Brad also briefly appears in the stinger.
- Call-Back: When Rick and Morty are on trial for accidentally killing the Observer and another of their species shows up to defend them, Rick references how something similar happened when they were on trial for killing a giant in "Meeseeks and Destroy", complete with the Judge Observer showing a clip of it.
- Challenging the Bully: Morty is finally able to stand up to his bullies if only because he is armed. Being The Ditz, this actually makes things worse for him.
- Clip Show: Parodied. Rick mentions that the Observer showing them bits from many of their past adventures is like hosting a lame clip show, but only one clip shown in the episode (when the duo were tried in giant court) is actually from an adventure the audience saw, while the rest are new.
- Continuity Nod:
- Morty can apparently still turn into vehicles, like that time he turned into a car in school in The Stinger of "The Ricks Must Be Crazy".
- Morty gets sick of the Observer and goes outside to confront him, and the latter asks if Morty plans to beat him up like Jerry did to "the piss guy" from "Analyze Piss".
- The Vat of Acid joke returns in a clip, only this time it's a massive vat of whale semen.
- The whole "Leg Rick" sequence is an obvious self-parody of "Pickle Rick".
- The only crossed-out bet on the betting board in The Salty Rick is "Morty marrying Mr. PB," clearly referring to Mr. Poopybutthole. One of Morty's Mind Blowers, seen in a Freeze-Frame Bonus, is Poopybutthole proposing to Morty.
- Cringe Comedy: A portion of the episode is dedicated to showing embarrassing moments the family members have gone through.
- Deconstruction: Of previous Rick and Morty anthology episodes and Clip Shows as a whole. The episode starts with an argument that summons a meta-savvy character to act as a framing device for numerous past misadventures as evidence. However the duo halt them and protest when they continue doing it unprompted and without context, seeming more interested in hosting a clip show than solving their current dilemma. This leads to a feud where said character and eventually its many bretheren forcefully continue generating clips out of spite.
- Desecrating the Dead: In one clip, Rick & Morty are performing experiments on a cursed pet cemetery. The Judge Observer chastises them for defiling a graveyard for their own interests.
- Didn't Think This Through: Rick and Morty excuse themselves to the kitchen to talk crap about the Observer. When they come back into the room, the Observer is playing a clip of what they just did. Rick admits they should have seen that coming.
- Dude, Not Funny!: When a reference to 9/11 leads the Observer to prepare to show clips of 9/11, Rick and Morty immediately shut him down.
- Eviler than Thou: The implied purpose of the third gun Rick gives Morty, as it creates a clone of Jeffrey Dahmer to deal with a run-of-the-mill mugger.
- Exact Words: After the first two guns that Rick gives Morty are named after the targets they're supposed to shoot and he misunderstands this (the gorilla gun and the bully gun), Morty naturally assumes the third one, which Rick says "shoots bad people", is the same way. Instead, this gun "shoots bad people" out of it (such as Serial Killer Jeffrey Dahmer).
- Flashback with the Other Darrin: Rick notices they've already done a courtroom scene, which the observers confirm with a clip from "Meeseeks and Destroy", and once again, Ian Cardoni's voice replaces Roiland's.
- Forced Meme: By the time the "Leg Rick" clip ends, Rick already has a "Leg Rick" t-shirt ready to show off.
- Good-Times Montage: We see a montage of Morty and the alive Churro having a fun day out.
- He's Back!: Rick Sanchez began the episode in the dumps after the events of the previous episode with Morty trying to cheer him up with some adventure coupons. But after dealing with an entire race of annoying omniscient crystals, Rick is back in business with Morty to go on yet another crazy adventure.Rick: Rick and Morty! We are back, baby!
- Hollywood Acid: In Jerry's humiliation story, his piss eats through the urinal and the floor below after he got accidentally pricked by several syringes. Justified as the stuff he got injected by apparently was of intergalactic origin.
- I Cannot Self-Terminate: One clip shows Rick stepping through a portal carrying body bags of the Rick and Morty who appeared in Space Jam: A New Legacy. Rick explains to the Observers that they begged for death. Can't kill yourself in a family-friendly movie, after all.
- Immortality Inducer: Morty asks Rick to bring his churro to life. To accomplish this, Rick makes the churro immortal so its lack of organs won't be a problem.
- Incurable Cough of Death: One of the bullies on the island develops a cough and dies soon after. Given that they've been treading the ocean for an unknown amount of time before finding land, it's likely to have been pneumonia.
- Indy Hat Roll: In their first adventure, Rick and Morty slide under a descending temple door just in time before it closes shut.
- Island Help Message: When Morty and the two bullies get stranded on a remote island, they build an SOS sign on the beach to attract attention.
- Kangaroo Court: Rick and Morty are put on trial by the Observers with the judge, jury, defense, and prosecution all being Observers. After escaping execution, Rick goes out of his way to show that nearly every individual Observer there is also a corrupt hypocrite, causing them to break into violence among themselves.
- Knights and Knaves: In the first past adventure the Observer shows Rick and Morty, where they enter a temple and are stopped by a pair of guardians, one of them claims to speak only in truth while the other only lies. Rick immediately sidesteps this by having one of the guards accidentally confess to sleeping with the other's wife, prompting them to beat each other up.
- Lampshade Hanging:
- Beth calls out the whale semen joke as being purely for shock value.
- During the trial, as the Observers continue to show clips that are funny for the out-of-universe audience but not particularly relevant to the case against Rick and Morty, both of them call this out and wonder what they're even supposed to be on trial for anymore.Morty: What are we even guilty of in that one? Being kind of dumb?
Rick: What are these clips? Wh-what are we even on trial for anymore?
- Living Clothes: One clip is called "Maximum Overdrive but with clothes" and is an adventure where all clothing has animated and turned on people. Rick says at least it's better than living vehicles before being Instantly Proven Wrong when a swarm of clothing takes down a woman and flay her alive to wear her skin.
- Living Lie Detector: The Observers can tell if someone is lying because they can see everything. Summer learns this when she claims to have been studying for a test while she wasn't.
- Mess of Woe: After the events of the previous episode, Rick is lying in his garage in a drunken slump and refusing to go on adventures with Morty like they usually do. Morty starts off the plot by trying to cash in these Adventure Cards in order to coax him out of it.
- Murder by Inaction: Rick shows footage exposing the Observers of this crime when they refuse to help a drowning person.
- My Fist Forgives You: At the temple early on, when the guard who always tells the truth admits that he slept with the other guard's wife, the other guard replies with "I forgive you" and proceeds to assault the homewrecker with his axe. Justified example since this came from the guard who always lies.
- Mythology Gag: Rick uses his scientific genius to build a real gun, or so it seems.
- No-Sell: Jerry just rolls his eyes at and brushes off the Observer's attempt to humiliate him in front of his family, because, as he notes, they already know he's embarrassing, so it's not like this is anything new for him.
- Not So Above It All: The Observer sees all, including every embarrassing moment they did. Yes, that also includes Space Beth who was caught farting in the middle of a mission briefing and blaming it on her chair.
- Noodle Incident: Rick was banned from a Carl's Jr restaurant for some reason.
- Ominous Crack: During the old man's rambling in the vampire story, the windows of the shelter start to crack under the pressure of the vampires trying to get in. Eventually, the windows break and the place gets overrun by the vampires.
- The Omniscient: The Observers see everything and EVERYTHING.
- Open-Door Opening: The episode opens with Morty lifting the garage door to meet Rick in his Mess of Woe.
- Overly Long Gag: Referenced, but not seen. The bit with the ambiguous guns is used three times, but one of the Observers says it actually went on for several more guns.
- Done with the old man listing his weapons' anti-vampire properties.
- Raised Hand of Survival: The first sign of zombie Ben Franklin coming to life at the pet cemetery is his hand bursting through the ground.
- Revolting Rescue: Subverted. In one adventure, Rick tells Morty that the only way to save the universe is if he sticks his tongue into an Apeborg's nostrils. Morty is repulsed but goes through with it for the sake of the world. Then it's revealed that this was one of Rick's pranks.
- Ridiculous Future Sequelisation: Rick shows video evidence of an Observer peddling bootleg versions of Avatar 3 to 6. Truth in Television though, since it's actually Cameron's announced intention.
- Rule of Funny: A fight breaks out in Observer court when one of the Observers shows a clip of the judge having sex with another Observer's wife. Since all Observers are omniscient, they should already know this happened, but it functions as a Brick Joke of an earlier clip in the episode of Rick tricking a temple guardian into admitting to having sex with the other guard's wife and instigating a fight.
- Rule of Three: We see Rick give Morty three different guns that he mistakes what they do: a gorilla gun, a bully gun, and a gun that "shoots bad people". There were apparently many more instances that were not shown.
- Running Gag:
- "I'M A LEG, MORTY!!!"
- Similarly, Rick telling Morty they'll have to jump into a vat of whale semen continues the Running Gag started in "The Vat of Acid Episode" (and continued in "A Rick in King Mortur's Mort").
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: During the Blade parody Rick and Morty get so bored with Whistlers overly detailed description of what his vampire killing weapon does they simply bail and leave him to fend off the vampire hoard himself.
- Self-Deprecation: "Leg Rick" is clearly an attempt at invoking
Discredited Meme on "Pickle Rick", with Morty and the Observers unimpressed while Rick considers it his finest moment. - Serial Killer: The gun Rick hands to Morty that specifically shoots bad people (out of it, not into) shoots a goop that turns into Jeffrey Dahmer.
- Shoo the Dog: Morty reluctantly agrees to abandon his pal Churry on a remote planet.
- Silence Is Golden: The sequence of Morty and the two bullies getting stranded is playing out with no dialog.
- The Stinger: Morty opens his school locker to find a churro inside and freaks out, thinking it's Churry come back to take revenge on him, but it's just a regular churro that Brad picks up and eats. Then Morty finds a message from Churry —"SOON"—scrawled in his locker in brown sugar.
- Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: One clip is Rick and Morty resurrecting Ben Franklin in the Pet Sematary and deciding to test its limits through scientific experimentation; testing what it can bring back and how long it takes with kitchen timers. First they start with whether it can recharge Morty's dead phone, and after an unspecified amount of burials, they're shown pushing a car into a pit to test if it'll somehow fill up the tank. They come back to Ben Franklin, having wrapped him in foil to see if it'd keep the resurrection but block out the evil, but he comes out completely roasted...and tempting enough for Rick to eat him before Morty brings him back to his senses.
- Swiss-Army Weapon: The old man in the vampire adventure proudly demonstrates a machine gun to Rick and Morty that has all sorts of appendages. Unfortunately, talking isn't a free action and the vampires overwhelm the building while he's busy talking up the features, with Rick and Morty wisely choosing to bail moments before.
- Take That!: One of the clips shows Rick having killed the versions of himself and Morty who appeared in Space Jam: A New Legacy, with both treating this as an unambiguously good thing because their counterparts "welcomed death" from being forced to be in the movie.
- A Taste of Their Own Medicine: How Rick defeats the Observers. With access to their tech, he begins showcasing their own incriminating footage, leaving them indignant and summoning a fight amongst themselves.
- Tear Off Your Face: In one of the adventures a sentient hoodie rips off a woman's face and tries to wear it.
- Tempting Fate: When Morty accidentally gets the Observer hit by a car, Rick tells him they'll deny ever being involved and wait for this to blow over. Unless, of course, the Observers saw this; cut to Rick and Morty imprisoned and on trial, showing this is exactly what happened.
- The Thing That Would Not Leave:
- Implied to be how Morty ends up feeling about the idea of Churry being immortal and staying by his side forever, even though he does enjoy hanging out with Churry.
- Also, the Observer, who refuses to leave and continues to taunt the family with compromising video footage from outside the Smiths' house.
- This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: When Rick doubts the validity of Morty's punch cards, Morty replies with "I got receipts, bitch!"
- Too Dumb to Live: Morty repeatedly misinterprets the specialized guns Rick makes for him, partially due to ambiguity in how Rick describes them. First, he uses a Gorilla Gun, which he assumes will "turn a bully into a gorilla"; it's actually meant to kill gorillas, and "merely" horribly maims the bully. Rick questions why Morty would even want do that in the first place; the bully now being a gorilla would just make the problem worse. Second, Morty stupidly shoots himself with the Bully Gun, thinking he himself would turn into a bully after Rick understood the last miscommunication, but it just kills him (and then he's revived by Rick). Finally, Rick gives him a normal-looking gun that specifically shoots bad people...which means it shoots a ball of goop that turns into serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
- [Verb] This!: When Morty complains that the "I'm a leg" shirt Rick is holding up is unlicensed, the Observer announces "License this!" and continues to show more humiliating footage of Morty.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: In one memory, a dying Rick prompts Morty to fight an evil space gorilla by licking his nostrils, only when Morty looks back, he barely sees the portal closing with a healthy Rick going into a tavern full of other Ricks and crossing out Morty's action from a bunch of embarrassing moments on a table as a bet with the rest of the Ricks.
