Rat King (1987 TV series)

Despite being a minor character in the comics at the time of its initial airing, the Rat King is featured as recurring character in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, being one of the few villains from the comics to make the transition into the cartoon (the others being The Shredder, Leatherhead and Dr. Stockman). His first few appearances on the show had him controlling rats with a flute (à la The Pied Piper of Hamelin) instead of his mind as in later episodes. The cartoon version of the Rat King was also depicted as highly intelligent, shown to be able to create such things as various chemical concoctions and bombs. In his final appearance in the series, he had added a tattered dark trench coat and dark hat to his onsomble 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 retreave a weapon of his from Dimension X 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 it 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 arrested.

In the series, the Rat King is shown 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 (which he counted himself as) were superior to all other species, occasionally joining other villains to help his goals. In some episodes of the show, the Rat King is depicted as somewhat of an anti-hero, with him, on one occasion, even helping the Turtles rescue a captured April O'Neil.