The latest entry in Rick and Morty season eight skewers holiday celebrations. It starts off with a similar approach to Solar Opposites‘ riff on a Santa Clause-style rule for Halloween, then flies off the rails by by enmeshing the hapless Jerry in an ancient drama involving the Easter Bunny, pseudo-Christian aliens, and the plot of Alien prequel Prometheus.
Amid all the weirdness, however, one dialogue exchange between Rick and Morty caught our attention—and bugged us so much, io9 asked showrunner-executive producer Scott Marder and executive producer Dan Harmon about it.
It happens right after Rick and Morty portal to Germany and find evidence that the Easter Bunny has recently emerged from its frozen-in-time resting place. Rick likens the scene to 1984 Timothy Hutton flick Iceman, a reference Morty doesn’t get: “The ’80s were forever ago, Rick!”
So Grandpa tries again with a slightly newer title: 1992’s Encino Man. Nope: “You’re old!” is the response.
Rick’s unfortunate retort “You’re old and gay!” correctly meets with disapproval, of course—”Fuck you, Rick! You can’t say that anymore!”—and the duo exchange glares before heading into the old-world town below.
“Check out this Wicker Man-looking place!” Morty exclaims. So he knows 1973’s Wicker Man—but not Iceman or Encino Man?
“I look at a lot of that stuff as just him being kind of front-row to Rick and getting Rick just kind of pontificating stuff at him,” Marder explained. “I think he’s heard of a lot of movies and aware of a lot of things because it’s probably just stuff Rick is just going off about while they’re traveling places. That’s how I think he captures a lot of his pop culture.”
Harmon jumped in with a follow-up example. “I like that there’s accountability to it. One of my favorite moments is, because it went through a cycle of writers, I think I wrote on a page the thing [in the season six premiere, ‘Solaricks’] where Rick says he doesn’t know who Iron Man is,” he recalled.
“And I just wrote the line. I didn’t have the follow-up. I think it was [show writer] Albro [Lundy] who did a pass on it and added the line of Morty going, ‘Hey, remember 10 seconds ago when you pretended not to know who Iron Man was? What was that about?’ It doesn’t really answer the question, but I think sometimes that stuff could be habitual and accidental and there should be a light shined on it. Who knows what reference—and what does that say about them?”
New episodes of Rick and Morty arrive Sundays on Adult Swim.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
