Character

Jerry Smith

Jerry Smith in Rick and Morty (2013), played by Chris Parnell.

Jerry is Morty's father and Rick's son-in-law, a well-meaning suburban dad whose insecurities are constant and audible. He craves respect from a family that rarely gives it, overcompensating with bluster or collapsing into whining self-pity. Excluded from Rick's adventures and often mocked by his own wife, he clings to normalcy in a household where nothing about him seems to matter much.

Parnell plays Jerry's wounded ego with a nasal, defeated earnestness that makes his humiliations land as comedy rather than cruelty. The show uses him as the show's designated punching bag, but his stubborn, oblivious hopefulness keeps him human — a guy who thinks he's the hero of a story everyone else has stopped reading.

Played by

Appears in

Rick and Morty2013