Created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon, he is voiced by the former during the first six seasons of the series,[1] then by Ian Cardoni beginning with the seventh season, and Yōhei Tadano in Rick and Morty: The Anime, after voicing the character in the Japanese dub of the series and various promotional short films.

Rick is a misanthropic, alcoholic mad scientist inspired by Christopher Lloyd's Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown from Back to the Future and Reed Richards / Mr.

[8][9][10][11] Rick Sanchez from Earth C-137 is a mad scientist who seems to know everything in the universe and thus finds life a traumatizing and pointless experience.

The Citadel had originally formed to oppose him after he had killed a number of alternate versions of himself on his journey of vengeance, and under his guidance oversaw the binding of the multiverse's Ricks into a "Central Finite Curve" in which they are all the "Smartest Man in the Universe", manipulating the flow of realities in which his daughter lived to ensure that she met Jerry Smith in order to produce an endless number of hypothetical grandchildren, allowing them to hide from the Federation using their brainwaves.

In Birdperson's native language, the catchphrase translates to "I am in great pain, please help me", an indication of Rick's depression.

In the episode "Get Schwifty", it is revealed that Rick was once in a rock band called the Flesh Curtains, alongside Birdperson and Squanchy.

He soon becomes anguished in his new body, and manages to return to his older true form, and murders a line of other clones he produced.

The family is forced to inhabit an unusually small yet Earth-like planet, as they cannot return to Earth due to Rick's status as a wanted criminal.

Rick turns himself into the Federation to allow his family to return home, and is incarcerated on a prison planet under the charges of having committed "everything".

The premiere episode of the series' third season, "The Rickshank Rickdemption" shows a possible origin for Rick, in which he was a well-meaning scientist who loved his wife Diane and daughter Beth, but had an encounter with a member of a militant group of Ricks who had achieved inter-dimensional travel during his own initial testing of a prototype inter-dimensional portal gun, who offered him the secret to creating the device, and joining their organization.

Shortly after his refusal, and his pledge to quit science forever, a bomb was sent through a portal, killing Diane and Beth.

Rick claims that this was a fake memory he created in order to trick his interrogator into implanting a virus into the mind-reading device he was attached to, allowing him to hijack his body and escape from the Federation prison, having actually turned himself in to access the Federation's supercomputer and wipe it out financially, before taking out the Council of Ricks while saving Morty and Summer.

At the end of the episode, after indirectly convincing Beth to divorce Jerry for trying to convince the family to sell him out, Rick again insists, in a rant to Morty, that the death of his wife and daughter as depicted was a fake memory; in the fifth season, his wife and daughter from his home reality are confirmed to have been caught in an explosion, with both being killed, the fake part of the memory having been Rick immediately developing an inter-dimensional portal gun himself to find a new family, rather than what he did in actuality: spent months developing the technology before spending the next thirty years attempting to track down the Rick in question (Rick Prime).

After Beth accuses him of being a bad parent, Rick counters that he made Froopyland to keep her occupied because she was a violent child, and has no doubt Tommy's claims were true.

Back at home, pondering whether she is evil, Beth is presented with the option by Rick of having a replacement clone of her created, so that she will be free to travel the universe without abandoning her family; on rewatching his own self-erased memory of the incident in "Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri", Rick learns that Beth asked him to decide for himself whether he wanted her in his life, and his response was to use a centrifuge to randomize who was the original after creating a clone, having been unable to answer, in the present finally admitting to himself that he is "a terrible father".

The season ends with the Smith family happy to be together again, although Rick is disappointed about losing his dominant position.

The family heads to the ship, with Rick going to free the Beths while Morty and Summer shut off its superlaser before it can annihilate Earth.

Rick watches the memory nonetheless, only to learn that Beth asked him to decide for himself whether he wanted her in his life.

In the fifth season finale "Rickmurai Jack", the Citadel's new President Morty destroys the Central Finite Curve, stripping all Ricks of their title of "Smartest Man in the Universe" and freeing the multiverse of his influence.

In Head-Space, in a parody of Dune, following an alien invasion whose army give themselves up to Morty C-132 due to an ancient prophecy, who becomes the Morty'Dyb, Rick opposes the rule of Morty's galactic empire over the next 180 years as the QuasRick Haderach (designed after the Mad Scientist from Robot Chicken), leading a rebellion against him.

[28] Rick appears in the couch gag of the 2015 The Simpsons episode "Mathlete's Feat", with Roiland reprising his role.

[36] One of the show's creators and executive producers and voice actor Justin Roiland revealed Sanchez was pansexual.

[37] This was shown in "Auto Erotic Assimilation", when Rick re-connects with Unity, an ex-lover who is a collective hive mind of assimilated individuals from the planet they occupy;[38] The episode "Rickternal Friendshine of the Spotless Mort" reveals Rick had feelings for his best friend Birdperson, and confessed his feelings for him in the hopes they'd travel the multiverse together.

[9] David Sims of The Atlantic noted Rick's "bitter amorality" and called the character "a genius who comfortably thinks of himself as the universe's cleverest man and is grounded only by his empathy toward other people, which he tries to suppress as much as possible", therefore writing that Rick's selflessness at the end of the episode "The Wedding Squanchers" is "the most surprising twist possible".

Club wrote that "[Rick] slowly realizing that he loved his grandkids and his daughter (and tolerated his son-in-law) no matter how many times he swore at them helped to give the character some necessary depth", and that "behind all the catchphrases and the crazed energy ...