Top 20 Darkest Rick and Morty Moments Ever

“Morty’s Mind Blowers”
When Rick takes Morty through a collection of memories so bad Morty asked to have them erased, things get pretty dark. In this memory, an alien has kidnapped Beth Smith and makes her choose between which of her children to save – Morty, or Summer. It’s a classic “Sophie’s Choice” dilemma – that is, until Beth immediately blurts out Summer’s name. Rick arrives to save the day and finds the situation immediately awkward. And it certainly is! Morty now knows that his mother would rather he die and his sister live. She didn’t even hesitate…

“Mortyplicity”
When Rick’s decoy family makes a decoy family (and so on), eventually the quality starts to degrade. A wooden version of Jerry abandons his family to die, hoarding the varnish for himself. In a post credit scene, wooden Jerry applies varnish to himself and swims in a river, only to be attacked by beavers who build a dam out of his body. However, after a flood, he’s submerged and wakes up in a desert in the far future. After spending time as an ornament in a cowboy bar, wooden Jerry is set on fire. Then, he awakens to see that he’s built into a cross. Wooden Jerry betrayed his family so that he could live – his karmic punishment is that he never dies.

“Rixty Minutes”
Television standards in different realities are different from ours, and that includes TV commercials. While watching interdimensional cable, Rick and Morty watch an ad for Strawberry Smiggles, a brand of cereal. The mascot, Tophat Jones, is an amalgam of the mascots for Lucky Charms and Trix, being a leprechaun with rabbit ears. Much like those characters, Jones is also insistent that no one get his cereal. While he does eat the cereal, unlike those real-world mascots, Jones arguably has a worse fate. Soon after eating the sugary breakfast meal, he is attacked by two children, who cut him open to get at the partially digested Strawberry Smiggles. Jones claims to see demons, and watching him get torn apart is equally terrifying for us.

“Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat”
When Rick dies, he finds his brain reuploaded to clone vats in other realities. Unfortunately for him, most of them turn out to be fascist dystopias. That is until he reaches one inhabited by intelligent wasps. Wasp Rick, in contrast to all the fascist Ricks, is surprisingly empathetic and nice for being a member of a species that eats its prey alive. He even invites our Rick to dinner with his lovely family. Except…well, it means they all devour a still living, and intelligent, caterpillar who looks like Morty’s math teacher, Mr. Goldenfold. Also, his children. The family being well-adjusted despite the grisly meal they’re partaking in makes for great, if grim, comedy though.

“Rickmurai Jack”
When Evil Morty invites Rick and Morty to dinner at the Citadel of Ricks, things are bound to get crazy and violent. Evil Morty restrains the duo and scans Rick’s brain for the blueprints to the citadel. He also lets Morty in on some of the Ricks’ dirty laundry. He explains that while “evil” Ricks may use Mortys for camouflage, the “good” ones do it too. Ricks discovered it worked so well that they began doing anything to create Mortys to accompany them. These methods include manipulating Morty’s parents into falling in love and even genetically engineering Mortys for the express purpose of being sidekicks and servants to Ricks. To manipulate and use your own family like that…that’s bleak stuff.

“The Ricklantis Mixup” [aka “Tales from the Citadel”]
One of the more bizarre things about “Rick and Morty” is that an entire city’s worth of alternate versions of the genius Rick and not-so-genius Morty live and work together on one massive space station. One of the businesses on the Citadel is a cookie factory, whose products are flavored by the joy distilled from the single memory of a Rick held prisoner. As if this wasn’t grim enough, one of the factory’s employees frees the trapped Rick by killing him, but is then used to replace “Simple Rick” just when he thinks he’s escaped. And we thought Willy Wonka was diabolical!

“Look Who’s Purging Now”
While on a planet that basically does its own version of the movie franchise “The Purge” every year by acting out violent crimes with no repercussions, Rick and Morty get caught up in the event. When attempting to send a signal from a lighthouse, Morty loses his temper to the point where he pushes the elderly lighthouse keeper down the steps. When the Iron Man style suits Rick called for arrive, he and Morty go on a rampage to get back to their ship, with Morty in particular showing great relish in taking out his frustrations on the villagers, not all of which are out to kill them. It’s a dark turn by the teenage protagonist. Luckily it’s all because of a chemical…right?

“The Rickshank Rickdemption”
The Season 2 finale of “Rick and Morty” sees Rick Sanchez give himself up to the Galactic Federation and going to prison; seemingly to protect his family. However, after escaping imprisonment and his son-in-law Jerry asking his wife Beth to choose between them, Rick’s motives are shown to be less clear cut. In a deranged rant to Morty in the garage, echoing the one in the pilot episode, Rick reveals his imprisonment was an elaborate way for him to push Jerry out of their lives, while also promising darker adventures to come. He also manages to make a tangent about Szechuan sauce from McDonald’s surprisingly menacing.

“The Ricklantis Mixup” [aka “Tales from the Citadel”]
After Rick’s near destruction of the Citadel and the deaths of its council, the bizarre dimension-hopping city is in need of new leadership. An election is held and a Morty manages to take a surprising lead. However, an assassination attempt by one of his former Morty staffers and a few other hints make it clear that something’s off. All becomes clear when the newly elected Morty leader has an influential cabal of Ricks murdered and a familiar tune begins playing; revealing this Morty to be the evil one previously encountered in the series, who has demonstrated that he can be just as bad or worse than any Rick.

“Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktim's Morty”
Jerry meets a cat that can talk. The cat glosses over the how or why. He just wants to have fun. After hanging out with Jerry at the beach, the pair gets picked up by Rick. Feigning engine trouble, Rick puts the car down and traps the cat so he can scan the feline’s mind. When viewing the cat’s memories, Rick is highly disturbed, as is Jerry when he insists on looking. Both men have a breakdown from what they see and demand the cat leave. Rick erases Jerry’s memory of it, in one of his kindest acts. We never see what the cat did, but Rick and Jerry both go to a dark enough place that our imaginations can do the rest.

“The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy”
Morty’s dad Jerry rarely goes on adventures with Rick, partly because of their mutual dislike, but also because Jerry is easily intimidated and it would be easy for him to die. Rick seeks to prevent this outcome by taking Jerry on a trip to a resort with an immortality field that prevents visitors from dying from otherwise fatal injuries; including a pair of alien children who shoot one another with real laser guns. An attempt on Rick’s life unfortunately causes the field to deactivate, causing the little boy alien to shoot and kill the little girl, Lisa, who’s presumably his sister. Talk about something that would mess you up for life!

“Forgetting Sarick Mortshall”
After Morty spills portal fluid on his hand, it connects to Nick, a guy who claims to have been wronged by Rick. After Rick ditches Morty for a pair of crows, Morty decides to team up with Nick instead, breaking his new bud out of an asylum. However, Nick is soon revealed to be dangerous and unhinged. When Morty tries to escape him, the two get into a fight near a train. To sever their connection, literally, Morty cuts off his own hand by putting his arm on the tracks. He then drops his appendage into Nick’s portal, essentially erasing his deranged ex-partner from existence. It’s a bad and really weird way to kill someone, and another example of Morty’s loss in morality.

“Total Rickall”
When parasites that insert themselves into the memories of people infest the Smith residence, it leads to a ton of dark moments. Beth killing Sleepy Gary, the man she thinks is her husband, is also quite dark, but this moment takes the cake. All the parasites are seemingly dead, after the family kills everyone they only have fond memories of. But when they sit down to dinner, Beth is suspicious of Mr. Poopybutthole. And she has good reason to be – the wacky character even seems to have inserted himself into the opening credits! However, upon shooting him, she discovers the strange yellow man is real, and not a parasite. It traumatizes Beth and leads to Mr. Poopybutthole’s hospitalization. It’s a phenomenal, but incredibly sad, twist.

“The Ricks Must Be Crazy”
While visiting a dimension where giant spiders coexist with humans, Rick, Morty, and Summer encounter engine trouble. While the former two investigate the problem inside the battery, Rick instructs his car’s artificial intelligence to “keep Summer safe.” The A.I. takes this incredibly seriously, as it first stuns or kills people who come close to the car. This eventually draws the attention of the police, leading to a horrifically traumatic experience for one of the officers. Although the A.I. is able to resolve things peacefully eventually, its initial, draconian methods are quite traumatizing for Summer and the viewers.

“A Rickconvenient Mort”
Morty meets a Captain Planet-like superhero named Planetina and falls hard for her. He takes some extreme steps to be together with her, including running away from home and killing her now corrupted adult kid heroes who planned to sell her. However, Planetina’s attempts to save the Earth become increasingly violent. This culminates in her confrontation with a group of miners, who refuse to stop work, since it’s their livelihood. Planetina snaps and destroys the mine, killing 300 people. Morty is understandably horrified that someone he loves is now a mass murderer. While their breakup is hard to watch, Planetina’s ecoterrorism is even more upsetting.

“Rickmurai Jack”
Rick has always been vague on his origins, but during their confrontation with Evil Morty at the Citadel, Morty takes a look into Rick’s memories. Through them, we learn that Rick’s original wife and daughter were killed by another Rick, which Rick previously claimed was false. His pursuit of their killer leads Rick to go on a rampage across the multiverse, fighting various versions of himself, and galactic governments. He massacres so many Ricks, the others essentially band together against him, with the ones who survive creating the Citadel and suing for peace. He then crashes into Morty's garage and begins his adventures with him. Rick’s capacity for self-destruction is on a scale that boggles the mind! No wonder he’s got issues…

“Solaricks”
A reset on portal users sends Rick to his original dimension. His doorbell rings and he greets his neighbor, Mr. Goldmanbachmajorian. The elderly man reveals a note he wrote himself, which implies that before Rick left his dimension, he created a time loop in the minds of everyone on Earth, if not the entire universe. While everyone still aged, they were unable to die and were stuck reliving the same day Rick’s family died. Rick stops the time loop soon afterwards, killing Mr. Goldmanbachmajorian, and presumably a lot of other people too. Rick is positively terrifying when you stop to think about what he can do.

“Rick Potion No. 9”
Rick’s capacity for destruction is as big as his ego, and that ain’t small! After a request for a love potion from Morty turns viral, Rick’s attempts to fix it actually make things worse; creating an apocalyptic spread of the virus which mutates the inhabitants of their version of Earth into monsters. Rather than attempt to fix things, Rick and Morty abandon that version of reality and go to a version of Earth where their counterparts died; burying their own dead bodies in the backyard. While Rick takes it in stride, Morty is completely traumatized and we would be too in his shoes.

“Auto Erotic Assimilation”
Rick’s personal life outside his family is rarely delved into, and one of the few times we’ve seen reference to it is when he runs into an ex-love interest of his, Unity, a hive mind. Although, they and Rick reconnect and engage in a lot of hedonistic activities, ultimately Unity breaks up with Rick after their intoxication leads to a loss of control over their unruly hosts. While it was probably in both of their interests, Rick takes it harder than one might expect, given his character; attempting to vaporize his own head and only surviving by passing out in a drunken stupor. Rick Sanchez is a monumentally self-destructive person, but seeing him actually try to end his own life was still shockingly dark.

“Meeseeks and Destroy”
Morty’s own attempts at finding a fun adventure don’t turn out well. He and Rick soon land themselves on trial for the murder of a giant, but after being exonerated from any wrongdoing, they come across something even more upsetting. While in a restroom in a tavern, Morty encounters an anthropomorphic jellybean, who soon attempts to rape Morty; forcing the distraught teen to fight off his attacker in a brutal and incredibly upsetting moment. Seeing one of the protagonists nearly raped is an incredibly dark place to take the show to. We’re just glad Rick gave Mr. Jellybean what he deserved.