‘Rick and Morty’s “The Vat of Acid Episode” Has a Special ‘Futurama’ Connection

The second Rick and Morty premiered “The Vat of Acid Episode”, it was clear: this twisting exploration into limitless timelines and possibilities was going to be Season 4’s awards’ contester. “The Vat of Acid Episode” ended up winning an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program, beating out Big Mouth, Bob’s Burgers, The Simpsons, and BoJack Horseman. But there’s something other than its impressive competition that makes this victory so remarkable. The Futurama episode Rick and Morty shamelessly ripped off was also nominated, for the same Emmy.

At its core “The Vat of Acid Episode” is a study in Rick’s pettiness. Before trading crystals with a group of alien gangsters, Rick tells Morty (both Justin Roiland) to jump into the same vat of acid as him if things go wrong. Morty immediately criticizes Rick’s vat, and for good reason. Rick can clone himself ad nauseam and has perfected interdimensional travel. The fact that his preferred escape method is a fake vat of acid with a compartment for bones is very silly.

The pair get into a fight over the vat that ends with Morty challenging his grandfather to invent him a video game reset button. After insisting that he doesn’t mess with time travel or rip off other show, Rick eventually relents. He presents Morty with a button that seems to save his place in time and allows him to travel back 10 seconds in the past, just like in Futurama.

The key phrase here is “seems to.” Really what Rick has invented is a device that transports Morty to another timeline in an infinite amount of timelines. Since two Mortys can’t exist in the same exact place at once, each timeline hop causes Morty to murder a version of himself from another dimension. It’s not time travel; it’s The Prestige.

In the episode’s final moment Morty is forced to face the consequences of living his life without consequences. The only way to escape the mob of people ready to attack him is by jumping into yet another vat of acid. It’s the most elaborate “I-told-you-so” in a show packed full of the sentiment.

What’s especially interesting about this episode is that the one that inspired it also garnered awards attention. Unlike Rick and Morty, Matt Groening’s Futurama was always happy to play with time travel. And Season 7’s “Meanwhile” revolves around a time travel reset button just like the one Morty requested.

Fry (Billy West) spends most of the episode abusing the button as he prepares to propose to the love of his life, Leela (Katey Sagal). But Fry being the idiot that he is doesn’t realize that constantly traveling 10 seconds back in time causes his wristwatch to fall out of sync with the rest of the world. When his wristwatch reveals that Leela is late to his romantic dinner, Fry jumps off the skyscraper. But while he’s plummeting to his death he sees Leela and realizes his mistake. Leela was going to show up after all and likely accept his proposal.

After dying repeatedly, Leela and Fry accidentally freeze time. The rest of the episode follows them growing old together in this time-adverse world before deciding to “go around again” one more time.

“Meanwhile” is one of the sweetest episodes of this often surprisingly emotional series. Because of Futurama‘s constant battles with near-cancelation, it was fourth episode written to be the show’s finale and is regarded as the series’ actual ending. This final finale was also responsible for one of Futurama‘s 12 Emmy nominations. In 2014 Futurama’s “Meanwhile” was nominated for Outstanding Animated Program. It ultimately lost that award to the Bob’s Burgers‘ episode “Mazel-Tina.”

As excellent as Bob’s Burgers undoubtably is, Futurama‘s loss felt unfair at the time. Here was a standard, silly, day-in-the-life episode competing with the romantic conclusion of a long-winded love story that also bent the rules of space and time. Yet with history at our backs, this loss feels perversely right. Futurama was criminally under-appreciated during its time, but it has gone on to become one of the most inspirational series for modern animation. It’s fitting that even at its very end Futurama was snubbed, but one of its spiritual successors has won — thanks to a homage to the late and not so great Philip J. Fry.

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Where to stream Futurama