This marks a change for the show, which previously had little continuity of storylines.[1] Jenny Jaffe of Vulture describes the episode as an instance of how Rick and Morty "likes to back itself into corners with the world's dumbest ideas and execute them in the absolute smartest ways."[2] Jesse Schedeen of IGN notes that this is the show "at its most violent", containing "a level of blood and gore" to match the season 2 episode "Look Who's Purging Now".[3] Greene concurs, saying the episode "reached some new levels of grotesquery" even compared to the violence of Rick's car while protecting Summer in "The Ricks Must Be Crazy".[4] A Nerdist article connects the scene where Rick controls the movement of the cockroach by poking its brain with his tongue to a 2015 study "Central-Complex Control of Movement in the Freely Walking Cockroach", published in Current Biology, where researchers were able to stimulate neurons of a cockroach in order to control its movement.[6]