An American Sanchez: Rick Goes West
I’m Pickle Rick! If you’ll recall, in Season 3 episode 3, “Pickle Rick,” Rick turns himself into a pickle while Beth, Morty, and Summer attend a family counseling session. The escapades of Pickle Rick take a turn for the dark when he brutally slaughters a rat colony and utilizes their parts to create a rat exoskeleton of sorts.
Comparisons can be made to the 1991 children animated flick An American Tail: Fievel Goes West. Roiland and Harmon clearly wanted to pay homage to the film by essentially turning Rick into a rat. While Rick and Morty tends to lean heavily on sci-fi references, it occasionally nods to movies of other genres as well.