For such a humble cat, Radical Rick’s got an unusual knack for making enemies.
But whether we chalk it up to his reputation, the swooning babes, or those championship trophies that MX Mug can’t stop drooling over, it makes sense that a clear-cut champion would inspire adversaries.
In the words of Taylor Swift, who might have her own shrine to the Radster somewhere... haters gonna hate, hate, hate...
And in Radical Rick’s case, the haters make him all the more legendary.
Lining up the baddies
From mustache-twirling regulars to handlebar shaped aliens, Radical Rick’s adversaries make quite the police lineup. It’s high time someone brought them together, ran the numbers, and scored them on a custom badness scale.
Yes, that’s right.
Here on the Radical Rick blog, badness is a word.
Here’s our thoughts on the top five villains of Radical Rick, counted down from fairly bad to BOAT, (Baddest of All Time).
To do Damian’s characters (and their fun chicanery) justice, we’ve gathered a score from five categories—Muscle and Agility, Mastermindery, Ambition, Lethality, and of course, How hard they fall.
Keep reading for a walk down memory lane… or should we say, solitary confinement hallway.
When you’re done, leave a comment and tell us where we’re wrong!
Baddest #5: Radical Rick’s Teacher, Miss Wristwack
Sometimes, the gnarliest enemy’s not a Goliath.
With dark fantasies of eliminating Radical Rick’s after-school and summer riding hours, the bony, bespectacled Miss Wristwack is truly frightening. And while ‘Radical Richard,’ as she calls him, is no straight-A kiss up, he’s no teacher’s nightmare… which makes her appetite to punish him all the more sinister.
With the public school system backing her up, along with 180 instructional days at her disposal, she actually wields more power over the Radster than any other baddie...and in Episode 123, ‘The Teacher from Hell’ she suffers a seriously gross downfall.
After passing out in a fit of glee, (she’s moments away from banishing Radical Rick to summer school for not showing up to his final exam), Wristwack gets mouth to mouth resuscitation from Mug and Spike... with a toilet plunger.
Talk about punishment.
Muscle and agility: 1 / 5
Mastermindery: 3 / 5
Dark Ambition: 4 / 5
Lethality: 1 / 5
Downfall: 4 / 5 BADNESS SCORE: 13
Baddest #4: Thrasher Bones
Though he’s not the nastiest of the bunch, Thrasher Bones gets kudos for being Radical Rick’s first true enemy.
A BMXer himself, Bones is a fast, ruthless competitor. But unlike MX Mug, who’s jealous of the Radster’s success but soon teams up with him, Thrasher holds a vendetta from day one... when a twelve year old Radical Rick bests him in the hero’s first BMX race. Humiliated by the loss, Thrasher joins the army and plots revenge all through boot camp.
In Episode 47, Thrasher suffers an eighties-worthy downfall, (it’s one he’s got coming after blowing up the Radillac). After ambushing the gang on an old cargo ship, this baddie finds himself stuffed in a tubular vent by one ‘Mr. Tea’ and then hung on a tank’s gun.
What can we say?
We pity the fool who tries to off Radical Rick!
Muscle and agility: 4 / 5
Mastermindery: 3 / 5
Dark Ambition: 3 / 5
Lethality: 3 / 5
Downfall: 3 / 5 BADNESS SCORE: 16
Baddest #3: Butch Cartilage
Bulging shoulders, leather jacket, pimples, and a speech pattern he probably learned from New York wiseguys—Butch Cartilige is O.G.
He’s a radder, deadlier version of Scut Farkus in ‘A Christmas Story,’ the yellow-eyed bully who makes your fourth grade blood run cold.
Like Thrasher Bones, his beef with Radical Rick has a starting point. Not long after they first cross paths, Butch breaks his hand by punching Rick’s helmet. It’s a fact Damian reminds us of with the cast Butch wears far into the series, even after he’s found his calling as Mean Inc.’s muscle.
This hulking brute earns the number three spot because he’s surprisingly cunning. While his goals are plain—demolish Rick, and make off with Bonnie Brainstorm like a caveman with a club—Butch thinks outside the box. He lays traps, leaves false trails, brings hungry sharks to a surfing contest (Episode 102), and even lures the Rad Squad into a large meat grinder at the Whammo burger warehouse (Episode 128).
Not bad for someone who’s got a bright future with The Sopranos.
Muscle and agility: 5 / 5
Mastermindery: 4 / 5
Dark Ambition: 2 / 5
Lethality: 4 / 5
Downfall: 2 / 5
BADNESS SCORE: 17
Baddest #2: Skuzzer Switchblade
With one line of dialogue, this mohawked nemesis tells us all we need to know:
“What? I’m in the middle of de-linting my royal belly button!”
Part Hell’s Angel and part wart hog, it’s a scream to watch Skuzzer Switchblade flaunt his royal lineage wherever he can. With high-falutin thous and highbrow insults, the aristocratic airs make a perfectly bizarre contrast with the sleeveless jacket, the tusky pig mask…and that bulging belly stretched over a Roman loincloth.
“Skuzzer was great because I could put anything on his chest. It worked as sort of a real time bulletin board, it changed from frame to frame depending on the situation…” -Damian
From the moment when Skuzzer hears about Radical Rick’s existence, the pig-man never disappoints. He’s like Highlander… in his vision of the BMX world, there can be only one. And where Skuzzer may lack in brains or craftiness, he makes up for it in raw, undiluted motivation. In caper after caper, his drive to snuff out Radical Rick and be the ‘The King of Wheeled Madness’ never, ever stalls.
As Miss Wristwack might say: A for effort, Skuzzer!
...And by the way, what on earth is under that loincloth?
Jockstrap? Commando? The Royal Jewels??
Damian’s not telling, so your guess is as good as ours!
Muscle and agility: 5 / 5
Mastermindery: 2 / 5
Dark Ambition: 5 / 5
Lethality: 3 / 5
Downfall: 4 / 5
BADNESS SCORE: 19
And #1... the BOAT: Dr. Purin Flashin
You probably saw this coming.
How can we resist a shriveled, gollum-like mastermind? A fiend whose detailed plans for world domination all hinge on ruining BMX culture?
The villain whose name invokes the high infla-shin of the late seventies comes in first. With a scheming, cringy presence, he’s a perfect foil for a thoroughly rad hero.
“Dr. Purin Flashin was fun to draw. He’s just a layer of skin hanging on a skull. The challenge for me was: how skinny and bony could I go without making him a skeleton?” -Damian
What Purin Flashin lacks in physical prowess, or healthy body fat levels, he makes up for in sheer, Pinky and the Brain-like planning. Right from his first appearance, and even before he gathers Thrasher, Butch, and Skuzzer into Mean Inc., Flashin shows us he’s the energizer bunny of evil schemes.
He just keeps going.
Whether that’s nuking D.C. with a ‘World Piece’ bomb (Episode 100), devaluing the economy by mass-producing bikes from old swing sets (July 1982 BMX Plus!), or blowing everyone up with a combustible keg of Whammo secret sauce (Episodes 152, 153, and 154), it’s almost a shame when the Rad Squad makes mincemeat of Flashin’s latest shenanigan.
Give him some protein shakes, a pinky ring, and he’ll run circles around Dr. Evil. TEN out of five for dark ambition!
Muscle and agility: 0 / 1
Mastermindery: 5 / 5
Dark Ambition: 10/5
Lethality: 4 / 5
Downfall: 4 / 5
BADNESS SCORE: 23
What do you think? Did we nail down Radical Rick’s baddies?
Or did our rankings miss the mark on someone’s dastardly badness?
Leave a comment or let us know on instagram!