Rick & Morty Full-On Stole Futurama’s Grossest Joke

Even though the series Rick and Morty hates copying other animated series’ work, it straight up stole the grossest joke in the history of Futurama.

Despite Rick’s total disdain for outright copying another animated series (with ‘putting one’s own spin on it’ apparently being the only suitable exception), Rick and Morty full-on stole Futurama’s grossest joke.

Rick and Morty has always been a meta series with Rick breaking the fourth wall since season 1 and other characters addressing the fact that they’re in a T.V show as well throughout the series. This has always played up the ongoing theme of Rick and Morty that nothing matters in the universe, even the fact that everyone is just a cartoon character created for entertainment. However, just because nothing matters doesn’t mean Rick and Morty are going to be a couple of hacks who steal ideas from other adult animated series. In the season 3 episode titled, “The Rickchurian Mortydate”, Rick and Morty are obsessed with the video game Minecraft, so they travel to a ‘Minecraft dimension’ only to drop the entire storyline because apparently South Park already did it. Then, in “The Vat of Acid Episode”, Rick initially refuses to make Morty a device that can save his place in time because he already saw something similar on Futurama. Funny enough, however, those reservations didn’t seem to stop the series from doing the very thing Rick hates during one particular Rick and Morty adventure.

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In the Oni Press comic Rick and Morty #52 titled “The Mortian” by Kyle Starks and Phil Murphy, Morty crash lands on a dangerous world after flying away from a giant Death Star-like space station in an escape pod. Upon his arrival, Morty is almost eaten by a flying beast, he’s chased by an enormous reptile-like creature, and he’s taken prisoner by a primitive alien race. During his time in chains, Morty’s captors gave him and his fellow prisoners some type of slime to consume. While Morty thinks it tastes pretty good, the others he’s chained-up with refuse to drink it at all–and then it’s revealed why: the slime is secreted from a giant slug-like alien creature.

Rick and Morty’s ‘Slug Slime’ is Exactly like Futurama’s Slurm

In the Futurama season 1 episode “Fry and the Slurm Factory”, Fry and the gang get a behind-the-scenes look at how their favorite soda, Slurm, is made after getting a tour of the Willy Wonka-esque factory. What they found was a giant alien slug that secreted a slime that was then processed and turned into Slurm, though the episode made it clear that the characters could consume the slime directly from the slug if they wanted to (and it was just as gross as it sounds). After getting a side-by-side comparison, it is clear to see how the ‘slug’ Morty encounters in Rick and Morty is exactly like the one Fry meets in Futurama. It is odd that Rick and Morty would have a character so blatantly similar to one in Futurama, especially if it wasn’t a deliberate callout or reference given Rick’s well-noted hatred for copying other people’s work–though the explanation may be simpler than one would think.

It is a known fact that Futurama is the king of Sci-Fi comedy, especially in the realm of adult animation, so this ‘slug slime’ may very well simply be a reference or nod to the iconic series as a sign of respect. However, despite the reasoning behind it, it seems clear that Rick and Morty full-on stole Futurama’s grossest joke.

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