Now 'Rick and Morty' Is Parodying 'Aliens' and 'Blade Runner'

The claymation-obsessed folks over at Adult Swim have moved on to parodies of Blade Runner, Poltergeist, Re-Animator, and Aliens for more “Non-Canonical Adventures.” As fans anxiously wait a few more weeks for Season 3 to pick up again on July 30, these frightful shorts in the realm of horror and sci-fi are the best we have to hold us over.

As always, the shorts put Rick and Morty into roles from the movies to re-enact pivotal and oftentimes iconic scenes from the best films in horror and sci-fi genres.

More recently, these “Non-Canonical Adventures” tackled 2001: A Space Odyssey and Gremlins to great success. Previous shorts riffed on The Thing, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Ex Machina, and The Fly. But Rick and Morty has a long history of tangentially-related promotional shorts that include live-action remakes of scenes from the show or unofficially canon scenes from one or more universes — if you’ve ever wanted to go back to Buttworld, you can start there.

Check out the latest shorts right here:

Blade Runner

As always, Rick is the villain and Morty is the protagonist in the Blade Runner short. Morty assumes the role of the film’s hero, Rick Deckard, albeit a bumbling, weakling version that’s far from badass (typical Morty). He’s helpless as Rick’s version of the crazed Replicant Leon Kowalski assaults him, throwing him up against a wall.

The “Time to die!” line is straight out of the iconic Blade Runner scene. Even the eye-gouging happens for a briefest of moments before a gunshot from off-camera kills Leon-Rick.

It’s Rachael in a massive fur coat that saves the day with a gunshot, but in the Rick and Morty short, she looks like she could be an aged-up Summer, drenched in neon befitting of Blade Runner.

Poltergeist

Morty in his usual garb is Robbie from Poltergeist in the frightful scene in which his clown doll is perched at the foot of his bed in the middle of the night, except in this scene, Rick is dolled up as a clown. Morty tries to fall back asleep, but after he hears a cackling squeak, he’s jolted awake. Clown-Rick is right behind him to unfurl his clown arm around Robbie-Morty’s neck.

Re-Animator

Because of course Rick always has to be the mad scientist, he’s Herbert West in the Re-Animator short, moments after he’s beheaded Dr. Carl Hill — or in this case, Morty. You can see the bright, glowing green re-animator syrum on the table that was used to put life back into the decapitated head. Rick taps on the head with a pencil to wake it up. Morty-Carl’s head rightfully stammers “Youuu … bastard!” as the rest of his body stumbles dangerously towards Rick-Herbert and attacks.

Aliens

Is there a single moment in sci-fi-horror more iconic than the scene when the door slides upwards in Aliens to reveal Ellen Ripley in the Power Loader exoskeleton ready to fight the Xenomorph Queen? It’s too bad that in the Rick and Morty version, Rick-Ripley doesn’t actually say “Get away from her, you bitch!”

It looks like Jerry is playing Bishop, the android that gets ripped in half in Aliens, and Morty is the helpless Newt this time around. Instead of saying any words, Ripley-Rick just belches and falls on what’s left of Bishop-Jerry.

This may not be canon, but Rick’s encounter with a Xenormorph face-hugger leading up to Alien: Covenant definitely is.

Rick and Morty returns to Adult Swim on July 30 at 11:30 p.m. Eastern.