Theodore Matthews, better known as Thimblenose Ted, is a supporting antagonist in DreamWorks's 13th full-length animated feature film Flushed Away.
He was voiced by Christopher Fairbank.
Biography[]
Joining the Toad's henchrats, Thimblenose Ted, along with the others, was presumably kept in the dark about the Toad's plan to eradicate all the citizens of Ratropolis and repopulate it with his tadpole army. Ted served as one of the Toad's main henchrats alongside Spike and Whitey. In the gang's hierarchy, he was less important than Spike and Whitey, but more important than Ladykiller and Fat Barry.
He was a dark gray rat wearing a black business shirt whose distinctive feature was that he was missing his nose. He covered the nasal socket with a thimble strapped around his head. The lack of a nose gave an unusual quality to his voice. How he lost his nose isn't generally known. He claims to have lost it in a knife fight, but he actually got run over with a lawnmower.
He often behaved like a zombie, standing rigidly straight, arms hanging limply, eyes distant. He also ran and moved very stiffly sometimes. Despite this seeming serenity, he was one of the most vicious and cruel of the henchrats in his own detached way.
Ted was first seen when the henchrats attacked the Jammy Dodger, making a failed attempt to grab Rita, after she had taken back a ruby stolen from her by the Toad. While Whitey restrained Rita and her accomplice, the henchrats searched the ship for the ruby. Later, after the henchrats discover the ruby thanks to Roddy they return to the Toad's lair with the captured Roddy and Rita, Ted was the only henchrat besides Spike and Whitey allowed inside the Toad's private chambers. He held the imprisoned Rita on a chain. However, Roddy destroys great amount of the Toad's collection of valuable objects uncovered in the London sewers by accident and the henchrats take Roddy and Rita to the icemaker, a large refrigerator designed to freeze all of Toad's enemies, when the Toad planned to have his two prisoners frozen, Ted was the one who activated the freezing machine by casually flicking a switch. Although the two escape and Spike and Whitey are frozen instead and Rita takes back the ruby once more.
Later, after Roddy and Rita escaped and stole a cable necessary to the Toad's plan, Ted was tipped off to their location, Spike formulates a plan to capture Roddy and Rita by pursuing them on the Ratmobiles, a group of kitchen appliances (primarily hand mixers) designed to travel across water and joined the other henchrats in pursuing them. During the chase, the ship heads towards a tunnel while Roddy hangs from the side. Ladykiller manages to get hold of Roddy's leg but gets shaken off. The Jammy Dodger then flees through the tunnel, using an inflatable dinosaur balloon to plug up the entrance. Ladykiller accidentally runs into it, bounces off, and falls onto Thimblenose Ted, taking both of them out in the process. After a while, Thimblenose Ted later returned to fight Roddy and Rita again alongside the other henchrats when Roddy attempted to rescue Rita, who had been captured earlier by Spike and Whitey. At the climax, Ted was armed with a stapler gun, but the Toad grabbed it from him and used it to shoot at his enemies. During the final battle with the Toad, when the feed to the freezing machine sprayed liquid nitrogen everywhere, freezing everything, Ted slipped on some of the ice and went flying offscreen. After this, his fate is unknown.
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