Rick and Morty Episode 4: M. Night Shaym-Aliens!

Rick and Morty and Jerry are trapped inside a layered simulation run by alien scammers who want Rick’s recipe for concentrated dark matter. The episode opens with Morty at school being questioned about that formula, which makes Rick suspicious enough to pull him out and reveal that their world is fake.

Rick explains that they are on an alien ship and that the simulation was built to trick him into giving up the recipe. He and Morty try to escape by acting out a loud, outrageous plan that overloads the simulation, and they manage to reach what looks like the edge of the fake world and slip out to the alien ship.

Once they board a pod and return home, Rick’s attempt to open a safe fails, and the world glitches again, revealing that they are still inside another simulation. Rick and Morty run through the ship, realize they are dealing with multiple nested layers of fake reality, and keep forcing the aliens to chase them deeper into the scam.

Meanwhile, Jerry is also inside the simulation, but unlike Rick he remains mostly oblivious to the glitches and bizarre behavior around him. He spends much of the episode pitching a new advertising slogan for apples, even as the world around him keeps breaking down.

Rick eventually turns the tables by giving the aliens a fake version of the concentrated dark matter recipe. The scammers rush to make it, their ship explodes, and Rick, Morty, and Jerry are sent back home. In the final tag, Jerry’s apple slogan is poorly received in the real world, and he is fired immediately.