Summer's wish to become popular leads her to some real mind-opening experiences.
Tropes:
- Achievements in Ignorance: Rick stumbles through interrogating random people, trying to punch his way to Summer, and somehow beats her to Kenneth's hideout unintentionally.
- Always Save the Girl: Played with. Summer kills the mortician before he can put the woman who was delivered to the furnace after her on the conveyor, thus saving her life, but follows that by leaving the woman to fend for herself, reasoning that she needs to go find Morty and doesn't have time to save her any more than she already has. Still gets the girl at the end, though.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: After Morty destroys Summer's appearance at the party by swapping her strength with max intelligence, she takes revenge on him by analyzing the surroundings to work out a Rube Goldberg Device that would make Morty trip over a skateboard.
- Big "NO!": Kenneth's Kuato (x several layers) when Rick uses his spider-like pod to force him to go into the ocean where he'll drown.
- Big Sister Instinct: Summer beats the crap out of Kwyatt, the guy who trafficked her, to find out what happened to Kuato-Morty (who was removed from her while she was unconscious), then storms the bad guys' hideout with Rick and engages them in a shootout to get her brother back.
- Blindfolded Trip: After Summer gets kidnapped, the kidnappers put a sack over her as well as over Kuato Morty's head.
- Body Horror: Due to Morty and Summer tossing themselves into a pool with the attribute slider, it goes haywire, causing Morty to be horribly disfigured and fused into Summer's stomach. Then Morty gets surgically removed and is reduced to a single being...that he ends up liking when it gives him the chance to be popular by riding Kenneth's walking pod.
- Bond One-Liner: Summer gets a couple:
- After she jumps the guy who put her on a Conveyor Belt o' Doom to be thrown into a furnace and was about to do the same to another young woman, causing him to fall onto it and be incinerated instead, she coldly tells him "Arrivadeadci, bitch."
- And after using a nearby book like a frisbee to knock down the woman who auctioned off Morty, she tells her "That's what frolf is about, bitch!"
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Par for the course for Rick; as he and Summer argue during the final battle, Rick snaps that he rescues Morty "seven times per season."
- Brick Joke: In the final scene Summer mentions Morty's missile in passing. A minute later it goes off.
- Chekhov's Gun: Rick comments on having upgraded Summer's ponytail at the very beginning. It ends up being used multiple times as Prehensile Hair to get her out of sticky situations.
- Chekhov's Gunman:
- The very first person who greets Summer at the Kuato bar—a friendly Kuato girl who compliments her—later also gets captured by the traffickers. Summer saves her life while escaping from them, and the two of them hook up in a Rescue Romance at the end.
- Kenneth, a guy first introduced partying at the club, whom Kwyatt states "pays for all this." It turns out to be quite literal, as he (or rather, the Kuato within the Kuato within the Kuato in him) is the Big Bad and leader of the traffickers.
- Clone Jesus: Kuato Big Bad bears a striking resemblance to Jesus Christ.
- Chained Heat: Downplayed. The feuding Summer and Morty inadvertently become fused together by the attribute slider as a direct reference to this trope, though they don't stay conjoined for long before Kuato traffickers surgically remove Morty.
- Coin Walk Flexing: Summer shows off her super-dexterity by knuckle-rolling a coin at the party.
- Continuity Nod:
- Morty brings up having helped Rick kill his nemesis two episodes ago in "Unmortricken". Rick also excuses his Worf Had the Flu moments during the final battle as "getting his groove back" after falling into a funk at the end of the same episode.
- The chamber full of Morty's and Rick's mindblowers shows up as one of Summer's cleaning chores. Based on all the broken vials, it looks like they did another round of it offscreen.
- It was revealed in "Solaricks" that Rick's close bond with and heavy trust in Summer is because she reminds him of his dead wife Diane. He directly tells her this himself here during their fight with the traffickers.
- Summer stops Rick from intervening in Kuato-Morty's fistfight with the Big Bad to give her brother a chance to win it himself (at least until the other Kuato pulls a knife), not unlike how Morty stopped Beth from stepping into Jerry's fight with Pissmaster in "Analyze Piss".
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: During their shootout with the villains, Summer irritably points out that none of this would have happened if Rick unmerged her and Morty when she asked him to earlier.
- Crash in Through the Ceiling: Kuato Morty makes his entrance for the Final Battle against Kuato Big Bad by crashing through the cabin's skylight.
- Cursed Item: In the opening scene, we see Summer separate normal amulets from cursed ones.
- Damsel out of Distress:
- Summer, after being kidnapped by Kuato-traffickers and waking up to find Morty gone, uses an implant Rick gave her to open her handcuffs before she's tossed into a fire, attacks her captor as he's about to do the same to another girl and throws him in instead, and escapes.
- Dude Out of Distress in Kuato-Morty's case. He spends most of the episode after being extracted from Summer as a small, fairly helpless slug-like Distressed Dude, but once he's being taken away to be given to a new host and learns that Summer and Rick are coming to save him, Kuato-Morty bites and then sedates one of his captors, escapes, and fights the Kuato Big Bad, giving Rick a chance to finish him off.
- A Day in the Limelight: This episode primarily focuses on Summer with Rick and Morty playing supporting roles.
- Deliberately Monochrome: Rick's garage camera has only a black-and-white setting for recording purposes, which the garage points out is for dramatic effect. Rick hates it.
- Dominance Through Furniture: In The Stinger, Morty's buyer is seen resting his feet on a submissive servant kneeling in front of him.
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: Morty doesn't like how Rick doesn't give him stuff to mess around with rather than Summer, even though Morty brings up reasons why Rick should. On the other hand, Morty has proven time and time again that he usually screws up big time with whatever Rick decides to give him.
- Ear Ache: Morty bites Kenneth's ear off during their Kuato battle.
- Fictional Sport: Apparently, "frolf" is at least a high-school sport in this universe. The name is a Portmanteau of "frisbee" and "golf" (which Rick lampshades), and accordingly seems to be some kind of mixture of the two note . The denouement sees Kuato-Morty join the school's frolf team and score the winning "par".
- Flair Bartending: The bartender at the Coolest Club Ever performs cool tricks while mixing Summer a drink.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The attribute slider indicates Summer's default state is low strength but maximum charisma and decently high dexterity and intelligence. For Morty, charisma and intelligence are maxed out while strength is nearly bottomed out and dexterity is fairly low.
- Generation Xerox: Rick casually tells Summer that he puts more trust in her than Morty because she reminds Rick of her grandmother, his late wife Diane, though he doesn't elaborate more than that while they defend themselves from Kuato smugglers.
- Growing Muscles Sequence: Morty and Summer both use the attribute slider to buff their strength, going from normal to ripped in an instant.
- Halfway Plot Switch: Lampshaded by Rick when he comments that he expected the attribute slider to be the focus of the whole plot.
- He's Got a Weapon!: Summer shouts, "Whoa, he's got a knife!" when the Kuato Big Bad pulls one out. When it's revealed to have its own sub-knife sticking out of it, Rick yells, "Kuato knife!"
- Honey Trap: The handsome Kwyatt is a male version, putting the moves on new Kuato girls at the club and inviting them to leave with him to lure them into being captured by Kuato traffickers. He does it to Summer (though does seem to feel at least a bit bad about it), and is shown about to do the same to another alien girl before Summer arrives to beat him up after escaping. He himself lampshades it:Kwyatt: I'm just a pretty face. I'm just a handsome guy!
- Hunter of His Own Kind: The real mastermind behind the illegal Kuato trafficking is revealed to be Kenneth's Kuato...'s Kuato's Kuato. He openly admits to having sold out his own kind for money.
- Hypocritical Humor:Rick: Wait, w-why is this [footage of Summer] in black-and-white?
Garage A.I.: For dramatic effect.
Rick: I didn't design you for dramatic effect.
Garage A.I.: You made me sound like your dead wife.
Rick: Just color the fucking picture. - I Have a Family: The taxi driver informs Rick who is beating him for information that he has five kids.
- I Just Want to Be Loved: Summer exploits the attribute slider to become popular with the rest of her friends at a party; something Morty also wishes to exploit and is butt hurt over it because Rick didn't give it to him before. She later reluctantly goes to another planet where a club is specifically allowing other people with Kuatos to have fun and does have fun.
- Implausible Deniability: Kwyatt insists to Kenneth that he didn't betray him... though obviously he did lead Rick and Summer right to his lair.
- Improvised Lockpick: Summer frees herself from the cuffs on the Conveyor Belt o' Doom by using her Prehensile Hair as a lockpick.
- Inappropriate Hunger: The cremator of the Organ Theft victims mentions he also uses the furnace to make pizza.
- Instant Sedation: Both Summer and Kuato-Morty pass out the instant the kidnappers jab a syringe of sedative into the former's arm. Same goes for the Mook whom Kuato-Morty injects later.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique:
- Rick is a little too eager to punch people for information, enjoying the thrill of it. Once he gets going, he basically goes into a punching rampage, even to people who don't deserve it, though he at least apologizes to the cab driver and bartender.
- Also Summer employs this technique on Kwyatt to get information about Morty.
- Just Between You and Me: Kuato Kenneth reveals his fourth Kuato to the heroes because he is certain they are about to die.
- Karmic Death: Kwyatt, a Dirty Coward who acts as a Honey Trap to lure in Kuato girls to be abducted and sells out his boss to save himself, ends up being killed via Your Head Asplode on said boss's orders once the latter decides that he's no longer worth keeping around.
- A Kind of One: Deformed conjoined twins sticking out of the body are consistently referred to as Kuatos, whereas Kuato was the name of a specific mutant in Total Recall (1990).
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Rick discovers that Morty has become a Kuato attached to Summer, he lampshades that he "thought the [attribute] slider was gonna be the thing this week" (as the show's episodes air weekly). He also mentions how many times he saves Morty "a season."
- Liquid Assets: Rick's attribute slider is able to shuffle the balance of a person's existing traits (Strength, Charisma, Dexterity, and Intelligence), increasing one at the cost of others. Summer gives herself strength at the cost of intelligence, and Morty later dumps all of her points into intelligence to take the slider from her.
- LOL, 69: The jokes between Morty's buyer and his two Kuato companions in The Stinger consist of meaningless, sophomoric references to the number 69, until one guy makes an actual sex joke that the others consider to be Too Much Information. The scene is a reference to Squid Game, where one of the VIPs watching the challenges makes similar jokes, having bet on player no 69.
- Man Bites Man: Kuato Morty bites the mook twice who was about to sedate him and then proceeds to sedate him while the guy is distracted.
- Man-Eating Plant: Rick has an entire menagerie of alien plants that eat live prey and aren't picky about what that prey is if they're not regularly fed.
- Murder by Cremation: How the baddies use to get rid of the victims of their Organ Theft operation.
- My Brain Is Big: When Morty causes the attribute slider to put all of Summer's points into intelligence, it causes her brain to double in size and deform her head.
- One-Word Vocabulary: One sentence, in this case. Once Morty becomes a Kuato, the only thing he's capable of saying is "Open your mind!" in various intonations, and the same goes for all other Kuatos. While this phrase does tell Summer and everyone else with one what they need to do to telepathically communicate with them, it's shown via Kenneth's Repeating So the Audience Can Hear that it translates to something different each time.
- "Open!" Says Me: Played straight with Summer kick-opening doors at the Taken house. Subverted with Rick who wants to do the same, only to sprain his ankle.
- Organ Theft: Kenneth trafficks Kuatos to wealthy clients who want the status of having Kuatos.
- Overly Long Gag:
- Rick's punching rampage, which ironically started with an innocent taxi driver.
- Kenneth reveals himself to be a Kuato within a Kuato, then a Kuato within that Kuato, and when he promises to keep going, Rick runs out of patience and forces his moving pod to drown him.
- Even Kenneth's knife has its own Kuato knife.
- Rick trying to jiggle Kenneth out of his moving pod to give it to Morty.
- Papa Wolf:
- Rick gets a dangerous Death Glare once he figures out that Summer and Morty had been abducted by Kuato traffickers, and furiously beats up several people Summer previously spoke with to find out where she and Morty are and what the traffickers did to them.
- He also joins her in Storming the Castle to get Kuato-Morty back, and prepares to intervene in the latter's fight with the Big Bad Kuato until Summer holds him back.
- Phony Psychic: Discussed. Kenneth calls Rick a phony psychic after the latter reveals he was faking his Pstandard Psychic Pstance."He's a fake, you morons! Like most psychics!"
- Placid Plane of Ankle-Deep Water: When Summer psychically reaches out to Morty, she finds herself in a dark, empty mindscape full of shallow water. Morty becomes her reflection in the water when she makes telepathic contact.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Summer once again doesn't know a classic movie, having no idea what a Kuato is. Amusingly enough, this offends and disgusts the other kids at the party more than actually having a Kuato does. It serves as a plot point, as her unfamiliarity with the movie means she doesn't know Morty is trying to psychically communicate with her.
- Preemptive Apology: Kwyatt apologizes to Summer before the van with the kidnappers rolls up.
- Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: When Kwyatt is seducing another victim, she flirtatiously tells him "oh, I bet you say that to all the mutant girls". At which point Summer jumps in and drags him away with a cold "He does."
- Prehensile Hair: Summer's hair was modified by Rick to act as a weapon, but only when it's told the right commands. She first uses it to pick her handcuffs, and Rick later orders it to kill a guy by going down his throat, convincing Summer to tell Rick to change her hair back to normal out of disgust.
- Pstandard Psychic Pstance: Spoofed. Two of Kenneth's mooks use the stance when killing Kwyatt, and Rick then does the same thing back, complete with high-pitched noise, causing them to flee. Rick then reveals it's just a small device that generates the sound to freak them out.
- Psychic Link: Kuatos are able to psychically link with their hosts, even when disconnected. Morty kept shouting "Open your mind!" at Summer to get her to realize this, with Rick having to explain it to her after Morty is taken.
- Repeating So the Audience Can Hear: Kenneth responds to one of Kuato-Morty's "Open your mind!"s with "Why do I do it?" to make it clear that Morty's statement translates to something like "Why are you doing this?!"
- Rescue Romance: After breaking out of her restraints, Summer saves an unnamed young Kuato woman who, like her, was abducted by traffickers, had her Kuato removed from her, and is about to be thrown into a fire. The two of them get together in the end.
- The Reveal: Played for Laughs when Kenneth reveals himself to be a Kuato within a Kuato, repeating the process as if it's really surprising (though Summer admits a talking Kuato is surprising). When he shows that there's another Kuato inside him, and implies it continues layers deeper, Summer and Rick just get sick of it.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When the discussion at the garage gets heated, Rick makes himself disappear in a puff of smoke.
- Sibling Fusion: Summer and Morty fuse accidentally and not to the benefit of either.
- The Stinger: We see the alien who purchased Morty to become his new Kuato. He and two other aliens, who are clearly based on the VIPs from Squid Game, proceed to make a bunch of 69 jokes.
- Super Window Jump: Rick grabs Summer and jumps with her through a window to escape a bunch of mooks. He lampshades the stunt afterwards by making a connection to Taken.
- Teeth Flying: Kuato Morty spits out a tooth during his fight with Kuato Kenneth.
- This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: Both of Summer's Bond One-Liners (see above). Morty also gives an annoyed "Thank fucking Christ, you bitch!" while telepathically communicating with Summer.
- This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: Summer holds Rick back when the latter wants to help Kuato Morty in his fight with Kuato Big Bad. The intention is to give her brother a chance to win the fight himself.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: After the events of the episode; being passed over for the Attribute Slider, embarrassed at a party, ending up a Kuato on Summer's torso, having fun at a Kuato club only to be kidnapped for a Kuato-trafficking ring that surgically removes him from Summer to sell off to some rich creep, Morty gets the mini-spider tank of the head of the trafficking ring and gains some popularity at school using it in frolf games. And then it's yanked away again when he accidentally blows up some bleachers with missiles and terrifies his classmates.
- Underestimating Badassery: The people who kidnap Morty underestimate him such that he drugs the doctor operating on him, pulls an Air Vent Escape, and gets the drop on the Big Bad of the episode.
- Vehicular Kidnapping: Summer and Kuato Morty are kidnapped on the street by guys jumping out of a van.
- What Have You Done for Me Lately?: Morty demands that Rick give him an Attribute Slider, but Rick flat out refuses, telling Morty he needs to "do some shit for me" first. Morty immediately protests that he just recently helped him kill his nemesis, Rick Prime.
- Wimp Fight: Zig-zagged. On the one hand, Kuato Morty and Kuato Kenneth are slimy, stubby-armed mutants who unsurprisingly can't punch worth a damn. On the other, Morty gets Kenneth in a headlock and bites his ear off, so it's not a totally pointless fight.
- Women Prefer Strong Men: The reason why Morty wants the attribute slider is so that he can improve his physique and impress the girls.
- Xtreme Kool Letterz: The Kuato club Summer visits is called "Mind Openerz".
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Kenneth to Kwyatt when the latter leads Summer and Rick right to the traffickers' hideout after they beat him up, ordering his Mooks to kill him and his Kuato by exploding their heads open.
- You Remind Me of X: After Rick previously told an A.I. version of Diane in "Solaricks" that Summer reminds him of her, he now tells Summer herself this in the climactic battle, though he doesn't get the chance to go into more detail considering they're under fire.
- Your Head Asplode: How Kenneth's underlings kill Kwyatt (and his Kuato) with a psychic link.
- Your Makeup Is Running: Summer's makeup is running after she exits the pool.
