Rat King (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)
The Rat King is a male character who features in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Contents |
Biography
Mirage
Rat King was a male individual who was gifted with the powers of the King of the Rats and stood amongst the ranks of the Pantheon. (Tales of the TMNT v1 #35)
After residing in a swamp for several months, the Rat King decided to venture into a nearby abandoned industrial park and use it as shelter against the oncoming winter. There, the Rat King happens upon the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and their friend Casey Jones, who had come to the industrial park to train. Believing the Turtles and Casey to be other 'monsters' who wish to take his territory, the Rat King proceeds to stalk them throughout the park, even capturing Michelangelo and leaving him to be devoured by the rats. The Rat King is eventually defeated by Leonardo who, in a duel with the Rat King, flings several shurikens at him, which knock him off balance, sending him plummeting into a silo.
After entering the silo where Leonardo defeated the Rat King, Splinter falls into a pit and injures his leg; left helpless, Splinter is found by the Rat King, who converses with him multiple times throughout the story-arc, often debating philosophically with him and giving him cryptic advice. But as Splinter begins to starve from lack of food, the Rat King appears again and tells him to devour one of the live rats to regain his strength; otherwise, the rats will eventually eat Splinter instead. Splinter refuses, because this is cannibalism. But the Rat King takes the form of a rat demon, taunting Splinter with the prospect of being eaten by him. Splinter finally breaks down and does the unthinkable, killing and eating a live rat. The Rat King tells Splinter that breaking this taboo has allowed Splinter to "find what he was looking for," and that the Rat King has been waiting for Splinter to come to him for some time. Two months later, after the Rat King stops appearing to him, Splinter recovers enough of his strength to climb out of the silo. Splinter then discovers, much to his shock, the long-dead corpse of the Rat King buried under rubble, his limbs twisted, and several shuriken embedded in his remains, indicating that he had already been dead all along, and that whoever Splinter thought he was talking to could not have been a living person.
He was later revealed to be part of a group of beings known as the Pantheon where each member of the group having jurisdiction over a species of animal. When the Pantheon member who rules the rats time reaches an end, a new one is chosen; a scarred and heavily bandaged (explaining the Rat King's appearance) patient at a hospital. Becoming the Rat King, the man challenges this same Splinter to a battle, which he loses after a long fight. With the Rat King defeated, Splinter is offered to take his place in the Pantheon, which he refuses. Accepting Splinter's decision, the Pantheon and Rat King leave, though not before stating that Splinter will be offered membership in the Pantheon one more time, at the moment of his death.
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Lord Ha'ntaan
IDW
Rat King
Overview
Personality and attributes
Powers and abilities
As the King of the Rats, he gained supernatural powers that included the ability to control vermin like rats. (Tales of the TMNT v1 #35)
Notes
- The Rat King was created by Jim Lawson where he made his first appearance in Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles v1 #4 (February, 1988) by Mirage Studios.
In other media
Television
- In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Rat King appeared in the setting of the 1980s animated television series starting from the episode "Enter the Rat King" where he was voiced by actor Townsend Coleman. The Rat King is shown as a homeless man living in a dilapidated portion of the New York City sewer system near the Turtles and Splinter. In episodes featuring him, the Rat King would often enact some sort of plot to establish his own rat-controlled government and bring human rule to an end, believing that rats were superior to all other species, whom he described as 'inferior non-rodents'. He occasionally joined other villains in group efforts that would, he thought, ultimately help his own goals. In the episode "Wrath of the Rat King", he had added a tattered dark trench coat and dark hat to his ensemble and was recruited by a desperate Shredder to get rid of the Turtles in return for mutating his rat servants to help in his own schemes. As a clause to his rats being mutated, the Rat King was asked to help Krang retrieve a weapon of his from Dimension X, the Shock Wave, that ended up in the wrong part of the city and was now being studied. He turned on Shredder and Krang, claiming the device for himself, planning to use the Shockwave to blow up a reserve of rat poison for an ironic annihilation of the city's population. However, he was stopped by the Turtles and finally arrested. After multiple instances of escaping, the Rat King was finally brought to justice.
- In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Rat King appeared in the setting of the 2012 animated television series where he was voiced by actor Jeffrey Combs. Victor Falco was a scientist working on a neurochemical that allows him to read thoughts, and ultimately, to anticipate every move the Turtles make. After an experiment leaves him disfigured, he leaves for the sewers to plan his revenge on the Turtles by mind controlling Splinter, until he and his armies were stopped. In season 2, after the Mutagen rain that New York had, several containers of Mutagen fell on the city. The Rat King obtained one of these containers and began to perform experiments on his rats, mutating them. The Rat King's plan is to make an army of human rats like Splinter to conquer the city. In the final battle, the Rat King is defeated by being thrown into the Undercity by Splinter. In season 4, the Rat King returned from surviving the fall, using his mind games against Splinter again, but by overcoming him, he manages to defeat the Rat King, who is discovered as a skeletal corpse and realizes that everything he had it was nothing more than a hallucination created by his fever.
Video games
Appearances
- Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles v1: (1988)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
External Links
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