Rick Sanchez (''Rick and Morty'')

Rick Sanchez
Rick and Morty character
First appearance	"Pilot"
Created by	Justin Roiland Dan Harmon
Voiced by	Justin Roiland
Information
Full name	Rick Sanchez
Aliases	Rick Sanchez (C-137)
Species	Human
Occupation	Scientist
Significant other(s)	Unity (ex-lover)
Children	Beth Smith (daughter)
Relatives	Jerry Smith (son-in-law) Summer Smith (granddaughter) Morty Smith (grandson) Morty Smith, Jr. (great-grandson)
Nationality	American

Rick Sanchez is a fictional character from the Adult Swim animated television series Rick and Morty. Created by both Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon. He is based on Emmett Brown from Back to the Future, and is a genius alcoholic scientist. Rick is the show's main protagonist alongside his grandson Morty. Known for his reckless, nihilist behavior and his pessimistic personality, the character has been well-received.

He is formally referred to as Rick Sanchez C-137 by the Trans-Dimensional Council of Ricks, in reference to his original universe, C-137. Both Rick and Morty are voiced by Roiland. The Rick and Morty comic series follows Rick Sanchez C-132; the video game Pocket Mortys follows the Rick and Morty of C-123.^[1]

Role in Rick and Morty

Rick Sanchez C-137 is the father of Beth Smith, and the grandfather of Morty and Summer Smith. He is said to have been away from the family for several years prior to the events of the show's first episode, "Pilot". He frequently travels on adventures through space and other planets and dimensions with his grandson Morty.

Rick is portrayed as a mad scientist; utilizing his mathematical and scientific prowess in conjunction with apathy and egotistical cynicism, he emerges safely from any situation, regardless of the consequences of his self-preservation. In "The Ricks Must Be Crazy", Rick reveals that he powers his flying car with a battery that contains a miniature universe whose inhabitants unknowingly provide the required electricity. When the inhabitants cease providing Rick with energy to power his car, as they have created a miniature universe for their own usage, Rick destroys their miniature universe, killing everyone inside. He does not demonstrate remorse for his action, but satisfaction when his original universe consequently begins powering his vehicle once again.

Rick's intelligence is portrayed to transcend that of metaphysical beings, as demonstrated in the episode "Something Ricked This Way Comes", where he outsmarts Satan. In that same episode, Rick is implied to be an atheist, as he tells Summer "there is no god...gotta rip that Band-Aid off now. You'll thank me later".^[2]

Rick reveals his disdain for love in the episode "Rick Potion #9", in which he claims that it is "a chemical reaction that compels animals to breed".^[2] When Rick and Morty irreversibly mutate all humans on Earth except for their family members, they abandon their original dimension, Dimension C-137 (and their family in that dimension), for a new one. Rick locates a universe in which the alternate version of himself has undone the damage inflicted by the love potion, but where the new dimension's Rick and Morty have been killed, allowing the C-137 Rick and Morty to take their place. Despite Morty's trauma concerning this knowledge, Rick is nonchalant about moving to the new dimension.

In the episode "Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind", after numerous Ricks in alternate dimensions are murdered, the Trans-Dimensional Council of Ricks accuses Rick C-137 and orders for him to be arrested. Rick C-137 finds himself captured by an "evil" Rick, but is saved by a legion of alternate-dimension Mortys led by Morty C-137.

In the first episode of the second season, "A Rickle in Time", Rick nearly sacrifices himself to save Morty, but saves his own life when he realizes that doing so is possible. In the episode "Get Schwifty", it is revealed that Rick was once in a rock band called the Flesh Curtains, alongside Birdperson and Squanchy. In the episode "Big Trouble in Little Sanchez", Rick transfers his consciousness into a younger clone of himself, whom he calls "Tiny Rick". He soon becomes anguished in his new body, and manages to return to his older true form, and murders a line of other clones he produced. In the second season's finale, "The Wedding Squanchers", Rick and his family attend Birdperson's wedding, where Birdperson is betrayed and killed by his bride Tammy, a double agent for the Galactic Federation. The family is forced to inhabit an unusually small yet Earth-like planet, as they cannot return to Earth due to Rick's status as a wanted criminal. Rick turns himself in to the Federation to allow his family to return home, and is incarcerated on a prison planet under the charges of having committed "everything". But in the season three premiere "The Rickshank Redemption", by taking out the Council of Ricks while saving Morty and Summer, it is revealed that Rick actually turned himself in to access the Federation's supercomputer and wipe it out financially. Rick also indirectly convinces Beth to divorce Jerry for trying to convince the family to sell him out.

In the premiere episode of the series' third season, "The Rickshank Rickdemption" shows a possible origin for Rick, in which he was a well-meaning scientist who loved his wife Diane and daughter Beth, but had an encounter with a member of the Council of Ricks during his initial testing of a prototype portal gun, who offered him the secret to creating his inter-dimensional portal gun and joining the Council of Ricks. Shortly after his refusal, even deciding to quit science forever, a bomb was sent through a portal, killing Diane and Beth. Rick claims that this was a fake memory he created in order to trick his interrogator into implanting a virus into the mind-reading device he was attached to, allowing him to hijack his body and escape from the Federation prison. At the end of the episode, Rick again insists, in a rant to Morty, that the death of his wife and daughter was a fake memory, though this may be simply him denying the truth to hide his feelings.

Rick's catchphrase is "Wubba Lubba Dub-Dub", first introduced in the episode "Meeseeks and Destroy". In Birdperson's native language, the catchphrase translates to "I am in great pain, please help me".^[3][4]

Development

The character was created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon, who first met at Channel 101 in the early 2000s. In 2006, Roiland created The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti, an animated short parodying the Back to the Future characters Doc Brown and Marty McFly, and the precursor to Rick and Morty.^[5] The idea for Rick and Morty, in the form of Doc and Mharti was brought up to Adult Swim, and the ideas for a family element and Rick being a grandfather to Morty were developed.^[6] Roiland considers his voice for Rick to be a "horrible Doc Brown manic impression".^[6]

Reception

The character has received positive reception. Speaking of Rick's relatability and likability, Dan Harmon stated that "we’ve all been Rick. But Rick really does have bigger fish to fry than anybody. He understands everything better than us. So you give him the right to be jaded and dismissive and narcissistic and sociopathic".^[7] Emily Gaudette of Inverse wrote that fans have "come to love [Rick] over two seasons of misadventures".^[8]

David Sims of The Atlantic noted Rick's "bitter amorality" and called the character "a genius who comfortably thinks of himself as the universe’s cleverest man and is grounded only by his empathy toward other people, which he tries to suppress as much as possible", therefore writing that Rick's selflessness at the end of the episode "The Wedding Squanchers" is "the most surprising twist possible".^[9] Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club wrote that "[Rick] slowly realizing that he loved his grandkids and his daughter (and tolerated his son-in-law) no matter how many times he swore at them helped to give the character some necessary depth", and that "behind all the catchphrases and the crazed energy ... There’s something dead and sad and fucked up in the guy".^[10]

In the first episode of the third season, "The Rickshank Redemption", Rick shows a significant interest in Szechuan sauce, a McNugget dipping sauce offered by McDonald's restaurants in 1998 as a promotion for the Disney animated film Mulan. Rick's insistence that his motivation in life is "finding that McNugget sauce" caused a public interest in having the sauce be reinstated on the McDonald's menu, with some fans attempting to recreate the sauce themselves.^[11][12][13] According to USA Today, McDonald's spokesperson Terri Hickey stated that "We never say never, because when our customers speak, we listen. And to paraphrase some of our most enthusiastic fans, our sauce is so good that it would be worth waiting 9 seasons or 97 years for."^[11][13]

References

External links

• Rick Sanchez on IMDb