The Rick & Morty outing “Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion” (season 5, episode 7) featured a brief post-credits stinger that explained the origin of kaiju — and the monsters have a more understandable motive than sci-fi fans might have expected. Since the show began, Rick & Morty’s animated anarchy has been putting a unique, offbeat spin on existing sci-fi, horror, and fantasy stories and ideas. The Adult Swim hit is built on subverting sci-fi tropes — which continues in season 5, episode 7.
Earlier in season 5, Rick & Morty ruined Hellraiser’s Cenobites by pointing out that their modus operandi makes no sense, with the show underlining the in-built contradiction in their "pain=pleasure" ethos. The more recent episode, “Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion,” continued this streak of subversive genre parodies with a killer post-credits stinger. After an episode spent spoofing Voltron and Gobots, the outing ended by showing where the oversized monsters of kaiju movies come from.
According to the stinger of “Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion,” the giant bugs seen invading cities and terrorizing civilians until they are inevitably felled by the military (or Rick and company, in some cases) are arriving on earth with the best of intentions. The post-credits scene opens with a military commander telling Rick & Morty’s kaiju characters that they likely will not survive their trip to earth, but it is worth it to try and inform humans of the cure for AIDS. One bug then notes that humans might not understand their language, only for his commander to sarcastically tell him that inter-dimensional travel does not remove their clothes and cause them to be seen as screaming monsters — “or maybe it does.” Indeed, that is exactly what transpires in the darkly funny closer, as one bug makes it through the portal, attempts to inform humanity of the cure, and is immediately shot in the head and killed.
It is a blackly comic spoof that draws on classic sci-fi stories like Starship Troopers, the satirical Paul Verhoeven adaptation that portrays a human army as a fascist force and their alien bug enemies as comparatively vulnerable cannon fodder. An earlier season 5 post-credits scene saw Rick & Morty spoof 2001: A Space Odyssey, but this clever (and less aggressively gross) gag is more of a shot at a whole sci-fi sub-genre than one specific movie. The giant monsters of kaiju movies are sometimes depicted as thoughtful guardians of humanity, but many monster movies simply depict them as unthinking rage machines with no obvious motive.
As such, flipping the perspective and giving the monsters the most charitable motive imaginable for their sojourn to earth lets Rick & Morty poke fun at giant monster movies by questioning whether humanity should be instantly killing anything it is scared of. The same theme was explored (in more depth) in the earlier underrated Rick & Morty outing “Promortyus” (season 4, episode 7), wherein the title characters enjoyed destroying a planet until they were forced to return and contend with the mass slaughter they committed. However, the post-credits scene of Rick & Morty’s “Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion” is much less interested in seriously interrogating the morality of such stories, and more interested in getting a laugh from subverting monster movie cliches.
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