Justin Roiland, the co-creator of Rick and Morty said, "I was like, 'No time travel.' The designs are reminiscent, but psychologically, I perceive them as something completely different from their origins." In each episode, Rick and Morty travel DIMENSIONALLY.
We all know that it was NOT time travel that allowed Rick to get Szechuan Sauce from McDonald's or when he got pizza for dinner in seconds. He went to a dimension where these things existed in the present!}
We decided it would be fun to track the time travel of the show through the cultural references to see where in time Rick and Morty might be in each episode -- since they are NOT time traveling! These are the side by side timelines of the shorts and the episodes with the year of release of each cultural reference.