'Rick and Morty' Main Characters Ranked by Intelligence (2024)

Rick Sanchez (Justin Roiland) may be the smartest man in the universe, but the same cannot be said of his family. In fact, the funniest moments in Rick and Morty are often found in Rick's frustration at the dim-wittedness of his relatives.RELATED: Season 6 of the fan-favorite show is on the way, and fans are already thinking about everything they'd like to see when the show returns, but for now, we'll just have to revel in the five seasons currently available. Though Rick is undoubtedly the most intelligent man in the show, selecting a runner-up isn't quite as simple as it might seem.

7) Jerry Smith

Whether it be season 1 or season 5, fans of Rick And Morty just know that Jerry Smith (Chris Parnell), Rick's bumbling son-in-law, will undoubtedly mess up at one point or another. He might develop an app that threatens to destroy the world. He might become a face of public outrage after refusing to give up his penis to save a war hero. He might even agree to help assassinate his father-in-law because he blames him for ruining his marriage.

Whatever he is doing, you can guarantee he'll stumble and fall along the way (and probably receive more than his fair share of insults for doing so), but Jerry is the heart of the show, and Rick And Morty just wouldn't be the same without him.

6) Morty Smith

Morty (Justin Roiland) may accompany his grandfather on most of his adventures, but he certainly takes after his father regarding his intelligence. Morty isn't entirely to blame for his lack of common knowledge, though, given that he spends most of his time skipping school to help Rick on some faraway planet.

RELATED: 10 Best Animated Shows of All Time, According to IMDb

The lovable, yellow-shirt-wearing teen has made almost too many mistakes to count. He accidentally created a race of super sem*n. He involuntarily encouraged a snake planet to invent time travel, producing a whole host of terminator snakes that wanted to kill him. And perhaps worst of all, he f***ed with the squirrels, an utterly unforgivable mistake. Morty's dynamic in the show has changed a lot since season one, but something tells us his intelligence never will.

5) Summer Smith

Summer Smith (Spencer Grammer) is a typical teenage girl (minus the portal-wielding grandpa, of course). She's worried about her body image and reputation at school and is hungry for attention (although her family often fails to provide it). She's certainly more intelligent than her father and younger brother too. When Morty's mind blowers go awry, she's the one who steps in to restore Rick and Morty's memories, and she saves Rick's life when they visit an all-female planet.

She also, however, huffs ceramics and smokes the exhaust pipe of a spaceship, thinking it contains all the species' knowledge. Summer is a strong character, though, and she's a good match for her alcoholic grandpa, so here's hoping we get more Rick and Summer adventures in the upcoming season six.

4) Beth Smith

Beth Smith (Sarah Chalke) may dream of operating on real people, but becoming a horse surgeon is no mean feat. Rick's only daughter may be riddled with abandonment issues and suffer from a mild dose of the alcoholism that haunts her father, but she's still easily the second smartest member of the Smith family. Then again, that isn't saying a whole lot.

RELATED: The 8 Best Adult Swim Shows, Ranked

That isn't to say Beth doesn't have her moments of stupidity. Across five seasons, we've seen her abandon an old schoolmate in a world Rick created for her, struggle to give her daughter compliments, and her dysfunctional relationship with Jerry is a constant source of hilarity (and endless ire for her father). There's undoubtedly a greater intelligence hiding within Beth, though, as confirmed by the introduction of Space Beth.

3) Birdperson

Birdperson (Dan Harmon) has the distinct honor of being best friends with Rick Sanchez. As we learned in season 5, the two fought side by side regularly in their younger years, forming a strong bond and doing all they could to keep the universe fair (for a while, anyway). Birdperson is a fierce warrior capable of holding his old against Rick, highlighting his incredible intelligence.

His sense of judgment is questionable, though, as he marries Tammy and falls in love with her without ever suspecting that she may have ulterior motives. Birdperson is a fan-favorite character which explains why the episodes he features in are considered amongst the show's best.

2) Space Beth

What's cooler than Beth? Space Beth is the answer. We may not know which one is the clone (and knowing Rick, it wouldn't be a huge surprise if they were both clones), but we know which one we'd rather have on our team in a fight. Space Beth shares his father's knack for inventing and uses her incredible weapons to become the most wanted fugitive in the ongoing war against the Federation.

RELATED: Rick and Morty: The Best and Worst Rick Sanchez Moments

Not only are her inventions enough to help defeat the Federation, but they can also go toe-to-toe with Rick's inventions, highlighting her incredible intellect. She may have only appeared in a handful of episodes so far, but fans are clamoring to see more of Space Beth, allowing us to understand what she's capable of truly. She might turn out to be smarter than Rick. After all, anything can happen in the multiverse.

1) Rick Sanchez

Rick Sanchez is the cleverest man in the universe. Need we say any more? The heavy drinking, non-stop-burping grandpa invented portal technology, allowing him to travel anywhere across the multiverse, and since then, he's done just about anything he's wanted. He's saved the world on several occasions (and accidentally ruined a few too, but we don't focus on that). His inventions are out of this world. Between creating a robot that's only function is to pass him the butter and building an entire theme park inside the body of a homeless man, there appears to be literally nothing he can't do. Even his spaceship is more intelligent than 99% of the show's other characters.

Rick Sanchez is not only the most intelligent character in Rick And Morty, but he may even be the most intelligent character ever created. His work puts Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) to shame, and he likes to remind everyone of that, be that through his constant mocking of popular culture or the fact that he literally transforms himself into a pickle to avoid family therapy. To put it simply, Rick is clever. Very clever indeed.

KEEP READING: 7 Shows Like Rick and Morty to Watch for More Wild Adventures