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Scrat (also known as The Scrat and Squeak Attack) is an acorn-obsessed saber-toothed squirrel. His search for acorns and keeping them once he has them are usually shown as his own stories in the films, independent of the main plot, which are parallel with the journeys of the other main characters simply by chance, making the other characters meet him occasionally. Although not part of the gang, Scrat has proven to be enormously successful and has become a breakthrough character of the series.

Scrat is commonly shown in scenes as a comic relief character, involving the gang, but never interacts with them, directly with a few exceptions. He appears in all four films, as well as his own short films, "Gone Nutty", "No Time For Nuts", "Scrat's Continental Crack-up", "Cosmic Scrat-tastrophe" and Scrat: Spaced Out, and has also made a cameo appearance in Sid's short, "Surviving Sid".

He has become the mascot of the Blue Sky Studios and appeared in their logo at the start of every of their movies. He is voiced by Chris Wedge.

Appearance[]

Scrat is a crossover of a squirrel and a rat (hence the name Sc-rat), is small and has brownish fur. He has a pointed jaw like a rat and a body similar to a squirrel. Scrat also has small saber-teeth similar to a saber-tooth tiger and a large football shaped bushy tail about as big as his body.

Personality[]

Scrat starts off being always seen chasing his acorn. Once succeeded, he usually hugs it, buries it or pretends to eat it. This doesn't last for long as he always loses it. Scrat is usually a glutton for punishment, having to risk his life to get his nut back. He was struck by lightning, chased by avalanches, got into fights with piranhas and Sid (In the first film after the dodo bird fight). Scrat is also nutty when it comes to his acorn. At the end of the second film on DVD, and at throughout the third film he is calm, nice, easy-going, cute, innocent, loyal, caring, loveable, brave, sweet, devoted, silly, panicky, heroic, eager and happy-go-lucky.

In a special feature in the second film's DVD, his name has been stated to be a mix of the words "squirrel" and "rat", his species allegedly believed to have been a common ancestor of both. In the Ice Age DVD commentary, he is referred to as "The Scrat" by Directors Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha.

Roles in the series[]

Movies[]

Ice Age (2002)[]

Scrat is first shown naively making his way through the ice age with his only possession: One single acorn. He tries to bury it into the snow, but with little success, as the snow itself is frozen solid. With enough force, he stomps down on it, causing the ice around it to crack. This begins a chain reaction, which cracks more and more ice, until an entire glacier comes crashing down, nearly smashing Scrat. However, Scrat escapes, only to be stepped on by some migrating animals and remains stuck under the foot of a female Macrauchenia as she steps on him at every step she makes. Eventually, Scrat gets free from the foot and make his way to a tree and try to bury his acorn there, but inevitably use it as a lightning rods by mistake.

Later, Scrat unknowingly follows Manfred, Sid, Diego and Roshan up north, getting thrown ed into the sky, sliding through ice slides, and then having his acorn turned into a popcorn by the fire after trying to melt it while it was frozen in a little ice block.

2.0000 years later, Scrat is finally free from a block of ice where he and his acorn where frozen in for all those years as they arrive in a tropical island and melts but he lose his acorn again. He tries to bury a coconut but he causes a volcano to erupt and he gives a nervous smile to the audience.

Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006)[]

Scrat made his way to a great glacier and yankes out his beloved acorn from the side. This lets losing a stream of water, evidence that the current ice age is ending. Scrat hastily tries to plug the holes in the ice back in, but rather ends up being shot out from the glacier's side and falling down a long way down, until he hits solid ice, and is sent through the icy slide when a young Platybelodon slides through there.

Scrat2

Scrat at the beginning of the second movie.

Scrat eventually was close to retrieving his acorn when he saw it under the icy surface of a lake. He tried to get it back by stomping on the surface, but ended up under the ice. He had lost it when it ended up above him, and he remained on the lower levels of the ice. Eventually, he would get his cherished acorn back, having battled piranhas and baby vultures, being stomped out of a nest, scaling ice walls, and at last, reaching his cherished acorn. It is revealed in the second film that Scrat is a professional at some kind of ice age martial art. This is demonstrated when he is attacked by the aforementioned piranhas and one of them attempts to eat his adored acorn, and then again, when he tries to come back home to Indianapolis before they find his owner Lisa and let her out, but is resuscitated by Sid. Warning signs that Scrat is about to perform this martial art appear in the form of slitted eyes and a loud war cry, Sid starts to run while he's being kicked and chased by Scrat thus ending the film.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs[]

Scrat founds a new acorn on a cliff where he intencounters Scratte, a female saber-toothed squirrel, whom he competes with over his acorn, and is instantly smitten. However, after numerous conflicts, the two fall in love and they come to live togheter in a big three in the Dino World. However Scrat gets sick of her and comes back to his acorn but at the end he loses both Scratte and the acorn.

Ice Age: Continental Drift[]

Scrat accidentally causes the continental drift while trying to catch his acorn in the center of Earth. Later he finds a map that leads him to Scratlantis, a place full of squirrels like him that evolved even gaining the ability of talking. However Scrat is more interested in the acorns and his hunger accidentally destroys the city and leds him to be trapped in a desert, much to his horror and dismay.

Ice Age: Collision Course[]

After having somehow escaped from the desert and came back to the ice Valley, Scrat has a new acorn and finds a frozen UFO and accidentally uploads it finishing in space where, struggling to command it, accidentally sends a deadly asteroid towards Earth. While the Herd tries to stop the asteroid, Scrat still struggle to command the ship which also causes some problems to the Herd too and at the end he accidentally destroys Mars. Scrat tries to act like nothing happened and escapes.

The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild[]

Scrat doesn't appear since he's still stuck in space and that this is a TV spin-off film/pilot centered on Buck but he's indirectly mentioned when the Herd and Buck mentions the asteroid event and he can be seen in a drawing in Buck's den that shows him in the UFO (probably a reference to the Scratazon temple).

Shorts[]

Scrat is also the main character in some short films. In the first, entitled Gone Nutty, he loses his meticulously-organized collection of acorns in a catastrophic chain of events. By ramming his acorn into the hole in the exact middle of the collection, he shatters the pile and, incidentally, the continent and accidentally starts continental drift.

In the second, No Time For Nuts (which happened before the plot of the second film), he finds a time machine left by an unfortunate time-traveler, and visits a number of historical events. He is eventually trapped in a future when acorn trees have gone extinct, but somehow manages to return to the series' time period.

Scrat also had a cameo in the short film Surviving Sid that was significant to the plot.

In the third, Scrat: Spaced Out (which serves as a midquel), after accidentally ruining Buck's plan and days before accidentally destroying Mars, Scrat gets captured by a group of female alien Sabertooth squirrels named Scratazon which tries to steal his acorn for hunger but Scrat fights back and the alien ship blows up. Then a black hole is created and Scrat defeats Scratazon by pushing her into it and gets his acorn but he gets swallowed by the black hole. He gets luckily spitted out but his acorn is swallowed and lost forever leaving Scrat alone in space screaming in frustration. After this he comes back to the UFO out of screen and tries to come back to Earth which eventually makes him crash on Mars like it was shown in the film.

Shows[]

Scrat Tales[]

Scrat comes back to Earth and discovers that he and Scratte had a son. He teaches him how to catch acorns which leds to funny disasters and situations.

Games[]

Scrat is the main character in the Ice Age 2: The Meltdown video game. He's also playable in the other two games based on the series, though, in the Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs game, he and Scratte appear as an interlude, but still playable.

List of Ordeals and Injuries[]

ZAP1

Scrat gets struck by lightning.

Scrat is probably the most hardy of the characters. He gets injured a lot but rarely has any bruises, scratches, or permanent body damage.

Ice Age (2002)[]

  • Falls from a very high point in the beginning.
  • Gets stepped on by creatures weighing tons.
  • Gets struck by lightning at the top of a tree, when he tried to bury his acorn.
  • Gets flicked really high in the air by Diego.
  • Rolls down a hill, gathering snow, forming a snowball.
  • Runs into ice wall.
  • Frozen in ice for 20,000 years.

Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006)[]

  • Gets filled with water and inflates like a balloon.
  • Gets his head flattened by a cut-out piece of ice.
  • Fights a school of piranhas.
  • Gets beaten by a condor and is thrown out of her nest.
  • Nearly split in half when the dam breaks.
  • Falls into a chasm.
  • Almost drowns.
  • Hit by a Platybelodon on a water slide.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)[]

  • Fights a crow.
  • Gets thrown into a microwave.
  • Falls off a cliff and gets trampled by Manny.
  • Falls off another cliff.
  • Gets crushed by a tree.
  • Has his chest hair torn off by Scratte.
  • Almost falls into a volcano.
  • Gets attacked by Scratte while dancing the tango.
  • Falls from a great height in the Ice Age world to the Dino World, after being trapped in a bubble.
  • Gets shot up into the air by a rocket with Scratte (he pulls the acorn from Scratte's hands).
  • Sticks to a tree.

Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012)[]

  • Gets caught on fire when he passes through all of Earth's layers.
  • Trips and bumps between the sphere and the solid outer core, creating a Scrat-like Moai, a Scrat Sphinx (which loses its nose when it falls off), and 4 Scrat faces on Mount Rushmore.
  • Spins in the core until he's thrown out of the rift into the upper atmosphere.
  • Crashes on a piece of ice.
  • Becomes very thin due to the crushing water pressure.
  • Gets pulled away and crashes into a big chunk of ice.
  • Gets eaten by a shark.
  • Gets attacked by sirens.
  • Gets his eyes burnt after Scratlantis sinks to the bottom of the ocean, leaving him in the desert.

Ice Age: Collision Course (2016)[]

  • He remains stuck inside his helmet.
  • Has his skin wear off temporarily.
  • He's stepped on by his own acorn.
  • He gets in trouble with the teletrasporter.
  • He's smacked by doors.

Controversy[]

Main article: Ivy Supersonic

The origin of Scrat is disputed. Cartoon designer Ivy Supersonic claims she created the character in 1999, after seeing a squirrel-rat hybrid in New York City's Central Park. She called her character "Sqrat" and says she presented the idea to 20th Century Fox movie executives. A CNN report by Jeanie Moos of Ivy's discovery was aired in 2000, two years before Ice Age went into development. Supersonic claims the studio's documents actually identified the character in "Ice Age" as "Sqrat", though her creation was not saber-toothed.[1]

Ivy Supersonic was offered a $300,000 settlement by Fox Studios. She turned it down and subsequently lost in court. The case is currently in appeal (Case # 04401 Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, NYC). She still has hopes of receiving damages for her claimed infringement.[1] Supersonic did win a partial Summary Judgement from the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board in a reverse suit, Fox Film Corporation v. Ivy Silberstein (her real name), in which Fox had tried to prevent her from registering the trademark "SQRAT".[1]

Trivia[]

  • Despite the fact that Scrat was made to be a fictional creature, a species similar to Scrat dubbed Cronopio was discovered in the Rio Negro region of Argentina in 2011 by paleontologist Guillermo Rougier.
  • He is a playable character in the Ice Age: The Meltdown video game, where he serves as the main protagonist as the game serves as a midquel of the film which shows what else Scrat during the events of the film.
  • A running gag in the franchise is Scrat being stepped on by someone due to his little dimensions or when he's in trouble in fighting a character for the acorn: In the first film he's stepped on by several animals, in the second film he's stepped on by the baby condor, in the McDonald commercials he's squashed by Ellie's butt and stepped on by Momma T-Rex, in the third film he's stepped on by Manny, Crash, Eddie, Sid and later by Scratte.
  • Scrat is absent from The Buck Wild movie.
  • Scrat returns in his huge-bellied brother's film, Scraat Belly Telling since it's a short series episode, and walks in a bedroom door. Scrat is the only main character of the Ice Age series to not follow along with the rest of the main characters. Nevertheless, his actions throughout every movie have always indirectly impacted the group greatly one way or another.
    • However, he has only mostly interacted with Manny, Sid, Diego, Granny, Crash, and Eddie.

Gallery[]


Guy with glasses

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