Rick Opening Wall

Origin

Contrary to a common assumption, the scene is not from an episode of Rick and Morty. It comes from a Pringles advertisement — a Super Bowl spot titled “Rick and Morty x Pringles,” uploaded to YouTube by Adult Swim on January 28, 2020.

In it, Rick tears the wallpaper off a wall to reveal the truth hidden behind it, which turns out to be the Pringles logo. The commercial took over 1.2 million views and 70,000 likes within two days.

The internet identified the template almost immediately. A comment on the video the day it went up predicted that the shot of Rick gesturing at the exposed wall would become a meme, and took 380+ upvotes for the observation.

What it means / how it’s used

The format is an exploitable about hidden truths. Rick tears away the surface to reveal what is really underneath — and the reveal is labelled with whatever the poster believes is the actual explanation.

Common constructions:

• A visible phenomenon and the unglamorous cause behind it.
• A conspiratorial framing played for laughs.
• A community’s stated purpose versus its actual one.
• Self-implicating versions where the hidden truth is about the poster.

Rick is the right character for it. His entire function in the show is contemptuous explanation — he is constantly telling other people how things actually work — so an image of him pulling back a surface to reveal the truth is entirely in character, regardless of the fact that in the source he is selling crisps.

How it spread

The turnaround was under 48 hours. On January 29, 2020 — the day after the commercial went up — a Redditor posted the format to a Rick and Morty community, taking over 1,000 likes at 98% upvoted in a day. Edits followed immediately, and by January 29–30 a version on r/dankmemes had taken over 26,200 points at 92% upvoted within a day.

That speed is unusual even by meme standards, and it happened because the audience was primed: the commercial aired during a period of heavy anticipation for the show, and a large, meme-literate fanbase watched it simultaneously looking for exactly this kind of frame.

Notable examples & variations

• Straight “the real reason behind X” reveals.
• Multi-layer versions where each torn strip reveals another cause.
• Versions where the wall reveals something completely mundane.
• Edits substituting other characters doing the tearing.
• The original Pringles version, still shared as a curiosity.

Legacy / cultural impact

The format is a notable case of advertising deliberately engineering a meme — or at least producing one so cleanly that the intent is hard to dismiss. The commercial’s composition, with a wide flat surface and a gesturing character, is close to ideal template geometry.

It also sits in a small category of memes whose source is routinely misremembered. Most people using it assume it comes from the show, and the crisps have been almost entirely forgotten — which is either a marketing failure or a marketing success, depending on how you count.