Recap / Rick And Morty S 2 E 2 Mortynight Run - TV Tropes

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Recap / Rick And Morty S 2 E 2 Mortynight Run 2 Following

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Season 2, Episode 2:Mortynight RunMeet Fart, the elemental-pooping cloud.Written by: David PhillipsDirected by: Dominic Polcino

Rick: Hey, Morty, remember when you said selling a gun was as bad as pulling the trigger? How do you feel about all these people that are getting killed today because of your choices?Morty: I did the right thing, Rick!Rick: Tell that to Gearhead's gearsticles.Morty: You did that!Rick: Wrong! I'd be playing "Roy" right now. At a certain point, my hands are tied, Morty.

Original air date: 8/2/2015

Rick and Morty drop Jerry off in a daycare made for Jerrys; Morty tries to save a gaseous lifeform.

This episode contains examples of...

• Affably Evil:
  • Krombopulos Michael is very nice and friendly for an assassin who claims to have no code of ethics and will kill anyone for money, even children and old people. He just loves killing!
  • The gas organism, Fart, is equally polite and gentle to the solid life forms he considers a disease and has every intention of "cleansing".
• All for Nothing: After a rescue attempt, the deaths of tons of innocent people, and a lot of trouble, Morty ends up killing the gas life form anyways because he learns that they're out to kill all carbon-based life forms.
• All Just a Dream: Morty's playthrough of the "Roy" video game begins with Roy waking up from a nightmare, telling his mother that he dreamt he was with an old man who put a helmet on him (I.E. what happened to Morty immediately before the game).
• Alternate Self: While in line to pick up Jerry from daycare, Rick and Morty encounter parallel selves who didn't try to save Fart and had fun at the arcade. It's also heavily implied (and eventually confirmed in "Solaricks") that, due to a mixup, another alternate pair of them ends up taking the current main Jerry back with them, while the main duo ends up with the Jerry native to the alternates' universe.
• Anti Matter: The gun Rick sells to Krombopulos Michael is specifically called out as firing antimatter, because the target "cannot be harmed by normal matter." It seems to fire purple energy bolts, though.
• Arms Dealer: Selling a gun to a murderous assassin qualifies Rick as an arms dealer, and its implied that he's done this many times before. When Morty calls him out on this, he dismisses Morty as having a "very planetary mindset."
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Fart is revealed to be an extremist who is intent on cleansing the universe of carbon-based life forms, which his kind considers to be a disease that needs to be eradicated for the greater good. He is not outwardly malicious, however; he maintains a personal bond with Morty, and even shares his intent nonchalantly to him, convinced he would understand the importance of his cause. He is shocked and betrayed when Morty kills him in response, not understanding what would provoke such a backstab.
• Bookends: The first time Fart sings a song to Morty, it is interrupted by an angry Rick. The last time it sings to Morty again, it is interrupted by Morty himself, who uses his song as a distraction to shoot him dead.
• Borrowed Biometric Bypass: During his assassination coup, Krombopulos Michael forces a guard's hand on a scanner to open a door.
• Break the Cutie: Morty (again). His idealism is completely crushed when Fart is revealed to be genocidal and he is forced to kill him, making the entire endeavor All for Nothing. Rick unknowingly rubbing this in his face by complimenting him for sticking to his principals helps him none.
• Chekhov's Gun: Literally. The antimatter gun Rick sells to Krombopulos Michael at the beginning is used by Morty to kill Fart at the end.
• Condescending Compassion: The main daycare worker at the Jerryboree is a Perpetual Smiler who talks to the Jerrys there like 5-year-olds, even though he's a grown man in his 30's. Since the daycare was created by a variant Rick—almost all of whom see Jerrys as idiots—it makes sense.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Rick keeps telling Morty that he should have stayed out of trying to save Fart. Morty spends most of the episode insisting he did the right thing, but after being forced to kill Fart at the end, he silently has to admit that Rick was right on this one.
• Disaster Dominoes: Fart manipulates a cop into committing suicide by crashing his car into a Federation fighter. The fighter spins out of control and knocks the others off course, one of which smacks into a crane holding a large gear, which breaks off and flies back to disable the large cruiser.
• Disney Acid Sequence: Fart can induce these, doing so twice for Morty to bond with him, and once on a Gear Cop with not-so-nice intentions.
• Dodge by Braking: Rick pulls this trick on his pursuers.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite being the type of person who'd casually sell a gun to a contract killer just to make some quick money to blow at an arcade, Rick is visibly disturbed when Krombopulos Michael hands over his business card to Morty.
• Exact Words: After revealing his genocidal intentions for carbon-based life to Morty (who is one such life form), Fart reads his mind and concludes that he still agrees that "life must be protected, even through sacrifice." Thus, despite being telepathic, he doesn't pick up on Morty's intention to kill him until it's too late; it turns out, Morty wasn't thinking about protecting Fart and his kind, but saving carbon-based life by sacrificing Fart.
• False Friend: Gearhead double-crosses Rick for the bounty on his head. Unfortunately for him, betrayal is one of Rick's Berserk Buttons.
• Fatal Family Photo: Krombopulos Michael looks at his girl's photo. A minute later, he gets accidentally smashed by Morty driving Rick's car.
• Fictional Currency: Early on, Rick is handed a money bag with 3,000 flerbos by Krombopulos Michael.
• Final Solution: Fart wants to bring peace to the universe by destroying all solid life forms.
• Foreshadowing: Fart's song at first sounds like Word Salad Lyrics, but if you listen closely, you'll hear that it's actually about how intergalactic peace can be achieved by killing all humanoids, before he explicitly reveals to Morty at the end that this is his intention.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: As Rick loads green rocks into his car, one of them appears to have a small lifeform attached to it.
• Funny Background Event:
  • While Rick and Morty talk in the arcade, a Mr. Meeseeks can be seen watching an alien play an arcade game. The alien wins the game and Mr. Meeseeks promptly dies as a result.
  • Gazorpazorpfield can also be seen later on. Well, an episode of it.
• Hard Truth Aesop: You should know when to not get involved in a situation, even if it seems bad; otherwise, intervening can just make things worse. This is especially the case if you're relying purely on righteousness and don't have a solid understanding of all the facts involved.
• Hates Being Nicknamed: Or at least, hates the nickname he's commonly known by. Gearhead asks if Rick even knows what his real name is (it's "Revolio Clockberg, Jr."), and reveals that calling him "Gearhead" is a highly racist nickname akin to calling a Chinese person "Asiaface".
• Hope Spot: Inverted. After learning of their genocidal nature, Morty is terrified when he learns Rick opened a portal and more Farts will be coming in soon. Morty tries to warn him about this, but before he can, Rick loudly passes gas, revealing his claim was just a joke.
• Innocuously Important Episode: This is mostly a one-off episode, but does have one subtle-but-significant impact on the series, and gets numerous references in Season 6:
  • It's heavily implied that the main Jerry the audience has been following in the series since Rick and Morty moved to his dimension in "Rick Potion #9" is accidentally traded away to a different Rick and Morty at the end of the episode thanks to a receipt mix-up, and the Jerry that the main protagonist duo brings back with them is a different one. "Solaricks" later confirms this to be true. While the new Jerry has had almost all of the same experiences with his own version of the family as the previous Jerry (at the very least, the events of "Something Ricked This Way Comes" did happen to him too, since Rick makes a mention in Season 4 of Jerry going to Pluto), and is exactly the same in terms of personality, this means that the "Main Jerry" who appears for the rest of the series after this episode is the third version of him that the audience has followed, unlike Rick and Morty (the originals) or Beth and Summer (the second versions).
  • The video game "Roy: A Life Well Lived" reappears and becomes central to the plot of an episode in the sixth season (the title of which—"Rick: A Mort Well Lived"—is a reference to it), and the Jerryboree also appears or is referenced multiple times in the same season.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: Rick assures Morty that he is not doing any shady business out of the Parking Garage. Cue Krombopulos Michael knocking on the car door to buy a specialized gun from him.
• Jaw Drop: Rick and Morty both have them after Fart uses his powers to cause the above-mentioned Disaster Dominoes, leading to a ton of destruction and death.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While Rick is apathetic as usual towards the whole situation, he is completely right that Morty caused countless innocent deaths by trying to save Fart, none of which would have happened if he'd stayed out of it.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: The "Roy: A Life Well-Lived" video game in the arcade has the player put on a VR helmet that puts them in the shoes of the eponymous Roy, and the goal is to live the longest and most interesting life possible. Morty nearly forgets who he is when he's put into the game without warning and Rick has to snap him out of it, while Rick can play the game and argue with Morty at the same time because he's ready for it.
• Low Clearance: Rick maneuvers the shuttle through a clockwork while the pursuers crash trying to follow.
• My Car Hates Me: Morty can't get Rick's spaceship car to start while the guards converge. Probably doesn't help that he just made a crash landing.
• Never My Fault:
  • As Rick points out, Morty states that selling a gun to an assassin is just as bad as pulling the trigger yourself, but later, dozens of innocent civilians die as collateral damage because Morty saved Fart instead of just letting him get killed. Morty insists that it's different because, unlike Rick, he "did the right thing."
  • Rick also has shades of this by not caring what K. Michael does with the gun he sells him, and later blames Morty for what he himself did to Gearhead's gearsticles in order to escape from him.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: By leading Fart to the wormhole back to his universe, Morty very nearly gives the gas organisms the information they'll need to invade his universe and wipe out all carbon-based life, and has to kill Fart to avoid this. To say nothing of how his entire quest to save him from an assassin resulted in more deaths than if he had just stayed out of it, making it All for Nothing and Not Quite the Right Thing.
• No-Flow Portal: Zig-zagged; Rick uses the portal to flood and flush away some gromflulomites, but later says that Fart being gaseous means he can't go through the portal. So Rick's portals aren't liquidtight but they are airtight.
• Not in Front of the Kid!: Implied when Krombopulos Michael shows up to meet Rick, who has Morty with him, and purchase the anti-matter gun from him. He starts talking about his plans for killing, and Rick quickly and pointedly introduces Michael to "my grandson, Morty" in an effort to get him to stop talking. Unfortunately for Rick, Michael—who will kill anyone for money, including children and the elderly, with no qualms—has zero problems with telling a kid about his profession, and even gives Morty his business card, to Rick's annoyance.
• Not Quite the Right Thing: Morty's first brush with this out of several in the series. His grandpa uncaringly sells a gun to a self-professed Psycho for Hire who's willing to kill absolutely anyone? Clearly, the assassin's target is an innocent victim whom Morty needs to save from captivity and death! The fact that Fart is amiable and friendly to him helps as well. But throughout the episode, Morty gets put through some serious Break the Cutie when rescuing Fart snowballs into antagonizing the Galactic Federation, indirectly causing a multitude of innocent deaths while trying to escape, and discovering at the end that Fart is Affably Evil and an Asshole Victim planning to exterminate all carbon life in the universe, forcing Morty to kill him and rendering the whole adventure All for Nothing. He's left realizing in the harshest way possible that his intervention only caused a ton of bad stuff to happen for no benefit, all in the name of trying to take what he saw as the morally-correct action.
• Parking Garage: Morty wonders what shady business Rick is doing out of a garage. Turns out, he's selling a gun to a killer.
• Pet the Dog: Rick is seriously annoyed that Morty insists on going to save Fart rather than the two of them just hanging out and having fun at the arcade like Rick wants to. At one point, when Morty gives him the option to bail while he rescues Fart himself, Rick does indeed ditch him...for all of a minute, before he portals back Just in Time to save Morty, and subsequently sticks with him for the rest of the episode in his goal to rescue Fart, despite repeatedly complaining about it.
• Portal Cut: Rick opens a portal right in the middle of a guard, cutting him in half.
• Played Ball in College: When Morty plays Roy: A Life Well Lived for the first time, he opts to have Roy play college football, where he stars as a wide receiver nicknamed "The Rocket". Roy's life post-football is marked with disappointment and settling into a job at his father-in-law's carpet store, however a particulary rough battle with cancer has him regain the strength to fight, as his family stands behind him, even greeting him with a banner reading "Cancer can't beat 'The Rocket'", when he lands in remission.
• Slice of Life: The alien video game Roy: a Life Well-Lived, detailed under Lotus-Eater Machine, which shows the life-and-times of a normal American man named "Roy" (for some reason, despite this being an alien arcade not on Earth). It's considered a bad move to go back to selling carpets after beating cancer, by the way. Rick immediately going off-grid draws a crowd.
• The Stinger: An advertisement for Blips and Chitz, the arcade, which Rick appears in.
• Stock Money Bag: Rick is handed the sum of 3,000 flerbos in a money bag with a huge flerbos symbol on it that resembles a dollar sign.
• Take the Wheel: Rick tells Morty to take the wheel of his ship/car (which he's been teaching him to drive) so he can get a shot at his pursuers.
• Unfortunate Names: After Rick calls the gas entity a fart, he adopts Fart as his name, despite Morty's protests.Morty: I'm gonna miss you, uh... Fart. I'm really sorry your name became Fart.
• Villain Song: Once you learn about Fart's true intentions, his "Goodbye Moon Men" song becomes this, where he explains in metaphors how he wants to destroy all solid life forms.
• Vomiting Cop: The two Gear Cops when they find Gearhead after Rick swapped his mouth gears with his testicle gears.
• Would Hurt a Child: Krombopulos Michael cheerfully states that he'll kill anyone for money, including children and old people.

The worlds can be one togetherCosmos without hatredStars like diamonds in your eyesThe ground can be spaceSpace, space, space, spaceWith feet marching towards a peaceful skyAll the moon men want things their wayBut we make sure they see the sun...