Rick and Morty Season 2 Episode 3 ends with the darkest moment yet from a show lousy with dark moments. Unity, an alien hivemind in control of the population of an entire world, broke up with Rick, in the process writing him a letter that laid bare the Rick and Morty lead’s capacity for inhuman behavior. Rick, defeated and adrift from any moral center, put in his place by an enslaving alien, ends Rick and Morty Season 2 Episode 3 by draining his flask in his garage lab then building and activating an elaborate suicide device. But, drunk on booze and alien good, Rick passes out and falls out of the beam of the powerful laser that would have burnt his head to cinder.

Rick and Morty Season 2 Episode 3 and Suicide

Rick and Morty Season 2 Episode 3 is science fiction. But if Rick can build a laser head-zapper, test it on a defrosted alien, then stick his own head inside, surely some of our real-Earth humans have managed feats nearly as elaborate. As it turns out, a number of people have pulled off suicides nearly as elaborate as Rick’s attempt at the end of Rick and Morty Season 2 Episode 3.

Chainsaw Guillotine

Suicide by chainsaw is more common than anyone other than Leatherface would like to believe. But a woman described in the Journal of Forensic Science comes closest to building her own Rick-like death trap. Combining weights, pulleys and elastic bands, her suicide machine was designed to slowly lower a chainsaw on to her neck where she lay facedown on a wooden platform. Unlike in Rick and Morty, this elaborate suicide device worked.

Playing Card Bomb

In 1930 an inmate on Death Row in San Quentin committed suicide with a pipe bomb made from a deck of cards and a bed leg. William Kogut stuffed the metal leg of his cot with playing cards, filled it up with water, plugged one end with a broom handle and set the whole contraption on top of the heater. With the open end pressed against his head Kogut waited for steam to build up enough pressure to rocket the pasteboard card fragments at the side of his head. It worked.

While his methods were a little more ad hoc than Rick’s science-enabled Rick and Morty Season 2 Episode 3 suicide attempt, Kogut may have topped Rick Sanchez for ingenuity.

Cyanide with a Twist

William Carothers invented nylon as the head organic chemist at DuPont. Like many people throughout history, Carothers killed himself with cyanide. But being a genius chemist, he didn’ just take cyanide. Instead he created a cyanide-lemon cocktail, dissolving the cyanide in the lemon’s acid to greatly enhance the effectiveness and quick action of the poison.

Nuclear Meltdown - The Most Rick and Morty Way To Go

Like the very first scene in the first season pilot episode of Rick and Morty, one man may have attempted to bring everyone else down with him.

Rick and Morty - Season 1 Episode 1 “Pilot” Opening

In 1961 someone pulled a central control rod out of the SL-1 experimental nuclear reactor, killing two of the operators instantly and the third moments later. While it was steam and impalement that killed the men, the amount of radiation released could have done the job just as easily.

After a two year investigation no solid conclusions were reached, but suicide or murder-suicide (possibly motivated by an inter-office affair) was deemed a likely cause.

The Least Rick Suicide Method

While many people have used elaborate engineering and scientific methods to kill themselves, just like Rick’s attempt in Rick and Morty Season 2 Episode 3, there have also been a number of very un-Rick suicide attempts. Perhaps the least Rick of all suicides was the prison suicide of Franco Brun, who managed to stuff a Bible down his throat to death.

We’ll see next week if Rick’s suicide attempt will have any repercussions in Rick and Morty Season 2 Episode 4.