‘Rick and Morty’: 5 Things You Missed in Season 5, Episode 2

Once Rick (Justin Roiland) figures out what’s happened to his decoys, he dubs the whole mess an Asimov cascade. We’ve covered what that means in depth. But the basic rundown is this. Sci-fi author Isaac Asimov is best known for creating the Three Laws of Robotics, a fictional device used to explain how artificial intelligence can be created in a way that never harms humans. As it plays out in the Rick and Morty universe, every Rick decoy is smart enough to have the same idea as his creator. That means that every Rick decoy has created his own decoy family, and those decoys have created decoys. Thus it’s a cascade of robots built with Asimov’s laws in mind.

That explains one high concept in “Mortyplicity.” What about the prisoner’s dilemma? This idea comes up in game theory. It basically states that two rational adults may choose not to cooperate with each other even if it’s in their best interest to cooperate. Essentially Prisoner A knows that Prisoner B can benefit from betraying them. Because of this chance of betrayal, Prisoner A is less likely to trust Prisoner B even though agreeing to the partnership would help them both. That’s basically why every Rick refuses to work with every other Rick. Rick knows he’ll eventually betray the alternate version of him so he knows those other Ricks will betray him as well. Instead he chooses to fight alone.

It was only a matter of time before Rick and Morty made a Highlander joke. After figuring out that all of the squid aliens are actually decoy families in disguise, Rick realizes that all of his decoys have made decoy families of their own. Since every decoy family believes they’re the real deal and since this family has a problem with violence, the only solution is a last-man-standing duel to the death. That’s the premise of Christopher Lambert’s 1986 action fantasy movie, Highlander.

But there’s another nod to that movie that’s more than a throwaway joke. The post-credits scenes revolves around an immortal wooden puppet version of Jerry (Chris Parnell) becoming trapped in a time loop that does cowboys before Christianity for some reason. While wooden Jerry is living through this hell, Queen’s “Who Wants to Live Forever” plays. This was the song that lead guitarist Brian May wrote specifically for Highlander.

“Mort Dinner Rick Andre” saw Beth (Sarah Chalke) and Jerry rekindling their sex life. While they were getting a bit too frisky in front of the family, Rick says, “There are suicide capsules in all of your teeth. Do what you want with that.” Fittingly, “Mortyplicity” shows one of the Ricks dying by a suicide capsule in his tooth. The moral? Never doubt Rick.

When one of the decoy Ricks is at his wits end, he makes a drastic decision. Creating a giant hologram of his own poorly rendered and pixelated floating head, he calls for all of the decoys to meet in one place for a Highlander-style battle. It wouldn’t be Rick and Morty if he didn’t make an obscure reference, calling his creation of the hologram a “Star Fox boss Season 4 callback.”

This Mad Libs of a description actually makes sense. Rick’s hologram looks a bit like Emperor Andross, the main antagonist of the Star Fox series and the nemesis of Fox McCloud. Andross almost always appears as a massive floating head, but the design in “Mortyplicity” seems to draw on the more abstract 2008 version rather than his 1993 premiere. That “Season 4 callback” joke likely refers to a combination of “Rattlestar Ricklatica” and “Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri.” “Rattlestar Ricklatica” pushed an abstract sci-fi concept to its absolute limit much like “Mortyplicity” did. And “Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri” follows a giant battle after an episode that questions the agency and humanity of artificial intelligence.

Did you spend all night with a migraine as you tried to figure out which Smith family was real? Then you’re going to hate this. One of the decoy Ricks explicitly states how people can tell the real family from the fakes, and it makes a lot of sense.

As previously stated, this information comes from a Rick we know to be a decoy, so take it with a grain of salt. That Rick says that the decoy families are limited to standalone terrestrial adventures. Basically if a Rick and a Smith family are in the middle of a story you have no context for or they’re unable to leave Earth, they’re a decoy. That explains the absence of portal guns and other interdimensional and planetary antics during this war. That also means we know the real family. The only family who leaves Earth during this episode is the one shown in the final seconds of the episode hanging out with Space Beth. It’s a “Ricklantis Mixup” all over again — a huge saga about a ton of Ricks and Mortys (and now Beths, Summers, and Jerrys) that has little to do with our main Rick and Morty.

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