Prickcest Speculation Masterpost
I wanted to gather together all of the little screenshots, gifs and hypothesises surrounding C-137's backstory, particularly in relation to Rick Prime
Comparisons
On the left is the Season 3 Deceptive memory that our Rick used to trick the federation. On the right is the scene from the memory Morty sees when he opens Rick's downloaded brain in season 5. Both are screenshots of C-137's final line before Prime leaves. In S3, C-137 says "A different kind of Rick, I guess" and in S5, we don't know what he's saying
C-137 looks very sad in the S5 memory. Prime's face looks stunned, rather than angry. If they had a previous relationship, we can guess that maybe C-137 is cutting Prime off in this scene or 'breaking up' with him.
On the left is the S3 screenshot and the right is S5. Both show Prime holding the portal gun out to C-137
In the S3 memory, it's shown to be the apparent first time C-137 has seen inter-reality technology like this. When Prime enters at all in this memory, C-137 looks completely shocked. In S5, Rick doesn't look taken off guard or surprised at all. This implies it wasn't the first time he'd seen the technology and the conversation wasn't likely centered around the creation and usage of it. Maybe Prime was offering to take C-137 with him on his travelling of the multiverse.
Left is S3, right is S5. Both are the scene where Prime is walking away.
While not as significant as the other differences, we can see that C-137 doesn't turn to look at Prime while he's leaving in S5. He doesn't need to watch as he walks away because he's seen the portal tech before, or maybe he can't bare to watch him leave.
Lines
Rick Prime talks about not teaming up anymore when talking to hermit Jerry in S6E1. In S6E10, C-137 goes on a rant to Morty about how when you let people in they stop respecting you and "kill your family". It's implied that Prime is the one who dropped the bomb that killed C-137's family, and it's what C-137 himself assumes, so he's clearly talking about Prime. This means that he and Prime definitely knew each other before the inciting incident, otherwise what C-137 says doesn't make sense.
In S6E1, we see a hologram C-137 used to help identify Prime in his search of revenge. We see this small clip matches up with what we see in S3. We do see that Prime says "Ricks don't pass on this", however we dont hear the rest of the conversation, so we don't know if it's actually about accepting portal travel or that it was the first time these two met.
Parallels
We know that it is confirmed that C-137 was in love with Birdperson. We can see from Rick's memory of the Battle of Bloodridge, his argument with Bird Person very clearly parallels his falling out Prime, with both holding out a portal gun and then one leaving through a portal. This could imply there was a romantic or sexual connection between the two of them.
We also see a parallel between Space Beth + Domestic Beth and Rick Prime + C-137. Domestic Beth and Space Beth fall in love with each other. Domestic Beth doesn't do any grand adventures, she's a horse surgeon and has a family, like C-137 did. Space Beth had adventures and travelled the universe, like Prime did.
In Bethic Twinstinct, Space Beth says "You're the housewife, and I'm the space lady, and yet you're the one who chewed me up and spit me out?"
As I mentioned earlier, if we assume based off the body language in the season 5 memory that C-137 was most breaking things off with Prime. So Prime was also 'chewed up and spit out' despite being the epic space adventurer and not the family guy.
Beth also asks C-137 if he's "forgotten the ice cream before" (had relations with another version of himself), and he says "drill me for details when I'm drunker". Which, to me, implies he very much has.
The fact that rickcest was confirmed with this line in the same season we see C-137's "they kill your fucking family" line and Prime's "I don't team up anymore" line seems to be foreshadowing something.
Other Ideas
The "Cult" One
I first heard of this one in this video
Lonny proposes the idea that Prime was in fact going around and giving Ricks portal technology in order to recruit them into joining a group of Ricks. They points to Prime mentioning he specifically MANAGED people ("managing people is such a headache"), which implies a group of people.
They also bring up the wall of Ricks we see in the S5 flashback that C-137 uses to find more Ricks to kill. It may have been Prime's little cult following.
It doesn't explain a lot of the stuff that implies a previous relationship with C-137, so I believe that the two ideas probably go hand in hand.
It's also worth pointing out that the wall of Ricks has what appears to be a citadel symbol. The only thing is, C-137 is apparently one of the founders of the Citadel, but we see him kill a large gathering of Ricks, and we see this citadel symbol pre-citadel.
I am literally only realizing this as I'm writing this post, so I don't have a put together idea of what it may mean. I think it's possible that maybe Evil Morty was involved in that original Rick Cult, because I don't think that symbol became the Citadel's until after he was elected. That's off the top of my head, though.
The "Time Travel" One
This one isn't one with much backing, however I think it's neat. Credit for this one goes to this Tumblr post.
This person suggested that maybe the reason C-137 hates time travel so much is because Prime might've lied and said he was C-137 from the future. He hates it because it was used to manipulate him
Misc.
In S6E10, we briefly see a hologram of Prime that doesn't match with any footage we've seen of him before.
I don't have any clever comments about how this could fit into prickcest as I'm writing, but I would like to include it in case someone else has something to say about it.
My Personal Ideas
My take away from all the evidence I've presented has lead to my current idea of events:
Prime and C-137 had a healthy, romantic relationship. However, with C-137's wife and daughter, guilt started to eat away. He tried to talk to Prime about it and Prime's response was "run away with me and travel the multiverse" and C-137 just couldn't bare the thought of abandoning his family, so he broke things off with Prime. Prime was upset, "Rick's dont pass on" the opportunity to travel the infinite cosmos. "Rick's don't pass on" the opportunity to be with someone they love.
I hope you found this post to be comprehensive, and please PLEASE add on stuff in the notes!! We need to gather evidence! /lh
