A Mischief of Mice

Not all mice are like Mickey.

In fiction, mice are more often than not portrayed as the good guys, being pitted against predators like cats and helped out by friendlier animals like dogs...

...but, they are not without exceptions.

Perhaps because of their history with humans, mice are also likely to be portrayed in fiction as antagonists, or at least as very unwelcome pests. While usually not seen as outright disgusting and evil in the way that rats are, mice are still often thought of as irritating, undesirable creatures. There's a reason, after all, why the freaked-out reaction people have to finding one in their house has become a trope of its own. Mice are also not uncommon as an animal phobia.

These mice are often portrayed as the total opposite of their good counterparts; mischievous, scheming, and greedy. They are often portrayed as taking pleasure in antagonizing cats, whether they are provoked or not. Resourceful Rodent may come into play and overlap with this if the mouse or mice are being clever and resourceful. Some mice even like to scare people because it's funny to them.

It should be mentioned that, whether intentional or not, mice tend to bring fear to elephants in fiction.

See also Hair-Raising Hare, Killer Rabbit, Screwball Squirrel, Suicidal Lemmings and You Dirty Rat!. Contrast Nice Mice.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Beastars: A bunch of mice decide to join together to form one big super mouse and become a feared criminal. They were defeated by Yafya and are now some of his most trusted subordinates.
• Gregory Horror Show: Gregory and his family are anthropomorphic mice, and most of them fit this trope to some degree.
  • Played for Horror with Gregory himself. He is the owner of a Hell Hotel, which is basically Purgatory, and he uses psychological manipulation, and his violent hotel guests, to keep anyone from leaving. He is also physically and verbally abusive to Neko Zombie, a cat who he keeps locked up in the hotel. Despite this, his attitude is usually very whimsical. He likes to speak in a very formal way, as if he was just a regular hotel owner. His dialogue is often cryptic as if he knows a lot more than he lets on. His Signature Laugh is high-pitched and sneaky as well.
  • Also Played for Horror with James, Gregory's Bratty Half-Pint grandson. He hates the Second Guest so much that he attempts deadly pranks on her, such as giving her a box containing Lost Doll. And he does it all with the attitude of an annoying, petulant child.
  • Averted with Gregory Mama, who is straight-up malevolent with few trickster qualities, if any. She's a Wicked Witch who collects people's souls. She claims that she does this to stay young-looking, although it's debatable how effective this is, as she still looks like a deranged old lady.
• Voltron: The Space Mice were a heroic version of this. They would very much play tricks on the space explorers, particularly liking to harass Pidge. This actually becomes a plot point at the start of the series when Pidge realizes the mice are able to move around the castle at will and most likely were the ones who pilfered the Black Lion's activation key. Once they return it, they become a lot more tame, but their mischievous natures do allow them to cause the occasional amount of trouble for Zarkon's forces when they manage to get into the Castle of Lions from time to time.

Asian Animation

• Pakdam Pakdai: Charly, Marly, and Larry are a trio of mice who, much like the titular cockroaches from Oggy and the Cockroaches, constantly make the life of Don the dog a living hell on a regular basis.

Comic Books

• The Beano: The Nibblers are a group of anthropomorphous mice who like stealing food. Their home's owner Porky and his cat would try and fail to stop them every time.
• The Dandy: Korky the Cat sometimes has to deal with mice who keep raiding his larder and stealing food.

Comic Strips

• Garfield: While Garfield is actually more into befriending mice rather than chasing and eating them, sometimes the mice will actually mess with him, such as giving him a makeover when he sticks his head in their mouse hole.
• Krazy Kat: Ignatz isn't the friendliest mouse you'll meet. He has a personal dislike of Krazy, who has a crush on him and is unaware of what he truly feels about the cat, and tosses bricks at Krazy's head which the latter takes as a sign of affection. This usually results in him getting arrested by Officer Bull Pupp.

Fanfiction

• There Is No Epic Loot Here, Only Puns: One of Delta's puzzles involves a mess-making mouse.

Films — Animation

• Epic: After she shrinks to Leafman height, MJ discovers the dangers of the forest when she and Nod are both attacked by a deer mouse, which is giant from their perspective.
• The Great Mouse Detective: Invoked; Ratigan loathes being called a rat and insists that he's just a "big mouse" (which he actually was in the original book). He really is a rat, though, and he's a sadist who's proud of the fact that he has drowned widows and orphans.
• Robin Robin has a slightly more benevolent example than most. Dad Mouse and his four mouse children often steal food from human homes. They're not greedy, they only take what they need to survive, but they do take pride in how good they are at sneaking around. They even sing a musical number about it called "The Sneak Song". The protagonist, Robin, is a robin adopted by the Mouse family. She is terrible at being stealthy, which makes her feel bad. She wishes she was more like the mice until she learns to be herself at the end.
• The Secret of NIMH: Martin is a mouse, as well as a Bratty Half-Pint who has no trouble mouthing off to Auntie Shrew. The sequel even has him suffer experiments that lead to him becoming a villain who desires to have the whole of Thorn Valley destroyed For the Evulz, though his brainwashing is undone at the end.
• Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring: Freddie and Joey are mice who are bullies. In their very first scene, they frighten Nibbles with a picture of a cat for fun.

Films — Live-Action

• Babe: Downplayed with the three singing mice who serve as a Greek Chorus to the movie. They don't affect the plot but tend to giggle mischievously when Babe is about to get in trouble (although they are sad and respectful when introducing the chapter when Ma dies).
• MouseHunt: The titular rodent is the source of all of Lars and Ernie's problems and outsmarts them at every turn. He reforms at the end of the film when he gets a new job as a cheese tester in the brothers' new cheese factory.
• Stay Tuned zigzags the trope. At one point, Roy and Helen Knable, jumping around on Hellivision's channels, find themselves in an animated show as cartoon mice. At that point, Roy helps himself to a donut "the size of a Buick". Then they're pursued by a cartoon robot cat, and they spend their time dodging, evading, and using every cartoon trope in the books, from dropping a dryer in a bathtub with the robot feline to saying "Don't Try This At Home." Much of what they do, though, is drawn from their own knowledge of cartoon mice, so that it's not that they're being deliberately mischievous, but that they're just doing what they know. All of it was done by the great Chuck Jones.

Literature

• Anatole: Anatole the mouse is most upset when he overhears a family talking about how terrible mice are for scrounging food, so he secretly sets himself up as taster at a cheese factory, leaving little signs on the different cheeses. With Anatole's cunning methods, business booms at the factory; but he keeps his identity as a mouse very secret.
• The Gruffalo: Invoked. In the first book, the mouse lies that he's The Dreaded so he can scare the Gruffalo off, and it works when he claims that he loves to eat Gruffalo crumble. By the second book, the Gruffalo has given him the moniker "the Big Bad Mouse". Subverted, however, as the mouse is actually harmless.
• Redwall: Gonff the self-titled Prince of Mousethieves, while not evil by any stretch of the imagination, is a Lovable Rogue who was first introduced in the book Mossflower stealing food from the antagonists, Just Like Robin Hood. In a later book, it is revealed that he has an entire tribe of descendants who are all also thieves.

Music

• The Aquabats!: "Idiot Box!" from Return of the Aquabats! features an unflattering reference to Mickey Mouse.
  Children, I wanna warn ya
  'Cause I've been to California
  Where Mickey Mouse is a demon!
• A traditional Irish song, "The Mice Are At It Again", is about a guy who lives in a run-down rooming house, and is bedeviled by the resident mice. Not-entirely-accurate lyrics can be found at mudcat.org.
  "Well last week I earned some overtime and like a big fat-head
  I hung my trousers at the foot when I got into bed.
  The next morning when I awoke I found I had been dunned.
  I asked the Mrs. about it and she says "it's ten to one
  That the mice are at it again, oh, been up to their tricks."
  I said "they must have been hungry for to chaw up seven-and-six.
  For I knew I'd half a sovereign." "That's right," says Mary Jane,
  "And they chawed it down to half-a-crown, oh the mice are at it again."

Theatre

• The Nutcracker: The primary antagonist is the Mouse King. In some versions, he is changed to the Rat King, presumably to conform better to the audience's expectations.

Video Games

• Bonkers: Mr. Big (from the TV series episode, "Hamster Houseguest") is a mouse who is one of Toon Town's four most wanted criminals. He has set up a bomb set to explode in the warehouse, and since Fall-Apart Rabbit is trying to defuse the bomb, Mr. Big has hidden Fall-Apart's pieces in crates. He also has mouse henchmen who try to stop Bonkers from collecting Fall-Apart's pieces.
• Cool Spot: In "Off the Wall" and "Back to the Wall", there are pajama-clad mouse enemies who attack Spot by tossing pieces of cheese at him.
• The final biome in Hades features mice both big and small as enemies. The small mice attack as a swarm but take little damage to kill, making them a soft check on whether or not the player has a dash boon. The large mice have a fair amount of health, attack, and drop poison on the ground when they are attacked that does not damage to the player.
  • This section also has a mini-boss called "Tiny Vermin" that is as small as the normal mice but has a bite equivalent to the big mice. It also can summon big mice to fight against you. It is arguably the hardest mini-boss in the biome.
• The Squeaks from Kirby: Squeak Squad are a group of thieving mice responsible for kicking off the plot by purloining Kirby's slice of strawberry shortcake. They do realize the error of their ways, though, and make amends with Kirby by giving him another slice at the end of the game and assisting him in Kirby Mass Attack.
• Several mouse-based Pokémon tend to fit this bill according to their Pokedex entries. Rattata-line having rather annoying reputation, and Pikachu-line having tendencies to shock people literally are two of these.
• The Rhythm Heaven game "Rat Race" features three mice who make their way across a large table in order to get at a giant piece of cheese seemingly left unguarded. They have to be careful not to let a very watchful black cat catch them.
• Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time: Penelope, Penelope, Penelope. Murder, greed, manipulation, warmongering, and, of course, treason, makes her one of the most odious enemies the Cooper Gang has faced.
• The Sonic the Hedgehog games have various robot mice enemies created by Dr. Eggman. Specifically:
  • In Sonic and Knuckles, the Technosqueek enemy resembles a computer mouse and inhabits Flying Battery Zone. He scurries back and forth across the floor or ceiling.
  • In Sonic 3D Blast, the Mouse enemy inhabits Gene Gadget Zone. He stands on one wheel and moves around in an erratic motion, only harming Sonic if the hedgehog runs into him.
  • In Sonic Advance 2, the Mouse enemy inhabits Egg Utopia if the game is set to the normal difficulty. He scurries back and forth, charging at the player if they get close to him.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Little Mousers are a masked species of mice, with roles often involving some form of theft.
  • One of the bosses from Super Mario Bros. 2 is a mouse named Mouser who tosses bombs at the player. To defeat him, the player must catch the bombs and toss them right back at him thrice.
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: Ms. Mowz is a flirtatious and highly effective badge thief. In battle, one of her moves allows her to steal an enemy's items.
  • Mario Party 8: Mowz appears on King Boo's Haunted Hideaway, running a roulette-like game. If the player successfully pockets a ball in either the star, coin, or candy slot, Mowz will steal the corresponding asset from another player. He also appears on Shy Guy's Perplex Express as a suspect in stealing Holly Koopa's Candy, hiding in one of the three-to-five train cars.
• Toonstruck: There is a pesky mouse running around and causing trouble in the tavern. It even nibbles on the Barman (who is an anthropomorphic hunk of cheese.) The Barman hates the idea of hurting the mouse, but he's still so fed up with it that he offers a reward to anyone who can get rid of it.
• Wario Land 4: One of the bosses, Aerodent, is a mouse ghost that pilots a giant floating teddy bear. It drops pin enemies to attack Wario.
• Yo-kai Watch: Phantasmurai (and its recolor Spooklunk) is a boss fight who attacks the player. Whenever it's weakened, it's revealed that it's actually being controlled by a mouse.
• Yoshi's Island: Little Mousers are a masked species of mice. In most appearances, their role is to steal eggs (or balls of yarn) from the player character.

Web Original

• Tiktoker Talon-tal portrays Mickey Mouse as a complete jerkass with a mouth full of Cluster F-Bomb and a Hair-Trigger Temper that can hit hard to the ones who bother him, like Goofy, Donald and even his girlfriend Minnie, becoming a sensation on the internet with videos like this one.

Western Animation

• The Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers episode "Catteries Not Included" has Dale and Monty dare to visit Cat Alley to see if any cat knows the whereabouts of the missing kitten Spunky. To their great surprise, Dale and Monty find that Cat Alley is overrun by mice, who have turned it into a party-land playground. The most intel the two Rangers glean from these mice is that all the cats disappeared two nights ago, and have been unseen since.
• Felix the Cat: The episode, "The Mouse and Felix", features a mouse who ransacks Felix's house to steal his food and outsmarts him at every chance he gets. However, it's revealed that he's been taking Felix's food to care for his children, so Felix makes him feel welcome into his home.
  • Going back to Felix's very first appearance as Master Tom in "Feline Follies," a gang of mice live la vida loca in the kitchen while Felix!Master Tom is out romancing a girl cat.
• Garfield and Friends:
  • In "Rodent Rampage", Floyd's cousin Tyrone comes to visit and is surprised when he discovers that Garfield doesn't chase mice, so he takes advantage of this by taking over Jon's house. Once Jon discovers Tyrone, he tries to get Garfield to catch him by bribing him with sausage lasagna. Tryone takes every step to ensure that Garfield doesn't catch him, such as putting him through traps and even feeding him tabasco sauce. Even Floyd, who is usually nice to Garfield, understanding of his predicaments, and has defended him against the Kitty Council and mice who were taking advantage of him in the past, does nothing to stop Tyrone and even goes along with him.
  • In "Trial and Error", two mice named Elmo and Ferd love to steal food. They nab Garfield's pie, which Odie gets blamed for.
• Goliath II: All elephants fear mice, which one particular mouse exploits for a cheap laugh because he thinks it's hilarious to scare people.
• Herman and Katnip: Herman. A majority of the things that he commits towards Katnip are much more over-the-top, mean-spirited, and brutal than Jerry's brand of retaliation.
• Hey Duggee: True to their title, the Naughty Mice often purloin things and play practical jokes on others. They also dress and talk like stereotypical "bad boys".
• Looney Tunes:
  • In "We, The Animals... Squeak!", a guest on Porky Pig's radio show is a cat known as "Kansas City Kitty" who relates how she had to deal with some ruthless gangster mice who held her son hostage in order to force her to let them have the run of the house.
  • The Night Watchman" also depicts mice as reprobate gangsters.
  • Hubie and Bertie, a duo of mice created by Chuck Jones, have psychologically manipulated Claude the Cat in two cartoons; "Mouse Wreckers" (playing pranks on him to drive him insane to the point of leaving) and "The Hypo-Chondri-Cat" (where they trick him into thinking that he has gotten sick).
  • "Canned Feud" features a sadistic mouse who tries everything he can to deprive Sylvester of the can opener needed to open some cat food, and ultimately succeeds. Why? Because he can.
  • "Scaredy Cat" and "Claws for Alarm", both directed by Chuck Jones, feature evil mice who try to kill Porky and Sylvester. The former cartoon provides the page image.
  • "Snow Business" features a starving mouse who attempts to eat Sylvester in a reversal of the "cat trying to eat a mouse" cliché.
  • "Stooge for a Mouse" has a mouse who tries to get some cheese from a nearby table. How? By sabotaging the friendship between Sylvester and a bulldog named Mike. Unlike the mouse in "Canned Feud", who got away scot-free with starving Sylvester to death, he gets his comeuppance in the end.
  • Tex Avery's early short Ain't We Got Fun revolves around mice who raid an old man's pantry and then frame it on his cat.
  • Speedy Gonzales usually puts it over on Sylvester. He had different adversaries in "Cat-Tails For Two" (Benny and George), "Mexicali Shmoes" (Jose and Manuel, two cats), and of course Daffy Duck in the Dork Age cartoons (1965-69).
• Mickey Mouse: Mortimer Mouse, one of Mickey's rivals, is everything the latter is not: arrogant, rude, cocky, sexist, and scheming.
• The mice in Mighty Mouse were often portrayed as persecuted and hunted down by evil cats. The mice in the Gandy Goose cartoon "The Exterminator" are wiseacres who give Sourpuss a hard time.
• The Pink Panther: The cartoon "Pink-A-Boo" has a pesky mouse abscond some supplies from Pink's home, often right under his nose. Later, this mouse is joined by a platoon of guest mice, and they start a loud party in the Mouse Hole in the panther's living room.
• Pinky and the Brain: The Brain, has, well, a genetically-enhanced brain and plots to take over the world. One zany plot involved Brain operating a giant human-suit robot and getting onto a quiz show, hoping to win cash to fund his latest weapon. However, even he has some lines he won't cross.
• Pixie, Dixie and Mr. Jinks pitted the two mice Pixie and Dixie against the hip-talking cat Mr. Jinks, usually after an initial chase.
• The Simpsons: Itchy, one of the titular characters from the Show Within a Show, The Itchy & Scratchy Show, is a heartless and mischievous little bastard who gets a kick out of mutilating or killing Scratchy in ways that would make Jerry or even Herman sick to their stomachs.
• The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat: Skidoo the mouse is a real troublemaker. Depending on the episode, he can be a mischievous trickster or even an outright antagonist. For example, in "The Maltese Milkshake," when Felix says he has a dream sequence coming up, Skidoo is more than eager to knock him unconscious with a mallet.
• South Park: Mickey Mouse is portrayed as a Corrupt Corporate Executive that doesn't see anything wrong in selling sex to underage girls. And when The Jonas Brothers start getting cold feet, he beats the crap out of them.
• Superfriends: The episode "Professor Goodfellow's G.E.E.C." has an inventor create a supercomputer that can automate any machine normally operated by humans. The Super Friends are skeptical at first, but the device demonstrates itself more than capable of any task. Things go wrong when a mouse gets into the circuitry, generating increasingly worrisome errors that cause automated machines to go haywire.
• The titular Jerry from Tom and Jerry tends to flip flop between Nice Mice^note (dealing with Tom's bad behavior, helping out others, etc.) to this trope ^note (harassing Tom and making him suffer just for his own sick kicks, which is more apparent in the infamous Gene Deitch cartoons) on a regular basis.
• Walter Lantz had a short-lived series of cartoons featuring two mice named Hickory and Dickory who constantly outwit a cat named Doc.
• Wonder Pets!: In "Save the Nutcracker!", the Mouse King steals the Wonder Pets' nutcracker out of greed. He apologizes and returns it to them once they show him that he's already got a lot to be grateful for.

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