Rodents of Unusual Size: Difference between revisions
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{{examples}}
==
* Several Kia car commercials feature giant hamsters, sometimes complete with giant hamster wheels.
* In an ad for Doritos, a man puts a piece of an extra-cheesy dorito on a mousetrap, then sits down to eat some more. A giant mouse (well, a man in a mouse suit) bursts out of the wall and tackles him, presumably not being satisfied with the tiny tip of one chip.
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* There's a commercial for extra-durable work pants which demonstrates their toughness with a giant cartoon beaver, which loses its teeth trying to bite through a pair.
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* ''[[Galaxy Angel (anime)|Galaxy Angel]]'' had this alien hamster thing which they found in the ruins of a once great city.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* [[Neil Gaiman]]'s gag biography in ''[[Sandman]]: The Season of Mists'' [[Suspiciously Specific Denial|denies]] that he was found outside a London sewer unable to say anything more than "Powerful big rats, gentlemen". And then goes on to deny that he had a vestigial tail, played a part in the ''obviously fictional'' negotiations between Londons Above and [[Neverwhere|Below]], or that there were any tooth marks on the bones.
* In the ''[[Judge Dredd]]'' universe they have these. After examining the meat from one they decide to farm them in place of the regular rats they used to farm.
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* One supporting character from ''[[The Elementals]]'' was a wererat who had a crush on Fathom.
== [[Film]] ==
* [[Trope Namer|Named]] after the R.O.U.S. from ''[[The Princess Bride (film)|The Princess Bride]]''.
* The movie adaptation of H. G. Wells' ''[[The Food of the Gods]]'' features giant rats besieging some people in a cabin. Or rather, it features normal rats romping around a miniature set, and a few prop rat-heads that make "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" look like ''Aliens'' by comparison.
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* ''[[The Killer Shrews]]'' features giant shrews. (Well, giant for shrews, at least. Theyr'e played by German-shepherd-sized dogs in cheap prosthetics.)
== [[Literature]] ==
* ''[[
* The [[Stephen King]] short story ''Graveyard Shift'' has a lot of rats of usual size...{{spoiler|until you go down to the sub-basement where there are not only rodents of unusual size but they're mutated as well, the "queen" of which is big enough to eat a man}}(appears in the collection ''[[Night Shift]]'').
* The James Herbert trilogy of novels: ''The Rats'', ''Lair'' and ''Domain''.
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* ''[[Parrish Plessis]]'' has canrats, rat-dog hybrids that are both vicious and intelligent. One of them, the Big One, is the size of a doberman.
* The H.G. Wells' novel ''The Food of the Gods'' features giant rats, about the size of wolves, as part of the mutated ecology that the titular food's unleashed. Unfortunately for humans, the rats also have the carnivorous temperament of wolves and quickly become the dominant pack hunters in the hot zones.
* The Changelings from ''[[
* The Lemming-Men of Yull from Toby Frost's [[Space Captain Smith]] books have armed and industrialized themselves, but still retain their love of jumping off cliffs.
* The Doormouse is a once-human businessman in the [[Nightside]], who had himself changed into a giant bipedal mouse because he likes being cute and fuzzy. Not a ''dor''mouse; his name came about because he's in the business of renting out use of his [[Cool Gate]] collection.
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* The Rh/attes are an aptly-named alien race from ''Chess With A Dragon''.
== [[Live-Action TV]] ==
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'', "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" (considered a [[Special Effect Failure]] in actual execution though)
* ''[[The New Avengers]]'' episode "Gnaws".
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* SPG, the pet hamster of Vyvyan on ''[[The Young Ones]]'', was usually played by a puppet the size of a guinea pig rather than the size of a real hamster. In one episode, he scarfed down an entire potfull of lentils and swelled up to volleyball size.
== [[Music]] ==
* The ''[["Weird Al" Yankovic|Radioactive Hamsters From a Planet Near Mars]]''.
* Green Day had an album cover where a gigantic Hamster was attacking society.
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* The [[World War I]] song "The Quartermaster's Store" mentions "rats, rats, as big as bloody cats" (see also [[Real Life]]).
== [[Newspaper
* This is an [https://web.archive.org/web/20110811203152/http://garfield.nfshost.com/1981/09/20/ occasional] [https://web.archive.org/web/20110811204848/http://garfield.nfshost.com/1983/12/10/ gag] in ''[[Garfield]]''; Garfield will be pretending to mouse, or maybe teasing a mouse and the [https://web.archive.org/web/20111113133145/http://garfield.nfshost.com/1987/11/22/ mouse] [https://web.archive.org/web/20110811202633/http://garfield.nfshost.com/1989/04/03/ will be] [https://web.archive.org/web/20111113134536/http://garfield.nfshost.com/1991/11/08/ larger] [https://web.archive.org/web/20110811205423/http://garfield.nfshost.com/2000/07/21/ than] [https://web.archive.org/web/20110811220935/http://garfield.nfshost.com/2002/11/16/ normal]. Then there's the [https://web.archive.org/web/20111113140923/http://garfield.nfshost.com/1984/12/18/ Training Mouse] from the arc where Garfield got locked out and found his way back to where Mama Leoni's used to be.▼
* In an early issue of ''[[Phil Foglio|What's New? With Phil And Dixie]]'', Phil distracts a giant monster rat by throwing a live cat at it.▼
== [[Oral Tradition]], [[Folklore]], Myths and Legends ==
* There's a Japanese legend called "The Boy Who Drew Cats", in which a city is plagued by a giant demonic rat. Which is eventually killed by the titular drawings of cats. [[A Wizard Did It|It's magical, okay?]]
* Also from Japan: Tesso (Iron Rat), a former human noble with [[Jerkass]], ungrateful parents who was cursed by a monk. He's a man-rat hybrid that raids the temples and the houses with a horde of smaller rats and devour everything on his path.
==
▲* This is an [https://web.archive.org/web/20110811203152/http://garfield.nfshost.com/1981/09/20/ occasional] [https://web.archive.org/web/20110811204848/http://garfield.nfshost.com/1983/12/10/ gag] in ''[[Garfield]]''; Garfield will be pretending to mouse, or maybe teasing a mouse and the [https://web.archive.org/web/20111113133145/http://garfield.nfshost.com/1987/11/22/ mouse] [https://web.archive.org/web/20110811202633/http://garfield.nfshost.com/1989/04/03/ will be] [https://web.archive.org/web/20111113134536/http://garfield.nfshost.com/1991/11/08/ larger] [https://web.archive.org/web/20110811205423/http://garfield.nfshost.com/2000/07/21/ than] [https://web.archive.org/web/20110811220935/http://garfield.nfshost.com/2002/11/16/ normal]. Then there's the [https://web.archive.org/web/20111113140923/http://garfield.nfshost.com/1984/12/18/ Training Mouse] from the arc where Garfield got locked out and found his way back to where Mama Leoni's used to be.
* The infamous "Moon Hoax", a series of articles in the 19th century New York ''Sun'', included fanciful accounts of giant civilized beavers living on the moon.▼
▲* In an early issue of ''[[Phil Foglio|What's New? With Phil And Dixie]]'', Phil distracts a giant monster rat by throwing a live cat at it.
* Some people think that the [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]] universe contains the Skaven, three-foot tall ratmen, using giant rats and rat-''ogres'', [[Flat Earth Atheist|but they are of course mad]].
** Or form Middenland, since you know you have been attacked by a ''massive'' army of said three-foot ratmen with [[Schizo-Tech|lazer cannons]]
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* [[Mortasheen|Morta]][http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen.htm sheen] has a few, including the amoebic; thieving [http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/gravesnitch.htm Gravesnitch] , the oddly-toothed [http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/gnawful.htm Gnawful], the cold-loving [http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/abomignash.htm Abomignash], and the absolutely disturbing [http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/vermoeba.htm Vermoeba] (Which is based on the Rat King detailed below)
== [[Video Games]] ==
* ''[[Pokémon]]'' has quite a few of these, often [[Com Mons]]. Examples include Rattata, Pachirisu, and of course, the Pikachu family.
** ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]'' has very scary implications if it weren't for the fact that the characters are trophies. Imagine, if you will, dropping a life-sized Pikachu on [[Kirby|Pop Star]] or [[Pikmin|Hocotate]]. A malicious, normal-sized Pikachu in either of those settings would be a Cthulhuesque horror upon the populations of those worlds, as it fits ''all'' of the ROUS criteria.
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** ''[[Fallout 3]]'' has a robot you can activate in the Old Olney Tunnels that mentions something during its startup sequence about an infestation of rodents of unusual size. {{spoiler|It is usually torn to pieces soon after by the 10 foot tall Deathclaws infesting the tunnels}}.
** ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'' has a direct quote from ''[[The Princess Bride (film)|The Princess Bride]]'' (see quote at top) when doing the Debt Collector quest's final part in Broc Flower Cave, which is of course filled with [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Rodents of Unusual Size]].
* ''[[The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind]]'' had giant rats, and in an expansion, tamed giant rats that carried extra stuff for your character.
** ''[[The Elder Scrolls
*** There's also a woman in one of the cities that keeps pet rats. Her rival hated them, and so put out meat to lure them, which had the effect of attracting mountain lions which came and killed a few of the rats. The lions were surprisingly weak in battle compared to the ones you usually fight in the wild.
**** That's because they were starved.
** In ''[[The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim]]'' they're called skeevers. They're so big that people lay down bear traps to catch them. One crazy guy underground tried to create an army of them.
* Twitch, a champion in ''[[League of Legends]]'', was a sewer rat who gained sentience and bipedal form from magical runoff. [[Single
* In the 1990s PC fantasy kingdom sim ''Majesty'', giant rats were generally the first monsters to show up in your kingdom.
** And rat-men were another common annoyance, though they were at least one of the few enemies your city guard could handle competently.
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* ''[[NetHack]]'' has giant rats and rabid rats are common early-game enemies, and ROUS are one of the many hallucinatory monsters. Many variants such as ''[[UnNetHack]]'' and ''[[EvilHack]]'' include the enormous rat and actual ROUS as stronger variants, while ''[[SpliceHack]]'' also includes humanoid rats.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* Giant mutant rodents are the signature creation of ''[[Narbonic]]'''s Helen Narbon. Of course, Helen being a young girl at heart, they happen to be giant mutant ''gerbils''.
* The trope name is evoked in the title of an ''[[8-Bit Theater|Eight Bit Theater]]'' [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2005/07/12/episode-575-rats-of-unusual-size/ episode] which discusses dire rats... but the resulting rodent isn't one, just an [[Ax Crazy]] dwarf disguised to chase for it.
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* In ''Yamara'', Tim the paladin is turned into a vampire, but messes up his first attempt to turn into a bat, becoming a giant flying squirrel instead.
== [[Web Original]] ==
* Actually older than [[Web Original]], as it goes back to Usenet, [[The Internet Oracle]] has as his arch enemy Woodchucks. The reason is the infamous Woodchuck question he is constantly asked, "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?". Some of his enemy woodchucks were rather large. After ''[[The Princess Bride (film)|The Princess Bride]]'' came out, they were given the official name of "R.O.U.S.".
* Squirrels are one of the eight [[Insistent Terminology|sentient (i.e., humanoid)]] species in [[Tasakeru]]. They're the only rodent species among sentientkind; the others are canines (wolves and foxes), mustelids (badgers, ferrets, raccoons, and skunks), and lepines (rabbits).
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* [[Kizzsprite]] is a chinchilla, resurrected as a kernelsprite. Of course, much weird plot shit surrounds him. We probably shouldn't get any further than that.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Splinter from ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' is a pet rat who was mutated into a four foot rat-man - or, in the 1987 series, a human mutated into a four-foot sewer rat.
* [[Classic Disney Shorts|Mickey Mouse]] is a three foot tall mouse. Good thing he's not dangerous. [[Kingdom Hearts|Well,]] [[Epic Mickey|usually]].
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* In ''[[The Owl House]]'', ratworms are [[Mix-and-Match Critters| giant worms with the heads of rats]]. Residents of the Boiling Isles use them in equestrian competitions, and Eberwolf (the Beast Keeper Coven head) [[Horse of a Different Color| has one for a mount.]]
==
▲* The infamous "Moon Hoax", a series of articles in the 19th century New York ''Sun'', included fanciful accounts of giant civilized beavers living on the moon.
== [[Real Life]] ==
* The [[wikipedia:Capybara|capybara]], the [[wikipedia:Beaver|beaver]] and the [[wikipedia:Porcupine|porcupine]] (the three largest living rodents)
* A "rat king" is the name given to a group of rats whose tails are so mired in muck and filth that they are permanently stuck together. Just as horrifying today as it was back in the sixteenth century.
** One wonders how long a rat king would survive. Counting "survival" as the amount of time between forming a rat king and the number of component rats which are dead being sufficient to noticeably hamper the surviving ones.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Index of Exact Trope Titles]]
[[Category:Bigger Is Better]]
[[Category:Rodent Tropes]]
[[Category:Index of Fictional Creatures]]
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