Adult Swim

During a preview for Rick and Morty Season 3 Episode 9, Rick mentioned Reddit. Now everyone is trying to track down the source of Rick’s “R2D2 toilet” quote. Has anyone found it?

At this point, no one has found the source of the Reddit toilet quote. Some are even speculating that Dan Harmon may have made it up. But we have found some tantalizing clues.

Here’s the quote that Rick said in the preview for next week’s episode:

A dad makes a toilet that looks like R2D2 and it breaks the front page of Reddit. But I’m Charles Manson because I gave you your own world instead of an iPad.”

Here’s the trailer when he said this to Beth:

Many people think Harmon made up this Reddit toilet story. But he actually referenced the R2D2 toilet back in October 2015:

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His reference was in response to a tweet informing him that Reddit thought he was having a meltdown. The Reddit conversation about Harmon took place here, in the Community subreddit, back in 2015. The original Reddit post has since been deleted, but you can still read all the responses.

If you search for “R2D2 toilet” on Reddit, nothing comes up that has a ton of upvotes. Reddit’s search engine is notorious for having issues, so it’s possible it’s still hidden somewhere. But it’s also possible that the post, if it existed, has since been deleted.

Of course, this hasn’t stopped people on Reddit from trying to start brand new R2D2 toilet conversations. One person shared a photo of an R2D2 toilet with the subject: “Not a dad.” Here’s the photo:

And someone else shared a YouTube video of a toilet that screamed like R2D2. But this isn’t the origin of the quote, because it’s a flaw with the toilet, not a special toilet that a dad made.

So I checked out Pinterest for help. But a search for “R2D2 toilet” only brought up R2D2 toilet paper roll holders, Kleenex cases, and trash cans. Not toilets.

The closest I could find was a toilet that made a Chewbacca sound, on YouTube.

The next closest is a fun Reddit thread from three months ago about a robot that delivered toilet paper to a hotel room, and kind of reminded people of R2D2.

But the mysterious post Rick and Morty is referencing (if it does exist) was likely made in 2015 on Reddit, around the time Harmon tweeted the original reference.

Since it hasn’t been found yet, I can only come up with three possibilities: 1.) it’s there and just hasn’t been found yet; 2.) it was on Reddit but later deleted; 3.) the post was never on Reddit and the quote is just a subtle reference to Harmon’s 2015 tweet and the Reddit discussion about his “meltdown.”

Back when he made the tweet, some people responded with encouraging words, like this: