Top 10 Rick and Morty Easter Eggs (So Far)
#10: Pop Culture Title References
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If you ever glanced upon the episode titles for “Rick and Morty,” you will undoubtedly start to notice a theme. The names of each episode reference various popular media. You have a few obvious ones like “Anatomy Park” compared to “Jurassic Park” and “Lawnmower Dog” versus “The Lawnmower Man”! But further down the rabbit hole, parodies of titles with character names become more common, such as “Mortynight Run,” “Total Rickall,” or even “Edge Of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat!” The taking of inspiration doesn’t stop there! Plotlines take various elements from pop culture and incorporate them into the Smith family adventures! It makes it all the more enjoyable when you can point at the screen and say, “I know where that’s from!”
#9: Interdimensional Customs
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This is probably the most specific Easter Egg on this list. Way back during the pilot, Rick and Morty are trying to sneak some Mega-seeds through Interdimensional Customs. As a result, we get to see the many aliens that populate the station, some of which you may recognize. In a blink and you’ll miss it a moment, one resembles the Xenomorph from “Alien,” the robots from “Mystery Science Theatre 3000,” and a Prawn from “District 9”! Another Adult Swim show also makes a quick cameo, as we see Mooninite from “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”! It’s like playing an alien version of “Where's Waldo?”
#8: Harmonious Claptrap
The co-creator of “Rick and Morty,” Dan Harmon, has his own production company slated at the end of each episode. But this end-card doesn’t stay the same throughout its run. Near the beginning of the show, Dan Harmon was married to American comedian Erin McGathy. We saw the two during the end card cuddled up on a couch. After their divorce in 2015, the end-card changed to show Dan Harmon drinking on the couch alone. It's a little depressing. Since Season 4, the end-card has changed again since Dan Harmon has entered a relationship with writer and producer Cody Heller. Regardless, it is a happier image for each episode to end on.
#7: Dan Harmon Hates Time Travel
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It’s no secret that the creators despise time travel as a plot device, despite the characters being based on the duo from “Back to the Future.” In Rick’s garage, you can see a box of “Time Travel” stuff, subtly “shelving” the idea. The show has used time travel in later seasons, but they still like to take shots at it. During “The Vat of Acid Episode,” Morty pressures Rick into creating a “reset button,” which he then uses during a montage accompanied with Eric Clapton’s “It's in the Way That You Use It.” The use of this song is a callback to a notorious roast during Harmontown, where Dan made fun time travel in Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar.”
#6: Background Jokes & References
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The advantage of streaming allows us to pause TV shows mid-air, so we get to examine each frame as if it were a painting. The creators of “Rick and Morty” use that as an opportunity to hide jokes and references in the background or with throwaway comments. During the episode “The Ricklantis Mixup,” you can see a “Doctor Who” Rick amongst the crowds! In “Morty’s Mind Blowers,” play the Truth Tortoise backward and you get a secret message about The Beatles! And if you look in the background of Rick’s garage in the first episode of season 3, you can see a framed photo of Doofus Rick! Jerry can’t get over him!
#5: Community References
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It’s great whenever you’re a fan of a creator, and you find little snippets of their work in other works. During the episode “Lawnmower Dog,” the character and plot were references to Justin Roiland’s failed concept “Dog World.” But by far the fan favorite of references were of “Community.” In “Auto Erotic Assimilation,” Rick asks Unity to create a TV show for him, which he proceeds to cancel and recommission. This chain of events and the characters on screen closely resembles Dan Harmon’s old sitcom! Even small details like Clone Beth’s blue streak in her hair can be seen as reference to Evil Britta in “Community.” There are countless references laden throughout the series, but the “Community” ones are some of the best.
#4: The Show’s Continuity
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The creators of the show have real attention to detail, where simple mentions become important moments later on, like the legendary Battle of Blood Ridge. The show has been very consistent with its continuity. Throughout its run, the Smith household has sustained a lot of damage. The biggest was when the house got teleported away to another planet during the season 1 finale. If you look closely, the driveway still has a large crack through it as do a few other places along the property as a result of the teleportation, which is present in episodes since.
#3: Gravity Falls
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This little easter egg is a fan favorite, so it has to be mentioned. The creator of Gravity Falls, Alex Hirche, and Justin Roiland are close friends and planned for the universes of the two shows to cross over. They planned for characters, like the rainbow suspenders guy, to crossover between them! Unfortunately, none of these epic crossovers ever came to fruition, with only passing references being made between the show. While we do see Morty versions of Dipper and Mable appear in the background of the show, the greatest easter egg we got was Gruncle Stan’s stuff popping out of some random portals during “Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind.”
#2: Foreshadowing
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Just as much as the show likes to maintain the continuity of old episodes, the show also loves to foreshadow future plot lines. Rick shoves some alien rocks into his spacecraft when Morty kills “Fart” in “Mortynight Run.” In “Total Rickall,” we see those same rocks dumped in the trash, missing the pink spots there in the previous episodes. We can tell that it was the mad scientist who made the mistake. This level of detail is what makes the show so great! It led to some awesome call-backs including the appearance of Naruto and Rick’s old band with Birdperson and Squanchy.
#1: Evil Morty Theories
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Everyone is trying to piece together who Evil Morty is and what’s his connection to Rick. We know that he has an affinity to C-137 as he used his android to capture him instead of killing him. In season 5 episode 8, Rick meets his past self, who goes on to insult the current Rick for moving in with an adult version of his abandoned daughter. Rick also has flashbacks of a baby Morty in season 1, a time in which he was supposedly gone according to Beth. It leads us to believe that President Morty was Rick C-137’s original grandson. These are all hypotheticals, however. We can’t wait to see what future easter eggs reveal about this character.
