Small Details You Missed In The Rick And Morty Season 5 Trailer

Foregoing any buildup or warning, Adult Swim recently released the trailer for Rick and Morty season 5. As one might expect, the Smith-Sanchez family is back again to embark on another round of absurd, morally bankrupt escapades across the multiverse. This time, it seems as though our protagonists will be facing off against male mermaids, giant insect kaiju, someone Rick (voiced by Justin Roiland) hates more than anyone in the world, an inter-dimensional traveler who's hunting Morty (also voiced by Roiland), and Jerry's (Chris Parnell) pathetic bucket list of old movie clichés.

Aside from showing us a few clips from some of these upcoming episodes, the trailer also has a number of hidden details lost in the fast-paced sequence of events. Here are a few of the details we found tucked away in the trailer for Rick and Morty season 5.

In the trailer, there's a strange-looking character with slicked-back hair, pale blue lips, gills on his neck, and very little clothing. As Jerry describes him, he's a "strange, horny ocean man." As accurate as that descriptor may end up being — he's certainly strange and from the ocean, and given Rick and Morty's track record for, ahem, extroverted characters, that last element could prove true — this mysterious man is much more meaningful than one might guess. 

As we teased before, this is actually someone Rick detests more than any other creature in any other universe, and the Rick and Morty season 5 trailer isn't the first time fans have caught a glimpse of him. Back in July 2020, Adult Swim released a first-look clip from the upcoming season, which features incomplete animation of Rick and Morty escaping monsters on a ravaged planet, Morty driving Rick's ship and dodging flaming asteroids, and then crashing the ship in the ocean. Rick immediately panics, and then, the merman emerges from a giant clamshell to taunt Rick and Morty. His name is Mr. Nimbus, and he's Rick's "once and eternal foe." Having an eccentric Aquaman knockoff as your arch-nemesis somehow feels very on brand for Rick.

We know from the trailer that Mr. Nimbus takes the fight to Rick's house, showing up in an undersea chariot of sorts, and later participates in a very one-sided fist fight with Rick in his garage. It's not discussed in the Rick and Morty season 5 trailer, but in the sneak-peek clip from last summer, the reason Mr. Nimbus is after Rick is because the genius scientist "desecrated the sacred treaty betwixt land and sea." The episode featuring Mr. Nimbus is all but guaranteed to reveal exactly what Rick did to violate such a treaty. Mr. Nimbus also only calls Rick "Richard," so there's that to look forward to as well. 

Another short sequence in the season 5 trailer depicts Morty carrying an injured Rick through a landscape dotted with floating crystals that look like a good place to store renegade Kryptonian generals. In Rick and Morty, however, these crystals aren't gateways to the Phantom Zone; rather, they seem to reveal alternate universe versions of Rick and Morty. And it wouldn't be the show we all know and love if at least one of these alternate realities didn't show Rick and Morty as superheroes.

As the grandson-grandfather pair trek through the field of crystals, Rick — even with blood pouring from his mouth, head, and chest — is quick to point out the crystal that shows the reality in which they are both versions of the half-vampiric, vampire-killing Marvel hero Blade, famously played on screen by Wesley Snipes. If you look closely, just behind Blade-Rick and Blade-Morty stabbing a bunch of vicious vampires, you'll see a vampire DJ. This seems to be a clever reference to the bloody rave scene from Blade – the movie's opening sequence — in which vampires dance gleefully as the sprinklers inside the venue shower everyone in blood.

The Blade-universe crystal is only on screen for a few seconds in the Rick and Morty season 5 trailer, but it isn't the only one that bears weight. Way in the back of the same shot is another significant crystal — one that references Rick and Morty's origins. 

Encapsulated within that gem are crudely drawn versions of our protagonists. Morty's wearing a blue shirt and a red vest, while Rick still rocks is signature white lab coat. If, upon closer inspection, this looks familiar to fans, it's because they've almost definitely seen these exact iterations of Rick and Morty before. The Blade reality was made up specifically for season 5, but this other crystal's reality is a callback to The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti, made by Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland in 2006 (via IMDb). This very-NSFW short parodies the classic Back to the Future film series, and ultimately formed the basis for the eponymous dynamic duo that fans would come to love in Rick and Morty.

Seeing characters in odd, uncomfortable, or even scandalous costumes isn't anything new in the Rick and Morty world, but season 5 ups the ante by having Rick and Beth appear in outfits that might make your skin crawl. At several points in the trailer, Rick is seen wearing a studded leather cap, a spiked-and-chained leather harness, matching wrist cuffs, a metal choker, and an entire swordfish that passes through a metal hoop at the center of his torso. Beth, meanwhile, is sporting leather arm bands, a buckled choker and a belt that matches it, a harness and metal shoulder caps, a chest piece made from bones, red and gray eyeshadow, black lipstick, and, most notably, ten darts embedded in her face. The blood dripping from each dart wound complements the bloody tears Beth also has swiped beneath her eyes.

These outfits — in combination with a few other details from the Rick and Morty season 5 trailer — prove that the series will reference the late '80s horror film Hellraiser in at least one upcoming episode. The whole universe in which Rick and Beth wear these costumes appears to be a parody of the Hellraiser world, and the get-ups look like mildly toned-down versions of what the film's extra-dimensional Cenobite beings wear. The darts in Beth's face feel like a clever twist on the iron nails that the film's main antagonist, Pinhead, has all over his face. 

Additionally, in the background of one scene from the trailer are two creatures who appear to be riffs on Hellraiser's creepier Cenobites. In particular, the one with no eyes and who bears all of its teeth looks exactly like Chatterer, Hellraiser's right-hand man. The one between Rick and Beth, with half of its face splayed open, could be a very subtle reference to Angelique (Valentina Vargas) from Hellraiser: Bloodline, though it's more likely that this one is a Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon creation.

Part of the fun of Rick and Morty is all the clever satire of popular sci-fi and fantasy properties, and season 5 looks to continue this tradition by taking aim at two IPs in particular.

A common sight in the trailer is the Smith-Sanchez family geared up in a set of matching, color-coded suits. This — combined with the fact that the five are later seen descending a cavernous, metallic tunnel containing five aesthetically matching ships — feels like a clear reference to the classic '80s cartoon Voltron.

The trailer also seems to give a hat-tip to another popular kids TV series: Transformers. Early on in the Rick and Morty season 5 trailer, we see Rick's ship facing off against a humanoid robot that bears a striking resemblance to a Transformer, with car parts making up certain portions of its body. The wannabe autobot also has what appears to be a parody of the Transformers' Autobot logo on its chest. 

Unfortunately, the trailer doesn't provide too many details regarding the Smith-Sanchez Voltron-esque team or the Transformers knockoffs they seem to be fighting. From what we can glean, the Transformers clip might just be a cutaway gag, but the Voltron motif seems to be more structurally embedded into at least one upcoming episode.

The thought of his longtime crush Jessica (Kari Wahlgren) being a significant part of his life is enough to make Morty scream until he passes out. That thought will apparently become a reality in Rick and Morty season 5, as the trailer shows two separate instances in which Jessica appears as part of Smith-Sanchez family adventures. Though she has been seen in missions with the crew before, some were non-canonical and these season 5 moments hold much more weight.

About 17 seconds into the trailer, there's that aforementioned scene involving giant, Transformers-esque robots. Upon first glance, it looks like Rick, Morty, and Summer (Spencer Grammer) are in the battle arena, but it's actually Rick, Morty, and Jessica. Why would Jessica be involved in such a strange quest with her not-so-secret admirer and his alcoholic grandpa? The answer lies in the first-look clip from season 5, the same one that revealed Mr. Nimbus. In that clip, Morty calls Jessica and confesses his affection for her as the ship he and Rick are in hurtles to Earth. Much to Morty's surprise, Jessica admits she has feelings for Morty too, and invites him to watch a movie with her that night. Though it's not explained in the new trailer, that moment should happen in season 5 and mark the beginning of a relationship between Jessica and Morty.

Later, at the 1:12 mark of the trailer, a robo-dog (seen earlier in the trailer as well) portals into the Smith-Sanchez family's kitchen and punches Morty in the face, declaring that the act of violence was necessary "for the future." In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, Jessica peeks out from behind a wall, looking on as Morty's parents Jerry and Beth (Sarah Chalke) stand in shock at what just happened. It looks like Jessica is trying to process the chaos as well. Depending on when this episode happens relative to the one featuring the Transformers-type enemies, Jessica seeing a creature from another universe sock Morty straight in the face could be either the push she needs to commit to the mind-bending antics and go on even bigger escapades, or the warning sign to step away before she gets in too deep. Only time will tell how this pans out.

Of course, the most important detail in the whole trailer comes right at the end: New episodes of Rick and Morty will be portaling into this universe on Adult Swim on Sunday, June 20 at 11 PM ET.