"Never Ricking Morty" is the sixth episode of the fourth season of Rick and Morty, and the 37th episode of the series overall. It premiered on May 3, 2020.[1] It was written by Jeff Loveness and directed by Erica Hayes.
Synopsis
Rick and Morty get caught in a narrative device disguised as a train full of passengers telling stories about Rick, and have to somehow make it stop.
Plot
While riding aboard a space train, the door of the dining car opens and a man with a kilt, long hair and beard comes in. The conductor, known simply as "Tickets Please Guy", asks him for his ticket; he tears off a piece and gives it back to the man. As TPG is moving along, the man sits down at a bar. Another man which has some similarity to our protagonist buys him a drink and asks him why he is here to kill Rick, assuming that there is no other reason for being in this train.
He tells his story, where he is sitting on a throne and ordering his minions to lower people into a big basin of acid. Rick comes in, is asked who he is but instead of answering, just farts. After several more questions are asked (with no response from Rick besides farts), he orders his minions to attack Rick. Rick goes on the offensive, shooting several with his two pistols; when they use a cannon-like gun, Rick takes a potion which grows him 3 extra arms. With his five arms (each wielding a pistol), Rick is able to overcome all of his enemies. He drinks another potion and the extra limbs wither away until he has just his two regular ones. With his left hand he swallows a pill followed by a two farts one out of an extra asshole. The man from the bar says now he will fight Rick.
The cut with the story ends and the man continues to tell that Rick would describe a different version of the story where he starts crying. The protagonist is then asked why he is going to kill Rick; the protagonist replies that he doesn't know who Rick Sanchez, and becomes quickly unnerved when others begin to chime in with their own story about wanting revenge on Rick. He leaves the train car and in the next carriage, more individuals are telling stories, including one about how Rick managed to save Space-Christmas.
Meanwhile, a blonde woman enters a separate train car and is asked by several females if she is also looking to get revenge against Rick Sanchez; the woman becomes uneasy about them while also stating she has no idea who Rick is. The two encounter the other in another car and the man points a gun at the woman, threatening to shoot her if she mentions Rick. She replies that she is just trying to figure out whats going on with this train. After the man asks her if she remember how she got on the train, and she says that she doesn't.
As the man ponders the nature of the train, he notices the woman playing with her boobs. Rick identifies this behaviour with Morty. It is quickly revealed that the man and woman are actually a disguised Rick and Morty. After removing their disguises, Rick realizes they are stuck in a literal story device, an anthology. Suddenly, the Tickets Please Guy comes in and a fight breaks out between him and Rick after the latter demands TPG to stop the anthology. The fight continues with TPG using Morty as a human shield; Rick eventually shoots out a window, tearing TPG apart with the top half floating in space. After Rick fixes the crack in the window, he obtains a bottle on one of the breathing-masks who fallen down after the pressure fallen down. But instead of filled with oxygen, it's filled with continuity.
The bottle gets shot and continuity is exploding after that, everything becomes even crazier. Rick and Morty find themselves in an act break shorty after containing a musical number between Rick and Birdperson.
Rick finds a map of the train that is apparently going in a big circle, rigs some space suits for them both together but Morty gets one that will fail after a timer is run up, for a reason that it is not to simple and it wouldn't work in this reality or so. Morty is forced to tell a story unrelated to Rick and Morty, after failing with his first story, Rick asks Morty if he knows the Bechdel test, after Morty says no Rick is asking what they are teaching him at his school and explains. Parodying the Bechdel effect, he tells a story about Summer and Beth fighting female scorpions with their period-rays, so they get into the first wagon where they meet Story-Lord. Story-Lord initiates a long battle with Rick and Morty.
After a crazy struggle against Story-Lord, won by a prayer to Jesus Christ everything is over, as Rick finds out that the train is just a toy with no actual controls in the drivers cab.
It is then revealed that the entire episode has taken place on a toy train Morty purchased from the Citadel of Rick. Rick tells Morty that he loves that he bought the train, and encourages him to keep buying things as it's helping consumerism. After the train breaks down due to the complexity of Morty's story, Morty suggests that he returns it. Rick orders Morty not to return it but buy another one, reminding him "nobody's out there shopping with this fucking virus!"
Cast and characters
Main Cast
Non-speaking characters
Unknown voices
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Guest-Starring
Starring
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Deaths
- Tickets Please Guy
- Female Scorpions (possibly)
- Jesus Christ (presumably)
Locations
- Story Train
- Planet Ramamama
- Blips and Chitz
- Smith Residence
- The Citadel (mentioned)
Episode notes
Trivia
- The episode's title is a reference to The NeverEnding Story.
- This is the first anthology episode not to air as the 8th episode of its respective season.[2]
- story-train.com, which is mentioned in the after credits scene "commercial," redirects to rickandmorty.com.[3]
- In celebration of Season 4, Pocket Mortys' weekly updates will coincide with new episodes, including new avatars for players to collect. With the release of this episode came: Supreme Guard Rick as an avatar, plus Goomby Morty and Tickets Please Morty to catch.
- This is the first episode to air in the 2020s.
- This is the fifth episode (after "Auto Erotic Assimilation", "Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate", "The Rickshank Rickdemption", and "Tales from the Citadel") that has the intro shortened to the title only.
- This is the sixth episode not to feature a cold open, the first five being Season 1's "Lawnmower Dog", "Anatomy Park", "M. Night Shaym-Aliens!", "Meeseeks and Destroy", and "Rick Potion #9."
Series continuity
- Some of the anthologies feature heavy story elements (though Rick points out that those events may or may not have actually happened), foreshadowing some events that will likely come in the future.
- Rick fights Pheonixperson while Summer fights Tammy, both fights were between those that were once friends during Seasons 1 and 2 but turned to the dark side in later episodes.
- In Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri, Tammy and Pheonixperson both appear as major characters with no reference to this scene, revealing the scene to have been a red herring.
- President Morty appears, leading an army of Ricks, Meeseeks, and male Gazorpazorpians after Tales from the Citadel. He also mind controls them through his eye patch much like he did with "Evil" Rick back in Season 1.
- Rick fights Pheonixperson while Summer fights Tammy, both fights were between those that were once friends during Seasons 1 and 2 but turned to the dark side in later episodes.
- Blips and Chitz, which was last seen in "Mortynight Run", makes an appearance in this episode.
- There are three photos from music numbers performed in episodes from Season 2 in the train cart that appears after the Birdperson and Rick musical number. The photos are of Morty and Fart performing Goodbye Moonmen in "Mortynight Run", Rick and Morty performing Get Schwifty in the episode of the same name, and Tiny Rick performing the Tiny Rick Song in "Big Trouble in Little Sanchez".
- Abrodolph Lincoler, Snuffles, Birdperson/Pheonixperson, Tammy, and President Morty all make reappearances.
- There is also a photo of Morty Jr. which can be seen during Morty's story, nodding to the fact that Morty still thinks about his son from "Raising Gazorpazorp".
Cultural references
- After Morty mentions getting a new train, Rick references how no one's going shopping because of a virus going around. This is a reference to the 2019-20 Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which happened a few months after the season 4 hiatus began.
- Rick compares Story Lord to Frasier Crane from the TV-show Frasier.
- The creatures that appeared after Rick and Morty prayed in the story are references to the Bible and many of its works and parodies related to it.
- The living vegetables are a reference to Veggie Tales, a show that commonly talks about verses and stories in the Bible using anthropomorphic vegetable characters.
- Biblesaurus is a reference to a belief in some rather outlandish forms of Christianity which state that dinosaurs allegedly once coexisted with humanity on a six thousand-year-old Earth. The character's design is based on the cartoon series Denver, The Last Dinosaur, including his fondness of skateboarding.[4]
- The antromorphic book is a nod to Psalty the Singing Songbook.
- The mechs the cats pilot when they fight Snuffles resemble the Z-Mechs that the Imps use from Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2.
- The "Story Train" concept is lifted directly from series co-creator Dan Harmon's "Story Circle" process of writing. The Story Circle, adapted by Harmon from Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey," entails an eight-step process a character must go through:
- A character is in a zone of comfort or familiarity.
- They desire something.
- They enter an unfamiliar situation.
- They adapt to that situation.
- They get that which they wanted.
- They pay a heavy price for it.
- They return to their familiar situation.
- They have changed as a result of the journey.
- Harmon employs this technique almost religiously for most of his projects, including Rick and Morty and Community.
- The scene where Morty is describing a story where his mother and sister are using their vagina-rays to battle against female scorpions is a parody of the Bechdel test, which is a measure of the representation of women in fiction. In order to "pass" the Bechdel test, the story needs to contain 2 women who talk about something besides men.
- The flashback to the Vietnam War is a nod to the twist of the 1990 film Jacob's Ladder, a movie dealing with Vietnam War soldiers exposed to a mind-altering drug that lead to a distortion of reality. Morty as a war veteran stabbing Rick with a bayonet is reminiscent of what happens to the main protagonist at the beginning of the film.
- In the background in the tent where Morty wakes up is a poster for One Night With Janis Joplin, a musical act about the life of Janis Joplin.
- The aliens in the train cart that appears after the Birdperson and Rick musical number are dressed as characters from famous Broadway musicals, including Erik from The Phantom of the Opera, Tracy Turnblad from Hairspray, Donkey from Shrek The Musical and Bombalurina from Cats. Two of the characters are yet to be identified.
- The cart also has several posters of different musicals, including "The Sound of Rick", "Rick" and "The Meeseeks of the Opera", parodying of the poster for the musical film The Sound of Music, Cats, and The Phantom of the Opera.
- Jesus Christ at the end of the episode says: "Father of omens! Give me blood beyond sight!" a reference to "Sword of Omens, give me Sight Beyond Sight!" from ThunderCats.
Transcript
View a full transcript of this episode here.
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