The 10 Worst Things Rick Sanchez Has Ever Done, Ranked

Rick and Morty (2013) fans know that Rick Sanchez doing bad things is essentially the show's entire plot. In reality, listing the things he hasn't done to cause chaos is a lot easier. However, some things warrant a particular spotlight because no matter how much we love Rick, these 10 moments likely made most of us grimace. 

Here are the worst things Rick Sanchez has ever done on Rick and Morty, ranked from "we can forgive him" to "man, that one really hurt." Watch them for yourself on streamers like Hulu, HBO Max, and more. And while some might say one of the worst things Rick has done is show up in Morty's life in the first place, this list won't be as broad as that, even if I personally agree.

10. Destroying Beth and Jerry's Marriage

This one might be a little widespread because it can necessarily be contained to one episode. However, Rick continuously meddling in his daughter's marriage is a big red flag. Listen, we all know Jerry is… well… Jerry, but his relationship with Beth is generally well-meaning. Not to mention, the nature of their relationship is their business, not Rick's. 

However, Rick makes it his business, and things come to a head in Season 3 when he forces Beth to choose between himself and Jerry. This leads to their divorce and a pretty bad rough patch for Jerry. While things have since reconciled, it's hard to ignore Rick's involvement. Part of him seems to care about his daughter genuinely, but the other part of him surely exerts his influence for more control over the Smith household. 

9. Seed Smuggling

Rick and Morty Season 1, Episode 1, "Pilot" does a solid job of establishing the pair's unusual dynamic right off the bat—and that includes Rick treating Morty pretty poorly. Morty is a high school student (about 14 years old). However, that doesn't stop his grandfather from ripping him out of school to help him smuggle drugs from another dimension. Normal stuff, right?

It only gets worse when Rick informs Morty that he'll need to put the seeds "way up inside his butthole." That anxiety-inducing plot point ends with the seeds dissolving in Morty's system. He gets a blast of super-intelligence, which Rick uses to manipulate Beth and Jerry with, before the effect wears off, leaving Morty in a crumbled heap after a loss of brain function that lasts… several days. 

8. The Creation of Heistotron

Season 4, Episode 3 "One Crew Over the Crewcoo's Morty" offers a whole lotta commentary on the ridiculous nature of heist movies. While Morty works on a heist movie script for Netflix, Rick turns his attention to creating the Heistotron, a robot capable of performing unpredictable heists. Unfortunately, Heistotron comes with a lot of destruction when it decides to "heist" planets, resulting in the deaths of entire populations. 

The death toll Heistotron causes is staggering, but it ranks relatively low on this list because it wasn't necessarily intentional on Rick's part. Rick didn't program it to destroy planets; it just went rogue. However, let's not forget that Rick only created the robot in the first place to kill Morty's spirit and ensure his meeting with Netflix didn't work out, which is pretty unforgivable on its own.

7. Abandoning Churry

Is putting Churry's abandonment higher than the extinction of entire planets fair? Probably not, but I'm doing it anyway because this is Churry we are talking about. Churry's origins occur via a flashback in Season 7, Episode 6, "Rickfending Your Morty." Here, Morty asks Rick to make a churro come to life; hence Churry's birth. However, after Morty bonds with Churry, he asks Rick to turn the little guy back into an inanimate churro—but things aren't that simple. 

Rick made Churry immortal in order for him to come to life, so together, Rick and Morty decide to drive Churry out into a desert and leave him. Perhaps the worst part is that they swayed Churry out there by promising to reunite him with his family. While Morty might be just as guilty as Rick here, Rick created Churry knowing the consequences, and then decided to toss him away without a second thought. 

6. Dooming Innocent Scientist to an Eternal Prison

Season 3, Episode 8, "Morty's Mind Blowers" gives us a taste of all the Rick and Morty adventures we didn't see—and, apparently, Morty didn't either. It's revealed that Rick has a room hosting vials containing traumatic or embarrassing memories that he whipped from Morty's mind, and to our delight, we get to witness them. 

That's where we learn about Jodie and Chang, two NASA scientists who were unlucky enough to cross paths with our titular duo. Basically, after an alien collector imprisons them in his menagerie, Rick sends out a broadcast that brings Jodie and Chang to their rescue. However, it's all a ploy. Rick and Morty switch clothes with the scientists, steal their ship, and abandon them in the menagerie for eternity. 

5. Enslaved a Universe to Power His Car

Season 2, Episode 6, "The Ricks Must Be Crazy," is another whip-smart Rick and Morty episode that takes big swings at slavery and the poor excuses people have used to justify it throughout history. The premise revolves around the miniature universe Rick builds to power his Microverse Battery (the element that powers his ship). The population's entire existence hinges on creating power for Rick—they just don't know it.

It's a grim, almost Truman Show-esque take on existence that culminates with the reveal that the miniature universe has its own Miniverse that it, too, enslaves. And, of course, in the Miniverse, there is the enslaved Teenyverse. The fact that Rick even created an entire universe to power his ship is pretty darn awful, especially when we discover the exploitation it resulted in. 

4. Letting Morty Slaughter Himself… A Lot 

Season 4, Episode 8 "The Vat of Acid Episode" is a classic Rick and Morty episode because of its creativity, but it also involves Rick being a big a-hole. In short, Morty goads Rick into creating a "quick-save" device for him. Similar to a video game, Morty can save, try something out, then restart. As expected, this leads to all kinds of wild scenarios for Morty. 

The kicker comes in the episode's end, when Rick finally explains that in order for Morty to "restart," the device uses an alternate Morty as a replacement. This means Morty unknowingly slaughtered a copious version of himself from other universes just so he could do stupid things. It's a very apt Rick and Morty-style conclusion, but it also spotlights Rick's unnerving apathy for life.   

3. Doing a Pearl Harbor

Rick and Morty has never been afraid to push limits with its humor, which is very much the case in Season 4, Episode 7, "Promortyus." After an incident with face-hugging aliens that turns out to be a much bigger thing, the duo flees via spaceship. During the chase, Rick barely misses two big towers on the planet, claiming a 9/11 joke would be too easy before descending on an alien sea harbor, saying, "Pearl Harbor on the other hand…"

Straddling the line of meta and offensive is Rick and Morty's specialty, but Rick's willingness to decimate a sea harbor just for a Pearl Harbor joke is truly terrible. It also highlights how destructive Rick and Morty's adventures frequently are. Later in the episode, Rick even explains that this is why they never revisit the same planet twice. 

2. Creating the Cronenberg Universe 

Season 1, Episode 6, "Rick Potion No. 9," is another classic Rick and Morty episode, and it comes with massive amounts of destruction. Lovesick Morty begs Rick to help win his crush, Jessica, over, which leads to Rick creating a love potion of sorts. Consent issues aside, things get worse when the potion mutates with the flu, causing the entire population to become obsessed with Morty and mutate into grotesque creatures dubbed Cronenbergs. 

Not only does Rick wipe out an entire universe, but he also fails to find a cure and decides to abandon the planet (and the unaffected Smith family) with Morty. They take over a new universe and assume the identity of that Rick and Morty, who just died in a lab accident. While Morty is clearly traumatized, Rick acts like it's business as usual, completely unempathetic to his grandson's life-changing heartache. To call it sociopathic feels like an understatement, but that's Rick Sanchez for you. 

1. Erased Diane Permanently

While the other entries on this list are focused on C-137's Rick Sanchez doing terrible things, Rick Prime is also Rick Sanchez, and therefore, worthy of making this list. Fueled by his own hubris, Rick Prime literally blew up C-137's life when he killed Diane, Rick's wife, and Beth on that fateful day in the garage. Afterward, Rick Prime took things a step further by using the Omega-Device to erase Diane from every universe in existence, ensuring no Rick could ever reunite with her.

The incident absolutely destroyed C-137, turning him into the brilliant but nihilistic, cynical, and self-destructive loose cannon we know today. For this reason, Rick Prime's use of the Omega Device takes the top spot because he created this grief-stricken, apathetic Rick. Had he not done that, then all the terrible things previously mentioned on this list might not have happened.