The Toad

"I hate rats!"

- The Toad "It's obvious I should've never sent rodents to do an amphibian's job!"

- The Toad

The Toad is the main antagonist of DreamWorks's 13th full-length animated feature film, Flushed Away. He is the leader and boss of his henchrats, Spike and Whitey, and his younger cousin Le Frog, and Roddy and Rita's most evil enemy.

Prior to his hatred for rodents, the Toad had a fun life with his owner Prince Charles, until he was flushed away down the sewers, like Roddy, by George Washington, a palace flunky.

He was voiced by the Academy Award nominated actor, Ian McKellen, who also played Magneto, Sir Leigh Teabing, and Gandalf the Grey/White.

Before Flushed Away


Of all the pets in the Buckingham Palace, Young Prince Charles fancied the Toad the best and became attached to him. They would frolic day-after-sunny-day, sharing the relationship between boy and toad.

However, when Charles got a new pet rat for his birthday, he and the Toad were separated.

One day, at a play, as Charles was playing with the rat, one of the guards found the Toad backstage and cruelly flushed him down the toilet (which the Toad calls a "whirlpool of despair").

Since then, the Toad despises all rodents. The Toad's deep hatred for rats motivates his evil plan for the sewer: Wash away the rats in a Great Flood and repopulate the sewer with an army of his tadpole offspring.

Flushed Away
The Toad serves as the boss of the following henchrats: Spike, Whitey, Thimblenose Ted, Fat Barry, and the Ladykiller.

He is introduced to Roddy after Roddy explains that he needs to return to Kensington. The Toad called Roddy "A Man of Quality" then provides him his royal collection. Roddy found it to be "amusing", in which the Toad thought he would find it as "diverging, not amusing". Roddy then accidentally destroys his collection, which makes the Toad blow a gasket asking Spike and Whitey to freeze him. The Toad then reacts angrily when Spike and Whitey were frozen instead. Rita then insulted him and unplugged the master cable.

The Toad gave up on getting the ruby so he could get the cable, and ordered Le Frog to do it after Spike and Whitey failed to do so. Le Frog got the cable back, and it was revealed that The Toad needed the cable so he could use it to open the floodgates during halftime during the England vs. Germany football game and use the wave from all the flushing toilets to flush all of Ratropolis away.

Roddy returned to the sewers and stopped The Toad by making him get stuck on the pipe with liquid nitrogen in it and get his tounge caught in the gears so the pipe would break, releasing the liquid nitrogen on the wave and freezing it so Ratropolis would be saved. After this, The Toad got stuck in the gears, and was most likely freed and taken into custody.

Personality
The Toad is a British, evil, pompous, greedy, well-dressed, short-tempered, domineering, easily frustrated, selfish, and aristocratic amphibian. He despises rodents, especially rats.

Appearance
The Toad wears a business suit with a purple shirt and a yellow tie (sometimes with a big tan wool jacket over his suit), and old brown shoes. He usually wears a very chic robe with purple pants and red slippers (similar to his shoes).

Trivia

 * The Toad is voiced by Ian McKellen while Roddy was voiced by Hugh Jackman in the film, which is an allusion to the X-Men movies, since McKellen and Jackman played Magneto and Wolverine respectively, and Wolverine's classic costume cameos in the film as one of the clothes in Roddy's wardrobe.
 * Ironically, despite his hatred for rats, he often involves Spike and Whitey, so his real henchman is Le Frog.
 * The Toad has a similar appearance to Ed Bighead from Rocko's Modern Life.