You Have To Have A Very High IQ To Understand This Rick And Morty Portal Gun Replica

It’s barely September, but that still means you’ve got to start working on your Halloween costume. If last year is any indication, the most popular costume this year will be, by far, Rick from Rick and Morty. There’s a lot to be said about this, but let me simplify it: if you dress up as Rick from Rick and Morty, you are not a Rick. You’re a Morty.

Nevertheless, Halloween is an awesome opportunity for some cosplay and prop-making action, and [Daren] has this year all wrapped up. He’s building the portal gun from Rick and Morty, with a projector. Yes, it will display portals where ever you point it. It’s actually building something instead of buying a blue wig and a lab coat. Rick would be proud.

The key to this portal build replica is the same tech as found in those Christmas projectors that illuminate the sides of houses with tidings of good cheer. These are just tiny little gobos in a rotating frame, illuminated with high-brightness LEDs. That’s easy enough to fit inside a 3D printed portal gun case, and when you add some 18650 LiPOs, a speaker for sound, and a PC fan for cooling, you have the makings of a real, projecting portal gun.

While it’s just a work in progress now, it is a fantastic achievement so far. Halloween is coming up, and this is a great build for all those Mortys out there.

45 thoughts on “You Have To Have A Very High IQ To Understand This Rick And Morty Portal Gun Replica

    1. Please consider this an open invitation to request to join this project and help wrap it up.
      All the 3D modeling is done, tweaked, and ready to print.
      I just don’t have enough time right now to do the rest.
      This still needs the LED PCB designed (which already has ducted active cooling so the current control can just be simple resistors) a couple mosfets, and some simple-moderate level Arduino code to tie it all together.

      1. The joke is not only funny, it’s true too. Watching Rick and Morty is like witnessing a high speed passenger train wreck. You know nothing good is going to come from it, but there is no chance in multi-hell you aren’t going to watch, even if it is excruciating. :-) It’s mind expanding…stretches the old grey matter to its limits, making it ready for some real action. :-) (Seriously, I have often experienced many creativity surges right after watching the show, usually along unrelated paths. It seems to work for me.)

        1. Your train wreck analogy is spot on.

          I have experienced exactly the same thing. Nothing directly transferred and I already know pretty much every word, but just the ‘stream of thought’ style of the show and the distraction of watching a random episode has often lead to some minor creative victory. Listening to Rush works too, but that may be more personal. :)

          1. Yes, I can see Rush having the same effect on the mind that Rick and Morty do in creating a creativity surge. The equation may include a kind of catharsis or just give some aspect of the mind a break since the viewer/listener has no hope of controlling what is experienced next, yet it’s going to be a wild ride. Some movies, books, music, and art can have that effect, perhaps shock-resetting the brain to give it a fresh re-run. I’m not sure exactly what is going on, but figuring out this equation would be worth a lot since clearly things like that can do good things to the mind.

    1. Measuring a mind’s power by IQ is like measuring a man’s ability to satisfy a woman in inches. Yes, there’s a positive correlation but the sum of all other factors involved dwarfs that effect overwhelmingly. Besides, last time I checked, BRAINS are three-dimensional. It’s INCONCEIVABLE that the measure of MINDS would have less dimensions than that. ….one dimension only — Bahh!! I bet its at least a handful: memory, creativity, consistency, eloquence, coordination/dexterity, empathy, and courage…………????

          1. Now that is funny… You put just about the same amount of effort into where your name is ultimately linked to as I did. Well, I put a hair more, but that took a concerted effort and 2 years. Think about it… create it. If it’s not doing it for you, get distracted by some other interest, move on.

          2. I wish I could follow what you mean here, especially about the 2 year thing, but I do know that distractability is both a blessing and a curse, even more so when one is VERY distractable.

            I’m not easily distracted, I’m just really good at … LOOK!!! A CHICKEN!!! ????

          3. Your name, and therefore the site you put when you made these comments, is linked to a freshly created wordpress site which still has ‘Site Title’ at the top.
            You took the time, once upon a time, to create it. You took the time to link it when you first commented. But since then, you obviously have moved on. :)

    2. It’s a test of certain mental abilities, more or less raw processing power, bearing in mind it’s only ink on paper. It measures what it measures. It doesn’t mean you’re a better human being, or destined to be successful, or better at any particular thing. But generally high-IQ people are smarter than lower-IQ people, although again “generally” is the important word. And “smart” meaning purely mental processing ability, the ability to take concepts and things, convert them into mental abstracts, juggle them about a bit, then translate that back into an answer.

      It’s not the same as savoir faire, doesn’t mean you won’t fall for “dumb” tricks. It’s not a measure of social skills, and the many other things that help one in life. But it’s a real thing and it’s measurable.

      Nah I’m not in MENSA. I got a high enough score (155) but I couldn’t be bothered, because I don’t have any drive to get off my arse (an important quality!). If I did join it’d be because apparently their meetings are hotbeds of desperate nerd sex, when people who spend the rest of the year among people that don’t appreciate their genius, finally meet their own kind.

      Oh and of course in relation to Rick and Morty, it’s a meme. And not a true one. It’s also a boring and stupid TV show. I much more love The Simpsons or South Park, and Futurama was the best.

      1. You make me want to join Mensa. :)

        As for the show, I found it original and entertaining, and then a good level of distraction for returning to, minus the occasionally excessively dramatic volume level shifts. You don’t actually ‘watch’ it. It’s more like ‘grounding and gives your mind something to work on in the background, which for some reason allows you to work on your foreground task at hand more effectively. STNG episodes were particularly good for this, but oh man, do I welcome something new.

        1. Problem is Mensa is a bit of a sausage fest. But I’m sure some sort of rota system can be drawn up to compensate for that, they’re smart people after all!

          Yeah there are TV shows you “watch” in the background, but not good ones. Decent ones you’re glued to, like going to the cinema. You might even rewind bits to make sure you caught everything. Garbage like Family Guy you might have on in the background as a bit of mental / visual noise.

          Actually my TV reception is terrible, and I’ve found that a Sony USB-TV adaptor (meant for the Playstation 2, but is a chipset PC ones use, so it just needs a driver tweak) has a better reception than my TV does. So I watch TV through that. And over time I’ve found it’s a pain to set up, which means I do it less and less. For the last year or so I’ve basically watched no TV at all. Sometimes if something good is on I make the effort, but most weeks I watch none at all.

          This is after a lifetime, since brought up as a kid, with the TV always on, first thing you do in the morning, last at night. But I actually don’t miss it! People who make a point of telling you they have no TV are usually arseholes. Particularly in the 1980s, when there were only 4 channels and the programmes were much better. But I’m not being pretensious (too logical for that!). I really don’t miss it, and I’m surprised by that!

          Of course I’m stuck on the Internet half the day. And I download TV shows that I want to see. So I downloaded some Rick and Morty, and yeah, it’s crap.

          Actually Futurama famously used to stick real scientific and mathematical stuff in there, some of their staff were former researchers and scientists. There was even the mind-swap theory in one episode that inspired a mathematical paper. The idea being that with two people who’ve swapped minds, how many others do you need to swap them back again, bearing in mind that no couple of bodies who’ve previously swapped can swap again?

          I can’t remember! But it was a genuine puzzle and produced a respected answer by real maths-heads.

          That’s different from people who think they learned quantum physics from Star Trek Voyager. Which was a snooze-fest of a load of unlikeable spiky humanoids trapped in outer space for much longer than the average time required for such people to go nuts and kill each other.

          But the Mensa sex stuff, apparently it’s a true thing. Stands to reason, too, that they’d be more experimental! And if you’re bi, with a penchant for nerds, then I suppose the sex ratio isn’t too bad!

          1. That was meant to be humorous. I honestly couldn’t care less.
            Yes, I’m aware of the actual scientific facts laced within Futurama, not through recognizing them myself as I never paid much attention, but through other posts such as this. I think there was an article on it in the past month which could be regurgitated if I cared.
            I’m also aware these are all works of fiction and I don’t watch TV. I can count the name of every show I’ve chosen to consume in the last 10 years on one hand. Beyond that, the experience was purely to spend time with my loved ones, doing what they are doing.
            I allegedly ironically consume this show because it touches the correct nerve, sometimes inspires, and obviously inspireD me to create something. I’ve blown enough time here. Back to doing that now.

  1. You have definately peaked my curiosity, but I have NO idea what link you are talking about. Could you please indulge me and drop the link here? So far in this blog page I have left no links. ???? If I have abandoned something I should not have, I’d like to know about it.

      1. I understand now. You’re right, that link is essentially abandoned. I should change something to make that more relevant. What is there right now says nothing about me. I’m missing an opportunity. Thanx. ???? ( I hope the color 3d printing project went/is-going well for you. )

        1. There is about 6000lbs of high precision dead weight currently sitting in my shop, waiting on me to build some jigs and adapt my models/program it for that purpose. However, my open source Hackaday project making the semifinals pushed that down the list by one.
          I’m giving the P1 until October to either succeed or fail, and then the M2 will be back at the top.

    1. Exactly. Anyways, most of the jokes from Rick and Morty are pop culture jokes, nothing that you need a high iq to understand. Whenever people say “you must have a high iq to understand Rick and Morty. All of these peasants around don’t understand most of the jokes.” I just laugh it off and say “it’s just pop culture references, it’s just some people don’t know much about pop culture.”

        1. He gets it.
          Now this is a pop culture reference, to a pop culture reference, to a reference, to people who don’t seem to get that the IQ line itself was also another pop culture reference (and a joke) to begin with, when the reference, to the the reference, to the reference, to the origin of all of it, was clearly laid out for them within this same reference. What is not to understand here.
          You people must all be iii BuuuUUUUUUUUUUUUUUp diots..

          Ok. I’m bored. Everybody out.

  2. Umm…. Your IQ is your ability to learn and retain information. It has nothing to do with how smart a person is at any given time its about there ability to learn things. A person can have a genius IQ but no education. So uh…. Theres that…

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