Nice Mice

1/100th your size. 100 times the hero you are.

"I cannot imagine mice as the embodiment of evil. Mice are such charming little creatures, and it is not by accident that Mickey Mouse became an absolutely universal hero."

— Andrey Konchalovskiy on why he changed the Mouse King to the Rat King in his adaptation of The Nutcracker

Unlike rats, mice are often portrayed as nice and heroic even though they are common household pests.

Very small and cute, yet wild, the mouse is an animal often used as a metaphor for someone easily underestimated. Thus, mouse characters and humanoid mouse races tend to be heroic and really good people, yet easily underestimated. In many works, this last trait is something they grow to resent deeply; it's hard to demand respect from someone when you can't even reach his knees and your voice is very squeaky — no matter how brave you are.

These mice characters are designed to be likable one way or another. Some are heroic, some are nice, and some are both. A potential Pest Controller, and a perfect animal to stun a Cruel Elephant.

Fictional mice of this sort will typically be white, tan or light gray, and are also often drawn with deliberately cute, chubby or fluffy designs, generally tending towards large eyes and short, round snouts, something particularly apparent when mice appear in the same works as rats.

Resourceful Rodent for rodents portrayed as clever and resourceful, You Dirty Rat! for rats who are portrayed as disgusting, often as the Unpleasant Animal Counterpart to mice. If construed in the knee-jerk manner by often-larger life forms as not so nice, it's Eek, a Mouse!! Compare Screwball Squirrel, the squirrel equivalents who are hyperactive pranksters and/or CloudCuckoolanders (although there are just as many outright villainous examples). See also Righteous Rabbit for the lagomorph end of the spectrum, and Cute Kitten and Precious Puppy, the feline and canine equivalents respectively. Contrast A Mischief of Mice.

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Examples:

Anime And Manga

• Kiratto Pri☆Chan has Miracle Kiratts' mascot Kiracchu, a pink mouse who is very friendly and tries to help as much as she can, and she even tried to befriend their rivals' mascot, Melpan.
• Pikachu from Pokémon are based off mice (the -chu is from the Japanese onomatopoeia of a mouse's squeak), and Ash's from the series is loyal, protective, and friendly.

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• There was a Friskies commercial where a cartoon mouse convinced a real cat to eat cat food instead of chasing after him.
• Chuck E. Cheese, the amicable mascot of a pizza restaurant/arcade for kids, was canonically a rat until 1993 when he was retconned into a mouse.

Comic Books

• In Art Spiegelman's Maus, a narrative of the author's father's struggle to survive The Holocaust, the Jews are drawn as mice. Nazis are drawn as cats, and the Allied troops (particularly Americans) are drawn as dogs.
• Mouse Guard: Though rogue mice feature as villains in the first story arc, none of them are as bad as Cats or Weasels.
• The Powerpuff Girls #67: "Monkey Business" has Mojo Jojo giving up his life of crime to become a restaurateur. The girls don't believe him and they try to prove it when they find rats in the kitchen. Mojo angrily explains that the rats are expert chefs he brought over from France. (Actually one of the rats tells Bubbles in rat-speak and she translates.)
• In Sunnyville Stories, the Eftirmatur family is a family of Scandinavian mice that runs the local bakery.
• In the original comic book that Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars! was based on, mice are benevolent godlike beings with a Crystal Spires and Togas type civiliation. One of them resolves the conflict by using his powers to teleport the entire toad army all the way across the Aniverse where they can't hurt anyone.
• Chlorophylle: The titular character is an heroic country mouse who is constantly protecting his homeland from all sort of enemies, including armies of rats.

Comic Strips

• Garfield:
  • The mice in Jon's house (most of them, anyway) are friendly towards Garfield. Jon, however, dislikes them and very often demands that Garfield get them out of the house.
  • One in particular, Squeak, became a minor recurring character, complaining about how mice have a bad rap - only for Garfield to retort that humans have a pretty good reason to distrust rodents.

Film — Animation

• The mice in Cinderella are not just nice, they are ultimately responsible for helping Cinderella's dream come true.
• Roquefort the mouse from The Aristocats is a loyal friend to the titular characters.
• The mice in The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under are so nice they form a society to rescue children in need.
• Morton from the 2008 adaptation of Horton Hears a Who! is snarky but he's not a Jerkass. While he doesn't believe Horton's claims that there's life on the speck either, he still does his best to help Horton and defends him when the Sour Kangaroo is slandering him.
• Timothy from Dumbo is one of the few nice characters in the show, and also the best friend of the titular Honorable Elephant. He even helped him on dealing with those Cruel Elephants.
• Same with most of the mice from The Great Mouse Detective. The villain, Ratigan, in contrast, appears to be a rat, even though he vehemently denies being one (he was definitely a mouse in the books). The exception to this trope being Ratigan's mooks who are thuggish criminals. Basil himself may not be nice, but he's still good.
• Subverted with Mrs. Fieldmouse in Thumbelina who is most definitely not nice. While she initially appears to be friend to Thumbelina, she shows her true colors as a False Friend and Gold Digger just using Thumbelina.
• Fievel and the mice from the An American Tail movies are all nice. They're also stand-ins for poor oppressed minorities in the human world. The villains from the third movie are also mice, however.
• Subverted with the mice in The Nutcracker Prince as while many of the mice are sillier than both the Mouse King and his mother, they are still loyal to their king and try to attack the toys.
• Played straight in The Secret of NIMH, where the main character Mrs. Brisby and her children are your standard animated mice, though somewhat fearful and skittish due to their small size and large number of natural enemies. Unfortunately, the majority of the Mice of NIMH were killed during the escape from the research facility, leaving only Mr. Ages and Jonathan, Mrs Brisby's husband. However, the movie also averts You Dirty Rat!; all the rats in the movie are uplifted animals, and most of them are benevolent (aside from the main villain and his henchman until the henchman's Heel–Face Turn).
• Drastically subverted in Epic (2013), in which Mary Katherine's expectations about this trope nearly get her killed. Only her leafman companion's quick reflexes save her from discovering that, to creatures the size of insects, an ordinary field mouse is a predator.
• A church mouse and his wife are supporting characters in Robin Hood (1973). They're friends with with Robin and Friar Tuck, and they're kind and polite during their brief screen time.
• Played with in Robin Robin. The mice are heroic characters, especially Dad Mouse, who is very kind and caring to Robin. They do steal food and cause trouble for humans, though they don't see anything morally wrong with it, and this story is not told from the humans' perspective.
• Slink the Mouse (voiced by Ernest Borgnine) from the 2011 Christian animated film The Lion of Judah is the oldest animal of the main cast alongside the wisest of the bunch. In the film, he tries rescuing Judah the Lamb from getting sacrificed by humans in Jerusalem to no luck. Near the end of the film, he ends up trapped inside the same cage as Judah and tries comforting him until "The King" arrives. After Jesus' death, Slink and Judah are freed and witness Jesus' resurrection before leaving earth. Slink previously appeared in the 2008 Christmas film Once Upon A Stable where he alongside the other animal character witness Jesus birth in Bethlehem.
• The titular character of the 1997 Croatian film Lapitch The Little Shoemaker is a kindhearted young mouse who is always eager to help those in need.

Film — Live Action

• MouseHunt's mouse counts, but it's a more blurred example due to Alternative Character Interpretation. Obviously the audience is supposed to feel sorry for him, being hunted so ruthlessly by two humans, but he outsmarts them so often that it's clear he's not an ordinary mouse. So, if he's capable of understanding that, perhaps he's capable of understanding what a nuisance he is to two humans who consider the house their property.
• The protagonist of Stuart Little is a sweet and friendly mouse child who is adopted by humans.

Folklore

• In Latin America there's no tooth fairy; instead, the one taking the children's teeth and replacing them with coins is a friendly tooth mouse or ratón de los dientes (also called Ratón/Ratoncito Pérez (Pérez Mouse or Little Mouse Pérez)). It also intervenes in french speaking countries under the name of La petite souris (The little mouse).

Literature

• The mouse in Aesop's fable The Lion and the Mouse makes this trope Older Than Feudalism.
• The main character of the Angelina Ballerina series—as well as all her friends and family—are pleasant and civilized. Even Angelina's flaws aren't due to her species as a mouse.
• In The Chronicles of Narnia:
  • Mice are the most badass race, and the only race that gets a racial storyline of its own. All other races of talking animals are given speech as a divine gift at the dawn of time. The mice, however, are so small and insignificant that they are overlooked by Aslan himself. However...
  • In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the mice earn their rank among the ascended animals by making a heroic attempt at Save Your Deity. In that story, mice chew off the ropes that bind the corpse of Aslan. As a result, mice are promoted to the rank of talking animal, and many years later the mice are considered among the most brave and honorable of all the animals.
  • In Prince Caspian the mouse militia fearlessly go up against far larger enemies, routinely taking them out by being ignored in the fray and chopping them from underneath. Culminating in the Heroic Sacrifice of their commander Reepicheep and his army's quite special way of dealing with that situation.
  • In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Reepicheep is one of the main charactes, and arguably the bravest of them all. Lucy works quite hard to resist her urge of cuddling him, since she understand that such behavior from her would hurt his pride. The local Jerkass human taunts him for his size, but he quickly teaches the far larger human to fear him. Also, while the other heroes just happen to be on that journey for miscellaneous reasons, Reepicheep is the one doing the journey as a holy quest. It's worthy of note that when the voyage reaches the borders of Aslan's Country, Reepicheep sails on while the others turn back, making him the only Narnian as far as we know to bodily enter heaven, and probably the only mortal anywhere since Elijah.
• In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, mice are revealed to be highly intelligent pan-dimensional beings; the little furry squeaky things we see are just their avatars in this dimension. Millions of years ago, they built the Master Computer Deep Thought as a means of discovering the Answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. They succeeded. Somewhat subverted though in that they act like assholes, treating Arthur as if he's nothing, and suggesting that they could just take his brain, dice and slice it up and replace it with a computerized one and nobody would know the difference.
• Redwall uses this a lot. The pacifist utopia that is the titular Redwall Abbey was founded mainly by mice, its Abbots and Brothers and Sisters are almost always mice, the heroes in each of the books usually include at least one mouse, and the famed Martin the Warrior whose sword makes an appearance in almost every book was a mouse. Likewise, with only one exception, characters that are mice are always good.
• Mice are the heroes of Robin Jarvis' Deptford Mice trilogy. They do battle against evil sewer rats and the God of Evil they worship.
• Averted by most of the mice in The Tale of Despereaux, who sentence the title character to be eaten by rats just because he is different, but Played Straight by Despereaux himself. (rats are bad, except for Chiarascuro, who is ultimately redeemed).
• In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz fieldmice rescue Dorothy, Lion, and Toto from the poppy field by dragging them away. (In the film The Wizard of Oz Glinda makes it snow to rescue them.)
• Defied in-universe in Moving Pictures by Definitely Not Squeak, a mouse who began talking under the influence of Holy Wood cinemagic. Told of this trope, he was outraged that humans consider his kind sweet and delicate, as he was the most badass mouse in the house and proud of it.
• The Wee Widow Mouse and her family in The Book of the Dun Cow, including her deceased Badass Adorable husband, who actively defied Cockatrice before his death.
• The Title character in Mus Of Kerbridge.
• The mouse featured in some of Beatrix Potter's books such as Miss Tiddlemouse and the mice featured in The Tailor of Gloucester are this. With the exception of the male and female mice from The Tale Of Two Naughty Mice who are trouble makers.
• The mouse in The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson is an "easily underestimated" example - he's little, cute and a lot weaker than the predators he meets, but he convinces them all that he's the scariest creature in this wood.
• Los cuentos de mi tía Panchita (think Costa Rica's version of the Mother Goose) has a short Nursery Rhyme titled La cucarachita Mandinga [Mandinga the Little Cockroach]. The eponymous insect ends marrying a mouse named Ratón Pérez because of his sweet and tender voice.
• Timothy is a friendly mouse in Cat Pack that the cats agree not to eat in gratitude for his help.
• The Church Mice picture book series features an entire church full of nice mice, along with Sampson the cat.
• The Aeslin mice of InCryptid are a species of ridiculously cute critters who are intelligent and have an Animal Religion based around the Price-Healy family, to whom they have undying loyalty (as long as their gods keep their end of the deal, providing protection and sometimes food). Don't make the mistake of thinking they're helpless, though; they make and use weapons, and in groups can even take down large snakes and alligators.
• In The Mouse Watch, the titular team is a Heroes "R" Us organization of courageous mice who dedicate their lives to protecting the world. Even protagonist Bernie Skampersky, a Troubled Sympathetic Bigot due to her Fantastic Racism against rats, is an example of this trope more often than not. And Bernie eventually has a Jerkass Realization and stops being a bigot. However, Digit becomes an aversion of the trope when he reveals himself as a traitor.

Live Action TV

• Mimoso in Odisea Burbujas is a tender and innocent baby mouse.
• The concept behind the international franchise of Topo Gigio is that he is a friendly, nice mouse.
• Today's Special has an entire Mouse World of sentient, benevolent mice; one of them, Muffy Mouse, is a series regular. She's a little mischievous, but ultimately one of the good guys.

Music

• Kids Praise: The anthropomorphic variety of this appears in the fourth album: there are a few churchmice forming a church's choir, and Charity Churchmouse becomes a recurring character.

Myths & Religion

• Classical Mythology: Mice were said to be associated with Apollon, the Greek god of light, and he even has an epithet related to this, Smintheus ("of the mice"). That said, Apollon was also associated with destruction, so his association with mice was as much due to their cuddliness as much as the fact that they're pests and plague-carriers.
• Among the Haida people of British Columbia, there is the spirit known as Mouse Woman, a diminutive grandmother figure who acts as a teacher and a nurturer, keeping peace between humans and spirits through trickery.

Podcasts

• Madeline from Wooden Overcoats is a cheerful and pleasant narrator for the series, as well as a loyal and affectionate Only Friend to Rudyard, our resident Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist.

Puppet Shows

• Tutter from Bear in the Big Blue House is a blue mouse who is a friend of the titular Bear. He loves cheese, has a tendency to worry and fret, and seeks to tidy up anything he can.
• Click from Between the Lions is a very high tech mouse in the fact that she can drag and drop objects and characters into and out of books and websites.
• Scotty from the The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss episode, "Horton Has a Hit" is a mouse who is a friend of Morton the Elephant Bird. While the other animals of the Jungle of Nool tease Morton for being an elephant bird, Scotty assures Morton that he'll always be his friend.

Tabletop Games

• Exalted: The mice of the sun are celestial servants of the Unconquered Sun, the greatest of the gods, and are sent into creation to cause small effects with large cascading consequences in order to aid the righteous and hinder the wicked.
• Magic: The Gathering introduced mice as a creature type in the fairy-tale setting of Eldraine, to make a Cinderella reference. Since rats are pegged into nasty roles this card could not make rat tokens, hence why mouse ones.
• Mice and Mystics has this as a central conceit. Through an Emergency Transformation, the heroes battle evil as mice, and the regular mice they encounter are just as sentient, upstanding, and heroic.
• In Crimestrikers, one member of the titular Heroes "R" Us organization is Darian "DX" Xenos, the team's Communications Officer and Mission Control. He's an anthro mouse and a very pleasant individual, despite having occasional problems with social skills due to his Autism.

Video Games

• Pokémon:
  • Plusle and Minun are always there to cheer their trainer and the other Pokemon in the party on (and cry when they lose).
  • Pikachu is somewhat of a subversion in that it can be moody, but otherwise plays the trope straight (Ash's Pikachu in particular) as the franchise's beloved Mascot Mook.
  • Tandemaus from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are a pair of tiny white mice that hold immense loyalty to each other (and you, once you get one). They hold such a strong bond, in fact, that their evolution isn't so much "getting a stronger form" as it is just acquiring children.
• In Prince of Persia, the Princess has a cute pet mouse that she loves very much. She sends him out to check on the Prince, and later he rescues the Prince in one level by opening a gate he gets trapped behind.
• The late 90s Reader Rabbit titles have Mattie the Mouse, who is of course a sweet and soft-spoken creature.
• D.I.J., a mouse hinted at throughout Resident Evil – Code: Veronica and then named and described when you find his diary in the Battle Game.
• The Spirit And The Mouse is an indie platformer game where you play as a stray mouse named Lila who's working together alongside the titular spirit to save your village home.
• The arcade game based on the cartoon series Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars! incorporates some elements from the original comic book, including the race of gentle Actual Pacifist mice with magical powers who live in a Crystal Spires and Togas type civilization. Somewhat confusingly, though, their homeworld is called Planet Rat. Two of them appear. One is saved by Bucky and uses his powers to help him. Because he is a pacifist, however, he helps in ways such as shielding him from harm or by bridging gaps in the terrain, never by directly attacking enemies. Later, the ruler of Planet Rat, Ro-Dent, tells Bucky how to save the planets pillaged by the toads by returning their stolen lifeforce.
• In Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, the mousefolk are shown to be a kind and diverse group who have long been suffering from Fantastic Racism. This is in contrast to their leader, Mausinger, who is closer to the You Dirty Rat! archetype. That portrayal of him is subverted, however, when his Hidden Depths are explored, and he turns out to be a fundamentally good person as well.
• Ultima VI features Sherry the Mouse, a talking mouse the Avatar must win over to help with a quest later in the game.
• Inverted with the Squeaks from Kirby: Squeak Squad. They are a gang of thieving mice seeking out the rarest of treasures. Though after their Heel–Face Turn, they play this trope straight and start to help and assist Kirby during his adventures, such as in Mass Attack and Star Allies.
• Campfire Cat Cafe & Snack Bar: One of the special NPCs is Wiz the White, a friendly wizard mouse who runs a minigame where a slider goes back and forth, and the player has to stop it at the right time. The in-game explanation is that you're helping Wiz make the biggest bubble, but in terms of gameplay, what this does is help the player get more acorns or diamonds.

Webcomics

• In Squid Row, Randie dreams of being helped by this and the Bluebird of Happiness while cleaning up the coffee place.

Western Animation

• Pinky and the Brain: Pinky is nice, if completely cracked. The Brain — not so much, but he's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
  • Julia, a Recurring Character from the Animaniacs (2020) version of the series, plays with this trope. She's an ordinary mouse whom Brain makes as intelligent as himself so he can have a "first lady" to help his senatorial campaign. This goes horribly right when Julia's idealistic, compassionate nature makes her so popular that the voters choose her instead of Brain! When she opposes Brain's ruthless plans, he uses a Mind-Control Device on her that ends up malfunctioning. In the end, Julia escapes and starts plotting against Brain, eventually undergoing a Face–Heel Turn.
• Tom and Jerry: While Jerry can be nasty at times (either in provoked self-defense from Tom, or even just tormenting Tom for the fun of it), he is usually the more good-natured in his feud with Tom, and the most likely to at least attempt a truce or relent when their war goes a step too far (he once saved Tom after he almost drowned trying to chase after him for example). He's also nice to other animals like canaries, baby woodpeckers, baby ducks, baby seals, escaped lions and circus elephants (on more than one occasion even).
  • Part of why both Gene Deitch's and Chuck Jones' rendition of Tom and Jerry are mixed to generally negative is how both characters Took a Level in Jerkass, and Jerry is no exception, making him oftentimes feel Out of Character.
• Herman and Katnip, a knockoff of Tom and Jerry attempted to play this straight, trying to cast the mouse Herman as the hero. However more then a few viewers, including Matt Groening, felt Herman was a subversion, due to his treatment of the Harmless Villain, Katnip, verging into Sadistic. Itchy of the Simpsons mentioned below is stated to be based on his Alternative Character Interpretation of Herman being evil.
• Subverted in The Simpsons Show Within a Show, The Itchy & Scratchy Show character, Itchy the mouse, who is a cheerful yet murderous psycho mouse who plots to kill his friend Scratchy the cat For the Evulz.
• Surprisingly subverted (considering it's a '30s cartoon) in the Fleischer short Fresh Vegetable Mystery where the mice are the bad guys.
• Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse: Both are nice. Hands down. Subverted with Mickey's unscrupulous rival Mortimer Mouse, though.
• Hanna-Barbera:
  • In Pixie, Dixie and Mr. Jinks, Dixie and Pixie were usually only acting in defense from Mr. Jinks, and only did the stealing of the cheese to survive. Sometimes it would switch around where Jinks was the hero of the episode and Pixie and Dixie would get their comeuppance in the end.
  • The Cattanooga Cats: Motormouse was usually Autocat's antagonist as it was Autocat's job to get rid of him from the Spin Your Wheels Garage. Once in awhile, though, Motormouse would help out Autocat and on occasion give him a lift home from work.
  • Blabber, from Snooper and Blabber, is a good guy as he and Snooper are detectives.
  • Mushmouse, from the Punkin' Puss and Mushmouse segment of the Magilla Gorilla show, is basically Jerry Mouse as a hillbilly. He's merely trying to keep from the end of Punkinpuss' rifle.
  • On the Undercover Elephant segment of CB Bears, the titular detective was assisted—and sometimes hindered—by Loudmouse.
• Looney Tunes: Speedy Gonzales is a mouse who pretty much only steals cheese to help his compadres. Sniffles is well-meaning, if annoying. There are some notable aversions however:
  • Averted in the early Looney Tunes cartoon, "The Night Watchman." Not only are the mice shady antagonists, the kitten is a protagonist.
  • Averted in Scaredy Cat and Claws for Alarm, when the mice (seen in the first and implied in the second) overtly try to kill Porky with poor Sylvester the only one aware of the danger.
  • Sylvester is victim to a mischievous rodent trying to starve him to death in "Canned Feud" and is also victim to a hungry mouse who is trying to eat him in Snow Business.
  • Chuck Jones' Hubie and Bertie were subversions, as they tended to mind-screw the hapless Claude. Three examples:
    • In "The Aristo-Cat", they convinced Claude that he was they mouse and Hubie and Bertie were cats.
    • in "Roughly Squeaking" they convinced Claude that he was a lion, and the bulldog in the yard was either a moose, a gazelle or a pelican.
    • In "Mouse Wreckers", they drive Claude insane by shoving the doghouse down the chimney (which he's sleeping in front of), making him think the house is upside-down, underwater, etc. all just to get him out of the house.
  • Subverted in Bob Clampett's "We the Animals Squeak", in which a band of mobster mice kidnap the son of champion mouser Kansas City Kitty, in an effort to blackmail her into letting the mice run rampant.
  • Averted in the short "Ain't We Got Fun", where the mice are depicted as gluttonous tricksters and the cat is depicted as heroic for trying to get rid of them (his owner, a Grumpy Old Man, initially assumes the cat is misbehaving and throws him out, but he begs the cat to come back once he sees what the mice did to his pantry).
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998): "Helter Shelter" introduces Bubbles' mouse friends Mr. and Mrs. Squeakers. They live in the Professor's sneakers.
• Biker Mice from Mars is about Badass Biker alien mice who protect Earth from evil.
• Garfield and Friends: Garfield rails against this trope in one episode, noting that mice were disease-spreading vermin.
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers: Of the animals with a larger sample size than one-offs or the main characters, mice are generally the most consistently nice of the animal which appear, with a rare handful of villainous examples. Of the main cast, Monterey Jack is a Boisterous Bruiser always ready for a brawl, but is otherwise kind-hearted and friendly. Gadget is nice quite literally to a fault, and on two or three occasions this comes back on her hard. And when she's pushed too far...
• Mighty Mouse was a superhero who more often than not rescued persecuted mice from villainous cats.
• The Mr. Bogus episode "Totally Bogus Video" featured a trio of mice who were being menaced by Ratty and his rottweiler accomplice.
• My Little Pony 'n Friends: In "Bright Lights", the mayor and sheriff of the mouse town of Muensterville are well-meaning and concerned for their people, only attacking the heroes when they mistake them for accomplices of those who harmed their town's children and willingly joining them and putting themselves in danger to stop the villains.
• Timothy Goes to School: Charles and Nora. While Charles is the nice and mostly shy. Nora is a little pushy around others but does become very kind around other students most of the time. Especially with Lilly.
• In Bojack Horseman, this is averted with Mia McKibben, assistant to J. D. Salinger (long story), who's anything but nice (though not evil, either; she's just aggressively competitive) and Stefani Stilton, editor of GirlCroosh (likewise, not evil; just all too willing to be biased over subjects she doesn't like). Played straight, however, with Ralph, Stefani's brother, which is the main reason he ends up dating PRINCESS CAROLYN.
• Li'l Sneezer from Tiny Toon Adventures is a toddler mouse with hurricane-like sneezes, who is one of the nicest characters on the show. He is very friendly and kind to everyone he meets, even to Furrball when he serves as his antagonist. One such example is in the short, "A Cub For Grub" (part of "Toon Physics"), when a trap he sets to catch a wild forest creature catches Furrball and lands him in a thorny bush. Sneezer spends the night removing Furrball's thorns and bandaging him.
• Minute Mouse was the Robin to Courageous Cat's Batman.
• Walter Lantz's Space Mouse was a galactic hero.
• Danger Mouse is the World's Greatest Secret Agent. He's quite competent, heroic to a fault, and doesn't suffer incompetence from his assistant Penfold well.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog: In contrast to the rats who are all nasty to various degrees, recurring character Charlie Mouse is one of Courage's good friends and he always helps him when needed. His appearance doesn't quite match his personality, however.

Other

• Tommy Douglas, the founder of Canada's left-wing New Democratic Party (and Canadian medicare), liked to tell a story about Mouseland, where the mice used to elect whichever cat was making the better promises about how the mice would fare under their rule. Eventually, one of the mice started to call for them to elect a mouse instead.

Real Life

• As mentioned under You Dirty Rat!, the common stereotypes are inverted with pet rodents (even then, many still confuse mice with rats). While rats can be well-trained, friendly, loving, and compassionate, even trained mice will sometimes bite their owner for no obvious reason. Mice also tend to escape if given half the chance, unlike the more loyal domestic rats, which usually return to their cage after exploring a bit. Mice often have less desire to keep themselves clean than rats do. Finally, male mice housed together usually end up killing one another, unlike male rats which can co-habit peacefully.
• Also inverted with wild mice, which love the taste of blood and if they can get to an incapacitated living creature (like, say, a sleeping human) have even been known to drink their body weight in blood if they can get away with it.
• Some wildlife mice tend to play this straight, in certain circumstances:
  • Grasshopper mice, native to Northern Americas, are tiny, fuzzy, and cute mice that like to eat insects, most of them that do harm to regular mice. Their favorite targets are often venomous scorpions, spiders, centipedes, and occasionally snakes. Although they do not make good pets, they kept those scary vermins from making future harm on biodiversity, making them this trope in their own right.
  • Many subspecies of hopping mice are known for their powerful long, narrow hind legs that can jump higher than most regular rodents, and sometimes prey on small insects and reptiles. Although they do come from the notorious and dreaded Land Down Under, some subspecies of hopping mice, such as spinifex hopping mice, are also affectionate pets in the Australian neighbourhood.

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