Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-24728184-20140313185356/@comment-995426-20150813211728

All this talk of the Rat King is making me think of the Mirage version.

The Mirage version of "I, Monster" was Tales of the TMNT, Volume 1, Issue 4. The Rat King was encountered in an abandoned industrial area by the four turtles and Casey. He commanded swarms of rats. But he was brought down by a shuriken attack that made him fall, seemingly to his death.

But the Rat King's most important appearance (and what this discussion keeps reminding me of) was during Splinter's substory of the "City at War" arc near the end of TMNT, Volume 1. During this arc, the family had all separated, the turtles leaving on their own to New York, April to Los Angeles, Casey to Colorado, and Splinter just went to live in the forest. Splinter was frustrated by a failure to continue developing spiritually. He wandered alone into the same abandoned industrial area featured in "I, Monster". But he had a fall inside an abandoned cooling tower. The fall broke his leg and crippled him, leaving him without food and without possibility of help, since no one knew he was there. But he was greeted by the Rat King. For the next two months, the Rat King was Splinter's constant companion/tormentor. Splinter went increasingly longer without food, and was close to starvation, but the Rat King provided a grisly cannibalistic solution: Splinter should eat the rats. Splinter refused, considering cannibalism to be too terrible a taboo to break. But the Rat King reminded Splinter that rats normally practice cannibalism when they are starving, and the rats would eventually eat him. Eventually, Splinter was so close to death that he had no choice, and he finally grabbed a random rat and ate it alive and raw. This was how Splinter was able to survive, regain his strength and heal himself enough to climb out of the cooling tower on his own. But the biggest shock soon after was when Splinter discovered the Rat King's skeleton, having been dead for a long time&mdash;Splinter may have spoken with his spirit, or he may have hallucinated the whole thing. But Splinter regarded the Rat King as a teacher of horrific (but necessary) lessons. At the end of the "City at War" arc, Splinter finally reunited with the rest of the family, but refused to talk about where he'd been or what had happened to him, still traumatized about the whole situation.

In Tales of the TMNT, Volume 2, Issue 35, "The Pantheon", Splinter encounters the animal pantheon during a vision. The Rat King's spirit is actually the current god of rats, but had originally been an ordinary human. On a spiritual plane, Splinter and the Rat King fought against each other. But the Rat King revealed personal critical character flaws that convinced the rest of the pantheon to expel him from the group. They invited Splinter to become the new Rat King, but it would involve killing the old one, and Splinter refused to take the life of a helpless man. The pantheon told Splinter he would be offered the Rat King's throne again at the moment of his death. This story was interesting because the cat goddess treated Splinter as if they were already husband and wife.

TMNT, Volume 4, Issue 10 was Splinter's last moments of life. He was living at the Jones Farm with his granddaughter Shadow Jones. But at this moment, he was alone in the house, having tea in the kitchen. In a brief moment, he saw the Rat King standing in a dearby doorway in the house. Moments after this, he had a heart attack, fell to floor, and...died. It was implied that the Rat King had come to take him to the other side.

I don't expect 2K12 Splinter and Rat King to be nearly this deep, profound or grisly. For one, Dr. Victor Falco actually seems to be a fusion of two characters&mdash;the Rat King, and Dr. Victor Feral from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness, a mad scientist who had mutant rat servants and carried out horrific mutant experiments. All in all it's been an interesting twist on the classic template. Also, Splinter doesn't seem to have a cat goddess wife waiting for him on the other side. XD But I would find it interesting if, in the Rat King's next appearance, they had a story of the two characters being trapped together for a long time like in "City at War", getting even deeper into each other's psyches, though perhaps without the cannibalism.