{"id":1641075,"date":"2022-09-14T15:03:30","date_gmt":"2022-09-14T19:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1641075"},"modified":"2022-09-14T15:04:45","modified_gmt":"2022-09-14T19:04:45","slug":"rick-and-morty-contemplates-religion-and-the-religious-following-of-die-hard-in-latest-episode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/rick-and-morty-contemplates-religion-and-the-religious-following-of-die-hard-in-latest-episode\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Rick And Morty\u2019 Contemplates Religion And The Religious Following Of \u2018Die Hard\u2019 In Latest Episode"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">30<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Frick-and-morty-contemplates-religion-and-the-religious-following-of-die-hard-in-latest-episode%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1641075&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>\u201cDie Hard\u201d and its progeny were popular movies that have become, for some, a kind of cultural obsession. In the world of \u201cRick and Morty,\u201d some alien species take that more seriously than others, as we see in this season\u2019s second episode, \u201cRick: A Mort Well Lived.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The episode begins with the two main characters and Summer in the \u201cBlips and Chitz arcade,\u201d a location Rick and Morty have visited before. The arcade contains a game called \u201cRoy: A Life Well Lived,\u201d in which the player becomes mentally connected to a video game world so lifelike that he really believes he is living out a man\u2019s entire (fairly ordinary) life, only to emerge at the end to learn that just a few hours have passed.<\/p>\n<p>Morty happened on this game kind of accidentally back in season two and seemed confused and disoriented by the experience, but must have changed his mind about it, because here in season six he is in the game, playing out Roy\u2019s life once again. The complication this time comes from the real world, where a group of alien terrorists take over the arcade and hold everyone hostage.<\/p>\n<p>Power is interrupted and the game reboots with Morty in it, scattering his consciousness among the game\u2019s five billion non-player characters (NPCs). Pulling Morty from the game would kill him so rather than flee the terrorists, Rick inserts himself into the game as Roy and tries to convince the five billion NPC Mortys that they need to get on spaceships and leave, which resets the game and lets Morty safely exit.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, terrorists are roaming the arcade, so Rick tells Summer to \u201cdo a Die Hard\u201d and defeat them while he saves Morty\u2019s mind. Summer, like many 17-year-olds, has never seen the 1988 film, so she just wings it.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile in the game, Roy\/Rick explains that the five billion people of that virtual planet are all, in fact, one consciousness. This sounds an awful lot like a new religion, and many of those NPCs take it as such, holding revivals and singing hymns on the subject. Rick emphatically insists that it is not a religion \u2014 and in fact that even in the real world, religion isn\u2019t real \u2014 but the people don\u2019t get it. Misunderstanding aside, they believe that they are all one begins to spread through the game world.<\/p>\n<p>The alien terrorists back in the real world are also \u201cdoing a Die Hard,\u201d but consciously. Their leader (voiced by Peter Dinklage in an homage to Alan Rickman\u2019s character in the real \u201cDie Hard\u201d) says that every civilization has a \u201cDie Hard\u201d myth. In his, it is something like a religion, complete with a holy book. Again, we have something that is not meant as a religion being taken as one by the masses.<\/p>\n<p>Rick\u2019s relationship with religion is complicated. He says often that it is all fake and seems for all the world like an outspoken atheist. But there are also instances when he references God as though he were real and known to him (<a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/07\/01\/rick-and-morty-season-5-hints-at-a-glimmer-of-change-inside-the-ever-stoic-rick-sanchez\/\">episode 2<\/a> of last season begins with Rick announcing that they are \u201cgoing to kill God\u201d). So, maybe God is real, but Rick just doesn\u2019t like him?<\/p>\n<p>But for someone who hates religion, he does a great job of creating a system of belief that explains things about higher consciousness and what happens after we die \u2014 in the game, at least. As the game progresses, a now extremely elderly Roy\/Rick has convinced 92 percent of the Mortys to join the cause, with the help of one charismatic early convert, a Morty NPC known as Marta. Some of the best jokes in the episode are about Morty not knowing things, which is why Marta\u2019s family is Jewish but knows nothing of Judaism, because their only knowledge of humanity is what Morty knows. Likewise, the Pakistani Mortys all have Italian accents, because Morty doesn\u2019t know what Pakistanis sound like.<\/p>\n<p>This planetary unity, of course, all breaks down. The eight percent who are holdouts represent the most cynical parts of Morty \u2014 they know Rick is telling the truth about them all being one, but they prefer their in-game lives to dealing with real-life Rick. Lots of people in real life escape into video games, but here some of them plan to do it to an unimaginable degree, choosing to live a life they know is fake rather than help their overbearing grandpa bring them back to reality.<\/p>\n<p>Outside, Summer defeats the dogmatic aliens by refusing to \u201cdo a Die Hard\u201d the way they expect, and Rick is able to extract Morty \u2014 or most of him \u2014 from the game. All\u2019s well that ends well?<\/p>\n<p>But not so fast \u2014 the Morty that leaves the arcade is docile and trusting, seemingly stripped of the hard-earned doubts about Rick and his methods. Rick arranged to have the game kept running, so the pieces of Morty that doubt him are still alive, somewhere. Will that fraction ever be reunited with the rest? Will Morty trust Rick implicitly now? We\u2019ll have to stay tuned to find out.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Kyle Sammin is a senior contributor to The Federalist and the co-host of the <a href=\"https:\/\/conservativeminds.fireside.fm\/\">Conservative Minds podcast<\/a> podcast. Follow him on Twitter at <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KyleSammin\">@KyleSammin<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cDie Hard\u201d and its progeny were popular movies that have become, for some, a kind of cultural obsession. In the world of \u201cRick and Morty,\u201d some alien species take that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":1641077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1641075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1641075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1641077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1641075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1641075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1641075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}