Rick & Morty The Obscure Horror Movie Referenced In “Never Ricking Morty”

Rick & Morty: The Obscure Horror Movie Referenced In “Never Ricking Morty”

Rick & Morty has pulled off obscure references, but one that most viewers missed out on was the nod to a ’90s horror movie in “Never Ricking Morty.”

You Are Reading :[thien_display_title]

Rick & Morty The Obscure Horror Movie Referenced In “Never Ricking Morty”

Rick & Morty have pulled off some hilariously obscure references throughout their 4 seasons, but one that most viewers missed out on was the nod to an obscure 90s horror movie in “Never Ricking Morty.” Community creator Dan Harmon’s anarchic animated sitcom Rick & Morty has become a runaway hit for Adult Swim, evolving from a raunchy spoof of Back to the Future into an ambitiously meta parody of everything from sci-fi tropes to Game of Thrones and its fans, to superhero movies and the Saw series, to television as a medium.

Rick & Morty is known for its ambitious movie parodies, but not all of the show’s spoofs are entire episode-long tributes to famous movies like season 1’s Jurassic Park riff ‘Anatomy Park’. Sometimes, Rick & Morty gives a subtle nod to a well-known movie and manages to discredit a long-held fan theory in the process, all in one split-second scene that a lot of viewers missed entirely.

Just look at season 4’s standout installment, the mind-bending-ly meta “Never Ricking Morty.” In this critically-acclaimed outing, the obscure 90s horror Jacob’s Ladder got a shout out in a momentary scene that simultaneously poked fun at a discredited Rick & Morty fan theory. There’s a great, subtle moment during the title characters’ journeys through numerous (pointedly non-canon) futures, wherein Morty awakens from a coma on a stretcher in what looks like a mobile hospital in 60s Saigon. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to the cult psychological thriller Jacob’s Ladder (like the same season’s later South Park nod), but it’s one that touches on a familiar theme for Rick & Morty: playfully dismissing fan theories.

See also  Monsters Inc’s Fear Of Children Came From The Plague – Theory Explained

1990’s Jacob’s Ladder saw Tim Robbins play a disturbed Vietnam veteran who returned home to the US from a traumatic tour of duty, only to find himself plagued by nightmarish visions of demons and bloody hospitals. The ending reveals that this is because he never actually left Vietnam, but instead his life since the war has been a dying dream in the moments he spent lying on the operating table bleeding out. It’s a moving riff on Ambrose Bierce’s famous short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, and a great horror movie ending that has since been referenced and ripped-off countless times. The now-famous ending also gave rise to endless “the protagonist is dying and this is all a dream” fan theories.

For a fan-theory-spawning series like Rick & Morty specifically, the “the entire show is all a dream and the main character is in a coma” angle is one of few fan theories that the madcap series has never directly referenced—until this episode jokingly kiboshed the idea by throwing it into this stream of non-canon riffs. The same montage sees Rick & Morty face-off against Evil Morty, crushing fans’ hopes that the character would prove to be a major antagonist by containing his only recent appearance within this pointedly non-canon segment. Rick & Morty’s fandom may not have recognized Jacob’s Ladder as the subject of this scene’s one-second spoof, but it would be hard to miss the message that the series is dismissing most of the show’s popular fan theories in one fell swoop and telling viewers they can’t always predict what’s coming next, so they might as well enjoy the story for its own sake.

See also  Attack On Titan Season 4 Proves The True Power Of The Colossal Titan

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/rick-morty-season-4-jacobs-ladder-dream-fan-theory-explained/

Movies -