Your Friend the Rat/Transcript

[The short opens on Remy and Emile in front of a chalkboard with writing that reads "A History." A nervous Emile tries to scoot away.]
Remy: Hello, I'm Remy, (pulls Emile back) and this is my brother Emile.
Emile: (waves) Hi.
Remy: We're here to speak out on behalf of oppressed rats everywhere.
Emile: (groans) Oh man.
Remy: Rats who don't have the access to media that our movie affords us.
Emile: We're speaking out?
Remy: Yes, we have to. (slams paw into other) We rats need to take a stand.
Emile: You said we'd sing something. You know, joke around.
[Remy rolled his eyes.]
Emile: You did not say we were gonna take a stand.
Remy: This is important. Humans need to know, humans need to...
[Then Emile went up to the camera, speaking to the viewers interrupting his brother.]
Emile: Feed us. That's what you need to do. Leave some garbage out and we won't bother you. Just leave the lid on top of the can loose...
[As Emile talked, Remy went up near him and pulled down a slide in front of them. The slide featured a 2D version of Linguini.]
Remy's Voice: All right, all right, moving on. This is a man.
Linguini: (waves) Hello.
[A 2D dog appeared right next to Linguini, with a diagonal dotted line appearing between the two.]
Remy's Voice: A dog, man's best friend, looks up to man.
[The dog disappeared and a 2D cat appeared right above Linguini, and another diagonal dotted line appeared between the two.]
Remy's Voice: A cat looks down on man.
[Linguini waved to the cat, who only harrumphed before it disappeared. Then a 2D rat came to Linguini at the level of his head with a straight dotted line appearing between the rat and eyes of Linguini. Linguini frowned at the rat.]
Remy's Voice: We rats see ourselves as equal to man, but you humans don't seem to see it that way.
[The rat extended his paw out in friendship, and Linguini's response was not a handshake in return, but appearing in army soldier clothing, holding a weapon and with his eyes now red. The rat squeaked with fright. Then Linguini shot at the rat like mad, before it showed clips of weapons and missles firing (some from tanks) at rats.]
Remy's Voice: So it's been war, a war without end!
[Then, when all was clear, Linguini stood there with his rifle, and his eyes turned back from red to white upon seeing to his alarm, a swarm of rats charging his way, making him scream as he fled.]
Remy's Voice: But this has not always been true.
Emile's Voice: When has it not?
[When the rat swarm was gone, we see one single rat carrying the Hindu Elephant god known as Ganesh on its back, while the god carried a steering wheel, an axe, and a tray of berries with its many arms.]
Remy's Voice: In India, the rat is the chosen mode of conveyance for the Hindu god, Ganesh, and thus, sacred.
[We now see life during the era of the Roman Empire as thousands of arrows were shot out by the barbarian hordes like mad. At this time, an army of Trojans in their Trojan horse came to an enormous ditch.]
Remy's Voice: During the Roman Empire, it was said to be good luck to have a white rat cross your path.
[One gladiator peeked out of the top hatch, seeing a white rat cross their path, and yelped upon seeing the arrows aim for them, as he closed the lid to hide inside. However, the arrows all bounced off the horse and formed a bridge over the ditch for the soldiers to cross, to the one gladiator's delight. He pointed his sword, signaling for the gladiators to march onward.]
Remy's Voice: Not so good if a black rat crossed it.
[A black rat then crossed it, unknown to the Trojans, as they, inside the Trojan horse, marched onto the arrow bridge, only to be crushed by a giant boulder that came out of nowhere. We now see a male black rat walking, as the subtitle "Black Rat (Rattus rattus)" appeared beneath, before a female rat walked by smiling to the male, which caught his attention as he appeared love-struck.]
Remy's Voice: Rattus rattus, the black rat, arrived in the West first, hitching a ride with the returning Crusaders.
[He followed the female rat onto a ship which left Arabia, and that ship, as well as two others, had arrived in Europe, and soon the continent of Europe was getting covered with rats, multiplying by the second.]
Remy's Voice: In Europe, finding plenty of filth, grain, filth, and...
Emile's Voice: Don't forget filth.
Remy's Voice: And more filth to eat, the black rat quickly prospered.
[Then lightning flashed as we see a dark setting with skeletons, skulls, bones, evil rats with bat wings and a vampire rat that appeared briefly.]
1347. 
Ye Black Death.
Remy's Voice: Wait, wait, this is all wrong. This isn't how we rehearsed it.
[Then the light came back on and all dramatic horror effect was cut, revealing to be a sound stage with a prop handler, that held a puppet vampire rat on a wire, peeking out. There were also a man dressed as the Grim Reaper removing the mask and an another man in an evil rat costume lifting the face up, and the three wondered what was wrong.]
Director's Voice: What, what's the problem?
Remy's Voice: It doesn't go from rats and darkness to rats and death skulls.
Director's Voice: Well, my script says rats and death skulls.
Remy's Voice: You forgot the flea! Rats didn't cause the plague, the flea caused the plague. The flea is the whole point!
Director's Voice: Just give him the flea.
[Cut to archival footage of P.T. Flea from A Bug's Life.]
Remy's Voice: No, not that one. 
[Cut to real life footage of a rat flea.]
Remy's Voice: There it is.
Emile's Voice: (in disgust) Oh, that's disgus...
Remy's Voice: Xenopsylla cheopis, the rat flea.
[We then see the black rat running happily, unaware of a flea bouncing towards him.]
Remy's Voice: See, this guy here gave the plague to (referring to the rat) THIS guy here, a rat, killing the rat.
[Once the flea bounced on the rat, the rat stopped in his tracks, looking alarmed as it turned white and spots appeared, before it gave out one last "eep" before it flipped over, dead, thanks to the flea.]
Remy's Voice: Once the flea senses the cold, dead rat, it prefers to find a warm, live rat. But, if a human happens to come along, well...
[A human, who looked like an ancestor of Linguini, appeared, before the flea bounced off the dead rat and onto the man, causing him to turn pale and green, with spots appearing all over his body just like what happened with the rat. He then went "eep" before falling backwards, kicking his feet up in the air, before he was completely lifeless. Then as Remy continued explaining, the flea bounced off onto four more victims, turning them green and spotty before they each die. The victims included a knight and his horse, a jester, and a bishop, respectively.]
Remy's Voice: From 1347 to 1352, the plague, or Black Death, killed a third of the population of 14th century Europe, and just as many, if not more, rats.
[For the bishop's disappearance, he was sent floating up to Heaven.]
Emile's Voice: So, so what stopped the plague?
[As Remy continued, the flea bounced more victims, killing them off, one by one. Victims included a king, a queen, an archer and even a fire-breathing dragon. During this, another black rat tried running from the flea, while dodging the archer's last arrow he shot and the dragon's last fiery breath.]
Remy's Voice: No one really knows. Maybe soap, closed sewers, a change in temperature.
[Then the black rat bumped into a muscular brown rat. The words "(Rattus Norvegicus)" appeared beside him, along with "Brown Rat" and "Norway Rat". As the flea tried to bounce on the brown rat, the rodent stopped the flea by punching it down.]
Remy's Voice: Or some believe, this guy, rattus norvegicus, the brown rat, better known as the Norway rat.
[The brown rat smirks and speaks Norwegian to the camera.]
Emile's Voice: That's us, right?
Remy's Voice: Right.
[The Norway rat gave a karate yell as he jumped up and crushed the flea, before bowing. Next we see the Norway rat in Chinese clothing bowing next to a bowl of rice a Chinese man had.]
Remy's Voice: The Norway rat came from China, and according to mythology, brought the gift of rice to man.
[The Chinese man tasted the rice, and he gave a wide grin, liking the rice. The hat he wore even flew up with fireworks appearing, to emphasize his like for the taste of rice.]
Emile's Voice: Wait, wait. The Norway rat came from China?
[The firework exploded and up in the sky appeared a Zodiac circle with the rat symbol picture changing to show all the many different traits and skills of the rat.]
Remy's Voice: Yes, the rat even holds the place of honor as the first year of the Chinese zodiac, a symbol of good luck, wealth, intelligence, charm, charisma, ambition, adaptability, versatility...shall I go on?
Emile's Voice: You're not making any sense. We came from China, but we're called Norway rats?
Remy's Voice: I'm getting to that.
[We then see a naturalist writing down a document before looking through a telescope, and he saw three vikings arriving on a longboat, which towed a smaller longboat carrying three brown rats wearing Viking helmets themselves.]
Remy's Voice: British naturalist, John Berkenhour, named us Norway rats, believing we had come to England on a Norwegian boat. The silly thing is, the brown rat didn't live in Norway at the time, more than likely, we came from Denmark, but the name just stuck.
Emile's Voice: Wait, now we're from Denmark?
Remy's Voice: Let it go.
[Next, we see a horde of black rats leaping off the continent of Europe and onto the boats heading out, with the rats yelling "Wheeeeee!"]
Remy's Voice: Kicked out of Europe by his brawnier cousin, the black rat joined explorers and colonists seeking opportunity, and some elbow room, across the globe.
[As Remy explained that, we see tons of boats carrying black rats heading to all the non-European continents, and said continents were filled up with multiplying black rats. In 1775, a warship carrying the redcoats arrived with the redcoats marching off the ship, followed by the Norway rats.]
Remy's Voice: It wasn't until 1775 that the first Norway rats arrived in America, much to the chagrin of the established black rats.
[We then see the colonists and the redcoats firing at each other, but as we focus on the rats' side of the battle, one black rat, wearing a colonist hat, came face to face with a Norway rat, wearing a redcoat hat. The next thing that happened is that the two got in a slap fight which lasted a couple seconds until the Norway rat socked the black rat out cold.]
[Next, a word card like in a silent movie is shown as music from the 1910's is played in the background.]
"Burly Brown Rat kicks his scrawny cousin, the Black Rat, across America..."
[We see a burly brown rat kicking a scrawny black rat up in the air, making the latter shout in pain.]
"...forcing the poor fellow to live in lush, warm coastal areas such as San Diego and Hawaii."
[Next, there is stop-motion footage of all continents covered by Norway rats, except for the North Pole, the South Pole and one spot in Canada.]
Remy's Voice: Adaptable like humans, Norway rats live throughout the world, except the North Pole and South Pole.
Emile's Voice: What about that spot?
Remy's Voice: That's Alberta, Canada.
[We then see a stop-motion clip of three rats gnawing at the edge of a cake shaped like the Alberta map, with a Mountie figurine pointing its gun at the rats.]
Remy's Voice: In 1950, rats invaded on the southeast border of Alberta, but were repelled by an impressive government rat control program.
[Cut to an 8-bit video game, where a Canadian mountie fends off rats as a goalie. Then, a giant robot rat appears, firing lasers. The mountie deflects them with his shoulder pads and shields until the lasers blow up the robot. "O Canada" plays as the mountie jumps in joy. In the modern day, in an average city, we look through the buildings, seeing people throw their trash away down garbage disposals and trash cans, which were emptied, and paths from garbage disposals and trash cans were led to beneath the grounds, where rats collect the trash.]
Remy's Voice: Our societies are intertwined, a symbiotic relationship of give and take. -You give us your trash, and we...
Emile's Voice: Take it, then eat it.
[The slide pulls up and we go back to the room with Remy and Emile, with the chalkboard now saying "Why Rats are Cool!"]
Remy: I don't understand it, myself.
Emile: Can we sing the song now?
Remy: No, no, no, no, no, no.
Emile: (singing) We'll follow you to Mar...
Remy: Stop.
[Then Emile stopped, groaning in disappointment.]
Remy: Now, "Why Rats Are Cool." Every day, rats eat ten--
Emile: (interrupts) Hey, wait. You said I could do this part.
[The blue rat rolled his eyes while his brother pulled out another screen, clearing his throat.]
Emile: It's a little something I'm calling, "What's Cool About Rats."
[He pulled the screen forward, and we now see a 2D Emile with an apple, chowing it down right to the core.]
Emile's Voice: Every day, rats eat 10 percent of our bodyweight. Gotta love that. Our favorite foods are scrambled eggs, macaroni and cheese, white bread. I'm getting hungry. Our teeth can cut through solid wood... lead pipe... cinder blocks... And even steel, with a biting force of 24,000 pounds per square inch.
[Next, we see Emile in a small bathing cap swimming up a pipe, before entering the top of the pipe, finding himself in a toilet.]
Emile's Voice: A rat can swim for three days, and yes, we can enter your home through the toilet.
[A man then came in to use the toilet, but he then saw an alarmed Emile in the bowl. The next thing you know, in the restaurant, which is where the restroom was located, the man was heard screaming, to everyone's surprise. The screaming was loud enough to shake the male symbol sign off the door. Next, Emile opened a dime like a door, revealing a tiny hole which he tried to get into, but his lower half was stuck.]
Emile's Voice: Very flexible, we can squeeze through any hole we can get our head into.
[Fortunately for him, a larger gray rat (possibly a 2D Git) appeared and pushed him through the hole. The next thing that's shown is a rat couple holding each others' paws, staring at each other lovingly, while many rows of baby rats appeared, multiplying like mad, and they all bawled. Regardless of that, the rat couple still kept gazing at each other.]
Emile's Voice: One pair of rats can have 15,000 descendants in a year. That may not sound good to you, but it's good for us, since the world is out to get us.
[We then see random clips of a rat being shot at by a cowboy; another rat ganged up on by a dog, cat and ferret stacking themselves on top of each other, another rat being scooped by a hawk; a rat trapped in cage with the door slamming shut, a mouse trap snapping a rat's tail, an exterminator using poison gas on a rat, and finally stock footage of a nuclear explosion.]
Emile's Voice: Whoa!
[We see a place known as Eniwetok Atoll, where the ground was blackened and most life was wiped out by atomic bombs, but what appeared to be three separate rats poked their heads out.]
Emile's Voice: On Eniwetok Atoll, atomic bombs were tested for ten years, but we rats survived, and suffered no ill effects from the massive radiation.
[Then the rats moved, revealing to be an unnatural mutation of three rat heads on one reptilian body with no arms. The next thing to be shown was a little girl walking her rat on a leash, in a fancy way.]
Emile's Voice: Some people have pet rats, called fancy rats. Why are they called fancy rats?
Remy's Voice: (impatiently) Keep going.
[Then two pictures of two historical figures, Jack Black and Queen Victoria are shown.]
Emile's Voice: Okay. Jack Black, royal rat catcher to Queen Victoria, liked to keep some of the rats he caught as pets. These he would give to the fancy people of the day.
[2D Emile appeared in Mr. Black's hand before the rat catcher handed him to the queen, who gave the rat a small kiss on the cheek, making him blush.]
Emile's Voice: Oh, yeah, that's right. I remember now.
[Next, we see three different instances of rats working together with scientists.]
Emile's Voice: Many, many rats have dedicated their lives investigating humanity's most dreaded diseases.
[Then a biology chart of rats and humans having the same organs was shown.]
Emile's Voice: How is this possible, you ask? Well, we share a similar biology. We grow old the same way. Treatments can be tested in a rat's lifespan of a year or two that would take 70 years in a human. Rats have even been to space, teaching people about how the body adapts to weightlessness.
[They laughed, enjoying the weightlessness and lack of gravity. Then the screen was pulled back up to the room with the chalkboard now having a drawing of a rocket on Earth and the planet Mars.]
Remy: So, as you can see, we've been together since the dawn of time, and we'll be together far into the future.
Emile: Key of G, fellas, and swing it.
[The music started playing again as the two danced and snapped fingers. The drawing then came to life as the rocket left Earth and landed on Mars, with the astronaut planting a flag, and the rat brothers began singing.]
Remy and Emile's Voices: (singing) We'll follow you to Mars or wherever you people go.
Rat: (singing) We rats are right there down below
Remy and Emile's Voices: (singing) We've traveled near and far with swamis, geishas, thugs and czars. In planes, and boats, and submarines. We've sailed from Liverpool to Queens.
Remy and Emile's Voices: (singing) We're even in Qatar or wherever you people go. We all adore Francois Truffaut. Abandon musophobia and embrace a new utopia.
Emile's Voice: (singing) Butterflies and puppy dogs, summer evenings, crispy frogs.
Remy and Emile's Voices: (singing) Imagine if you will a world where women, rats, and men, and children live in peace and harmony. We're even holding hands. We're dancing through the streets and singing cabaret songs. Oh-la-la-la, join with us. We'll make a human ratty wonderland. We'll help you tie your shoes when you don't feel like bending over, and perhaps you'll take that trap from out behind the pantry door. We'll say "Bonjour," and "How's the family?" when we pass each other on the street And just like that, we won't be strangers anymore. So here we go to Mars with our stories intertwined, and although once you tried to kill us, now we know that you won't mind. We'll journey through the stars and whatever else may be.
Emile: (singing) We all hate that lousy flea.
[As they finished, Emile squished the flea.]
Remy and Emile: (singing) That lousy flea.
[When the song was done, they looked at the viewers.]
Remy: So, what do you say? Can we make peace, and--
[Suddenly, he was cut off by a black screen, with a disclaimer rolling up and the usual fast-talking disclaimer voice reading the words scrolling.As the voice continued, the upset Remy and confused Emile appeared on the side of the scrolling words.]
Remy: Oh, no. Oh, this isn't over yet! Oh, no, no. Emile, how many times did I say they were gonna slap something on the end? And now they're doing it! Now, look at this!
Emile: Uh-huh. Yeah.
[Remy pushed the next set of words away, ranting some more, but the announcer kept going and so did the rest of the words.]
Remy: It's like it's in their DNA to--
[Emile tried bouncing on top of the rest of the words to keep them from going on, but they zoomed up, pushing the brown rat off.]
Emile: Whoa.
Remy: I, I, I'm a...I'm surprised, I'm surprised. Guys, you know, it's typical! Business as usual. You know what, our voice will not be denied!
[He walked away while his brother let out an exasperated sigh.]
Emile: You've had your say! Can we please get something to eat?
[Emile leaves. Roll credits.]
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