Night Riders – The Nightrider from Mad Max and KITT from Knight Rider
https://wiki.wizard101central.com/wiki/Creature:Night_Rider_(Life)
https://wiki.wizard101central.com/wiki/Creature:Night_Rider_(Death)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Max
https://madmax.fandom.com/wiki/The_Nightrider
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bWihIPQoIc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Rider_(1982_TV_series)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KITT
The Night Riders are Furryosa’s army, her mains, bests, minis and bosses. Night Rider (Death) is encountered multiple times throughout the Wallaru storyline:
In the First Forest Clearing, Night Rider (Death) is considered a Boss. All drops are recorded on this page.
In the Third Forest Clearing, Night Rider (Death) is considered a Minion to Drop Bear (Myth). All drops are recorded on that page.
In East Clearing, Night Rider (Death) is considered a Minion to Angry Ali. All drops are recorded on that page.
“Gah, look who it is. Another strangeface come to dreamsteal. Joke’s on you, strangeface. All are dreams is nightmares and pain. And now I use that pain to lifesteal you. Lucky you. I’ll just have to live with it.” – Night Rider
Mad Max is an Australian media franchise created by George Miller and Byron Kennedy. It centers on a series of post-apocalyptic and dystopian action films. The franchise began in 1979 with Mad Max, and was followed by three sequels: Mad Max 2 (1981; released in the United States as The Road Warrior), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015); Miller directed or co-directed all four films. A spin-off, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, was released in 2024 and was also directed by Miller. Mel Gibson originally portrayed the series’ title character, Max Rockatansky, in the first three films, while Tom Hardy and Jacob Tomuri portrayed the character in the later two films.
In Mad Max, the first film, Crawford “Nightrider” Montizano was a berserk motorcycle gang member of Toecutter’s gang. Little is known of his imprisonment, with the opening events of Mad Max showing the conclusion of Nightrider’s tale. Having broken police custody in Sun City and – with a punk woman named “Marmaduke” by his side – he attempted to flee from the Main Force Patrol (the Federal highway police unit) in a stolen MFP Pursuit Special. As he drives, he recites a Muhammad Ali style rhyming rant, which he bellows over the police CB band, citing his credentials as a hero to his peers, and general invincibility ‘Step right up and watch the kid lay down a rubber road to freedom!!!’
Though he managed to elude his initial pursuers: Roop and Charlie, and Sarse and Scuttle; the Nightrider then encountered the MFP’s “top pursuit man”, leather-clad Max Rockatansky. Max, the more skilled driver with a well-tuned, and faster vehicle, pursued the Nightrider in a high-speed nerve-wracking chase. The Nightrider engages Max in a game of chicken, driving head on in a collision course at top speed, assuming that Max’s nerve will break, and force him to swerve away. However, it is the Nightrider whose nerve breaks first, and he swerves off course with a yelp of fear. With terror in his eyes, Nightrider begins to weep, as his dream of freedom is replaced by a vision of certain doom, and Max’s faster car shunts the Nightrider’s Monaro along the highway at top speed. Barely focusing on the road, he is totally unable to negotiate an overturned vehicle in his path. The chase resulted in the death of the Nightrider and his girl in a fiery car crash.
Toecutter and his gang blame Max for Nightrider’s death. The remainder of the film is about Max and Toecutter’s conflict.
Knight Rider is an American action crime drama television series created and produced by Glen A. Larson. The series was originally broadcast on NBC from September 26, 1982, to April 4, 1986. The show stars David Hasselhoff as Michael Knight, a sleek and modern crime fighter assisted by KITT, an advanced, artificially intelligent, self-aware, and nearly indestructible car. This was the last series Larson devised at Universal Television before he moved to 20th Century Fox Television. The series received negative reviews from critics.
“Michael Knight”, is provided with high tech crime-fighting equipment, most notably the car named KITT or Knight Industries Two Thousand, the autonomous, artificially intelligent car. According to the series, the original KITT’s main cybernetic processor was first installed in a mainframe computer used by the US government in Washington, D.C. However, Wilton saw better use for “him” in the Foundation’s crime-fighting crusade and eventually this AI system was installed in the vehicle.
KITT is an advanced supercomputer on wheels. The “brain” of KITT is the Knight 2000 microprocessor, which is the center of a “self-aware” cybernetic logic module. This allows KITT to think, learn, communicate and interact with humans. He is also capable of independent thought and action. He has an ego that is easy to bruise and displays a very sensitive, but kind and dryly humorous personality. According to Episode 55, “Dead of Knight”, KITT has 1,000 megabits of memory with one nanosecond access time. According to Episode 65, “Ten Wheel Trouble”, KITT’s future capacity is unlimited. KITT’s serial number is AD227529, as mentioned in Episode 31, “Soul Survivor”.
In the original Knight Rider series, the character of KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand) was physically embodied as a modified 1982 Pontiac Trans Am. KITT was designed by customizer Michael Scheffe. The convertible and super-pursuit KITTs were designed and built by George Barris.
KITT has a front-mounted scanner bar called the Anamorphic Equalizer. The device is a fiber-optic array of electronic eyes. The scanner can see in all visual wavelengths, as well as X-ray and infrared. Its infrared Tracking Scope can monitor the position of specific vehicles in the area within 10 miles. The scanner is also KITT’s most vulnerable area. Occasionally, the bar can pulse in different patterns and sweep rapidly or very slowly. Glen A. Larson, the creator of both Knight Rider and Battlestar Galactica has stated that the scanner is a nod to the Battlestar Galactica characters, the Cylons, and even used the iconic Cylon eye scanner audio to that effect. He stated that the two shows have nothing else in common and to remove any fan speculation, stated in the Season One Knight Rider DVD audio-comments, that he simply reused the scanning light for KITT because he liked the effect.
The current list of all the (known) Wallaru references are located here.
Although I am well versed in Pop Culture references but I do not claim to have caught them all. Let me know your favorites in the comments and if I’ve missed one you caught, let me know so I can add it to the list.
Text for this article is excerpted from the linked wiki pages
Night Rider image is from Wizard101, and is copyright of KingsIsle Entertainment.
All Mad Max images are copyright Warner Bros.
Mad Max movie poster is borrowed from The Imp Awards.
All Knight Rider images are copyright Universal Television
Image usage qualifies as fair use under US copyright law.
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