Eh, I would say that Rick incompletely rejects his softer side rather than keeping it hidden. He doesn't want to care about anyone or anything; it is how he co

Eh, I would say that Rick incompletely rejects his softer side rather than keeping it hidden. He doesn't want to care about anyone or anything; it is how he copes with living in a crap-sack multiverse where he regularly sees himself or his family die, or even kills them himself. Hell, we don't even know that his S1 family was his original family; he abandoned them easily enough in the Cronenberg episode. For all we know, his Beth did die as a child like in his (false) memory in S3E1. He might have returned years later to a different universe, one abandoned by another Rick. We don't know that Morty is his original Morty; the memories in the flashback episode could have been collected from dozens or hundreds of Mortys who didn't make it. Heck, even Rick isn't the original Rick; he has body-hopped through several incarnations on-screen. So he rejects all meaning, but he's still a human with irrational attachments, so sometimes he will stop and do something for someone else. But to him, it's the same as his crippling substance abuse, just one more weakness being indulged for his momentary gratification.