Due to its surreal sense of humor, colorful cast of characters, and endless narrative possibilities, Adult Swim’s monster hit dimension-hopping sci-fi animated comedy Rick and Morty is one of the most quotable TV shows on the air. The series juggles jokes with philosophies, and sometimes combines the two brilliantly.
The show’s idiosyncratic and loose comedic style is a result of a lot of improvisation done by the voice actors – particularly Justin Roiland, who plays both of the title characters – in the studio while they’re recording their lines. Here are The 10 Best Rick and Morty quotes that’ll leave you laughing.
Updated by Ben Sherlock February 3rd, 2020: Rick and Morty recently aired the first five episodes of its fourth season. This run brought us some classic new episodes, as well as guest performances by such high-profile stars as Taika Waititi, Kathleen Turner, and Sam Neill. The show is just as fresh and inventive as ever, and the latest installments of the series have brought on a whole host of new hysterical lines for fans to quote. So, we’ve updated this list with a few hilarious quotes from season 4.
Updated by Ben Sherlock on May 7th, 2020: After taking a midseason break, Rick and Morty is back on Adult Swim to continue its titular duo’s interdimensional adventures. And the second half of season 4 is far from the end of the series, as the network’s last renewal of the series confirmed that once this season is over, we’ll still have 60 additional episodes to look forward to. It’s unclear where Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon will take the series. In the meantime, we’ve updated this list with a few more entries.
On Ruining The Season 4 Premiere
“Get out of here, Summer! You ruined the season 4 premiere!”
Although the show doesn’t break the fourth wall as blatantly as Deadpool or Family Guy, Rick and Morty is one of the most self-aware shows on the air. The main characters seem to know that they’re in a TV series.
Rick, in particular, often references “seasons” like he knows he’s on TV. This quote from the season 4 premiere episode is a prime example of Rick and Morty’s irrepressible meta-ness.
On Hitler Curing Cancer
“What about the reality where Hitler cured cancer, Morty? The answer is: don’t think about it.”
Rick eases Morty’s nerves about the possibilities of alternate realities where things turned out better than in our own reality by telling him about a reality in which Adolf Hitler came up with a cure for cancer. In that reality, one very good thing would have to be tempered with a lot of bad things. Rick’s solution is simply to ignore these things.
On Existential Terror
“Welcome to the club, pal.”
When Rick creates a robot whose sole purpose is to roll across the table, pick up the butter, and bring it back to him, the robot becomes sentient and tries to figure out the purpose of its existence.
Upon discovering that it exists purely to pass butter, the robot becomes filled with existential dread. Rick tells the robot, “Welcome to the club, pal.”
On Pickle Rick
“I turned myself into a pickle, Morty! I’m Pickle Ri-i-i-ick!”
In season 3’s iconic “Pickle Rick” episode, Rick turns himself into a pickle to get out of family therapy. He ends up slaughtering rats in the sewers and taking on an international crime syndicate before ending up at therapy anyway.
The opening scene, in which Morty turns over a pickle on Rick’s workbench and finds that he’s put his consciousness into it, is one of the series’ all-time most classic moments.
On Science
“Sometimes science is more art than science.”
In the season 1 episode “Rick Potion #9,” the episode that introduced the true extent of the show’s genius, Rick makes a potion for Morty that will make Jessica fall in love with him. It goes horribly awry when everyone in the world becomes dangerously obsessed with Morty.
Rick’s attempts to fix it turn the world in a wasteland filled with mutants ripped from the body horror films of David Cronenberg, leading him to the conclusion that sometimes, science is more art than science.
On Learning Lessons
“Oh, boy, so you actually learned something today? What is this, Full House?”
At the end of the season 4 premiere “Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat,” Morty tells Rick that he’s learned his lesson and he’ll start to live in the moment more and focus less on how the present will affect his future. Rick snidely points out that this isn’t the kind of show where the characters learn lessons at the end of each episode: “Oh, boy, so you actually learned something today? What is this, Full House?”
On Empowerment
“Have fun with empowerment. It seems to make everyone that gets it really happy.”
Rick gives Morty his own dragon in “Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktim’s Morty,” and the story takes a sexually graphic turn as the dragon’s private life is explored and it becomes a commentary on slut-shaming. When Rick liberates the dragons, he tells them to enjoy empowerment, and that it pleases most of the people who have it. He’s right; empowered people tend to be pretty happy.
On Disney’s Star Wars
“I’ve got a quick solo adventure to go on, and this one will not be directed by Ron Howard!”
When Rick heads off to the planet where he goes to the bathroom, he announces that he’s going on “a solo adventure,” and promises that it won’t be directed by Ron Howard. This is a reference to Solo: A Star Wars Story, Disney’s Han Solo origin movie, which was originally slated to be directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller before the Mouse House assumed full creative control, replaced them with Ron Howard, and tanked what should’ve been a guaranteed hit.
On App Development
“Do you wanna develop an app?”
Taika Waititi guest-starred as Glootie in season 4’s second episode, “The Old Man and the Seat.” While Rick was keeping an intruder named Tony off his private toilet planet, Morty and Jerry were being pestered by his alien intern, Glootie, to help him develop an app. Everybody wants a million-dollar idea, and now that everybody has a smartphone, one of the most common types of million-dollar idea is app ideas. Glootie represents every moron with a half-baked app idea who ever annoyed people asking for help developing it.
On Familiar Cyborgs
“My appearance is designed to be familiar and to put you at ease.”
In “Rattlestar Ricklactica,” when Morty allows a dying space snake to live, the space snakes become aware of powers bigger than themselves that they can unite against. They build their own Terminator and send it to Earth to kill Morty. It’s a metal cyborg with a really creepy human facade to put humans at ease. Suffice to say, an alien’s attempt at recreating human flesh and the human anatomy does not put anyone at ease.
On Love
“Listen, Morty, I hate to break it to you, but what people call love is just a chemical reaction that compels animals to breed. It hits hard, Morty, then it slowly fades, leaving you stranded in a failing marriage. I did it. Your parents are gonna do it. Break the cycle, Morty. Rise above. Focus on science.”
There are very few TV shows whose most famous quote about love is this depressing. Rick lays out the science behind love and how what we think is romance is really just delusion. These are harsh words, but some of us need to hear them.
On Reappropriating Slurs
“What up, my glip-glops?”
Seconds after explaining to Summer that “glip-glop” is an offensive term for Traflorkians, Rick uses it to refer to a bunch of them. He says this word is really, really offensive. He even uses other, Earthbound slurs as a frame of reference for Summer – he says it’s like “the N-word and the C-word had a baby, and that baby was raised by all the bad words for Jews.” And still, the second a group of Traflorkians walk into the party, Rick yells out, “What up, my glip-glops?” What’s so special about Rick that he gets to say it and Summer doesn’t?
On The Futility Of Existing
“Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. We’re all going to die. Come watch TV.”
This iconic, nihilistic line is Morty’s counter-argument to all of those people who say that to watch TV is to waste your life. Should you really be out there, living life to the full? Not according to Morty. Since he had to bury his own corpse in the backyard when he and Rick permanently relocated to another dimension, he’s had a new, much more pessimistic attitude towards the world. He sums it up perfectly in the season 1 episode “Rixty Minutes” when he explains the futility of existence to Summer.
Interdimensional Pizza Toppings
“Yeah, I’d like to order one large phone with extra phones, please.” “Cell phone. No-no-no-no, rotary! And pay phone on half.”
The different dimensions in Rick and Morty are always a head-trip, but rarely more than these three similar dimensions in “Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind.”
Each time Rick and Morty visit one, it’s the same situation, yet vastly different. Pizza slices sitting on chairs order a people pizza on the phone. Then phones sitting on pizza slices order a chair pizza on a person phone. Then, last but not least, chairs sitting on people order a phone pizza on a pizza phone.
On Smuggling Rare Seeds
“You gotta do it for Grandpa, Morty. You gotta put these seeds inside your butt.”
There really is no limit to what Rick will ask Morty to do for him. When he wants to bring home some rare seeds he finds in another dimension, then he simply asks Morty to put them up his butt. And since Morty is so sad and desperate for approval, he won’t put up much of a fight and will allow that to happen after not much convincing. It’s the least pleasant way to become an intergalactic smuggler like Han Solo.
Gonorrhea Vs. A T-Rex
“Don’t move. Gonorrhea can’t see us if we don’t move...Wait! I was wrong! I was thinking of a T-rex.”
This line is the kind of absurdist non-sequitur that makes Rick and Morty such an unusual delight. Gonorrhea and T-rexes are two very different things.
John Oliver brought the same deadpan delivery to his one-off character Dr. Bloom in the season 1 episode “Anatomy Park” that he brought to his recurring character Ian Duncan in Dan Harmon’s previous show, Community. He’ll be doing the same later this year in the role of Zazu in Disney’s upcoming live-action remake of The Lion King.
On Wall Street
“You ever hear about Wall Street, Morty? You know what those guys do in their fancy boardrooms? They take their balls and they dip them in cocaine and wipe them all over each other.”
While Rick’s vivid description of what goes on in the boardrooms of Wall Street is clearly meant as an exaggeration, we’re not so sure after seeing the antics of Jordan Belfort and co in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. Maybe that is what they do. It stands to reason that if they did, they wouldn’t go blabbing about it. Maybe Rick is onto something after all.
Summer’s Warped Stance On The Devil
“So what if he’s the Devil, Rick? At least the Devil has a job. At least he’s active in the community.”
What point is Summer trying to make here, exactly? She’s definitely on the Devil’s side, but is this a Satanist stance or an anti-religious stance? She suggests she’s interested in making sure the machine of capitalism remains well-oiled by chastising Rick for not having a job.
Does not having a job really make Rick worse than the Devil? Summer thinks so. This quote is, of course, from the episode “Something Ricked This Way Comes,” which was inspired by Stephen King’s Needful Things.
On Traditions
“Traditionally, science fairs are a father-son thing.” “Well, scientifically, traditions are an idiot thing.”
Since the show is about Rick and Morty’s interdimensional travels, we rarely get to see Jerry and Morty working together as father and son. But when they do, they have a hilarious dynamic. Morty is really dumb, and yet he’s still not as dumb as his dad, who insists that Pluto is still a planet. Some people disagree that traditions really are “an idiot thing,” as they believe some of the world’s smartest people follow traditions. Still, none of those people are smarter than Rick, so...
On Pirates Of The Pancreas
“If I sounded a little defensive, it’s because Pirates of the Pancreas was my baby. I got a lot of push-back when I pitched it, Morty. I guess I’m still a little defensive.”
“Anatomy Park” was a great premise for an episode, as Rick shrinks down Morty and sends him into the tiny theme park he’s built inside a homeless man’s body. His defense of the Pirates of the Pancreas ride is surprisingly relatable, as we’ve all gotten antsy over ideas we had that we thought were amazing that the rest of the group hated. Rick didn’t whitewash it either, which is admirable.