Sleep deprived for days in an effort to avoid being possessed by Bill, Ford begins to hallucinate. Are they memories, or nightmares? His confused brain cannot tell the difference anymore.
Stanley, for his part, is similarly sleep deprived and tired of this bullshit. But he’s no stranger to holding someone’s head above a toilet after a bad night. It just so happens that now it’s his paranoid asshole brother that keeps rambling some crap about a triangle in a top hate.
(He doesn’t believe in Bill — yet. He will).
Evil Morty discovers the existence of the Citadel of Ricks...
Continuation of my Evil Morty origin story (1, 2, 3, 4)
So, I adhere to the headcanon that “our” Rick DID come back to Beth at some point (probably after the battle of Bloodrich). He didn’t actually abandon her for 20 years and that’s why he has memories of holding Morty as a baby. However, “his” Beth and her family were attacked by the Galactic Federation and killed.
That’s why our Rick knows he can dimension hop and replace a copy of himself, and why he’s so thoroughly apathetic to the C-137 family, even though he does have moments of fondness. They’re not his.
His baby died years ago…