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liache · 7 years

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little junkers in the past headcanon things that i really love and would love to infodump on and would probably make it into my fic If I Ever Got Back To Writing It:

rat’s mother died of radiation sickness when he was 6 and he was sent to a humanitarian boarding school/orphanage, where he reluctantly stayed until he was around 10, after which he ran away with a group of other kids

said kids would soon be his survival group, ranging from 13 year olds to 9 year olds. rat was one of the younger ones. tbh i like the idea that the ones he was closest to had “rat” as a nickname: packrat (leader), labrat (medic), rugrat (youngest), and then junkrat (scavenger). it probably coincides with the letters of their first names. they had shorthands for these too: packard, labba, ruggy, and junk

jamie was an illegitimate child between a wealthy wind farm operator and his mistress. he never once met his father, who his mom resented for dismissing her and treating her poorly. if the crisis had never happened, however, jamie would be next in line for inheriting the wind farm empire his father established, and would probably even be taken into the family and trained to succeed his father at some point. too bad it all got destroyed from the crisis and explosion. his dad might still be around along the metropolis coast, but who knows? they couldnt recognize each other if they had to.

rat and his gang made a living of selling scrap and stealing from other gangs, since they were small and quick and people were more likely to take pity on a little starving kid. they used this to their advantage, and would send the younger ones (ruggy and junk) to beg in the larger villages, especially after rat lost his leg.

rat lost his leg at the age of 11-12 after stepping on a landmine while running into enemy territory. it broke his left ankle and annihilated his right leg up to his knee. packard was the one who had to try and fix him up, but you cant really expect a 16 y.o to know how to do a proper amputation. rat still experiences pain from having his bone not really sawed off, but broken apart with a chisel above the knee and sewed over, and having his other ankle set improperly.

packard was kind of a dick and threatened to kick junk out of the group for being disabled, which drove rat to prove himself even harder. labba helped make his first peg leg and scoured for pain medicine for him.

rat actually blew part of his right pinkie off in his mid-teens, but just the upper part. so he already had a close call with that arm.

he lost his hand and part of his forearm much later while he was in his late teens/early twenties, when he tried building a new type of bomb after 4 days of no sleep due to his plethora of mental problems, mainly paranoia.

ive posted abt this before, but mercy is the one who fixed up his arm. she probably would have helped him with a prosthetic, but in a mania in the middle of the night after he woke up, he stole all the medicine he could out of the medical tent and took off. he OD’d after eating random medicine out of desperation (hoping they were for pain) and saw god, but managed to puke up the pills after god called him a stupid wanker. rat doesnt remember mercy, but he remembers god calling him a wanker.

mako was born in new zealand and is mixed: maori mother and white aussie father. he grew up very close to his mother and sisters compared to his dad, but had an alright relationship with him. his mother died in his mid-teens due to cancer, and afterwards his dad moved mako and his sisters to the australian outback where his father’s family was. mako became acquainted with his paternal cousins there, who basically moved in with how often they visited. it was a very big family. mako’s a middle child with two sisters on both sides, and three cousins around his age.

mako’s mother grew up in america but moved to NZ as an adult to be closer to her extended family/grandparents, where she met mako’s father and settled down. because hog was close to her growing up, he took on her american accent (shhh this is just me getting an explanation for his lack of NZ accent)

mako worked in a slaughterhouse as an older teen/before the crisis, much to his displeasure and horror. he would have loved to be a mechanic and worked on cars and motorcycles in his spare time, but the slaughterhouse was the only place he could find solid work in the middle of nowhere. he vowed to become a vegetarian after only a week of working there. it’s probably where the “roadhog” persona started to grow: the empty-minded lack of empathy needed to kill the animals, the way he needed to dissociate from his morals in order to make money and survive.

that being said, he really did have a hobby of fixing and riding motorcycles. he was part of the biker scene, though one of the more casual members.

when the crisis hit, it took a while to reach the outback compared to the populated coast. it only affected the outback within the last couple years of the crisis, but it was enough to decimate mako’s new home and cause the death of his cousin and two of his sisters.

after the crisis and when the government tried to relocate mako and the rest of his family due to giving away outback land to the omnics, mako was actually initially unsure whether or not to join the ALF. while growing up he was a bit more shy and less confrontational than his family, who all joined immediately, but his rage toward the government and mourning over his lost family members drove him to join and eventually become one of their most prolific members, mainly due to his strength and durability during protests. this also helped the roadhog persona grow, to shed his old softness and grow a harder shell. it’s also when he took it on as an alias, since it was a common practice not to share your real name while part of the ALF.

hog was actually not in or around the omnium when it detonated; it was a plan devised by ALF members (including hog) to raid the omnium but it went awry when they accidentally damaged the core and caused it to explode. hog was supposed to be on watch outside of the omnium, up on a cliff in order to spot potential attackers from afar and prevent interference. when the explosion happened, hog was nearly a mile away and behind cover, but still suffered radiation burns on his arm and face (if he holds his forearm up to his face, you can actually see where his arm scars fit into his face scars). however, most of his remaining family was part of the infiltration team, and were instantly vaporized. the few who werent inside at the time were closer to the building and were either crushed by debris, or died soon after from direct radiation exposure. hog probably would have died too, but he took off on his bike as soon as it happened and sped as far away from the radiation as he could.

the ALF was criminalized directly afterward, and overwatch was sent to provide humanitarian relief (and blackwatch to round up and imprison remaining ALF members at the behest of the aus government)

hog began to wear a mask due to the effects of inhaling radioactive dust on his already sensitive lungs, and to protect his identity (not that a 7′3 550lb man isnt already inconspicuous, but, yknow). it also helped really distance himself from “mako” and fully embrace “roadhog”, since now survival was on the top of his list, and would be harder than ever. roadhog is a method of survival, no matter what he would have to do. this is also when his survivor’s guilt began to set in, which is part of the reason why he stayed in the outback for so long. he felt that he caused it to be this way, so he deserved to rot there. roadhog was born from the wastes, and that’s where he belonged.

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