Before making a single edit, Tropedia EXPECTS our site policy and manual of style to be followed. Failure to do so may result in deletion of contributions and blocks of users who refuse to learn to do so. Our policies can be reviewed here.
All images MUST now have proper attribution, those who neglect to assign at least the "fair use" licensing to an image may have it deleted. All new pages should use the preloadable templates feature on the edit page to add the appropriate basic page markup. Pages that don't do this will be subject to deletion, with or without explanation.
All new trope pages will be made with the "Trope Workshop" found on the "Troper Tools" menu and worked on until they have at least three examples. The Trope workshop specific templates can then be removed and it will be regarded as a regular trope page after being moved to the Main namespace. THIS SHOULD BE WORKING NOW, REPORT ANY ISSUES TO Janna2000, SelfCloak or RRabbit42. DON'T MAKE PAGES MANUALLY UNLESS A TEMPLATE IS BROKEN, AND REPORT IT THAT IS THE CASE. PAGES WILL BE DELETED OTHERWISE IF THEY ARE MISSING BASIC MARKUP.
If it's a Cash Cow Franchise, Rick and Morty has taken the piss out of it.
Acceptable Religious Targets: The show doesn't think highly of religion in general, casting religious folk as evil and their followers as idiots. Hell the Pope is the Big Bad of "Mort: Ragnarick".
Those losers who spend all their time waiting for new Rick and Morty episodes.
Magic. Stop trying to pretend like in involves skill or thought. A bit of common sense will crush any wizard.
Accidental Aesop: Even if "The Vat of Acid Episode" was dedicated to showing how petty Rick was, it did, as did arguably all of Season 4, impart the lesson that it is the consequences of one's actions that give life meaning.
Alas, Poor Villain: Poor Fascist Morty just wanted to spend time with his grandfather and wound up getting an unkillable assassin unleashed on him.
Given Evil Morty, and that Morty himself often shows sings of advanced intelligence, do Mortys have the potential to outshine Ricks and are being suppressed as a result? Rick even appears to fear the implications of a "cocky Morty" noting that it could have terrible consequences for everyone.
One that gets put forth in the show itself in "The ABC's of Beth". Was she genuinely a Creepy Child and a sociopathic lunatic that even Rick could barely keep a handle on, or was she just a lonely child who acted out to get her father's attention?
Following "Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri", which Beth is the original and which is a clone? And following "Mortyplicity" are the family real or just decoys?
Rick:
Was the Central Finite Curve established solely to keep potentially greater powers than Rick out, or to keep Ricks away from other realities? Or to make sure that C-137 would one day find Rick Prime by limiting the range of the Portal Gun?
Did Rick abandon reality in "Rick Potion #9" because he couldn't fix the problem? Or because he realized that, after a year of bumming around, Rick Prime wasn't going to return so he figured he was wasting his time in that reality?
Rick Prime:
While it's clear that Rick Prime utterly loathed his wife Diane, his feelings towards the rest of his family seem a bit murkier despite being touted as the Sociopath who doesn't care for anyone else. He was sad that he had to kill his Uncle Slow Mobius (albeit just to twist the knife in) and sounds outraged that Rick C-137 lived in his house with his daughter and grandson. His tone also softens when he meets (what he thinks is) his grandson and the worst his killbots do to Morty is just harassment fire (though admittedly it's quite possible that he just didn't consider Morty a threat).
A common theory among fans is that Prime suffers from an Inferiority Superiority Complex and is projecting that onto other Ricks. He invented Portal Travel and abandoned his family, rationalizing it that anyone else would. When other Ricks chose Diane and Beth over being a Deity of Human Origin, Prime, rather than confront the fact that he's just an asshole, began dragging those Ricks who refused down to his level to prove that it was the natural response.
Author's Saving Throw: After Rick's Politically Incorrect Hero tendencies inspired a Misaimed Fandom, the writers made clear that Rick is not down with fascist dystopias and, while he probably won't attend any rallies, is of a decently progressive mindset.
Badass Decay: Rick in Season 4. He loses more fights and people seem to outright pity him several times. The final episode even opens with him getting ball-tapped, albeit accidentally, by Jerry and he takes a lot of physical injuries over the episode. Tammy outright says that the New Galactic Federation doesn't consider him a threat anymore.
Summer is either very interesting and underdeveloped or really not.
Bird Person is either Crazy Awesome with an Undying Loyalty to Rick or he either blindly worships him and passive aggressively shames Morty into putting up with Rick.
"Never Ricking Morty" will need to be watched a few times before it makes sense.
The Bushworld Adventures special. Assuming that it's canon.
Broken Base: "Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender" is either a darkly hilarious Take That at the oversaturated and played out superhero genre or a mean-spirited attack on a much beloved genre.
Catharsis Factor: Tammy being horribly beat up and then killed outright in "Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri".
Continuity Lock Out: For a show that usually prides itself on irreverence, some episodes, such as "Tales From the Citadel", "Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri" and "Rickmurai Jack", won't make even a lick of sense without having seen everything that comes before.
Designated Hero: Rick in several episode where he put everyone in danger or is objectively crueler than the villain (most notably "The Ricks Must Be Crazy").
Designated Villain: Jerry a lot of the time. He's often portrayed as a pathetic, cowardly Jerkass for having entirely reasonable reactions to the crazy and often humiliating situations he frequently finds himself in, and his entirely legitimate points on how much of a Jerkass Rick is are brushed aside in favor of making him the butt of the joke. It's next exemplified in Season 3, which tries to portray him as a selfish parasite for being an Extreme Doormat when pretty much any of his moments of assertiveness are shut down by his family or rewarded with humiliation. It's especially bad since Rick (who constantly takes advantage of his own family while never doing anything in return unless blackmailed into it) is the one who calls him out on it, which is massively hypocritical at best.
Jaguar, the tragic Psycho for Hire from "Pickle Rick" has quite the following.
Morty's unnamed girlfriend. Some consider her a better character than Jessica. And she never even spoke.
The quasi-canon Bonnie Sinclair, an alternate take on Rick's absent wife.
Despite only appearing once, everyone loves Planetina. Helps that she's so Adorkable and voiced by Alison Brie.
Evil Is Cool: Rick Prime. Smarter even than Rick but bereft of morals and able to unleash some truly hilarious bits of dark humour and trolling.
Fandom Rivalry: Diehard fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe were not pleased by "Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender" and wasted no time in going to war. It only got worse when the comic series took more shots at the MCU. Though the Rick and Morty fanbase doesn't much seem to care about it, given all the Take Thats (many quite crueler) that Rick and Morty took at so many other pieces of media who didn't declare war on them and that the director of Doctor Strange is a fan of the show.
Fandom Specific Plot: The Twelfth Doctor meets Rick. Either he's mistaken for Rick or Rick was once his companion.
Rick's portal gun allows travel across the multiverse. Can easily fuel both crossovers and non-crossovers.
Or, as there are infinite versions of the Smith family, writing up one's own take on things is popular. Even the first two volumes of the official comic focused on Dimension C-132 instead of C-131 and the Rick and Morty: Pocket Like You Stole It series focuses on Morty C-594 while the Pocket Mortys game stars Rick and Morty C-123.
Is so emotionally well-balanced because, without a family to raise, he never went through the Cynicism Catalyst that his counterparts went through, causing them to resent him.
Helps Morty with his homework.
Fanon Discontinuity: Generally speaking, people would like to pretend that "Rickdependence Spray" didn't happen.
Shares many fans with Dan Harmon's earlier Community. Helps that many Community alums (Jim Rash, John Oliver, Keith David, Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Alison Brie) lent their voice to the show.
When the TwelfthDoctor debuted in Doctor Who, a lot of goodwill was created between the two shows with Peter Capaldi being fancast as Rick in a hypothetical live-action film. Tom Holland is the preferred choice for Morty.
With Gravity Falls thanks to both shows featuring a Byronic Hero sailing across The Multiverse. The fact that the creators are personal friends who have both cameoed on the other show helped.
Instantly got along with Justin Roiland's later show, Solar Opposites, with most, including Justin Roiland himself, agreeing that it was part of the Rick and Morty multiverse.
Everything about Rick in "Rickmurai Jack". His hatred for his other selves and how defensive he is about his parenting around Beth take on a much darker tone when it's revealed that he initially chose to give up super-science for his daughter's sake and that got his Beth killed.
It also shows why the Council fingered him as the prime suspect in "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind". He has the means and the motive to go on a Rick-killing spree.
In "The Vat of Acid Episode", Rick makes a Take That at Ant-Man and The Wasp. The episode's writer, Jeff Loveness, later penned the script for that movie's sequel.
Before "Rickmurai Jack", a popular theory about Morty's Evil Counterpart, Evil Morty, was that he was Rick's original Morty. After "Rickmurai Jack" disproved it, the very next episode "Solaricks" had Rick's Evil Counterpart, Rick Prime, be Morty's original Rick.
In "Ricktional Mortpoon's Rickmas Mortcation", President Curtis orders America to "transform and roll out". A year later, Curtis' voice actor, Keith David, would join the Transformers franchise as the voice of Grimlock in Transformers: EarthSpark.
Ho Yay: Rick/President Curtis. The show has lampshaded it more than once.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The show is popular in its native America but it is adored in England, being described as "Doctor Who on acid."
Jerry. He's pathetic and something of an insecure Jerkass, but in spite of being the only adult in the family to at least try to act like a responsible parental figure, literally everything he does blows up in his face massively, and even when he's done absolutely nothing wrong he still gets completely humiliated. And that's not even getting into how his entirely justified complaints over how much of a Jerkass Rick is and how Beth constantly enables him in spite of how clearly toxic he is to the family are completely ignored, to the point that Rick eventually destroys their marriage just so he can continue to use Morty as a glorified gofer without any interference. He tends to border on being an outright Woobie at times given his lack of malice compared to Rick and Beth.
Rick. He's a sociopathic, hedonistic, selfish, arrogant Jerkass who is clearly a toxic influence on the Smith family, but he's so broken and suicidal it's hard not to feel sorry for him at times.
Beth. She's just as selfish and self-destructive as Rick is, but all of it stems from her trauma and abandonment issues from a traumatic childhood where Rick abruptly abandoned her.
Moral Event Horizon: YMMV but Rick has arguably crossed it several times, considering all the shit that he, and his various alternate counterparts, have done to Morty, his own grandson. Gets even worse when you remember that Rick has killed or gotten into fights for Morty's sake. As "Promortyus" summarizes, most of what Rick does amounts to genocide.
"The Vat of Acid Episode" is a notable one as Rick manipulated Morty into killing dozens of alternate Mortys all because Morty criticized his vat of acid gambit. And the Rick who explained this wasn't even Morty's Rick. How many Ricks let their Mortys die just to prove a petty point?
King Jellybean is one of the most hated characters in the show. Even Rick acknowledged that Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil.
Following "The Wedding Squanchers", Tammy became perhaps the most hated character on the show.
Sophomore Slump: Season 3. Despite some bangers like "The Rickshank Rickdemption", "The Ricklantis Mixup" and "The Rickchurian Mortydate", it's generally agreed to be a step down from Season 2. The usual complaints about the season are that it relied too heavily on Plot Detours along with Rick and Beth being too Unintentionally Unsympathetic to root for. Thankfully from Season 4 onwards, the show was considered to regain, and some would argue surpass, its old glory.
What more does "Auto Erotic Assimilation" need to do to show the stupidity of race wars than making one about nipples?
In "Rattlestar Ricklactica", can you imagine starting a global war because of something as stupid as race? Imagine hating someone because they're a different colour. Quite a case of Values Resonance given that it preceded the George Floyd protests by a few months.
Played for Laughs in "Never Ricking Morty". Released in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown, it tells people to go outside and buy stuff. There's a virus hurting the economy.
Sophomore Slump: Season 3. Despite some bangers like "The Rickshank Rickdemption", "The Ricklantis Mixup" and "The Rickchurian Mortydate", it's generally agreed to be a step down from Season 2. The usual complaints about the season are that it relied too heavily on Plot Detours along with Rick and Beth being too Unintentionally Unsympathetic to root for. Thankfully from Season 4 onwards, the show was considered to regain, and some would argue surpass, its old glory.
Jerry frequently falls into this. Despite his whininess, he's absolutely right to say that Rick frequently drags Morty, and the whole family, into mortal danger that Beth endorses out of a selfish desire to keep Rick around due to her abandonment issues.
The Vindicators. As much as they're a Shallow Parody of the Avengers, they're quite right to say that Rick is a dangerous loose cannon who claims an Above Good and Evil morality to absolve himself of his any responsibility for the shit he pulls.
The President. As pathetic and whiny as he's framed as, he's right that Rick and Morty are unaccountable renegades who cause massive damage. Having contingencies for them is hardly unreasonable. The only thing that ruins his argument is that he's just as bad as Rick when it comes to being an insecure, petulant Man Child.
Squick: Rick and Phoenix Person's disturbingly realistic fight in "Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri". By the end, half of Rick's skin is burnt and he has to hold in his chest organs.
With the multiverse and all the infinite characters, everyone is this to someone but Jessica seems to be the most popular choice for this.
As said under "Base Breaker", Summer to some, being a well of untapped potential.
Frank Palicky, the knife wielding bully from the pilot proved instantly popular with the fans. Sadly, the creators don't seem interested in bringing him back.
Many fans consider that the Council of Ricks was done away with too quickly. They also consider that the show missed an opportunity for the Council to either pull a Villain Team-Up with the Federation or have a more drawn out war.
Worldender. He's described as a threat akin Thanos and Darkseid but is casually offed by Rick (when he was so drunk that he couldn't remember doing it) in favour of a Shallow Parody of the superhero genre.
Morty's unnamed girlfriend.
When Rick Prime properly debuts in the show, he's seemingly Killed Off for Real pretty quickly in favour of keeping Evil Morty as the Big Bad. He never even gets a chance to interact with his original Morty.
Unintentionally Sympathetic: Jerry. He's supposed to be a Straw Loser who's Extreme Doormat personality is just a way to manipulate people, but whenever he actually tries to be assertive he's shouted down by his family and insulted for it, or flat-out humiliated for reasons beyond his control.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: While it's often unclear how sympathetic Rick and Beth are supposed to actually be, the audience is clearly supposed to have some sympathy or at least pity for how broken they are. However, it's generally hard because they're both selfish, massively ungratefulJerkasses who constantly lash out at the people close to them. Their often abusive treatment of Morty and to a lesser extent Jerry doesn't help matters.
The Woobie: Morty. He's constantly forced to go on traumatic "adventures" by Rick, often tends to get humiliated and/or physically injured in the process, and is generally treated like crap even by his own family. In fact, this seems to apply to all Morties, who are treated like slaves by their Ricks and prone to just as much misfortune.
↑Originates from an infamously Fan Dumb statement in Season 3 but has since turned into a mockery against other fandoms who dub their work "elitist" or too smart.
YMMV • 
Radar • 
Quotes • (
Funny • 
Heartwarming • 
Awesome) • 
Fridge • 
Characters • 
Fanfic Recs • 
Nightmare Fuel • 
Shout Out • 
Plot • 
Tear Jerker • 
Headscratchers • 
Trivia • WMG • 
Recap • 
Ho Yay • 
Image Links • 
Memes • 
Haiku • Laconic • 
Source • Setting