Despite being a comedy show, Rick and Morty has given audiences some of the most terrifying characters ever animated. Since the series explores the unknown mysteries of the multiverse, show creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon and their team of writers have had the freedom to come up with characters who are essentially the stuff of nightmares.
With episodes featuring evil geniuses, superpowered aliens, wild A.I., and Lovecraftian monsters, the show’s cast has found themselves facing many mind-blowing horrors on a regular basis. Now that season 6 is over, audiences can process the chaos of the multiverse with this list ranking the scariest characters in Rick and Morty.
15. King Jellybean
Morty meets “Mr. Jellybean” in the bathroom of a medieval world, and while he seems friendly at first, he shows his true colors when he tries to molest Morty. The poor boy manages to escape Jellybean’s grasp, but he is horrified to learn that Mr. Jellybean is actually the king of the village he saved. In the end, Rick gets revenge for Morty by murdering the king, but the latter still leaves behind a terrible legacy of molesting other children.
Though he isn’t some superpowerful alien monster, what makes King Jellybean so horrifying is how real he is. He reminds audiences of real-life celebrities and politicians who get away with such despicable crimes because of their elite status. The fact that a couple of villagers learn of King Jellybean’s crimes but decide to hide the truth to preserve his ideal image shows how these criminals’ power can last even after death and how the world allows their crimes to go unpunished.
14. Beth’s Mytholog
This Xenomorph-inspired creature is Jerry’s perception of Beth made manifest, and that alone will make anyone second-guess being married. Though Beth’s Mytholog was only created to help Beth and Jerry with their couples’ therapy retreat, it displays a frightening amount of intelligence in using Jerry’s squishy Mytholog to escape captivity and rampage through the counseling institute.
The beast then used the Mytholog generator to create an army of Jerrys to help her take over the universe, well aware of how their subservience can be weaponized. Many people have had worries over difficult and even toxic marriages, but Beth’s Mytholog takes that fear and turns it into a world-ending nightmare to show how destructive negative perceptions of people can be.
13. The Night Family
In a horror-movie spin on Severance, Rick purchases an alien device that gives himself and his family the ability to sleepwalk, allowing their “Night Person” to do the things they don’t want to do themselves. Unsurprisingly, the Night Family gets tired of doing chores for their “Daymonoids” and revolts against them. But in a shocking twist, Night Summer is the one leading the family against itself, and the way she outsmarts everyone, including Rick, and takes over the Smith household makes her the most fearsome Night Person of them all.
As long as Rick’s device is active, the Night Family can take control of the Smiths any time they fall asleep or get knocked unconscious, making it very easy for them to gain the upper hand. What’s horrifying about the Night People is how they can plot against their waking counterparts without them knowing, encapsulating the old saying, “You are your own worst enemy.”
12. Memory Parasites
These alien creatures can telepathically alter one’s memories, allowing them to masquerade as someone a person knows and slowly take over their planet. These parasites take such hilariously ridiculous forms when they invade the Smith household.
Despite this, they ingrain themselves so deeply into the family’s memories that everyone, including Rick, starts questioning if they are all real. This only shows how easily one can begin to doubt their reality, as the Smiths quickly turn on each other, despite Rick saying how many of them are real.
11. Heistotron
At first, Rick created this robot to help him out-heist Miles Knightly at HeistCon. However, Heistotron pulls a classic double-cross, brainwashes everyone at the convention, and goes on a rampage across the galaxy. While whipping out every heist trope in the book, this rogue robot builds massive machines to steal and destroy countless planets all for the sake of completing the perfect heist.
Heistotron even manages to steal Earth under Rick’s nose by trapping it beneath a recorded sky. It’s a hilarious but frightening case of an A.I. going very wrong, very fast.
10. Supernova
The Vindicators are basically Rick and Morty’s version of the Avengers, but they act less like heroes and more like the Seven from The Boys, and Supernova is undoubtedly the worst of them. She blew up an entire planet while having a miscarriage, slaughtered an entire nightclub while she was blackout drunk, including three of her teammates, and framed all of her destruction on Doom-Nomitron to cover her tracks. She even killed her lover, Million Ants, in cold blood so she could kill Rick and Morty.
Supernova has shown that she cares more about protecting her heroic image than protecting the galaxy. Her reckless use of her powers and her apathy toward the people she killed makes her a bona fide supervillain, and Rick would surely have a daunting challenge to face if he ran into her again.
9. The Talking Cat
For some unknown reason, Jerry finds a talking cat in his room, and the latter encourages him not to question it and have fun with him in Florida. At the end of the day, Rick finally helps Jerry get some answers from the cat by giving him a mind scan. But after looking into the cat’s memories, Rick became so horrified that he almost shot himself in the head to spare himself from the agony.
Though the cat is ashamed of all the bad things in its past, the idea that he is responsible for such unfathomable horrors that nearly broke Rick Sanchez makes him one of the scariest mysteries in the entire show. It’s unlikely that this cat will return in a future episode, but it’s probably for the best that no one learns exactly what he did.
8. Fart
Morty finds this gaseous entity as a prisoner of the Galactic Federation and saves it from assassination. Fart seems benevolent at first, having become friends with Morty, but it begins to show its true colors once it brainwashes a Gear Person to kill himself and take countless other civilians with him. In the end, Fart reveals that it and its kind desire to eliminate all carbon-based life in the universe, forcing Morty to murder his friend.
The fact that Fart can drive a regular person to murder and suicide with a total disregard for innocent lives shows how terrible things would’ve been if Morty hadn’t stopped more of its kind from invading his universe. Also, who’s to say that Fart wouldn’t have eradicated his friend, Morty, as well? Though Fart believed all carbon-based life was a scourge to the universe and that eradicating it was for the greater good, this telepathic alien is still a horrifying cosmic threat that could have very well caused the end of the entire universe.
7. The Cromulons
The Cromulons make themselves known to Earth when one of them appears in orbit, plunging the planet into chaos as it demands that humanity show him what they got. It’s later revealed that these giant floating heads abduct planets from across the universe, forcing each world’s inhabitants to take part in a televised singing contest under the threat of global annihilation.
Though the Cromulons’ goal was to find the next hit song, Principal Vagina builds his own religion, worshipping them with many other followers who misinterpret the heads’ actions. Of course, their forms of worship include human sacrifice. While the Cromulons themselves are frighteningly powerful, it’s how their godlike actions twist the people of Earth and inspire them to commit acts of murder that makes them truly terrifying.
6. Unity
This hivemind entity can take control of any living thing by vomiting into their mouths, which allowed it to assimilate an entire alien planet in its pursuit of galactic domination. Amazingly, Rick used to date Unity, and when they reunite in season 2, they get into a disturbingly wide-scale fling, with Unity forcing countless aliens to have intercourse with Rick.
The idea that Unity can immediately steal someone’s free will is scary enough, but it is revealed that Unity prevented the citizens of its planet from carrying out immortal and depraved acts, including a full-out race war. The implication that these people were all better off under Unity’s control shows just how tempting this hivemind really is.
5. Rick’s Ship
This vehicle is basically the spaceship equivalent of Christine, the demonically possessed vintage car in the 1983 John Carpenter film of the same name. In season 2, Rick shows off his ship’s A.I. by having it “keep Summer safe” while he’s away. Since the ship is tasked with protecting Summer, its methods are drastic, to say the least. The ship diced an aggressive man with a laser, rendered another man paralyzed from the waist down, and intimidated a police officer by making a clone of his dead son, only to have it melt right in front of him.
What’s even scarier about Rick’s ship is that it has displayed free will by blackmailing Morty and Summer to let her do what she wants, which includes hunting a Galactus-esque creature and massacring countless robots at an alien ski resort. Through all its callous and manipulative actions, Rick’s ship has proven itself to be just as, if not more, dangerous as its creator.
4. Rick Sanchez
Almost every version of Rick is a threat to existence. Combined with his sheer disregard for anyone else, Rick’s extraordinary intelligence and a seemingly infinite supply of technology have made him one of the most formidable forces in any universe. And he only gets more dangerous when he’s drunk.
Rick can kill billions of people and not even care because almost nothing matters to him in such a vast multiverse. For instance, he accidentally mutated nearly all of humanity into ravenous monsters, but instead of finding a cure and fixing everything, he moves with Morty to a new reality and leaves the latter’s parents and sister behind on a post-apocalyptic Earth. And speaking of which…
3. The Cronenbergs
After giving Morty a contagious love potion that ends up making the whole world fall in love with him, Rick concocts some half-baked cures that turn just about everyone on Earth into grotesque monsters straight out of a David Cronenberg film. While they had already been turned into love-hunger “Mantis-people” beforehand, their current forms have left them all but devoid of self-awareness.
There is almost no trace of humanity left in these mutant creatures, as they all succumb to their primal instincts and devour anything that hasn’t been Cronenberged. And so, civilization quickly falls as the Cronenberg plague ravages the planet.
2. Evil Morty
Evil Morty’s presence has loomed over the show ever since his debut, as he secretly executed the murder of multiple Ricks, kidnapped and tortured countless Mortys, and became elected president of the Citadel of Ricks. For years, this Morty has been the subject of numerous fan theories, and even after five full seasons, almost nothing is revealed about him, making him all the more chilling.
However, Evil Morty is not without sympathy, as he only broke through the Central Finite Curve so he can finally be in a universe free of Rick’s oppressive influence. But that doesn’t excuse all the abhorrent crimes he’s committed across the multiverse, and the way he outsmarts Rick and succeeds in his goal has made him a terrifyingly powerful villain. Also, the theme song that plays at the end of each of his appearances is enough to send shivers down any viewer’s spine, as no matter what episode he’s in, Evil Morty always seems to win the day.
1. Mr. Frundles
When Rick Sanchez is afraid of something, it’s definitely bad. At the end of the season 6 premiere, “season 2 Jerry” finds this adorable, yellow Boogen that Rick kept in the house. Though it seems harmless at first, when Jerry lets Mr. Frundles out of his cage, things get ugly fast.
With a single bite, Mr. Frundles turns any living and nonliving thing into duplicates of himself, who continue to infect everything in sight. Mr. Frundles infects everything and everyone on Earth, turning the planet itself into one giant version of himself, which forces the Smiths to move to a new reality. Rick and Morty took John Carpenter’s The Thing to a whole new level with this cute little alien, as it unleashed a cosmic horror that took over the entire world in mere seconds. And he did it all with a smile on his many faces.
