For the rat that first appeared in human civilization, a controversial image has developed in the collective image : on the one hand, it was considered sacred by Asians, and on the other, cursed by the Western world.

… to cursed animal

The rat is pursued by the shadow of the plague in the Western vision. Indeed, the rat was judged as responsible for the Black Death which claimed 25 million victims in Europe between 1347 and 1352. The video game A Plague Tale : Innocence [21] published in 2019, bears witness to this. We are immersed in 1348 during the one hundred year war when the plague consumed the population. Villages are swarming with rats, depicted as masses of creatures living in the darkness. From the Black Death the rat was perceived as a monster. In the movies, its appearance is often exaggerated in this sense. When, in Fantastic Mr. Fox [17], the rat has bloodshot eyes, pointed ears like those of a vampire, and a body stretched out like a lizard’s; in the movie The Food of the Gods [7] the size of the animals is huge in order to accentuate the monstrous appearance [a]. Broadly speaking, its appearance provokes the “ disgust at the mere sight of rats’ ball-bearing eyes and maggot-colored tails. ” [b] Nevertheless, the rat looks like a mouse, a rodent that has a much more positive image in fiction. In reality, the rat simply has a longer body [c], smaller ears than its head and a thicker tail. Let us take the example of the Disney mascot like Mickey Mouse [8] or Stuart Little [11]. The mouse's plush-like appearance gives the image of a friendly animal, who lives with humans.

Furthermore, In the Middle Ages, according to The Pictorial History of England, the Tower of London had a dungeon dedicated to the torture of rats. In the Game of Throne series [18], a torturer uses “ rat torture ” to make a prisoner talk. A metal bucket containing a rat is attached to a human's abdomen, then the other end is heated with a torch. In order not to cook alive, the rat has no choice but to dig an exit in the prisoner's flesh. Business Insider ranks this scene as the 4th of the 20 most gruesome deaths in Game of Throne series [d]. So, the rat is considered as the source of many of mankind's misfortunes and musophobia is perpetuated in fiction.

In fiction, representations of the rat are often exaggerated, to build an image that is sometimes positive, sometimes negative based on beliefs. Despite positive representations of the rat in Asian culture, Western culture promotes a negative image that will endure over time and increase human hatred of the rat.