A dirty rat, both in name and nature.
For my first-ever CM proposal, I am proposing one of the most iconic of the FNAF fangame villains: RAT.
What's the work?[]
Five Nights at Candy's is a survival-horror videogame series created by Emil "Ace" Macko, based on the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise. It follows Mary Schmidt in the first and third instalments and her daughter Marylin Schmidt in the second installment as they try to avoid the animatronics from the fast-food restaurant Candy's Burgers & Fries, a rival business to Fazbear Entertainment.
Who's the villain?[]
RAT is a decrepit rat animatronic locked in the storage room of Candy's Burgers & Fries. He first appears during Night 6 of Five Nights at Candy's and it's remake Five Nights at Candy's: Remastered, exiting his room and trying to kill Mary. He later returns in Five Nights at Candy's 2, having now been moved to the Rowboatics Corp. factory with the other animatronics, where he and CAT try to kill Marylin.
In the prequel Five Nights at Candy's 3, he takes the form of both Monster Rat and Shadow Rat and acts similarly to the nightmare animatronics from Five Nights at Freddy's 4: haunting a young Mary Schmidt's nightmares. The game also reveals that, at Candy's Burgers & Fries' previous incarnation Rat & Cat Theater, before the animatronics were introduced, RAT had an human actor who was an alcoholic jerk. He was accidentally killed by the Puppeteer in a fight, resulting in his ghost possessing the animatronic.
What has he done?[]
Gosh, where to start? Let's go in chronological order, shall we? To summarise, RAT is shown to:
- Attempt to kill the Puppeteer after for being ordered to leave the Rat & Cat Theater. The Puppeteer only killed him in self-defence.
- Tormented Mary Schmidt in her nightmares as Monster Rat and Shadow Rat.
- Grabbed and attacked Mary's little brother. This was after he possessed the rat animatronic.
- Tried to kill Mary Schmidt.
- Ripped apart fellow animatronic Chester the Chimpanzee just for entering his room.
- Presumably murdered the new nightguard and framed Candy the Cat for it.
- Tried to kill Marilyn with CAT's help. Upon doing so, she is brutally mauled to death.
Mitigating factors[]
RAT has very few mitigating factors. His attack on Mary's brother, though the outcome was never shown onscreen, which would count as offscreen villainy, clearly left Mary traumatised and continued to fuel her nightmares. Even though he was a popular character with the children as a human, it was clear that he was both mean to the kids and egotistical about their adoration of him.
Moral agency[]
While all the alcohol may have clouded most of his ethics, RAT is obviously the ghost of a human under his metal shell, meaning that he definitely understands morality and is actively out to kill.
Heinous standard[]
When comparing crimes, RAT definitely stands out among the other villains of the series. Candy, Cindy, Chester and Blank, aside from actually liking the children during the day, tried kill Mary, Marylin and other nightguards, but nothing else (with Candy even being framed once and Chester and Blank being due to their faulty programming). The Penguin only wanted to mess with Mary and Marilyn and never tried to outright kill. Old Candy is implied to have attacked an adult in broad daylight, but this was to protect a child the adult was abusing. CAT clearly had good intentions at first and, much like the first four, has a notable lack of crimes aside from trying to kill Marilyn. The only other villain who compares to RAT is Vinnie, aside from accidentally killing RAT's actor, intentionally killing CAT's actor and tormenting Mary as Monster Vinnie, does very little in terms of villainy. It also helps that RAT is a Knight of Cerebus, cementing him as a much bigger threat than everyone else.
Final verdict[]
He definitely qualifies for me.