10 Greatest Unspoken Star Wars Movie Plot Points

And now, we sing the ballad of poor Ratts Tyerell, an extremely minor character in The Phantom Menace who nevertheless has a low-key heartbreaking arc in the middle of the film.

Ratts is a podracer pilot glimpsed a few brief times during the movie's podracing sequence, namely at his moment of death.

In the second lap of the Boonta Eve Classic, Ratts can be seen letting out a scream as his pod crashes into a stalactite and explodes in a fireball, killing him instantly.

Though the scene swiftly moves on and the audience isn't invited to actively think about Ratts ever again, keep your eyes peeled when Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) talks to Watto (Andy Secombe) about Anakin (Jake Lloyd) after the race.

In the background, a couple of diminutive alien creatures can be seen walking around mournfully, and one of the film's deleted scenes reveals these characters to be Ratts' wife and children, who were in attendance for the race and presumably saw him die.

Not-so-fun fact from the wider Star Wars universe: one of Ratts' sons, Deland, went on to found the Ratts Tyerell Foundation and became a lobbyist to highlight the dangers of podracing, successfully having it banned on many planets throughout the galaxy.