Welcome back everyone, this will be my full Rick and Morty Season 6 Episode 3 Easter Eggs article. There were a whole bunch of Easter eggs and references, so we’ll break it all down. Careful for spoilers from the episode if you haven’t seen it yet. If you haven’t seen the episode yet, be wary of spoilers. We’ll just begin at the start and move scene by scene, discussing Easter eggs and WTF moments along the way.
Rick And Morty Season 6 Episode 3 is all about Self-Love, I mean Self-Love literally. Because the episode revolves around Space Beth and Home Beth doing each other. We get a lot of movie references in the episodes, movies like Basic Instinct, Eternal Sunshine Of A Spotless Mind, And Multiplicity. We also got Black Mirror San Junipero along with Shrek and Wonder Woman 1984 references. As usual, there were Marvel references like Tony Stark’s Nanotech and Loki. There were also a lot of game Easter Eggs and references.
Here are all the Rick And Morty Season 6 Episode 3 Easter Eggs:
Bethic Twinstinct – Basic Instinct
Starting with the episode title Bethic Twinstinct, which is a reference to the movie Basic Instinct, one of the spiciest crime Thrillers of the 90s. It was a pretty spicy episode, but the actual plot of the episode has nothing to do with the actual plot of the movie like they were just using the name as the parody.
It’s mostly a Beth episode about both of the Beths, space Beth and the version at home. And the idea is that they’re meant to be so like Rick, they’re just as narcissistic as Rick is, of course, they would be into themselves the same way that Rick is kind of into himself. In fact, later in the episode, Rick reveals because he’s seen the infinite Ricks like he’s been to so many different realities, he’s seen every possible permutation of the family.
So basically, they use the episode to do a deep dive into Beth’s personality and is mostly about Home Beth because Space Beth did leave, did Explore her potential, but home Beth did not. So that’s kind of what she does during this episode, like the kind of explore what she’s capable of.
The way the writers talked about the Beths in the episode is they were meant to feel kind of like young versions of Rick. So the Beths get kind of like a speed-run version of Rick’s complete Arc to where he is in the present day. I don’t know how many episodes they plan on having Space Beth in this season, but the way she leaves at the end of the episode makes it sound like she won’t be back for a while.
Turkey Rick And Nano Tech
During the cold open, we find out it’s the Thanksgiving episode, Space Beth brought Morty like the brand new XL Pooplickian game console, they use it for a bunch of video game parodies. Turkey Rick is meant to be a reference to the U.S president pardoning him and Morty again for crimes they may have committed the previous year. During the season 5 Thanksgiving episode, they revealed that Rick has been using this trick for years to Pardon all of the crimes that he commits every single year.
They reference Rick’s lack of portals again, I don’t know how long that’s going to last, but eventually, he’ll probably fix it. Rick reveals currently he started changing his clothes using something similar to the nanites like Black Panther and Iron Man use because he doesn’t have portals anymore. Previously in episode 1, they made a joke about him using portals to travel to other realities and steal clean pairs of clothes from alternate reality versions of Rick rather than do laundry with his own clothes.
Going Full Loki
Jerry’s whole toast about how badly he needs Beth just to continue living, it’s just more to highlight how much Home Beth has been ignoring her own potential, just because the family’s been holding her down this whole time, kind of. Like she’s had no time to explore herself, and that’s basically what this episode is, Space Beth is coming to remind her that, and they explore literally and metaphorically themselves like they go full Loki.
Even though they’re clones, you could make the Loki reference, like Loki getting it on with a version of himself from another timeline, Loki would be proud of this episode. Space Beth reveals her spaceship is like a Tardis, bigger on the inside, so it’s a flying house basically, she’s got a ton of Predator weapons in there apparently, too.
When she says, Rick calls it a hack, that’s a reference to Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland saying that Rick is meant to feel kind of like a parody of Doctor Who mixed with Doc Brown from Back to the Future. The Venusian wine getting them buzzed is what pushes them over the edge to go full Loki with themselves, which is why Rick hides it at the end of the episode like he believes that this is the true reason why this happened.
And if you don’t speak French, the Venusian language that they start speaking is basically real-life French. The whole joke here is that Sarah Chalke, who voices Beth, can actually speak fluent French. So they just let her have fun with that in this episode. The song that she sings in French is the major general song from the Gilbert and Sullivan comic Opera Pirates of Penzance. So Beth is apparently also a big theater nerd on top of everything else.
Video Game References
Then all the Video Game parodies are mostly meant to be jokes about the poor mechanics of games just in general. And also jokes about how lame the games would be if they were hyper-realistic. The Asteroids game is based on the real-life Asteroids game, but the joke is that if it were real you wouldn’t see any asteroids, you’d be traveling through the vacuum of space forever, just to try to find something. And that’s why the game has Morty recorded the message because he would really starve if it were real life.
The controllers that Rick later tries to reverse engineer seem like they’re based on like a combination of PlayStation controllers and Super Nintendo controllers. When Summer finally catches both the Beths, she freaks out. The energy drink that she starts guzzling is called battery acid, it looks kind of like Monster Energy which is also a joke about how most energy drinks aren’t much better for you than actually drinking battery acid, but please do not drink battery acid.
Their version of Street Fighter seems like it’s closer to Street Fighter 5. Kick puncher looks like a parody of Ryu, and Tubesteak looks like Blanca. But if you watch the community series, the Kick puncher name is a big community easter egg. During that series, Kick puncher was the hero of a movie franchise that Troian Abed kept talking about. Tubesteak pretty obvious reference that’s just a reference to your dong.
The next video game parody is Final Fantasy 7. We see one of the characters holding a giant sword from the game, but because they’re doing the whole hyperrealistic thing, the whole idea is that the sword is too big and heavy for him to actually pick it up. I’m not sure to whom the giant crustacean is meant to be a reference. I think the whole thing with the infinite console screen is meant to show you that the game has access to an infinite library of games, but they’re all kind of like Lane games like this.
The next parody is an overt reference to the affair that the Beths are having but done in the style of like a jrpg tech space relationship game, like a dating Sim (the worst dating Sim you’ve ever seen).
The Text-Based Game
Then the text-based game might seem familiar if you play games back in the 1970s, this is probably 2 too old for most people watching this episode, but some of you may have actually played the game back in the day. It’s a Mainframe game called Wander from 1974, like a text-based game. There are lots of clones of this, but this is based on one of the original ones from back in 1974, which basically plays out exactly the way that you see in the episode.
It’s just like a text-based game where it gives you little queries, you type responses and it’ll just generate Things based on that. The joke about the Vampire ending in the clearing is just a joke about people having to play the real version of the game back in the day with similar circumstances like weird crazy stuff would happen and because it’s just text you wouldn’t have a warning of what might happen next.
Morty Breaking The Forth Wall
Then when Morty catches them it almost looks like he breaks the fourth wall here and that would be a first for him. I don’t think we’ve ever actually seen him break the fourth wall in an episode before. But the way they cut the transition, I think they play it so that you could think it is a fourth wall break or it’s not a fourth wall break.
It almost seems like Morty breaks the fourth wall again like almost breaks the fourth wall but not quite when he references the fact that they’re in a television show Trope of kids and sitcoms that never age like The Simpsons. So like “how many times have we done this Thanksgiving before, how old are we”.
San Junipero
Then we find out that Rick has a working Hollow deck inside the house, and when he says they went full San Junipero, that’s a reference to the Black Mirror episode of the same name where two women fall in love and live out the rest of their lives inside a matrix like simulation.
When they’re on the rooftop smoking, you notice the smoke that they blow is based on what they’re currently thinking about. So Space Beth blows a middle finger flipping someone off And Home Beth blows Jerry’s face.
Eternal Sunshine Of A Spotless Mind And Multiplicity
Then we see the memory device from Morty’s mind blowers that they want Rick to use. He makes an Eternal Sunshine reference because in that movie Jim Carrey’s character wanted all history of his relationship and his love for Kate Winslet’s character taken from his mind.
The Multiplicity reference is to the Michael Keaton movie where he clones himself, implying with the joke that the Clones got it on with themselves during that movie.
And like I mentioned earlier, when he says the two of them are gonna attack him later when the memory wipe fails, he’s actually talking from experience because as he said “he’s seen it all”. So he’s been in scenarios where that’s happened, where it hasn’t worked and they’ve attacked him. Which is why he goes through this whole thing so unsurprised by every turn, like “yeah yeah whatever let’s get on with this”.
Jerry Upgrade
Then when they reveal the truth at dinner, Jerry has the flashback that’s just meant to show you how Beth has all this potential that she’s never really actually explored and that’s why this is playing out during this episode. Because it’s finally coming out of her, like “oh wow I never thought about doing something like this, is this what I’m capable of”.
We find out that Rick has upgraded Jerry’s body with a shell defense mechanism, that he uses anytime there’s something that he just can’t or doesn’t want to deal with. And that will just continue in future episodes like he’ll have that ability going forward now. He also reveals that Jerry can turn into a full-on Shrek if they try to force the shell open. Also clowning on Wonder Woman 1984 is just being a lame movie.
And when Summer reference getting themselves another Jerry, they actually literally just did that in episode one or actually kind of the reverse of that, like they found that they’d had a different Jerry this whole time and went back to get the original one.
Morty Tequila And Post Credits Scene
The lesson Rick is referencing when he says he also learns something this week, is that he shouldn’t leave the Venusian wine out, because he blames that on everything that happened during the episode and stows it in that hidden cabinet. Also, zoom and enhance in the background here, there’s this freaky little tiny Morty stuck inside the bottle of liquor, like a Morty tequila worm or something, his eyes are closed so I’m assuming he’s dead. Beneath it there’s a Meeseeks box and next to it is a container that looks like a hairy ball sack.
In the post-credits scene, they reveal that Jerry or other Jerrys, multiple Jerrys, visit the Jerryboree daycare (which we just saw in episode one) to get it on with themselves sometimes in really weird ways. So like as weird as Beth got in this episode Jerry is just as weird.
Three Way Ending
The way the writers talked about the weird three-way thing they have going on at the end of the episode, is that they could always reference it in future episodes as it could potentially become a thing. But at most I think they’ll just use it for comedy like they’ll reference it in funny ways in future episodes.
The same way that they make the joke about the giant Naruto baby at the end of this episode, like “oh yeah that thing is still out there, remember we did that once upon a time a little while ago”. And the way they play Space Beth leaving, this sounds like it’s going to be the last episode we’ll see her in for a while. She might come back before the end of this season but like I think it’s going to be a little while.
