Rick And Morty Brain Parasites
- Rick is a mad scientist who drags his grandson, Morty, on crazy sci-fi adventures. Their escapades often have potentially harmful consequences for their family and the rest of the world. Join Rick and Morty on AdultSwim.com as they trek through alternate dimensions, explore alien planets, and terrorize Jerry, Beth, and Summer.
- The reason I think about is that I just got done with season 2 episode 3 of the show rick and Morty. Morty said after he saved rick is that the parasites put happy memories in your brain and the only way to know real people is by the negative memories you have of that person.
In between the first and second seasons of the show, Roiland and Harmon gave an interview that provided endless ammunition to the sci-fi theorists about a secret plot. Ever since, the internet has been alight with crazy Rick and Morty theories (like that one about the ticket).
Rick is so gentle, the hand on his throat massages upwards, he feels the lump move up with them. Rick’s fingers press at the back of his throat, compliant Morty gags on them as they slide further down, the obstruction makes an attempt to shimmy down only for Rick to tighten his grip on Morty’s throat and trap it.
Fans of Adult Swim’s half hour animated sitcom Rick and Morty are a mix of general comedy fans and science fiction geeks who have found a humorous outlet for things that they love. The characters of Rick and Morty began as vulgar spoofs of Doc Brown and Marty McFly from Back to the Future, took a healthy dose of Doctor Who, and awoke as an ongoing series. Co-creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon took the former’s off-kilter sense of humor and the latter’s obsession with television plotting, and Rick and Morty was born.
During the first season of the show, that sci-fi geek sect of the fandom took to Reddit to theorize on the plot and characters of the show, while the comedy fans produced the best Rick and Morty memes. The two fandoms would often clash, with one side embracing crazy theories after each new episode and the other trumpeting “it’s just a show” and “it’s not like it’s LOST.”
The turning point in this debate was a single interaction where Harmon (DH) and Roiland (JR) revealed that they had intended Rick and Morty to have an underlying “secret” that was never revealed to the audience.
DH: We haven’t talked about this in a while, but before we wrote the first episode of Rick And Morty, we had a conversation where, I think it was Mike McMahan who said, “Should we decide that there is a secret we keep from the audience forever?” But we always know it.” I won’t say what. We said, “Oh, what about this?” And we went, “Yeah, that’s really cool.” I was kind of obsessed with it for a while. But I think what’s really interesting about this new golden age of TV is that [Snaps fingers.] halfway through the first season, somebody made a Reddit post where they threw out the theory, which was exactly what we had talked about, basically. It was like, “Oh, thank God we didn’t really do anything with it.”
JR: We were operating with that thought, though. We were writing season one with that thought in our heads that it could be the case.
In the vast landscape of Reddit lies a post where some Rick and Morty-obsessed superfan stumbled across the grand secret. Chances are someone responded “it’s just a show” or “it’s not like it’s LOST.”
The infamous interview was given before season two, and this fall we’re expecting to see Rick and Morty season three, so it’s entirely possible that whatever this overarching secret was could be revealed as an actual plot in a future episode. It’s equally possible that the entire series will continue on with the assumption of a “secret” backstory, forming a negative space of plot that superfans will be able to fill in.
What we know for sure is that someone stumbled upon the original “secret: on Reddit during the first season and (if Harmon’s memory is to be believed) around the halfway point. The first season had 11 episodes and the middle portion aired between January and March of 2015. With those boundaries, archived Reddit and a knowledge of what season two added to the mythology, here are the four most likely secret plots for Rick and Morty.
Rick knows he is fictional
Sometimes Rick performs meta jokes on the show. Over two seasons, he’s spotted robot dogs as a potential spin-off property and brainstormed a number of new catchphrases (beginning with “wubalubadubdub,” which means “I am in great pain, please help me” in an alien bird language). This theory initially came out after the first Adult Swim game for the property, Rick and Morty’s Rushed Licensed Adventure, opened with Rick mentioning the “game developers.”
This theory is intriguing, but because of the nature of the show and its style of comedy, is near impossible to prove or disprove. Putting it in context of the AV Club quote, it would seem entirely natural for the entire series to go by without Rick revealing that he knows he is a cartoon. The problem is that the writer’s knowing that fact doesn’t necessarily help with characterization in the show. In Dan Harmon’s previous sitcom Community, the Abed character was allowed to break the fourth wall and address the audience, but it was our knowledge of the meta humor that made it funny. Unspoken acknowledgement of an unchangeable reality doesn’t seem like a good arch “secret.”
Rick is actually drinking super seeds
This theory mostly comes from the pilot episode alone. When we first joined Rick and Morty, grandfather was taking grandson along on a journey to get “super seeds,” which Morty would eventually have to smuggle home in his rectum. In the episode, Rick is vague about why he needs the super seeds, but the end of the show reveals that super seeds have temporary intelligence-boosting properties. After his parents leave the garage, the intelligence-enhancing effect wanes in Morty and the secondary effect (seizures) kicks in. When Morty starts seizing, he gets some light blue drool below his mouth: the same color that is constantly dribbling out of Rick’s mouth.
The theory is that Rick is smart, sure, but to be that much smarter than all the other beings in his dimension, he is constantly dosing with super seeds. Rick’s constant burping and all the occasions where he seems to be drinking out of a flask are all a ruse to hide that Rick needs regular doses of a super seed serum to maintain top-of-the-line intelligence.
We haven’t spent a lot of time with super seeds since (unless you are playing Pocket Mortys, another Rick and Morty game), so if this is the secret, Roiland and Harmon have buried it deep after someone caught on. Then again, maybe the art director on the pilot just thought all drool should be the same color, regardless if it’s the result of inebriation or super seed shock.
Rick is an older Morty
Maybe sprung out of the fact that both characters are voiced by Justin Roiland, this “Rick is a Morty” theory hinges on one minor plot point from the pilot. The general idea is that the character we know as Rick is actually an older Morty that has jumped back in time to be a grandfather to himself. This would explain Rick’s general nonchalance in the face of danger (aside from his extreme arrogance): he has some foresight into possible outcomes of present events.
Since this theory was hatched, we’ve been introduced to the Council of Ricks and the idea of infinite Ricks and Mortys on a centralized curve, so it seems like this theory would be impossible. Unless, of course, time moves differently in some dimensions. This is where the scene in the first episode — where Rick travels to a future dimension to fix Morty’s broken legs — becomes important. A future dimension would suggest places with accelerated time flow; somewhere Morty could age into a Rick.
Rick And Morty Brain Parasites
Harmon and Roiland have since said in interviews that Rick and Morty isn’t going to tackle time travel any more than they have (even though the characters’ roots are in Back to the Future):
Harmon: “Time travel is a real shark-jumper. Once you introduce it to the canon of your show — it’s just a dangerous toy to pull out.”
Roiland: “Here’s what’s great about the first episode of Season Two is that it’s a cautionary tale of why you don’t f*** with time. And by the way, Rick never travelled — none of them travelled in time — all they did was pause time.”
Morty is probably not Rick. However, if he were, that would definitely be a “secret” best kept from the audience to avoid jumping any sharks.
The Morty we know isn’t Rick’s original grandson
This theory has my gold star for most likely to have been the discovered “secret” plot. Reddit user NotYourParents summed up the theory two years ago (in the necessary timeframe):
Before Rick created the interdimensional remote control or the scanner showcased in Rixty Minutes he was still a mad scientist. He was still living with his daughter and her family and had a lab in the garage. Due to negligence or just by accident something goes wrong with an experiment and Morty dies because of it. This drives Rick even more insane due to his guilt over the death of his only grandson. He creates the scanner to find a universe where he dies in the shower, or somewhere alone. He uses that opportunity to jump right in … This way Rick could go on living his life the way it was before Morty died, and now he brings Morty along because he never wants to lose him again.
This theory was posted before the season one episode “Close Encounters of the Rick Kind,” but glimpses into the mind of Rick (that we see in that episode) and aligns with the subtextual narrative. In that episode, we see that Rick has memories of playing with a baby Morty, which would be impossible if he had actually left the family for the period of time mentioned in the show. When the showrunners were talking to the AV Club, Roiland mentioned that they had written season one with the “secret” in mind, so this appearance of a young Morty could be a subtle clue.
In the episode “Rick Potion #9,” Rick and Morty accidentally mutate the entire human population of their dimension. Instead of reversing the mutation, they jump to a universe where they replace a Rick and Morty who die in a freak accident. Rick doesn’t seem traumatized by the switch (though it has a lasting impact on Morty), as if he was desensitized because he’d done the switch before.
In the aforementioned “Close Encounters of the Rick Kind,” we meet an Evil Rick who has constructed a dome of tortured Mortys to disguise his brain signature. (Morty brain waves conceal Rick brain waves). The amount of stolen Mortys it would take to make that dome suggests that Ricks are jumping dimensions for Morty-related purposes on the regular (ditto for the Morty-replacement coupon Rick gets at the Council of Ricks).
In the season two episode “Total Rickall,” Beth shoots Mr. Poopybutthole, a close family friend, thinking he is a space parasite. In the post-credits scene, Rick tries to comfort his daughter by saying “Listen Beth, don’t torture yourself. I made a similar mistake years ago, but ya know, on a planetary scale.” Could that be the mistake that caused Rick to jump into another dimension where his counterpart had abandoned his family (and was probably killed for not having Morty to mask his brain wave)?
Most importantly, this secret boils down to strengthening the bond between the two main characters. Several times, the show has played on the idea that Rick secretly cares for Morty more than he lets on, usually to provide an emotional climax to an episode (or in the case of the season two finale, a whole season). We’ve even seen hints that Rick has a death wish — he even tried to commit suicide at the end of season two, episode three “Auto Erotic Assimilation.” The idea that the only thing keeping Rick alive is that he gets to go on adventures with a Morty, who he probably murdered in another dimension, makes the bond between Rick and Morty a deep and tragic one.
Granted, the nature of the “secret” is that it wasn’t supposed to be addressed in the plot of the show, but a sad Rick who just wants to spend time with a family he feels guilty for murdering will be my secret until the show proves otherwise.