Rick and Morty packs every episode with references to other media, and often its own ever-growing mythology. So it's no surprise that a big chunk of the in-jokes and Easter eggs buried across the first four seasons of the show have to do with video games. In fact, more often than not, there are multiple references in one episode.
The show loves video games, classic and modern, as much as it does the sci-fi stories it takes its cues from. Finding them all - to say nothing of just keeping up with them - takes some work. Here are ten video game nods in Rick and Morty you might have missed.
10 Poké Ball
The fourth season finale "Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri," itself a nod to Return of the Jedi, contains a pretty subtle nod to the Poké Ball game from Nintendo Switch. As Clone Beth battles her father, she tosses what looks suspiciously close to a Poké Ball which then opens and produces a huge alien monster. Rick does the same thing, and though the two creatures don't actually resemble any actual Pokémon, the implication is clear. That being said, Beth's monster does have a tail that kind of looks familiar...
9 Minecraft
The season three finale also paid some love to video games. That episode actually featured numerous references to Minecraft. "The Rickchurian Mortydate" actually spends a little bit of time inside a Minecraft VR simulator (virtual reality being another type of game the show references). The brightest element of the episode though comes from what the references actually illuminate about the character of Rick Sanchez. Rick reveals that he believes he is on the autism spectrum, a rare moment of introspection and vulnerability for the character.
8 Mortal Kombat
Another great video game Easter egg from the fourth season finale has to do with Mortal Kombat. The last episode picks up a lot of dangling plot threads, including the fate of Birdperson, now resurrected as Phoenixperson (ala Jean Grey).
As the two former friends duel, Rick reluctantly battles his friend and hits him so hard he produces a visual right out of the video game franchise. An X-ray filter similar to that of the Mortal Kombat video games flashes over the fight scene, giving Rick a moment of glory before being brutally defeated.
7 Froopyland
Froopyland is in some ways, a Jumanji-like game. In other ways, it's Hell. Froopyland is an artificially generated world created by Rick from a collapsed quantum tesseract for his daughter Beth back in the 80s. Her friend Jimmy gets stuck there for decades, mostly because he had a Nintendo game system Beth coveted.
Showing that the Sanchez apple doesn't fall that far from the tree, Beth exiles her friend there to get at his sweet, sweet hardware. But the reason Froopyland exists at all is that Rick actually created a place to hide the scary tendencies of his daughter, which, yikes.
6 Animal Crossing
Rick tests out a Minecraft VR simulator in the third season finale, but the show references other kinds of virtual reality experiences as well. When Rick and Morty go to a place called Blitz and Chips (basically Dave and Busters), Morty plays a virtual reality game called Roy: A Life Well Lived. The goal of the game is just to live life, boring and mundane as it is.
The entire bit seems a shot at real games like Animal Crossing that are pretty bland and pastoral in comparison to more high-octane shoot-'em-up type games.
5 F2P iOS games
Beth's husband Jerry spends a lot of time playing free-to-play iOS type games on his cell phones. So much so he frequently misses very important things happening around him (which in his defense is probably more than he has any right to expect).
The games Jerry plays in various episodes, like "Something Ricked This Way Comes" riff off popular F2P games like Balloons and Candy Crush. They're simple games for a simple guy just trying not to get sucked into a portal to an alien-Hell dimension.
4 Halo
The allusions to video games often have to be subtle, like with the Poké Ball, to avoid any legal complications. That being the case there are lot of weapons throughout the show that bears some resemblance to iconic ones found in popular games like Halo.
One instance of this happens in the episode "Total Rickall," where Rick has a wall of guns (as one does). Many of the guns on the wall might seem familiar to fans of the Halo franchise; two of the weapons on display strongly resemble the PNKR Rocket Launcher and the MA5 Assault Rifle.
3 Gears Of War
Another arsenal from a Xbox video game series that gets love in Rick and Morty is Gears of War. In the third season finale episode "The Rickchurian Mortydate," Rick has cause to load up on weapons again, and this time, he goes big. He busts out a device that looks a lot like the Hammer of Dawn satellite laser from Gears of War.
Rick busts this weapon out during his epic battle with the President of the United States, so clearly he means business. He actually ends up killing a bunch of people (not cool) but somehow manages to patch things up with the President later, one of the few times things go back to normal on the show.
2 Half-Life 2
In the same battle from "The Rickchurian Mortydate," Rick Sanchez also uses a Gravity Gun that's very reminiscent of Half-Life 2. The battle rages throughout the White House, destroying historical property and leaving numerous people including Secret Service agents dead. Weapons seem to be the primary method for the show to sneak in references to video games, at least recently.
1 Zelda Limited Edition Nintendo 3DSes
Rick Sanchez loves video games as much as Beth does, it seems. Actually, there's some doubt about it thanks to the false memories implanted by an alien lifeform. In one such memory that takes place in the episode "Total Rickcall," Rick crashes into the living room to the entire family how they need to get to Walmart to stock up on Zelda Limited Edition Nintendo 3DSes they can then flip for mad coin. While Rick may have a deep understanding of market dynamics, it's unlikely he'd be that interested in video games.