Rick and Morty has given us an array of moments which weren’t just far from appropriate but emotionally haunting too. It is home to some of the most iconic comedy moments and almost every scene has become a meme, which is now loved by the community.
These little, dark and twisted moments which are scattered throughout the show are truly difficult to forget, especially when getting through them was so cringe inducing and traumatizing.
It questions a lot of morals, disregards beliefs in the most offensive way possible, yet never for one moment it loses its awareness about them. So with that, let’s look at 5, absolutely messed up moments from Rick and Morty.
5. Rick and Morty Bury Themselves (Rick Potion #9)
The world has turned into Cronenbergs and Rick and Morty haven’t got any option to go back to normal. No time reversal, nothing. Morty is already fuming at Rick for messing the whole situation up and because of him, the entire population had turned into Cronenbergs.
So the only solution that Rick can possibly come to in that situation, was to go into a different reality altogether. It’s rare to see Rick running away from a problem in order to solve it but this was one of those situations and it was absolutely heart-wrenching. They essentially go into a reality where both of them have just died due to a freak accident and they replace their dead selves in order to continue thriving in that world.
Morty’s eyes have no shade of emotion in them as he buries his own self in a grave dug by him. The whole world has suddenly changed and they have essentially left their real families along with the entire population of the planet to rot and die, only to live again in a different reality.
Nothing has changed for anyone else, but for Rick and Morty, the entirety of their lives have taken a wild turn and it has taken a toll on Morty like it would do to any sane person in that situation. His parents continue their usual routine of fighting and absolutely nothing has changed, but the scar that this entire ordeal has left on Morty, will forever be fresh.
4. The Horrifying Encounter with Mr. Jellybean (Meeseeks and Destroy)
The supposed safe adventure of Morty takes a wild and vile turn as they both enter a shady tavern by the name of Thirsty Step. Rick heads over to the Karaoke and Morty goes to the toilet where he meets the frighteningly misleading Mr. Jellybean.
As Morty comes out of the urinal he and Jellybean have some small talk but Morty can sense that this is going towards a weird direction as Jellybean starts to caress Morty’s shoulders as he is washing his hands. Morty naturally tries to get away but Jellybean grasps a hold of him and his kind jelly face soon has veins popping out of it and a disgusting little grin of a Rapist.
“Stop Fighting, Just let this Happen”, he says with saliva pouring out of his mouth. The visible trauma in the face of Morty as he screams for help while Rick is busy singing Sweet Home Alabama in the Karaoke outside was absolutely shattering. With pure fortune, Morty gains a hold of Jellybean and smashes his head with the filthy toilet seat, sending him off with a well-deserved, disgusting death. This is also the moment where we see Morty’s deep seated rage come out which is a nice foreshadowing for the upcoming episodes as well.
3. Keep Summer Safe (The Ricks Must be Crazy)
Just after exiting from the screening of “Ball Fondlers” in a random universe, Morty and Summer are shocked as to how free the censorship in this world is. And as Rick dwells further into the workings of this universe, he realizes that his car batteries are dead.
And so he, along with Morty go to Microverse in search of a battery while Summer stays in the spaceship. Rick commands the ship to Keep Summer Safe and disappears. And well, the ship takes it’s command with too much accuracy and it’s ways of keeping Summer safe are, well, highly questionable.
Straight up lasers a stranger to 50 different pieces and paralyses a guy, and when Summer yells to it to stop using physical force, it literally creates a ghost baby of a Police Officer sending him into the same emotional trauma he had felt while facing his son’s death in the first place. And to get the Military off of it, it brokers world peace with the humans and the spiders. The bottom line being, yes, it did Keep Summer Safe.
2. Evil Morty Returns (The Ricklantis Mixup)
The Evil Morty made a shocking comeback as he became the president of the citadel. Through countless murders and deception, this morty now sits as the president amongst the council of Ricks to guide him. The Campaign Manager Morty, who attempted to kill The Politician Morty now finds himself in an airlock and to his shock, the Politician Morty has won the elections.
He tries to warn the guard Ricks that the Politician Morty is in fact a very evil tyrant, but he gets thrown into space to his death. The council sits on the roundtable with Morty in the President’s seat. Many Ricks are of the opinion that no matter who sits on the throne, the Citadel will be ruled by Ricks, like it always was.
Morty Carefully listens to their pleas and allows each one of the Rick to raise their hands who share the same opinion, and then in an instant he orders them dead. All of them. His face doesn’t twitch a single moment as all these different Ricks die right behind him.
“Speeches are for Campaigning, Now is the time for Action”, he says as every dead body which laid a foundation to his rule, is thrown out of the ship. The entire episode went into the depths of nihilistic reality and it really sent some of the most uneasy shivers down my spine. And obviously that iconic Rick and Morty music plays by the end, to top it off.
1. Rick Tries to Kill Himself (Auto Erotic Assimilation)
Rick’s meeting with Unity takes a dark turn as he is forced to contemplate the meaning of existence when he returns back home. Unity leaves him because they were too alike, and they could never be together or coexist with each other. The inhabitants and Unity are gone and now Rick lies all alone. He comes back, only to create a laser machine which is capable of frying him in an instant. His eyes are lifeless and he truly has failed in contemplating the point of it all.
The deep seated depression and the feeling of loneliness kick in at the same time as he puts his head through the machine, but passes out on the desk just as the laser is about to hit him. There are a lot of, per say “Dark” moments in this show, but this one truly had Rick at its Lowest and the Loneliest. What hurts even more is that there was no one to check up on him or to ease him through his pain. He faced it all alone and he failed, all alone.
The Movie Culture Synopsis
Rick and Morty season 5 has premiered on Netflix and we can’t wait for more hauntingly realistic scenarios it portrays with the thick cover of pitch black humor. This show really makes you question the point of it all, and the only other animated show which has ever come close in doing that to me is Bojack Horseman. That’s an idea for an upcoming list.