Rick And Morty: 5 Jokes That Are Destined To Be Timeless (& 5 That Won’t Age Well) – Screen Rant

Rick and Morty is the subversive, poop-jokes riddled creation of Justin Roiland that started out as aparody of Back to the Future and went on to become one of the smartest comedies on television. The show follows the adventures of Rick Sanchez, the smartest man in the multiverse, and his hapless grandson/sidekick Morty.

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Together the two travel the multiverse examining topics relating to everything from family and responsibility to nihilism to man's place in the world. Over three and a half seasons, the show has come up with some classic jokes that will be remembered through the ages, and some other stinkers that are best left forgotten.

Rick and Morty arrive on a planet going through a periodic purge where the inhabitants turn into serial killers. The two seek refuge with a cat person who is a writer. After inviting Morty to listen to a reading of his novel and asking for feedback, the writer immediately gets offended at Morty's mild criticism and tries to throw him and Rick out of his house.

Morty points out the unfairness of the writer's behavior while awakening his inner purger, killing his host. It is a ridiculous, dark meta-joke at the expense of storytellers who are too full of themselves to acknowledge criticism of any kind while churning out mediocre work.

The Devil himself makes an appearance on the show and is beaten at his own game by Rick. Summer, however, takes a liking to the Devil, helping him set up a new business and becoming company head. Naturally, the Devil betrays Summer and kicks her out of the company, leading to Summer and Rick building up their bodies to deliver a physical beatdown to the Devil in front of everyone.

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It is a bizarre sequence that leaves so many questions without a satisfying payoff. Why is the Devil hurt by physical force? When did Summer and Rick get the time to become so jacked? How was beating up Satan supposed to resolve the issue at hand?

Morty plays a game at a space arcade called "Game of Roy." In that virtual reality game, Morty gets to play the role of Roy, starting from his birth, to his school years, getting a job, getting married, getting treated for a deadly illness, living to a ripe old age, and dying from an accident, only to wake up and realize it had all been a dream-game.

Before Morty can process the false life he had just lived in its entirety, Rick takes over and plays as Roy, taking the character off the social grid and breaking every score that Morty had set.The wholesequence is simultaneously sad, alarming, and hilarious. It even manages to beat interdimensional cableby being earnest instead of simply zany.

Rick can be quite rude to Summer, but then he is rude to everyone. What was less acceptable was when he specifically declared that he did not go adventuring with women when Summer asked him to take her on an adventure.

At that moment, a misogynistic streak emerged in Rick's character that left a bad taste in many viewer's mouths.

This is the catchphrase that Rick utters to endear himself to the audience like a typical zany TV character. The phrase has been endlessly repeated by fans of the show and will always remain a part of Rick's legacy as a bit of hilarious gibberish. Except its not gibberish at all. In bird-person language, it translates to "I am in great pain, please help me."

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Onthe surface, the joke works as a commentary on silly TV trends like giving a character a catchphrase; ona deeper level, it speaks to theprofound level of hurt and loneliness Rick feels. His proud nature rebels at the thought of actually asking for help,turning his cries for help into a joke for the audience and his loved ones. Wubba-Lubba-Dub-Dub is Rick and Morty at its morbidly funny best.

Rick and Morty has a large and passionate fan base. And anyone who knows anything about internet fandoms will know there is a large amount of fanfiction and fanart devoted to exploring intimate relations between members of the Smith family. Where things get potentially icky is that the show itself often leans into these possibilities with throwaway gags.

Like the time a dream version of Summer came on to her young brother and grandfather. Or when a version of Morty can be heard wishing aloud that incest porn had a more mainstream appeal. The general audiences for the show would have a big problem if they were to be made aware of just how much extremely graphic fanart and fanfiction those scenes have generated online.

The episode where Rick turns himself into a pickle is a genuine classic and a perfect representation ofRick's philosophy of life. Rick's worst fear is being emotionally vulnerable to those he sees as intellectually beneath him, which is everyone. In order to escape a meeting with a therapist who might actually force him to confront his feelings, Rick chooses to turn himself into a literal pickle.

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The rest of the episode is Rick using his genius intellect to survive the absolute helplessness of being trapped in a pickle body and to return to his regular form.

Rick and Morty is a clever show. But at its worst, the show can come across like itstalking down to the audience, and the episode where Rick and Morty have to battle a robot called Heistotron that wants to pull the perfect heist suffers from the worst of this tendency. The entire episode is one long complaint about how dumb heist movies are, and how anyone who enjoys them is an idiot.

What makes the episode particularly problematic is that, at one point, Rick is shown to be responsible for the destruction of an entire planet and all its citizens just to stop Morty from becoming a successful writer. While Rick has always been callous, that incident makes him truly evil, which does not square with what had been established about the character.

Two extra-dimensional beings attack Albert Einstein, mistaking him for Rick, to stop him from discovering the secret to time travel. The joke works on so many levels. The extra-dimensional beings are shaped like testicles, staying true to the gross humor the show revels in. Doc Brown from Back to the Future, who Rick started out as a parody of, was also based on Einstein.

The scene is also a parody of innumerable time travel movies that go to such complicated lengths to avert a disturbance in the flow of time, which in this case involves two testicle monsters beating thehell out of one of the greatest minds in history. Finally, what puts the cap on the perfectionthat is this scene is Einstein struggling back to his feet after the monsters leave and declaring he will mess with time. Because humans never learn.

Thisentire episode is a parody of the Terminatorfilms, with snakes instead of people. Problem is, the show is not nearly clever enough at making the parody stand out for any particular reason.

It also quickly becomes tiresome seeing the snakes hissing at each other while audiences guess where the story is leading. What should have been a throwaway gag became a stretched out and often uninteresting episode.

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Rick And Morty: 5 Jokes That Are Destined To Be Timeless (& 5 That Won't Age Well) - Screen Rant