Rick And Morty Season 8 Will Feature More Of Rick's Grossest Habit [Exclusive]

Despite the episodic nature of "Rick & Morty," the show's status quo has changed slightly over the years. The characters are nicer to Jerry (Chris Parnell), Morty (now voiced by Harry Belden) has gotten more confident, and Rick (now voiced by Ian Cardoni) is ever-so-slightly less of a drunken jerk. Recall that in his very first scene of the show, Rick drunkenly barges into Morty's bedroom, tripping around and spilling his beer all over the place. It's a lot harder to imagine season 7 Rick doing the same.

But for fans who miss the griminess of season 1, Cardoni has some promising news. "I will say in season 8, you're going to hear more burping, which means I've just had a lot more carbonated beverages in the booth to help me along with that," he told /Film's own Ethan Anderson in an interview. He continued, explaining:

"Any burp that you hear in my seasons are my genuine burps, and there is a [growing] library. Some of them are right captured in the middle of the line authentically. Other times, we'll just have a burp session at the end of a recording session, and then we'll just get a whole bunch of different ones. There's probably an entire MP3, minutes long, of just me burping and going, 'F*** you, Morty!' Whether they'll ever use them or not, there's a bunch of options there."

People often talk about the quality of actors' line deliveries, but nobody ever talks about the quality of their burp deliveries, and quite frankly, that's a shame. For now, we'll just have to wait and see if Cardoni's burp skills measure up to those of original Rick voice actor Justin Roiland. If Cardoni can get the burping right, he'll have fully won over any lingering skeptical viewers.

In 2017, a particularly studious "Rick & Morty" fan on the show's subreddit decided to keep count of how many times Rick burps both per episode and per season. They found that Rick burped a total of 104 times throughout season 1 but only 67 times in season 2. Tragically, this data was not updated for later seasons, but it's clear the trend was a steep decline. There are also multiple YouTube compilations out there of every time Rick burps, and those first two seasons always take up the majority of those videos' runtimes. Assuming the editor of the following compilation did their due diligence, it seems like Rick only burped three times in the entirety of season 7. That's a 97% decline from Rick's season 1 height:

This is a little disappointing, given that Rick's burps are not just funny but also a source of great fascination for at least one researcher out there. In 2019, paralinguistic researcher Brooke Kidner used Rick's burps as an example for explaining a burp's communicative value. She noted that the vast majority of Rick's belches were improvised by his voice actor and detailed her findings accordingly:

"Acoustic analysis showed no significant disruptions between belching and speech, supporting the conclusion that belches do not compete with speech. Additional acoustic analysis showed belching occurred regularly before a stressed syllable, an established pattern for infixation in English. [...] The results show that belching can be intentional and behave like paralinguistic items in human language and communication."

It seems that Rick's initial burping, much like his silly catchphrase "Wubba Lubba dub-dub," was not just some random thing he did. "Wubba Lubba dub-dub" was revealed to mean, "'I am in great pain, please help me," so perhaps Rick's burping embodies a similar message. (The fact that Rick's burping declined most steeply after he began attending therapy sure implies this.) The return of Rick's burping in season 8 might sound fun, but it could mean the return of great pain in Rick's life. Let's hope that this time around, Morty will interpret those belches as the cries for help they truly are.

"Rick & Morty" season 8 premieres May 25, 2025, on Adult Swim.