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The Fear Hole is an interesting concept that was introduced toRick And Mortyat the end of the seventh season.In Season 7, Episode 10, “Fear No Mort”, fans follow the adventures of Rick and Morty as they fall into the horrors of a Fear Hole. The fun twist of the episode is that instead of the duo entering the hole together, only Morty goes in.
This means that over the course of the episode, only Morty is actually subject to the horrors of the Fear Hole while Rick stands outside of it waiting for his turn. Fans never get to see Rick entering the Fear Hole, but that hasn’t stopped people from wondering what would have happened if he had. With there seemingly being few, if anything, things that Rick fears, what he would have experienced in the Fear Hole is a mystery to many people. Luckily, an answer to one ofRick And Morty’sbiggest new questions can be deduced.
What Is The Fear Hole?
The Fear Hole is either the strange creation of or at leastmaintained by a Fear Demoninside of what appears to be an ordinary Denny’s. The idea behind the hole is that someone brave enough jumps in and is confronted with the thing that they fear the most. Should the person who entered manage to confront their fear, they’ll be allowed to leave the hole and pin up a photo of themselves on a wall with other successful Fear Hole users. During the course of the episode, fans are routinely given fake situations of Morty making his way out of the hole, but he doesn’t officially succeed until he first comes to a realization about what his greatest fear is.
It takes Morty long enough to figure out thathe’s in the Fear Holealone, and even longer to uncover that his greatest fear is a combination of his reliance on Rick and his general fear of Rick replacing him with someone else. After Morty is able to come to grips with that, he is officially allowed to leave the Fear Hole. Upon leaving the hole, fans get a tease of Rick thinking about entering it himself, but he ultimately decides against it.
What Does Rick Sanchez Fear?
Rick is an interesting character because it is hard to gauge what he does and does not fear his various words and actions. There are at least two stated things that Rick fears on some level, regardless of how ridiculous they might be. Those two things Rick seems to fear areall those scurvy piratesand squirrels. He is confirmed to be afraid of pirates in a brief exchange during Season 3, Episode 10, “The Rickchurian Mortydate” and he is confirmed to at the very least be gravely concerned by the hidden power that squirrels hold in Season 3, Episode 8, “Morty’s Mind Blowers”. In fact, Rick’s fear of the power of squirrels is so great that it seemingly results in his and Morty’s retreat from an unknown dimension:
“We have to pack up and move to a new reality, Morty!”
Rick certainly isn’t one to fear the enemies he’s faced across the series, but the fear presented in Morty’s trip through the Fear Hole may have been accurate to some degree. Outside of these hyper-specific instances, there’s really no telling what Rick truly fears. His aloof and crude nature whichcan even extend to his alternate versionsmeans that he could even outwardly admit what he feared without it coming across as genuine, meaning his greatest fear could be something as simple as a pirate or something as massive as understanding what it means to be alive.
What Would Rick Sanchez Have Seen In The Fear Hole?
Deciding what Rick would see is quite tricky because he’s not exactly the kind of character to put his greatest fears out in the open. It would be easy to say that he would end up trapped in a world in which he is at the mercy of either squirrels or pirates, but for a lot of people, that might be too simple of an answer. It’s also just as likely that Rick would experience something similar to what was seen throughoutSeason 7, Episode 5, “Unmortricken”where he fears getting back and ultimately losing his wife Diane. The problem with that suggestion is that Rick has already been confronted by the fact that Diane’s existence is gone, and he’ll never see her again, so that might not make too much sense to fear. Even guessing Rick’s fear involving other people is hard to imagine thanks to a line he has in “Fear No Mort”:
“Put it in this way. You’re all basically NPCs.Only Morty and I are real, so your side quests don’t matter. The main quest is us.”
The unfortunate and potentially either unsatisfactory or somewhat sweet truth is that Rick would likely experience something a lot more existential or even more personal. It’s possible to make the argument that Rick would see himself losing the new family unit that he has formed and come to love (in his own special way), but even that isn’t necessarily big-picture enough of an answer. A solid guess at what Rick might experience would be the endless horrors of living an ordinary and meaningless existence without any kind of family by his side. Rick is never really worried about anyone’s safety aside from his own, and all he finds himself doing time and time again is going on wild interdimensional adventures, so if he suddenly lost the things that made him Rick, that might just be the scariest thing possible – although, he could just end up ina world without a Plumbus. Luckily, it won’t be a surprise if fans eventually learn about what Rick’s greatest fear is in the future as the show continues to explore his character to new depths.
Rick And Mortyis available to stream on Hulu.
Rick and Morty
Rick and Morty is an animated sci-fi comedy that follows the outrageous interplanetary and multidimensional adventures of Rick Sanchez and his grandson, Morty. Airing on Adult Swim, Rick and Morty has become one of the most popular animated shows on television, blending humor, action, and genuine emotion.
