How the Animated Series ‘Rick and Morty’ Is a More Extreme Version of the 1985 Film ‘Back to the Future’

With the fourth season of Rick and Morty underway Debra Minoff and Susannah McCullough of The Take quite deftly compare the animated series with the classic 1985 film Back to the Future. They meticulously note how the stories align themselves in a number of uncanny ways, particularly in regard to generations, family and time travel.

As we see in today’s boomer, millennial and zoomer animosity, generational divides can seem so impenetrable that connecting with each other might as well require time travel. ‘Back to the Future’ made this literal when Marty had to meet his parents at his age to understand them. In the episode ‘Big Trouble in Little Sanchez’ gives us the variation on this idea when Rick’s teenage clone allows his grandkids to connect with a younger more open version of him.