#smart mort

In summary: when I say “Smart Mort” is an “unstable fusion”, what I mean is that we have:

1. Mort

2. The alternate universe monocle-wearing Mort whose soul Mort presumably absorbed at some point.

3. When Mort drinks coffee, he gains monocle Mort’s abilities and mannerisms, so the Mort we know is, at first, still conscious through this experience, merely becoming smarter and gaining these mannerisms. Mort and the original Smart Mort have varying levels of awareness and control during this state over time, hence -

The reason it’s an “unstable” fusion is that gradually over time, the “real” Smart Mort gains more and more control over the conscious state Mort takes on when caffeine is involved, until he’s strong enough to be brought out with no coffee whatsoever. There is evidence for this.

First off, a lot of people treat Mort & Smart Mort as 100% separate individuals. This is technically true, and has plenty of evidence for it, but if you look at Smart Mort’s very first lines, it doesn’t seem to be the whole truth. He refers to himself as having gained intelligence and a “smashing accent”. This doesn’t make sense if Mort & Smart Mort are separate in this instance because the original Smart Mort would have always been smart and had his accent. But it does make sense if the Mort we know is still fully conscious when he says things like this.

“I’ve been semi-intelligent before... I’ll handle them.”

(There are a BUNCH of similar lines like this one).

Now obviously, I know the actual explanation for some of the discrepancies is that The Writers Just Didn’t Think About It That Much, and that I’m also Looking Too Much Into This. I’m fully aware, but I think the canon that we do have can be explained in a consistent manner!

The writer’s clearly started out intending for Smart Mort to just be regular Mort but, like, smart, prior to coming up with the whole soul absorption thing. Point is, in his very first appearance, Mort is just about fully conscious and in control, but this does change as time goes on. Hence, unstable fusion.

In The Wrath of Morticus Khan. this exchange takes place:

Mort confirms he was basically fully conscious and in control the entire time he was smart, and found the experience “icky”.

Plus, when Smart Mort does come back in this episode, he refers to Mort’s actions from earlier on in the episode as his own, not as a separate being’s. Thus indicating our regular Mort still has consciousness + control.

But then when he reverts back to Mort at the end of the episode:

Mort wasn’t really “aware” towards the end of it. Guess OG Smart Mort gained the upper hand.

Point is, it’s a sort of shared consciousness of sorts, where sometimes one or the other dominates, but sometimes the answer is “both”. Or to be more specific, Coffee Mort is a combined consciousness. A fusion.

By the time Exiled roles around, Smart Mort basically has control of the consciousness, lol, hence this line:

(Plus he now has the power to actively resist being summoned by coffee too!)

Therefore, regular Mort kinda has no idea what’s happened in the interim when he comes back:

And finally, there is no clearer evidence that Mort & Smart Mort are two separate entities when they meet each other within the recesses of Mort’s mind. The “unstable fusion” only really applies when coffee is involved, but summoning Smart Mort without it, which is now able to be done, finally means it really is 100% original Smart Mort.

But my point is, there’s some “unstable fusion” stuff going on in the beginning that people seem to tend to ignore lol.