The Food of the Gods

Mr. Skinner was killed when his car tire was punctured in the forest while trying to escape. He got out to fix it and was overwhelmed by the swarm of giant rats that had become predatory due to consuming the F.O.T.G. substance. The rats, now the size of dogs, attacked him in the darkness and he was unable to reach safety in time.

Earlier in the film, the substance is shown to affect rats first, making them aggressive and abnormally large, foreshadowing their deadly potential.

After Morgan ferried his injured friends back to the mainland following the deadly wasp attack, he returned alone to investigate the source of the giant creatures. As a professional football player accustomed to facing dangerous situations, he felt compelled to understand what was causing the mutations and potentially eliminate the threat.

Morgan's arrival was originally for a hunting trip, establishing him as someone comfortable in dangerous outdoor situations.

A mysterious substance called F.O.T.G. (Food of the Gods) bubbles up from the ground on the remote island. The Skinners treat it as a divine gift and feed it to their livestock. When consumed by rats, wasps, grubs, and chickens, the substance acts as a mutagen that causes dramatic abnormal growth, turning ordinary creatures into monstrous sizes.

The film establishes early that the substance comes from the earth itself, implying a natural but unknown origin.

Jack Bensington owns a dog food company and sees the F.O.T.G. substance as a massive commercial opportunity. He believes the growth-promoting properties could be marketed to make animals larger and more profitable for the pet food industry. He brings bacteriologist Lorna Scott to analyze the substance and potentially develop a way to replicate or package it for sale.

Bensington's arrival on the island with scientific equipment establishes his profit-driven motivation from the start.

The survivors, trapped in the Skinner farmhouse as giant rats surrounded the building, were being picked off one by one. Morgan devised a desperate plan to blow up a nearby dam upstream from the island. The resulting floodwaters drowned the giant rats, whose massive weight made swimming impossible. The survivors escaped through the rising waters to higher ground.

The farmhouse siege builds progressively, with the rats chewing through defenses, forcing a dramatic solution.

Morgan blew up the dam because the giant rats had overrun the Skinner farmhouse and were killing the survivors. Brian, Bensington, and Mrs. Skinner had already been killed. With no other means of escape and the rats literally at the door, Morgan rigged the dam's infrastructure with dynamite to flood the area and drown the giant rats, whose enormous weight made them unable to swim to safety.

The escalating attacks throughout the film culminate in this desperate act of survival.

After the flood recedes, the survivors pile the dead rat bodies and burn them, pouring remaining F.O.T.G. jars and gasoline over the carcasses. However, several jars are swept away by the floodwaters and drift toward the mainland. These jars ultimately reach a dairy farm where cows consume the contaminated substance, tainting the milk supply.

The film's theme of human interference with nature backfiring is established through the Skinners' initial feeding of the substance to chickens.

The ending implies that the F.O.T.G. contamination has spread beyond the island to the mainland. Cows at a dairy farm consumed the mutagen-contaminated feed, and the milk produced is now tainted. Schoolchildren are shown unknowingly drinking this milk, suggesting they may undergo abnormal growth just like the island creatures - the threat is not over, it has simply moved to a new location.

The open jar drifting toward the mainland during the cleanup scene foreshadows the contamination spreading.

The giant rats were unable to swim to safety because their massive size and weight made them sink rather than float. Normal rats are strong swimmers, but the enormous bodies created by the F.O.T.G. mutation were too heavy for buoyancy. When Morgan flooded the area, the rats drowned rather than escaping to higher ground, allowing the survivors to survive the night.

The film establishes that the mutated creatures grow proportionally but beyond normal proportions, affecting their physical capabilities.

The Skinners fed the mysterious F.O.T.G. substance to their chickens, causing them to grow to enormous sizes far larger than humans. Unlike the rats and wasps which became aggressive predators, the chickens were simply massive. The film shows them ruling the barn and being large enough to pose a threat to humans, though the rats ultimately proved more deadly.

The Skinners are introduced believing the substance is a gift from God, blindly feeding it to their animals without understanding the consequences.