Dark Kat
If there is such a thing as an ultimate villain in Megakat City, then Dark Kat certainly fits the profile. Nothing is known of his real name, his past, or how he came to have purple fur. A towering, muscular figure clad in black robes, he is a very intimidating persona. Dark Kat's deep, commanding voice radiates evil and adds to his menace. To back up his physical strength, Dark Kat possesses a devious criminal mind, capable of concocting any evil scheme in an attempt to get what he wants. While his plans have been many and varied, his primary goal is to totally destroy Megakat City, presumably to rebuild it as his very own criminal empire, "Dark Kat City." He first appeared piloting a small, one-kat fighter, attempting to destroy the newly erected Enforcer Headquarters. In doing so, he would eliminate the "justice machine" that defended Megakat City, leaving it open for him to conquer. Then-Enforcer pilots Chance Furlong and Jake Clawson|Razor pursued him.
Clawson managed to hit his jet, damaging his firing system and making it impossible for him to launch any missiles. Dark Kat was inadvertently saved by the intrusion of Commander Feral, who accidentally caused Furlong and Clawson to crash into and partially destroy Enforcer Headquarters - pretty much doing Dark Kat's work for him. Feral was too preoccupied gawking at the destruction to notice Dark Kat slip away, and by the time he finally turned his attention back to his target, Dark Kat was gone.
The criminal mastermind resurfaced years later, this time breaking into the Megakat Nuclear Plant and stealing Nuclear Fuel Rods, and then escaping in his new airship, the Fear Ship. These stolen components would be used in his "Doomsday Device," a powerful nuclear bomb that Dark Kat intended to drop on Megakat City. He even got an added bonus; Commander Feral, who had snuck aboard the Fear Ship with a tracking device so that the Enforcers could follow him back to Dark Kat's headquarters. His demon-like minions, the Creeplings, managed to capture Feral, and Dark Kat held him prisoner. The Swat Kats, following Feral's signal, arrived at Dark Kat's lair, deep within an active volcano. The many booby traps of the villain's home did not dissuade the vigilantes, and they eventually got to his control center. There, they engaged Dark Kat and his creeplings in paw-to-paw combat, but Dark Kat threw T-Bone down into a pit of spikes, causing Razor to run to his partner's aide, allowing the villain to escape in his ship again.
To make matters worse, the bomb was loaded aboard the Fear Ship. The Swat Kats freed Commander Feral, and then went off after their foe. They were too late to stop him from dropping the bomb, but Razor - who had used his grappling hook to get inside of the Fear Ship's open bomb bay in midair - clung to the bomb as it fell, and tried to defuse it. Dark Kat was one step ahead of him, having designed the Doomsday Device to have nothing but red wires. However, Razor managed to get lucky and cut the right wire. The bomb fell harmlessly onto the runway of Enforcer Headquarters. T-Bone then shot down the Fear Ship in the Turbokat. However, Dark Kat was far from finished.
He survived the crash and deduced that the Turbokat was the backbone of the Swat Kats' arsenal. To deprive them of their jet, he reasoned, would decrease their threat to him. He needed a partner to accomplish this task. To this end, he recruited the technology pirate Hard Drive, who his creeplings sprung from jail after being recently captured by the Swat Kats. Hard Drive led the unsuspecting Swat Kats to an abandoned kitty litter factory, where Dark Kat surprised them and captured them with a net. The villains then put the tied-up Swat Kats on a conveyor belt that would carry them into a crushing machine. Hard Drive complained that they might escape, but Dark Kat, always the careful planner, told his cohort that the building was rigged to explode if their enemies escaped. He sent Hard Drive in the Turbokat with a voice modifier that made him sound like T-Bone to pose as the Swat Kats and start blowing up buildings, even extort money, to ruin the Swat Kats' image as heroes. But, the Swat Kats escaped the death trap regardless of all of Dark Kat's careful planning, and he was beaten once again. He and Hard Drive were turned over to the Enforcers and sent to prison. He escaped shortly afterwards, however, and was soon back on track.
He sent his Creeplings to steal the newly created biochemical compound Katalyst 100 from Megakat Biochemical Labs. His purposes for the chemical were never revealed. In any case, his plans were ruined by the arrival of the evil biochemist Dr. Viper, who also wanted the chemical. The alarm had been tripped by Viper's entrance, and the Swat Kats arrived. In the ensuing battle between the three parties, Megakat Biochemical Labs was completely destroyed. After this, Dark Kat realized that the reason they had been defeated was because they were not working together. They must join forces, he told Dr. Viper, if they wanted to kill the Swat Kats and take over Megakat City. Viper agreed, and he and Dark Kat banded together. They also recruited the Metallikats, whose parts had been stolen from an evidence locker at Enforcer Headquarters by the Creeplings, and he and Viper rebuilt and reactivated them. Because he had anticipated that the uncouth robotic gangsters would not agree to join forces, Dark Kat had taken the liberty of putting Neuroscrambler collars on their necks so he could control them.
The Invincible Alliance of Evil had but one purpose: to destroy the Swat Kats. Dark Kat was the brains of the group, and his first plan was to capture one Swat Kat, so that they could also apprehend the other when he came to save his friend. Dark Kat's plan almost worked. The Metallikats lured Razor on the Cyclotron into the Megakat Tunnel, where Dr. Viper's mushroom monster - which was clinging to the ceiling - grabbed him off the vehicle. But the trigger-happy Metallikats attempted to shoot Razor then and there. They missed and hit the mushroom monster, which dropped Razor, allowing him to escape.
Dark Kat, furious, punished his allies for their incompetence, and then quickly formulated a second plan. Mac, disguised as Mayor Manx's limo driver, abducted the Mayor and Deputy Mayor Callie Briggs. Dark Kat then went on live TV and told all of Megakat City that his hostages would be killed unless the Swat Kats surrendered to him come sunrise. This plan, like so many of his others, also came close to fruition. He successfully lured the Swat Kats to his abandoned tuna factory hideout on Megakat Island - managing to destroy the Turbokat in the process when it was flown by remote control and used as a decoy for the Swat Kats to come ashore using an amphibious tank-like vehicle. Dark Kat anticipated this ruse, and managed to capture the Swat Kats, the Mayor, and Miss Briggs as they attempted to flee inside of a special Mega-Forcefield Bubble.
Everything looked like it was going to go exactly as Dark Kat had planned it, until he made one of his few mistakes by revealing to Dr. Viper and the Metallikats his intention to betray them and be the sole ruler of the city. A fight broke out between the villains, during which Commander Feral - disguised as a fisherman - snuck in and deactivated the mega-forcefield bubble, freeing the Swat Kats. A climactic battle ensued, and when Razor had Dark Kat and his treacherous associates right where he wanted them, he reactivated the forcefield bubble, trapping all the villains. Once again, Dark Kat was one step ahead of his enemies. He revealed that the factory was wired to blow, and would do so in mere seconds.
The Swat Kats, Feral, Manx, and Briggs all managed to get out before an enormous explosion engulfed the building, obliterating it. It seemed to all that this was the end of not only Dark Kat, but also of the Metallikats and Dr. Viper. But all of these criminals somehow managed to survive and resurface, no doubt due to the quick thinking and ingenuity of Dark Kat. The criminal mastermind's fifth appearance in Megakat City occurred a short time later. Here, Dark Kat created a multi-legged vehicle he dubbed the Black Widow. The Black Widow could fly and go on the ground on its legs, but Dark Kat needed it to be bigger. Thus, with the assistance of black-clad ninja thieves called the Kommando-Kats, he stole from Megakat Super Conductors several crates of superconductive wire. As for the interference of the Swat Kats, Dark Kat already had a plan for them, too. His ninjas rigged an abandoned warehouse to explode.
When Razor fired an Octopus Missile at the Black Widow and missed, it hit the warehouse, and Dark Kat detonated the hidden bombs to blow the building up. Next, he had two con-artists he had hired pretend to have been injured in the blast as they walked by. As Dark Kat had hoped, the Enforcers not only bought the story, but the Swat Kats did as well. Razor, fearful that he would injure more innocent civilians, could not bring himself to fire on Dark Kat during their second confrontation, when the criminal mastermind stole from Katalytic Laboratories the Mega-Katalytic Konverter - another component needed for the Black Widow.
Thus, Dark Kat escaped scott-free back to hide newest hideout. There, the Kommando-Kats installed the Konverter and the superconductive wires into the Black Widow. This would turn energy into mass when the Black Widow "drank" from power stations, making it grow bigger. After hitting the electrical substation, Dark Kat proceeded to the main power grid. However, Razor had gone to visit the "injured" kats at the hospital and discovered the ruse, and was now back in the gunner's seat of the Turbokat. At the main power rid, though, the reunited Swat Kats were unable to stop Dark Kat's Black Widow from draining all the power and growing bigger. They then pursued Dark Kat to Megakat Park.
With a combination of Drill-Bit Missiles through one of the Black Widow's legs and water channeled from the lake to the leg by Mole Missiles, the spider-craft short-circuited from the inside and collapsed. All of Dark Kat's Kommando-Kats were rounded up by the Enforcers, but Dark Kat himself got away once again when he blew up the Black Widow to cover his escape. This was the last time that Dark Kat ever appeared in Megakat City, at least in the Megakat City known to the Swat Kats.
In one bizarre case, the Swat Kats found themselves hurtled into an alternate universe where evil versions of themselves were assisting Dark Kat. The alternate-universe Dark Kat was no different from the normal one; he was just as intelligent and meticulous. Using the evil Swat Kats, and an evil Deputy Mayor Briggs, he planned to steal a device called the mega-detonator from Puma-Dyne. The detonator would be placed in a special implosion bomb, which the Dark Swat Kats would drop onto and destroy Enforcer Headquarters. The good Swat Kats, however, foiled Dark Kat's plans by using the Turbokat's cement machine-gun to gum up the Evil Turbokat, preventing the already-activated bomb from being dropped. The bomb went off, destroying the Dark Swat Kats and all of Dark Kat's carefully laid plans. The Swat Kats were then returned to their own dimension, where they will surely one day encounter their craftiest foe again. And Dark Kat will always have another intricate plan forming in his diabolical brain.
