The Adult Swim animated series Rick and Morty is no stranger to dark parodies and twisted references to other forms of media, and in one off-shoot comic book, Rick and Morty introduce a version of a classic comic strip that is a total nightmare. One of the coolest aspects of Rick and Morty is the endless worlds fans are taken to while following the adventures of the titular characters. Some worlds are interesting and deep, like the planet Unity took over in the episode “Auto Erotic Assimilation” while others were absolutely ridiculous like the universe where chairs are people and people are chairs as shown in the episode “Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind.” This corrupted version of a beloved comic strip is one of the ridiculous universes, but with a horrifying concept laced into it as well.
In Rick and Morty Presents: The Council of Ricks #1 by Jake Goldman, Marc Ellerby, and Phil Murphy, fans are given the backstory of the Council of Ricks’ formation. Before they represented the Citadel, every Rick on the council had their own unique set of skills that were all needed to complete a nearly impossible mission. Rick clones were being controlled by a mysterious villain who was using them to replace important figures within the Citadel’s hierarchy and take control. So these specific Ricks came together to stop the evil mastermind, and once they came face-to-face with who was behind the scheme, a dark new world was introduced to fans that turned a classic comic into a nightmare.
The horrifying world in question is one that is known as the “Desks That Eat People” universe, but what it is really is a nightmarish version of the beloved comic strip Dilbert. Dilbert originated as a comic strip that follows the life of a mild-mannered office worker whose adventures mirror that of an average employee going to work everyday in an office and the natural humor that comes with that. Rick and Morty’s version of Dilbert is an entire universe that takes place in an office, as the original Dilbert established, except within that office existence there are desks that eat people behind every corner. When describing the universe, one of the Ricks says, “Whole place is like a Dilbert cartoon on acid,” proving that this world is a clear reference to the strip and not a supposed one. Plus, when fans get to see the dark dimension, the references just keep on coming along with the horrifying reality of this twisted world.
The evil mastermind behind the Rick clones, who turned out to be the smartest Jerry, is sent to the “Desks That Eat People” universe as punishment for his crimes against the Citadel. When he gets there, Jerry is brutally eaten alive by a desk, with a desensitized Dilbert look-alike sitting in his cubicle complaining about Mondays. The scene is an absolute hellish nightmare and is one of the darkest takes on Dilbert in history.
From the idea of an entire dimension taking place within an office of carnivorous desks to the brutal reality of what a desk eating a person looks like, Rick and Morty proves to have outdone itself with this twisted parody. Rick and Morty’s version of the classic comic strip Dilbert is a total nightmare filled with killer desks, insidiously apathetic office workers, and seemingly no escape from the endlessly mundane life of eternal office work.
