10 TV Shows That Make You Question Your Own Reality
4. Rick & Morty
A popular favourite around these parts of the internet, Rick & Morty is a stickler for building up the viewers’ expectations and then subverting them in unexpected ways. The show itself is an unforeseen success story, which has surely surpassed its initial targets on commission by massive margins, with the animated series becoming a bona-fide cult phenomenon across the globe.
Currently in the middle of season 4 at time of writing, it’s clear that a science fiction caper series is the perfect vehicle for illustrating mind-bending concepts such as inter-dimensional travel, investigations of alien societies, theme parks built into the organs of down-on-their-luck vagrants and (perhaps most famously) the scientist lead turning himself into a pickle. Rick & Morty is a trippy, trippy show where pretty much anything is possible and its exploration of infinite dimensions with infinite versions of the characters leaves its audience with questions about their own infinite versions across dimensions.
Perhaps most relevant to this list is that the show directly tackles the subject of mind manipulation itself in the season 3 episode ‘Morty’s Mind Blowers’. In this episode, Morty discovers a secret area of the house where Rick stores the family’s memories in containers, where he can actively remove any memory from his grandson as he pleases. Albeit through the lens of comedy, it raises some dark themes and conflicts on the subject of mind control within a pretty abusive relationship, and is something that leads directly to some sleepless nights considering the fitness of the viewer’s own memory and the supposition that there could be more realistic external forces which possibly impress upon it in reality.