LogFAQs > #942141628

This was originally written as some examples of the fact that Rick constantly loses to female characters, but I think there's actually even more relevant information in here about how inconsistent his powers are overall. I'm too lazy to rewrite the parts that are specifically about losing fights to female characters, but just read this like it's a list of all the times his powers have done absolutely nothing to protect him in the most mundane of situations... and you start to see a pretty clear pattern that I think is best summarized by my last bullet point (3x8). I didn't write anything about season 4.

1x2 - Lawnmower Dog: He does manage to grab Miss Pancake and hold her hostage. This is probably his best showing against a female character and that speaks volumes.

1x7 - Raising Gazorpazorp: Rick is totally helpless against the all female society of warriors. You can argue that this is one of the many cases where he lost his portal gun but also consider the following... his portal gun was broken by someone throwing a rock at it. And Rick for some reason didn't use any of his innate cybernetic implants of other enhancements to get himself out of this situation, to prevent himself from being captured by the female gazorpians, or anything. Great example of Rick's inconsistent power set.

2x4 - One of my favorite episodes, Total Rickall: Not a female combatant but it's worth noting that in this episode he gets his ass beat by a symbiote, and easily captured. Guess his nano-defense mesh didn't feel like activating in this scene either.

2x9 - Look Whose Purging Now: I said this before already but Rick almost gets killed by Arthtricia in this episode. Rick, who has a gun, a portal gun, and supposedly an endless supply of high tech gear on him at all times. Arhricia is an unarmed teenage girl. She steals his gun, shoots him in the liver, steals his portal gun and his ship. This is an example of how easily Rick can be defeated when he lets his guard down.

2x10 - The Wedding Squanchers: Tammy defeats Rick very quickly in a physical battle and forces him to surrender his portal gun. Once again, his cyborg enhancements did not seem to help him out.

3x4 - Vindicators 3: Once again at the end of the episode Rick is easily disabled and defeated by a single female combatant. Apparently he has no sci fi gadget which prevents him from being lifted up and choked, and no kind of weapon that he could have deployed to save himself while in this position. This is also a good opportunity for me to bring up the fact that Rick constantly lies about what his tech is capable of doing. We see in one episode where he claims he has a beam that turns people into snakes, but it's later revealed that he was just disintegrating them and releasing snakes from a holster in his leg. For some reason a lot of fans still take what Rick says at face value even though we're explicitly told that he lies about his own abilities. Now keep in mind that when the phantom train conductor grabs Rick, he claims that he had an automatic defense system protecting his body... but the tech didn't activating until after Rick explained this? It didn't stop the guy from grabbing him? It seems like maybe he needed to engage the device manually, hence the delay, and the fact that it's never shown to automatically protect him in any scene... not even this scene.

3x6 - Rest and Ricklaxation: When Rick is trying to get Morty to go back into the containment tank, the woman who Morty picked up runs over and easily overpowers Rick, throwing both Rick and Morty out of the containment tank. I guess his nano defense mesh did not feel like activating in this case.

3x8 - Morty's Mind Blowers: We're shown countless gags of Rick messing up in small ways, doing stuff as dumb as skiing directly into a tree. No automatic shields to protect him, nothing. He just knocks himself out. It seems that Rick is intentionally curating the narrative to make himself seem omnipotent, but this episode gives us a glimpse of the fact that Rick messes up fairly often. As the audience, we're usually only shown the outcomes where Rick looks infallible, and even that facade has been chipped away over time.


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all the rest weren't so unfortunate
https://imgur.com/yv2eC4n