Rick and Morty: Every Series Reference and Callback in the Season 6 Premiere

Rick and Morty Season 6 premiered with the pivotal episode “Solaricks”, which not only picked up from the big Season 5 cliffhanger, it also reset the series status quo and in doing so, established a whole new set of stakes for the show. 

WARNING: Spoilers Follow! 

After Evil Morty ruined Portal Gun travel in the Season 5 finale, Rick attempts to get the technology again by essentially rebooting his portal fluid. However, a mishap results in Rick instead rebooting all portal travelers, sending them all back to their original realities. Well, if you’ve been watching Rick and Morty for the past five seasons, you should already know that sorting everyone back into their original relaities requires all kinds of series callbacks. 

Here the big ones you need to know when watching Rick and Morty Season 6: 

“Evil Morty Monologued and F-ed Off”

This one is easy: The Season 5 cliffhanger saw the evil version of Morty finally enact his plan to capture Rick, and use his brain scans to create a new portal gun, that allowed Evil Morty to escape the Central Finite Curve that Rick and the Council of Ricks created to ensure their place as the smartest man in the multiverse. Evil Morty never shows up in the series-changing event that just occurred the Season 6 premiere, so this is our only real mention of the series-changing event that just occurred. As usual, Rick and Morty is playing it off with raunchy humor…

Dimension C-137

Rick Sanchez C-137’s tragic origin story has been hinted at or shown in piecemeal flashbacks all throughout the series – but the Season 6 premiere finally takes us there. Literally. 

Seeing Dimension C-137 really cements just how broken Rick was after his family was murdered, as his entire neighborhood (world?) is enslaved to replaying the day of his tragic loss It’s the epitome of a ghost town reality. 

Diane 2.0

Rick’s home in Dimension C-137 is equipped with a computer A.I. that haunts him as a disembodied version of his late wife, Diane. Diane has also been referenced throughout the series or shown in key flashbacks – now, thanks to Vanessa Bayer (SNL, DC’s League of Super Pets), she has a voice. 

Return to the Cronenberg Dimension

Morty’s original universe (and the home of the Rick Prime) was destroyed in Season 1 when Morty tried to make a love potion that was mutated by the flu into a “Cronenberg” disease. Rick and Morty fled to a new home reality, leaving Jerry, Summer, and Beth behind on the dystopian world where they became savage nomads.

 The Cronenberg Dimension was revisited in Season 3 when Morty and Summer tried to save Rick from the Galactic Federation prison. The Galactic Federation blasted the savage version of Morty’s family with freeze rays; in the Season 6 premiere we find out that getting frozen didn’t go over well with the Savage Smiths. Beth and Summer died, and Jerry became a nihilistic douche. Savage Jerry is ultimately killed when Rick Prime is forcibly transported back to the Cronenberg Dimension, his true home. 

Space Beth vs. Clone Beth: Life Choices

Since Season 3 Rick and Morty has been teasing that Beth Summers may be a clone created by Rick, while the original Beth took off on adventures across the cosmos. In Season 4 “Space Beth” made herself known, and we learned Rick created the clone but erased all knowledge of which Beth is the original. 

In the Season 6 premiere, Space Beth and Clone Beth (?) have it out over the elephant that’s been in the room, while battling interdimensional monsters: Beth’s life choices, and which version of them makes her happiest. 

The Jerryboree Mixup

In Rick and Morty Season 2 episode “Mortynight Run” Rick drops his current version of Jerry off at “Jerryboree”, a play center designed by a different Rick variant as a daycare center for Jerrys while Ricks and Mortys are off adventuring. Despite Rick’s instructions, Morty ends up losing the ticket receipt for his version of his dad, and they just grabbed the one they thought was him, prompting doubt about Jerry’s identity.

The Season 6 premiere finally returns the lost Season 2 Jerry to his home reality, confirming the mixup indeed did occur. 

Interdimensional Traveler Now!

The Jerry mistakenly taken home from Jerryborree has been on quite a few adventures of his own since Season 2 – and he lets his original family know so before ditching their dysfunctional dynamic for his rightful place in the rag-tag family Rick C-137 has now built around himself. 

Season 2 Vibes In Here

The Rick C-137 and the Smith family go to collect their post-swap version of Jerry from his home dimension. The group finds that version of the Smith Family that Jerry lives with arguing like crazy at the dinner table, prompting Rick C-137 to comment that they have ‘serious Season 2 vibes.’ 

Season 2 of Rick and Morty was indeed a dark look at the Smith Family dynamic. “Big Trouble in Little Sanchez” had an entire B-story dedicated to deconstructing Beth and Jerry’s toxic, co-dependent marriage and paving a course to their eventual separation. Indeed, the family dynamic was not at its best. Case in point: Season 2 ended with Jerry planning to turn Rick in to the Galactic Federation, prompting Rick to do it first (and later cuck Jerry for his betrayal). 

Evil-Weird Rick Prime

The “Prime” version of Rick has been haunting this series since it began – but we’re only now meeting him. Rick Prime was seen in the Season 3 premiere’s flashback of Rick’s origin, when he killed Diane and Beth C-137 and started Rick on a dark journey of vengeance. He was also hinted to be “Weird Rick” who was singled out in Season 1’s “Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind”. 

Season 5 confirmed that Rick Prime tried to kill Rick C-137 after the latter refused his friendship over loving his own family. Now Rick Prime has been pulled back to the Cronenberg Dimension that was his home, and he only has Rick C-137 to blame… 

Rick and Morty airs now Season 6 episodes Sundays on Adult Swim.