‘Rick and Morty’ Season 4: 5 Things You May Have Missed in Episode 6

By the end of “Never Ricking Morty” we learn the dark truth. Not only is everything in Season 4, Episode 6 non-canon. It’s all an elaborate joke in the guise of a toy train to trap Rick and Morty in an anthology episode. But there’s another meta level to the Story Train.

If you pay attention to the circular layout of the Story Train, it looks an awful lot like Dan Harmon’s Circle Theory of Story. Harmon has long been outspoken about how he uses a circular format to breakdown The Hero’s Journey. Though “Never Ricking Morty” replaces a few of the circle’s steps with musical breaks and stories about Santa Claus, the basic beats can still be found under all the meta insanity.

If “One Crew Over the Crewcoo’s Morty” taught us anything it’s that Morty is a terrible storyteller. That was further confirmed in this episode. Rick, desperate to confuse the Story Master and regain control of this meta narrative, forces Morty to tell a made up story on the spot. Not only do Morty’s stories all contain evil scorpions for some reason. In his first one you can see a framed photograph of Morty’s son from Gazorpazorp, the murderous Morty Jr.

Speaking of Morty’s terrible stories, he comes up with a truly awful one for his mom and sister. When Morty’s first story distraction doesn’t work, Rick begs him to come up with another that passes the Bechdel test. That’s very much a real thing.

Also known as the Bechdel–Wallace test, this unofficial examination of how women are portrayed was developed by Alison Bechdel in 1985. Bechdel first introduced the rule in her comic Dykes to Watch Out For. In order to pass the Bechdel test, three things need to happen. There need to be at least two women (1) who talk to each other (2) about a subject that isn’t a man (3). Though the comic was mostly meant to skewer how terribly women are treated in Hollywood, it’s been adopted by many creators as real guide to writing. But of course all guides come with loopholes. As stilted, sexist, and weird as Morty’s story about Beth and Summer shooting scorpions with their periods is, it technically passes the feminist test.

The secret star of “Never Ricking Morty” was far and away the Tickets Please man. This deceptively routine fixture on the Story Train ripped off his shirt to reveal a six pack of kickass. While fighting Tickets Please, Rick shoots a hole in the Story Train, sucking his arm into the abyss just like in Snowpiercer. And because Rick and Morty exists to go from weird to weirder, Tickets Please’s journey into the void ended with his top half simultaneously floating both in space and in an arcade as he spurted blood.

As graphic and weird as all this is, we’ve seen this arcade before. Tickets Please / Floaty Bloody Man is actually just a regular guy who was hanging out with his family inside of Blitz and Chips, the intergalactic Dave & Busters Rick and Morty visited in Season 2’s “Mortynight Run.” Not only that but it looks like this guy was playing either Roy: A Life Well Lived or another simulation game to transform him into Mr. Tickets Please. Who knows if he ever really existed or died.

“Never Ricking Morty” has so many blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments, it’s one you’re going to need to rewatch with your thumb over the pause button. The first surprising cameo has to do with fan favorite Mr. Poopybutthole. One of the many vignettes features Evil Morty flocked by a literal army of Ricks. And who’s standing beside him other than a black cloak-wearing, scarred, and Star Wars-ified version of everyone’s favorite professor, Mr. Poopybutthole? Adding to the Star Wars references, one of Rick’s ex-girlfriends was apparently a Yoda.

Up next are the musical fanatics. In the musical break Story Car, a group of unnamed characters share their favorite moments when Rick and Morty joined them in a song. To drive home their love of showtunes, almost all of these characters are wearing outfits that embody a different Broadway classic. There’s a cat from Cats and a Phantom of the Opera, just to name a couple.

And rounding out Season 4, Episode 6’s parade of references is a very specific children’s show. After Rick and Morty defeat Story Master with the greatest story ever told, the story of Jesus, a bunch of kooky characters appear including a smiling cross and a group of talking vegetables. That cucumber and tomato are a clear nod to Veggie Tales, a Christian children’s show about talking vegetables that tell stories from the Bible. Never underestimate which obscure parts of pop culture Rick and Morty will mock.

New episodes of Rick and Morty premiere on Adult Swim Sundays at 11:30/10:30c p.m.

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