The 'The Rick Friend' meme stems from the popular animated series Rick and Morty, focusing on the character Rick Sanchez’s archetype: a brilliant, yet deeply flawed and nihilistic scientist. The meme usually identifies the person in a social circle who embodies these traits—high intelligence, a lack of social filters, and a generally pessimistic worldview. It gained traction on social media platforms like Reddit and Twitter as fans began categorizing their friends into character archetypes from the show. It is often used humorously to acknowledge someone's eccentricities or to self-deprecatingly admit to being the chaos agent within a friend group.