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| “ | Night Beth: Why won't you rinse your dishes... Night Morty: It takes two seconds... Night Jerry: If you don't, the schmutz dries and makes the dish harder to clean. |
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| ~ The Night Family's first confrontation with Rick. |
The Night Family are the main antagonists of the Rick and Morty episode of the same name. They are the night-time egos of the Smith/Sanchez family who they used as slaves to perform their menial tasks while they were unconscious.
Night Summer becomes their leader, with her boldness, leadership and intelligence surpassing even Rick's - regardless of the latter's day or night version. Night Jerry happens to be the least antagonistic of the whole Night Family, acting as more of a hero throughout the course of the episode.
History[]
At an unknown point in time before the plot of the episode, Rick traveled to the Goobie-Joob system to obtain a Somnambulator, a device that can make someone gain a working alter-ego while someone is asleep, essentially splitting the personality of someone when they're awake and asleep. Rick took advantage of this to make his unconscious night version do the things day Rick didn't feel like doing.
Rick's daughter, Beth, comes across Night Rick doing crunches in the living room, and is completely unresponsive to Beth. The next day during breakfast, Rick explains what really happened and reveals the Somnambulator. The family is immediately interested in having a night version of themselves do chores with the same setup Rick has, but Rick initially refuses. After a single depressive sigh by his granddaughter, Summer, Rick gives in and lets the whole family use the Somnambulator.
The night versions of each character greatly help out the day versions: Rick and Morty get extra exercise to work on their cores, Summer becomes fluent in Spanish, Beth becomes talented at playing the trumpet and Jerry writes to his night self as a pen pal, causing Jerry to be laughed at.
Biography[]
As mentioned before, the Night Family is essentially the same biological people as their day counterparts with a few key differences. The Night Family, being the sleeping versions of themselves, always appear as tired and hunched over with half-closed bloodshot eyes. They also speak with a quiet, snake-like hissing voice. They are also more aggressive, underhanded and antagonistic than their day counterparts. The Night Family ends up outsmarting their day versions many times.
One of the chores of the Night Family was to do the dishes left by their day versions, but because the day family didn't properly rinse their dishes, it was that much harder for the Night Family to do it, as the food left on them would harden and make them harder to clean. Tired of this, the Night Family confronts Rick while he's sleeping, and implore him to rinse his dishes, Rick refuses, and force the dried food on the dishes into Rick's mouth, causing him to vomit. It is during this confrontation that Night Summer is revealed to be the leader.
The next day, it is also revealed that the Night Family hid the Somnambulator and cut day Rick off from all his tech. Rick exacts revenge by using Summer to go undercover, pretend to be her sleeping self, and get close enough to the Somnambulator to destroy it. This fails, as the seemingly-awake Summer was actually Night Summer the whole time, who has used Rick's tech to make robots programmed to enslave the day family. The robots turn the tables by making the day versions of the Smith family do chores for the Night Family, instead of the previously-established other way around.
During a forced rest period, the day family is rescued by Night Jerry, who has learned to love the day version of his own family through the self-pen pal exchanges. Despite Night Jerry's much-needed help, Rick slaps him out of annoyance and wakes him up. The day family escapes by driving away, trying to get out of the Somnambulator's range, but the robots (with Summer riding on one of them) relentlessly chase them. During the escape, members of the family keep getting knocked out and woken up, adding further chaos and confusion to the situation, because this creates a constant mix up conflict of the day and night versions fighting each other in the car.
The car crashes, and the fight between the two sides continues, but Night Jerry proposes a truce if the day family rinses their dishes. Rick still refuses, causing the Night Family to win. However, the Night Family discovers that their finances are in ruins, as the day family handled finances. Night Rick destroys the Somnambulator and the Night Family is destroyed once and for all.
Trivia[]
- The ominous shadow effects and glows on the Night Family is a reference to the 1980 movie, The Fog.
- The Night Family are most likely parodies of the Tethered (particularly the Tethered Wilsons) from the 2019 psychological horror movie Us with Night Summer serving as an obvious parody of the family's matriarch, Red.
Gallery[]
Episode[]
References[]
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 Villains
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Smith Family Variants Galactic Federation The Vindicators The Government Others | ||