Rat God

* Form 1
* Form 2
* Form 3

*MAD RAT, DIE*

*“Don't worry! This is no prank! I know eeeverything about you!”*

ー *The Rat God, introducing herself to Mad Rat.*

The **Rat God** is the first major character encountered by Mad Rat during the events of *Mad Rat Dead*. She introduces herself as a benevolent deity who is granting him the power to relive his final day so that he may die without regrets. She subsequently appears in between major story events, asking him questions about his journey and encouraging him to keep moving forward.

However, this supportive, celestial persona is nothing more than a clever façade. The Rat God is in reality a malignant parasitic microorganism manipulating Mad Rat's brain in order to reach her next host, an objective requiring him to be killed and eaten by a cat (Food-Borne transmission but also can be like some mind controlling parasites in media). Simply called **Parasite** in her final appearance, she is the boss of Chapter 6 and the game's true antagonist.

## Story

### Role in the Plot

The Rat God makes her initial appearance in the story immediately after the game's first scene, wherein Mad Rat undergoes a mysterious and bloody procedure superficially similar to a rodent vivisection. She speaks to him first from a black void and later from a cheese-filled "afterlife," explaining to the protagonist that he has died and postulating that he probably has some "regrets" left over from his drab laboratory existence. Although Mad Rat is initially suspicious of her intent, she wins him over handily by appealing to his sense of unfulfillment, offering him a "special gift" -- namely, the ability to relive his final day and actualize his "dream" by turning back time. This sequence also forms the game's tutorial, with the Rat God teaching Mad Rat (and by extension the player) the basic controls and gameplay mechanics.

At this point, Mad Rat is largely left to his own devices as he explores the laboratory and gets acquainted with Heart. After a bloody run-in with inexplicably hostile Mob Rats results in him ending up unconscious in the sewer, the Rat God appears before him in another black void to give him some pointed, cryptic questions, including whether or not he regrets having killed his fellow rats in self-defense. This is suggesting already that there is something wrong.

In the following world, after a dangerous encounter with a mischief of ghost rats (which the protagonists assume to be the vengeful spirits of the Mob Rats killed in the lab) Mad Rat again falls unconscious, triggering another conversation with the Rat God. Keenly aware of what he's been going through, she asks him more questions, including ones about the nature of ghosts he fled from. Regardless of the player's answers, she takes a supportive tone, encouraging him and reminding him -- as she did in the tutorial sequence -- to "follow the cheese" to his happy ending, which she asserts is getting closer and closer. This claim is seemingly substantiated by Mad Rat's surroundings, because despite the fact that he was just inside the sewer, he awakens to find himself back in the laboratory, ready to fulfil his dream of killing his human owner.

A few stages later, Mad Rat appears to succeed in his quest for revenge, and the Rat God promptly appears before him to congratulate him on making his dream come true. With his revenge exacted, Mad Rat claims that he's ready to die without regrets now, prompting the Rat God to "reward" him with cheese to follow to his happy ending. He follows it in blind ecstasy, and nearly arrives at an "ending" indeed -- that is, an "ending" in the mouth of a hungry cat, a fate that he only narrowly avoids thanks to Heart's intervention.

The Rat God is conspicuously absent for a period of time after this event. Heart, having figured out the true nature of Mad Rat's strange behavior, is able to prove to the protagonist that he has been experiencing dramatic hallucinations (including his "revenge" on the human). The two soon discover that other, Stray Rats are being "guided" via hallucinations to "cheese" (i.e., cats) by the Rat God as well (reference to how The Cat looks like a piece of cheese before killing the other stray rats), calling into question the sincerity of her motivations. Being gifted real cheese by a human child (whose life Mad Rat saves) only serves to underscore the difference between the Rat God's hallucinatory fantasies and the reality that the two protagonists exist in.

In her next direct appearance, after Mad Rat collapses shortly before arriving back at the lab, the Rat God takes on a much less subtle tone in "encouraging" him to obtain his "happy ending". She gives Mad Rat one final series of questions, the last of which the player is forced to say "Yes" to, effectively demanding that he acquiesce to his fate of carrying out her will and being eaten by a cat. When he awakens, Mad Rat finds himself separated from Heart and lost in an uncanny dreamland of cheese, clearly a mental construction by the now openly antagonistic Rat God. He is eventually able to call Heart directly into the hallucinated world to wrest himself away from the false god's control, which prompts her to summon a massive, cheese-covered "moon" to do battle with the pair and force their submission (Reference to Mimolette (Boss)). Mad Rat and his Heart emerge victorious, and although it's then revealed that this battle was actually a clever ploy by the Rat God to lure them to a cat when they snapped out of the hallucination, she makes the critical mistake of leading them to a cat they'd previously befriended in their adventure, enabling them to escape fate once again.

As Mad Rat returns to the laboratory at last and is finally able to settle his score with his human owner, the Rat God lies in wait for another push to overcome the will of her defiant subject. Having finally fulfilled their wish, Mad Rat and Heart scale a building in order to have a "picturesque" death in the moonlight, but just before they're able to die in peace, the Rat God returns, explaining to the dismayed protagonists that they can't simply get rid of her because she's "IN [Mad Rat's] HEAD, AFTER ALL!!". Determined to brute-force the outcome she wants at all costs, she hijacks the power to rewind time, undoing the heroes' good deeds and returning Mad Rat to just moments before he was operated on by the human. It is during this relived experience that Mad Rat realizes the nature of the operation -- it was a heart transplant, wherein he was given Heart from another creature, along with the Rat God herself. This revelation inspires Mad Rat to take on a new wish: Rewinding time to prevent the transplant from ever occurring, thus keeping the Rat God from taking control of him and saving Heart's life.

He attempts this immediately, but the Rat God is able to override it, forcing the heroes into a hallucinatory nightmare far more fearsome than anything they'd experienced prior. She tells the pair that there's no way she'll let them interfere with her wish, a declaration that only serves to embolden Mad Rat's obstinate determination to overcome her influence and decide his own fate. As the pair ventures through the Rat God's "hellish heaven," she forces Mad Rat to fall unconscious once more, initiating another conversation wherein she attempts to dissuade him from defying her will. She asks the protagonist why he's accepted Heart as "part of [him]" while, in the same breath, he rejects her when she lives inside him and is thereby part of him too. He adamantly rejects her, maintaining that he'll never die as a vehicle for her dreams, before calling on Heart to bring himself back to consciousness. The two then fight their way to the end of the Rat God's apparitional hellscape, where they confront the self-proclaimed deity once and for all.

Before their final battle begins, the protagonists ask the Rat God why she's inside Mad Rat to begin with, which she explains is merely "instinct" -- in order for her to live, she needs a rat host to bring her to a cat. When asked if she's "okay with that", she responds that it doesn't matter if she is or not, because "fighting against [her] nature is meaningless". It is revealed that her motivation to manipulate and use Mad Rat to achieve her goals is entirely based in her instinct to continue her existence, a cycle which she has committed herself to no matter the cost. Even if she has to turn back time, she maintains, it's worth the sacrifice to keep living on -- and if Mad Rat has resigned himself to a "hopeless" death for the good of Heart, he has no right to oppose her dream. It is during this conversation that Heart finally identifies the truth behind the "Rat God": she is nothing more than a parasite manipulating Mad Rat's brain to advance her life cycle. She then becomes violent, waging a long and difficult battle against the protagonists to settle the score of their competing "destinies."

Mad Rat and Heart are eventually able to overcome her, a victory which reduces the Rat God to nothing more than a cluster of eye-like cells on the ground. The defeated parasite asks her host why he won't let her "wish" come true, reasoning that he's going to die anyway. Mad Rat replies that she just had "bad luck," by choosing the "wrong rat" as her host. Crying, the parasite explains that she cannot live outside of another being, and that in order to survive, she's forced to lead rats to be eaten by cats. Seemingly acceding to her fate, she poses a rhetorical question in her misery: Is wanting to live really such a sin? Mad Rat can only answer for himself, proclaiming that he's "jumped off the wheel of fate" before bidding farewell to his hallucination. In his departure, he admits that it was fun, "living in that dreamland of [hers]". The parasite can only respond with silence as Mad Rat goes on to rewind time, decisively preventing the "Rat God" from ever entering his brain to begin with.

### Afterstory

Although the parasite is entirely absent from the story following the final battle, her exact fate is unclear. Assuming that Mad Rat's assessment of her origins is factual -- namely, that she entered his brain following the transplant -- it stands to reason that Heart's original body was her host to begin with. As Heart was originally a cat and is enabled (thanks to Mad Rat's last wish) to go free and continue living his life after the story, there is a possibility that the "Rat God" ultimately received a "happy ending" in her definitive feline host after all. This cannot, however, be confirmed and should be treated purely as a matter of speculation.

### New Game

When attempting to select the "PLAY" option (to continue the story) from the main menu after completing the campaign in its entirety, the Rat God will appear in a familiar black void to address the player directly, going so far as to identify that they are a human. She tells the player that it's "just as [they] think": The "actors" (presumed to be Mad Rat and Heart) "have left the stage", alluding to the fact that the credits have rolled and the plot is over. After a pause, however, she cheekily asks if the player if they still want to play the game.

If the player responds with "YES", the Rat God appears to be surprised, reiterating that the protagonists really aren't there any more. Seemingly to accommodate the player, however, the Rat God decides to let them "relive their flashbacks", thus enabling the Story Mode to be replayed freely.

If the player responds with "NO", the Rat God accepts it, thanking them for playing. Before the sequence ends, she bids them a characteristically cryptic farewell, saying that she looks forward to seeing the player "somewhere, someday" and asserting that she "just need[s] some room to get in [their] head". The screen then fades to black and returns to the title screen.

As this entire sequence serves an obvious gameplay function, the canonicity of this conversation is unclear.

## Profile

### Appearance

#### Primary Form

The Rat God's primary and best-known form is that of a (notably humanoid) female rat. Like other rats depicted in the story, she has large ears and a long, curved tail, the end of which sometimes forms a "heart" shape for playful effect. Unlike other rats, however, her anatomy and skin are mostly human in appearance, a discrepancy accentuated by her size -- she is least twice as large as Mad Rat himself. She has a pair of white, angelic wings protruding from her lower back, messy yellow hair and magenta eyes. When smiling, the Rat God will occasionally reveal a pair of buck teeth reminiscent of stereotypical mouse characters.

In this form, the Rat God dons a full human outfit evoking the image of a "magician," complete with an exaggerated top hat. She wears a one-piece suit, primarily comprised of a magenta vest with long coattails (which matches her high heels and the aforementioned hat) overtop a white leotard (matching her detached cuffs and tie). Tying her outfit together is the yellow ribbon wrapped around her top hat, which is in turn color-coordinated with her hair.

When hostile, this form of the Rat God seemingly begins to deteriorate, with holes of varying shapes and sizes appearing in her ears, tail and wings. Her eyes also gain a "crazed" appearance to reflect her hostility. When vulnerable to counterattack, her hat falls off to reveal an exaggerated cowlick ("ahoge") at the top of her head.

#### True Form

In the final stage of Mad Rat Dead, where the Rat God is at last revealed to be a parasite, the player is able to witness her true, parasitic form during and after the last boss sequence.

In stark contrast to her initial appearance, the Rat God is in actuality a simple cluster of magenta and yellow cells with conspicuous eye-like features, thought to be nuclei. She is still able to speak in her true form, and while she only briefly appears this way, the nuclei are notably able to emote, even "crying" in unison.

### Personality

In her earliest appearances, the Rat God presents herself as benevolent and amicable, even bubbly at times, addressing Mad Rat as "Little Rat" with a certain air of maternal sagacity. She gives the impression of a wise and patient questgiver, encouraging the protagonist to make the most of his final day and spurring him to keep moving forward with his adventure. Her words come across as genuinely caring and supportive -- although she openly voices that she thinks Mad Rat should abandon his self-assigned mission to kill his former owner, she acquiesces to his convictions, expressing optimism that he'll eventually find a "new wish" to fulfil regardless. True to form, her dialogue is peppered with idealistic, motivational phrases like "Everyone has the right to take a bite out of their special treat!"

In actuality, however, this upbeat personality is a calculated façade meant to manipulate Mad Rat into fulfilling her goals. The parasitic Rat God has one "wish" in mind throughout the events of the story -- namely, to get Mad Rat (and by extension herself) eaten by a cat, which would enable her own life cycle to continue inside her natural, definitive host. As a parasite infecting Mad Rat's brain, she is able to alter his perception of reality and "speak" to him through hallucinations, wherein she constructs a clever narrative of lies that slowly but surely lead him into the territory of a feline predator. She goes so far as to trick him (through hallucinations) into thinking that he's achieved his goal of killing his human owner, after which she "rewards" him with hallucinated pathways of cheese that she claims will lead him to his "happy ending" -- while in reality, they are luring him perilously close to a hungry cat.

As Mad Rat (with the help of Heart) begins to fight back against her manipulation, the Rat God reveals the true nature of her personality and intentions. She is entirely unsympathetic to Mad Rat's wishes of how he wants to spend his final day, asserting that her wish of being eaten by a cat will be the only wish fulfilled. In a cruel demonstration of her determination to survive, she hijacks Mad Rat's ability to rewind time and forces him back to the moment of his heart transplant, erasing the good deeds that he and Heart had accomplished during their adventure. Ultimately, the Rat God is only concerned with her own survival, willingly waging psychological warfare against Mad Rat in order to ensure his submission. She argues that it's only her "instinct" to want to survive at all odds, referencing the fact that if he is not eaten by a cat, she'll die without leaving her own mark on the world. And indeed, when she's eventually subdued by Mad Rat in the aftermath of their final battle, she reasserts this, asking if it's really a "sin" that she just wants to live.

## Abilities and Powers

The parasitic Rat God exists entirely within Mad Rat throughout the events of the story and, chiefly with the intent of manipulating him into carrying out her will, is capable of producing elaborate and thoroughly convincing hallucinations for him to experience in real time. These hallucinations range from simulated events (e.g., killing the human or fighting ghosts) to entire complex dreamscapes (e.g., an "afterlife" made of cheese or a barren and treacherous hellscape) to monsters and attacks (e.g., "Nightmares" and the various phases of her boss fight), suggesting a profound degree of control over Mad Rat's brain.

Beyond sensory manipulation, the Rat God is a cunning puppeteer who adeptly uses her emotional intelligence to her benefit. She earns Mad Rat's trust and respect by empathising with his sad background and validating his heartfelt sense of regret, knowingly positioning herself as his confidant and friend despite her true intentions. Through a combination of calculated hallucinations and psychological manipulation disguised as sagacious advice, she attempts to discourage him from his goal of killing the human to bring him closer to being eaten by a cat. When Mad Rat's determination proves too strong to simply dissuade, the Rat God adapts, tricking him into thinking he's achieved his goal via hallucination and then giving him a "reward" to celebrate it and accommodate his wish of "dying happily".

The Rat God is also apparently able to manipulate time autonomously, turning back the clock herself to prevent Mad Rat from dying of natural causes and later overriding his attempt to rewind time far enough to forestall his heart transplant. The extent of her time manipulation powers is unclear.

## Relationships

### Mad Rat

Mad Rat is the Rat God's intermediate host, which in parasitology means that he is the "transitional" animal she is inhabiting and using as a vector by which to reach her definitive (final) host, a cat. This biological arrangement defines their in-story relationship, with her doing everything in her power to lead him to a feline predator, even if it means manipulating and lying to him in the process.

In her efforts at manipulation throughout the first half of the game, the Rat God takes on a gentle, patient, empathetic tone when speaking with Mad Rat in order to earn his trust and loyalty. She calls him "Little Rat" and claims to have given him the power to reverse time in a fabricated show of god-like benevolence, utilising elaborate hallucinations to construct a narrative that will lead him to unwittingly offer himself up to a hungry cat. She intends to let him die in blissful ignorance, as long as her "dream" (i.e., the next step of the parasitic life cycle) comes to fruition as planned.

When Mad Rat eventually sees through her lies, the Rat God's demeanour towards him changes immediately and dramatically. She becomes openly and unapologetically hostile, determined to demoralise him to the point where he will accept his "fate" as a vehicle for her wishes. In their final confrontation, she calls his idealistic desire to save Heart's life foolish and fights to the bitter end to prevent the heroes from turning back time in order to preclude the transplant. She is unsuccessful, however, and in her defeated state she tells Mad Rat, in a rare moment of vulnerability, that she had no choice but to take the actions she did due to having been born a parasite, asking him if it's really a "sin" that she just wants to live.

### Heart

Heart and the Rat God are not shown interacting directly until Stage 5-7, wherein Mad Rat calls the former to his aid amidst one of the Rat God's hallucinatory nightmares. She immediately expresses disdain for him (asking "What the hell are you doing here?!"), suggesting that she was keenly aware of the role that Heart played in helping Mad Rat overcome her manipulation. This antagonism and natural conflict in goals characterises what limited interactions they have in all of the story's subsequent scenes. Before she is explicitly revealed as one, Heart correctly identifies that the Rat God is a parasite.

Notably, Mad Rat posits that the Rat God was "put into" him by the human scientist during the heart transplant that also gave him Heart, a concept that is seemingly corroborated by the fact that neither he nor the Mob Rats are depicted to have had any prior experience with the parasite. If this postulation is to be treated as fact, there is a strong likelihood that the Rat God may have come from within Heart's original feline body -- which would make him her original host, and also mean that, due to the reversal of time, she is alive inside him even after the story's conclusion.

### Stray Rats

The Stray Rats encountered by Mad Rat and Heart during their journey also speak of a "Rat God" whilst hallucinating, shortly prior to being eaten by a cat (although this fate is later reversed thanks to the heroes' efforts). While these rats are demonstrably under the effects of a parasite employing a similar methodology to the Rat God featured as the story's antagonist, it should be noted that it is in all likelihood a different "Rat God" (i.e., a separate, unrelated parasite of the same species) controlling their brains.

## Gallery

Pre-release promotional media of the Rat God.Concept art of the Rat God.The Rat God's official profile page, from the Mad Rat Dead artbook.Concept art of the Rat God.Rat God Gif
## Trivia

* The Rat God may be based on *Toxoplasma gondii*, a common real-life parasite whose lifecycle features cats as its definitive host and rats as one of its most common intermediate hosts. Infected cats discharge the virus through their faeces, which infect the rats that commonly eat it, and those infected rats in turn develop a decreased aversion to the scent of cat urine, leading them to be preyed on by cats.
* The Rat God expresses genuine surprise and concern over Mad Rat's stated goal of taking revenge on his human owner. The exact reasoning for this is unclear, although it is possible that she may have seen it as unfavorable to her goals -- doing so would involve him staying inside the laboratory (where there are no cats that can eat him) and could possibly end in him being killed in self-defense. This hypothesis is supported by her initial guesses of what his dream is, which include "playing outside" and "eating endless cheese".
* Briefly before addressing Mad Rat at the start of Chapter 3, the Rat God is depicted with a scheming smile while the screen fades in. As this uncharacteristic expression occurs well before she is revealed to be the game's antagonist, this can be seen as an early hint of her true nature.