One meta joke from Rick and Morty season 3 might be even better than viewers initially realize. Adult Swim's animated sci-fi comedy, Rick and Morty, began airing back in 2013 and has since garnered widespread critical acclaim and popularity. The show is noted for its signature nihilism and self-aware comedy, often subverting genre expectations.
Rick and Morty season 3 continued the show's tradition of parodying certain genres and tropes with season 3, episode 4, "Vindicators 3: The Return of World-Ender." This episode is Rick and Morty's violent parody of superhero teams like the Avengers. Rick and Morty's involvement with the Vindicators in this episode begins when a crystal on the shelf in Rick's garage (which Morty refers to as the "Vindibeacon") starts ringing. Morty is eager to answer the call, but Rick says: "I refuse to answer a literal call to adventure, Morty."
For many of those well acquainted with storytelling, the phrase "call to adventure" will surely ring a bell. Indeed, the call to adventure is one of the many steps in the "hero's journey" (a.k.a "the monomyth") described in detail by writer Joseph Campbell in his book, "The Hero With A Thousand Faces." This episode of Rick and Morty is therefore explicitly referencing the story structure that underlies most of popular Western fiction, once again playing into the show's self-aware and meta-humor. However, this is only the first layer of the joke.
While the call to adventure is the part of a hero's journey where the quest is first brought to the protagonist's attention, the following step is the "refusal of the call to adventure," which is generally where the hero hesitates; caught between their duties at home and their desire to go on an adventure. Thus, the second level of irony to this Rick and Morty joke is that Rick's refusal to "answer a literal call to adventure" is itself another step in this narrative structure that Rick appears to be mocking. Therefore, in attempting to escape the tired formula of the hero's journey, Rick is unintentionally embodying it.
This very much embodies the philosophy of Rick and Morty, especially in how it depicts the meaninglessness of the characters' actions. Rick's resistance to the common story structures that a philosopher like Joseph Campbell saw in almost all of ancient literature, is ultimately futile. Rick cannot help but fall into the same familiar patterns of storytelling, and his attempts to mock those tropes only reveal how limited his perception of these things truly is.
This kind of meta joke might not come as much of a surprise to those familiar with Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon's obsession with the "story circle," a simplification of the hero's journey which the showrunner uses to write episodes of his shows (the best example of this is found in Rick and Morty's story train episode). However, this multi-layered reference to the monomyth does reveal a lot about Rick's character. The "smartest man in the universe" is not as smart as he thinks he is, and this one throwaway joke proves that his ironic detachment will not liberate him from the structures and tropes he looks down on; in fact, it leads him down the exact same path.
