Rick & Morty is a show that has a lot going on in terms of plot threads, character mysteries, and philosophical underpinnings, so much so that I don't think there's anything I could discuss in detail that anybody else hasn't done already. That said, there is something that isn't talked about a lot that I'd like to discuss here.
In a very small number of episodes Rick & Morty tackles the issue of identity through its use of nihilism and philosophies rooted in cosmic horror. Sometimes it can be an offhand comment like when Rick C-137 says he's the most Rick out of all Ricks, or it can be something a bit more extensive like Morty losing himself inside of a VR Life Simulator game.
These two scenarios I brought up in particular seem to have very different ideas about what identity is. On the one hand, the act of losing yourself in a VR game brings up questions about the validity of experiences by boiling them down to just an arcade game. If you played a VR game that felt so real and lasted so long to you that you lost sense of who you are, what does that say about your existence? Does it mean that identity is ultimately meaningless since it can be easily swapped out at any point with a game console?
Well, if the quote I brought up earlier is any indication, that may not necessarily be the case. Rick is the smartest collective in existence at least as far as the show tells us, which means that the average Rick is going to be smarter than the average member of any other species or average incarnation of any other being, and it also means that even the dumbest Ricks are still far above what can be considered average for a human. Just for clarification, the least intelligent Rick we've ever seen in the series, the one who apparently eats his own feces and befriends main-universe Jerry is still smart enough to create instant brownies so clearly the bar is very high if someone like that still isn't enough to reach it.
Even then, though, for as much as all the other Ricks make fun of him and try to remove him from helping out, they still refer to him as a Rick even if he is the least Rick of all Ricks. Does this mean that the identity you assume does indeed matter?
Well, I suppose with a show like this, the answer is going to be something in the middle. You see, Ricks tend to be smart enough to be able to calculate something as abstract and subjective as self, with self being the word used to describe your identity, and they are then able to determine how much you align with the proper self by seeing what factors you have that cause you to lean toward or deviate from that benchmark.
This is something that can even be replicated since Evil Morty seems to have a grasp on how to calculate certain aspects of Rick's self at the very least. During the episode "Close Rickcounters of the Rick kind" the robot piloted by Evil Morty notes that the robot Rick and Rick C-137 are only two ranks apart in terms of their level of evil. Of course, it's worth noting that in the episode that deals with the devil, Rick shows that evil exists and he can detect and measure it, which is a bit of a different thing from calculating one's value of self.
However, Rick C-137 notes on at least one occasion that he is "The Rickest of all Ricks" and that the Council of Ricks deviate from that standard by forming a government of Ricks to hide from the Galactic Federation, suggesting that some aspects of self identified within Rick are unafraid, anti-government, total freedom, and anti-regulation.
Unafraid and total freedom seem like qualities one would want to have on a surface level but what makes them so dangerous is their combination with the other qualities, anti-government and in particular anti-regulation. Rick doesn't want to be regulated and the truest Ricks are unregulated but lack of regulation can lead to a spiraling level of cruelty and evil, which again is something that can be detected and measured within the omniverse of Rick & Morty. Also worth noting is that unafraid doesn't necessarily mean courageous in all circumstances. Courageous is usually the act of abiding by what you believe in regardless of what happens to you and usually for the good of others but unafraid by itself can also mean unafraid of consequences and the affects those consequences have on others. So, in a way, we're starting to form something.
But the thing is that Rick & Morty themselves seem to have a higher value on self than other entities do within the show. Obviously there aren't an infinite number of Ricks if every one except C-137 can be destroyed along with the Council in a single episode, which means even if there are Ricks who were not present at that station at the time of Season 3 Episode 1, it's fair to say that there are some universes where Rick was never born. However, the idea also holds true for Morty and Summer. However, based on what we see in the series, there's a seemingly endless supply of Morties even though Summer doesn't exist in any universe where their parents never got married.
What this suggests to me at least is that there's an everpresent importance to the identity of Rick and Morty specifically. For every universe that contains a Rick, there has to be one that also contains a Morty, that's how they stay hidden from the Galactic Federation. Obviously if Rick was never born Morty wouldn't be either but if there are universes where Rick was born, he had his daughter and that daughter never married Jerry, it's entirely possible that a Morty would not exist in those universes and that the Ricks in those universes likely died off so I guess that's one reason for the equal number of Ricks and Morties in the show.
But why are Rick and Morty so important if self in general is not? Well, part of that may be because Rick thinks highly of himself in pretty much every incarnation barring the lowest of the low and Morties are necessary to hide Ricks. Seems straightforward but then if identity is important and something that should be abided by, why is it possible for any Rick to deviate from this self?
The answer is that self isn't as much of an acknowledgement of who you are like it is in real life as much as it is a standard for you to be judged by. In this way, it touches upon authenticity a little bit with the idea of "Be yourself but be your best self," which is to say that the best you is the one who meets all of the best qualities of the self while minimizing the worst ones. And it just so happens that, on this standard, evil or at least lack of morality is not an unfavorable quality to possess if you want to be Rick.
Another possibility is that intelligence of that caliber has some ability to corrupt, which we see with not only Evil Morty but also some of the comics in the series, specifically the one with Morty C-132. Currently, we're not entirely sure why this is case, it may be partly because of the influence Rick has on characters, that his very existence corrupts them but this could also imply that Morty has just as much potential for evil as Rick does and Rick may be suppressing it by being the lesser of two evils, at the same time turning him into the greater evil currently. A bit confusing the way I word it but I digress.
It's also worth noting that Rick and Morty are the only characters who consistently come into contact with different versions of themselves and others. Jerry did once during his time in the Jerry Daycare but Jerry's not smart enough to realize how much of a crisis this can cause in relation to self and identity. Summer came into contact with her version from the Cronenberg universe but she likely didn't think all that much of it since she was far more focused on Rick and, keep in mind, this didn't happen until Episode 1 of Season 3. Beth and Jerry both saw what their lives were like in universes where they never got married but that was a one off which ended with that universe having them get together anyway.
My point is that there aren't too many examples of characters who come into contact with themselves from other universes so we really can't identify consistently what impact this would have on an identity crisis. Rick is too confident in himself to think of himself as anything other than himself and Morty only has one real episode where he encounters and interacts with other Morties, again "Close Rickcounters of the Rick kind."
I don't think I made a single tangible point in this entire post so I'll put it to bed for now. Have a wonderful day.
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