References You May Have Missed In Rick And Morty

One of the worst-kept secrets in all of television history is the fact that Adult Swim's Rick and Morty is filled to the tippy-top with Easter eggs, tongue-in-cheek references, and oftentimes blindly obvious homages. There's an entire episode that spoofs Stephen King's Needful Things. The penultimate installment of season two takes root in the same narrative as The Purge film series. And remember the American Idol parody in "Get Schwifty"?

While co-creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland have imbued the sci-fi adventure comedy series with a ton of references to '80s-era film and television, literary allusions drawn from all across time, and many modern-day pop culture comments that are super easy to spot, the dynamic duo have also incorporated at least double that amount under the radar. We've dug deep into every episode, and returned with all the references in Rick and Morty that you may have missed the first time around.

The 1989 black comedy Weekend at Bernie's follows a pair of low-level suits working at a New York insurance company who, after a string of bizarre and genuinely chills-inducing events, end up spending their Labor Day weekend hauling around their dead boss, Bernie Lomax (Terry Kiser), and trying to convince everyone he's still alive. 

Considering the fact that Harmon and Roiland love a bit of crude humor, it makes perfect sense that a Weekend at Bernie's reference would appear in Rick and Morty. However, it's one that isn't as obvious as lugging a corpse across a crowded beach. Amongst the bits in Season 1, Episode 8, "Rixty Minutes," there's a spoof trailer for a movie that centers around a dead elderly woman being held up by her cats, manually maneuvered like a puppet. Fittingly, the faux film is titled Last Will and Testa-meow: Weekend at Dead Cat Lady's House II. Let's just hope the reason behind her death wasn't the same as the one in Weekend at Bernie's.

Best known for its thrilling action sequences and, of course, the dashing Harrison Ford as the titular archeology professor turned adventurer, the 1984 film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom also gained a reputation for its gut-twirling dinner scene that involved chomping on bugs, slurping up baby snakes like spaghetti, and guzzling down eyeball soup by the bowlful. The shining entree in the yuck-fest, however, was a heaping mound of monkey brains—served in a severed monkey head for that additional gross-out factor. 

A similar course is dished up in the season two finale of Rick and Morty, which centers around the wedding of Birdperson (Harmon) and Tammy Gueterman (Cassie Steele). Watch carefully during the reception montage and you'll see Squanchy (Tom Kenny) serving a "salad person" a bushel of lettuce, cucumbers, and carrots in a severed monkey head. Though no brains were involved, the dramatic effect is exactly the same as that seen in the '80s flick, making for a perfect (and quite sneaky) Indiana Jones reference.

George Orwell's Animal Farm gets a few carefully crafted references throughout the "Lawnmower Dog" episode of Rick and Morty, which sees the family's lily-white pet pup gain sentience, speech, and a newly fostered drive to take down all of humanity. Snuffles uses his powers to construct a full body suit, express just how angry he is about the way dogs have grown from wild beasts to humans' subservient playthings, and gather up a mutt-ley crew of fellow pups to rule over the Smith family—a progression of events that loosely mimics what's seen in Orwell's allegorical novella.

But that's just surface-level stuff; there's something even sneakier hidden in the best of places: a joke. In a scene where Snuffles, the dastardly dog in question, is at peak of his peril-doling reign, he insists that Summer call him Snowball. A funny bit in itself, as Snowball is no less domineering and powerful a name than Snuffles, the renaming moment is actually a direct nudge at Orwell's work. A main character in Animal Farm is named Snowball.

The link is tripled up when realizing that Snowball was voiced by Kelsey Grammer, the father of Spencer Grammer who lends her pipes to Summer in Rick and Morty, in the 1999 film adaptation of Animal Farm.

There are about a thousand reasons why Birdperson is such a cherished Rick and Morty character, but we venture to say it's his eccentric origins, monotone voice that delivers deadpan tales of violence and indiscretion, genuine vulnerability, and feather-ful design that has made him so magnetic. But could it also be familiarity that has pulled viewers into Birdperson's irresistibly odd charms?

One fan theory suggests that Birdperson on the whole is a reference to Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, a sci-fi adventure series that ran from 1979 to 1981. Based on the fictional space opera character Buck Rogers, created by Philip Francis Nowlan in the novella Armageddon 2419 A.D, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century had no shortage of interesting characters, but it was the alien named Hawk who really stood out. Hawk, played by Murder She Wrote alum Thom Christopher, was a half-man, half-bird warrior who represented the last of a dying breed of bird people—a background Birdperson himself possesses. 

Beyond the feathery founding myth, Hawk and Birdperson are seriously similar in aesthetic make-up, sharing the same half-bird face and stern resting expression. Perhaps Birdperson's grandfather was Hawk? Or maybe Birdperson's avian ancestors were live-action in another dimension. One thing's for certain: we wouldn't put it past the Rick and Morty creatives to weave a web as weird as one that links the series to Buck Rogers in the 25th Century through concrete (but somewhat convoluted) familial ties.

The second season premiere, "A Rickle in Time," gifted Rick and Morty enthusiasts with yet another kooky character: the Fourth-Dimensional Testicle Monster, voiced by funnyman Keegan Michael Key. An enforcer of the laws of time, the saggy-skinned, eye-less creature explains that Rick, Morty, and Summer must suffer the consequences of their messing with time and space. He sentences them to an eternity spent shackled in Time Prison. Though the trickster trio evade the time cop's clutches, his presence still lingered in viewers' minds long after the episode credits rolled. Where have we seen such a creature before? 

The answer lies in good ol' Stephen King—his novel turned mini-series The Langoliers, to be exact. From an aesthetic standpoint, the Fourth-Dimensional Testicle Monster is a spitting image of the terrifying Langolier creatures seen in the 1995 mini-series. Both have wide, toothy mouths that occupy the majority of their facial planes; neither have eyes; and their skin is the same dark red-colored, wrinkly texture across the span of their bodies (which is, for the Langoliers, just a head). The reference is taken one step further when you realize that King's Langoliers literally devour time, sustaining themselves on the universe that's left behind when time passes, and that Rick and Morty's Fourth-Dimensional Testicle Monster exists an hour "behind" the present, similarly munching up the past as time goes on. 

The third season premiere "The Rickshank Rickdemption" nearly brought viewers to tears as Rick recounted his origin story, twisting a knife into every fan's heart. Granted, it wound up being a total fluke, but the sentiment still remained. And what made the moment even more special was the backstairs allusion to one incredibly acclaimed neo-western crime series. 

The home seen in Rick's fake origin story is the same layout as Walter White's house in Breaking Bad—even down to the nitty-gritty details like plants that line the pathway to the front door and the location of the house number on the garage wall. The only difference is that Heisenberg was laundering the money he nabbed from selling top-quality crystal meth in his garage, and Rick was more focused on cracking the code to building a time portal. At least we can hope that's what he was doing.