Rick and Morty season 4 spoilers for 'The Vat of Acid Episode' follow.
Thanks to a bizarre Easter egg in Solar Opposites, Rick and Morty recently connected with The Simpsons, creating a shared universe of sorts. Not to be outdone by that strange crossover, Rick and Morty's latest featured a few more surprise connections, including a South Park Easter egg which revealed that chapter's final devastating twist before it even happened.
The episode in question, simply titled 'The Vat of Acid Episode', begins with Morty criticising Rick's latest invention, which he argues doesn't compare to other devices invented by his grandfather.
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Rick freaks the hell out and while he's all riled up, Morty uses this opportunity to challenge him, suggesting he won't be able to create a device that enables Morty to "save" his progress in life and then re-do any of his past choices. Seemingly breaking his "no time travel" rule, Rick sets out to prove his grandson wrong and creates a device which allows him to do just that.
At first, Morty treats his new abilities like a video game, but that all changes when he meets an unnamed woman who he falls in love with. In a wordless and surprisingly heartfelt sequence, we watch as Morty finds happiness and then unbearable pain when the flight they board crashes atop a mountain.
Unable to reach his do-over device, Morty and his fellow survivors turn to cannibalism in a bid to survive the bitter cold. It's a harrowing scene which is easy to get caught up in, but if you were paying close attention, you might have noticed that some of the clothes the group wear bear a striking resemblance to the four kids in South Park.
The other two survivors who aren't Morty and his girlfriend wear the same hats as Stan and Kyle, as well as similar coloured clothing. Morty himself can also be seen sporting an orange hoodie, much like Kenny McCormick, the South Park resident who's most famous for dying in most episodes.
While that might just seem like a random homage at first, it all comes together when Rick reveals the true nature of his do-over device. Instead of breaking the oft-referred-to time travel rule, Rick's invention actually shoves Morty into a different alternate reality every time he uses it – and by doing so, he also causes the horrific death of each Morty who once lived in that reality.
That's right. Each death Morty thought he had avoided video game-style was actually experienced by a different Morty in another timeline. This means that Morty actually died countless times in this episode, and if that weren't shocking enough, the Morty we've come to know and love is technically responsible for each and every death.
While this all happened in just one episode, Morty's plight directly parallels what happened to South Park's Kenny across multiple seasons where he too died over and over again. The difference here is that McCormick didn't visit alternate realities and replace his counterparts. Instead, South Park fans eventually discovered that Kenny developed resurrection powers because his parents were once connected to a Cthulhu-worshipping death cult.
Clearly then, it's no coincidence that Morty and the other plane crash survivors were dressed up like South Park characters. Just as Kenny lived life over and over, so too did Morty, unknowingly replacing his counterparts ad infinitum.
Both stories are tragic in their own way, but Morty's is infinitely more devastating because of how Rick orchestrated the whole ordeal and all of the Morty deaths that followed.
While these parallels don't directly connect Rick and Morty to South Park, there's one particular scene early on which further cements how The Simpsons are actually part of this multiverse.
When Morty first starts using the do-over device, he helps an elderly man outside of a building which looks suspiciously like Moe's Tavern, Homer's favourite place in Springfield. Not only are the walls painted the same colour, but there's also the same green and orange stained-glass window which Simpsons fans have seen countless times before across the show's 30-plus years of history.
Thanks to this and that aforementioned connection in Solar Opposites, it's not hard to imagine a world where Morty unknowingly replaced a yellow-skinned version of himself too, killing his Simpsons counterpart in the process. You bastards.
Rick and Morty season 4 airs Sundays on Adult Swim in the US, and airs in the UK on E4 and All 4 on Wednesdays.
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After teaching in England and South Korea, David turned to writing in Germany, where he covered everything from superhero movies to the Berlin Film Festival.
In 2019, David moved to London to join Digital Spy, where he could indulge his love of comics, horror and LGBTQ+ storytelling as Deputy TV Editor, and later, as Acting TV Editor.
David has spoken on numerous LGBTQ+ panels to discuss queer representation and in 2020, he created the Rainbow Crew interview series, which celebrates LGBTQ+ talent on both sides of the camera via video content and longform reads.
Beyond that, David has interviewed all your faves, including Henry Cavill, Pedro Pascal, Olivia Colman, Patrick Stewart, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Dornan, Regina King, and more — not to mention countless Drag Race legends.
As a freelance entertainment journalist, David has bylines across a range of publications including Empire Online, Radio Times, INTO, Highsnobiety, Den of Geek, The Digital Fix and Sight & Sound.
