Rick and Morty visited a lot of worlds in the first three seasons of the show - from a world where chairs sit on people, to a miniature theme park inside the body of a homeless man. In Rick and Morty season 4, however, they seem to be encountering an unusual number of worlds run by Nazis, whether they’re Nazi shrimp people or Nazi snakes.
The multiverse’s apparent tendency to spiral into fascism could just be another example of Rick and Morty’s wry commentary on the real world, in this case referencing the resurgence of the far-right. Yet in season 4, episode 1, “Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat,” even the ever-cynical Rick seems to be surprised by how many worlds he ends up in turn out to be fascist.
Of course, Rick and Morty’s worldview does tend to be pretty dark. In the season 2 episode “Auto Erotic Assimilation,” a planet of people enslaved by a hive mind were set free and immediately started a race war over their different types of nipples. In “Look Who’s Purging Now,” a planet liberated from the horrors of an annual purge almost immediately decided to start purging again. But is the prevalence of fascist worlds simply another symptom of Rick and Morty’s nihilism, or is there more to it than that?
Theory #1: Rick and Morty’s Time Travel Meddling Created Nazi Worlds
The mid-season finale of Rick and Morty season 4, “Rattlestar Ricklactica,” presented an interesting new possibility for the prevalence of Nazi worlds in the multiverse when Morty, in an effort to stop a race war on a snake planet, ended up kicking off a series of events that resulted in the Nazis winning the snakes’ equivalent of World War 2. The snake planet’s situation was ultimately resolved by Rick allowing the snakes’ time travel meddling to attract the attention of the Fourth Dimensional Beings, last seen giving poor Albert Einstein a beating in the post-credits scene of season 2’s “A Rickle in Time.” The timeline cops gave the caveman versions of snakes a similar beat-down to warn them against meddling in time, which put an end to the chaotic time loops and snake attacks.
If this happened in our usual Rick and Morty’s timeline, it’s possible that all of the fascist societies that Rick encountered in the season premiere were the result of those universes’ Ricks and Mortys introducing time travel and accidentally disrupting history in such a way that resulted in fascism succeeding. The presence of Nazi snakes in the midseason finale certainly ties thematically with the Nazi shrimps and teddy bears in the season premiere. But there is another theory that might explain why the multiverse has gotten so dark.
Theory #2: Evil Morty Is Responsible For All the Nazi Worlds
As far as we know, we’ve yet to encounter Evil Morty in Rick and Morty season 4. This devious alternate universe version of Morty was first introduced in the season 1 episode “Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind,” where he attempted to frame C-137’s Rick for murdering other Ricks, and constructed a terrifying fortress made up of tormented Mortys. He later returned in season 3’s “Tales From the Citadel,” in which he used his charisma and wits to become the Citadel of Ricks’ first democratically-elected Morty president - at which point he brutally eliminated his enemies from the Citadel.
It’s possible, therefore, that the emergence of so many fascist worlds in “Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat” has something to do with Evil Morty’s influence as the president of the Citadel of Ricks. After all, he has access to inter-dimensional portals, through which he could manipulate many worlds so that fascist dictatorships emerge. Evil Morty’s true motivations have yet to be revealed, but perhaps the creation of Nazi worlds is all part of his agenda.
Then again, maybe there are just a lot of Nazi worlds because people suck.
More: When Rick & Morty Season 4 Returns (& What To Expect)
