Boy, that 'Tales of the Citadel' episode sure had a lot of Easter eggs in it, huh?
Return of evil Morty and all that... Lots of theory fodder in there. Am I right? Don't worry.
I'll get to that one soon enough.
But there was one detail that I wanted to point out that isn't enough for a full episode and one that all the next day
Analysis overlook that I wanted to talk about, specifically this chart.
See how reverse Rick outrage is at the end of the chart,
But still has a 15 percent approval rating which is higher than the rent is too damn high Rick? Well,
it's an incredibly smart jab at one of the most subtle ways news media can and does bias what it's showing you. Looking at the
Graphic, most people would think that reverse Rick outrage's at dead last...
But he's not and that's even if they see him at all! They buried him in the back.
It's an easy way to discredit a candidate, a technique that was famously used during the 2012 presidential
Election to undermine the strong poll results and growing popularity of Republican candidate
Ron Paul. Long story short, the reason I'm pointing this out is to not only draw attention to an underappreciated
Rick and Morty Easter egg, but also to tell you just be aware. Sometimes the data doesn't lie, but the way it's presented does
Hello Internet! Welcome to Film Theory, the show where we take your favorite series, let them marinate in our salty mind brines, and pop out
crunchy DILLicious! (nice)
Theories just a short time later! And with that as the opening sentence of this episode, two things should be made immediately
clear. #1- We're talking about pickle Rick today. "I'M PICKLE RICK!!!" And #2- I've got pickle puns for days
Picking him up wasn't even that cumbersome, or should I say:
cucumber some?
Nope, I really
Really shouldn't. Sure, season 3 of Rick and Morty may have taken a little bit longer than expected to arrive,
But honestly this was nothing compared to the way we've got coming for season eight and Game of Thrones. "Winter is coming. Now
It's here." Now,
We just gotta wait like two more years. When it comes to Rick and Morty, the wait was
Totally worth it. Season three has delivered on both the lore side and the science side. Now in the past,
I focused mainly on the lore bits. Click the link in the corner of the screen if you're behind on those.
But I've never actually
spent any time getting into the nitty-gritty of what makes a Rick and Morty not only the funniest show on TV
But also the smartest. Parallel universes,
Reality simulations, memory altering-parasites --- the list of things to explore are as endless as the channels on an Intergalactic cable box.
But as someone who appreciates
Memes as much as science, no analysis of season three would be complete without a look into the science of Pickle Rick.
Not exactly whether Rick could realistically turn himself into a pickle;
He can't. But instead, how possible Rick's alien-esque
Cockroach and rat mech suits would be. A quick recap in case you missed this episode: Rick turns himself into a pickle to escape family
therapy "I turned myself into a pickle, Morty." As a pickle, he gets washed down into the sewer drain where he's surrounded by Cockroaches.
He bites the head off of one, but then manipulates its brain with his tongue to make it walk the next we see him
He's fashioned a suit of cockroach armor to kill rats.
He dismembers one,
Fuses its limbs to his pickle body, connects his brain to the rats, and then goes on a good old John Wick Style pickle murder
rampage. You know, a classic Rick adventure, or should I say, "A
Vlasic Rick adventure?"
"Uh, no you really shouldn't say that."
Cynical Hypothetical Viewer.
You're sounding a bit older and more grizzled than usual.
"Yeah, 30 years of vodka will do that to you. I'm Dan Harmon,
I'm the co-creator of Rick and Morty!" Ho- Wow
Welcome to the show. Wait did you just come on the show to tell me to stop making puns...?
"Well, not just to tell you to stop making puns.
I just wanted to save you the trouble of making this episode. Pickle Rick is something we just made up. We thought, 'Hey,
What's a funny vegetable we can turn Rick into?' and we land it on a pickle." Uh sorry, but you're wrong.
"What do you mean, pickles are hilarious!"
No, obviously a pickle is hilarious!
What I mean to say is, and I hate to correct you
But it's not technically a veggie. A pickle is a fruit because they have seeds. Pickles are technically a fruit of the vine.
It's decided by the US Supreme Court,. "But it's made from a cucumber..."
Yeah, fruit too. I mean, if you want to get really specific,
Cucumbers are a pepo, which is a type of berry, and a pickle technically fell under the classification of condiment?
But don't worry, people will debate it out in the comments. "Well, whatever it is
We just thought making Pickle Rick would be funny.
We do a lot of scientific research for the show,
but this wasn't one of those times. Pickle Rick is not rooted in actual science."
Yeah, I hate to be the "but actually" guy, but uh, actually- "the existence of this channel tells me that's not true."
Okay, so maybe I really love correcting my favorite creators, just not to their faces. But regardless,
I wouldn't be too sure of that one either, Dan. Tell you what, stick around for the rest of this episode
and if you're still not convinced by the end, I'll give you 25 smeckles.
"You know we made those up too, right?" Fine, lunch if I don't convince you. I'll buy you lunch. "Hmm, well
I have watched all the episodes of Hoarders on my DVR, so I guess I've got some time on my hands.
Let's do it." Awesome! We'll investigate this together!<3
Just, just you and me, and then we'll go on more adventures "The Adventures of Mattpat and Dan Harmon" forever and ever, six seasons
in a movie! "Maybe let's just start with the one." Yeah, sorry.
I just got a little excited. Now before we get into just how plausible these feats
are, we should determine exactly what Pickle Rick is. Is he completely human with just this pickled
Exterior, or is he more pickle than man? Dan,
Can you shed any light onto this? "He's a pickle in the streets, but a Rick in the sheets if you get my drift. "
(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I really, honestly don't. "Look man, I don't know. Obviously, it has Rick's brain since he talks and thinks,
But it's not like he has a whole human body inside his pickle shell. When Jaguar shoots him in the side, Rick doesn't bleed but
He does feel pain.
He also mentions at the end of the episode that he missed having a stomach,
So he's missing a lot of his bodily system."
"Man, I miss having hands. and blood. and a stomach." Okay so for the sake of simplicity,
Let's say that Rick has a functioning human nervous system, brain, spinal cord,
Etc. and everything else that we can see like his eyes and mouth.
But that any other body system that doesn't contribute to his immediate survival is missing. Sounds good?
"Deal." so let's take a look at the first body that Pickle Rick takes over, that of the cockroach
He bites to death. After the roach stops struggling, Pickle Rick rips open its
Exoskeleton and begins prodding its brain with his tongue after a few tests he determines how he can activate the roaches legs and wings thereby
carrying him along with its carcass
It would certainly seem at first glance that this is all nonsense.
But as with most things, some
Scientists have already demonstrated how to do this. According to a study titled "Central-Complex Control of Movement in the Freely Walking
Cockroach" "Holy crap, there's people that hooked cockroaches up to electricity and practice mind-control on them for a
Salary? I am in the wrong profession."
Seriously? I think it get boring after like a day. "Now boring is being controlled by insects,
Which is the entertainment industry." wow that was um..
shockingly honest
Speaking of shocking, and breaking an awkward silence
In that study, researchers proved that by stimulating certain parts of a cockroaches brain
They could get it to walk, change directions, even climb completely at will. Rick's methodology is obviously less sophisticated
But so are the results. The main takeaway here, though, is that by supplying small impulses to the roaches brain it is
scientifically plausible
That Rick could make certain parts of the cockroach twitch and crawl enough to carry his briny body along. "Now hold on just a second
There, Mattpat. I've read that study and-" wait what? you have? "I have interests beyond fart jokes and Dungeons & Dragons
You know. A-as I was saying, that study
indicates that the cockroaches brain was
stimulated with electric current and probably more importantly, those cockroaches were still alive so how on Earth is Rick getting a dead cockroach to walk?"
Good questions, Dan. First thing, it is totally possible to get dead bodies to behave this way by pumping them full of electricity. Heck,
We've known that dead animals plus electricity equals movement since demonstrations in the late 18th century by a scientist named
Giovanni Aldini
Aldini famously demonstrated that by hooking a corpse's brain to a battery, he could get the muscles in the faces, hands, and
Legs to move. It was actually this kind of demonstration that inspired Mary Shelley when she wrote
Frankenstein. "That still doesn't solve the problem of the electricity. Electric Pickles, while an excellent band name,
Don't seem very realistic." Pickles are actually great conductors of electricity.
But you don't have to believe me, check out this illuminated pickle switchboard created by Chili's for a rave
They were throwing, because apparently Chili's is where sanity goes to die or bad marketing decisions get made. One of the two.
"I prefer Shoney's." Hey to each, they're own.
At any rate, pickles conduct electricity so well because they're high sodium content gives them a strong charge.
And if we can see that Pickle Rick has a normal human nervous system, that means he does have electrical
Impulses running through him, so him prodding that Roach's brain with his tongue is the equivalent of jabbing it with a small battery. It would
Likely take a bit more trial and error than we see in the episode,
But it would be possible to find the certain regions of the Roach's brain that controlled its movement and then
Stimulate those to make himself a little zombie Roach wagon. "You win this round Mattpat.
But then how do you explain Pickle Rick's rat Armour? There's no stimulation of the brain there!
Are you telling me that you think Rick could control a rat's brain remotely?" I just think it Dan
I can prove it pickle Rick's rat suit seems to be controlled by the rats original brain and spinal cord
Which we see him attached himself to in the episode even
Linking the rats brain to his own with a metal spike that may or may not be a sewing needle with this kind of brain
To brain link it is
Absolutely plausible that Rick could control the rats limbs even if they are now attached to him in another study conducted by
scientists at the University of Washington
who if we're being honest were aiming just a wee bit higher than those Roach steer-in guys two subjects had their brains linked through a
system of
Electrodes when the first person thought about moving his or her fingers nothing else just thought about moving his fingers the fingers on the other
Person would move now before he get it into our heads to take over the classroom bully's brain and get him to punch himself over
And over again saying why he hidden yourself "why you hitting yourself?"
I should mention that this kind of technology isn't its earliest ages
But let's not forget Rick is the smartest man in the universe he can travel
Interdimensionally, so it's safe to say that he could make this work his tools are definitely rudimentary
But the mechanism that he uses to remote-control the rat's limbs totally makes sense
So humans can control the brains of other humans yeah?
But I don't think we can assume that this means we can just hook up our brains to anything we want
rats have weak tiny brains pretty much all they do is scurry and eat and occasionally teach ninjutsu to mutated Turtles. You bring up a
Totally reasonable point but it's not like rick is trying to get the rat to recite Shakespeare
All that his rat body needs to do is run jump climb and slash those are exactly the kinds of things that Rick should be
Able to make it do even though a rat's brain is small the part of it that controls the rats
Movement the motor cortex is actually structured very similarly
To the humans motor cortex in MIT at Dan the science of pickle rick is a whole lot sounder than even you realized cockroach
Ventriloquism is just a small electric charge away
And there is scientific proof that a human brain could control the movement of a rat's body
Remotely as long as their brains are somehow connected, which they are that's all true, but to quote my cardiologist
There's a big problem here, and it's salt-pickled Rick's body is obviously going to be a lot saltier than that of your average scientist
But as you said yourself earlier
He has a human brain. You've got a degree in neuroscience right pickle brine blood isn't going to be good for the brain
Yeah, I was hoping you wouldn't bring that up fine. Dan's right you guys well
It is hard to know exactly how much of pickle Rick is still Rick the human parts of pickle rick are gonna
Have a whole lot of trouble dealing with the pickle parts insert your own pickle parts joke here viewers
I mean you've certainly inserted your fair share this season Rick's got a lot to be proud of
anyway normal sodium concentration in the human body is a pretty narrow range from 135 to
145 millimoles per liter if you go just a little bit over that to a range of 160
millimoles per liter or higher you start to experience symptoms of salt poisoning otherwise known as hypernatremia and if we imagine that
Internally Rick's body fluids are essentially pickle brine which we kind of see in the episode when Jaguar shoots him and he starts bleeding brine
Everywhere well he's in big trouble
Pickle brine contains about 380 milligrams of sodium per fluid ounce so after we do some conversions to determine the solutions molarity
it's called math we find that pickle brine has a sodium concentration of
559 millimoles per liter or about four times the normal amount found in the human body
Which means it's not looking too
good for Rick and it gets even worse because the highest recorded sodium concentration in a human was less than half that amount at
255 millimoles per liter and that amount of salt ended up being fatal the reason salt poisoning is even a concern is because salt
Causes cells to retain water so Rick's hypernatremia would cause his still human brain cells to swell with water
Resulting in seizures and eventually death so like I said this theory that Rick can somehow survive out of his own body is pure fiction
Looks like that trip to Shoney's is all mine. Not so fast there Dan. I'll admit that Rick is gonna
Have a hard time living as a pitbull
But there is a different green piece of Frodo's that might have worked a little bit better in avocado
Avocados actually have much lower salt content than pickles do and what sodium they do contain would be kept in check by their high levels
of potassium
Which also helps regulate the flow of fluids into and out of cells
avocados also apparently conduct electricity
Because I guess somebody out there has hooked up a battery to every food product to see if you can run a current through it
Plus avocados contain a number of vitamins that are vital for brain function and
Avocados are what the internet would like to call thick full of trans fats fats that are
Essential for the coating of neurons so signals can be sent from the brain through the nerves and in Rick's case to the rats brain
So there you have it Dan
I mean granted avocado Rick doesn't have quite the same ring to it
But Rick's plan isn't entirely without scientific backing only now instead of fighting rats
He'll have to fight off Millennials trying to scoop him onto an overpriced piece of toast, but hey, that's just a theory
Hold on a sec you owe me a lunch what I just
Demonstrated that Rick could somewhat plausibly survive using science the bet was
Could pickle Rick be a thing and not could Rick turn himself into any item found in a farmers market pay up
Hey fine by me going to lunch with the creator of two of my favorite shows is not a loss in my book so we
Going to show he's then now that was just another bit how about Chili's I got a hankering for some baby back ribs after you
mentioned it
It struck me as a sizzler kind of guy for some reason by the way can we talk?
Evil Morty just wait until the end of this season this Sunday at 11:30 p.m.
On Adult Swim or immediately afterward on YouTube since their live copy right detection is pretty crap well
That's one thing we can both agree on
Can we eat now you drive
I don't have a car wait
wait before we go can you tell everyone to subscribe?
Shameless plug munch just let your shield for Adult Swim dude seems even I came on your show to be poorly
Photoshopped and serve as a straw man for your scientific research you clearly come out on top here, please
I'll throw in a skillet chocolate chip cookie
fine
Subscribe by doing the bell thing
You heard the man, do the bell thing
now back to evil Morty
Do you see I've got a this theory coming up?