It’s always fun when Rick and Morty choose to make a tribute to a beloved show or film. However, nothing would have prepared viewers for “Rick: A Mort Well Lived’s” craziness. What initially begins as a question about whether Summer will do a Die Hard episode turns into a meta-critique of Die Hard’s pop cultural status and, ultimately, a really good homage to the original. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that Morty passes the entire episode buried in a video game.
Naturally, this one makes some references to Die Hard. Summer energetically shouts the title of the movie for the majority of the episode. However, did you notice the less obvious jokes and Easter Eggs that were hidden in this episode? In case you have any questions, we’ve got you covered. If you haven’t seen the episode yet, beware of spoilers. We’ll start at the beginning and work our way through shot by shot talking about easter eggs and wtf moments as we go along.
Here are the Rick And Morty Season 6 Episode 2 Easter Eggs:
A Life Well Lived: A Buddha Reference
Starting the episode titled Rick: A Mort Well Lived, is a reference to the Buddhist phrase; a life well lived. Now people have heard that phrase is a lot all over the place, it was originally from Buddha’s Medisuda teaching on treating all beings with kindness and care, which is basically the theme of the episode. Where all the Mortys in this Roy game just want to live their lives out in peace even though on a meta-level they’re all fractured pieces of our Morty’s one consciousness, and that’s why everyone speaks with Morty’s voice, except for Rick who’s playing as the Roy character.
With Marta Morty, the primary Morty completes the episode by remaining in the game to live out her life as she had planned and fulfill the typical “enjoy a life well-lived” line while still inside the game. That was the secret bargain she made with Rick at the end in exchange for getting all the rest of the Mortys, like all five billion plus of them, to leave the game. He had to agree to keep the Roy game running long enough for her to finish living out the rest of her life, which is why in the post-credit scene the workers at blips and chits wheel the game with its own power supply to make sure that it stays on into the very Indiana Jones-looking warehouse, that’s full of massive piles of stuff.
After which they joke about remembering where they put it, because everything in the cavernous warehouse is digitally cataloged and backed up. So it doesn’t really matter where they put anything they’ll be able to find it no matter what. A joke about the military in the Indiana Jones movies, like how do you find anything in this warehouse they’re all in the same-looking boxes.
Are You Pulling A Die-Hard?
The episode’s cold opening is the reveal that they’re stuck inside the Roy game, at blips and chips, with everyone on the planet containing a piece of Morty’s consciousness, because the game fritzed out when the terrorists attacked. In a special cameo seen by Peter Dinklage of Game Of Thrones, Tyrion fame.
In the whole exterior part of the episode in blips and chips, like the B storyline is a parody of the Die Hard movie with both Peter Dinklage’s group and summer separately trying to pull a Die Hard, do the plot of the movie, without each other knowing about it till they’re both fighting each other. Like are ‘you doing a die-hard…?’ “Maybe…” “Are you doing a die-hard…?” ‘Maybe…’
Basically do all the things that John McLane and the villains did in that movie separately. And based on the logic in the episode, this is canon now to the Rick and Morty multiverse of all these realities.
Culture
Once every culture reaches a point in the multiverse of Rick and Morty they produce their own version of the Die Hard story in their mythology. And that’s how these aliens knew about the plot of Die Hard and were pulling a die-hard because he’s also written several books on it. Which they referenced in one of his books that
Summer winds up reading on the can called the Nakatomi Paradigm, a reference to the Nakatomi Plaza tower from the movie it takes place in, which summer uses to learn the ending of the movie and how to take the gun to her back and win the scenario.
In some cultures it’s called tower man, Rick reveals he also knows about that because he makes a reference to tower man at the end of the episode. Another culture calls it the Thornburg Cycle that’s a reference to the Richard Thornberg character in the Die Hard movie, like in one of the cultures he’s like the main character of their Die Hard mythology. Another culture in the multiverse calls it “Foolish to imagine you’d be able to kill…” which is a reference to a particular line of dialogue from the actual movie.
And one of the funnier reveals is that at the end of the episode after they both make it out of the game they reveal that this is not Rick’s first Die-hard. Like he makes a reference to it at the beginning of the episode telling Summer to go do a die-hard but he himself has already been through similar scenarios like this in other cultures. Because when Peter Dinklage’s alien sees him he recognizes him as Dr. Oz Elysium, like Rick has become a legend in his culture’s die-hard mythos.
Pulling a Version of Die Hard And Cult Parody
The other joke is that they do the whole plot of Die Hard as a tongue-in-cheek version like a cliff’s nose version. Like if you asked a child who had never seen Die Hard to explain the plot, that’s basically what they did in the episode. This is also a bit of a meta-reference to the actual Rick and Morty tv show because it was originally inspired by Back To The Future, it was called Doc and Marty.
So it’s like Summer in the episode is pulling a version of the Doc and Marty’s version of Back To The Future. Like when she runs around at the episode, killing all the aliens, using die-hard as an actual catchphrase just repeating the line. That’s also meant to be a reference to John McClain’s “Yippee Kaye” catchphrase.
As they reveal what’s going on with all the Mortys in the game, over the course of the episode all the different Mortys start to eventually shave their heads and wear Morty clothes. So that even though they all have very different bodies and faces, some are women, and some are old men, they all slowly start to look more like Morty. Dan Harmon, the writer of the episode, said this is also where they started to parody the organized religion and cults aspect of the episode.
Like the Mortys in the game slowly start to turn it into a cult, we’re all part of this larger greater cosmic force that also just happens to be a 14-year-old boy and we’re all just video game characters. This is why the main Morty, Marta, says her video game parents don’t actually know anything about Judaism because they’re just versions of Morty and Morty never learned anything about being Jewish. They also make a joke about that with the news broadcast later it’s called Good Enough News, which is why when he’s trying to report the news he does a really bad job of it.
Why Only 5 Million Mortys Instead Of 8 Million?
Rick also makes a lot of jokes throughout the episode about how all the crazy things that all the different Mortys get up to, are going to be even funnier in the end, because really it’s just Morty, doing bad things to himself. The reason why they say that Morty was fractured into a little over 5 billion people instead of like the 8 billion, that should normally be on earth. I think either what happened is that there are only a little over 5 billion people on this planet, or what happened is they’re just saying that there are a little over 5 billion people who have brains that are capable of housing a portion of Morty’s consciousness.
When rick comments to the other Mortys about losing followers every time he has to explain the truth to them, that’s just a joke about how some of the Mortys don’t want to believe the lie like they want to actually be part of this cult. He also makes a “Get Schwifty” episode reference when he says he’s an old-school hip-hop man. His joke about missing the mark on diversity is because most of the Mortys here are white and because he represents most of the people on the planet you should see like a much wider variety of Mortys here.
Also, there’s the idea that they’re all starting to resemble Morty like they’re making themselves look more like Morty does in real life. So everybody looking the same would be like the opposite of diversity.
God’s Existence In Rick And Morty
When Rick tries to tell the military Morty that there’s no God even in the real world, that’s actually a reference all the way to the pilot episode where Summer says: “Oh my God, my parents are so loud, I want to die. Rick responds, “There is no God, Summer. You’ve got to take off that band-aid now. You’ll thank me later”. Within the Rick and Morty multiverse, there are higher-level cosmic beings that he’s gone up against but no actual one true God.
Even the version of Jesus they did on the show was like a fictional version, within the context of this one particular scenario. So it wasn’t meant to be a real version. Even though the real Evil is canon to Rick and Morty, that doesn’t prove that God exists. By association I think until Rick acknowledges that God exists on the show, he doesn’t exist on the show. So to speak we’ll see if he finally bends in that direction by like season 10 or season 100. However many seasons Rick and Morty wind up going –100 years Rick and Morty – then we’ll finally prove god’s existence.
You’ll notice that as Marta calms the military Morty down and he understands the truth, he and they all begin to speak in Morty’s repetitive “oh geez” fashion. Also, his character had a very loose understanding of his backstory in a war, because Morty in real life doesn’t really know that much about world history. Like he doesn’t do that well in school, that’s why he calls it a generic overseas war.
Morty’s Character Gets A Soft Reboot
Then Rick sort of explains the logic of the scenario. Like what happens with Morty losing pieces of his consciousness, which they pay off at the end of the episode. Because every time in the game one of the people dies, a piece of Morty’s consciousness dies, as a fraction dies, and eventually, those fractions add up.
By the end of the episode, Marta is the only person who stays in the game. So it’s like that one little piece of Morty that he winds up losing. The funny way they pay that off though is that when they come out of the game Morty says immediately “oh rick I trust you implicitly let’s go great”.
So the part of himself that he lost was the portion that didn’t trust Rick, which is kind of convenient for Rick going forward and convenient for the show I think it’s their way of sort of soft rebooting the Morty character to more like a season two type of Morty as opposed to the more mistrustful version during season three. Like we’re gonna clip out this one little piece of Morty’s personality and he’s gonna be a little bit more like he was during season two.
Snyder Cut Reference
Rick complains about not having enough pockets in his Roy form, which explains another reason why he always wears that lab coat. He makes a Justice League Snyder Cut joke saying eight percent of it was just Batman dreaming. That was a reference to the end of the movie with the nightmare scene of that potential future that Batman was seeing in his dreams, that he woke up from at the end.
Which morty claims he doesn’t understand, meaning he hasn’t seen the Snyder Cut. But also that means the Snyder Cut is now canon to Rick and Morty. They just did a bunch of brand new Vindicator shorts and the Vindicators team themselves were meant to be a big parody of all superhero movies. Like the Marvel Avengers movies the DC Justice League.
Also Read: Rick And Morty Season 6 Episode 1 Easter Eggs: Marvel, The Batman And Old Movie Easter Eggs
