Dan Harmon Just Teased Ideas for 'Rick and Morty' Season 5 and We Ranked Them

Rick and Morty go to a planet powered by chips and salsa? Sounds good. An entire episode where Morty buys a boat? Not so much.

by River Donaghey
May 28 2019, 5:00pm

Left image via Dan Harmon's Instagram; right image screenshot via Adult Swim/IMDB

Rick and Morty is finally coming back for a fourth season this fall, and it looks like Dan Harmon is already getting ready for season five. Last weekend, Harmon took to Instagram to give us a behind-the-scenes look from the show's writers' room, posting a series of photos of writer Rob Schrab's ideas for future episodes—and they're, uh, absolutely wild:

"The amount of season 5 ideas Rob Schrab can come up with in a day is just awe inspiring from a certain distance at which I should have stayed," Harmon writes alongside a photo of him standing over a sea of scribbled Post-It notes, before posting close-ups on a few of Schrab's choice ideas.

A planet powered by chips and salsa? Sounds great. An episode where Morty buys a boat? Not so much. Sure, Rick and Morty have to crank out a whopping 70 episodes over the next few years and, fine, the show has already proven its ability to pull off everything from fourth-dimensional testicle monsters to sad montages set to Blonde Redhead songs, but these ideas are all over the place, even by Rick and Morty standards. Some are good, some are bad—and some are just the words "anal beads."

So in honor of the return of Rick and Morty later this year, we here at VICE have dutifully catalogued all of Schrab's ideas—at least the ones we can read in the photos—and ranked them from best to worst. You're welcome in advance, Adult Swim.

30. Anal beads

This isn't even an idea, really.

29. The People's (Basketball) Court

28. Bark-nado

27. Morty buys a boat

Could be good, could also be the plot of any family-facing 1970s sitcom.

26. Jerry gets a pinecone in his butt

25. Y-Ray vision [unintelligible]

The second half of this idea is impossible to read, so maybe it's a better idea with more context.

24. Blood shed

A lot of these less fleshed-out ideas are just built around puns. But "blood shed" is the best of them, at least.

23. Invisible pigs

22. The king of smiles

Good idea if it's about a monarch who rules over your right to grin, bad idea if it has anything to do with Radiohead.

21. The Thing but with women

20. Sperm blob


19. Rick's day care

18. Planet Biopic

Did we read that one right? Is it a biopic about the life of a planet? Sure, why not.

17. Furniture zoo

16. Woman made of fish

15. Library of food

14. Trench coat made of dreams

13. Summer brings mannequin to life with [amulet/mullet]

This is another one that's tricky to read. Does Summer bring the mannequin back using an amulet, or is the newly-animated mannequin sporting a mullet? Do we have to choose? Both ideas are solid. Let's keep going.

12. Planet of no stop signs

11. Detachable fingers (or toes)

10. Dinosaur ghosts


9. Artificial person with real leg

It's like a sci-fi Ship of Theseus.

8. Jerry makes a log cabin with hair

7. Planet powered by chips and salsa

6. Voltron but with vegetables

Also brilliant.

5. Jerry gets into a Twitter feud and wins... Now, someone is trying to kill him

4. Maximum Overdrive but with grass

Isn't this basically the plot of The Happening? Whatever, we'll take it.

3. When-wolf

2. Rick discovers the 11th Commandment

Yes. Even Harmon himself said this is one he wants to write. But it's still not the best of all possible ideas that sprang forth from Schrab's brain during his Post-It session. That prize goes to...

1. Wesley Sniper

Yes. There it is. The best idea of them all. It is beautiful. It is perfect. It must be an episode, preferably starring Snipes himself. The guy already made a cameo as himself in What We Do in the Shadows, so we at least know he's got a sense of humor. This one just writes itself.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, give us a season five episode about Rick and Morty facing off against Wesley Sniper with a subplot about Jerry's various Twitter beefs. We maybe don't need to find out whatever a "sperm blob" is but, honestly, we'll watch whatever regardless. At least none of the Post-Its make any reference to a "Kanye West episode," so there's that.