Mortynight Run

Plot

Rick gives Morty a driving lesson in his flying ship. They discover Jerry in the backseat and take him to a daycare center, Jerryboree, designed by a Rick in an alternate timeline for versions of Jerry. Jerry feels infantilized by the childish atmosphere but gets excited to watch Midnight Run. He discovers a room of Jerrys abandoned by their Rick and is disgusted by their lack of will to leave. He walks out but after failing to communicate with an alien at a ticket station, he is scared by the outside planet and returns. Rick sells an antimatter gun to assassin Krombopulos Michael, but Morty is concerned over the morality. They use the money to go to the arcade Blips and Chitz. In the first game, Morty becomes the character Roy and lives his life for 55 years, with no memory of the outside world, until dying after falling off a ladder in a carpet store. While Rick plays Roy, Morty takes the ship to stop Krombopulos Michael but accidentally crashes and kills him. Before a guard can kill Morty, Rick arrives through a portal that slices the guard in two. Krombopulos Michael's target was a gaseous being that communicates through telepathy, which Rick calls Fart. Morty takes Fart aboard the ship, and Rick protests before leaving angrily. He reappears to save Morty after guards attack. Gearhead fixes the damaged ship while Fart starts singing "Goodbye Moonmen" in Morty's head. Gearhead betrays Rick by calling the authorities, who Fart says want to use their ability to alter atoms. Rick, Morty and Fart are chased by law enforcement until Fart uses telepathy to distract them. Fart reaches a wormhole and tells Morty their plan is to destroy all carbon-based life. Morty induces Fart to sing again and kills them with the antimatter gun. Rick and Morty return to pick up Jerry, but another Rick and Morty are confused over which Jerry corresponds to who, and they each leave with a random Jerry. In a post-credits scene, Rick appears in a Blips and Chitz advert.

Production

The episode first aired on Adult Swim on August 2, 2015. Before its premiere, an early version sent to critics for review was leaked online, along with the preceding episode "A Rickle in Time." This leaked copy had lower audio and video quality and was missing final animation touch-ups, though co-creator Justin Roiland believed most viewers would not notice the difference. In 2017, art director James McDermott shared concept art for the episode, including a "wet and steamy" design for the shady space garage where Rick encounters Krombopulos Michael. He also drew an unused character named Krootch, originally meant to be a procurer who tries to deceive Jerry after he leaves the daycare; the character was cut when Dan Harmon decided the setting needed to feel more chaotic and frightening. Roiland revealed that the rocks Rick collects at the episode's end contain a parasite pod, visible as a pink blob, which later triggers the infestation seen in "Total Rickall." In that later episode, Rick is shown disposing of the rocks. A 2017 video featured Roiland reading alternate jokes that were proposed during the writers' room sessions for "Mortynight Run." In a 2020 video, Harmon explained how both the main plot and subplot fit into his eight-step "story circle" writing technique. The song "Goodbye Moonmen" appears on The Rick and Morty Soundtrack released in 2018. Composer Ryan Elder was given the lyrics and told the song should be a David Bowie-inspired piece performed by the character Fart. After listening to Bowie for several hours, Elder wrote the song on guitar in just a couple of hours. Voice actor Jemaine Clement recorded his lines from New Zealand under producer direction, and Elder noted that only about 20 minutes remained in the session for Clement to record "Goodbye Moonmen." His first take was the one used in the final episode. The comic Rick and Morty #34 from 2018 chronicles Krombopulos Michael's life from one of his earliest assassination jobs to his death.

Analysis

"Mortynight Run" marks the first time Morty's name appears in an episode title, while earlier titles had only featured Rick's name. The Blips and Chitz arcade makes a brief return in the season four episode "Never Ricking Morty". According to Josh Wilbur of Wired, the concept of time moving faster inside a simulated world—such as Morty experiencing 55 years in Roy within just minutes—is a familiar science fiction device. He compares it to the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Inner Light", where Captain Picard lives decades in 25 minutes, and the Black Mirror installment "White Christmas", where a digital copy of a person endures 1000 years per minute.

Paste's Gita Jackson interprets the episode's moral as "that we understand so little about the world that we live in," rather than the bleaker idea that "life is inherently pain." This theme appears in Fart's reasoning for wiping out all carbon-based life and in Jerry's confusion when he leaves the daycare. Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club notes that the episode "challenges the obvious notion of Rick as a coldhearted bastard and Morty as a sweet, good-natured kid." He explains that the right moral choice is not always clear, and Rick often grasps situations better than Morty does. Additionally, Morty's development suggests he could be "designed for change," while Jerry's experience indicates he is not.

Emily Reuben of Looper points out two continuity errors in the episode. First, Rick floods a room to kill several guards, but this should have been impossible because Morty had earlier crashed through the wall, creating a hole. Second, the cargo in the back of Rick's ship changes inexplicably between shots in the opening scene.

Reception

2.19 million people tuned in for the initial Adult Swim broadcast. IGN's Jesse Schedeen rated it 8.8 out of 10, singling out the Roy game as a highlight that demonstrated the writers' careful craftsmanship. He praised Morty's development, the unique personality and voice actor Jemaine Clement gave to Fart, and noted that Jerry's side story tied neatly into the main plot, was funny, and ended well. Paste's Gita Jackson gave it a 9.5 out of 10, finding the episode hilarious, especially the dense joke count at Blips and Chitz and Fart's odd phrasing after telepathically scanning others. Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club awarded an A-minus. Though initially let down that the episode lacked the surprise factor of earlier installments, he later saw it as "solid, even necessary storytelling" for Morty's character arc. Handlen also appreciated the "subtle touches throughout" and Clement's vocal performance, which made Fart "just likable enough for his eventual disintegration to matter."