When Rick & Morty spoofed The Purge franchise back in season 2, the Adult Swim hit accidentally predicted the future of the horror/thriller/sci-fi satire movie series. As proven by Rick & Morty’s Terminator spoof, the anarchic animated comedy is not afraid to take on any franchise no matter how famous or fan-adored it is. Given the Adult Swim show’s love of the horror genre, it came as no surprise when Rick & Morty parodied The Purge movies in season 2.
When Rick and Morty arrive on a planet partaking in its version of the Purge in the season 2 episode “Look Who’s Purging Now”, Morty insists on trying to save a local named Arthricia (voiced by Chelsea Kane). This results in all manner of gory mayhem and offers Rick & Morty many chances to mock the politically conscious (if far-fetched) Purge movies. However, one gag early in the episode predicted the 2018 prequel to the series, The First Purge.
Like Rick & Morty’s heist movie-spoofing episode, the show’s Purge parody works by forcing viewers to question the strange internal logic of the famous franchise. When Morty strikes up an awkward conversation with Arthricia once she comes aboard Rick’s spaceship, he asks if people got into the Purge as soon as it was conceived of, or if there was a settling-in period of people asking “wait, this is going to stop crime how?” Fast forward a few years and the franchise being spoofed offered an answer to this inquiry with 2018’s The First Purge, which clarified that the process began on Staten Island alone and volunteers were originally offered payment as an impetus to participate.
Throughout the history of the Purge movies, viewers had reasonably wondered how the populace was convinced this would be a good idea and why people went along with it years before the series began. Like Rick & Morty’s later Hellraiser parody, the show’s Purge spoof pointed out that there was no attempt made by the franchise to explain its plot holes. However, The First Purge did exactly that by portraying the first Purge as a smaller social experiment whose success was exaggerated by corrupt public officials to garner public support for a large-scale version of the gory event. It is a clever backstory and one that adds up, justifying the resigned attitude that citizens have in the Purge movies by depicting the tradition as one slowly forced on them by self-serving politicians.
This was not the only time that Rick & Morty satirized the lack of logic found in some horror movies. As far back as the show’s second episode, Rick & Morty’s Freddy Krueger parody Scary Terry spoofed the premise of the Nightmare On Elm Street movies by asking what would happen if their villain was encountered during an Inception-style dream heist, resulting in an inspired genre mashup. However, Rick & Morty accidentally predicting the plot of the fourth installment in The Purge series may be the first time the show has guessed a franchise’s future while mocking the movies.