Hi, I’m Erik Voss, and my favorite comedy show is Rick and Morty on Adult Swim. And ever since I broke down the first episode of season 3 that was released early, I’ve gone back to re-watch the series again and I’ve caught so many subtle jokes that I wanted to point out for you guys. Now yes, the show Rick and Morty is packed with references, so I’m going to skip over the more obvious stuff and point out the little things that I missed the first time that made me laugh when I caught them this time.
And you may have already noticed some of these but ‘..
.just just going go with it you know you know just go with it and don’t stop judging.’ And before I get into these, this video was brought to you by Quidd. Now you know that thing where you like toss a sticker onto a text message? Well, Quidd is an app that will put on your phone exclusive stickers like Rick and Morty, and Breaking Bad stuff, they also have cards and 3d figures, and it’s all free.
And we’re going to do a giveaway of a cool-ass Rick and Morty funko pop vinyl figure, and I’ll get to more details on that later in the video.
Ok, so to get started the first thing I want to point out is Rick’s burping. Now, this isn’t really a joke, but this specific style of belching through words is actually a reference to the old-school comedian Foster Brooks. He was known from the old Friar’s Club roasts. “Thank you.
.. very much, thank you very much. As they put..
. Frederick and gentlemen just (burp) told you–” Okay, so with that out of the way, let’s look at the first episode, the pilot. One of the craziest things that happens this episode is that a kid freaking dies. Morty’s bully and Summer’s crush, Frank.
Now, Rick freezes Frank and he tips over and shatters.
And the missable joke here is that later in the episode, to honor Frank, the school flies its flag at half-mast. Also in this episode, outside Beth’s horse hospital, there’s an early establishing shot of doctors trying to wrangle a fussy horse, but then later in the episode, they’re hosing down blood stains in the same spot, implying that this horse didn’t make it. now the second episode is called The Lawnmower Dog, and that title is a reference to the 1992 movie, The Lawnmower Man, where a scientist gives a mentally handicapped gardener super intelligence, which is more or less the premise of the plot in this episode, with Snuffles the dog.
Now you may notice that Rick mistakenly refers to the dog as Ruffles, and Ruffles is the name of the dog in Justin Roiland’s animated project they never completed called Dog World about a society of smart dogs. And one of my favorite jokes this episode is Snuffles changing his name to Snowball.
“Snuffles was my slave name. You shall now call me Snowball, because my fur is pretty and white.” And actually, Snowball was the name of the evil black pig in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
Now, another inside joke that showed up in this episode is this guy with the rainbow suspenders and a football shirt. According to Justin Roiland, this character was originally intended to be the in-universe link among Rick and Morty and two other shows animated by his friend, Alex Hirsch, who does Gravity Falls, and Jason Ruiz who made a show called Murder Police on Fox that never aired.
Notice how the football on a shirt has three Roman numerals on it 18, 3 & 5. Now, Roiland said that the character would have had different numbers on his shirt in the other two shows, and that together that they would all form a code with corresponding letters.
These numbers correspond to R, C and E, but of course we’ll never know what that word was going to be because the other two animators couldn’t fit him into their shows. So unfortunately, this guy is some rando who shows up throughout season 1, in this episode, but also in the background of Close Encounters of the Rick Kind, then ranting against trunkpeople marriage rights in Rixty Minutes, and then leaving the party early in the season finale. And then lastly, in this episode, I love this little moment when Morty returns to his family and Summer runs up to hug him, kind of motorboating him, and Morty pushes her away.
This is because he’s still traumatized from the dream earlier where his sister was too sexy. Okay, moving on. I loved all the references in Anatomy Park to things like Jurassic Park and Disney World, but one super dark and really subtle joke that not everyone caught, but you’re honestly pretty lucky if you did miss it, came from Ethan. This is Summer’s clingy boyfriend. Remember the character Jacob counseled Ethan to help him make a breakthrough, but when you listen to what he says closely, it’s pretty messed up.
“My brother… took me fishing once..
. in the bushes. I can’t! I can’t! He made me feel like a girl!
I may be a girl!” Yeah, I’m not going to spell out what exactly he means by that, but I’ll let you be the judge. So episode 4, that was M. Knight Sham-Aliens!, was also great but I want to skip past it to my favorite episode of the series, episode 5 – Meseeks and Destroy.
This of course is the famous Mr. Meeseeks episode also the episode of the awful Mr. Jellybean scene. And I love this little animation detail of Rick’s eyes following Mr.
Jellybean as he leaves the bathroom, then back to Morty as he puts together what might have went down.
And then later, in that post-credit scene, when Jellybean’s people learn the horrible truth and decided to hide it from the world, notice the statue. The little boy is wearing tighty-whities and King Jellybean is doing this really disgusting, subtle lip bite. I also feel like this whole idea of letting King Jellybean die a hero is a subtle homage to the end of The Dark Knight when Commissioner Gordon decides to cover up Harvey Dent’s dark side so that he can die a martyr and inspire the people of Gotham.
Even the music here sounds like it could have been composed by Hans Zimmer. “Wait.
Destroy it.” Okay, moving on to the next episode, episode 6 Rick Potion Number 9. It has a few fun missable jokes. First there’s this intercom announcement from Principal Vagina, warning kids with the flu not to come to the flu season dance. “I don’t know how many times I have to say this, but if you have the flu stay home.
The flu season dance is about awareness, not celebration. You don’t bring dead babies to passo–” Now this, of course, is a pretty dark reference of the history of Passover, where God smited? Smut? Smooted? Smited the firstborn children of the families of Egypt.
And speaking of dark, at the end of this episode is one of my favorite jokes ever from Beth. “I wish that shotgun was my penis. If it were, you could call me Ernest Hemingway. I don’t get it and I don’t need to.” Now, considering the writer Hemingway killed himself by putting a shotgun in his mouth, you can probably guess what she was going for.
..
The next episode is Raising Gazorpazorp, which opens with a pretty great missable joke, the family debates over whether to intervene with Morty humping his sex robot upstairs, but then something goes wrong. “Um Rick ,could you come with me please? Quickly?
Okay, now if we hear squeaking we intervene.” And I love to call back in the next scene. “Unacceptable! Oh.” Also in this episode, the steps on the female gazorpazorp court say Sis Semper Calumniam, which is Latin for you’re always wrong.
And Summer says this to defend herself – “And if you think my top is cute, you cannot execute.” This is a reference to Johnnie Cochran’s famous defense in the OJ Simpson trial “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” Then at the end of this episode, Morty Junior’s angry dance is a reference to Kevin Bacon’s angry dance in Footloose.
Now the next episode is Rixty Minutes, aka the first interdimensional cable episode, and for this episode, many of the shows that they watched were improvised by Justin Roiland in the audio booth – that’s why you can hear him breaking character a few times. “I’m Gazorpazorp (bleep)field, bitch now give me my (bleep) enchilada.
Called two brothers. Two brothers. It’s just called two broth–” I also love where the camera flashes past a channel with a music video of Michael Jackson’s Thriller with phone people. So this is the phone universe from Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind. Now the next episode, Something Ricked This Way Comes, has a bunch of little Easter eggs that you probably already spotted, to things like Adventure Time, and Stephen King, and Steven Jobs, but the one that I only now just caught was in the closing X gonna to give it to ya montage.
The bully that they beat up in the schoolyard is a grown-up version of the character Randall from the show, Recess. Okay, moving on to Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind, which introduces us to all the other Rick’s and Morty’s from different universes. So for example, in the background of the Citadel, there’s a Cronenberg Rick and Cronenberg Morty, presumably from their c-137 universe that got Cronenberged. I also like the joke here when the Ricks examine Rick’s portal gun. “Oh come on, don’t look at another man’s portal gun history.
We all go to weird places!” Now of course, this is a reference to the universal anxiety of someone looking at all the porn in your internet search history.
But if you think about this, this is hilarious, because this is how Rick looks at the universe. Just surfing through different porn web sites and getting off. Okay now up next are two of the craziest visual gags in this entire series.
So first up, I mentioned Gravity Falls earlier, and a big reference comes in this episode. So when the Rick’s are chasing our Rick and Morty through the portals, if you look closely a few random objects fly out of this one. It turns out that is the same mug and other belongings of Gruncle Stan from an episode of Gravity Falls when he loses them in a portal. And I’ll get to that second crazy, visual gag in a second, but first I want to thank Quidd for sponsoring this video. Quidd is an awesome new app where you can collect great stickers, and cards, and 3d figures for free all on your phone.
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Just, please don’t put any of those circles or arrows around my nipples. You’re already doing it. I know you’re doing it. Why did I say it?
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Okay, so back to this episode. The other crazy visual gag comes in this awesome montage with Rick and Morty running through various alternate dimensions of chairs and pizzas and phones.
And if you look closely at the background, you can see the framed portraits are changing as well. But the one that blew my mind is that later in this chair universe, Rick and Morty pass a homeless chair who drinks out of a bottle that shaped like a tiny bus, and then immediately after the bus that passes Rick and Morty is in the shape of a bottle. This attention to detail is insane.
Also later in this episode, doofus Rick tells Jerry about Eric Stoltz mask Morty. And this reference to Eric Stoltz is a subtle nod to Rick and Morty’s origin as Justin Roiland’s animated Back to the Future parody short called Doc and Marty, which he had to change for legal reasons to Rick and Morty. And a little history on Back to the Future here, the part of Marty McFly was originally played by actor Eric Stoltz before he got replaced by Michael J Fox because they wanted the characters be a bit more comedic.
So the season 1 finale is Ricksy Business with the house party. So Rick tells Summer that her improvised nonsense word of glip glop is a hate word.
“Are some glip glops from the third dimension going to come over and play cards or something? Glip glop? You’re lucky a trapthalorkian doesn’t hear you say that. It’s like the n-word and the c-word had a baby and it was raised by all the bad words for Jew. Then later, Rick totally appropriates this hate word “Yeah, what up my glip glop?
” And one of the guests at this house party is a staircase person from the tavern in the Meeseeks and Destroy episode. Now I love the character of Abradolf Lincler. All of his lines stem from the fact that he’s half Lincoln half Hitler, and this one’s my favorite. “Prepare to be emancipated from your own inferior genes!” And later, in this episode, Rick grinds up the crystal kalaxian and snorts it, leading them to this choreographed dance.
And then when Morty angrily throws a crystal outside, the interdimensional monster snatches it and eats it, and then shortly after that you can see the creature also happily doing the Rick dance in the background. There’s also this really dirty joke from Tammy. “I love watching bukkake. I mean, I don’t know would I personally would ever do it?” Okay, so kids, cover your ears, but bukkake is a Japanese term for a sexual act that involves lots of men doing something to one woman, or man.
And then later in this episode, Tammy flirts with birdperson “I’m not looking to get into a soul bond, I’m just looking for…
I believe birdperson can arrange that.” Sh it sounds like bird person is planning a bukkake.
I don’t even know how you would begin doing that. Okay, moving on to season 2. The season 2 premiere is A Rickle in Time, which opens with this great meta joke “Phew. Man that guy is a red grin grumble – pretending he knows what’s going on. You agree, huh?
You like that red grin grumble reference? Well guess what? I made them up. You really are your father’s children. Think for yourselves, don’t be sheep.
” So Rick is basically making fun of all the young fans of this show who laugh along to references that they don’t understand, like bukkake.
I hope you don’t understand what that is. And the next episode of season 2 is Mortynight Run, with the character of Fart, voiced by Jemaine Clement. And I really appreciated this subtle joke: “I communicate through what you call Jessica’s feet, no telepathy.” Just to be clear, Fart is reading Morty’s mind here, which is, yeah, currently thinking about his crush, Jessica’s feet.
So the song that Fart sings is Goodbye Moon Man, and Jemaine Clement is invoking David Bowie. He actually did a Bowie parody on his show Flight of the Concords. Also in this episode, in the arcade Blitz and chips, there’s a cameo by Mr. Meeseeks in the background. He’s helping another alien win a pinball game, and then when he’s successful, Mr.
Meeseeks vanishes. We also see the Jerry day care center, where the music that’s being played is human music, which is the same song from Jerry’s simulation back in season one, in M.
Night Sham-aliens. “And now, here’s human music. Boop-boop-boop.
Boop-boop-boop. Hm. Human music. I like it. Well look at this fella.
Aren’t you handsome? Thank you.” The next episode is Auto-erotic Assimilation and the title itself is an amazing pun. It’s also a reference to another sex act which is a callback to what Morty and Jessica walked in on squanch doing in the previous season finale. Now this is the episode with Unity.
That’s Rick’s ex-lover who’s consciousness took over an entire planet. My favorite joke here is a reference to Dan Harmon’s previous TV series, Community. So notice how Rick’s watching TV. He’s playing God, forcing the characters to have sex on the table, and then canceling and uncanceling the show “Okay now put it back on! Alright I’m bored.
” which are both things that happened on Community. Okay, the next episode, Total Rickall” is another favorite of mine from the series. The concept of a parasite that creates false positive memories? It’s just so ingenious. And one mystery here at how this parasite made it into the house in the first place.
Remember, Rick accuses Summer.
“Somebody probably tracked it in last week on the bottom of their shoe, or on a piece of alien fruit. Someone? Get off the high road, Summer! We all got pinkeye because you won’t stop texting on the toilet.
” But if you look closely at this, there’s actually a little visual callback that answers this mystery. Early in the episode, Rick throws out these green rocks. And he got those rocks back in Mortynight Run, and notice how they have these little pink warts on them. These are the same pink warts that are on the parasite corpses, so really it was Rick that tracked in the parasite from the beginning. And one thing that you might have caught is that Mr.
poopy butthole was edited into the opening credits, partly to tease this idea of false memories changing our view of the past, but also this makes sense because these clips in the opening sequence are horrifying, negative memories, proving that mr.
Poopy butthole is actually real. Now in this episode, Rick talks about how he hoards a supply of limited edition Nintendo 3ds’s, which Justin Roiland actually said is something he did in real life, hoping that he’d be able to cash in on them some day. But one little clever joke that I liked in this episode came from Frankenstein admitting he was wrong to gang up on Summer. “I was on the wrong side of the pitchfork on this one.
‘ I’m not even gonna explain that one, that’s just great. So after this episode, is Get Schwifty, which includes an animated cameo by Justin Roiland. He’s the guy being sacrificed to the head god with a sign saying thief. And in this episode’s amazing post credits scene, ice T transformed back into water T and he attacks the numericons, shooting the numbers 6 & 7, which is a reference to Tech 9 album, sixes and sevens. The next episode is The Ricks Must Be Crazy, where Rick and Morty go into the different layers of the microverses.
Zeep, who’s voiced by Steven Colbert, says this: “I dropped out of school.
It’s not a place for smart people.” Now this detail is meant to parallel the character to Rick, who said pretty much the same thing back in the first pilot episode. “But I’ll tell you how I feel about school, Jerry – it’s a waste of time.” There’s also a little little joke when Rick remembers that he screwed around with a society in the Microverse “(bleep) You!
What did you say to me? (Bleep) you.
You told me it means much obliged. And then this gets called back later this episode. “Much obliged.
” I also appreciated in this episode how Rick uses the same hidden snake trick that he used in Get Schwifty to make the president think you can turn people into snakes. Okay skipping past Big Trouble in Little Sanchez, to the second Interdimensional Cable episode, the little bits commercial in this episode? When the guy swears in front of children, one of the kids looks up at him and shoots them a dirty look.
Now, the next episode is the purge episode Look Who’s Purging Now, where Summer blows a hole in the garage roof, which gets called back in the following episode, when the hole appears freshly patched in the opening establishing shot. Now that brings us to an even 50, but I’m having fun.
Let’s keep going into season 3. Now I already did a breakdown of the first episode of season 3, so definitely go check that out. I already pointed out a few great missable jokes. First there was the memory of Rick in the background as he reacts to 9/11 footage. “Fine, but I’m driving.
” Morty also alludes to finding Jerry’s mannequin leg, which is a reference to a video that Dan Harmon made that showed him humping a mannequin leg in his bed. There’s also a few Easter Eggs for Gravity Falls, like there’s a mabel morty and a dipper morty, there’s also a quick frame that shows the outline of Rick’s penis.
But there were three other things that I didn’t point out in this episode. First, in the garage there’s a framed picture of Doofus Rick in the cabinet. That presumably belongs to Jerry, who remember got along with him so well in that season one episode.
Clearly he misses him so much. And then also in the false memory that Rick created of his origin story, his 1998 house is a recreation of Walter White’s house in the show Breaking Bad. Notice how the house layout, and architecture and even the bushes in the front yard are exactly the same. This makes sense, because like Heisenberg, this version of Rick is the kind-hearted family man who ends up using his scientific brilliance for evil purposes. Then finally, season three showed us a new end card to the episode that usually shows Dan Harmon’s production company logo.
Before, it was claymation that showed Harmon and his wife, happily watching TV. But now, this one shows Harmon after his divorce, alone on the couch, probably drunk. Depressing and hilarious.
Now again, there are lots of things I didn’t cover on this list, and a lot of it are just references and jokes that I found a little obvious, but I’m curious – what do you think I missed? If there ends up being a lot, I kind of want to make a second follow-up video to this with even more jokes and references.
But come on, hit me up in the comments; let’s give each other even more reasons to laugh at the show. Show me what you got! And subscribe to new rockstars so you can watch any other Rick and Morty videos we make, and you can help make Rick and Morty a bigger priority for us by liking this video and sharing it and tweet about it and keep a link to the video in your tweet.
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