People usually watch cartoons to feel better, but sometimes that’s just not the direction
that the portal gun takes you in. Sometimes you’re sitting at home waiting to get Schwifty when those
nasty human feelings come creeping up on you. At least; that’s how it is over in our universe.
As Rick himself always says, Whubalubadubdub!
Hi, I’m Caled from Wicked Binge and today we’ll be ranking Rick
and Morty moments from sad to Soulcrushing.
Just a couple rules before we get started.
We’re going to start with the saddest moments on the show
and work our way up to the moments that left us with the worst sense of despair.
There are some tear-jerking moments that were too heartwarming to be considered.
(When we say tear jerking we mean that Doofus Rick cried. We certainly wouldn’t.)
With that said, let’s go through the ominous green glow of the portal and hop into our list.
First up are the sad, but passing moments of the show. Some have a comedic tinge while
others are just used as one off lines. They’d be easy enough to forget about,
but if you take the time to think about them, there’s something dark lurking under the surface.
Kicking things off is the Butter Passing Robot
This is a smaller existential crisis from the multiverse, but we feel it bears mentioning. Rick,
in a show of intelligence, builds a robot at the breakfast table to pass him the butter. It was a
simple enough joke when juxtaposed with Jerry’s bubble popping game, but a bitter moment for the
robot. When he asks Rick what his purpose is, Rick has to tell him that it’s just to pass butter.
Oh god.
It comes back to bite the inventor later on though, when he is looking for a friend.
The robot must remind him that he wasn’t programmed for friendship
after tossing a stick of butter unceremoniously into his peas at dinner.
Next up we have Roy and Morty.
While we’re speaking of small existential crises, we have to bring up Roy.
Any Blips and Chitz regulars here are probably wondering why a video game about
a carpet salesman and cancer survivor is on this list at all.
The answer is that while it is just a videogame, those who aren’t used to it
really feel like they’re experiencing the life of the titular character; Roy.
It’s sad to see his dreams of pro-football get crushed. It’s sad to see the cancer diagnosis.
It’s briefly very heartwarming to see that cancer can’t beat Roy the Rocket. It’s crushing to see
that after all that he dies falling from a ladder after his return to the carpet store.
Still, we feel the saddest part is how Morty, once disconnected from the game,
has a tough time remembering who and where he is. This is a problem mostly for the weak
minded and unaccustomed to such high-tech video games, but it is sad to witness nonetheless.
Another sad moment for Morty was discovering that It was all for Noob Noob from The Vindicators 3:
In Season 3 Episode 4 Morty gets to use his 10th adventure card.
He chooses to go save the world with his heroes; The Vindicators. They don’t get along with Rick,
who seems to be getting a little jealous that his grandson reveres them so much.
After getting blackout drunk, Rick creates a series of Saw-style traps,
to use his own words, like a hack. This all culminates in a final test where they must
place the only thing they have of value on a platform intended for…. Well, not for Morty.
What builds itself up as an emotional reconciliation between Rick and his grandson
turns out to be a declaration of respect for Noob Noob — the janitor of The Vindicators.
Morty gets to ride the rollercoaster Rick designed for him and see how his grandfather
and partner in adventure was able to open up to a complete stranger just for laughing at his jokes.
Worst of all? Rick doesn’t even remember Noob Noob when he’s sober.
Following that is The Whirly Dirly Accident.
This was a passing moment and again, played off for laughs.
But the comedic element relies on you not stopping to think about it too much.
In one of space’s most luxurious bars there is an establishment Rick frequents.
It’s featured gimmick is an immortality field that makes it impossible to die
on the property. When the setting is first introduced we see two children
running around in the lobby shooting one another and instantly resurrecting.
When Jerry and Rick’s shenanigans cause a momentary lapse in the immortality field,
the patrons don’t get the memo right away. As a result,
the brother shoots his sister and she doesn’t get back up.
Poor, poor Lisa.
Our next moment is when Purge Planet invents the Purge
Rick and Morty visit a Purge planet. This is a small planet that lives peacefully except
for the one night a year where all crimes are legal. You know, like in the movie The Purge.
The pair help bring down the rich overseers of the planet who take joy in watching the poor fight
one another every year. So it seems like this planet gets a happy ending at first. It takes a
few minutes of them trying to invent a new society before they fall back into old patterns, however.
The negotiations make them frustrated, and before the aggression has time to fester
they are already discussing a set period of time when they should be allowed to fight one another.
This really does go to show that history repeats itself, especially on purge planet.
Rounding out the tier is Planetina
We do have a specific moment in mind for this one, but the whole concept of the character gets
a little sad. She’s an avatar of our planet, which is dying, who is conjured into being by
four kids with elemental rings. Those kids have grown up and want to sell out the franchise.
Planetina doesn’t have her own agency at first.
When Morty rescues the rings so she can be her own person, that doesn’t seem to go any
better. It gives her the opportunity to learn about just how bad the state of the earth is.
There are plenty of heart-wrenching moments in this, especially if you watch Morty’s
reactions. When her environmental activism gets extreme and she kills 300 people for drilling,
that was pretty hard to watch. It was even worse after they break up,
and a sobbing Morty confesses his love for her once more.
The saddest part though? The metaphor. Like our real-life issues with the planet,
Planetina’s arc is never resolved. It’s a pretty grim message overall.
Now we move into our second tier; The Soulcrushing. These are the darker moments
of the show that aren’t disguising themselves as jokes, or giving us any false hopes along the way.
First up is Leaving the Planet of Cronenbergs
After Rick accidentally creates a planet of Cronenberg style monsters that he doesn’t
know how to fix, he decides that he and Morty should just abandon ship.
The solution is easy enough; he finds a similar timeline where their Rick and
Morty die close to the Flu-Season dance that causes all the trouble.
Of course the downside of this fix is that the pair have to start their
new lives by cleaning up their dead bodies. Morty in particular
is traumatized. Not only did he ask for a love serum that got his entire planet Cronenberged,
he is never going to see his original family ever again. (At least, he doesn’t think he will.)
He is forced to come to this realization while digging a grave for a dead version of himself,
and being expected to pretend as though the entire thing never happened.
Next up is Fixing the Battery
Rick’s spaceship is operated by a microverse battery. This is exactly what it sounds like,
a battery that is powered by the microscopic universe inside. Rick has given them electricity
on a grid that funnels most of it to his spaceship. This process is eventually
made obsolete by the scientist inside the microverse who creates his own miniverse.
At first Rick is too mad to understand his own hypocrisy on the issue,
but eventually he tries to use it to his advantage. He gets into a full out
race with the other scientist to see who can make it back to the main world first.
Rick wins and makes it back to the spaceship. Much to Morty’s surprise,
when Rick turns the key, it’s to discover that the ship is working again.
Rick explains this in dark, but very certain terms.
“He knew that once I got back to my car one of two things was going to happen.
I was going to have to toss a broken battery, or the battery wouldn’t be broken.”
Following that is more of a series of increasingly sad moments involving Morty’s Girlfriend
In one of the more high concept episodes, Rick gives Morty a device that works as a
save point button, like in a video game. Morty ends up meeting a girl and falling in love.
They fight, they make amends, and end up going on vacation together.
When the plane crashes, Morty loses his save point device and his phone,
stranding the surviving crew out in the cold. They struggle to survive,
and Morty eventually has to launch an expedition out to his backpack for help.
Rather than to undo the traumatic experience, Morty decides to call 911 at great physical cost
to himself, because he doesn’t want to see his relationship undone. Unfortunately, he ends up
accidentally sitting on the button after his recovery, losing the best of the timeline.
Eager to go through the process again if it means being with his love,
he tries to meet her again. Only this time his desperation comes across as creepy,
and he ends up moving the save to a point when she’s pepper spraying him.
This culminates in a series of violent suicide saves where Morty jumps into a dangerous animal
exhibit and lets the animals rip him to shreds over and over, just so he can feel something.
After Rick converges the timelines again to get rid of the device,
we see they converged into a timeline where Morty was with his girlfriend. Unfortunately
Morty doesn’t see her because she shows up right after he has gone into Rick’s fake vat of acid.
She gets there just in time to see the bones float to the top of the vat and leaves sobbing.
Morty resurfaces only after she’s gone, and never knew that she came back for him.
Next is another rough one for Mort. The Death of Fart
Morty goes through a lot of pain and suffering to save a gaseous being that Rick
unfortunately names ‘Fart.’ He sacrifices a fun day at the arcade Blips and Chitz,
which an alternate Morty has a blast attending. He also ends
up murdering a lot of innocent people in order to successfully orchestrate the escape of the being.
But Fart seems to be worth saving. Aside from the fact that Morty views him as the
victim in a tough situation, there’s his beautiful voice and declarations about
putting the life of all beings above one’s self. He praises Morty for this very quality.
It isn’t until the two have really bonded that
Morty learns all carbon-based life forms are considered a disease on Fart’s home world,
and are about to be eradicated. Suddenly Fart’s willingness to kill the people of
Gear World makes a lot more sense within his theoretically pacifist mindset.
Morty knows what he must do. He asks Fart to sing to him again and while
the telekinetic being is distracted, Morty shoots him with the antimatter
ray that was originally intended for the assassination he’d worked so hard to prevent.
Not only does Morty lose a friend whom he has betrayed and killed with his own hands, it means
that the whole day was for nothing. The death, the fighting, the loss of innocence was all for
a creature that had to be put down on either case, leaving a lot of innocent blood on Morty’s hands.
Following that is Simple Rick Freedom Wafer Select
The Ricklantis Mixup was an episode filled both with sad moments and existential dread from
start to finish. There are Mortys killing Mortys. There are Rick’s that have forgotten who they are.
The Citadel seems to be getting worse by the day and the only person who can save it
dies in the vacuum of space while the evil Morty gets elected the first Morty president.
All very grim.
But perhaps nothing illustrates the false hope of the environment so well
as Simple Rick’s. This is a wafer company where Ricks are forced to work on a line
for a fraction of their boss’ salary. They make delicious wafers from the secretion of
a chemical in Simple Rick’s brain derived from a moment when he experiences true happiness.
One of the Ricks working on the line snaps. After he kills Simple Rick during negotiations
he is given one true moment of bliss where he believes he has escaped the life of drudgery.
He gets a moment of freedom and that moment is replayed on a loop once he is taken
captive to replace the now-dead Simple Rick. The memory makes him
secrete a chemical used in the company’s new flavor; Simple Rick Freedom Wafer Select.
Up next is the rather whimsical sounding Whubalubadubdubs!
It’s pretty early into season 1 when Rick establishes his new catchphrase
“Whubalubadubdubs.” It sounds like just a fun nonsense word and it’s one of the
only catchphrases that Rick actually sticks to for any length of time.
It’s played for laughs time and time again before we learn from Bird Person
that it actually has meaning in an alien language. “Whubalubadubdubs''
translates to “I am in great pain. Please help me.”
Just like Rick to call for help in a language that will make him look careless rather than weak.
And finally, winning the Show’s Most Soul-crushing Moment is When Rick is No Longer a part of Unity
All break-ups are sad. Even on a show as ridiculous as Rick and Morty,
it’s never easy to see characters that we like part ways.
Even though we didn’t know Unity long, they were a very impactful character on the show.
The hivemind seems to be one of the only beings in the world that can make Rick Sanchez less lonely.
Though we agree with Summer’s assessment that Rick was a bad influence for Unity,
it was hard to see something that Rick cared for so much ripped away after such a brief
amount of time. He actually is the one that talks the hivemind into leaving him,
though as always, he was actually talking about himself.
“They just put you at the center of their life because you’re powerful
and then because they put you there they want you to be less powerful.”
Watching Rick’s face get more and more dejected as he wanders through
the vacant planet reading the pieces of Unity’s goodbye note is tragic enough.
Watching his resignation as he interacts with Beth afterwards also hurts.
But we don’t think anything hits home as hard as watching Rick give life to a squealing creature,
hold it up to a ray, and watch it turn to ash in his hands.
After he has tested the machine he loads it up with another charge and lines it up with his head.
Had he not passed out just before the ray went off,
this would have brought about a quick and very somber end to the show.
Rick is so laid back about everything that to see him experience emotions so deep he
is almost brought to suicide is truly the show’s most soulcrushing moment.
That’s been in everyone! Our list of the Rick and Morty Moments from Sad to Soul-crushing. What
Rick and Morty Moment hit you the hardest? Let us know in the comments down below, as well as
what other videos you’d like to see. While you’re down there don’t forget to like and subscribe.
And as always, stay wicked.