The Rick and Morty season 5 trailer teases an episode that spoofs kaiju movies! The animated sci-fi comedy series regularly parodies genre conventions but has yet to tackle the subgenre of Japanese giant mosnter movies, popularized by titles like the original Godzilla. Beginning in 2013, Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty has grown over its four seasons from a goofy spoof of Back to the Future into a hyper-kinetic, dark parody of sitcom tropes and sci-fi television conventions with a huge fanbase.
As a sci-fi satire, Rick and Morty takes for granted that fans of the series will recognize the many horror, fantasy, and sci-fi properties that the show parodies. The first 4 seasons of Rick and Morty aimed spoofs at subjects as both as iconic as Game of Thrones and Jurassic Park and as obscure as Jacob’s Ladder and The Langoliers. According to Rick and Morty’s first season 5 trailer, the upcoming episodes will be no different, with the teaser featuring a prominent parody of ’80s horror classic Hellraiser.
However, the Hellraiser parody is not the only nod to horror history contained in the trailer, with another shot showing that Rick and Morty’s fifth season may be set to parody a genre the show has never touched on before. Although the first season standout “Rick Potion 9” featured memorably grotesque, city-destroying monsters in the form of the Cronenbergs, Rick and Morty has never featured any kaiju in its four seasons so far (one could argue that season 3’s homage to The Fifty Foot Woman/Attack On Titan counts, but it is hardly fair to call supporting stars Beth and Summer “monsters”, regardless of how giant they were in that outing). However, this looks set to change with season 5’s first trailer revealing a giant insect tearing its way through the hometown of the Smiths, with Jerry trapped outside the family house as the gigantic monster terrorizes the town.
The first trailer sees Rick lock down the Smith family home to keep himself and Morty safe, only for Morty to note that the titular pair have accidentally left Jerry outside, at which point a brief shot shows Jerry desperately attempting to enter and escape the gigantic ant seen wreaking havoc behind him. The second Rick and Morty provides a bit more context, showing the Smith family battling the giant bug monster with Power Rangers-inspired vehicles. Whether this will be a throwaway stinger or an entire episode’s premise, though, remains to be seen.
Interestingly, Justin Roiland’s other project Solar Opposites featured a kaiju as early as its first episode in the form of the monstrous mutated “Funbucket.” Typically, the movie parodies of Solar Opposites can tend to be more superficial than those of Rick and Morty, with the series only occasionally devoting entire episodes to recreating movies so the characters can poke fun at their fictional worlds. In this case, it looks like the two shows may be inverting their usual approach, as Rick and Morty could be offering only a throwaway reference to kaiju for a greater parody of Voltron or Mighty Morphin Power Rangers — where Solar Opposites spent much of their pilot’s screen time spoofing the giant monster genre.
