Rattrap

Rattrap is the Maximal saboteur, demolitions expert and full-time cynic, and he is the character who most clearly signals that Beast Wars intended to be funnier and meaner than its parent show. Scott McNeil plays him as a Brooklyn wise guy who has read the situation correctly and resents being the only one who has. His catchphrase, "We're all gonna die", is delivered so often it becomes a running joke, and then the show uses it seriously exactly once, which is why it works.

His best material is defensive engineering. In "A Better Mousetrap" he reprograms the Axalon's defence drone Sentinel and immediately nearly kills the entire crew with it. In "The Low Road" he is reduced to a wheezing invalid by a Predacon virus and wins anyway by being nastier than Waspinator. He is the Maximal who volunteers for the suicide run in "The Agenda (Part III)", boarding Ravage's ship and destroying it, Tarantulas and Ravage together, and then complains about it.

The relationship that defines him is with Dinobot. It starts as open contempt, hardens into insults with real venom behind them, and ends with Rattrap being the one who cannot bring himself to condemn Dinobot after the betrayal in "Maximal, No More" and who says the harshest and most necessary things to him before "Code of Hero". His line over the funeral pyre is the closest the show gets to letting him drop the act.

Rattrap is also the crew's institutional memory of what Maximals are supposed to be, which is why his sniping at Primal never quite reads as disloyalty. He is a coward with a perfect record of showing up.

Rat beast mode makes him small, fast and almost impossible to detect, ideal for infiltration; he is the crew's demolitions and computer-systems specialist, capable of rewriting Predacon hardware on the fly. Armed with a compact gas-powered rifle and improvised explosives. After the quantum surge his Transmetal rat mode gains supercharged wheels for high-speed travel. Limits: he is physically the weakest Maximal, cannot survive a stand-up fight with anyone, and his upgrades give him mobility rather than firepower.

• Dinobot: the great antagonistic friendship of the series, insults standing in for respect neither will voice.
• Optimus Primal: he questions every order and obeys all of them.
• Cheetor: relentless mockery of the kid that softens as Cheetor grows up.
• Rhinox: the quiet partnership of the two crew members who actually keep the ship running.

IDW's Beast Wars comics keep him close to the cartoon, if slightly more competent and less comic. The Fun Publications material and Beast Machines both continue him without major reinterpretation. No significant divergence.

Survives the entire war and returns to Cybertron aboard the Autobot shuttle. He survives Beast Machines as well, one of the few characters to make it through both series intact.

• Scott McNeil voiced Rattrap, Dinobot, Waspinator and Silverbolt, meaning many of the show's best-loved exchanges are one actor talking to himself.
• Rattrap is stated in dialogue to be a descendant of the Autobot Arcee, a claim made in "The Agenda (Part II)" that fans have argued over ever since.
• His original 1996 Basic-class toy was among the smallest in the first wave; the character's popularity far outstripped his toy's price point, and he was re-released in the BotCon 2006 Dawn of Future's Past set.
• McNeil has said the voice came out of a Peter Lorre and Brooklyn-gangster mash-up improvised at audition.
• He is one of only two Maximals present from the first episode to the last without dying, the other being Rhinox.

Where the cartoon, the Marvel comics and the toy bios disagree, or where a popular claim does not hold up. We record these rather than smoothing them over.

• The claim that Rattrap is descended from Arcee is delivered as a throwaway boast and is treated by some fans as an unreliable brag rather than a canonical fact.