Web Video / Rats SMP

"Unknown to my younger self, however, one of the most exciting periods of my life, one full of mystery and inquisition, was the time a small family of friends moved into the Mansion, unbeknownst to the rest of us, at least at first. Our tale begins with some little rats…"

— The Grandmother

The Rats SMP was a private, modded Minecraft multiplayer server hosted by POW Creations, which was founded by Apokuna and OwengeJuiceTV. It featured several prominent Minecraft YouTubers and streamers, especially from the Outsiders SMP, the Empires SMP, and other adjacent series.

On the SMP, all the players are Rat Men living in a large Mansion in the countryside, having decided to stay there for the winter; however, the Mansion is also inhabited by human NPCs, who will attempt to catch and either trap or kill any of the rats if they see them. If a player dies three times, they are Killed Off for Real and sent into Spectator mode. Between server events, the rats must complete various quests to establish a closer relationship with other Mansion inhabitants and guests or prevent the humans from discovering their presence in their walls.

The Rats SMP began on October 16th, 2022, and ended on January 8th, 2023.

Note: Unless otherwise specified, all tropes pertain to the characters, not the content creators that play them.

There may be unmarked spoilers ahead; tread cautiously.

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The Rats SMP contains examples of:

A – L

• After the End: The "Future" section of the "Ghosts of Ratmas" event on Day 60 takes place after the fall of humanity, leaving the intelligent cats and the rats to their own devices, including space travel. The rat protagonists transported there have to stop the cats' Doomsday Device from destroying the Earth, or at least delay it.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: According to El, some of the rats tried some drinks after finding the Wine Cellar to the Mansion on Day 29, which resulted in, on their parts, a severe lack of judgement and the intentional overheating and subsequent explosion of the Boiler Room. The Janitor is not happy about it, to say the least. Following the incident, Will then suggests, with Martyn backing them up, framing the Janitor for the Boiler Room destruction by bringing in some alcohol from the Wine Cellar, citing that he was Drinking on Duty earlier that day.
• All There in the Manual: Supplementary material in the form of character bios for the main cast can be found on POWCreations' official Twitter account.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: A few of the rats have decidedly unnatural fur/hair colours, like Acho (lilac), Lizzie (pink), and Scott (light blue). Acho's case is justified and Played for Drama, being a former pet fancy rat who had ink spilled on him (and his fur is revealed to be naturally greyish white in his lore finale via Expository Hairstyle Change), while others have varying degrees of justification themselves from various pigments and less human influence.
• Analogy Backfire: On Day 47, Owen and Oliver try to convince everyone to let Scott off the hook for causing the Cat-astrophe, and cites how the other rats blew up the boiler back on Day 29. Bek and Will, the main instigators for the incident, are quick to assert that that was deliberate.
• Anvil on Head:
  • After the cats are released on Day 10, Tubbo drops an anvil on one of them, because apparently, he was taught to do so by a music album cover. It somehow lives.
  • Martyn repeatedly tries to drop anvils on the server guests during their appearances. When this works on Billzo, Martyn gets head-butted across the room in retaliation.
• Art Imitates Art: El's art gallery displays many rat-ified pastiches of classic art pieces created with the Chisel and Bits mod, including the "Mona Rita", "The Squeak", a version of "Starry Night" where the moon is a piece of cheese, and "The Creation of Ratam".
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • Rats:
    • Several references have been thrown around regarding the passage of time for the rats in years, especially in their backstories. In actuality, domesticated pet rats only live 2–4 years on average and about 7 years at maximum, while their wild counterpart, the brown rat, often barely lives one year.
    • On a related note, the rat reproductive rate is thoroughly exaggerated in a few instances. Rats typically have 5–10 babies per litter (or up to 12), and 3–6 litters per year, their average lifespan in the wild. This means they would usually have under 100 babies in a year, and are unlikely to have 400 or more children in a generation.
  • Contrary to what Ponk says, neither badgers nor honey badgers hibernate in the winter.
  • Termites:
    • Similarly to the rats, it's stated that the termite guests have been living in the walls of the Attics their entire lives up until they were found by the rats, which was about a week at most. In reality, queen termites can live up to a decade in optimal conditions, and even worker termites have an average livespan of a year on average.
    • Additionally, the termites pass their crown between each other, allegedly because their late grandfather never left a line of succession for it; needless to say, this is not how termite "queens" function — or any insect colonies, for that matter.
• Asleep for Days: The creator-characters logging in and out of the server are recorded in the in-game chat as them taking "rat naps", resulting in instances of this every time a creator-character hasn't appeared on the server for more than a day.
• Back for the Finale:
  • Lizzie accidentally falls asleep after the first few weeks and only wakes up in time for the finale. And then she gets shot by Mr. Icraga with a medieval crossbow. Luckily for her, she still has two lives to spare from being Put on a Bus for most of the series' run-time.
  • After the Janitor is told to pack up and leave about ten days after his debut, he returns for the finale when Mr. Icraga comes home and calls him off leave.
• Beta Couple: Aimsey and Guqqie, the rabbit guests, get together with much sweetness and fairly little drama.
  Martyn: Well, this goes better than Eloise and Bek, doesn't it?
• Big Applesauce: The "Present Day" section of the "Ghosts of Ratmas" event on Day 60 takes place in New York City. It's also the hometown of Oliver, Oli, and Shelby, the latter of whom are siblings.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Played with. On Day 9, Bek, Krow, Owen, and Scott tackle a quest involving an infestation of "giant silverfish" as tall as they are in the Master Bedroom's en suite bathroom drains. However, Owen is also quick to point out they're rats, so the scale of the insect infestation isn't the same as that of humans; Mrs. Icraga also only notes on how the presence of the bugs are "positively revolting" and never mentions anything about the insects being of abnormal size.
• Big Fancy House: The place where the server is set is a large house in the countryside, distant from the big cities; the house itself is enormous, not just from the perspective of the rat protagonists, but from the fact that it contains rooms and halls fancy enough to have chandeliers, as well as rat-sized secret passageways between rooms inside the walls.
• Bittersweet Ending: The rats are Forced from Their Home after the Janitor is called off leave to get rid of them and bursts into the Attic, leaving them at real risk of freezing to death in the snow, or drowning or otherwise dying as they choose to sail downstream. That being said, they still have each other to rely on and the couples who have gotten together over the course of the series have promised to stay together for the foreseeable future, and the Grandmother imagines them to be able to live a happy life even after leaving the Mansion behind.
• Bland-Name Product: The Halloween event on Day 16 features a trail of candy, including colourful "Scootles", "Kronch" chocolate bars, "Geese's Pieces", and "NicNac" packets.
• Blunt "Yes": On Day 29, Apo is captured by the Janitor and imprisoned in the Van, and no one can break him out with just their pickaxes, chisels, and teeth. Jimmy is the first to suggest the obvious alternative, only to be shouted down immediately.
  Jimmy: First off, do we care if he drives off with Apo?
  Everyone else: YES.
• Brief Accent Imitation: Played for Laughs.
  • After completing a quest for the Maid's melon juice, Apo, Bek, and Scott notice a painting of French ships in a hallway and start imitating French accents, burning candles in the attic to "get rid of the accent".
  • The chef hat Scott later dons has been nicknamed "the French hat", and it's a server in-joke that anyone wearing the hat, allegedly magical, has to speak either in French or with a French accent.
• Cats Are Mean: The cats of the Mansion, nicknamed 'Oy' and 'Oreo' by the rats, chase and attack the rats on sight and serve as the Right-Hand Attack Cats for the Janitor during his time in the Mansion. The Jingle Jam Christmas event also reveals that sometime in the future, when humans "eradicate one another" at war and leave the rats and cats to their own devices, sufficiently to the point of space travel for both species, the cats will attempt to blow up the Earth altogether, forcing the time-travelled rat protagonists to have to destroy or otherwise stop the systems of the "Rat Obliterator 3000 V3.7".
• Celebrity Paradox:
  • On Day 47, Acho makes repeated references to Part 2 of his Outsiders SMP finale as a "movie" he and his fleas watched, while his content creator counterpart was on said SMP.
  • Sneeg and Philza from the Origins SMP, a different world, make guest appearances in the series. Aside from a few comments that they look or sound familiar (and Sneeg gifting Scott a Nether star on arrival), the series attempts to side-step the issue that cc!Scott is on both servers. cc!Scott also logs onto the server still wearing his Origins skin on one occasion (admittedly non-canonically), and tries to write it off as him attending "RatCon".
• Character Overlap: Special guests Sneeg and Philza are Dimensional Travelers who are native to the Origins SMP. A lightning strike may or may not have been involved in the dimension travel.
• Cheesy Moon: Questionably in the Rats universe; in-game, the Moon is made from End stone, but it has a distinct yellow tint to it and the rats refer to it as "cheese" when they visit it in the Jingle Jam Christmas event.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • On Day 2, Scott, Bek, Owen, and Will discover a lever suspended on the ceiling, and surmise pulling it allows humans to access the attic where the rats are living. It foreshadows the finale where the Janitor comes into the attic using this, forcing the entire rat population to flee the Mansion altogether as their home and safe space has been compromised.
  • On Day 16, the rats find the Grandmother has made them all Halloween costumes, including a pirate costume that Owen wears. While he goes on to trade the hook-hand for some carpets to fix up the Mansion with Tommy and gives the hat to Kara as a gift, he uses the eye-patch on Day 82 to make a gas-mask to help him enter the Festering Fungus-infested Boiler Room and torch and decontaminate the place.
  • A locked door branches off from the Library, with hinge-holes so small that not even the smallest rats can fit through; during Sneeg's tour through the Mansion on Day 57, he's sent in to investigate the contents of the room, being tiny enough to fit through the holes, and finds the Father's Study on the other side. In the finale, Tubbo is able to sneak in and listen in to the Father phoning the Janitor to come off leave.
• Christmas Episode: There are two Christmas-themed events: the "Ghosts of Ratmas" event on Day 60 hosted for the Yogscast's annual Jingle Jam charity event, and the Ratmas celebration on Day 64 covering Martyn's Secret Santa and a few miscellaneous map updates and festive quests.
• Company Cross References:
  • With 6 of the main cast members having previously been on the Outsiders SMP^note (not counting Rats creators with guest appearances on Outsiders), which ended about two months before Rats, there are many references to that:
    • Most of the Outsiders veterans have mentioned having a distaste for mazes and being trapped in them — Acho and Krow explicitly cite it as a "distant memory" or "déjà vu trauma" on Day 1, while El mentions having "horrible flashbacks" and Owen saying he "did his time". On the opposite end of the spectrum, Kyle, an ex-Outsider who makes a guest appearance on Day 42, claims to love mazes and believes himself to have been an expert on them in a past life.
    • As Sniff explains how rats from the woods like her call humans "hunters", Owen brings up how hunters might "shove a spear through things [and] people"… while staring at Apo.
    • On Day 16, Apo finds a demon horn headband and thinks it fits her; Owen semi-jokingly has her take it off, and tries to give them to Krow.
    • On Day 39, Apo mentions having a nightmare about timekeeping in the Maze from Outsiders because its structure shifted at sundown.
  • Considering 5 out of 16 of the main cast members are members of Season 2 of the Empires SMP^note (not counting Rats creators with later guest appearances in Empires), there have been several nods to that as well:
    • Jimmy is not happy about entering the server via the Toy Room, and claims to have "flashbacks" in relation to toys. He has also explicitly stated that he hates salmon.
    • During his visit on Day 23, Tommy is seen to own several oddly familiar Sheriff toys, which he claims to be his sons.
    • On Day 42, when Scott picks up the termites' crown and puts it on, Owen briefly sings a relevant line from "The Crown (Part 1)" from Empires: the Musical.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: After going through much of the early series with a generally Humans Are Cthulhu attitude, the rats appear to become desensitized to the humans' and cats' presence and running from them, so much that Martyn writes off being trapped in a cage as part of "house life" to Aimsey, and Phil questions if the rats are okay from living in such a hectic environment.
• Courtroom Episode: On Day 36, a trial is held for Oli because he pushed Apo to be mauled by cats to save himself on Day 29. El, acting as the judge presiding over the trial, declares Oli neither guilty nor innocent but arranges a duel for the two parties to fight it out.
• Crack in the Sky: The portal connecting the Origins SMP that allowed Sneeg to enter the Rats world appears as a patch of dark blue sky with what appears to be stars scattered around.
• Crossover: A brief one with the Origins SMP occurs when guests Sneeg and Philza travel into the Rats dimension via a Crack in the Sky.
• Damsel in Distress/Distressed Dude:
  • Any of the rats who are caught and trapped in cages by humans become this; they have 7 minutes (or 6 minutes later in the series) to be rescued, otherwise they are killed. However, this can be subverted with the use of Chorus Fruit or an Ender pearl, which allows the consumer/thrower to teleport a few blocks away and thus out of the cage, or they may simply glitch out of the cage due to faulty teleportation coding.
  • On Day 29, Apo spends the majority of the day's event trapped in the Janitor's Van after being caught gathering fabric in the Laundry Room; the rats' goal is to find the keys to the Van in the Boiler Room and free them.
• Dancing Is Serious Business: To the Magical Squid, at least, who requires the rats to dance well enough to his standards to obtain a Glitter Sac from him. Considering the rats need the Glitter Sac as a potion ingredient to reverse a Forced Transformation for two among their number, this challenge is taken very seriously by everyone involved.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • Oli's mother apparently "died long ago from rat diseases" and his father was apparently flushed down the toilet, causing him to turn to rummaging through garbage for survival. He's also been confirmed to have an absurdly large number of dead family members.
  • The reason Jimmy is the Safety Rat is apparently because his old house burnt down with his family in it.
  • Billzo the goat escaped from a slaughterhouse-farm and was on the run after his parents were sent off to the glue factory, only to stumble across the Mansion the rats were residing.
• Don't Celebrate Just Yet: On Day 47, after Scott throws the first couple of potion doses at the cats, they split into four clones which either kill each other or suffocate in the walls. The rats initially gather to celebrate their apparent victory, only to get chased down by the final clone, and the last dose of the potion ends in catastrophe.
• Don't Try This at Home: Acho's lore finale, "Freedom vs. Before", on Day 80 includes one such warning to the viewers not to throw their pet rats into the washing machine and that such an extreme action is for lore purposes only, and even then, it's acknowledged that doing so is risky in-universe.
• Double Jump: One of the rats' abilities, which helps negate or at least soften any fall damage they sustain.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • On Day 19, Oli finds out garbages memoirs to the Butler has been stolen from the Blue Room and starts threatening any rat whom garbage believes to have ever taken it from its "rightful" spot… in front of Will, who took the book earlier that day out of curiosity about what the words inside say and was told by Oliver to keep their mouth shut about it.
  • On Day 64, the Grandmother writes to the rats in her Christmas note to stay warm, and how it's difficult to do so after "that nasty Janitor broke the boiler before he left". The rats, knowing full well who actually did that and having instigated a Frame-Up afterward, can only laugh about that.
• Extreme Omnivore: The rats, being rats, are prone to eating just about anything and everything. There have been mentions of them eating glue, paper, Bottles o' Enchanting, candle wax, ribbons, apple seeds and cherry pits (which have cyanide in them and are toxic to rats in real life), and Tide Pods, and gnawing on the wires and walls.
• Festering Fungus: After the explosion of the Boiler Room, a deadly invasive species of warped fungus begins to grow in the Mansion, concentrated at first in the garden, then in the destroyed Boiler Room as Owen decides to plant a mushroom to get rid of the bug infestation there. Inhaling its spores in large amounts is deadly to rats and humans, granting long-lasting Slowness and later Wither effects, the latter of which can be lethal; even inhaling too much of the fumes in which the fungus is burnt can kill in three days. So far, it has (directly or indirectly) claimed the lives of many of Scott's unnamed family members and Owen (life #1)… but not Shelby, who's from New York and is joked to be Built Different™.^note In actuality, Shelby just downed a bottle of milk, which can clear one potion effect — in her case, the Wither effect inflicted by the spores. In the end, Owen sneaks back into the Boiler Room with a handmade gas mask to burn and destroy the fungus, though not without almost suffocating in the resultant smoke and being rescued by Scott.
• Forced Transformation:
  • On Day 39, Will and El are accidentally turned into cats after Oli throws one of the Eldest Daughter's potions on them out of ignorance, and have only until midnight that day to undo the effects before they become cats permanently. Played for Drama in that both of them are terrified about the possibility of the transformation being permanent, with El considering running away and isolating herself because she wouldn't be able to stay in the Rattic and with her friends, and Will desperately trying to hold off The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body to eat their friends alive.
  • On Day 47, Scott attempts to invoke this by attempting to brew potions that can turn the cats into rats, so he can kill them in revenge. Unfortunately for him and the other rats, brewing potions is not like cooking as he assumed; under the potion's effects, the two cats multiply in numbers, one of the 'clones' gets killed by another clone, two more suddenly drop dead, and the other, newer clones shift in sizes — either enlarging to half the height of a human or shrinking to the size of a termite. The resultant disaster, which Scott ultimately very much regrets, ultimately causes two canon deaths.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The introduction of the cats on Day 10 is hinted at in the Butler's journal note "Enough is enough" (found on Day 9), where he writes about introducing anti-rat counter-measures to keep the household in top-notch condition.
  • Similarly, the introduction of the Gardener on Day 19 is foreshadowed on Day 10, when Apo finds a note from (presumably) the Maid suggesting they should bring in "Mr. Kamon" (the Gardener's name) to deal with a moth infestation in the Laundry and Boiler Rooms.
  • At the start of almost every event, Owen makes a comment about it's a lovely, normal day… before everything rapidly descends into chaos. Apo lampshades it on Day 57.
    Apo: No, I feel like every single time somebody says it's a normal day in the Attic, something not normal happens, so maybe you should just not say that.
• Forged Message: Invoked by the rats on multiple occasions, writing messages in the guise of other human NPCs to conduct certain actions, e.g. leaving the pantry door open, so they can stay in the Mansion longer without starving to death.
• Frame-Up: At the end of Day 29, after instigating and aiding in the explosion of the boiler, Will suggests to Martyn that they should place bottles in the remnants of the Boiler Room to emphasize how the Janitor was Drinking on Duty and that he blew up the boiler in a moment of Alcohol-Induced Idiocy, rather than the rats overloading the thing earlier that day. While this is never carried out on-screen, judging by the Grandmother's Christmas note to the rats mentioning how the Janitor allegedly blew up the boiler before he left, the plan seems to have succeeded.
• From Beyond the Fourth Wall: Most of the creators' stream chats take the form of fleas, and raiding another creator on Twitch is referred to as "sharing fleas"; Owen's, though, are gears, and Scott's are clumps of dirt and mud.
• From Roommates to Romance: Oliver moves into Sniff's house at the start of the series, and they get together near the end.
  Sniff: I'm gonna make Olive[r] and I's room, because apparently we're sharing a room. Now, before you ask if that's gay, it is.
• The Ground Is Lava: The "Party Room" of the International Cat Station from the future on Day 60 is essentially a game of this mixed with Hole in the Wall, requiring players to move to stand on blocks of a certain colour, as blocks of other colours on the dance floor would disappear just moments later.
• Halloween Episode: Day 16 takes place on Halloween, where the Mansion is entirely redecorated for the occasion, the rats have to track down costumes made for them by the Grandmother (but stolen by the Son), and carve pumpkins to trap spirits following them around.
• Humans Are Cthulhu: Played with. The humans are several times taller than the rats, who all but live in perpetual terror hiding from them. While the rats gradually get used to the humans' presence and later help resolve conflicts between the NPCs from afar for varying reasons, and the humans occasionally do help the rats in turn with problems like magical mishaps, the inherent threat of being trapped in a cage with no one to save them in time is always daunting for the rats and a constant in their life in the Mansion, and there are many aspects of human society and culture that few of the rats are remotely able to comprehend despite having civilizations of their own. Among many other examples listed below:
  • This quote from Day 1:
    Jimmy: (hiding from the Maid) I don't like this. I didn't know this is– This is Horror SMP!
  • On Day 15, the rats have plenty of horror stories to tell about humans, including taxidermy of other animals, one apparent instance of putting another human's head on a stick, and global warming.
  • On Day 16, several of the rats mistake various Halloween decorations for them being real, and quickly assume ceiling bats are out to kill their loved ones or the humans actually killed someone to get a skeleton in their Lobby. They are also generally clueless about other Halloween traditions like apple-bobbing.
  • On Day 29, Oliver suggests outright suing the humans for trying to kidnap Apo and send them to a "poison centre" to be killed.
  • On Day 39, Oli tracks down the Eldest Daughter's bedroom and recruits the other rats to help him raid the place for "garbage". While some of the items there are "valuable" in the sense of expensive, including various crystals, some of the items they find there are simply homework and textbooks, concepts that most of the rats are clueless about even if they're literate.
  • On Day 57, the rats browse the library for books on dimensional travel to help Sneeg find his way across the realms, only to find titles filled with scientific concepts incomprehensible for even some of the smartest rats, like atomic theory, evolution, global warming, microbiology, and relativity… which, to be fair, are incomprehensible concepts for many humans as well.
    The book is full of words you don't really know, and while you can decipher a few of them, the overall message is too complicated to understand.
  • After Ratmas, this has gradually become increasingly subverted as the Butler gains an inkling of the rats' presence in the Mansion and starts actively calling upon them for help, and the Maid calls for a truce between herself and the rats after they helped her get together with her crush.
• Hurricane of Puns: And not just because there's a resident Pun Master rat; half the server are willing and able to make puns, often relating to rodents or their respective specialties, when the situation calls for it.
• I'm a Humanitarian:
  • Other than being forced to cannibalizing on ratlings for survival just before the events of the series, Tubbo gives Bek some of the leftover meat from his time in the "Cupboard of Starvation" without telling her of what it actually consists of. When this is revealed, everyone else is disturbed.
  • Discussed for Laughs. When rabbit guests Aimsey and Guqqie are invited to stay in the Shed for shelter from the cold, Martyn asks Scott to feed them rabbit stew. The two rabbits are rightfully horrified, and Scott chides him on being mean until he get the memo that they are rabbits.
• Improbable Weapon User: Weapons used by the rats due to their small size include sewing needles and safety pins as swords, buttons and golden coins as shields, thumbtacks as arrows, and dental floss picks as bows.
• Jump Scare: While not patrolling the hallways, the humans are known to materialize out of thin air in parts of the Mansion where the rats are, resulting in this and forcing them to flee and remain vigilant at all times.
• Kill It with Fire: Scott's preferred method of disposing of the Festering Fungus and its remnants, because It's the Only Way to Be Sure.
• Lilliputians: All of the main cast are rats, and are under one block tall with varying heights. The non-human guest stars, being other animals, are also shorter than the the human NPCs.

M – Z

• Mass "Oh, Crap!": The rats collectively have one on Day 85 when the Father pulls out a medieval crossbow after first spotting them spying on him, and proceed to scamper back to the Attic when Lizzie gets shot, in order to come up with a new plan of action. About half of them pack up and prepare to run, while the other half on reconnaissance find the Father calling the Janitor to get back to the Mansion… and cue the second instance of this in the event.
• Massive Numbered Siblings:
  • Discussed; Martyn claims to have 500 children by the time the series takes place.^note A later livestream has him claim that he only has two kids, which is likely a reflection of his content creator counterpart's family life. While this is just a part of his rat cover story, no one questions this.
  • Sniff, being from The Clan, has six cousins via one uncle alone, and one of those cousins gave birth to a litter of twelve shortly before the time of the SMP.
  • Owen has 461 older siblings.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: After their Forced Transformations into cats on Day 39, El and Will start showing a distinctively more feline traits, including a taste for milk and occasional meowing.
• Mistaken Identity: Since the humans generally aren't aware that the rats are sentient, their actions tend to be mistaken to be done by various humans around the Mansion, ranging from blaming the Son for misconduct to praising various household staff for amending certain wrongs, including acknowledging the Maid's sorrows and fixing the piano in the Music Room. Most of the rats are content to let this continue as it would reduce the chances of having an exterminator called on them or otherwise benefit them, and sometimes invoke this via Forged Messages.
• Mouse World: The rats reside in the walls and attic of the Mansion, and in various corners of the human world. Rat society also draws certain parallels with human society, sharing bonds and friendships, furniture, weapons, etc.
• Never Learned to Read: Played with. Several of the rats are illiterate at the beginning of the series, often due to starting out in positions where they were never able to receive a human-equivalent education. Most of them end up learning over the course of the SMP, but until that point, it causes some complications as being illiterate means being unable to read the quest books to obtain vital information, and hinders participation in certain events. What complicates matters is that human languages are treated as a Noble Tongue and some of the rats can read in "Rat".
• No Party Like a Donner Party:
  • Tubbo is first found locked in a cupboard with Shelby, allegedly for 3 years. This, apparently, has caused him to be driven to killing a nest of rat babies and cannibalizing on burgers made from them for survival. Shelby has no recollection of this, not knowing she had consumed ratlings.
  • When the Janitor enters the Attic on the hunt, the rats flee onto the roof and Oli proposes choosing a rat to eat to survive the winter. Everyone objects to this plan of action.
• Noble Tongue: Implied to be the case for English and other human languages, in relation to the animal protagonists. Only a few of the rats are able to read "Human", and even fewer are able to write in it; Martyn's justification of any instance of him being able to "write" is that he writes in "Rat" and not "Human" (which cc!Owen adopts). This also applies to spoken language, in that the rats can understand spoken "Human" but cannot speak it themselves due to the species barrier.
• One-Steve Limit: Downplayed with several rats (and by extension, content creators) who have similar names, including Acho and Apo, or Oli and Oliver (portrayed by cc!Olive).
• Our Ghosts Are Different:
  • The spirit on Halloween manifests as a trail of souls; it can make the environment around various individuals too dark to see through and randomly possess individuals to make them levitate. However, they can be trapped inside carved pumpkins.
  • The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future are intangible rats that can walk through walls and speak, but still require food despite being dead. They're also able to return to "life" (i.e. their ghostly state) if they die again.
• Previously on…: Owen's condensed episodes of the series usually start with the line "Last squeak on the Rats SMP…", followed by a narrated recap of the events of the previous episode.
• Quest Giver: Both the guests and the human NPCs function as this, openly or subtly giving the rats various quests to complete, like fetching them certain items or foodstuffs, or delivering messages.
• Rat Men: All of the POV characters, by virtue of their humanoid Minecraft skins. Fan depictions vary on a sliding scale between this and depicting them as actual rats.
• Red Sock Ruins the Laundry: The premise of the quest "Laundry Mishap", in which the Maid prepares to wash Mr. Icraga's shirts in early anticipation for his arrival home from the war, but is sent into a panic after ending up with a laundry load full of pink shirts, which she speculates is because of a red sock. On Day 37, Will, Bek, and Apo complete this quest by re-dyeing all the clothes different colours. Thankfully, none of the humans question this.
• Resourceful Rodent: The rats live their lives scurrying through the walls, pipes, and corners of the Big Fancy House in which they reside, hiding from humans and scavenging for resources for survival from unused chests.
• Running Gag:
  • Someone yelling at everyone to stop using the in-game chat in the middle of server events or lore, to no avail.
  • Martyn knocking the server guests off a ledge and out of the Mansion at the end of their visits.
• Savage Wolves: The wolves owned by the Gardeners patrol the perimeter of the Mansion's gardens and attack any and all rats on sight.
• Script Swap: On Day 39, while going down to visit the Magical Squid to obtain the Glitter Sac, Oliver asks to read their book of instructions again, only to be accidentally passed Acho's poetry book. Then multiple other books, none of which are the right one. Justified from an in-game perspective, as all of them are untitled books and quills with the same outward appearance, and item sizes are relative to the player who dropped it.
• Secret Santa: One is hosted in the Rattic by "Santa" leading up to the Christmas Episode on Day 64, in which each creator-character is assigned a different rat via dropper and has to get them a gift of some sort.
• Shout-Out:
  • There are lots to the rats' Villain Song from Rat Movie: Mystery of the Mayan Treasure: Olive's 1st episode opens with an excerpt from the song, a snippet of it is included in the introductory cinematic of Apo's YouTube episode, Owen sings a line from it on Day 6, and the rats sing it on Day 82 in introduction to the Maid after she requests a formal discussion. Owen has also been nicknamed "the big rat who makes all the rules" (or other variants) for being a server admin.^note Apo is also a server admin, but the Ratsgiving event clears it up by referring to them as "the small rat who makes all the rules".
    Rats! We're rats!
    We're the rats…
    We prey at night, we stalk at night,
    We're the rats!
  • One of the toys in the Toy Room is a stylized fox in a suit that looks similar to the Minecraft skin of fellow content creator Seapeekay. Some of the server-members go as far as to say the toy looks familiar to them.
  • Oliver uses the "DUN DUN!" sound effect from Law & Order as a greeting and to jumpscare others.
  • Bek learns from Scott how to make tiny Among Us crewmates using the Chisel and Bits mod early in the series and goes on to spread them throughout the entire Attic; Sneeg also builds one lying outside Martyn's Attic Bar during his guest appearance on Day 57.
  • Following a small dispute on Day 2 over who among a crowd of rats picked up the humans' two music discs, Owen jokes that they can make a popular SMP about the discs and that it would be a "dream come true", while Bek comments that music discs would be a weird thing to fight over.
  • Oli claims on Day 19 that he learnt how to write lust letters from reading Fifty Shades of Rat. A similar reference is made on Day 57 when Owen finds a book titled 50 Shades of Purple in the Library, with the following message within:
    [This book contains… um… Maybe you shouldn't be reading this one…]
  • The garden gnome that El builds for the second human Gardener on Day 23 is split into two due to its large size. Scott modifies it so that both ends are sticking out of portals.
  • Martyn spends several days in a maid dress, donning long, blond twintails in a distinctive hairstyle. Multiple people have referred to this as Ratsune Miku.
  • There are two 'angel' statues whose eyes are covered, initially located in the Garden, but are later moved into the Basement but are accidentally released to roam free in the Mansion itself. Considering they have moved to different locations between episodes/livestreams and El finds a possibly related book titled "Living Stone, Legend or Fact?" among the Eldest Daughter's belongings on Day 39, it is suspiciously implied a Weeping Angel; however, the series ends before anything concrete is said about them.
  • On Day 42, one of the first arguments Martyn tries to use against the Termites to assert the rats' authority is, "We're big, you're small, and there's nothing you can do about it."
  • When the first snow hits the Mansion on Day 47, the rats looking over the garden from Owen's balcony start quoting "Let It Go" lyrics.
  • While hiding in the Attic-linked bathroom from the vicious cat clones on Day 47, Jimmy points through the trapdoor near the entrance and compares the three clones to 'Draco', 'Crabbe', and 'Goyle', nearly getting mauled to death through the open trapdoor in the process.
  • On Day 51, Will really has an objection against the two rabbit guests at the start, thinking they're suspicious because…
    Will: I mean, they eat a bunch of carrots, what do they need such good eyesight for anyways, you know?
  • When the Ballroom is opened on Day 64, Martyn, Scott, and Bek start singing "Be Our Guest".
• Space Episode: The third and last part of the "Ghosts of Ratmas" event on Day 60 takes the rats on a trip to the Moon in the "Future", where they have to stop the intelligent cats' Doomsday Device from destroying the Earth and turning an Class 3 Apocalypse How situation into a Class X one.
• Special Guest: Multiple fellow content creators have made one-off or voice-only appearances in the Rats SMP, including Ponk (as a badger), TommyInnit (as an indefinite winged, rat-like creature), Philza's wife Kristin (AKA "Mumza", as Mrs. Icraga), GeminiTay (as the Eldest Daughter), Seapeekay (as the Fox), Philza and KaraCorvus (as crows), Billzo (as a goat), and SmallishBeans (as Mr. Icraga).
• Spinning Out of Here: During the "Ghosts of Ratmas" event on Day 60, the rats have to spin around and say "Squiiiiiiii!" to travel between the past, present, and future scenes, as well as returning to the Attic.
• Stargazing Scene: Scott and Owen spend a night stargazing on Day 3.
• Stock Animal Diet:
  • Cats can be fed milk as a distraction, and the two rats who are turned into cats on Day 39 gain a taste and craving for milk the longer they stay in their forced feline forms.
  • Martyn and Acho's Trademark Favourite Foods are respectively stated to be 'g-RAT-ed cheese' and brie.
  • Subverted with rabbit guests Aimsey and Guqqie; Acho tries to feed them carrots because he read that rabbits like them, but Guqqie protests this and points out not everything read in books is accurate.
• Stuff Blowing Up: After Apo gets kidnapped by the Janitor on Day 29, Bek, El, Jimmy, Krow, Oli, Oliver, Will sabotage the Boiler Room so that the pressure in the machinery builds up, causing a massive explosion and much destruction. El attributes it to Alcohol-Induced Idiocy from finding the Wine Cellar earlier that day, at least on her part.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: While asking Owen about how the boiler works on Day 29, most of the rats present are quick to affirm that they definitely shouldn't press certain buttons or flick certain levers to increase the pressure, lest the boiler explode. Having just suggested to sabotage the Mansion so that the Janitor has more work to do and would be too distracted to go rat-catching, no guesses what the rats in question do next.
• Sweet Tooth:
  • Tubbo's favourite food is stated to be sugar. Not sweets, sugar. And apparently, if he doesn't have sugar… things get messy.
  • Lizzie's favourite is said to be toffee, but since she's asleep for most of the series, it's hard to say for sure.
  • One of Oliver's favourite foods is melatonin gummies. The other is important time-sensitive documents in the law office.
• Team Chef:
  • Since Scott is the one in charge of the food supply as the resident Farmer, this eventually extends to cooking as well. On Day 37, he jokes about taking over both the Gardener and the Chef's jobs after both get kicked out of the Mansion.
  • While Lizzie is nominally this as a baker, she spends most of the series asleep and ultimately never gets around to do much baking herself.
  • On the humans' end, the Chef, Cassandra, is naturally this by default.
• Tempting Fate:
  • On Day 15, after having to herd Ponk around the Mansion all day, Owen asks the other rats if they can never have any guests ever again, to which most of the other rats present agree. Little do they know, Ponk is only the first in a long line of non-rats who are going to be stopping by the Mansion for the winter.
  • On Day 47, as the snowfall begins, Owen and several of the other rats rejoice in finally being able to have "a normal day where nothing goes wrong". Cue Krow walking up to the group awkwardly asking how things are going, the group immediately deducing something is up, and everyone finding a very vengeful Scott in the Lobby with the cats. Cue a server-wide cat-astrophe, where everything, including the revenge plan, ends up Gone Horribly Wrong.
  • In the finale, the possibility of Mr. Icraga or other humans coming up to the Attic, the place where the rats live, is raised, which many of the rats dismiss. Later, this is exactly what happens once Mr. Icraga calls the Janitor away from leave.
• Thanksgiving Episode: On Day 39, after midnight and all the humans have gone to bed, the rats gather to have a meal and compliment each other to celebrate "Ratsgiving".
• Trademark Favourite Food:
  • Every rat is listed to have at least one in their introductory biographies on Twitter.
  • Honey, for Ponk the badger.
• Translation Convention: While the humans write and speak in English (or equivalent), they are unable to understand the rats, only hearing their voices as squeaks; it's also discussed implicitly that rats have their own language, yet are able to understand what the humans are saying, and have to actively learn to read and write in English (or equivalent) to communicate with humans beyond body language. On the other hand, to the audience, the creator-characters are generally still speaking English and are perfectly comprehensible.
• Trash Landing: The rats land in a large dumpster in the Big Applesauce in their introduction to present-day New York City on Day 60.
• True Companions: In the series finale, the mischief of Attic rats are referred to as a family, having relied on each other for food, safety, and companionship for the past months.
• Under the Mistletoe:
  • Will hangs some above their dining table during the festive season while considering invoking this, but never gets around to doing so in canon.
  • On Day 64, the Maid writes a note about looking for mistletoe so she can make a move on her crush, the Chef, during the festive season. The rats manage to find some to speed the plan along, and go on to corrall the two humans to the doorway between Kitchen and Dining Room to bring about their Relationship Upgrade.
• Unnamed Parent: Played straight for most of the rats who have their parents mentioned in their backstories; subverted for the Icraga parents, whose given names are revealed in the finale.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Most of the Icraga household treat the rats this way. Half the mischief of rats gathering on your library table having a Courtroom Episode? Walk away. A sudden uptick in the Mansion's feline population, which may or may not size-shift? Ignore them. The Janitor is the only one who considers the rats an active threat to the Mansion, while the Eldest Daughter is a Punch-Clock Villain who doesn't mind them as long as they don't mess with her stuff.
• Video-Game Lives: Each rat has three lives, and if they lose all three of their lives, they are sent into Spectator mode as a ghost. Exceptions have been made for rats who have died due to glitches relating to the mod-pack; in such cases, lives lost this way are restored by admins. Krow is the only rat who has lost all three of its lives over the course of the series, but is brought Back from the Dead.
• Villainy-Free Villain: The human NPCs and cats are by all means reasonable to want rats out of the house — especially the Janitor, who knows the rats are sentient and can do great damage if they want to. However, since the story is told from the perspective of the rats, these antagonistic figures are still unpleasant to be around, and the Janitor in particular is presented as overzealous and terrifying, even to the Icraga children.
• When the Clock Strikes Twelve: On Day 39, after a potions mishap resulting in a Forced Transformation, the rats have until midnight to obtain certain ingredients for the Eldest Daughter to brew a potion to reverse the transformation, lest the transformation become permanent.
• White Void Room: On Day 29, excluding the grid on the ceiling, Apo describes the interior of the Janitor's Van to be white, desolate, and empty, designed to cause anyone inside to Go Mad from the Isolation.
• Who's on First?: Despite the name, Krow is a rat, and this has lead to some brief miscommunication whenever crows, as in the actual birds, are brought up in its presence; this ranges from it being offended when the rats find a quest instruction book titled "Stupid Crows", to several instances of confusion when Phil and Kara, two crows, make a guest appearance in the series on Day 59.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: Zig-zagged between being played straight and inverted. While rummaging through the humans' belongings and storage, the rats have stumbled across many items of varying significance to humans, to which they have varying reactions to.
  • On Day 2, Will tracks down the humans' bar in the Drawing Room and steals several bottles of alcohol (potions in-game), and later uses them to trade for a bottle cap to be made into a cute hat, thinking they'd be valuable because the liquid inside is shiny; many of the other rats react with shock upon seeing the unintentional stash.
  • On Day 10, Owen finds a netherite scrap in a storage room chest, before throwing it out and saying it "doesn't seem useful", and that it's not like any metal he's seen before.
  • On Day 29, Apo raids one of the storage rooms for amethyst, which would be a valuable gemstone/crystal for humans but just some shiny material for the Cosplayer Rat to use.
  • The catalyst for the Day 39 event start with this, with Oli recruiting the other rats to raid the Eldest Daughter's suitcases for "garbage"… including her schoolwork and textbooks — both of which most of the rats don't really understand as concepts — and potions that Oli just throws aside out of curiosity and carelessness… that end up turning two of the other rats into cats.
• Written-In Absence: Shelby and Tubbo were not able to make it to the first day of the series; their characters started on Day 2 with the claim that they had been locked in the cupboard for three days… or years.
• X Meets Y: Olive's 1st episode as Oliver describes the series to be The Secret World of Arrietty meets Flushed Away, presumably also meeting Minecraft.
• Yet Another Christmas Carol: The "Ghosts of Ratmas" event on Day 60, co-hosted by Martyn for the Yogscast's annual Jingle Jam charity event, involves the rat cast travelling to the past, present, and future of rat society, and the events within it cover the downfall of rat–human relations and the greater rat–cat conflict.

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"I whisper this 'thank you' to the wind and pray it delivers it to them safely. That's all for me for today. Good night!"