"I live in New York, I got three roommates — two of them are rats, we eat pizza for dinner every night. The rent? 4,000 dollars a second."
— Shelby, Rats SMP
In fiction, whenever a character associated with rats shows up, there's a good chance they'll be portrayed with a New York City accent, or as explicitly coming from the Big Apple. This applies both to actual talking rats (whether funny, civilized, or nearly-normal) and to characters with a rat Animal Motif.
There could be several reasons for this. As far as Animal Stereotypes go, rats are known for being streetwise, scrappy and morally dubious, which are all stereotypes that apply to New Yorkers. More obviously, though, New York City just has... a lot of rats. It's not the most rat-infested city in America (that would be Chicago, with Los Angeles in second), but New York does have a serious rat problem, something exacerbated by the city's longstanding reluctance to implement trash bins instead of leaving trash bagged at the curb, which means New York's rat population has free access to as much garbage as they want.
In British media, the equivalent would be the Cockney Rat, with London's East End having a similar reputation to that of Brooklyn. For critters portrayed through the lens of the southern parts of the United States, see Southern Gator.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Comic Books
- Kamandi: One of the various societies of Uplifted Animals of the future world is a society of rats living in undersea tunnels beneath the flooded ruins of New York city.
Films — Animation
- Chicken Run: Nick and Fetcher are a Cockney Rat example, being a pair of Loveable Rogue smugglers who ferry goods to the chickens to help in their escape attempts.
- Flushed Away: Most of the rats in the film have Cockney accents, since they live in the London sewers. The one exception is protagonist Roddy, who has a posh Received Pronunciation accent thanks to originally being a pampered pet rat.
- Heidi's Song: The Head Ratte is voiced by Sammy Davis Jr., who was born in Harlem, New York. Additionally, he sings a big band musical number. These elements are anachronistic considering that the story takes place in the Swiss Alps in the 19th century. However, the Head Ratte takes pride in being filthy and uncouth, so these stereotypically lower-class traits are kind of fitting for his personality.
- Ratatouille: Django, father of Remy and Émile and leader of the rat colony shown in the film, has a New York accent (though neither of his sons do), despite living in France. Since we're shown that the rats speak their own language, this is most likely just a Translation Convention rather than an actual indicator of his place of origin.
Films — Live-Action
- Charlotte's Web portrays Templeton the Rat with a New York accent, provided by Brooklyn native Steve Buscemi.
Live-Action TV
- The Muppet Show: Rizzo, along with his fellow Muppet rats, is a cynical Deadpan Snarker with a Brooklyn or New Jersey accent: in The Muppet Christmas Carol, he says he's from Jersey. He's named after the human character of Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo from Midnight Cowboy, a street hustler from the Bronx.
- The Secret Life of Toys: The supporting cast of Living Toys includes the minor antagonist Bratty Rat, an obnoxious stuffed rat doll who loves to tattle on the other toys' wrongdoings, or manipulate them by threatening to do it, and who has a thick New York accent.
Literature
- Played With in Beasties, where the main character Riley is a kid from New York who gets turned into a rat.
Music
- "Garbage Land" by Red Vox tells a story of the daily life of such rodents... including what happens when New York becomes too expensive for even the rats.
- RAT TAXI by Louie Zong is a Concept Album about a rat who works as a cabbie, bringing to mind New York's famous yellow taxis. The second track, "CHEEZY STREET", has the rat explain (in the style of East Coast rap) that he was a former lab rat who escaped and ended up in the sewers, with his goal being to break free into the city above.
Theatre
- Chuck E. Cheese: The mascot, Chuck E. Cheese himself, was intended to be a rat in his early iterations and given a New York accent in his animatronic shows. However, his character eventually went through multiple changes to make him "cleaner" and more family friendly. These changes included making him a mouse instead of a rat and changing his accent to sound like a Younger and Hipper teenager instead of a snarky adult New Yorker.
Toys
- G.I. Joe: Nicky Lee, code name Tunnel Rat, is a demolitions expert and combat engineer who "grew up mean" on the streets of Brooklyn. G.I. Joe: Sigma 6 and G.I. Joe: Renegades follow through by depicting him with a strong Brooklyn accent, making him come across as very similar to Rattrap.
- Monster High: Mouscedes King is a wererat who is from the city of Boo York.
Video Games
- Date Everything!: A variation; Vaughn Trapp, the anthropomorphized form of the player's rat trap, is the "unholy amalgam of rat and trap", with rat-like teeth, whiskers, a rat tail ponytail, and hair shaped like rat ears. He has a New York accent and curses the most out of any Dateable in the game. In spite of his rat-like features, his passion in life is to kill rats, to the point that he loses his sense of purpose with no rats to trap. His Realized form keeps most of the rat-like features.
- Sam & Max: Freelance Police: The series as a whole mostly takes place in Manhattan, so New York accents are a given, but the series' rat characters like Jimmy Two-Teeth and Frankie have Brooklyn accents to fit their lower-class petty criminal shtick. Subverted by the Rat Queen in Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual!, who speaks in a grandiose English accent.
- Super Mario Bros. 2: Downplayed in the remake Super Mario Advance. Mouser is voiced with a Brooklyn accent by Charles Martinet. Although he is a mouse, he looks rather ratlike and has traits that are more stereotypically associated with rats than mice (big, scrappy, antagonistic, etc.) Interestingly, Mouser's very first voiced appearance in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! averted this trope by giving him a German accent which falls more into the Punny Name aspect of the enemy.
Web Animation
- Natural Habitat Shorts: All shorts that deal with rats or that have rats as supporting characters in them tend to have them speak with a Brooklyn accent.
- Rabid Fans: One of the hosts is Pete, a rat who speaks with a slight Brooklyn accent and is a massive Nicks fan.
- Rat Movie: Mystery of the Mayan Treasure: The titular rats all have New York accents, though it's most audible from da giant rat dat makes all of da rules.
Web Video
- Dimension 20: In The Unsleeping City, one of the player characters is Kugrash, a tiny rat man with a strong New York accent that lives in the sewers as a protector of New York's homeless population. He used to be a crooked attorney named Bruce Kugrich, who was transformed into a rat man after crossing the wrong person.
- Kid Time Storytime: The anthropomorphic rats White Rat and Gray Rat speak in Brooklyn accents and are said to live in New York and ride the subway.
- POWCreations: As one may expect from two series themed around rats, New York City is often referenced in relation to its rat population in the Rats SMP and its sequel Rats: In Paris, with several of the rat characters hailing from the Big Applenote and the Present Day segment of Yogscast Jingle Jam crossover event in the former series taking place in New York. Shelby is the one who plays into it the most by speaking in a thick Brooklyn accent while in character and building her rat-house with the brick wall of the Attic exposed in the original series to remind her of the townhouses back home.
Martyn: This is a big city for such little rats! Oli, how did you ever survive here?
Oli: Oh, no. You see, the thing is, they don't really notice the rats, so you can go anywhere, eat what you want, you live like a king out here! It's a good life!
Western Animation
- Beast Wars: Rattrap is a snarky, cynical Cowardly Lion of a spy and demolitions expert with an exaggerated Brooklyn accent.
- James the Cat: Pa Rat & family are examples of the Cockney variant. In the Series 2 episode "Ups and Downs", the Cornerhouse residents make Pearly King outfits for Pa and Ma as part of their surprise.
- Silverwing: Remus, one of the two rat kings, has a Brooklyn accent with a Creepy High-Pitched Voice that fits his shifty, low-down personality. His good brother, Romulus, has a deeper voice and lacks a noticeable accent.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Inverted with Master Splinter, who — despite being a rat living in the New York sewers — is one of the only characters typically portrayed with a distinctly non-New York accent; he usually has a Japanese accent, typically as a result of being either the pet of the Japanese Hamato Yoshi or the mutated form of the man himself. In some iterations, it's Raph who has the Brooklyn accent.