Rick and Morty Season 6 Episode 5 is back with a whole bunch of references and Easter eggs, so we’ll break it all down. As always, there were a lot of movie references, game references, and real-life references. We got to see Summer’s TikTok account and Morty’s contacts list, which had a lot of Easter Eggs in it. Then they did a Gwyneth Paltrow Parody and some anime references.
This episode was heavily focused on Rick and Jerry. So Jerry gets a note in his fortune cookie that says that he will have sex with his mother. Now, this kind of note seems odd coming out of a fortune cookie, so Jerry gets worried that it might be true. When Rick performs some tests on him, they find out that the fortune is indeed real. The two go on an adventure that involves Rick killing a lot of people to break this fortune.
Here are all the Rick And Morty Season 6 Episode 5 Easter Eggs:
Final Destination And Goop Parody
The actual episode title is Final Desmithation which is a reference to the Final Destination movie series, which is all about characters learning about their deaths and their final fates and trying to avoid them but failing to do so. They usually wind up meeting their fates in ironic twists.
This episode is all about Rick and Jerry trying to stop a company from controlling fate using the chaos alien and its special fortune cookies that it creates. The episode is also basically like another Rick and Jerry episode, it felt like a pretty small episode compared to some of the others, just because it mostly took place inside this goop facility that they were parroting. It was a big Gwyneth Paltrow goop parody.
Rick And Jerry’s Friendship
The writer said that they intended for it to be similar to previous Rick and Jerry episodes, where during the course of the episode, they kind of become closer as friends, but by the end, also kind of not. They treat it like they’re not friends even though they do kind of become closer. Rick got pissed off at the end because all he had to do to stay invincible for the rest of his life was to not make any more friends for the rest of his life.
But the sheer fact that he got pissed off means that he and Jerry actually did become friends. Otherwise, his fortune would still be unresolved, and he would still be Invincible. The family’s clowned on Rick a whole bunch this season about that too, the whole idea that he really does care about them, but he’s unwilling to admit it.
The whole thing is going on here with the family clowning on Jerry. They said that they wanted Rick to feel like Jerry deserved his hell because he didn’t like the idea of the family forcing him to do something he didn’t want to do. And it’s just an example of Rick actually being Jerry’s friend without totally admitting it. But once he does this, he does find out that something really weird is going on, and it turns into the actual plot of the episode.
Fate, Panda Express And Tiktok
The way they explain fate in the episode is that Rick says that it’s like a probability field. Except at the center is everything that is known, pulling everything that’s unknown towards it. So for instance, when Jerry’s fortune is unresolved in the episode, the closer that his mother gets to him in proximity, the more probable it becomes that he will eventually get with her. So that’s why it just starts out with a couple of texts, but then as she gets closer, more and more things happen, and they get closer and closer and closer towards the very end of the episode until Rick saves him.
The actual opening scene takes place with the family at Panda Express. Making a bunch of cultural jokes about how Panda Express is like the least Chinese restaurant you could go to in America. It also shows you that the family has been going to Chinese restaurants and eating fortune cookies for a long time now. Rick said later that the company had been using this fortune cookie alien for the past 20 years, meaning that the family has probably had their fates altered a couple of times because of fortune cookies previously.
The Taxi Show Tiktok Trend
They make a bunch of Tiktok jokes, which are mostly like old people making fun of young people for doing silly things on Tiktok. Tiktok is primarily a platform used by the youngest generation currently.
The whole joke with the Taxi song is that the kids don’t really understand why it’s cool, they just think that it sounds good. But Rick reveals later in the episode that one of his favorite songs on this playlist is Angela’s theme from Taxi. So like, because he’s old, he actually watched the TV show and liked the song in the correct context. But in the new context, the kids are just using it because it sounds good they don’t really understand what it means.
They pay off the Taxi theme song Joke when they reveal that his favorite song on his playlist is Angela’s theme from the Taxi show. As I said, the whole joke with the kids’ Tiktok song is that they hadn’t actually seen the series, so they didn’t know the song in its original context. It’s like Rick getting mad at the kids for not appreciating the songs in the way that he thinks they’re supposed to appreciate them.
It’s also a bit of a call back to Summer’s Die Hard episode when she hadn’t seen the movie so she didn’t understand what it actually meant, and she just kind of made up the meaning as she went along. She just kept repeating the phrase Die-Hard Die-Hard until the end of the episode when she actually did learn what it meant because she read the story.
The Wierd Fortunes
One of the early jokes here about the fortune cookies is that most of them are generic and repeated like all fortune cookies are kind of like this. Later the old man explains that that’s actually part of a larger fortune, that the Fortune 500 company got to dilute the market with a bunch of fake fortunes so that the real fortune became more potent.
They introduced the whole joke about Jerry doing it with his mother, which the old man also explains was part of his Cry for Help. This pay off by saying that he created a bunch of different types of Fortunes in an attempt to try and get people to come to help him.
The first batch of Fortunes was more literal, the consequence being that people would break their legs if they didn’t come to investigate this company, implying that a bunch of people broke their legs. The next one with the fortune that said that a virus was shut down the world is actually a joke about the virus in real life shutting everything down with the lockdowns during 2020, and because no one came to help him, it’s implying that the fortune cookies were responsible for the big virus in 2020.
Then he said his last attempt was to create a bunch of ones that said people would do it with their mothers. And the joke is that Jerry’s the only person who actually showed up, meaning that a bunch of other people actually got with their mothers, which is a big Oedipus joke complex. Because later, they also turn it into a Morty thing when he talks about dressing as Morty because Beth is his wife. Implying that Morty might also want to get with Beth, deep down inside.
Jerry’s Mother And Sleepy Gary
This is also the first episode to bring back Jerry’s mother since season one, we haven’t seen her in a long time. But if you remember, one of the jokes of that episode was that she had a secret lover on the side, and her husband, Jerry’s biological father, would sit in the closet and watch them while he was dressed up as superheroes. So Jerry already comes from a very spicy family.
Jerry makes another Sleepy Gary total recall reference to season two. When he says that his gag reflex has been mixed up because of his time with sleepy Gary, that means exactly what you think it means. He got down and dirty with sleepy Gary big time. But if you remember, we saw in the previous episode that he actually was getting with other versions of himself, just like Beth was, so we already knew that Jerry was bi. I think of that one as like the Loki episode because it’s them getting with other versions of themselves.
Summer’s TikTok Account & Morty’s Phone
Beth asking Jerry not to tell Summer is also her not wanting to give Summer another eating disorder. Summer already has a whole bunch of stuff going on with her whole bunch of problems, but I don’t think she actually has an eating disorder right now.
They reveal Summer’s TikTok account is Summerson69, which is a 69 DTF joke like summer is super horny. But is also a reference to the song she sings with a Tinkles character, also from the sleepy time Gary episode. There were a couple of references to that episode during this one.
Then we see a screen for a phone, which is from Morty’s phone. So we find out he’s got the other family members on it, of course, he’s got Noob noobs number still, Brent is a person in real life who works on the animation crew, he’s got Mr. Poopy butthole, he’s got April, which I think is meant to be a call back to the April Fool’s joke which was season 3 episode 1 they aired it on April Fool’s Day.
The Justin person is Justin Roiland, so the joke is that he actually calls Justin Roiland in real life and the whole idea that Justin is the actual voice of the Morty character. The Wilder person is a reference to Wilder Reese, who’s another crew member working on the series. So the joke here is kind of like Morty calling the people who actually make Rick and Morty episodes controlling the story.
Sailor Moon And Reusing Animation
The big bad in the episode is meant to be a big Gwyneth Paltrow goop reference, her name in the episode is Jenith Padrochant, the wordplay with that last little part of her name is exactly what you think it is. Her headquarters building here is meant to be
sort of like a fortune cookie reference. But I also think it’s kind of meant to be a reference to the Sailor Moon Millennium Castle, because of the big Sailor Moon reference after this. Rick makes a big Sailor Moon magical girl transformation joke about how he saves money by them using the Sailor Moon effect to change their clothes multiple times.
Which itself is a reference to real life when animation companies reuse animation in episodes to save money. This isn’t just an anime joke, regular Western cartoons are famous for reusing animation to save money.
And the whole idea in previous seasons is that one of the reasons why Rick and Morty Seasons took so long to come out is because the animation on Rick and Morty is so much more complex than in other series, they reuse far less of it than other cartoons do.
And recently, Dan Harmon has basically said, “oh we won’t have big breaks anymore, we’ve worked out a lot of those things”. So in the episode when Rick says, “Ah look at all the money we’re saving”, it’s also another joke about how quickly they’re getting Seasons out, one year after the other, without huge breaks anymore.
More Rick And Morty Season 6 Episode 5 Easter Eggs
There are also a couple of the fourth wall breaks from Rick in the episode, where he acknowledges them being inside a television episode. But he’s known that he’s been inside a television show for a long time now.
You also notice when Rick is walking past them with the towels in his hand, that’s just paying off the joke about him having to do his own laundry because he doesn’t have portals to steal fresh clothes from other versions of himself.
You know the space Beth comes back again, which is a big surprise. I wasn’t expecting her back for a while, I guess they weren’t kidding when they said that she’d be coming back a lot this season. Also, space Beth makes it sound like she visits zoos in outer space for fun like she says the “Earth version” of the zoo as if she goes to other zoos that are not on Earth.
Rick’s probability detector looks a lot like the detector from Ghostbusters, but he’s also used this one in the series before too. Rick also reveals that it’s equally possible for him to become both a dolphin and a balloon version of himself, so we’ll see if they pay that off in a future episode where we see a balloon Rick and a dolphin, Rick.
The whole joke with Rick and the drug dealers hearing him being cool with them is another joke about his ongoing feud with the Earth government and the Earth president. He hates both of them, so he doesn’t mind if anyone does anything illegal.
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