Rick & Morty: When Did Rick Stop Burping (& Is He Still An Alcoholic?)

One of Rick Sanchez’s memorable character traits in Rick and Morty is his incessant burping, though it’s been much less of a staple in the show recently – but does that mean he’s also no longer an alcoholic? When someone would do a Rick impression, the key details were slurring his speech, stuttering a bit, and making sure to burp quite frequently.

Rick’s constant burping was there to show how much of a mess he is. He wasn’t just irresponsibly taking his grandson off on big, dangerous sci-fi adventures in Rick & Morty. Rick was also a raging alcoholic, constantly drinking and burping and barely able to string two sentences together without either losing track of his thoughts or getting interrupted by a burp. His life was very much not together, and the burping was a large part of it.

As Rick & Morty went on, Rick’s burps started to get a lot less frequent. This had a mundane, real-world explanation and possibly hints at there having been real character development for Rick. While he’s still an irresponsible mess, he’s at least showing signs of getting better.

When Did Rick Stop Burping On Rick and Morty?

The real-life reason for the change to Rick’s burping was rather mundane. None of the burps are edited in later, meaning Rick & Morty creator/voice actor Justin Roiland has to do all of the burping himself. Roiland isn’t able to burp on command (via Vice), making that particularly difficult. To keep from having to drink carbonated drinks all the time when recording the dialogue, which was causing some pretty severe stomach issues for Roiland, they cut down on just how much burping he had to do.

In-universe, Rick’s burping noticeably dropped off around the start of season 3, likely in response to the events of “The Wedding Squanchers”, the season 2 finale. Rick ended that episode being sentenced to significant time in Federation prison, giving him plenty of time to be forced to quit drinking cold turkey. He escapes in the season 3 premiere, “The Rickshank Redemption”, claiming that he got caught on purpose to take down the Federation and Jerry at the same time.

Regardless of whether it was a plan or not, Rick seems different from this point on. His slurring and burping are incredibly reduced, which would be consistent with the time spent in prison changing something about him. He still spent significant time in prison before getting out, so while the withdrawal symptoms would’ve been horrible, he had some real time to not be quite as physically addicted to alcohol.

Is Rick Still An Alcoholic?

Just because Rick is doing better doesn’t mean that he’s recovered. He still drinks and burps a fair amount, so his alcoholism is clearly not completely under control. Rick & Morty episode “Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender” centers around Rick getting blackout drunk, which Morty points out happens a lot. While Morty could be talking mostly about earlier incidents, the fact that he drinks so much he blacks out in that episode shows he’s not over his alcoholism.

That said, while he’s not over it, he does seem to have it more under control. He’s not as drunk all the time, so he’s making fewer mistakes and being more prepared for the situations he ends up in. When Rick battles the president in “The Rickchurian Mortydate”, he’s prepared for absolutely everything that can and does happen, something that would’ve been much messier if he’d been his usual alcoholic self. After being caught and imprisoned at the end of season 2, he’s doing what he can to not let his guard down like that again.

It’s not confirmed in Rick & Morty outright, but Rick seems to have gotten his alcoholism a little more under control since the second season of Rick and Morty. He still burps, slurs his words, and drinks occasionally (making people wonder what’s really in Rick’s flask), but not as much as before. Whether it’s a deliberate point in the show or just a background plot to give Justin Roiland’s stomach a break, it works as another sign that Rick is learning and growing over the course of the show.