The 70 Most Ricktastic Facts About Rick and Morty

Unless you’ve been living on a tiny planet or inside a Microverse car battery since 2013, there’s a very high chance you’ve at least heard of Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty.

This wonderfully hallucinogenic animation is about Rick Sanchez, the smartest mammal in the galaxy as well as a sociopathic narcissist, and his grandson Morty, a simple, neurotic teenage boy.

With him along for the ride is his granddaughter Summer, a sharp-tongued sharp-witted older teenager, his daughter Beth, an aggressive, highly-intelligent horse-surgeon, and her husband Jerry, a wet paper bag.

Here are the 70 most Ricktastic facts about Rick and Morty!

1. Justin Roiland himself voices both Rick and Morty.
2. Roiland originally wanted the show to run in eleven-minute segments, but Adult Swim pushed for half-hour episodes.
3. Rick and Morty has shown its popularity by picking up a raft of awards since it started, including the IGN People’s Choice Award for Best Animated Series in 2015 and 2017, and the IGN Award for Best Animated Series in 2015 and 2017.
4. The show’s animation is done using Toon Boom Harmony, with all of the show’s background art being created on Adobe Photoshop. Post production takes place using Adobe After Effects.
5. The show’s two titular characters are based on a pair of characters from an animated short by co-creator Justin Roiland called The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti.
6. Justin Roiland created a small animated show called House of Cosbys, which led to him getting numerous cease and desist letters from Bill Cosby’s lawyers. As a humorous protest he decided to create a vulgar Back to the Future parody called The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti, with his two characters being named Doc Smith and Mharti McDonhalds to avoid a lawsuit. When Roiland was editing the audio for this he fell in love with the voices he’d done for the two characters, deciding to drop his protest and develop the characters more, eventually shaping them into Rick and Morty.
7. Rick and Morty’s intro and theme song are a parody mix of Doctor Who and Tintin.
8. Rick re-joined the Smith family one month before the events of the show’s pilot episode.
9. The universe where we see most of the events take place on Earth is Earth Cesium-137. That’s why Rick and Morty often refer to themselves, or are referred to, as “Rick C-137” and “Morty C-137.”
10. The second episode of the show’s first season (Lawnmower Dog) is based on a pilot that Justin Roiland developed for Cartoon Network called DogWorld, where two kids find a portal to a world inhabited by intelligent dogs with human pets.
11. Also in this episode Rick refers to Snuffles as “Ruffles,” which is the name of the human pet that the dog family in DogWorld.
12. In Lawnmower Dog, the voice of Snowball’s accountant is that of Maurice LaMarche, who voiced The Brain in Pinky and The Brain.
13. When recording the dialogue for the show, Roiland improvises a lot on set, which he feels makes the lines more natural. Roiland calls the improvisations “Alts” and will record a whole bunch of improvised one-liners and jokes quipped by Rick or Morty before choosing one to make the episode’s cut.
14. As Rick spends most of his time drunk, Roiland once tried method acting and getting drunk before doing the recording of Rick’s dialogue. It didn’t go well, and he barely got any recording done!
15. Ever thought that Rick’s daughter Beth sounds familiar? Well that’s because she’s voiced by actress Sarah Chalke, who played Elliot in Scrubs, Stella in How I Met Your Mother and Amy in Backstrom.
16. Sarah Chalke is also a huge fan of Rick and Morty’s artwork.
17. In fact, Beth is the third time Sarah Chalke has played a blonde doctor. Although if you ask Jerry, he’d say she’s only played a blonde doctor twice as being a horse surgeon apparently isn’t the same as being a “real doctor.”
18. Each one of Rick’s characteristic burps is a real burp.
19. Rick’s burping only came to be because, when voicing Doc in The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti, Roiland accidentally burped in the middle of a line. He said it was so gross and funny he thought “let’s see if I can do that again for a couple more lines.”
20. Although he does all the burps, Roiland has said before it’s not easy for him. He sits in the studio with a can of low-calorie beer and a bottle of water, waiting for them to come naturally as he can’t force them or burp on command. He tells the engineers recording the show “Just leave it rolling, because I don’t know when this burp is coming!”
21. Justin Roiland has also said that Sarah Chalke can burp on command and that he’s very jealous of her.
22. When traveling in cars Rick never wears a seatbelt, while all the other characters do.
23. Every time we see a vehicle door open with Rick inside, empty beer cans and bottles either come pouring out or can be heard rattling around.
24. Spencer Grammar who voices Summer, said that if she could travel back in time she’d kill Hitler. Whilst this would do the world as a whole some good, it’d be shame for Rick and Morty fans as it would never give us the joyous combination of Adolf Hitler and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one character in Abradolf Lincler, a “misguided venture” of Rick’s to create a morally neutral super leader by combining the DNA of the two. Prepare to be emancipated from your own inferior genes!
25. In the episode Get Schwifty in Season 2, we find out that Rick, Bird Person and Squanchy were in a rock band together called “The Flesh Curtains.”
26. Rick and Morty has had a raft of celebrity guest stars doing voices on the show over the duration of its run to-date. Just a few notable names include Stephen Colbert, Dana Carvey, Claudia Black, Nathan Fillion, Susan Sarandon, Joel McHale, Rich Fulcher, Christian Slater and Danny Trejo.
27. In the episode Night Shaym-Aliens! in Season 1, we are introduced to the Zigerions, alien scammers after Rick’s formula for concentrated dark matter. Their leader, Prince Nebulon (Yes, a scamming Zigerion Prince), was voiced by David Cross who played Tobias Fünke in Arrested Development. Both the Zigerions and Tobias Fünke are massively uncomfortable with nudity.
28. In the episode Auto Erotic Assimilation in Season 2, we are introduced to Unity, a hive-mind entity which Rick used to date. Rick gets Unity to create a TV show for him, which is actually a copy of Dan Harmon’s show Community, and features all the main characters in the show: Jeff, Annie, Shirley, Pierce, Troy, Abed, and Britta. It even references Community being cancelled and bought back when Rick tells Unity “Now cancel it! Okay now put it back on.”
29. At the end of this episode, we see Rick attempt suicide before choosing not to. Just before he does this he drinks an orange liquid from an Erlenmeyer flask. This orange liquid synchronizes all of the possible Ricks in every conceivable reality, meaning had Rick not bowed his head down and actually killed himself, that every single Rick across the entire multiverse would have ceased to exist.
30. The way in which Rick says the word “bitch” is style after how Jesse Pinkman said the word in Breaking Bad.
31. Rick’s swearing isn’t the only thing the Rick and Morty team were inspired by from Breaking Bad. The inspiration for the premise of Pickle Rick came from Breaking Bad’s episode 4 Days Out in Season 2, where Jesse and Walt are stranded in the desert and Walt shows some true ingenuity to work with nothing and save them both. This led to Dan Harmon wanting to test Rick’s genius, saying “How smart is Rick, though? Is he so smart that with his mouth alone he could gain an advantage over biological killing machines in an environment that wasn’t built to sustain him?”
32. In the early stages of production, Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston auditioned for the role of Jerry.
33. The word “Rick” is often used in episode titles in lieu of other words, such as Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind, A Rickle In Time, Total Rickall, and The Rickshank Rickdemption, to name a few.
34. In fact, Rick’s name appears 16 times in episode names out of 31 total episodes.
35. Rick’s surname, Sanchez, only makes one appearance in an episode title in the episode Big Trouble In Little Sanchez in Season 2.
36. Morty’s name appears in three different episode titles: Mortynight Run from Season 2, alongside Morty’s Mind Blowers and The Rickchurian Mortydate from Season 3.
37. The Rickchurian Mortydate is the only episode title to feature both Rick and Morty’s names in the title.
38. Other than these two titular characters, Beth is the only other character to have her name in an episode, in Season 3’s The ABC’s of Beth.
39. In the episode Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind we are first introduced to the Trans-Dimensional Council of Ricks, the Citadel of Ricks’ ruling council that is made up of six different Ricks. The Council’s spokesperson is called Riq IV, whilst the other council members are called Rick Prime, Quantum Rick, Maximums Rickimus, Zeta Alpha Rick and Ricktiminus Sancheziminius.
40. Rick C-137 was offered a place on the Council which he refused, thinking them to be “Rick-sheep.”
41. In this episode, the word “Rick” is said 84 total times. With one piece of dialogue between Rick C-137 and his Rick guards having the word “Rick” said 8 times in 8 seconds!
42. In this episode Doofus Rick has a Morty that was assigned to him as he doesn’t have his own children. Doofus Rick’s Morty looks like Eric Stoltz, who was originally cast as Marty McFly in Back to the Future – he even recorded a lot of the film before being recast.
43. At the end of this episode, it is revealed that Eyepatch Morty was the evil mastermind behind the episode’s events, For The Damaged Coda by Blonde Redhead. In Season 3, Episode 7, The Ricklantis Mixup, we follow the story of the first democratic election in the Citadel of Ricks. As the episode closes out and we come to realize that the now-President Morty is Eyepatch Morty from Season 1, For The Damaged Coda by Blonde Redhead booms, cementing this piece of music as Evil Morty’s theme.
44. For Season 3’s Rest and Ricklaxation, Justin Roiland and Chaos Chaos (who did Can You Feel It? from Season 2’s Auto Erotic Assimilation) collaborated on an original song together for the episode called Terry-Folds. This song is the song playing when Morty turns on the radio in Rick’s car during their trip home together from their spa vacation, and again during the episode’s credits.
45. Many fans of the show believe it is set in the same universe as Gravity Falls, an animated series made by Alex Hirsch. Hirsch and Roiland shared a desk together at Disney and made a pact to reference each other. During the chase scene when Rick opens up a bunch or portals to lose his pursuers we see a pen, notepad and a mug emerge from one of the portals. In Gravity Falls, Stan loses these items in a portal.
46. In the episode Big Trouble In Little Sanchez in Season 2 of Rick and Morty, a picture of Bill Cipher, the antagonist of Gravity Falls, can be seen on a monitor when Beth and Jerry go to counselling.
47. In The Rickshank Rickdemption, there are a few frames in The Citadel of Ricks where you can see two Morty twins in the background, a boy and a girl dressed in the same clothes as the two main character twins in Gravity Falls.
48. In Rest and Ricklaxation, a decaying version of 8 Ball, Bill Cipher’s friend from the Nightmare Realm, can be seen in the toxin tank.
49. In Morty’s Mind Blowers, there are several bulbs that reference Gravity Falls, including a blue one with the word ‘”STANDFORD” written on it. It is a reference to Ford Pines, one of Gravity Falls’ main characters, and one labelled “Bill C.” in reference to Bill Cipher.
50. Rick and Morty also appear in Gravity Falls’ universe. In the real-life published version of Journal 3 from Gravity Falls, there’s the silhouette of a Plumbus, and a Zigerion on another page. There’s also a copy of Ford Pines’ wanted poster with an encoded message on the corner which translates as “RICK WAS HERE.”
51. The episode Rixty Minutes was released before it aired on Adult Swim via 109 consecutive 15-second Instagram videos.
52. In the Season 3 opener, Rick repeatedly references McDonalds’ McNugget Szechuan sauce that was released in 1998 as a promotion for the Disney film Mulan. In addition to getting the show’s creators a box of Szechuan sauce from McDonald’s, this caused uproar among fans who all wanted a taste, with police having to attend many fan gatherings at McDonald’s restaurants and restraining fans, earning disrepute for Rick and Morty fans everywhere and becoming known as “The Sauce Riots.”
53. Although the episode Total Rickall was the first time we’d seen Mr. Poopybutthole, the producers edited him into each of the scenarios in the episode’s intro to make it look like he’d been part of the show all along. This is similar to the way the parasites featured in this episode manifest themselves through fictional memories.
54. We saw Mr. Poopybutthole again in the Season 2 and Season 3 finale after-credits scenes, where each time he was the first person to give the fans any indication of how long they’d be waiting for the next season, telling them both times they’d be waiting a long time.
55. For Thanksgiving in 2017, Roiland and Harmon released an emotional and touching two-minute clip called The Poop In My Pants. The clip featured Mr. Poopybutthole flicking off the TV after the end of Season 3 and picking up a scrapbook titled “The Poop In My Pants.” Mr. Poopybutthole then flicks through the scrapbook which details how he went back to school, met his wife, got married and started a family.
56. The Poop In My Pants is chock-full of brilliant little easter eggs for the observant fan, including the reveal that Mr. and Mrs. Poopybutthole are from dimension C-137, a Varrix hiding during their picnic, and Pickle Rick’s helicopter with Jaguar leaping from it during their tandem bike ride, to name but a few.
57. Rick and Morty have appeared in a couple TV promos. In an advert for Carl’s Jr. & Hardee’s Burgers made in 2015, Rick brings living Carl’s Jr. burgers into Morty’s room while he is sleeping. The burgers go crazy and end up stealing a bunch of stuff from Morty’s room, leaving it in a right mess.
58. In another TV promo for Alien: Covenant, we see Rick and Morty wandering the dark halls of an abandoned spaceship. A Facehugger jumps out, latching onto Rick’s face before quickly shriveling and dying of toxicity due to all the various things swirling about in Rick’s system.
59. In the Season 26 finale of The Simpsons, Rick and Morty featured in the episode’s opening couch-gag.
60. Between October 2016 and July 2017, a series of 16 Claymation Rick and Morty shorts ran on Adult Swim during the adverts. They featured Rick and Morty in parodies of iconic film scenes. In order, the shorts parodied: The Thing, The Fly, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Ex Machina, Halloween, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, Poltergeist, Re-Animator, Aliens,T., Gremlins, A Clockwork Orange, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Matrix and Ghostbusters.
61. In the episode Morty’s Mind Blowers, during the end-credits scene we see Jerry come across a small selection of his own “mind blowers.” One of these tapes is labelled “Apples Campaign,” referencing his disastrously awful “Hungry For Apples?” campaign that saw him get fired in the post-credits scene for Season 1’s Night Shaym-Aliens!.
62. Another one of Jerry’s “mind blowers” tapes is labelled “Sleepy Gary,” referencing his affair with Beth’s imaginary parasite husband in Season 2’s Total Rickall.
63. Jerry’s car is inspired by the Wagon Queen Family Truckster from National Lampoon’s Vacation.
64. Rick and Morty quite often references and parodies TV shows and films. Whilst most of them are fairly transparent parodies such as Anatomy Park/Jurassic Park, some hints can be a little more low-key however. Pickle Rick is obviously a parody of Die Hard, one of Dan Harmon’s favorite films, but it also has subtle undertones of John Wick woven into it, with Pickle Rick using pencils to kill people as John Wick sometimes does and also having a Russian nickname, “Solenya,” as John Wick the “Baba Yaga” does.
65. Originally, Mr. Meeseeks was supposed to be a neon-brown color, but this didn’t sit well with test audiences so he was changed by the producers to the familiar blue color we know and love.
66. Read more: https://topfactsite.com/the-70-most-ricktastic-facts-about-rick-and-morty/