B. F. Skinny

Benjamin Franklin "B. F." Skinny is a talking rat who appears in JumpStart Adventures 5th Grade: Jo Hammet, Kid Detective. Unlike animal characters from many other JumpStart games, he is not naturally anthropomorphic, but the product of an experiment, although something had gone wrong with it. He gained the personality of a vaudeville entertainer after latching onto old comedy routines from the movies he used to watch in the lab, but has no short-term memory to convey simple thoughts, which resulted in him forgeting a lot of things. He later left town and became a national talk-show pheomenon.

B.F. calls Jo "lady" and "kid" and only calls her by her real name by the end of the game. He also calls the janitor a "guy with a broom".

Appearance
B. F. Skinny is a white rat who stands on two legs and has arms and hands, but who is the size of a normal rat. His arms are long and his body is triangular. His legs are virtually nonexistent - the corners of his body simply end in disc-shaped paws. He has a thick snout and a huge pink nose. His eyes have blue pupils and black eyebrows that usually fly above his head. He wears shirt cuffs despite not wearing a shirt, and also a red bow tie. He has a thick pink tail and rounded ears with pink insides. He possesses a visible belly button and knobby elbows represented by swirls.

In the Game
He is the messenger of the whole operation. He delivers Martin's coded messages directly to Jo Hammet at the museum.

Quotes

 * "[H]e can speak English, but latched onto the old comedy routines of the movies we used to watch in the lab. Now he only speaks in bad jokes and tired cliches, but you've gotta love the little guy!" - Martin

Trivia

 * His full name is never revealed in the game, and instead the initials of his first name were used.
 * His name is a play on American scientist B. F. Skinner.