Rick Sanchez's Tragic Backstory Has Finally Been Revealed

In the latest episode of Rick and Morty, Rick Sanchez's backstory has been explained entirely, and it's actually a sucker punch to the gut.

Even if you don't watch the show, it's widely known that Rick is... not a good guy. While he boasts an immense intellect, he doesn't use it to solve world hunger or reverse climate change. He instead invents machines to travel to other dimensions and murder a lot of aliens for resources for more machines and almost exploded the world with neutrinos after a big night out. The number of victims from his scientific experiments is immeasurable, he has a history with selling weapons to unsavoury sorts, and he is responsible for the eradication of two universes (at the very least).

There's really only one person who'd be perfect for a live-action Rick Sanchez, and that's Christopher Lloyd. Check out this clip of the actor dressed as the megalomaniac scientist along with Jaeden Martell as his bemused grandson!

However, the final episode of the show's fifth season - titled Rickmurai Jack - showed the audience that he wasn't destined to become the confusing and cruel man that he is in his old age. This change is the result of tragic events in his life that twisted him to use his genius to wreak revenge on the person responsible.

Using a brain scanner on Rick, Morty finds out that the deaths of his wife Diane and daughter Beth are actually the actions of an alternate Rick. The loss causes him to lose his grip on his morals and he perfects portal technology to travel to different dimensions in search of the version of himself that killed his family. He has killed hundreds and hundreds of Ricks in his quest, causing the remaining Ricks to commune over how to prevent the lone rogue Rick from eliminating them all.

Once he susses out their plan, he kills these Ricks and forms the Council of Ricks from the survivors, thereby leading to the construction of the Citadel. He meets Morty when he crashes into a reality where Beth survived the encounter with that Rick and takes the kid along with him on his hare-brained schemes.

Intense. You can sort of get it now, why Rick is so cavalier about all of the important things that Morty values. Still, I'd probably have tried therapy before trying to hunt down my self from another dimension.