It seems that in every season they gave us more hints about who Richard is (btw, I found another Rick in S3)
Richard Brenner, head of the Narcotic Enforcement Division from 1954-71
Rick Shaeffer, Deparment of Energy
Richard Fryer. Maybe it was Richard who "fried" Terry's brain, or he is connected to the dream circle/cycle that never ends/loop.
He likes to hide...
Ricky the clerk, who works at 7-Eleven. He's the one who asks Hopper if he is a bounty hunter, then he sees him steal "Todfather" car, and is threatened by Terminator (also, Snow balls?)
Twelve Ricks, like the twelve kids, and Twelve building a red tower in the lab in S4.
Reefer Rick, a drug dealer who's more like a legend, and who knows if he has a family...
Speaking of family, his last name, Lipton, seems to connect him to Brenner (so, Richard Brenner is real?)
A sailor... or maybe a captain
And in S5 we have Commander Rick
Also, a nickname for Richard is Dick
Dick jokes and Dick plans in S5, which didn't work.
Then the new mention I noticed, which is very interesting.
Cross-legged (cross, X, the lab) opponent Ricky Shuster, after a wild fakeout... hm
Shuster is a German last name that means shoemaker.
There are many interesting mentions of shoes throughout the show.
The man with one red shoe. Plot: a corrupt CIA official sets up an innocent man (Richard Drew) wearing mismatched shoes as a fake spy during a power struggle, leading to chaotic surveillance and romance.
One skate
One red skate shoe
At Reefer Rick's house
El making the diorama of Hopper's house out of a Rebook shoe box.
Guns/weapons that don't exist yet. They're still shoes
More references:
Both Nancy and Holly lose a shoe in S5, and we see a close up of them. Before Will's funeral, Karen tells Nancy that she can wear her heals, the ones she borrowed for Cathy's birthday. In S1 and S2 Nancy wears a ballet shoes necklace, and in Barb's house there's a baby shoes picture frame. In S2 Owens tells Joyce that he would be worried too (about Peter?) if he was in her shoes. When they ask if the thing that killed Chrissy is from the UD, Nancy says "If the shoe fits". At the pool, when we see for the first time lifeguard Billy, the song Moving in stereo is playing ("Life's the same, except for my shoes"). El explodes the orange juice over Stacey's face, after Stacey and her friends stared at her in disgust seeing El and Max goofing around wearing oversized heels. When Robin and Nancy escape from the cops at the Pennhurst asylum, we hear a patient saying "Cinderella, you dropped your shoe!" And Erica tells Lucas that it's hard for his shoes to fall off when he's riding the bench.
