Anmol Ahuja
Watching the absolutely brilliant ‘Rick and Morty’ was nothing short of a TV viewing revelation for me. It completely changed the way I would come to choose and view the shows that would later become a part of my watchlist and has somewhat influenced my taste in the kind of comedy and sci-fi I view. You come out of a typical Rick and Morty episode either surprised, shocked, guffawing, often times disgusted too, but mostly just marveling at how effortlessly put together it all seems, and scratching your head on all the jargon it throws at you at lightning speed, in the name of philosophy, technology, relationships, religion, politics, sci-fi and life itself, in the words of the very rise Rick Sanchez, who, discerning as it may be for a cynic, stands right most of the time.
That precisely, I believe, is a true victory for the show. The show operates in multiple timelines, galaxies and dimensions, yet the deepest problems they face are also the most human. Morty and Summer’s insecurity at school and in life, looking at their parents go through a rough marriage, which in turn dials back to Beth having to be at the helm of Rick’s abandonment issues in her childhood. It’s all thankfully delivered with a good bit of fun, and a ton of other zany, memorable characters thrown in, that really add the extra edge to the show. What’s also surprising is that most characters are also voiced by the duo of Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon, the co-creator of the show. How one comes up with absolutely brilliant stuff like this, writes all the brilliant characters populating your script, makes them funny yet zany and resonant, AND voices them too is beyond me. But, as long as we are being delivered top-quality entertainment from Adult Swim, we’re all for it. Having already ranked the best episodes on the series, here we delve into all Rick and Morty characters that make the show awesome and try to rank them. Happy reading! (And viewing!) Needless to say, everything following this contains spoilers and will make little to no sense if you haven’t watched the show. By the way, which Rick and Morty character are you? Who do you think should top the list?
15. Summer Smith
Summer is literally every typical high school white girl parodied in animation. While her speech, mannerisms, body language, and voice acting are spot on, it’s her growth as a character on the show to so much more than what an initial impression gives away that keeps me invested in Summer as a character. She can be funny and exceptionally practical in situations even Rick sometimes fails to, simply an acceptance-seeking teenager or a bright spot in a family of nitwits (except Rick, of course). Her scenes where she confronts the fact that she was an unplanned child and the way she chooses to deal with it among an increasingly dysfunctional family are the strongest moments for her as a character, in my opinion.
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14. Beth Smith
Beth is the kind of psychologically complex character who brings a lot of depth to the show’s proceedings. Her doubt, confusion, uncertainty, and trying to find the genesis of her problems by courting her father’s methods while she struggles to be a good mother and horse surgeon are all essential characteristics that certainly make her one of the most important parts of the show. The bit where she is torn apart, believing that she might be a sentient clone of herself that her father replaced in this dimension, is especially pivotal in her development as a character.
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13. Krombopulos Michael
Out of all the characters appearing on the list, Krombopulos Michael has the shortest screen time owing to the fact that he gets killed by Morty shortly after his introduction. Krombopulos Michael meets Rick in a garage to collect an anti-matter gun from him in exchange for Flerbos, which Rick uses to spend an afternoon at Blipz and Chitz, a videogame arcade, much to Morty’s disdain. Michael introduces himself as a professional assassin with no moral compass or ethics, “I’m very discreet. I have no code of ethics. I will kill anyone, anywhere. Children, animals, old people don’t matter. I just love killing!” #KMIchealkills
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12. Abradolf Lincler
I am not sure whether one can actually come up with a character this ingenious without being high as a kite. Abradolf Lincler, as the name clearly suggests, is a cross between Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler, two extremely well-known though polarisingly different politicians. Abradolf Lincler was Rick’s failed attempt to create a morally neutral superleader, although what he gets is not quite what he bargained for. As he wonders about an internal conflict he has between all men being created equal and the idea of superior/inferior genes, which is funny enough in itself, Lincler sacrifices himself tragically to let Morty have some Kalaxian crystals, and in the hope that he could redeem himself in Rick’s eyes. Rick later snorts that K-Lax for a high, while Morty and the viewers watch in comical disbelief.
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11. Birdperson
I would place the death of Birdperson at the hands of his fiancé Tammy, who turns out to be an intergalactic agent, right up there alongside Evil Morty’s reveal in two of the best episodes of the series. Birdperson was one of Rock’s oldest friends and allies, and the particular show, and that moment came as a shock to the viewers precisely because it was set up nicely in the same episode. We see Birdperson describing his misadventures with Rick to Beth, and Rick finally accepts and opens up about Birdperson as a friend when Tammy turns and shoots Birdperson dead. “Weddings are basically funerals with cake, Morty!” Too literal, Rick.
However, this is where things get REALLY interesting. In an unforeseen post credits scene, we see Tammy reanimating Birdperson with cybernetic parts, who then reawakens as Phoenixperson, as both of them fly off. Something ‘Rick’ed this way comes, I guess.
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10. Jerry Smith
It is often remarked that one of the best kinds of comedy stems from being able to take a joke upon oneself, to make a complete fool of oneself to mine laughs. Jerry Smith’s character, voiced by an excellent Chris Parnell, seems to at least have that part of his life figured out. The resident family idiot and the butt of mostly ALL of Rick’s jokes and Beth’s criticism, his simpleton eyes and demeanor may sometimes make your heart go out to him. Give it a second, though, and Jerry Smith is almost certain to come up with something that restores the character’s affable idiocy. I found the bits where Rick drops off Jerry at a daycare in space and the one where Jerry and Beth go for couple therapy and end up creating manifestations of themselves to solve issues in their marriage to be particularly character-defining.
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9. Mr. Poopybutthole
Anybody unaware of the show’s inappropriate humor would, at this point, probably, turn back in disgust or stop reading the article altogether. It’s no farce, one of the characters of the show is actually named Mr. Poopybutthole, and incidentally is also one of the show’s best creations. The character is shown sharing warm moments with the Smith family in the episode ‘Total Rickall’, where the Smith residence is infested with a parasite that survives by implanting fake memories inside the host’s head and multiplying. Upon figuring out that the parasite can only implant positive memories and eliminating all the zany characters that the parasite manifests into, Beth shoots Mr. Poopybutthole, too, who turns out to be real, and gets severely injured in the process. Upon being visited by the Smith family, he refuses to see them and apologizes to Beth for not having any bad memories with him. Right in the feels, Mr. Poopybutthole, although you may have a drug problem right now, ooweeee!
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8. Scary Terry
Creative recreation, parodying or replication of iconic characters can often land one in murky waters. That, of course, is only applicable if you are not Justin Roiland or Dan Harmon, who seem to be masters of traversing risky terrains now. Scary Terry is a shot at the iconic character Freddy Krueger from the ANOES movies. Terry has miniature swords instead of knives for fingers, and has a compulsion for uttering “B*tch!” at the end of every line. This becomes especially funny during Scary Terry’s most personal, unguarded moments, whence he says something with an emotional connect and ends it with “B*tch!”. Deep down though, Terry is just as insecure and vulnerable as the rest of us; the guy just wants to be scary. After all, you’ve got to love a character who is a serial killer in the day, and has nightmares of being late to class and turning up with no pants!
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7. Pickle Rick
The only reason Pickle Rick exists is Rick’s denial to attend family therapy. Rick is able to transform himself into a pickle just in order to avoid going to the psychiatrist with his family. While on that, he goes on a murderous rage, literally building armor for himself from the ribcage of a rat he kills, and later ends up killing all the agents in a high-security building. His square-off with Jaguar is graphically and action-animation-wise, awesome, and most definitely a season highlight. Along with being one of the most violent episodes of the entire series, it sets up Pickle Rick as a total bad*ss and as a character not to be messed with.
-TYING WITH-
7. Tiny Rick
What’s better than a full-grown Rick in all his infamous glory, you ask? The mind and conscience of one, trapped in the body of a younger, smaller Rick, crying out for help in songs and raps that nobody seems to understand, which is what makes it all the more funny since the cries for help are not cryptic at all. They are, in fact, quite literal.
Tiny Rick had a catchphrase that is somehow still stuck inside my head, and he also managed to become one of the coolest kids in school overnight. Sound logic to it all, which is especially interesting. However, the reason I love Tiny Rick so much more (apart from his catchphrase, that is) is that he made the entire school dance to “Let me out, this is not a dance!”, his musical rendition for asking for help from his grandkids Summer and Morty, ending suitably with, “I am dying in a vat in the garage!”. In whatever little understanding I have of it, I see effective dark humor here, employed to great comical effect. I also may have a particular fondness for the only episode in which Tiny Rick appears, and that is partially because of Morty’s “get your shit together” moment with Summer, which is absolutely, unabashedly hilarious.
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6. Squanchy
Undoubtedly the squishiest character on the show, Squanchy is a native of the planet Squanch, the home of all things Squanchy and also the infamous site where Birdperson’s marriage with Tammy turned into a massacre in “The Wedding Squanchers.” It was in the later moments of the episode that Squanchy turned into a giant raging monster and gave everybody a taste of his squinch, allowing Rick and his family to squinch from the planet. With precious little to squash, this character was able to scratch his way into the audience’s hearts, and they absolutely squinched him for that!
Good luck squeezing that out. As Rick says, “It’s more contextual than literal. You just say what’s in your squinch, and people understand!”
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5. Evil Morty
In what is, in my opinion, the best Rick and Morty episode created until now, (The Ricklantis Mixup), the holy mother of all reveals awaits towards the end wherein a candidate Morty, contesting elections to the Citadel, wins and has non-compliant members of the shadow Council of Ricks killed, in complete Godfather style. While their bodies float in the abyss, he reveals himself to be Evil Morty from ‘Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind’, and makes a “cold, calculated speech with sinister overtones”, while ‘For the Damaged Coda’ by Blonde Redhead plays elevating the proceedings to a whole new level, hitherto unachieved for me, on the show. While it opens up a number of possibilities, now that Evil Morty is President of the Citadel, what it also does is establish Evil Morty as one of the most badass characters on Rick and Morty, and I’m all for that if THIS is the quality of the episodes that come out of it.
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4. Snuffles/Snowball
“Where are my testicles, Summer?”
Snuffles, now self-aware and armed with robotic enhancements, courtesy of Rick’s invention to make him smarter, breaks into a baffled Summer’s room in the middle of the night, and asks her this. There will not be a time when this particular scene doesn’t have me in splits. One of two ingenious, hilarious and really special character offerings of the second episode of the first season, ‘Lawnmower Dog’, Snuffle’s story of a submissive being gaining sentience, rebelling against the controlling authority and (dreaming of) declaring war, subsequently taking over the planet is at once outrageous and frantically funny. The moments where he rubs Jerry’s face in his own urine as retaliation and still displays care for his human Morty despite being a ruthless colonist are the high points of the episode.
In the end, he decides on not taking over the human world because that would just lead to them repeating the same mistakes humans did. He instead decides to move to a world where self-aware, intelligent dogs were in power, and pet insurance was mandatory. Now that’s a good boi!
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3. Meeseeks
If the rest of the characters here made this list, the Meeseeks should be right up in the Hall of Fame. These adorable blue orb heads appeared in a single episode in season one, and I have been pining for their return ever since. Meeseeks, known to be inhabiting many planets in the multiverse, exist only for one purpose: fulfilling a wish of the person who summons them. It is seemingly simple, except even Meeseeks are up for a bad day when summoned by the Smith family, who need help correcting a golf game, being popular at school, and some marriage advice. What makes these characters even more striking and having conceivably more depth is that despite being of a generally amiable and helpful nature and repeatedly uttering “I am Mr. Meeseeks! Look at me!” which is one hell of a catchphrase, they also explain that existence is pain for them. They don’t exist to find meaning in life, but instead serve a singular purpose and cease existing altogether upon its completion. This seemingly eccentric mix of comedy, philosophy, existentialism, and unconventional amusement is what makes the Meeseeks and Rick and Morty so special for me as a viewer.
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2. Morty Smith
The perfect sidekick, we see Morty as a character striving to achieve a balance between the unreal life he leads with his grandfather, traversing galaxies and timelines, and the desire for a ‘normal’ life with his dysfunctional family, and at high school, going after his crush as any middle-aged teenager would do. Unsurprisingly, while he has a set of defining moments where the character shines, the moments where he one ups Rick or makes him stop to think he is more than a mere accompaniment are absolute gold. It is this very relationship that is at the helm of Rick and Morty, apart from all the science fiction and irreverent humour. “Every Rick needs a Morty!” Let’s just leave it at that!
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1. Rick Sanchez
The man behind it all. The brilliant, boozy, megalomaniacal, egoistic, narcissistic scientist inventor is the person responsible for most of the happenings (and mishappenings) on the show. His escapades and misadventures have had enough of an impact to change the course of the Rick and Morty multiverse. The man single-handedly brought down the council of Ricks and the Citadel, converted the intergalactic currency to zero and courted chaos at a whim, created a miniverse to power his car battery, converted himself into a pickle to avoid family therapy, and on, and on. His relationship with Morty and the camaraderie he shares with his grandson is particularly interesting to watch, as are his antics when he just refuses to give two shits about everything happening around him. Most of the laughs on the show are, incidentally derived from his banter and constantly trying to undermine other characters on the show. The most important and vital character on the show, which goes without saying; his name is on the title card.
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