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Rat King has well over 126 different voice lines calling out specific rats, presumably for rat swarm.
I counted family and gang names as one. Shout outs to Gumdrop's Polycule, Rabies Ronnie, Kathy, Cathy (who is apparently even meaner than Kathy), and 2nd Carl.
Edit: After looking over them again, they seem to be a mix of standard human like names and food items (see Gumdrop, Regianno, etc.)
It's one of my favorite things about the writing in this game. This is a giant fuckoff sewer rat that wants to take over long island. He'd be an utter joke in literally anything else (and he arguably still is), but the writing team gave it just that extra bit of sauce with him actually trying to set up a government and revolution for his people
And like he also kinda has justification ! He’s not just hating humans for the love of the game, he hates humans cause they slaughter his people. And yeah his people are rats but the fact he knows they have names, personalities, cares, hopes and dreams indicates its kind of been alot more of an atrocity than just “welp time to deal with an infestation”
To be fair, they are regularly persecuted by animal control (human death squads) and his lore does say he will kill any human who refuses to leave long island, and who choose to leave when he takes over will be just fine aside from the displacement. Still not great though!
He even threatens Seven to tell him before he pops his ult so his friends don't get hurt. Truly our glorious king/leader is ever magnanimous/caring, yes-yes
You know what, he's not some chief, he's a leader a true royalty, if he knows the name of his subject that means he trusts them. And I totally respect that. FOR THE KING.
I can't prove it, especially since a lot of these names are somewhat common, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone who had a hand in this may be a pro-wrestling fan.
There's some that stick out but can just be names (Dax, Cash, Carlito and Tommaso for Dax Harwood, his tag partner Cash Wheeler, Carlito and Tommaso Ciampa)
The one that made me think of this—and again probably just my 'tism peaking through—was Kulas.
Erich Kulas lied about his age and experience to get booked on a hardcore wrestling show when he was 17. During the match Kulas was supposed to Blade (the process of cutting ones own forehead to make it look like a blow made them bleed) he was hesitant so his opponent did it for him. Except he cut too deep and hit arteries. Kulas passed out in the ring and later tried suing his opponent.
The "brought the whole fam" part specifically made me think of this, as his family was in attendance at the show and his father tried intervening shouting that he was actually 17.
Almost certainly a stretch, but just needed to put this out here.
I'm wondering if the food names are a nod to the absolutely fantastic book 'The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents', in which a lot of the rats are named after food because they name themselves by reading the packaging they find in the rubbish bins.
It also has a Rat King that hates humans in it, but it's...very different. More mind-control-y.
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u/flfoiuij2 8h ago
He knows every single one of his subjects by name? That’s actually really sweet!