The Sad Rick & Morty Detail That Will Have You Looking Twice At Rick Sanchez

"Rick and Morty" is a show that never feels afraid to be even smarter than 99% of its audience. As Rick Sanchez (Justin Roiland) drags his grandson, Morty (also voiced by Roiland), across the multiverse, the show uses a plethora of bizarre creatures and circumstances to explore the human experience in exceedingly complicated ways. However, despite his seemingly infinite genius, Rick has always been a tragic character throughout the show's expansive story. 

Many episodes acknowledge Rick's numerous personal issues and the extreme lengths to which he will go in order to avoid addressing them. For example, in Season 3, Episode 3 ("Pickle Rick"), Rick transforms himself into a pickle simply because he doesn't want to go to therapy. Similarly, in Season 2, Episode 7 ("Big Trouble in Little Sanchez"), he turns himself into a teenager in yet another futile attempt to escape the pain of existence. 

Outside of all the crazed scientist's ill-advised transformations, he has also shown a willingness to throw caution to the wind. In Season 2, Episode 3 ("Auto Erotic Assimilation"), Rick goes on a bender with a hive mind named Unity (Christina Hendricks), hoping to distract himself with sex and substances. When that plan fails, Rick nearly takes his own life, in one of the darkest moments of the series.

However, in addition to all of the aforementioned cherry-picked plot points, there's one notable detail that repeats itself in nearly every episode of "Rick and Morty," and it might have you looking twice at Rick Sanchez.

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Rick lives life on the edge, often with very little regard for his own well-being. Whether he's chasing after dangerous space drugs or dragging his family into yet another harrowing adventure, he doesn't often seem to care about consequences. Maybe it's because he knows there are infinite versions of himself or because he knows he's too smart to die so easily. Regardless of the exact reason, Rick's tendency to embrace danger is a constant for the character, and there's one subtle way the show repeatedly demonstrates this carelessness.

As pointed out by u/Botono on the r/RickandMorty subreddit, Rick never wears a seatbelt. As can be seen in nearly every episode of the series, Rick's spaceship is clearly equipped with seatbelts on both the driver and passenger sides. In fact, Morty and Summer both buckle up whenever they're on board, but Rick never does the same. 

Since this user pointed this out in 2015, this post has become so popular that it currently stands at more than 2,500 upvotes. In the comments section, other "Rick and Morty" fans made jokes about imagined conversations regarding Rick's lack of seat belt usage. Channeling their inner Rick, u/chortiz11 wrote, "If we crash in space, what's a seat belt going to do for you, huh, Morty? Did they teach you that in school?"

Of course, since Rick is constantly inebriated, his refusal to wear a seatbelt is hardly the most dangerous thing about his piloting. Still, in a show known for its attention to detail, this is a cleverly understated way of communicating Rick's devil-may-care attitude.

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