Alive homage
Midway through “The Vat of Acid Episode,” which mostly involves Morty misappropriating a device that lets him reset his timeline, we get a tangent that somehow transforms into an earnest homage to Alive—the book-turned-movie that told the true story of 1970s plane-crash survivors who were forced to resort to cannibalism to avoid starving to death. It comes out of nowhere and is outstandingly specific—maybe it’s because I was a big Alive fan back in the day, but to me, this moment represents peak Rick and Morty: a plot that goes completely off the rails and incorporates a completely unexpected reference, but somehow also ends up serving the story perfectly.
