He bleeds out, a look of mystified shock frozen in his eyes, convulsing as his life-force ebbs away. S1, E5 ‘Meeseeks and Destroy’ Fairytale EndingĪ fairytale giant – in the ‘Fe Fi Fo Fum’ mould – slips in his kitchen and slams his skull on a table-top. (It’s a testament to Rick and Morty’s perpetually heavy ante that a little girl having her head sliced off by a Freddy Krueger substitute doesn’t even make it onto the list.) Here are the most gruesome, in all their gory glory, season by season. There are long deaths, slow deaths, good deaths, bad deaths, sad deaths, funky deaths, perfunctory deaths, ironic deaths, iconic deaths, horrid deaths, hilarious deaths and hectares of borderline disturbing deaths. That it’s not the first association you make with the show is possibly a by-product of there being so damn much of it that it stops registering. What really characterises it though, is death.
Then there are the catch-phrases, and the colourful cast of supporting characters – everything from fatally-depressed Mr Meseeks to embedded family friends like Mr Poopybutthole. The super-slick, super-sick Rick and Morty brand is known for many things: the warped, borderline-abusive dynamic between its titular characters, its deliciously dark humour, the gleefulness it takes in capsizing the conventions of a thousand genre tropes.
