(Rick?:)Geez.(Jerry:) you speak the true-true. I'm in Cloud Atlas. What's Cloud Atlas? How is this possible? Infinite Timelines, infinite possibilities including a timeline where Jerry's a movie star look you guys are getting excited about the wrong aspect of this device Jus- what? Look at this! *intro music* Hello internet! Welcome to Film Theory, the Cromulon certified Schwiftiest show on the web. Oh Yeah! You gotta get Schwifty! but you know what's decidedly not Schwifty? That we still have MONTHS to wait before we can feast our eyes on season three of one of the best shows on TV right now, Rick and Morty. Man! If only I could get my hands on Rick's portal gun and travel to an alternate dimension where the episodes are already out Actually come to think of it If I had a portal gun, I'd probably use it for other things.. There are a lot of attractive women there Morty! They all wanted time with me. One of the reasons I love this show so much and how it's always dropping really smart nerdy jokes about reality, science and philosophy But it isn't above some good old-fashioned toilet humor. What Rick?! No, you can't! Too late Morty the hole's opening. No, no! Rick you don't understan- [fart] There's just a lot more where that came from too! Ah the classic fart joke But it's the characters in Rick and morty that are the best elements of the show. Jerry's soul-crushing mediocrity. Morty's endless sexual frustration. Summer's endless quest to be popular and Beth's domestic alchoholism. Actually that last one probably shouldn't be funny. But it is! Then of course there's Rick the enigmatic Interdimensional genius. The end of season 2 leaves us with a cliffhanger that promises some kind of revelation about Rick's past And that is what we're theorizing about today. Without getting too specific, I'm gonna go ahead and warn you all now: Do not watch any further, if you haven't seen up through season two of Rick and Morty. Check obligatory spoiler alert off the to-do list and~ Let's go. The fan community for the show has been losing their minds about rick getting jailed at the end of season Two's finale How's he gonna get out is season 3 gonna start with an epic prison break a la "Prison Break" style But the biggest question of all is what did Rick even do to get locked up in the first place? Not much is known about The circumstances surrounding his imprisonment. I mean, in the past He's made some passing statements about having a lot of enemies As you know Morty I've got a lot of enemies in the universe to consider my genius a threat galactic terrorists, a few sub-galactic dictators, most of the entire intergalactic government wherever you find people with heads up their asses. And at bird person's wedding he graces Beth with some casual wedding chatter. The road your Father and I walked together is soaked deeply with the blood of both friends and enemies Must be nice. Then right before the vows are given it turns out Summer's friend Tammy is an undercover Narc for the galactic federation And her wooing of bird person was all just an elaborate ruse to trap Rick and throw him into the big house And that's it. That's all we know. we don't really know the specifics of why Rick is labelled as a terrorist. It's widely accepted that the show's creators are withholding the answers to these questions, waiting until the new episodes come out to reveal the specifics about Rick's mysterious past, but screw that why wait for them? What if the answer to Rick's misdeeds are right in front of us already? Hang on to your head hats because I'm about to show you what I got cuz honestly I think I got it all figured out First here's a clip from the season 2 finale. And what are you in for? Everything. I don't think Rick is being dismissive here. Rick is in prison because he hasn't just broken laws, He's broken entire systems of laws and the realities that harvard them. Rick is labeled a terrorist and thrown into prison because he is literally a serial destroyer of worlds That's my theory anyway. Does it sound like a stretch? It's not. For a prime example of Rick's nonchalant world destroying antics, we only need to look at the end of the infamous episode: Rick potion #9. It goes like this Morty realizes It's gonna take a lot more than an evening of Netflix and chill to get Jessica to be his girlfriend. So he asks Rick to brew him a love potion. When the potion's effects accidentally spread to the entire town, Rick's attempt at a cure Doesn't quite go as planned. The entire town gets transformed into classic 80s horror movie nightmares, and after another failed attempt at a cure the whole world becomes infected, so what do Rick and Morty do? he finds a dimension that is exactly like his current dimension, save for two things: One, the attempt to cure the world of the virus is successful, and two, the Rick and Morty of that respective universe are seconds away from death. That way rick and morty from the infected reality can simply bury the bodies of the deceased Rick and Morty take their place, and go on with their lives. Now, you might be thinking that this is a really contrived solution to the show's problem. It's awfully convenient that a reality exists in which everything is the same, except for those two variables I mean What are the chances that such a reality would even exist? Well, according to the canon of the show, the odds are practically a hundred percent. "There's an infinite number of realities Morty." Let me explain. The series Rick and Morty appears to adhere to what's known as Everett's interpretation of quantum mechanics. Better known as the many-worlds interpretation Before many-worlds, reality was always viewed as a single unfolding history. A timeline where one event leads to another, leads to the next. Everett's Interpretation however, proposed that reality is much less like a lime and more like a tree, with branches at [Keith's] point for other possible outcomes are realized. To put it simply, everything that could possibly have happened in our past, but didn't, has occurred in the past of some other universe. For instance the other week I was in the theater and presented with a dilemma. A bag of perfectly good popcorn on the ground. my moral quandary: do I eat that seemingly perfectly good bag of floor corn, Or do I leave the floor corn where it belongs. On the floor. I even posted the debate on Twitter in the comments raged Despite my better judgment and the popular vote I decided to give the floor corn a pass, but by the many-worlds interpretation There's a universe where I ate that floor corn and suffer the consequences of that decision whether it was reveling an artificial buttery goodness Or getting the herb well floor corn aside. The same is true for Rick and morty in the show There's a universe where rick decides to make the love potion for morty turning the world into Chaos and one where he doesn't and life Goes on as normal. So if virtually every reality Exists then Rick can dimension hop as much as he wants. Leaving behind destroyed old realities and inhabiting new ones that conform to whatever condition he desires. And as you can imagine, Rick jumping from One Universe Branch to another Whenever it suits him is messing with the order of those other worlds. For instance if Rick and morty are supposed to be dead in this new dimension they hopped to in Rick potion #9, their arrival from the Cronenberg universe is throwing a whole new set of variables into an otherwise closed system And that's going to create problems to the order of this many world system. Which begs the question how many times has rick done this? if we look back at the end of Rick potion #9, Rick seems oddly Nonchalant about the whole burying his own dead body thing. While morty has a mind melting existential crisis, Rick just grabs a beer and watches some TV. It's clear that this is not his first time at the rodeo. He's done this before. As a matter of fact in the very first scene of the entire show, Rick destroys another world Don't remember? Let's take a look. In the cold open to the pilot, Rick drunkenly attempts to nuke the entire world in order to allow a fresh start. Even though Morty eventually talks him out of it, Rick passes out before he can disarm the bomb. The countdown sequence gets closer and closer to launch, and we hear that the bomb is fully armed right before the show takes us to the title sequence. But what happened that the show's creators aren't showing us There's no way Morty, who is characterized as naive and not brilliant, could figure out how to stop the launch sequence himself. So boom, the show opens with Rick's favorite drunken pastime destroying an entire reality I mean, if this is the kind of guy who had burned down his entire Brick-and-Mortar startup. Just because he got bored There's little doubt he'll also destroy entire worlds when they start to tire on him Maybe that's what the devil was referring to when he said this in the episode Something Ricked (This Way Comes). I mean seriously, I may be the devil, but your grandpa is the devil. We really have no way of telling just what dimension we're in or how many times Rick has hopped realities. Heck, every time a new episode starts we could be in an entirely new dimension. How about all the societal disillusionment brought up by the Cromulons and get Shwifty. Entire faiths are dismantled due to the giant floating things in the sky that almost destroy the entire world. Yet We see no remnants of the headist religion in any episodes that follow that's because that reality was left behind in between episodes It's clear that Rick does a fair amount of interdimensional Travel in between episodes as evidenced by the scan on his portal gun in close Rick counters of the Rick kind. Who's to say that he comes back to the same reality every time? In all likelihood, we're seeing a different reality almost every time. But Matpat, (you're probably saying) he has to be in the same dimension throughout the show because he's referred to as Earth Rick C-137. C-137 of course referring to the dimension he resides in. well the prevailing wisdom is that the episodes one through six of season one take place in dimensions C-137. And after Rick and Morty cronenberg the world up in Rick potion #9, he travels to another unnamed dimension but what makes us so sure that the initial dimension We're watching is C-137? If we think back to some of the details given to us throughout the series some things just don't add up. for one were taught that Rick left Beth for 20 years before he moved into the garage and Re-entered her life. Yet, in Close Rick-counters of the Rick kind, We see some of Rick's memories projected onto the screen. One of them is holding baby morty But that doesn't make sense. If rick has been gone for 20 years and Morty is still in high school, then how could he be present for Morty's infancy? If Earth Rick C-137's memories indicate a different history than the Beth of the initial dimension, there's no way that episode 1 through 6 took place in C-137. Truth is, Rick has hopped to and from so many dimensions, He doesn't even remember what dimension He's in anymore. in the episode Morty Night Run, Rick and Morty drop Jerry off at a daycare specially designed to keep Jerrys busy while their Rick's and Mortys are off on their irresponsible adventures now. What's telling here? Is that when Rick is filling out the admissions paperwork he writes C-137 for his own dimension, But N/A for Jerry's strange detail right no obviously this jerry doesn't exist in a paradoxical non dimension He's from somewhere. So why does Rick write Not applicable here? because Rick destroys and switches realities, so often that he isn't even sure which one He's in at the moment, but the kicker for me is the show's intro in the final shot of the awesome opening sequence We see a visual reference to HP lovecraft's cthulhu. A giant cosmic entity that's so widely known as the destroyer of worlds So what's most interesting to me about this particular moment? Is that most of the other clips in the series intro are later revealed in the context of a full episode. This clip isn't anywhere to be found in any episode in either season one or season two. So why include it especially? Considering it takes up too much revered spot as the image that takes us to the title card well It's not a mistake dear viewers, It's a deliberate reference to Rick the world destroying terrorist who fancies himself a cosmic deity He has the power to save or destroy entire worlds, and he is the reason I'm alive at all. But hey, that's just a theory. A film theory! And, cut. If you want more Shwifty Rick and Morty action, Click here to check out my friends at Wisecrack and their video on the Philosophy of Rick and Morty If you liked this video You'll love that one covering everything from Cosmic body were to jerry being the everyman and finally before you go aim your portal gun right here to subscribe to the film Theorists why would you do that well duh for more cool videos like this you made it this deep into the video So you must have really liked it. So why not keep the notifications coming? I mean next episode is gonna be all about a marvel movie that I think everyone's really excited about so if you want to subscribe To make sure that that one winds up in your feed it wouldn't be a bad idea just sayin. Make the smart call. subscribe. [Subtitles refined by SyncActual]
The only part that really has any discussion value is the part where we see Rick seeing young Morty. He's right, he can't have been gone for 20 years and also have seen baby Morty. That or he snuck in one time and picked him up and then left. That or he was dimension hopping.
I'm actually really surprised that he didn't use this theory as an explanation for Mr. Poopybutthole. He seriously appears out of nowhere, and is treated as if he's been there all along. What if he WAS in the dimension that episode takes place in, but not the previous ones?
Doesn't Rick say in the Love Potion episode that "we only have 2 or 3 more resets, tops" or something along the lines of that?
I know that there should really be infinite dimensions but Rick seems to imply that re-dos are limited.
I like how he didn't even mention the time Rick LITERALLY admitted to destroying a planet. It was after Beth shot Mr. Poopybutthole I believe, and he said that he had done something similar but "on a planetary scale". That alone is a good reason to get locked up in space jail IMO
"The answer is don't think about it"
Edit: I don't mean you can't think about it. Watching TV is supposed to be fun, stop giving me homework.
I think this guy feels that the writers are a lot more concerned with continuity than they actually are.
Eh. I sorta disagree with him.
I don't think matpat saw the recent ticket theory. Too bad it could have helped him.
No Matpat, just no. How do we know rick is in the same reality? Look at the ground outside the house. There is a huge-ass crack in there, and it's there in pretty much every episode. And no, cthulu at the end there isn't symbolic, I'm certain Roiland has confirmed that there is a lot of "fake scenes" in the intro, to keep the viewers on their toes as to what happens next, so the show becomes harder to predict. We have never seen the mole people because they are simply a distraction. Not to mention, cthulu is more used as a symbol of brain-washing and cults, much more so than "destoyer of worlds".