When pizza rat became the voice of a generation after he valiantly tried to save a slice of abandoned cheese pizza from a subway staircase before realizing it was too hard and ran away, hungry and alone, the internet had its requisite fun. It seemed like the joke had died when the sexy-pizza-rat costume debuted, complete with “two attached pepperoni pizza slice pockets.”
We were wrong. Pizza rat was only the beginning.
An Instagram video posted on Thursday by Jonathan Liu shows that our Italian-craving rodent friend was not an anomaly, but the Franz Ferdinand of a citywide Game of Calzones.
The rats, perhaps realizing now that one person’s trash is another rat’s chance to become internet-famous, are fighting over the pizza now. The video’s caption reads, “I win today, interwebs. #subwayrat #teampizza #pizzarat#pizzaparty.”
Or, you know, maybe rats have always fought over pizza on the subway, and they were just waiting for a smartphone-wielding Herodotus to finally chronicle their efforts. If, on the other hand, this is a sign that rodents are breaking into factions in search of meme-hood and the best slice of pizza in New York that is only slightly covered in dirt, it seems likely that this will escalate even further next week, with rat armies carrying boxes of pizza on their way to the 1 train, or, even worse, with a rat eating an entire wheel of Brie on the subway.
