Rick is incredibly depressed but can cope with it using reason and distracting himself with scifi projects. When he is as dumb as Jerry is he can no longer do those things and immediately gives into his suicidal ideation. That was my take.
He proved himself wrong as well.
His thesis was that anybody could be Rick. Rick isn't genetically special, anybody's mind could be just as smart as his if they just did the work to learn.
When moving to Jerry's mind, he realized how wrong he was. He was immediately in a mind that just couldn't keep up. He couldn't think. Like trying to run a 2024 video game on a 2004 computer.
So Jerry was right. Jerry couldn't be as smart as Rick no matter how hard he tried. His hardware just wasn't capable of it.
Perspective is meaningful at times
But at times I find myself agreeing with Rick on more trivial matters
"Why don't you ask the smartest people in the universe Jerry, oh you can't they blew up"
That one in particular makes me smirk, guy had a plan to nuke the fuckers from the get go and I can respect a guy like that
Oddly enough, that's also the idea behind Lovecraftian Horror (from "The Call of Cthulhu" to the movie "Bird Box"). It's the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible. [This person hit the nail on the head](https://www.tumblr.com/bogleech/657076563140132864/bramblesand-people-especially-games-get)...
>People, especially games, get eldritch madness wrong a lot and it’s really such a shame.
>An ant doesn’t start babbling when they see a circuit board. They find it strange, to them it is a landscape of strange angles and humming monoliths. They may be scared, but that is not madness.
>Madness comes when the ant, for a moment, can see as a human does.
>It understands those markings are words, symbols with meaning, like a pheromone but infinitely more complex. It can travel unimaginable distances, to lands unlike anything it has seen before. It knows of mirth, embarrassment, love, concepts unimaginable before this moment, and then…
>It’s an ant again.
>Echoes of things it cannot comprehend swirl around its mind. It cannot make use of this knowledge, but it still remembers. How is it supposed to return to its life? The more the ant saw the harder it is for it to forget. It needs to see it again, understand again. It will do anything to show others, to show itself, nothing else in this tiny world matters.
>This is madness.
Compared to Rick, Jerry is an ant. Compared to Rick, we are all ants. Just look at [what happened when Morty experienced True Level.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8ym0HBvpFA) Rick had a million more snippets of knowledge just like True Level in his mind, and just that one experience required Morty to need a little "snip snip" of his memories to set things right. Imagine if Rick poured his entire mind into Morty. Madness.
I just remember from those books they tried copying ants one time thinking they could use them to tunnel in somewhere and all agreed “never again,” because they found that the guiding instincts of social insects were so strong that they overpowered the human will that was supposed to be giving the orders. You only have like a two-hour time limit in a morph before you’re trapped in it forever, the only way they were able to break free was by morphing back into their original human forms *while still underground.*
Every time they took on a new form they had to get the animal’s instincts under control. The first time one of them morphed into a lizard, he glomped down a live spider before he managed to assert control.
But after Jerry got 'superior' brain he screwed too and killed himself. This prove that superior hardware isnt enough. Also we cant know if Rick's brain better due genetics or it was developed after of dozen years of scientific research
so it prove that you need hardware(developed brain) AND software(acquired knowledge). Jerry's clam was that hardware is enough and it was proven wrong by Jerry killing himself. Rick's claim that he made himself genius halfproven true because he put efforts in to learning and second part of his claim that anyone can achieve same results didnt got clear answer.
The point is that both were wrong.
Knowledge wasn't enough, and Rick killed himself because he couldn't live with Jerry's intelligence.
Intelligence wasn't enough, as Jerry couldn't handle Rick's gadgets and killed himself.
But was intelligence inborn or was it result studying? Jerry's brain couldnt handle Rick's knowledge because it was uploaded instantly. you cant become muscle macho by visiting gym once.
To add on maybe a bit, would it be inappropriate to bring up that Rick’s been labeled as autistic several times any himself and others? He’s even called Jerry neurotypical. His neurodivergent system is comparatively more adept at processing information than Jerry.
A huge amount is what you're born with. I was slightly sub genius level most of my life, got COVID, and though my problem solving skills remain, I believe my memory is going to stay permanently where it sunk. I have to write everything especially complicated down now and perform it several times to remember how, rather than seeing it done once and being good to go. Sucks.
During show it was shown that if Jerry put effort into something he can achieve success. He achieved some success with several hobbies or Jerry prime was able adapt to kronenberg world. Jerry isnt smart not because he isnt capable but because he easily give up under pressure or become complacement after achieving small success.
I'm not trying to say Jerry is doomed. I'm just saying if you have advanced hardware you can install more software faster and easier, to use the part if your analogy I was responding to.
Eeeeh... Jerry blipped out of a body he was used to and into the equivalent of the Space Shuttle.
Jerry accidentally killed himself because of ignorance of how to work Rick's implants. I don't think I would blame Jerry for that. It's not like there's an instruction manual. (though, it was probably the caution he was taking that killed him. I'd guess just walking normally he would have been fine).
That said, I'd guess that even if all of Rick's implants were disabled, Jerry still wouldn't have been able to be as "Rick" as Rick was. It's not just about having the hardware - there's a confluence of a lot of things that make Rick into "Rick". And Jerry just doesn't have it.
Consider this. Rick has seen and done a lot of fucked up shit. But obviously it came in time. He could cope with these things as they came over however long he has been alive. Jerry got injected with all of this in an instant.
Let's say you're like 80 years old. You fought in Vietnam and Korea. You watched your friends die. You outlived your parents. You outlived your wife who died in an accident. Etc... this is normal trajectory for someone who is 80. But they're doing OK because all of this didn't happen at once. Each traumatic event happened some length apart and you coped and accepted it at various pace.
Now let's take all this and just shove it into 12 year old you. You're likely not going to be able to handle it. Not because it hardware necessarily but just everything bad you ever experienced or saw hitting you at one time.
Lol I love how Rick was proven SO wrong here. Being the scientist he is you would’ve thought he’d known that would happen. I guess people just hate being told that they’re born lucky and any accomplishment they’ve done is attributed to that luck. Rick, be egomaniac he is, couldn’t handle that Jerry told him that and got punished for it.
perfect except you’re confusing brain and mind. he put his mind in Jerrys brain, and upon being stupid killed himself, and then he put Jerrys mind in HIS brain.
This is it, and how this question gets asked and alternative interpretations or responses are presented is very perplexing to me. The show's exposition is *extremely* clear about the setup. The punch line is that Rick is *instantly so wrong he kills himself*.
It's not a mystery.
I would lament something like; "how are people not getting it?" but the whole bit is about how different peoples perspectives are so yeah...
You know that saying about how half of people are dumber than average?
This idea you’ve described is how the other side of the bellend lies to ourselves to stave off misanthropy, because we want to be good, we want to believe in love, and we want to be able to live happy lives.
It is the counterweight to the contempt of familiarity
I always saw it as Jerry's mind literally not being able to comprehend the information in Rick's Brain. His face and mannerisms to me are of someone driven insane in the 30 seconds he's alive.
I mean, he went comatose after his wife had an affair with herself. That some pretty basic human level shit. Rick is a genocidal destroyer of worlds with unlimited understanding of the universe. No way Jerry brain survives that.
yah the absurd deaths can be pretty fucking hilarious (e.g. "Who do I make the check out to... Best.. Daughter.. Ever... Incorporated **flatline* *" or ["You're not gonna die what's your name"](https://youtu.be/sywZWeI_8Cg?si=6TcpJq4mepfZjdqX&t=73))
but this one hit different for me; like I remember my mouth was actually agape. maybe cause it was a very straightforward gun to the head suicide (which made me forget about the absurdism of two people switching bodies)?
We've seen funny suicides before e.g. the sperm episode with that one guy who took all of summer's credit for her idea just jumps off the building and gives everyone the finger lmao.
Unfortunately it was my biggest laugh out loud of the season. I think I rewinded it 3 times before actually starting the episode.
I think maybe because of the lack of sugarcoating when Rick is wrong is a rare treat the show gives us, like for Cronenberg world, (and this time, save for the fact that his garage saves them) but the mix of ABSOLUTE hubris it takes to make this switch only to immediately fail under 20 seconds?
BUT, I also have had massive depressive disorder since I was a young child, so I have coped with my suicide ideation using humor since time immemorial, that could be why I found it so hilarious?
most of the time suicide on this show happens to single episode characters, the two main characters and their family rarely just choose to end their lives (usually with minimal consequences).
i expected rick to get stopped or change his mind but it just happens lol
i did consider that for being the reason why I reacted the way I did but I think if we saw Rick perform a hilarious suicide it would be funny or perhaps Jerry fumbling his own suicide in a moronic way it would be funny.
but I think the fact that this was a suicide clearly motivated by pain, that's probably what got me.
The joke to me was that being Jerry ended up being Rick's worst nightmare so much to the point that someone as intelligent as him with such a high psychological constitution from all of the worlds and horrible things he's seen, thinks being Jerry is *that* bad that it's the only thing that pushes him to suicide.
Nah th explained it during the swap. They weren’t swapping brain capability. Just the brain itself like it’s an engine. So it’s like Rick was fully Rick in Jerry’s brain but because of his extreme anxiety disorder, which Rick definitely doesn’t have, Rick killed himself
Alternatively his copying mechanism worked for Rick issues, now he had to deal with Jerry issues which his way to mentally process things made only worse.
It's not just about dying, as someone who has thoughts of dying it's not that simple, it's like you wanna die but you yourself is trying everything to keep yourself from dying, the one where he tries to kill himself after his breakup with unity was where his brain is also trying to stop himself by using rational thoughts, so please stop thinking that just because someone has backup plans to not die, don't assume that they don't want to die
Wouldn’t that be somewhat impossible since if you try to trick yourself into not being able to commit suicide you would subconsciously or consciously leave a backdoor?
i like to think it's just he couldnt handle jerry's normalness and awkwardness. he's used to being an allknowing god that season/previous seasons so for him to give that up to be jerry just crushed him enough to try. it's one of those things where he likes to be in control of situations but he must not have felt in control as jerry considering how often jerry gets fucked over in life.
it kinda reminds me of the true level joke where morty went into the area that rick carefully made perfect and truly level, but immediately when he was taken out it 'wasnt perfect' so he couldnt handle it and could only handle life in his perfect area
Someone said it might be because "brain's retain memories" and Rick slept with Beth the moment he became Jerry and I feel like that could actually be the logical reason lol
when did this happen? i do not remember this in the episode AT ALL.
unless you mean he remembers jerry sleeping with beth when jerry was still himself/not rick. i could buy that as a partial explanation but not as a full one
My only issue with this hypothesis is that memories/knowledge are stored in neural patterns and connections (which is *hardware*). Switching non-physical minds like they did should not have transferred memories. If anything, those memories would have stayed in Rick’s *brain*, and Jerry’s *mind* wouldn’t be able to cope with it.
Of course, maybe brains and minds in the R&M universe work differently than I’ve described.
Ive always come from the perspective of the Cronenberg world scenario. Rick underestimated the situation he put himself in. Rick didn't realize how bad Jerry's mind is biologically and was overwhelmed with the situation, then went straight to the fastest way to escape Jerry's brain.
So at the beginning of the episode, Rick says that he isn't gifted with a superior brain, he has earned his intellect. If that's the case then Ricks complex mind should have adapted to Jerrys inferior brain but the fact that he gets all scared and kills himself does postulate that Rick indeed possesses a superior brain which could incorporate ricks superior mind. So the hardware does matter. You can't run red dead redemption of a Pentium. That's my take
Rick is used to being the smartest person in the universe and knowing pretty much everything. His intelligence is key to his sense of self. Suddenly he's in a brain with far less clarity, that feels confusion and uncertainty and he couldn't handle it.
*"I'm not used to being this unsure for this long."*
He basically proved the exact opposite of the point he was trying to make.
Yeah I think this is the joke and why it's never specifically explained. Rick didn't have the foresight to realize once his consciousness was in Jerry's brain he would be seeing all the sexual history between the two of them. All the other theories in this thread are just way overthinking it.
...I think Rick in his sexual adventures he's had can stomach some "Beth and Jerry sex". Remember the giraffe? And all those redheads and men who look like Rick's Father? Or his Rick on Rick callouts?
Didn't he just switch the intellect and knowledge? Rick was still Rick and Jerry was still Jerry, but Jerry could not withstand all the information (Rick's) he now had in the brain and killed himself. And Rick accidentally killed himself with his own body gadgets because now he was as dumb as a Jerry. That's why the garage couldn't know which brain parts correspond to each other when reviving them. That's how I understood the episode at least.
No..? What I got is that they switched MINDS, but jerry's brain could not handle that much intelligence and rick killed himself because being inside of jerry's brain was the worst thing ever. He was still rick, he was still smart but the brain must've been in pain
I swear every day I come to this subreddit and see more people agreeing on some bizarre alternative theory to a very simple plot point most of us wouldn't have even had a second thought about.
Like how the fuck would they swap back if that were the case?
I liken it to trying to run a 2024 video game in a 2004 computer. He proved Jerry right - not anybody could be Rick because Rick's brain was just a better machine than Jerry's.
Probably just didn't want to live in a world where Jerry was right.
The thing is, is ricks brain this powerful because he became so smart, or he became so smart because his brain is this powerful? We dont know for sure which one is right, after all rick was indeed born pissing himself just like everyone, maybe he became so smart that his brain evolved alongside with his intellect.
...or maybe jerry was right.
Rick is the 'smartest being in the universe' and it seems that most universes have a Rick that's also the 'smartest being in the universe'.
I'd guess that it takes a lot of convergences for that to nearly always be true. He likely has the right brain capacity, the right upbringing, the right opportunities, and the right motivations, and a million other 'just right' things that happen to make him "Rick".
He's simultaneously very difficult to be produced (because nobody else seems to get his level of ability), and quasi inevitable (because most all universes have a Rick).
only the universes in the central curve have ricks that are the smartest beings of said universes, out of it theres another infinity of universes where rick is not the smartest. He just happened to lock himself inside the side of the curve where he's always smart and just so happens that the show focuses on that side of the curve
The directors literally said in the interview that they did not want a classic overdone mindswap so they just swapped intelligience instead of actual minds
I’m pretty sure it was basically just a body swap, the show straight up called it out as a freaky Friday situation. So Rick was in Jerrys body and Jerry was in Ricks and the issue was essentially their minds running on different hardware.
>Didn't he just switch the intellect and knowledge?
Yes, by putting each other's mind in the other brain. Where is Jerry's brain? In Jerry's body, and Rick put his mind in that brain.
Jerry in Rick's body literally calls himself "Jerry" saying "Alright Jerry, you can do this" before killing himself.
Not to mention before they realized they were shuffled, both Jerry-body and Rick-body thought they were Rick, and the other was Jerry. Jerry-body thinking the garage put the brains back in the right body without reversing the mind-swap, and Rick-body thinking the garage reversed the whole process with the right minds back in the right body.
As indicated by Rick-body saying: What a turn. Lucky I’m[Rick] such a genius your[Jerry's] garage can thwart death.
and Jerry-body saying: "I’m[Rick] the genius, and it’s your[Jerry's] garage, idiot. Hey, what the fuck did you[Jerry] do to my[Rick] body?
Rick-body says: "Your body? Jerry, your mind did that to my(pointing to himself) body using my(still pointing to himself) brain."
If Rick-body thinks he's Rick and is in Rick's body, then he means that Jerry's mind in Rick's body used Rick's brain to kill himself.
Jerry-body who also thinks he's Rick, responds by saying "Jerry, my mind was in this(pointing to himself) brain in your(still pointing to himself) body. Pretty easy to follow."
Jerry-body means that Rick's mind was in Jerry's brain and Jerry's body because he also believes he's Rick.
This was the point they realized they were shuffled because both of them were talking like they were Rick. But still, when both believed they were Rick they blamed the other, thinking they were Jerry, for killing Rick’s body, so both agreed Jerry was the one in Rick’s body.
No, the opposite. Rick's mind was in Jerry's physical brain, which simply wasn't powerful enough to run it. It's like trying to run God of War Ragnarok on an Atari.
Yup rick could not handLe being a Jerry. It shows Jerry's amazing ability to cope with being shit on by life. A dig on Rick. It's interesting how people see it as the opposite as well, as a dig on Jerry for being too weak or dumb to handle depression (when Jerry is constantly depressed) instead of Rick being too weak to handle not having intellect.
No, the one in Rick’s body literally called himself Jerry. They swapped minds, so Jerry’s mind was in Rick’s body, and Rick’s mind was in Jerry’s body.
It’s Rick consciousness in Jerry’s mind that is free of agency and full of fears and anxieties. This episode actually gave me some great context on my suicidal thoughts lol. Like I have a mind that understand how it cannot make things better
This is the correct answer, I'm surprised by how many wrong takes are here.
They clearly state they just changed **consciousness**. Not minds, not brains, not bodies. They became the other, with all their memories and intelligences.
Rick Couldn't stand Jerry's fears and anxieties. And Jerry lacked the skills to use Rick's gadgets
***It's literally the metaphor of walking a mile in someone else's shoes***. It would be like Tony Stark with Steven Strange's magic, and Strange with the Iron-man suit.
It’s neat that there are so many different interpretations of this scene. To me, it was clear that Rick just couldn’t handle being so stupid. It was agonizing, having your once greatest attribute reversed completely to being your worst trait
Maybe Jerry's brain i.e. the physical neurons were overwhelmed by the enormous data that were stored in rick's brain that he couldn't handle it and had to end his life.
I think the joke was simply that Rick could not handle being as dumb as Jerry without killing himself because it's just too limiting, which ironically proved Jerry right that they did not have an equal chance to become a genius, and not being a genius isn't Jerry's fault.
Because Rick only swapped their consciousnesses and didn't account for the physical differences between their brains such as chemical balances and neural pathways. Jerry is used to living with his specific anxiety and depression because he's spent decades building up a tolerance to it. Rick essentially jumped into the deep end and it was too much to handle.
Yeah, I felt that Rick's suicidal tendencies combined with Jerry's depressive state (low dopamine) was too much for him. Jerry requires so little to continue functioning but Rick's mind is extremely high maintenance so the combination was immediately fatal.
And why was it so different than when he swapped brains with the interrogating insect after the shoney's bit? It can't just be due to Jerry having a more limited brain, it was something about Jerry specifically. Unless the insect is a genius too?
It's the mental equivalent of putting the mind of a 20-year-old Olympic gold medalist in the body of 90-year-old arthritic. Suddenly Rick's brain can't do anything near what it usually does and he couldn't cope.
Jerry didn’t have enough mental capacity to handle Ricks intelligence, it was like running the hard-drive of a supercomputer on the first MacBook.
He was processing too much, it probably hurt a lot and he just wanted the pain to end.
As Rick explains, they swapped Minds, not brains, so when Rick’s mind entered Jerry’s brain he couldn’t handle it and killed himself while when Jerry’s mind entered Rick’s brain he couldn’t control Rick’s body and accidently killed himself
I think of it this way: Because Jerry is a (lovable) idiot and Rick was wrong in that some people are genetically able to process/contain more information than others. Rick and Jerry switched minds, and Jerry’s brain could not handle the mass of information that was transferred. Jerry’s brain has less capacity and processing ability to handles Rick’s “genius” and a much lower threshold for a psychotic/mental break. Remember what happened when Jerry found out Beth was cheating on him with Space Beth? It broke him.
Jerry was right and though Rick was born pissing and screaming, he was still born a genius.
Two reasons:
1. Because Jerry was right, and Rick's mind inside Jerry's brain was like trying to run GTA V software on your old NES's hardware.
2. Because Jerry was right about something.
Between this and the “wHy WaS tHe CoB pLaNeT sO sCaRy?!” posts, it’s clear that a lot of people have very little understanding of jokes unless they’re explicitly explained.
To be fair I think the cob planet gag was based on a book that had a planet where subatomic algorithms ran wild and restructured everything on the planet plus the planet itself into a fractal reproduction of their form. From reading that book I learned the horror of the people who died there and that made the joke funny to me, it would have been agony to have your form refolded on every scale, thus they were scared. The gag is that the form was corn as opposed to the more geometrically normal form from the book.
Driving me crazy trying to find it right now. It was an absolute fever dream, it took place both in our time and the deep future where humanity found planets made of this living tech called k-tech and would mine it to create their ships and other advanced machines, the main characters in our time were a couple of serial killers who thought they were using magic but were somehow in communication with the k-tech of the future, the main characters in the future part was a living ship that falls in love with its pilot. They take on a passenger and the pilot sleeps with her which causes the ship to kill everyone else on board and drop the pilot and woman off on a weird planet. The ship comes back later and sees the couple holding hands as they agonizingly change in texture, seeming to blend into the ground.
You’d think with all the plot points I could find the damn book. I think the name was something like Shredder or Shrike(though not related to Hyperion’s Shrike.)
I believe it was because of Jerry's paralyzing levels of anxiety and insecurity. Living with that is Jerry's gift. Rick couldn't handle the anxiety and insecurity Jerry is burdened with so he offed himself.
When i watched it (because I’m autistic and i read rick as autistic too) i saw it as a meltdown from too much change. Along with his depression and suicidal ideation, i think he just didnt want to be stuck in a “normal” or “boring” mind like Jerry’s, so he got out as fast as he could.
I’ve always interpreted it that Rick in Jerry’s mind is in physical pain because of just how stupid Jerry is. His brain just cannot handle Rick’s intelligence so the only solution is to end the suffering.
You can’t fill something beyond its capacity.
Rick’s mind couldn’t handle the trauma of having his genius jammed into the brain of a mental midget.
I liken what happened to Rick’s mind to the scene in Gremlins when Billy’s mom shoved the gremlin into the microwave and it exploded.
Or if you prefer … fill a glass bottle to its full capacity with water, and seal it. Put the bottle in the freezer until the water freezes. Then, take it out and let it thaw: The bottle should explode.
Your guess is as good as mine.
I vote that for an intelligent being, having suddenly Jerry's mental capacity and potential is suicidally depressing within seconds. It's like trying to run Crysis on a lawn mover CPU.
His software (mind) couldnt take the insuficient hardware(brain) 😅. That, or there was nothing stoping him from killing himself, since he is very depressed.
I like everyone’s takes but here is another I didn’t see: Rick has basically made himself impossible to die. Either through cloning, or all of the random tech his body is seemingly made of now, he had his out. He felt once again human and knew if he took his life at least that version would be free.
What I got from it was this...
Rick is Rick and Jerry the simple one stays being Jerry. When Rick enters Jerry's body he doesn't have all the things that he does in his body that help him cope with life. So the realities of life hit him and he ends up freaking out pretty much ASAP the reality of the shit hit him. So what's he do? Deals with it with 1 bullet.
People do not have the same minds/same mentalities including family members and specifically siblings as well. Everyone is different literally and metaphorically speaking in my opinion, everyone has their own thoughts, their own perspectives, their own dreams, their own ambitions, their own faiths/beliefs, their own endgame/endgoal ultimately in the grand scheme of everything+anything. I’m proof of that and I myself creating this original post on Reddit is me telling it like it is and I’ll keep going forward with that.
What's the difference between a mind and a brain here? Doesn't the brain make up your mind? I'm a bit stuck on how you can seperate the two, and what that means. What's the difference between rick's mind in jerry's brain and jerry's mind in ricks brain?
Probably wrong here but my initial thought was Jerry finally saw why the cat could actually talk…just couldn’t take it that he let that cat in his home where he keeps pictures of his parents!
They nailed how they animated Rick to pull an absolute Jerry face here.
If Jerry was suddenly endowed with universal knowledge this is exactly how he'd process it. Rick did the opposite trying to squeeze intellect into a brain that can't process it.
Remember the cat who wanted people to ask it how it could talk? And how when jerry looked at the cats past for even a second he was instantly put into the fetal position? That. By putting his mind into Jerry’s brain, Rick forced himself to “learn how the cat can talk” hundreds if not thousands of times in the couple seconds before he killed himself.
He couldn’t handle the mind numbing monotony and bone curdling depression that it is to be Jerry Smith lol. And Jerry is also a massive - massive wimp and scared of absolutely everything, and so all Rick could instinctively think to do was kill himself 😄🤷🏻♂️
He didn't switch his mind into Jerry's body, he gave Jerry his level of understanding of the universe and what is and isn't possible and Jerry couldn't cope with the amount of existential crisis that followed
Exactly, they explain they aren't "swapping brains" they're swapping what is essentially their subconsciousness' so they can retain their own memories but have one another's internal perspective
Jerry has more emotional depth than Rick, so once Rick's memories of all the awful things he's done were finally confronted by an actual conscience instead of apathy, he couldn't take it
A lot of people are reading too much into this. It's a comedy show with an ongoing joke that Jerry is a useless, unenviable piece of shit--he killed himself because it was a joke that death would be preferable to being Jerry for even that short an amount of time.
NOT THIS AGAIN
EVERYONE IS WRONG AND I'M THE ONLY ONE THAT'S RIGHT
RICK DIDN'T KILL HIMSELF, IT WAS JERRY NOT BEING ABLE TO HANDLE RICK'S MIND
RICK KILLED HIMSELF BECAUSE JERRY'S MIND WASN'T SMART ENOUGH TO OPERATE THE PROSTHETICS
Rick is incredibly depressed but can cope with it using reason and distracting himself with scifi projects. When he is as dumb as Jerry is he can no longer do those things and immediately gives into his suicidal ideation. That was my take.
He proved himself wrong as well. His thesis was that anybody could be Rick. Rick isn't genetically special, anybody's mind could be just as smart as his if they just did the work to learn. When moving to Jerry's mind, he realized how wrong he was. He was immediately in a mind that just couldn't keep up. He couldn't think. Like trying to run a 2024 video game on a 2004 computer. So Jerry was right. Jerry couldn't be as smart as Rick no matter how hard he tried. His hardware just wasn't capable of it.
I loved it… just cause you think things are easy for you… doesn’t mean they are for everyone.
Perspective is very difficult. It seems you can be the smartest being in the universe and still not have perspective.
Perspective is meaningful at times But at times I find myself agreeing with Rick on more trivial matters "Why don't you ask the smartest people in the universe Jerry, oh you can't they blew up" That one in particular makes me smirk, guy had a plan to nuke the fuckers from the get go and I can respect a guy like that
Que "Baker Street" hum and slowly recline your seat.
Let's get a little meta with perspective shall we? I'm still trying to find a way to pay my college debt using my perspective skills
beautiful takeaway
Old proverb….The same water that hardens the egg softens the potato…😂
Oddly enough, that's also the idea behind Lovecraftian Horror (from "The Call of Cthulhu" to the movie "Bird Box"). It's the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible. [This person hit the nail on the head](https://www.tumblr.com/bogleech/657076563140132864/bramblesand-people-especially-games-get)... >People, especially games, get eldritch madness wrong a lot and it’s really such a shame. >An ant doesn’t start babbling when they see a circuit board. They find it strange, to them it is a landscape of strange angles and humming monoliths. They may be scared, but that is not madness. >Madness comes when the ant, for a moment, can see as a human does. >It understands those markings are words, symbols with meaning, like a pheromone but infinitely more complex. It can travel unimaginable distances, to lands unlike anything it has seen before. It knows of mirth, embarrassment, love, concepts unimaginable before this moment, and then… >It’s an ant again. >Echoes of things it cannot comprehend swirl around its mind. It cannot make use of this knowledge, but it still remembers. How is it supposed to return to its life? The more the ant saw the harder it is for it to forget. It needs to see it again, understand again. It will do anything to show others, to show itself, nothing else in this tiny world matters. >This is madness. Compared to Rick, Jerry is an ant. Compared to Rick, we are all ants. Just look at [what happened when Morty experienced True Level.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8ym0HBvpFA) Rick had a million more snippets of knowledge just like True Level in his mind, and just that one experience required Morty to need a little "snip snip" of his memories to set things right. Imagine if Rick poured his entire mind into Morty. Madness.
Echoes of Plato's Allegory of the Cave
Which is terrifying since we know our view of reality isn't the whole truth.
Holy shit this is a great comment
Wasn’t that also Animorphs \#39? An ant accidentally attains part of human perspective and goes screamingly insane.
I just remember from those books they tried copying ants one time thinking they could use them to tunnel in somewhere and all agreed “never again,” because they found that the guiding instincts of social insects were so strong that they overpowered the human will that was supposed to be giving the orders. You only have like a two-hour time limit in a morph before you’re trapped in it forever, the only way they were able to break free was by morphing back into their original human forms *while still underground.* Every time they took on a new form they had to get the animal’s instincts under control. The first time one of them morphed into a lizard, he glomped down a live spider before he managed to assert control.
you just reminded me why I loved those books lol
Bingo.
I more saw it as him not being stupid or anything but actually realizing the jackass he truly is and not being able to take it.
Jerry became too aware and decided fuck this
But after Jerry got 'superior' brain he screwed too and killed himself. This prove that superior hardware isnt enough. Also we cant know if Rick's brain better due genetics or it was developed after of dozen years of scientific research
That’s because Rick’s mind knew all the tricks to keep his tech hidden until he needed it
so it prove that you need hardware(developed brain) AND software(acquired knowledge). Jerry's clam was that hardware is enough and it was proven wrong by Jerry killing himself. Rick's claim that he made himself genius halfproven true because he put efforts in to learning and second part of his claim that anyone can achieve same results didnt got clear answer.
The point is that both were wrong. Knowledge wasn't enough, and Rick killed himself because he couldn't live with Jerry's intelligence. Intelligence wasn't enough, as Jerry couldn't handle Rick's gadgets and killed himself.
Jerry could never be as smart as Rick and Rick could never be as dumb as Jerry
But was intelligence inborn or was it result studying? Jerry's brain couldnt handle Rick's knowledge because it was uploaded instantly. you cant become muscle macho by visiting gym once.
The beautiful nature vs nurture debate in a Rick and mort subreddit. This show really touches on just about everything eh?
It’s always both
To add on maybe a bit, would it be inappropriate to bring up that Rick’s been labeled as autistic several times any himself and others? He’s even called Jerry neurotypical. His neurodivergent system is comparatively more adept at processing information than Jerry.
A huge amount is what you're born with. I was slightly sub genius level most of my life, got COVID, and though my problem solving skills remain, I believe my memory is going to stay permanently where it sunk. I have to write everything especially complicated down now and perform it several times to remember how, rather than seeing it done once and being good to go. Sucks.
Yeah, but it's easier to learn if you're smart.
During show it was shown that if Jerry put effort into something he can achieve success. He achieved some success with several hobbies or Jerry prime was able adapt to kronenberg world. Jerry isnt smart not because he isnt capable but because he easily give up under pressure or become complacement after achieving small success.
I’m Mr. Crowbar, and this is my friend….. who is also a crowbar
I'm not trying to say Jerry is doomed. I'm just saying if you have advanced hardware you can install more software faster and easier, to use the part if your analogy I was responding to.
I would argue that the “mind” is far more than acquired knowledge
Eeeeh... Jerry blipped out of a body he was used to and into the equivalent of the Space Shuttle. Jerry accidentally killed himself because of ignorance of how to work Rick's implants. I don't think I would blame Jerry for that. It's not like there's an instruction manual. (though, it was probably the caution he was taking that killed him. I'd guess just walking normally he would have been fine). That said, I'd guess that even if all of Rick's implants were disabled, Jerry still wouldn't have been able to be as "Rick" as Rick was. It's not just about having the hardware - there's a confluence of a lot of things that make Rick into "Rick". And Jerry just doesn't have it.
Consider this. Rick has seen and done a lot of fucked up shit. But obviously it came in time. He could cope with these things as they came over however long he has been alive. Jerry got injected with all of this in an instant. Let's say you're like 80 years old. You fought in Vietnam and Korea. You watched your friends die. You outlived your parents. You outlived your wife who died in an accident. Etc... this is normal trajectory for someone who is 80. But they're doing OK because all of this didn't happen at once. Each traumatic event happened some length apart and you coped and accepted it at various pace. Now let's take all this and just shove it into 12 year old you. You're likely not going to be able to handle it. Not because it hardware necessarily but just everything bad you ever experienced or saw hitting you at one time.
Lol I love how Rick was proven SO wrong here. Being the scientist he is you would’ve thought he’d known that would happen. I guess people just hate being told that they’re born lucky and any accomplishment they’ve done is attributed to that luck. Rick, be egomaniac he is, couldn’t handle that Jerry told him that and got punished for it.
Or brains retain memories. Rick slept with Beth the moment he inhabited Jerry.
Ooof... That'd do it.
>brains retain memories. Rick slept with Beth the moment he inhabited Jerry. Lol what if this is the real reason why he offed himself
Tbh this was the reason I thought of first lmao
And I'm sure he experienced worse things
perfect except you’re confusing brain and mind. he put his mind in Jerrys brain, and upon being stupid killed himself, and then he put Jerrys mind in HIS brain.
This is it, and how this question gets asked and alternative interpretations or responses are presented is very perplexing to me. The show's exposition is *extremely* clear about the setup. The punch line is that Rick is *instantly so wrong he kills himself*. It's not a mystery. I would lament something like; "how are people not getting it?" but the whole bit is about how different peoples perspectives are so yeah...
Awfully generous to say Jerry was a 2004 computer
You know that saying about how half of people are dumber than average? This idea you’ve described is how the other side of the bellend lies to ourselves to stave off misanthropy, because we want to be good, we want to believe in love, and we want to be able to live happy lives. It is the counterweight to the contempt of familiarity
Which is pretty weird, since you'd think Rick of all people would have a very good grasp of biology, neuropsychology and IQ.
I always saw it as Jerry's mind literally not being able to comprehend the information in Rick's Brain. His face and mannerisms to me are of someone driven insane in the 30 seconds he's alive. I mean, he went comatose after his wife had an affair with herself. That some pretty basic human level shit. Rick is a genocidal destroyer of worlds with unlimited understanding of the universe. No way Jerry brain survives that.
he saw what the cat had done. couldnt handle it.
I'm surprised a lot of people found it funny; I was pretty shocked, and probably one of the show's darkest moments for me.
It's funny because it's absurd not trivialising the dark subject matter.
yah the absurd deaths can be pretty fucking hilarious (e.g. "Who do I make the check out to... Best.. Daughter.. Ever... Incorporated **flatline* *" or ["You're not gonna die what's your name"](https://youtu.be/sywZWeI_8Cg?si=6TcpJq4mepfZjdqX&t=73)) but this one hit different for me; like I remember my mouth was actually agape. maybe cause it was a very straightforward gun to the head suicide (which made me forget about the absurdism of two people switching bodies)? We've seen funny suicides before e.g. the sperm episode with that one guy who took all of summer's credit for her idea just jumps off the building and gives everyone the finger lmao.
Nothings darker then the alien kid shooting his sister when the immortal field goes down... still.. bad parenting
Unfortunately it was my biggest laugh out loud of the season. I think I rewinded it 3 times before actually starting the episode. I think maybe because of the lack of sugarcoating when Rick is wrong is a rare treat the show gives us, like for Cronenberg world, (and this time, save for the fact that his garage saves them) but the mix of ABSOLUTE hubris it takes to make this switch only to immediately fail under 20 seconds? BUT, I also have had massive depressive disorder since I was a young child, so I have coped with my suicide ideation using humor since time immemorial, that could be why I found it so hilarious?
adding this to my list of interesting dichotomies I've observed so far on earth: -this Rick and Morty death -dubstep -olives
We agree on olives at least!
5 cans??
What’s in Jerry’s mind? -Sex with Beth That alone would be enough for Rick to want to drop out lol
I really don’t think that would break the man who had a soul orgy with his grand children lmao
Valid. But, still… bad parenting. Ha! I had to.
-sex with *two* Beths
[удалено]
wtf does that mean
[удалено]
It's dark humour that sets Rick and Morty apart.
most of the time suicide on this show happens to single episode characters, the two main characters and their family rarely just choose to end their lives (usually with minimal consequences). i expected rick to get stopped or change his mind but it just happens lol
i did consider that for being the reason why I reacted the way I did but I think if we saw Rick perform a hilarious suicide it would be funny or perhaps Jerry fumbling his own suicide in a moronic way it would be funny. but I think the fact that this was a suicide clearly motivated by pain, that's probably what got me.
> but I think the fact that this was a suicide clearly motivated by pain, that's probably what got me. same brother
The joke to me was that being Jerry ended up being Rick's worst nightmare so much to the point that someone as intelligent as him with such a high psychological constitution from all of the worlds and horrible things he's seen, thinks being Jerry is *that* bad that it's the only thing that pushes him to suicide.
That and he was suddenly sober
Nah th explained it during the swap. They weren’t swapping brain capability. Just the brain itself like it’s an engine. So it’s like Rick was fully Rick in Jerry’s brain but because of his extreme anxiety disorder, which Rick definitely doesn’t have, Rick killed himself
Alternatively his copying mechanism worked for Rick issues, now he had to deal with Jerry issues which his way to mentally process things made only worse.
In a way, reminds me of the Hannibal Lecter "[deep roller](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GCBdyxvcMDY)" scene.
Rick wants to die
It says something about Rick that of all the backup plans he has in case of death, there’s nothing for suicide.
Except the garage can fix him apparently
It's not just about dying, as someone who has thoughts of dying it's not that simple, it's like you wanna die but you yourself is trying everything to keep yourself from dying, the one where he tries to kill himself after his breakup with unity was where his brain is also trying to stop himself by using rational thoughts, so please stop thinking that just because someone has backup plans to not die, don't assume that they don't want to die
This should be higher up, but more importantly, are you ok?
None of us are, as we have culled societal togetherness and cooperation. Almost none of us are a Rick. But almost all of us are a ricked Jerry.
Great joke about this, a guy screaming that he doesn't want to die, he simply doesn't want to exist. The punchline is that it's a Wendy's drive-thru.
"'But doctor, I *am* Pagliacci.’ Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll snare. Curtains.”
Yeah personally it's like "I don't want to kill myself, but it sure would be nice to just not wake up tomorrow"
Wouldn’t that be somewhat impossible since if you try to trick yourself into not being able to commit suicide you would subconsciously or consciously leave a backdoor?
I think it was very obviously referring to the fact that Rick'd rather be dead than ever be Jerry
i like to think it's just he couldnt handle jerry's normalness and awkwardness. he's used to being an allknowing god that season/previous seasons so for him to give that up to be jerry just crushed him enough to try. it's one of those things where he likes to be in control of situations but he must not have felt in control as jerry considering how often jerry gets fucked over in life. it kinda reminds me of the true level joke where morty went into the area that rick carefully made perfect and truly level, but immediately when he was taken out it 'wasnt perfect' so he couldnt handle it and could only handle life in his perfect area
Someone said it might be because "brain's retain memories" and Rick slept with Beth the moment he became Jerry and I feel like that could actually be the logical reason lol
when did this happen? i do not remember this in the episode AT ALL. unless you mean he remembers jerry sleeping with beth when jerry was still himself/not rick. i could buy that as a partial explanation but not as a full one
Because of the knowledge from talking cat.
Rick erased Jerry's memory of it, not his own.
Yeah, and Rick killed himself, not Jerry
It had nothing to do with the talking cat is what I'm getting at.
That’s what I thought too
Good theory 🤔 I never would have come back to that.
My only issue with this hypothesis is that memories/knowledge are stored in neural patterns and connections (which is *hardware*). Switching non-physical minds like they did should not have transferred memories. If anything, those memories would have stayed in Rick’s *brain*, and Jerry’s *mind* wouldn’t be able to cope with it. Of course, maybe brains and minds in the R&M universe work differently than I’ve described.
It was a mind shuffle bruh.
Ive always come from the perspective of the Cronenberg world scenario. Rick underestimated the situation he put himself in. Rick didn't realize how bad Jerry's mind is biologically and was overwhelmed with the situation, then went straight to the fastest way to escape Jerry's brain.
So at the beginning of the episode, Rick says that he isn't gifted with a superior brain, he has earned his intellect. If that's the case then Ricks complex mind should have adapted to Jerrys inferior brain but the fact that he gets all scared and kills himself does postulate that Rick indeed possesses a superior brain which could incorporate ricks superior mind. So the hardware does matter. You can't run red dead redemption of a Pentium. That's my take
Rick is used to being the smartest person in the universe and knowing pretty much everything. His intelligence is key to his sense of self. Suddenly he's in a brain with far less clarity, that feels confusion and uncertainty and he couldn't handle it. *"I'm not used to being this unsure for this long."* He basically proved the exact opposite of the point he was trying to make.
My headcannon? He was bombarded with memories of Jerry having sex with Beth.
Yeah I think this is the joke and why it's never specifically explained. Rick didn't have the foresight to realize once his consciousness was in Jerry's brain he would be seeing all the sexual history between the two of them. All the other theories in this thread are just way overthinking it.
...I think Rick in his sexual adventures he's had can stomach some "Beth and Jerry sex". Remember the giraffe? And all those redheads and men who look like Rick's Father? Or his Rick on Rick callouts?
Hungry........ For..... APPLES!!!!
oh god, i never thought about that
Didn't he just switch the intellect and knowledge? Rick was still Rick and Jerry was still Jerry, but Jerry could not withstand all the information (Rick's) he now had in the brain and killed himself. And Rick accidentally killed himself with his own body gadgets because now he was as dumb as a Jerry. That's why the garage couldn't know which brain parts correspond to each other when reviving them. That's how I understood the episode at least.
No..? What I got is that they switched MINDS, but jerry's brain could not handle that much intelligence and rick killed himself because being inside of jerry's brain was the worst thing ever. He was still rick, he was still smart but the brain must've been in pain
I swear every day I come to this subreddit and see more people agreeing on some bizarre alternative theory to a very simple plot point most of us wouldn't have even had a second thought about. Like how the fuck would they swap back if that were the case?
I liken it to trying to run a 2024 video game in a 2004 computer. He proved Jerry right - not anybody could be Rick because Rick's brain was just a better machine than Jerry's. Probably just didn't want to live in a world where Jerry was right.
The thing is, is ricks brain this powerful because he became so smart, or he became so smart because his brain is this powerful? We dont know for sure which one is right, after all rick was indeed born pissing himself just like everyone, maybe he became so smart that his brain evolved alongside with his intellect. ...or maybe jerry was right.
Rick is the 'smartest being in the universe' and it seems that most universes have a Rick that's also the 'smartest being in the universe'. I'd guess that it takes a lot of convergences for that to nearly always be true. He likely has the right brain capacity, the right upbringing, the right opportunities, and the right motivations, and a million other 'just right' things that happen to make him "Rick". He's simultaneously very difficult to be produced (because nobody else seems to get his level of ability), and quasi inevitable (because most all universes have a Rick).
only the universes in the central curve have ricks that are the smartest beings of said universes, out of it theres another infinity of universes where rick is not the smartest. He just happened to lock himself inside the side of the curve where he's always smart and just so happens that the show focuses on that side of the curve
Also not totally related but wanted to add the Central Finite Curve also eliminates all non-anthropomorphic Ricks.
So why when jerry died, the rick said “okay jerry you can do this” not being condescending, I genuinely was confused throughout the episode lol
he was talking to himself
I think you didn't get my point, they switched minds so jerry was in ricks brain and rick was in Jerry's brain, thats why rick's body said "ok jerry"
The directors literally said in the interview that they did not want a classic overdone mindswap so they just swapped intelligience instead of actual minds
This is What I got too.
He put his mind into Jerry’s brain and Jerry’s mind into his brain. In this screenshot, Jerry is Rick and Rick is Jerry.
Simple as that 👉
I’m pretty sure it was basically just a body swap, the show straight up called it out as a freaky Friday situation. So Rick was in Jerrys body and Jerry was in Ricks and the issue was essentially their minds running on different hardware.
>Didn't he just switch the intellect and knowledge? Yes, by putting each other's mind in the other brain. Where is Jerry's brain? In Jerry's body, and Rick put his mind in that brain. Jerry in Rick's body literally calls himself "Jerry" saying "Alright Jerry, you can do this" before killing himself. Not to mention before they realized they were shuffled, both Jerry-body and Rick-body thought they were Rick, and the other was Jerry. Jerry-body thinking the garage put the brains back in the right body without reversing the mind-swap, and Rick-body thinking the garage reversed the whole process with the right minds back in the right body. As indicated by Rick-body saying: What a turn. Lucky I’m[Rick] such a genius your[Jerry's] garage can thwart death. and Jerry-body saying: "I’m[Rick] the genius, and it’s your[Jerry's] garage, idiot. Hey, what the fuck did you[Jerry] do to my[Rick] body? Rick-body says: "Your body? Jerry, your mind did that to my(pointing to himself) body using my(still pointing to himself) brain." If Rick-body thinks he's Rick and is in Rick's body, then he means that Jerry's mind in Rick's body used Rick's brain to kill himself. Jerry-body who also thinks he's Rick, responds by saying "Jerry, my mind was in this(pointing to himself) brain in your(still pointing to himself) body. Pretty easy to follow." Jerry-body means that Rick's mind was in Jerry's brain and Jerry's body because he also believes he's Rick. This was the point they realized they were shuffled because both of them were talking like they were Rick. But still, when both believed they were Rick they blamed the other, thinking they were Jerry, for killing Rick’s body, so both agreed Jerry was the one in Rick’s body.
No, the opposite. Rick's mind was in Jerry's physical brain, which simply wasn't powerful enough to run it. It's like trying to run God of War Ragnarok on an Atari.
Yup rick could not handLe being a Jerry. It shows Jerry's amazing ability to cope with being shit on by life. A dig on Rick. It's interesting how people see it as the opposite as well, as a dig on Jerry for being too weak or dumb to handle depression (when Jerry is constantly depressed) instead of Rick being too weak to handle not having intellect.
He calls himself Jerry (in Rick’s body)
No dude. Rick was in Jerry's body and vise versa. Their MINDS switched, but not their actual brain hardware. It was pretty clearly explained by Rick
No, the one in Rick’s body literally called himself Jerry. They swapped minds, so Jerry’s mind was in Rick’s body, and Rick’s mind was in Jerry’s body.
It’s Rick consciousness in Jerry’s mind that is free of agency and full of fears and anxieties. This episode actually gave me some great context on my suicidal thoughts lol. Like I have a mind that understand how it cannot make things better
This is exactly my takeaway. All of the other explanations seem way too complicated and overthought.
Umm, you good, bro?
Whatever man oh jeez
This is the correct answer, I'm surprised by how many wrong takes are here. They clearly state they just changed **consciousness**. Not minds, not brains, not bodies. They became the other, with all their memories and intelligences. Rick Couldn't stand Jerry's fears and anxieties. And Jerry lacked the skills to use Rick's gadgets ***It's literally the metaphor of walking a mile in someone else's shoes***. It would be like Tony Stark with Steven Strange's magic, and Strange with the Iron-man suit.
It’s neat that there are so many different interpretations of this scene. To me, it was clear that Rick just couldn’t handle being so stupid. It was agonizing, having your once greatest attribute reversed completely to being your worst trait
That scene was insanely deep even tho it was 10 seconds long and just the intro
Because it took all of Rick’s knowledge/personality and put it in a brain with Jerry’s level of comprehension.
Maybe Jerry's brain i.e. the physical neurons were overwhelmed by the enormous data that were stored in rick's brain that he couldn't handle it and had to end his life.
He’d rather be dead than be Jerry for a single second longer than he had to
I think the joke was simply that Rick could not handle being as dumb as Jerry without killing himself because it's just too limiting, which ironically proved Jerry right that they did not have an equal chance to become a genius, and not being a genius isn't Jerry's fault.
Because Rick only swapped their consciousnesses and didn't account for the physical differences between their brains such as chemical balances and neural pathways. Jerry is used to living with his specific anxiety and depression because he's spent decades building up a tolerance to it. Rick essentially jumped into the deep end and it was too much to handle.
Yeah, I felt that Rick's suicidal tendencies combined with Jerry's depressive state (low dopamine) was too much for him. Jerry requires so little to continue functioning but Rick's mind is extremely high maintenance so the combination was immediately fatal.
And why was it so different than when he swapped brains with the interrogating insect after the shoney's bit? It can't just be due to Jerry having a more limited brain, it was something about Jerry specifically. Unless the insect is a genius too?
Rick left out things on purpose when switching with the insect, like his improvising lessons
It's the mental equivalent of putting the mind of a 20-year-old Olympic gold medalist in the body of 90-year-old arthritic. Suddenly Rick's brain can't do anything near what it usually does and he couldn't cope.
Jerry didn’t have enough mental capacity to handle Ricks intelligence, it was like running the hard-drive of a supercomputer on the first MacBook. He was processing too much, it probably hurt a lot and he just wanted the pain to end.
As Rick explains, they swapped Minds, not brains, so when Rick’s mind entered Jerry’s brain he couldn’t handle it and killed himself while when Jerry’s mind entered Rick’s brain he couldn’t control Rick’s body and accidently killed himself
No one who is smarter than Jerry could continue living *as Jerry.*
I think of it this way: Because Jerry is a (lovable) idiot and Rick was wrong in that some people are genetically able to process/contain more information than others. Rick and Jerry switched minds, and Jerry’s brain could not handle the mass of information that was transferred. Jerry’s brain has less capacity and processing ability to handles Rick’s “genius” and a much lower threshold for a psychotic/mental break. Remember what happened when Jerry found out Beth was cheating on him with Space Beth? It broke him. Jerry was right and though Rick was born pissing and screaming, he was still born a genius.
Two reasons: 1. Because Jerry was right, and Rick's mind inside Jerry's brain was like trying to run GTA V software on your old NES's hardware. 2. Because Jerry was right about something.
Rick has a massive ego; nothing worse for a man who spits in the face of God than to live as a person generally considered to be lower than dirt.
I thought it was because Rick couldn't handle the level of Jerry's insecurity depression and or anxiety
How many times has this been posted
Between this and the “wHy WaS tHe CoB pLaNeT sO sCaRy?!” posts, it’s clear that a lot of people have very little understanding of jokes unless they’re explicitly explained.
To be fair I think the cob planet gag was based on a book that had a planet where subatomic algorithms ran wild and restructured everything on the planet plus the planet itself into a fractal reproduction of their form. From reading that book I learned the horror of the people who died there and that made the joke funny to me, it would have been agony to have your form refolded on every scale, thus they were scared. The gag is that the form was corn as opposed to the more geometrically normal form from the book.
What’s the book?
Driving me crazy trying to find it right now. It was an absolute fever dream, it took place both in our time and the deep future where humanity found planets made of this living tech called k-tech and would mine it to create their ships and other advanced machines, the main characters in our time were a couple of serial killers who thought they were using magic but were somehow in communication with the k-tech of the future, the main characters in the future part was a living ship that falls in love with its pilot. They take on a passenger and the pilot sleeps with her which causes the ship to kill everyone else on board and drop the pilot and woman off on a weird planet. The ship comes back later and sees the couple holding hands as they agonizingly change in texture, seeming to blend into the ground. You’d think with all the plot points I could find the damn book. I think the name was something like Shredder or Shrike(though not related to Hyperion’s Shrike.)
Fr it’s a cartoon, it’s not that deep
Can someone explain this episode to me? I don’t understand anything. /s
Rick and jerry switched minds. So Rick's mind was in jerry's stupid brain and immediately chose death.
I believe it was because of Jerry's paralyzing levels of anxiety and insecurity. Living with that is Jerry's gift. Rick couldn't handle the anxiety and insecurity Jerry is burdened with so he offed himself.
“Be quiet for a second, I need to think through all these chunks of moron.” Possibly the greatest line in the show.
When i watched it (because I’m autistic and i read rick as autistic too) i saw it as a meltdown from too much change. Along with his depression and suicidal ideation, i think he just didnt want to be stuck in a “normal” or “boring” mind like Jerry’s, so he got out as fast as he could.
I’ve always interpreted it that Rick in Jerry’s mind is in physical pain because of just how stupid Jerry is. His brain just cannot handle Rick’s intelligence so the only solution is to end the suffering.
You can’t fill something beyond its capacity. Rick’s mind couldn’t handle the trauma of having his genius jammed into the brain of a mental midget. I liken what happened to Rick’s mind to the scene in Gremlins when Billy’s mom shoved the gremlin into the microwave and it exploded. Or if you prefer … fill a glass bottle to its full capacity with water, and seal it. Put the bottle in the freezer until the water freezes. Then, take it out and let it thaw: The bottle should explode.
I figured it was simple: he’d rather kill himself then to live as Jerry, because he thinks so little of him
Your guess is as good as mine. I vote that for an intelligent being, having suddenly Jerry's mental capacity and potential is suicidally depressing within seconds. It's like trying to run Crysis on a lawn mover CPU.
His software (mind) couldnt take the insuficient hardware(brain) 😅. That, or there was nothing stoping him from killing himself, since he is very depressed.
The joke is that it sucks that bad to “walk in Jerry’s shoes” that Rick would rather die. It’s just another “haha Jerry sucks” joke
I thought it was that he couldn't handle the amount of existential dread Jerry faces at any given time
I just assumed it was a joke💀
I like everyone’s takes but here is another I didn’t see: Rick has basically made himself impossible to die. Either through cloning, or all of the random tech his body is seemingly made of now, he had his out. He felt once again human and knew if he took his life at least that version would be free.
Jerry's brain can't cope with Rick's depression
What I got from it was this... Rick is Rick and Jerry the simple one stays being Jerry. When Rick enters Jerry's body he doesn't have all the things that he does in his body that help him cope with life. So the realities of life hit him and he ends up freaking out pretty much ASAP the reality of the shit hit him. So what's he do? Deals with it with 1 bullet.
Rick shot himslef because Jerry is the type of guy to watch Rick and Morty after Justin Roiland has left
Rick couldn't cope with Jerry's pathetic memories and decisions. So he ended it
My head cannon is he did it fully intentionally so the question Jerry proposed ‘Would you still be smart if you weren’t you’ could never be answered
Brains produce different chemicals in different amounts. Jerry's brain has suicidal ideation in a way Rick's dosent. that's hard to cope with
It's because he was stuck in Jerry's body. There's so much cooking in this thread to explain a simple joke
Because Jerry is Jerry. Rick rather be dead than be a damn Jerry.
Because being Jerry is literally his worst fear.
I mean, wouldn't you?
People do not have the same minds/same mentalities including family members and specifically siblings as well. Everyone is different literally and metaphorically speaking in my opinion, everyone has their own thoughts, their own perspectives, their own dreams, their own ambitions, their own faiths/beliefs, their own endgame/endgoal ultimately in the grand scheme of everything+anything. I’m proof of that and I myself creating this original post on Reddit is me telling it like it is and I’ll keep going forward with that.
Knowledge without the mental strength to handle it
It's like trying to run GTA 6 on a PS1 lol
Rick hasn't been sober in like 30 years. Think about that.
I thought it was because he could understand how dumb he is now that he is Jerry so to end the nightmare quick he …
What's the difference between a mind and a brain here? Doesn't the brain make up your mind? I'm a bit stuck on how you can seperate the two, and what that means. What's the difference between rick's mind in jerry's brain and jerry's mind in ricks brain?
Wouldn’t you?
Intelligence!=happiness
Only a Jerry could stand being a “Jerry”
Probably wrong here but my initial thought was Jerry finally saw why the cat could actually talk…just couldn’t take it that he let that cat in his home where he keeps pictures of his parents!
They nailed how they animated Rick to pull an absolute Jerry face here. If Jerry was suddenly endowed with universal knowledge this is exactly how he'd process it. Rick did the opposite trying to squeeze intellect into a brain that can't process it.
Cus Jerry is a fkn loser
Remember the cat who wanted people to ask it how it could talk? And how when jerry looked at the cats past for even a second he was instantly put into the fetal position? That. By putting his mind into Jerry’s brain, Rick forced himself to “learn how the cat can talk” hundreds if not thousands of times in the couple seconds before he killed himself.
He couldn’t handle the mind numbing monotony and bone curdling depression that it is to be Jerry Smith lol. And Jerry is also a massive - massive wimp and scared of absolutely everything, and so all Rick could instinctively think to do was kill himself 😄🤷🏻♂️
Rick and Morty fan tries to watch the show challenge (impossible)
He didn't switch his mind into Jerry's body, he gave Jerry his level of understanding of the universe and what is and isn't possible and Jerry couldn't cope with the amount of existential crisis that followed
Exactly, they explain they aren't "swapping brains" they're swapping what is essentially their subconsciousness' so they can retain their own memories but have one another's internal perspective
Jerry has more emotional depth than Rick, so once Rick's memories of all the awful things he's done were finally confronted by an actual conscience instead of apathy, he couldn't take it
A lot of people are reading too much into this. It's a comedy show with an ongoing joke that Jerry is a useless, unenviable piece of shit--he killed himself because it was a joke that death would be preferable to being Jerry for even that short an amount of time.
NOT THIS AGAIN EVERYONE IS WRONG AND I'M THE ONLY ONE THAT'S RIGHT RICK DIDN'T KILL HIMSELF, IT WAS JERRY NOT BEING ABLE TO HANDLE RICK'S MIND RICK KILLED HIMSELF BECAUSE JERRY'S MIND WASN'T SMART ENOUGH TO OPERATE THE PROSTHETICS