Junkrat
Overwatch character
Junkrat's appearance in Overwatch.
First game	Overwatch (2016)
Designed by	Arnold Tsang[1] Ben Zhang[1]
Voiced by	Chris Parson[2]
In-universe information
Class	Damage
Nationality	Australian

Junkrat is a character who first appeared in the 2016 video game Overwatch, a Blizzard Entertainment–developed first-person shooter.

During the development of the game Overwatch, Junkrat's original concept was conceived by Blizzard as a means to balance the character Torbjörn turrets.^[3] In addition, they wanted to create a character that could serve as an indirect damage dealer, able to bounce explosives off of walls and "cause chaos in battle". Designed by artist Arnold Tsang, several concepts were considered including a cyborg, several designs that looked "more alien that human", and a round robot,^[1] the last of which would later be recycled as a basis for the character Wrecking Ball.^[4] They found themselves gravitating towards an initial design of a man in a bomb suit with a large grenade launcher.^[1]

However this caused a problem as the developers wanted to be able to see the character's face and his maniacal expressions, so the concept was scrapped and started over. One early concept to this end featured a large mustached man with cargo pants and a cape, before settling on a man with a mostly exposed torso, a peg leg, and a cybernetic arm. While they initially considered the idea of making him a member of "Los Muertos", a Mexican gang in the Overwatch universe, they instead chose the Junkers, a group of scavengers in Australia taking inspiration from the Mad Max film universe.^[1][5] Establishing Junkrat's background helped the team also finalize Roadhog, another character in the game who had been also been designed by Tsang early on. The writing team chose to make the two partners in crime,^[6][5] with lead writer Michael Chu describing the pair as " not exactly your common superheroes".^[5]

Junkrat, real name Jamison Fawkes, is an Australian scavenger, mercenary and anarchist. After the Omnic Crisis, an "omnium" – an A.I. controller that directs omnics as part of a hive mind – was destroyed in the Outback, turning it into an irradiated wasteland. Living in the ruins are the Junkers, a group of scavengers and mercenaries; Jamison Fawkes was among their numbers. The effects of the radiation awakened a sense of madness which soon developed into pyromania. In the heart of the destroyed omnium, Junkrat found a valuable secret, making him the target of bounty hunters and rival gangs. He made a deal with the Junker enforcer Roadhog, who agreed to become his personal bodyguard in return for a 50-50 share of the profits from their finds.^[7] His loud personality often drives him into trouble, one of them is by blowing away their deception when attempting a Trojan-horse plan to get revenge on the Queen of Junkertown after banishing him and Roadhog from her dominion.^[8]

Junkrat appears as a playable hero in Heroes of the Storm.^[9][10][11]

He carries a Frag Launcher that fires grenades and employs Steel Traps and remote-detonated Concussion Mines; when he is killed, several primed grenades are released from his body in a final attempt to get back at the attacker (Total Mayhem). Junkrat's ultimate ability is RIP-Tire, a self-propelled truck wheel loaded with explosives that he's able to manually steer and detonate.^[3]

Junkrat has been popular since his debut. His character design has been the subject of cosplay,^[12] while engineer Colin Furze created a functional replica of his RIP-Tire weapon.^[13] Meanwhile, Agents of Shield television series Matt Owens based aspects of the character Hellfire on Junkrat, having the character quote several of Junkrat's lines and sharing traits between the two down to his ethnicity and name.^[14] Chris Moyse of Destructoid stated he was always amused by Blizzard's depiction of the character in how he was often used for comic relief, "but he’s also pretty much a cut-throat murderer, who’d blow up your mum for three buck". Moyse compared him to DC Comics' Joker or Marvel Comics' Green Goblin in this manner, feeling that Junkrat's charisma "doofus" personality belied that he was a very dangerous individual.^[15] The Daily Dot's Joseph Knoop meanwhile praised the destructive nature of the character's gameplay in contrast to others, and argued that some of the character's appeal arose not from his background as an insane Australian, but that "we all see a little bit of Junkrat in ourselves".^[16]

Clayton Purdom of Killscreen praised how Junkrat's gameplay "rewards cowardice", enjoying how it rewarded the use of ambush tactics and hit and run behavior. Comparing it to gameplay found in the Halo video game series, he enjoyed being able to stay away from the main conflict and be able to engage from afar, finding such a novel concept for a first person shooter. Purdom also praised the character's "less savory" aspects, noting that while Overwatch had been praised for embracing diversity while maintaining cohesion amongst the cast, Junkrat's "Batman-villain malevolence" helped him stand out. Acknowledging that the character's destructive attitude did not strike a comedic tone with him, Junkrat's vocal disdain for certain levels in the game and how badly he wanted to demolish them provided "just the sort of ludonarrative consonance we don’t celebrate enough", providing moments he felt Overwatch otherwise handled poorly with its cast.^[17]

Journalist Nathan Grayson expressed similar views in an article for Kotaku, stating that while he originally found the character a blight on the game, after using him he came to understand the appeal. In particular, he enjoyed how Junkrat's mechanics not only encouraged players to be "so crafty and conniving". He found the character's maniacal laughter and personality also played well into this aspect, portraying him as someone having "the time of their life" and further calling him the "Gollum the Overwatch universe" due to how deceptively easy pickings his hunched stature made him appear to other players.^[18] In contrast, fellow Kotaku writer Cecilia D'Anastasio wrote an article refuting Grayson's claims, suggesting that instead the character was counterintuitive to the design of a game like Overwatch as he was "antagonistic to team coordination". By his main damage source being to utilize a constant stream of grenades, he became harder to fight against, and felt to D'Anastasio like a character that encouraged "mindless" gameplay in contrast to its more strategic aspects.^[19]

In matters of representation in gaming, non-profit organization AbleGamers praised him as a positive example of disability due to the loss of his leg, noting that while it change the manner in which he navigated the world it did not define his identity, and further emphasized "a narrative of capability and resilience".^[20] Kat Seifert in the book Science MashUp: XR–Gesellschaft–Utopien: Leipziger Beiträge zur Computerspielekultur examined Junkrat's in-game animations, and praised how they not only conveyed his disability but also his personality through elements such as his weapon reload animation. She felt that these elements helped illustrate to the viewer not only his character, but also helped emphasize Overwatch's character design diversity.^[21] In contrast however, University of Murcia researcher Juan Francisco Belmonte in a paper for the 2017 DiGRA conference argued that Junkrat's insanity and dirt-covered features coupled with Roadhog's animalistic features presented them as "a departure from what 'white' represents" for other characters in the game and an example of how he perceived Blizzard relying on stereotypes when designing Overwatch and representing the cast's cultural backgrounds.^[22]

• Media related to Junkrat at Wikimedia Commons
• Official design reference guide by Blizzard Entertainment.