Ritz The Rat
Ritz The Rat, or simply Ritz, is a potential upcoming character for Friday Night Funkin'.
Appearance
Ritz is an anthropomorphic rat with gray fur. He wears an orange beanie with a white arrow pointing downwards, red fingerless gloves, orange sneakers and a pair of triangle shades. He holds a bluish-gray microphone in his right hand. He is drawn in a chibi style.
Origin
Ritz is the titular character of Ritz, a 2D platforming game where he must collect cheese to feed his friends while avoiding spikes.[1] The game was created by ninjamuffin99, Mafalda "MKMaffo" Murdocca, Min Ho "DIGIMIN" Kim and Kawai Sprite for Newgrounds' Pixel Day 2020 and was posted to the site on the 25th of January, 2020.
Personality
Ritz appears to be a thoughtful individual who has a love for cheese. He is shown to be heroic in Ritz, as he gathers cheese for his friends to eat, even endangering himself to do so by skillfully jumping over dangerous spikes. In MKMaffo's sprites of Ritz for Friday Night Funkin', he appears to be a very confident singer. However, missing a note leaves him utterly stunned.
Trivia
General
- On the 3rd of March, 2021, ninjamuffin99 posted a GIF of Ritz to his Twitter account with the caption "deleting in 30 seconds." 6 minutes later, he posted an image of a Ritz idle sprite's line art in front of a yellow background, presumably for the Story Mode menu. These supposed teasers led many to believe that Ritz may be the opponent of Week 7.
- Ritz's "leaked" sprites were created by MKMaffo for a mod she was working on in 2020.[5] In a Tweet showing off a miss sprite and yellow health bar icons, MKMaffo stated that her "november20 assets wont see the light of day," suggesting that her sprites will not be used when Ritz is officially added to the game.[6] MKMaffo herself affirmed that her Ritz sprites are reskins of those of Boyfriend.[7]
- Particular Ritz sprites that have been revealed include an idle sprite with a microphone, an idle sprite without a microphone, a V-sign sprite, a sprite of Ritz presenting a piece of cheese (seen in ninjamuffin99's aforementioned "deleting in 30 seconds" Tweet and a Newgrounds blog post[8]), a Story Mode sprite, a down note miss sprite, orange health bar icons and yellow health bar icons. The yellow icons have been shown to replace Boyfriend's icons in the icon grid.[6]
- Ritz is a German word translating to "scratch" in English.
Lore
- In 2020, ninjamuffin99 claimed that Ritz was "canonically" Boyfriend's brother, as he and Kawai Sprite worked on both Friday Night Funkin' and Ritz, making the two developers "fathers together."[9] As an in-universe explanation, ninjamuffin99 described this in 2021 as a Stuart Little situation.[10] However, in 2023, ninjamuffin99 instead stated that Ritz being Boyfriend's brother is a "light headcanon" for the same reason as before.[5]
- In a live stream made in 2024, PhantomArcade confirmed that Ritz and Boyfriend being siblings was a joke.[11]
- According to MKMaffo, Ritz is older than Boyfriend.[12] This means that Ritz is 20+ years old (that being in human years).
- A rat's average lifespan is usually of 1–3 years. 20+ human years in rat age would approximately equal to a little more than 4 months.
- Ritz skateboards around as opposed to driving a car.[13]
Inspirations
- MKMaffo posted on Newgrounds concept art from Ritz, which also goes into detail about how Ritz was conceived:[14]
- Ritz's character design was loosely based on the Yoshi's Island art style, and some of his inspirations were the Little Mouser enemies from the same game, as well as the Super Mario Bros. 2 boss Mouser.
- Ritz's sunglasses are based on the glasses of Kamina from Gurren Lagann.
- Ritz has a loose 1990s aesthetic.
Gallery
View Ritz's full gallery here.
Ritz's static idle pose.
The GIF of Ritz posted on ninjamuffin99's Twitter before being deleted shortly afterward.
Ritz's idle animation without his microphone by MKMaffo.
Ditto, but with no background.
Ritz's idle animation with his microphone by MKMaffo.
