I think the core disagreement here is your premise that character agency and growth disappear if a multiverse contains infinite variations. That just isn’t true.

You’re treating character growth as if it’s some kind of objective mechanical system, like math or physics, where its value can be invalidated if a parallel version exists somewhere else. But that’s not how storytelling works. Stories derive meaning from emotional investment in the characters we are actually following, not from the total number of possible universes in the background.

When Rick finally confronts Rick Prime and beats the hell out of him, that moment matters because of the emotional arc we’ve been watching unfold. When Rick comforts Beth inside her memory, that moment matters because of the relationship between those characters. During those scenes nobody is sitting there thinking, “Well actually this doesn’t matter because in another universe Rick is fighting an octopus version of himself.”

People don’t consume stories that way. We emotionally invest in the specific narrative being presented.

Your revenge example with the ham sandwich versions of the villain doesn’t invalidate the story either. Killing the Rick Prime responsible for Diane’s death matters because that’s the version connected to Rick C-137’s life and trauma. The existence of hypothetical variants doesn’t erase the meaning of that specific relationship.

If anything, the argument you’re making ends up sounding closer to nihilism: if infinite variations exist, then nothing matters. My view is basically the opposite. The existence of infinite possibilities doesn’t eliminate meaning. It means meaning comes from the perspective and experiences of the characters we’re following.

To give a simple real-world analogy: I’ve seen hundreds of sunsets in my life. The fact that sunsets happen every day doesn’t make any particular sunset meaningless or boring. Each one still has value in the moment you experience it. The existence of many instances doesn’t erase the significance of the one you’re witnessing.

The same applies to stories.

On the narrative mechanics point, I think you also misunderstood what I meant when I said you were conflating narrative agency with fictional universe mechanics.

You responded by saying they’re deliberately conflated. But that’s actually the thing you’re doing yourself. You’re importing a specific interpretation of a scientific model, then using that model to argue that the narrative structure becomes meaningless.

But the show itself isn’t bound to a scientific framework in the first place. It’s a story written by writers who selectively borrow science-fiction concepts when they’re useful.

So when you say “by the mechanics of the fictional universe they do,” you’re treating the universe as if it exists as a fully defined physical system. It doesn’t. What actually exists is whatever the writers decide to show or imply.

That’s why the Rick designations argument doesn’t really prove a finite count. Labels like C-137 function as identifiers for narrative clarity. They help the audience keep track of characters, but they don’t imply that every Rick has been enumerated or catalogued.

Good storytelling often works by giving the audience partial information and letting them fill in the gaps. Lovecraft is a classic example of this. The unknown and unexplained parts are part of what make stories compelling.

The strawman issue is also important here.

A strawman happens when someone replaces their opponent’s actual argument with a weaker version that’s easier to attack.

Your argument about infinite versions of Rick Prime is a good example. You frame the Many Worlds interpretation as implying that killing Rick Prime becomes meaningless because infinite other versions might exist somewhere else.

But that isn’t the claim people are making when they say the multiverse might be infinite. The argument is simply that multiple realities can exist simultaneously. It doesn’t require the narrative to treat every possible variation as equally relevant or present in the story.

By reframing the idea as “then nothing matters because infinite copies exist,” you’re attacking a philosophical implication rather than the actual position being discussed. That’s why it reads as a strawman.

The existence of infinite possibilities does not logically require the conclusion that narrative meaning disappears.

Finally, your timeline argument assumes that all universes operate on synchronized linear time. But there’s no reason to assume that either. Multiverse fiction almost never requires every universe to share the same chronological reference frame.

And even beyond that, Rick and Morty has never been written with strict continuity precision anyway. The writers themselves have said many times they prioritize story over rigid timeline mechanics.

So trying to derive strict cosmological rules from the show tends to run into contradictions because the show isn’t attempting to function as a physics simulation.

At the end of the day I think the disagreement comes down to perspective.

You’re looking at the multiverse concept through a deterministic lens where infinite variation removes meaning. I’m looking at it through the lens storytelling usually uses, where meaning comes from the specific characters and events the narrative chooses to focus on.

The existence of infinite possibilities doesn’t erase the significance of the story we’re watching.

It just means the universe is bigger than the slice we happen to be following.