If there's one wholly predictable thing about Rick and Morty, it's that everything about it beyond this one thing is wholly unpredictable. Case in point: the Adult Swim hit occasionally gives its titular characters the not-so-dangerous missions of hawking wares for various companies in oddball sponsored ads. The latest bit of Rick and Morty promotional chaos is for Old Spice, and the commercial is kind of a shocker, as it appears to kill off the fan favorite Butter Robot. Check it out below!
This commercial starts off in the exact same way as the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's ad that was released in 2015, with the megaphone-toting Rick bursting into Morty's room and shocking the squeaky-voiced teenager out of overnight slumber. All so Rick can introduce his "friends," the three different canisters of Old Spice Invisible Sprays: Bearglove, Swagger and Pure Sport. The super-smiley canisters are oh so happy to start messing with everything in Morty's room, and that's when things get interesting.
As co-creator Justin Roiland is flatly Rick-reading off the ad copy concerning the Old Spice Invisible Sprays' noteworthy qualities, Pure Sport digs through Morty's desk and finds Butter Robot, which Morty's short arms are unable to get back. Butter Robot gets passed to Bearglove, who then flips it back over its head and into Swagger's mouth, where the single-tasked bot gets chewed up as the commercial ends. (With Rick counting off the money he earned for this non-subtle cash grab.)
For those who might not remember, Butter Robot was first introduced in the Season 1 episode, "Something Ricked This Way Comes." Its fat-dispensing fate was soon realized after it asks Rick what its purpose is, and Rick tells it to pass the butter. And it's a hilariously uncomfortable moment when Butter Robot morosely realized that his entire existence is all about passing butter. (And not about being friends.) Following that appearance, it was also used in the mobile game Pocket Mortys. And in case anyone wants to challenge the notion that Butter Robot is a beloved character, it was legitimately created in real life, both as a standard butter-passing bot and as a battle-waging megabot.
But was Butter Robot actually chewed up and "killed," so to speak, in the ad above? Considering its main appearance on the show itself came during that single episode, it's not as if there are any big canonical reasons why it couldn't be killed off in a 30-second commercial. I mean, I'm not exactly sure that joyous, adult-sized canisters of Old Spice are part of Rick and Morty's natural universe, but they would not be the weirdest creatures to show up and make us question everything.
Sadly, Rick and Morty's third season ended weeks ago and we have no idea when Season 4 will ever get here, although it may have more episodes when it does. In the meantime, you can check out the trailer for Rick and Morty's porn parody while reading about why any show-related theories we come up with might very well be real. Such as the belief that Butter Robot survived this Old Spice ad and will return in the future.
And don't forget to bookmark our fall TV premiere schedule to see where all of TV's other robots and humans will show up in the near future.
