5 Essential Rick And Morty Episodes Everyone Should Watch At Least Once

With eight seasons already released and at least four more on the way, it’s safe to say “Rick and Morty” is still going strong after 12 years on the air. The outlandish adult animated series first introduced audiences to the drunken, selfish, super-genius Rick Sanchez and his timid, hormonal grandson, Morty Smith, back in 2013. Spawned by a web series parodying the “Back to the Future” movies, “Rick and Morty” took on a life of its own when the series launched on Adult Swim, turning the original parody’s imitations of Doc Brown and Marty McFly into the series’ troubled grandfather and grandson duo.

Over the course of its first eight seasons, “Rick and Morty” has parodied various sci-fi and other pop culture properties, including “Jurassic Park,” “Inception,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” “The Avengers,” and “Mad Max.” The series is known for blending overtly immature humor with scathing irreverence, as well as the same kind of meta wit that fans loved in co-creator Dan Harmon’s NBC sitcom, “Community.” Through all of this, “Rick and Morty” even manages to produce the occasional moment of genuine profundity.

The genre-bending, absurdist stylings of “Rick and Morty” have made it one of the most endearingly creative mainstream animated series airing today. The following episodes encapsulate everything audiences have come to love about this strange sci-fi sitcom.

The episode that introduced interdimensional cable to “Rick and Morty,” Season 1’s “Rixty Minutes,” put a fun new spin on traditional TV clip show episodes, while also showcasing the improvisational approach that produced much of the show’s early zaniness. The episode saw Rick adapting the family TV to pick up channels from every alternate dimension. While this led Jerry, Beth, and Summer to start wondering about the lives of the alternate versions of themselves, Rick and Morty were content to remain on the couch watching TV.

The episode’s only real plot follows Jerry, Beth, and Summer as they use special goggles provided by Rick to see into the lives of their alternate selves. This leads Beth and Jerry to believe they would have been happier separating and that Summer prevented them from achieving more with their lives. As the two parents of the Smith family and their eldest daughter go through an interdimensionally induced crisis, however, the real magic of this episode unfolds with Rick and Morty’s TV binge.

The interdimensional cable concept, which Season 2’s “Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate” would revive, transformed much of this episode into an abstract sketch show. The shows Rick and Morty flicked between included a manic commercial for an electronics store owned by the aptly named Ants in my Eyes Johnson, an overly elaborate action movie trailer for a film called “Two Brothers,” and a bizarre cop drama about Detectives Baby Legs and Regular Legs.

“Pickle Rick” has become perhaps the most popularly memed episode of “Rick and Morty.” While the episode has its detractors, whose main argument seems to be simply that Rick turning himself into a pickle is an aggressively unfunny attempt at humor, they are missing that this is more or less the point the episode is making. While Rick tries to convince Morty that turning himself into a pickle is a mind-blowing breakthrough, Morty can only look on in underwhelmed disappointment as it becomes clear this latest experiment is simply Rick’s way of getting out of a family therapy session. Rick turning himself into a pickle is an infantile joke because Rick is being infantile in his refusal to put work into genuinely bettering himself.

The episode has a valid point to make about the mundane nature of self-improvement, but it has plenty of fun along the way. Rick, stuck in the form of a pickle, ends up on an elaborate adventure that takes him into the sewers, where he uses his ingenuity to craft himself makeshift limbs from the bodies of rats. He then emerges in a top secret facility, where he embarks on a John Wick-style killing spree, fighting off legions of security guards and assassins, before finally turning up to therapy with his family.

“Pickle Rick” shows just how far Rick is willing to go, subjecting himself to an excruciating and ultimately pointless adventure, simply to avoid the realities of therapy and confronting his real issues. The episode encapsulates the heart of “Rick and Morty,” which is a series about Rick using his adventures and scientific genius to avoid facing his own emotions and difficulties in finding connection with his family.

“Auto Erotic Assimilation” is a must-watch for anyone getting into the series. It shows Rick at both his most depraved and most vulnerable, all while delivering a healthy dose of the series’ signature subversive sci-fi. In this episode, Rick takes Morty and Summer on an adventure that leads him to a reunion with his ex-partner. Of course, because he’s Rick Sanchez, that ex couldn’t be morally or physiologically simple. Rick’s former lover, Unity, is a hive mind who exists by taking over the bodies of other beings.

“Auto Erotic Assimilation” takes place on a planet that has been entirely assimilated by Unity. Every single one of the planet’s inhabitants is simply another vessel for Unity’s mind, their original identities erased. While Summer takes issue with Unity’s subjugation of an entire population, Rick reconnects with Unity in sordid and raucous fashion. Both plots are brilliantly subversive. The romance plot reveals Rick to be the more toxic partner in his relationship with a parasitic hive mind who takes control of entire civilizations. Meanwhile, Morty and Summer discover the planet was much worse off before Unity took it over, its inhabitants locked in a bitter race war between people with different kinds of nipples.

Comedic highlights include Morty casually chuckling to his sister, “Ah, Summer. First race war, huh?” and Unity creating a TV show for Rick in the form of a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it parody of Harmon’s other sitcom, “Community.” The episode lives on in most fans’ minds, though, for its devastating ending, in which a depressed Rick makes an attempt on his own life after Unity breaks up with him, giving viewers a rare glimpse behind Rick’s usual mask of cynicism.

“The Ricks Must Be Crazy” is perhaps the best dive into convoluted sci-fi mechanics “Rick and Morty” has done so far. It’s an episode that revolves around a very simple problem — Rick needs to fix his car battery. The battery in Rick’s car, though, shouldn’t ever run out, because it is a microverse battery. This means an entire universe is contained within the battery, within which is a planet of alien beings who have looked up to Rick ever since he gave them “gooble box” technology. This means of generating power creates plenty of surplus energy, which powers Rick’s car. The only issue is that time moves faster in the microverse, and now a scientist there, Zeep Xanflorp (played by guest star Stephen Colbert), has developed a “miniverse” battery, meaning gooble boxes are no longer required.

Visiting the scientist’s miniverse, Rick discovers another scientist who has just discovered “teenyverse” technology. When it dawns on this scientist that his whole universe exists simply to power a battery in another universe that exists simply to power another battery, he takes his own life and traps Rick and Zeep in the teenyverse. A bitter conflict emerges between Rick and Zeep, who realizes Rick created his entire universe to power his car.

The episode’s harrowing ending forces Zeep to resign himself to giving up his “miniverse,” leaving his people to labor on their gooble boxes for Rick’s benefit forever. When Rick and Morty finally manage to return to their own universe, Zeep realizes that his people could either continue toiling to power Rick’s car, or the battery will remain broken and Rick will simply throw it away, destroying Zeep’s universe. The episode spotlights Rick’s selfishness and finds him an excellent foil in Zeep, who is essentially his mirror image.

This Season 3 episode starts with Rick promising Morty a stand-alone adventure in the lost city of Atlantis. While the episode delivers a stand-alone story — within the context of this season, at least, though it ties into a larger story arc for “Rick and Morty” as a whole — it is not the adventure the opening teases. Instead, an alternate Rick and Morty from the Citadel of Ricks turn up, asking for donations to the Citadel Redevelopment fund. When Rick and Morty refuse to donate, pointing out they were the ones who destroyed the Citadel, the episode shifts its focus from the main Rick and Morty to deliver “Tales From the Citadel.”

This episode took an anthology approach to its narrative, presenting several broadly unconnected stories from the now rebuilt Citadel of Ricks. “The Ricklantis Mixup” introduced viewers to a jaded Cop Morty and his rookie Cop Rick partner in the rundown Mortytown. There’s also the tale of the Simple Rick’s factory, where one worker’s desperate bid for freedom resulted in terrifying tragedy.

Most notably of all, though, the episode featured a Morty running for — and eventually winning — the presidency of the Citadel. While the presidential candidate Morty seemed a straightforward, optimistic new politician, he killed off several of his advisors on the Shadow Council of Ricks in the episode’s shock ending. A final twist revealed that this Morty was, in fact, the Evil Morty introduced at the end of Season 1. The surprise ending, the heartbreaking stories of different Ricks and Mortys, and the inventiveness of this one-off Citadel anthology made “The Ricklantis Mixup” one of the strongest episodes of “Rick and Morty.”