Junkrat is the call sign of Jamison Fawkes, a character who first appeared in the 2016 video game Overwatch, a Blizzard Entertainment–developed first-person shooter, and the resulting franchise.

[3] In addition, they wanted to create a character that could serve as an indirect damage dealer, able to bounce explosives off of walls and "cause chaos in battle".

The writing team chose to make the two partners in crime,[7][6] with lead writer Michael Chu describing the pair as "not exactly your common superheroes".

[12] His loud personality often drives him into trouble, one of them is by blowing away their deception when attempting a Trojan-horse plan to get revenge on the Queen of Junkertown after banishing him and Roadhog from her dominion.

In Overwatch 2, Junkrat gains a short-term boost to his reload and movement speed after killing an enemy, due to a new passive ability given to all "Damage" class characters.

[22] Chris Moyse of Destructoid stated he was always amused by Blizzard's depiction of the character in how he was often used for comic relief, "but he’s also pretty much a cut-throat murderer, who’d blow up your mum for three buck".

Comparing it to gameplay found in the Halo video game series, he enjoyed being able to stay away from the main conflict and be able to engage from afar, finding such a novel concept for a first person shooter.

[25] Journalist Nathan Grayson expressed similar views in an article for Kotaku, stating that while he originally found the character a blight on the game, after using him he came to understand the appeal.

He found the character's maniacal laughter and personality also played well into this aspect, portraying him as someone having "the time of their life" and further calling him the "Gollum the Overwatch universe" due to how deceptively easy pickings his hunched stature made him appear to other players.

[26] In contrast, fellow Kotaku writer Cecilia D'Anastasio wrote an article refuting Grayson's claims, suggesting that instead the character was counterintuitive to the design of a game like Overwatch as he was "antagonistic to team coordination".

As his main damage source utilizes a constant stream of grenades, he became harder to fight against, and felt to D'Anastasio like a character that encouraged "mindless" gameplay in contrast to its more strategic aspects.

[27] Regarding representation in gaming, non-profit organization AbleGamers praised him as a positive example of disability due to the loss of his leg, noting that while it change the manner in which he navigated the world it did not define his identity, and further emphasized "a narrative of capability and resilience".

[29] In contrast however, University of Murcia researcher Juan Francisco Belmonte in a paper for the 2017 DiGRA conference argued that Junkrat's insanity and dirt-covered features coupled with Roadhog's animalistic features presented them as "a departure from what 'white' represents" for other characters in the game and an example of how he perceived Blizzard relying on stereotypes when designing Overwatch and representing the cast's cultural backgrounds.