Invader Zim/Headscratchers

• In the episode "The Frycook What Came From All That Space", there a periodic massive increase in business called "the Foodening" that makes it impossible to escape the planet for the next twenty years (because of the gravitational pull). If this is so, how do the customers escape? Ever?
  • The gravitational increase is caused by the massive weight gain experienced by the customers when they eat all that food. Presumably, over the next 20 years they slim down again. That still doesn't explain why the mass of the food itself doesn't increase the gravity of Foodcourtia before it is eaten.
    • Maybe they eat so much that a massive amount of food has to be delivered to the planet continually to satisfy their appetites, and they keep on eating and eating. But, eventually, they stop eating, and the mass of the planet goes down again because all the, erm... waste is sent out of the planet using some sufficiently fast, high-energy vehicle to escape the gravity that, unfortunately, living beings cannot survive in due to the inertia (Light, obviously, should be able to escape the gravity since the planet isn't a black hole. So, in theory, something that goes close to the speed of light ought to be able to escape as well. But it goes so fast that the contents of it get mashed up, which is okay for dookie, but not lifeforms).
    • It can't be, though--the extra gravity pull starts as soon as the inrush of customers starts, so the extra mass is definitely from the customers arriving.
      • Uh... there's a time-warp thing involved... I dunno.
        • I think that was just to explain why there was significantly less than twenty years between Zim's first escape and the frycook coming after him.
    • It's funny.
      • Yes, we know that. Rule of Funny and Rule of Cool don't actually explain anything except in a Doylist context.
    • This could be explained with the time warp. Maybe the gravity of the planet continues to increase during the Foodening until the gravity of the planet warps time itself, and everyone is shot back to just before the Foodening began, restoring normal gravity. Granted, that leaves a lot of time travel problems to be worked out, and doesn't make all that much sense.
      • Fuck physics, I have money!
    • Maybe the planet just has really short years.
      • Maybe customers who don't want to leave can just leave by teleporter or something? Though that doesn't explain why it's so important for Zim to escape before the Foodening, since he could just teleport out afterwards.
    • My guess is that the Irkens have some kind of technology to outright destroy waste products (or shunt it to another dimension, or something). The customers are stranded for twenty years, during which time they run out of food, starve and lose weight, while all their body waste is gotten rid of via whatever the Irkens use. Eventually, since they're eating the food and then disposing of it via mass-destroying toilets, the planet's mass finally shrinks back down to escapable levels. And god help me, the MST3K Mantra may never recover from that explanation...
    • The other dimension waste disposal theory makes even more sense in the context of Zim's threat to send Dib and the bus to a "dimension of pure DOOKY!" in "A Room with a Moose".
  • Well, doesn't the taxi ship service thing shut down for the Foodening? So maybe when it's over and people stop eating (the gravitational pull is from the snacking remember) it opens again and they all leave.
    • O.0 You still have all the people, and all the matter from the snacks, since nothing can escape Foodcourtia's gravitational pull during the Foodening. It's just in their digestive tracts and septic systems now.
    • The gravitational pull is from the act of snacking on such a huge scale, not from the presence of the snacks themselves. So once everyone's full and there's no active snacking going on, the pull weakens and people can leave.
    • ...You make my brain hurt so much that that actually makes sense! ...Possibly. ...No, it doesn't.
    • Yes, yes it does! Ignoring the fact that the idea that active snacking causes gravitational pull makes no sense, it is seriously what the show suggests happening, which means all theories about how leaving is possible have to work around it. Therefore, if active snacking causes the gravitational pull, then everyone finishing eating releases them. Easy.
  • They just don't leave. They arrive for the Foodening and remain until the Foodening ends. That's why it was such an urgent thing for Zim to get off the planet before the Foodening; because once it starts, he can't leave for twenty years.
• In the same episode, why is Sizz-Lorr a frycook at all? For Irkens, size=status, right? And Sizz-Lorr is huge, nearly as tall as the Tallest. And being a fast food worker is considered such a low-status job that Zim was demoted to it for nearly destroying his own civilization. So shouldn't Sizz-Lorr be in the military or something?
  • Holy crap, he must have done something even worse than ZIM! Maybe he blew up a couple of planets, or something.
    • Maybe. Although if he had the job as punishment, you wouldn't expect him to be as passionate about it as he seems to be, or to be able to take a vacation, which he's planning to do during the foodening.
      • Hmmm. Maybe being a frycook is a higher status thing than whatever ZIM was? Or maybe he's in charge of that planet, or something.
      • Maybe he's just one of those people who takes a job that's beneath him because he loves it, possibly after retiring from a long and storied career.
      • Maybe he accidentally ate the snacks of the Almighty Tallest and was forced to be a cook to atone for his grievous sins. He then realized he was passionate about cooking and became a huge success!
  • Perhaps it's not just height, but also width that determines status. Sizz-Lorr's wider than he is tall, so that might have something to do with it. No fatties in charge, no sir!
  • Foodcourtia is essentially a prison planet; since Sizz-lorr is the head frycook, that would make him a sort of warden. Plus, it means he controls an entire planet, which is hardly a lowly position.
  • They address this in the DVD commentaries, and state that it is because he's more wide than tall.
    • Yeah, but why do I get the feeling that was a joke...?
  • The Irkens worship junk food. To be the head of a planet that administers such snacks is an honor indeed.
  • Well, Irken are programmed from birth to belong to a certain class, for instance ZIM was originally programmed to be an invader, but after his actions in Operation Impending Doom I, he was reprogrammed to be classified as a food court drone as a punishment. So probably all irkens are programmed from birth according to their genetic stock, to belong to some class, and only those belonging to the Invader class and who are tall can become The Tallest, while irken belonging to other classes, even if tall, cannot become The Tallest.
  • Sizz-lorr was an Irken?
  • I always thought that only Irkens who served in the military were eligible for becoming the Almighty Tallest. If Sizz-Lorr has only been a fry-cook all his life, then he could never become superior to the Tallest.
    • I posit that among the Irkins he's a complete freak, far outside the parameters they ever expected. He's really not tall so much as big, is oversized in every aspect, and otherwise a complete deviation from the Irkin form (this goes double if you believe that the Tallest are really just regular sized Irkins in special suits), and was therefore deported off to Foodcourtia to do menial labor like a hunchbacked son.

• And another one from "Frycook", Foodcourtia is clearly part of the Irken empire, but no Irken customers has been seen. I mean,seriously, we've seen only THREE Irkens (and they were workers) between a lot of other different aliens (including enslaved ones, like the Vortians). Where are all the Irkens?
  • Perhaps the Irkens have more pressing matters than eating at fast food restaurants.
  • It is not clearly stated if the Irken actually need to eat, or if they eat "regular" food or some nutritious serum their back packs supply to them. ZIM seems to only eat out of curiosity, not necessity, and the Tallest out of gluttony. So perhaps Foodcourtia is a place the Irken built to get economic input from the other species on the Empire, and to keep them happy and controlled with comfort food. Vazquez seems to have this approach specially towards fast food.

• What the hell does Zim eat while he's at earth? I remember him eating a sandwich in Battle of the Planets and a poop soda in another, but what does he eat? Does he just live of of poop soda and sandwiches or something? What!
  • Zim's sammiches are clearly shown to have the Irken logo on them, so they are most likely Irken sammoches rather than filthy human lunchmeats. As for the cola, maybe it's just one of the few things from earth that he happens to be able to eat (like waffles)? It's not like cola and sandwiches share many ingredients.
    • Since the Tallest are shown enjoying snack-type junk food, and the planet of Foodcourtia is devoted to junk food, I always assumed Zim lived on junk food.
  • It's possible that the PAK itself provides all the nutrients an Irken body needs. This would result in the consumption of food being a biological aspect that the creature the PAK is attached to developed, but no longer a need. The Irken not actually needing to eat anything both explains Invaders (including the illegitimate Zim) not having anything to eat on their missions, being able to eat foods from alien worlds, and the prevalence of snacking; food has become a recreational luxury instead of a biological necessity, and a great wealth of snackfoods is a symbol of prominent status, as we see with the Tallest.

• Why is it that at the end of "Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy" the writing on the pig is English, even though the Irkens clearly have their own language (or at least their own alphabet)? Wouldn't Zim write with that, not English?
  • Well, ZIM's been on Earth for a while at that point. Maybe habitually writing in English is one of the few ways he's assimilated.
  • Translation Convention, most likely. Of course, that doesn't actually explain it...
  • Well, it's shown that English is used all over the universe. Maybe the Irken language used for more official business?

• Related problem: If the Irkens use their own alphabet, why are their S.I.R. units named with English lettering and words? "What does the G stand for?" Well, Zim, have you ever encountered a letter G before?
  • Maybe they use the Latin alphabet for acronyms, sort of like the Japanese do.
  • Maybe, by an incredible coincidence, the Irken alphabet just happens to include a S,I,R, and G. But all the other letters are different.
  • By that same token of logic why is Zim, The Tallest, and everyone else even speaking in English at all? Mostly likely, it is an imagined, extreme translation from the audible Irken language that we never get to hear because we puny humans could never, ever, be able to comprehend it. In a million billion years. Siiiigh.
    • Can't be; Dib understands it in the transmission picked up at the start of episode 1. I'm pretty sure he communicates with the Tallest later, too.
    • Actually, yeah, it could be. Membrane is a super-genius with an insane amount of resources, which Dib quite obviously has access to. Maybe the transmission-receiver Dib was using automatically translates for him?
      • Though it wouldn't explain the SIR acronym (which I'd just chalk up to the same sort of Translation Convention that makes R2-D2 and X-wing fighters work in Star Wars), that would make sense for Dib. He was specifically looking for alien transmissions, so he probably did have a translator plugged into the antenna ahead of time.
    • Irken and English are the exact same spoken language, but the Irkens made a different alphabet.
    • Maybe one of the many, many feature of their PA Ks are that it instantly translates their speech for anyone that happens to hear them, allowing them to communicate with other races.
  • I second the PAK translation theory. I'm guessing since the Irkens are so technologically advanced, they could create something of that sort.
  • Because, though this show is really not for kids, subtitles for an imaginary language would just push it over the edge.
    • But subtitles in an imaginary language isn't?
      • The show didn't air with those subtitles...

• Just what DOES the G stand for?
  • I don't know. [proceeds to pound on his own head mindlessly]
  • It's a glitch. With all the other glitches that surmounted with having random junk for a brain, it seems logical that mispronouncing his own name could and does occur.
  • The DVDs have Irken subtitles. If you're that curious, you can switch 'em on and see if they contain English letters.
  • 'Glitch', 'Girl', 'Giraffe', 'Gaffe', 'Gomez'...
  • Given what he's made out of, I always assumed it stood for 'Garbage'
    • I'd say that since SIR unit means Standard Information Retrieval unit, the G probably stands for either Glitched or Grade F.
    • Or Garbage, since that's where GIR came from.
    • Commentary says it doesn't stand for anything. If you want suggestions, the whole thing could be "Goofy, Idiotic, Robot" or "Garbled Information Retrieval".
      • "Garbage Idiot Robot"
    • It stands for "GIR".
  • G La DOS
  • OK, so perhaps we don't know what the G stands for, but what about the I and the R? Is it still information retrieval or something different since it's a G and not an S?
    • Possibly, though GIR is no good at information retrieval. I'm partial to it being Idiot Robot, myself.
    • Maybe it doesn't stand for anything? Maybe Gir is just a name, like Zim or Dib? You guys are making things too complicated.
  • GIR is the sound a rabid dog makes when it's lost its mind.
  • I second "Garbage", since that's what the Tallest made him out of. If SI Rs are "Standard-issue Information Retrieval" units, then GIR's a "Garbage-issue Information Retrieval" unit.
  • G.I.R. already explained what it means in the first episode. It stands for "I don't know."
  • I third the 'Garbage'. I always thought that it was the most sensible theory. (Actually, when I started watching it, this troper thought it stood for 'garbage irken robot').
  • Gir was the one that invented the name, so if he doesn't know, then it literally doesn't stand for anything. Do all you "garbage" enthusiasts really think that he quickly assessed that he was made of garbage and adjusted the usual designation to match? One minute before proclaiming himself as "GIR", he didn't even exist.
    • Considering that GIR was in hypercompetent duty mode when he called himself GIR and he only said "I don't know" after switching to his normal mode, that's actually pretty likely.
  • I always guessed it was Garbage Intelligence Robot.
  • I just assumed it stood for 'Glitched Information Retrieval', since he was so screwed up.

• Why don't the Planet Jackers just use their planet-towing rig to tow their own planet to orbit a not-dying sun?
  • From what we saw, moving a planet causes earthquakes and the like.
  • You have severely overestimated the intelligence of anyone who exists in the Invader Zim universe. Only Gaz, Dib, and maybe Tak are immune to the idiocy.

• Yeah I know it's for comedy but it still annoys me that Zim's Paper-Thin Disguise can fool so many people. I mean seriously, only Dib and Gaz seem to be smart enough to tell, but even Professor Membrane and Ms. Bitters can't tell. And really, what kind of skin condition can make a person have no ears or nose and green skin? Planet Earth really just is begging for the annihilation by Zim if they're that stupid.
  • This is a Jhonen Vasquez cartoon. Everyone everywhere is an idiot except for usually one or two exceptions.
  • But then again, neither Ms. Bitters nor the Professor are particularly known for caring much about anything.
    • Miss. Bitters is probably in the same bin as Gaz, she knows, but she doesn't care because Zim is Too Dumb to Live. Membrane on the other hand may just be oblivious to anything paranormal because the world likes screwing Dib over.

• The reason that the show was canceled because it was "too dark for kids" really, really upsets this troper. First off, what the hell was Nickelodeon thinking when they decided to ask Jhonen Vasquez to do a show for them anyway? Did they even look at the guy's previous line of work before asking him? An idiot can tell that you that Johnny the Homicidal Maniac is not kid friendly entertainment. What the @#$% kind of work did they expect from him to do? And what did they mean (or imply) when they said they wanted to have a show that could appeal to their 11-15 demographic?
  • This troper is just surprised that the show managed to stay on Nick long enough to make 27 episodes. Undoubtedly Invader Zim rocks, but it was too dark for kids. I mean, they had a kid being shown having his eyes ripped out of his head and replaced with red robotic eyes. It's amazing how much crap they were able to get past the censors in the short time at Nick.
  • Apparently, executive Mary Harrington was a fan of Squee. So that answers that.
    • And she still somehow decided Vasquez's work would be perfect for a children's television network. Mmmnyep, sure nailed that one.
  • The show was canceled due to ratings. It was very expensive to make and they weren't getting what they thought they should for their investment, so they pulled the plug. There were some squabbles over material deemed inappropriate, but that's not what did Zim in. I know people like to harp on the Periphery Demographic and the merchandise sales, but guys, Occam's Razor. Which is more likely to cause queasiness in your average TV exec: A potential loss of money? Or the fragile little psyche of children they relentlessly push toward teeth-rotting candy and overpriced action figures?
    • To be perfectly honest, I'm actually kind of glad they canceled Invader Zim as soon as they did. In that sense, it allowed every single episode to be completely devoid of any horrible Flanderization from the network and the creators, leaving the series as a precious masterpiece. I mean, just look at some of the other shows that stayed on and then tell me Invader Zim wasn't given a mercy killing.
      • Invader Zim wasn't given a mercy killing. Keep in mind this was 2002--SpongeBob was on season three, Fairly Oddparents was brand-new, and it would be another year before we even got a preview of Drake and Josh. There's only one episode of all the ones in production pre-cancellation that could be said to have sucked. Though I still think the rumors of a story arc are a bit exaggerated considering what we've seen of what was unfinished, I feel inclined to believe Vasquez when he says it was going somewhere. Not to mention that most of the executive meddling was either minor, averted or made the show even funnier (IGGINS!). So no, no mercy. Evidence shows the show would've gotten on just fine for another year or so baring any of the writers going horrifically off the rails.
• In the Halloween episode Zim and Dib gets trapped in a nightmare world inside Dib's head where everyone has a nightmare version of them, beside GIR and Zim, why?
  • The Nightmare World was supposed to be an Darker version of Earth. GIR and Zim are not from Earth, which is why neither them nor their base is seen in the nightmare realm.
    • two things: A. the base DID appeared in the nightmare world. B. The Nightmare World isn't a Darker version of Earth it's a result of Dib imagination.
  • Because they are Dib's waking nightmares. The fact that Zim and Gir don't exist as nightmares in the world of his imagination is because he knows for certain that they are real and he is freaked about them openly in daily life. It's kind of poetic, really. Also, it wouldn't have been funny that way.
  • Actually, Zim seems to be in the episode. First when it flashes the monsters (with count chocula), you see a weird mushroom looking creature with hair it seems to stand on (they look exactly like Zim's spider legs). The same creature is later shown capturing Zim, and waving good-bye to the two monsters who go to Hell (or whatever they call it).

• In "GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff", when Zim called for the policeman (who has a squid brain) for help, he said that his ink is not working, and all that comes out is...you don't want to know. Later, however, he managed to blind GIR with a liquid of some sort and declared that his ink is working. It really bugs me, what EXACTLY did he use? It can't be...ink, can it?
  • "It came from his natural squid ink-glands!", according to DVD Commentary.

• This is more an It Just Bugs Me about the fandom than the show, but... How do all the shippers seem to miss the fact that Irken have no concept of romantic love, are literally grown in vats, and have bodies that are little more than vessels for their PAK? In fact, the seeming oversaturation of the fandom with such shippers practically makes me ashamed to admit I love this show. STOP IT PLEASE. I SHOULDN'T BE ASHAMED FOR LIKING SOMETHING GOOD. :( Err... Got a bit carried away there.
  • That's because the Viewers are Morons and Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls. Jhonen Vasquez even lampshades this on numerous occasions throughout his previous works such as Filler Bunny And Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, commenting how much he hates his fandom.
    • He does not "hate his fandom." That he's been exasperated on occasion I don't doubt, that he's felt people missed the point entirely is something I know, and yes he's made fun of the whole phenomena but seriously, this "Jhonen hates his fans" thing is fueled in large part through either A) people interpreting bemusement as scorn and B) outright hearsay, this is one of the reasons he and Steve Ressel so infamously did not get along, he was continually badmouthing Jhonen to the fans. I know it might seem counter-intuitive to the kinds of settings he uses, but he's a pretty unpretentious guy, not the sort of person who'd take himself seriously enough to genuinely resent the people who support him. If you'll notice, most of the things that can be read as a Take That to the fans is equally easy to read as him making fun of himself and his insanely over-the-top reactions to very petty matters.
  • It's not that we miss it. It's that we don't care.
  • This troper doesn't have anything against slash, but she is pretty amazed by the huge amount of ZADR fanfics. Then again, this cartoon is one of the darkest shows the world's ever encountered, so it kinda makes sense that the girls who are watching it have twisted minds.
  • It's not that there's so much ZADR, it's that so much of it is poorly handled. If you're going to take Zim and Dib's relationship down that road, please recognize that it's not fluffy marshmallow KAWAIINESS, or hot, steamy bishie action, or any of that. It's a kid and an alien who are perfectly willing to destroy each other, even as they have more in common than they see, and need each other more than they'll ever, ever admit.
    • That's more like friendship than romance and a story about Zim's and Dib's developing friendship would be much better and would make much more sense than any romantic, crappy fic written by some idiotic Yaoi Fangirl.
    • But it's hot. (By virtue of being about characters they like driven to horniness for one another because... well, because they say so and it turns them on and that's what it's all about.) If you can come up with a counter-argument to that, please let me know.
    • It's not about a human boy and an alien boy, it's about a human child and a very old alien who only looks like a child. Zim has been mentioned by Jhonen in the commentaries to be very old, which Zim has stated himself. Zim's probably older than Membrane. Jhonen has also mentioned that the fact Dib is Zim's nemesis on Earth is even more pathetic for Zim because Dib is a boy and Zim is an old "man" (I'm paraphrasing, it's on the commentary for the Nanozim episode I think, when Zim mentions he has been a pilot since before Dib was born). So based on that, any romantic relationship between them would basically be... NAMBLA territory, to put it euphemistically.
      • Zim is only 16 in Irk years, according to Jhonen himself, though he's 159 in Earth years. Still weird, but not quite as weird.
        • "According to Jhonen himself"? Really? Where? I've heard this rumor again and again but as far as I can tell it's 100% Fanon. It's never shown up in an interview I've seen, nor his blog/twitter, nor the DVD commentary. Link or it didn't happen.
          • Now, now, There Is No Such Thing as Notability. But yeah, that is crap.
    • No one ever said it would be a healthy, functional relationship.
  • It's this simple: Fanon does not have to care about what is Canon. So if some-and I'm hiding my true views of the subject- stupid, horny, little, 14-year-old girl with delusions of being an erotic writer and some mental deficiency that leads her to believe a 10-year-old boy blowing an alien is hot, then they have every right to write said, ahem, literature.
    • And it's simply impossible that anyone, anywhere, is capable of writing ZADR in a way that makes it interesting, emotional, appealing, or even believeable. No such thing. Every last one is a stupid, horny 14 year old girl, ever since Above Troper deemed it so. Simple, people.
      • Sturgeon's Law, Most Writers Are Male, Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls, IKEA Erotica. Combine all of those and apply it to this scenario. The above troper simply made an observation, and he/she is correct. Most ZADR(and slash in general, actually) is objectively sub-par finger exercise materials for sexually-maturing Hot Topic shoppers and deviantART frequenters. Does that mean there's anything wrong with it? Probably plenty. Still, it doesn't hurt anybody and it's those sick, perverted harpies' right to masturbate and squee to it until their little hearts are content and their fingers are raw to the bone.
• This Troper has found out from Jhonen's site that Dib is not actually Membrane's son. He is, in fact, Membrane's younger clone. The question is: Where does Gaz come from? Is she adopted? Membrane's creation? A clone of Membrane's wife, who died and couldn't have kids?
  • She might be a clone, but whose clone, that's another story. The most probable theory is that she is Membrane's experiment. If you noticed, she really has a lot of strength for a ten years old girl, it's almost supernatural. Then again, this is Invader Zim we are talking about, so anything is possible.
  • Or a demon... In Gaz, Taster of Pork she levitates off the ground, surrounded by a purple light and her eyes are red. Plus, she's scary like hell for a little girl. It wouldn't surprise me if she was a paranormal being.
  • This idea is pretty interesting. Though it is mentioned in one episode that Dib's and Gaz's mother is kept in a jar by Membrane. It might be just a dark, humorous joke of the show or Membrane really does keep his wife's ashes in a jar, because she has died and he's still attached to her. And due to the fact that he's still attached to her, he has cloned her and named her Gaz, just like he has created a clone of himself and named it Dib. There are many possibilities. Too bad the show wasn't continued
    • What episode was that?
    • Did it say her ashes in a jar, or her in a jar? 'Cause this IS Zim we're talking about. It could well be her head hooked up to a life support rig.
    • It said her in a jar. It's either simple Black Humor or a Double Entendre, implying that Membrane still keeps his wife's ashes in a jar (it's a custom in some states in America) because he hasn't let go of her and misses her. Although I doubt that this show, where everyone is void of any good feelings, would take something seriously.
  • If you heard it "from Jhonen's site," you could at least do us the courtesy of telling us what site, if you can't link to it directly. I've heard this idea before, but it was always in the context of being "potential" canon rather than something that had been planned from the start.
  • This Troper believes that Gaz and possibly Dib are artificial. Due to the fact that Gaz seems to have robotic arms and legs (seriously, look at her arms... they're silver and have those segments that cartoon robo-tentacles have. Her legs are the same except colored purple) and in Nanozim its shown that Dib has an "arm control nerve" in his belly when he himself says that humans don't have those. Also, both Gaz and Dib have square pupils (kind of like what Bender from Futurama has) ... though there are a few other kids who have square pupils so that might not mean much (unless those other kids are robots or have cyborg eyes or something).
    • The purple-stripey legs were pretty obviously meant to be candy-striped stockings, and while Gaz's arms could have been robotic with no(thing resembling) synthflesh up to the wrists, I just always assumed that those were her sleeves.

• The robot parents. We know why GIR is the way he is; his head is literally full of garbage. But as far as most of Zim's other equipment goes, it's clear that the only defective element is Zim himself — except for the robot parents. They make an appearance in the very first episode, having been included with the house apparently, and they suck from the get-go. What gives?
  • It probably has something to do with Zim's knowledge, or lack thereof, of everything Earth-related. Same reason he has a toilet in his kitchen.
    • But there's nothing wrong with the toilet, per se, it's just out of place (and actually if you think about it, one of Zim's less stupid mistakes — knowing that humans need to eliminate is a simple matter of biology, where knowing that they have a cultural taboo revolving around a need for privacy when performing said biological act is a lot more complicated). The robot parents aren't just weird, they're crappy and malfunctioning.
    • They don't malfunction too badly, considering. They talk, move around, even riverdance and fly with jetpacks. And when they do give off sparks/explosions, maybe Zim just never intended for them to leave the house until Parent-Teacher night, and decided they were good enough.
    • "Considering" what, exactly? Yes, they have some obviously sophisticated functions. That don't work properly, in a fashion that is never suggested to have been the result of Zim's idiocy or misuse. None of Zim's other equipment malfunctions to the degree they do, saving GIR whose crappiness is specifically accounted for. It's not really a big deal, but it seems like a weird oversight.
    • Plenty of Zim's other technology also malfunctions - for example, the house computer: it decides to disguise the Voot Carrier as a giant pig. The stranger thing about the robo-parents is that they look human at all. Zim had never seen any humans until they came out in response to his house building itself.
    • Except, that example WAS implied to have Zim's input ("why am I so amazing?" was his response to the pig-disguise). Plus, "none of Zim's other equipment malfunctions" had the qualifier "to the degree [the robot parents do]". They are consistently, horrendously terrible, not now and again ridiculous.
    • Of course, the robot parents do seem to fool the real earthling parents to a decent degree, so by Zim universe standards they are functional. Or maybe it's trying to point out that they are as functional as real parents — they're often more helpful to Zim than Membrane is to Dib.
  • I always thought Zim had built the robots. I'd have to watch the series again to be sure, but I have a memory of him working on them with a screwdriver or somesuch.
    • Like I said, they make an appearance in the first episode — after Zim "builds" his house, the robot parents are there to greet him when he opens the door. He's elsewhere shown tinkering with them, but never is it implied he built them.
      • The robot parents, the base and the computer all came from the voot cruiser in the first episode, and the cruiser came from Zim himself. The glitches are probably either because Zim's customized the ship or because the ship's just old.

• Why don't the Tallest use Zim's destructive power to help conquer planets? They could send him down with some huge merch, and when Zim starts destroying, negotiate with the inhabitants to call him back. They could demand full command of the planet in return for taking Zim off their hands.
  • That's a lot like the logic that went into Zim's inclusion in Operation: Impending Doom I in the first place. In the script for "The Trial," the flashback shows that he was put into weapons R & D for a time, under the same principle and with similar results. You can count on Zim to be destructive, but not to aim at (much less actually hit) your desired target.
  • Zim is just too unpredictable and dangerous to keep around, there's a reason they sent him as far away as possible. Everything else they try ends up backfiring.
  • There's conquer, and then there's incinerate. The important thing about the Irken conquest is that they want to be able to use the planet afterwards, even if it's a parking lot. Using Zim for that kind of tactic would give one of two results: either he has the kind of luck he does on Earth and nobody notices, or they don't have a chance to make their demands because Zim reduces the planet to shrapnel by the time their call has been patched through.
    • One Irkan Invaders was shown chillaxing surrounded by a firestorm that used to be a city, so keeping the cities intact is obviously up to the Invader.

• Why doesn't Zim have a problem with water in any episode besides 'The Wettening'?
  • 'Cause most of the time it's water out of a faucet or something. There's a one-off note in the commentary that it was supposed to be polluted water that he was having a negative reaction to. (Which would suggest the children were dancing around in acid friggin' rain in that ep.) I guess the message got garbled somewhere down the line and they didn't do it consistently.
  • He uses a coat of glue to shield himself from the water. It lets him resist water to some extent.
  • Dib throwing water on Zim and him running off screaming and burning is a recurring gag.
  • Furthermore, in one episode Zim coats himself in flesh to stave off bacteria, but in another it's shown meat fuses with his body. What's with that?
    • Except, that wasn't even meat. That was heavily processed napkins. Eugh.

• About Tak's plan: if she already had enough snacks to fill a hollowed-out planet, why didn't she just use them to curry favor with the Tallest? The planet-hollowing part seems redundant.
  • Most likely to ruin Zim's life like he did hers.
  • This Troper assumes it was more that Earth was going to become a snack-based planet, sort of like a second Foodcourtia. Tak mentions that Earth has no strategic value by itself, and this makes sense, since we know from the first episode that Earth is far away from Irken space and all the other Invaders fly into the opposite direction from Zim. The Tallest don't particularly need more snacks themselves (they have as much as they could ever want), but theoretically putting the snacks inside Earth would not only give the Irkens a new planet, it would open a supplying station that could help them expand into this part of the galaxy/universe/whatever.
  • Tak said herself: it wasn't about revenge, it was about being an Invader. She should have passed her test, not Zim. It's about taking what was rightfully hers. Even though she knows Zim's assignment is a joke, she still wants it because, in her mind, she'd be taking back what Zim stole from her.
• Why do they continue airing this show if it was only canceled due to appealing outside the intended demographic and it being frightening to children, rather than ratings? (Which it was dominating in.)
  • "Canceled due to ratings" does not have to mean it got poor ratings (which I don't think anyone's claimed), just that it didn't get what Nick deemed high enough ratings to justify what was evidently an enormous expense. No reason, then, to not air episodes they'd already paid for, just not enough reason to pay for more.
    I really think the "too scary" bit is just a very persistent piece of fiction. Its appeal to fans is obvious — it casts the cancellation in a wholly misguided light, turning Nickelodeon's execs into Designated Villains in the process. They couldn't possibly have had reasonable or consistent motives for getting rid of what was obviously the best show ever imagined, right? They must be stupid or evil or both. In reality, I think they could have done better by the show, but Zim wasn't quite as Screwed by the Network as we like to make-believe, at least not relative to their other shows. Still sucks, though.

• What's up with Tak's outfit? I mean, all the other Irkens seen on the show wore the same uniforms, so why is her outfit different?
  • She DID technically go AWOL ("Escape"), so her outfit would unsurprisingly be nonstandard or outdated.
    • but Zim was shown in her flashback (most likely in the same rank as Tak) wearing his normal uniform
    • A lot of people think it's a custom uniform made because she wants to be an individual. It's assumed in the fandom that she's a defective as well.
    • Her ship was custom-built (or at least, she claims she built it herself, which would make that likely different from the norm to be worth mentioning in the first place), so that may be. But I didn't get the idea she and Zim were necessarily the same rank at the time.
  • Maybe it's because she's a girl.
    • Nope, Invader Tenn, from 'Megadoomer', was female and wore the same uniform as Zim. I think some of the theories above may be possible, though.

• In the episode "Abducted", does anyone else hear the Doctor Who theme when ZIM and GIR are trying to escape?
  • ...Holy shit, yes I do.

• Why. Just...why. Why is the Irken Empire even doing the whole "take over the galaxy" thing? It was working WITH other races, like the Vortians, when Zim was just a scientist under Miyuki's reign. Presumably, Impending Doom 1 was initiated by Spork. Yes, he clearly had a huge ego, in fact, that seems common among Irkens, but there's no real reason given for why they do what they do. Not so much as a single throwaway line. They don't NEED other races to do things like make them curly fries, they've perfected the freaking test tube method! They could just breed an entire host of Irkens for the sole purpose of, say, picking the Tallest's bloody TOES. And they have the technology to cloak things, mass-produce items and people...they clearly have the skills and knowledge to make sure every single member of their race is comfortable, yet they're only interested in invading/slaughtering sentient species. You can't just go filling this gaping plothole with the bullshit reason of "They're evil, accept this", cuz I CAN'T. I'm not a four-year-old. This isn't a fairy tale, this is a mildly mature cartoon that's more for adults/teens than little kids. A little EXPLANATION please, Jhonen? >.<
  • You appear to be presupposing evil is an unnatural state of being that REQUIRES some kind of outside explanation, ala Rousseau Was Right. That sounds somewhat overly optimistic, given the kind of universe we're operating in. Plus, the stuff you're talking about — introducing elements that actually suggested things weren't always just For the Evulz — came about at the end (after the end, really) of the series, so you're criticizing them for not taking an in-depth look at stuff they didn't get a chance to explore. I suspect Zim's look at morality might well have become more sophisticated as it matured.
    • There might actually be a very simple explanation for why the Tallest do what they do. It's all For the Evulz...which of course is seems to imply that the entire Irken race is always going to be represented as the Villain by Default.
    • Maybe. I know that confusing the morality issue by using a Villain Protagonist and a Hero Antagonist was one of the things Jhonen enjoyed doing, so maybe he'd have also enjoyed mixing it up a little more with the Irkens down the line. I personally suspect the Irkens aren't necessarily evil for the hell of it but because their wiring's crossed — we know they're utterly dependent on their technology, and looking at how Zim came to be Zim in "the Trial", it seems he didn't become a megalomaniac obsessed with destruction until AFTER all that information was "downloaded" into him, that could be a clue. (It would be an nice little irony, then, that Zim is not so much a defective as a living emblem of the larger defective nature of his entire race.) It would also leave open the door for possible redemption. OR... I could be reaching. But hey.
    • I always thought it was because there are so many Irkens. You see them pile into convention halls and academies en masse; there's got to be billions of the little buggers wandering around. Perhaps their chief interest is in finding habitable planets to sustain their massive population, and the other sentient critters just happen to be in the way.
  • It could be that the Irken, or better, the Brains that rule them, have built this massive militaristic society and only got to the technological point they are now because of that militaristic past. In order to have this militaristic empire working, the Brains needed to shape the irken species into the warmongers they are, and if now that they have all this power and technology, they try to turn back from the militaristic life style, their empire would crumble, probably hundreds of different paramilitary factions would emerge and try to take over each other, not to mention all the enemies they've made by now. So now the irken society has to keep making war in order not to destroy themselves or be destroyed by angry former slaves or scared neighbors. They have gone out of their way for so long to become ideal warriors that now they can't be anything else. Besides, war itself seems to be something the leaders use to keep citizens distracted and entertained.
    • Panem et circenses.
  • Their ranks are determined by physical height. The Irkens are not exactly the height of responsible leadership. It's entirely possible that the Irkens are a militaristic, warmongering species because somewhere, some Tallest decided it would be really bitchin' to go conquer some worlds.

• Not really a Just Bugs Me, but something that makes Zim seem much more sympathetic than he should be for the premise of the show that doesn't quite belong on Fridge Horror: Many people see Zim as a sort of kid, and his rivalry with Dib and presence in the school system as perfectly normal for someone of his maturity. However, he's strongly implied to be a complete adult, with the only thing at all kid-like about him being his lack of tallness. Imagine a thirty-year-old human astronaut being forced to sit in among a learning group for five-or-ten-year-olds in a community of extremely gullible, giant bush people on Betelgeuse, with roughly humanlike intelligence but slightly more slobbish and with less technology and war. Especially after two months of listening to the Doom Song non-stop. It's no wonder Zim is such a comedy protagonist! Did anyone else realize this, or is it pretty much down to the MST3K Mantra that Zim is the equivalent of an eight-year-old human technogenius?
  • SIX months, not two.
  • No offense, but people who want Zim to seem either more sympathetic or less evil than he really is are never short of reasons — ironically, one of the favorites is to presume he is in fact a child in "Irken years" and so shouldn't be held accountable as an adult. Usually, it's the less sympathetic crowd disputing that. I don't have too much sympathy for Zim being "forced" to attend an elementary when that was his own idea and I've never heard it as much as implied that he can't simply stop whenever he wants. Of course, to do that would be to admit to a mistake... At any rate the fact that that he did choose that on his own was probably MEANT to be significant in terms of hinting at his level of FUNCTIONAL maturity, his chronological level notwithstanding. But many people look at that and do not realize there is meant to be a discrepancy in between the two.
    • Okay, I just thought that some of the things in the show seemed Dude, Not Funny when looked at from the point of view of Zim being an adult in a world of giants instead of an adolescent or young adult, and (as you said) the people trying to make him seem sympathetic rarely go the other way from "Zim's just [physically and often emotionally similar to] a child". Zim was in school (Skool) because he needed a disguise that would allow him to gather the humans' knowledge, but he could hypothetically have sent in tiny camera drones (since I'm pretty sure he has those, or at least tiny cameras and tiny drones if the shrinking device wouldn't work for that purpose), so you have a point there.
      • Actually my point wasn't "he doesn't have to physically attend skool because he could send robot spy cameras," but "he doesn't have to attend an elementary school because that is a completely useless place from which to build a primarily military-oriented intelligence-gathering mission," which was highlighted in that first episode when he tries to ask his ridiculously obvious question and is met with a raised eyebrow and a silent return to the discussion of the e'er approaching doom. He should be trying, say, the Pentagon. Or at least the library. I might not have said anything if you hadn't asked whether anyone else had noticed the discrepancy — I mean, yeah. I've definitely seen people very pointedly reference Zim's age relative to the kids he surrounds himself with, so if you haven't I suspect you're just looking in the wrong places, which might come down to a contrast between the camps of "Zim-as-Woobie" versus "Zim-as-Villain".
    • Oh, that... actually makes less sense, since Zim's intelligence (or lack thereof) tells him that Skool (and later, the library) is where those in want of information go (presumably, a top-secret military base would be one of the last places to go in order to get information). I was agreeing with you (or the above troper, if that was not you). But yes, I probably have just been looking in the wrong places (though more the places that people insist Zim is a kid {{[[[Insane Troll Logic]] because he's the height of a human kid}} than the people who realize that Zim is an adult, though a low-ranking one by Irken Invader standards).
    • It was me (Tyoria) both times. Sorry if it makes less sense now, it just seemed to me that it would be obvious to the average "Earthanoid" that an elementary school would be a poor place to begin that kind of research, and while Zim might be forgiven his ignorance due to being an alien (and being "told" that was a place to go for information), the bit in the first episode that I was talking about seems like it should have been a clue bat to the face that he wasn't going to progress very far at all along that route. So thus it didn't seem like "forced" was the word — more like he's sticking to it out of habit. You could spin it as a Dude, Not Funny, I just think most of the show's like that already (plus I'm not PERSONALLY too inclined to feel sorry for him, although he has his moments).
  • To be fair, there are moments when sympathy is justified. In "Room With a Moose" Zim wanted revenge for all of the bullying and abuse he has when through so far attending school Skool, and a lot of the examples of said bullying are pretty harsh, especially if you've been bullied yourself. Examples include Groin Attacks, being punched, hit, and smacked with dodge-balls, using a tether ball as a means of torture, being offered tainted ice cream, getting water poured on him while tinkering with a device, causing burning and smoke, and being socially excluded in general.
    • That's not the same thing as saying "sympathy is justified". I never said I don't sympathize with him because he never suffers. I'm saying I don't sympathize with him because the reasons for him being in that situation in the first place are not sympathetic. The original Draco in Leather Pants suffered a number of moments that almost certainly were traumatizing and could be viewed as Dude, Not Funny (bouncing ferret comes to mind), but when he was put into those situations as a direct result of his own jackassery, I didn't feel too much for him. The best you can do is conjure up a Freudian Excuse such as "well he was raised that way, so really it's his parents' fault". Kinda like what happens with Zim. Only when he started suffering for reasons that really weren't his fault did I come to feel sorry for him. I can see how Zim being bullied generates antipathy towards his tormentors, but think about the greater context here. He's being beaten up by people he plans to enslave or murder in the first place. That situation looks sympathetic mostly because it's viewed through the lens of Protagonist-Centered Morality — but Zim is a Villain Protagonist Protagonist.

• In "Parent-Teacher Night", it's shown that baby Irkens are created through some kind of cloning process. Most likely, this was not always the case, and they once reproduced in a more "natural" way. However, in the aforementioned scene, and occasionally elsewhere, Zim does not appear to have genitalia. How exactly did Irken reproduction work?
  • Genitalia was probably edited out of their genes when cloning was introduced since it was no longer needed.
    • but, in A Room with a Moose, Dib was shown kicking Zim in the crotch, and it was shown to be painful, judging by his reaction and the fact this and other bullying made him want to make them face the moose. So.......
      • Hey, just because there's nothing vital there doesn't necessarily mean there's no pain when you're kicked. We don't have genitalia in our backs, for instance, but I can imagine that getting kicked there is still pretty frigging painful.
  • That's really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to asking questions about how Irken biology came to be. In the unproduced script "Ten Minutes to Doom", we find out they're so dependent on their paks they die if separated from them for more than ten minutes — more than that, the paks are really the source of an Irken's "brains" and even their personality. It's all external hardware. It can't be organic evolution in action, so I wonder if the Irkens were a natural race that became increasingly dependent on their technology or whether they were never natural at all and some OTHER force had a hand in it.
  • It's a kid's show, ya can't show alien wing wong.
  • Irkins reproduce in a manner completely dissimilar to mammals? There's no real reason he [i]would[/i] have visible external genitalia, mammals only have it because spermatozoa need to be kept cool and the delivery system proved more effective. For all we know ancient Irkins spawned in water, making all that unnecessary.
    • For all we know the reproductive organ is part of the squeedlyspootch when the Irkins were redesigned to have all organs super-condensed into one.

• What's all this nonsense about new Invader Zim episodes? I've heard a few people talking about this, but that's it. I know rumors like this have been around since it was canceled, but now they're back in the spotlight. Does anyone know where this rumor spawned from?
  • That is because nick-toons has been re-airing it due to its Massive fan base. They even made a new game for it too so this makes people wondering "what is zim" and will he come back. There was also a poll on whether we want more Zim: 98% yes 2% no
  • I saw that, but that doesn't really explain where people are getting dates from. (I keep hearing November.) And they've very recently taken if off their schedule.
  • I did find this from back in late April. (Thanks a lot, "Kris".) It got picked up by some site called "Nickutopia" a few days later, so very conceivably could have gone viral from there. Although I don't see anything specific about November.
    • According to Jhonen Vasquez's official site/blog ( http://www.questionsleep.com/mindspill/ ) Invader Zim was getting the second highest ratings on Nicktoons, second only to Avatar (which IS getting another series). This led to some rumblings of a possible Invader Zim revival. Jhonen met and talked with some people at Nick (apparently, he does have people there he keeps in contact with, and Nick DOES remember Invader Zim), but the issues of production cost and the loss of the initial inertia apparently means it's not going through. However, Jhonen said that he'll be game for it as long as Nick is.

• Why, oh, why do the fans blindly hate SpongeBob SquarePants? Honestly, it's not Stephen Hilenburg's fault Invader Zim was canceled.
  • Not every fan hates Spongebob, just the ones who think it stole ratings from Zim. Actually, Spongebob tends to get a lot of misplaced blame by the fans of canceled Nicktoons because it's Nick's Cash Cow Franchise. Some hate it simply because they're against everything Spongebob is: a happy ball of sunshine.

• Why do people keep saying Gaz (sort of) killed Iggins? The elevator cord snapped when he was having a fit, and she does flinch and grimace. It's not like she was ever shown to have invisible magic limb-helper-demon-telepathy-things.
  • Has she ever been shown NOT to?
  • ...Even so, she wouldn't have winced at the sight if it was a deliberate act on her part.
    • Maybe she felt remorse? There's a pretty big difference between fantasizing about an act and then actually committing it. Maybe she thought that she would enjoy hurting Iggins because she was angry, and then only after the fact realized that she took no pleasure in ending a life. This troper has done things like that before. It sucks. You feel so awesome about it right up until you witness the pain that it causes, then you're just like "Dammit".
  • Also, Iggins is clearly alive at the end of it. He even screams his name.

• The fact that Dib never seems to learn. Most of his encounters with Zim and his subsequent pseudo-defeats are his own fault. For example, in Dark Harvest, he points out to Zim that he doesn't have human organs, which is what starts his organ hunt. Then, when he actually seems to goad Zim into searching for an organ he doesn't have yet by asking what he has so far. In Nano Zim, he actually tells Zim about his backup copies of the photos he took of Zim out of disguise, causing him to erase his memories of where he hid them. Why, why, why, why, why, dear God why hasn't he learned by not to give away his information to his enemy?
  • To be fair he's not the only character prone to picking up that particular Idiot Ball. The biggest What an Idiot! moment for me was in "Backseat Drivers" when one of the Irken techs screams aloud that their shields and weapons have all gone offline — while the Resisty is still on the main screen. "Hi hostile aliens, please feel free to destroy us in our helpless state!" *Face Palm* In "Room with a Moose" Zim does the Just Between You and Me speech that helps Dib work out a way to escape the wormhole, and so on.
    • Then, just for that extra little bit of delicious idiocy, the Resisty still focuses on stealing the Tallest's snacks rather than, you know, killing them.
  • True, but you'd think Dib, being one of the few characters with more than two brain cells, should know better.
  • Dib is a little boy. Even normal little boys aren't the best at figuring out social cues on when it's best to keep your mouth shut, and Dib isn't even normal. He's a notorious social outcast and Motor Mouth. Frankly, I'm surprised he doesn't give away crucial information more often.

• In Gaz: Taster of Pork (and possibly other episodes, this troper can't remember for sure at this moment), Gaz more-or-less says that it's pointless for Dib to fight or stop Zim because Zim is too incompetent to be an actual threat. However, in Battle of the Planets, Dib was the only thing that prevented Zim from destroying the Earth and killing everybody, Gaz included.
  • True, but that's juts because Zim just happened to stumble upon Mars' steering wheel. He could never have planned or executed anything like that by himself.
  • Gaz isn't necessarily implying that her own behavior would change if she did perceive Zim as a real threat. She could just be disparaging Dib's proclaimed "heroism". If you look at Gaz's behavior, her apathy masks a fairly misanthropic outlook — heck she herself tried to destroy all life on Earth in the beginning of "Dibship Rising". She doesn't really care, and thinks Dib is a boob because he does and is making a mountain out of a molehill by giving Zim top priority when logic dictates he'll fail 99% of the time anyway.
  • If it's the episode I'm thinking of, Dib confronts her with knowing that Zim wants to destroy the world and she responds with a chuckling "yeah, but he's just so bad at it." I don't think she was really disparaging Dib or even taking a side on the issue, just that she finds Zim's antics as funny as we do.

• In Hobo 13, we're treated to an entire episode of Skooge minus his Pak. But Irkens DIE if they're separated from their Pak for 10 minutes. What is this I don't even.
  • Fun answer: Skoodge is actually a genetic defect of some sort, and doesn't need a Pak. Or, since he's survived so much crap, he runs on sheer will power to survive.
  • Boring answer: It's an animation error.
    • This takes place after he was shot out of a space cannon as part of an organic sweep, and he spends the entire episode pak-less. It's very much intentional.
  • He's just that badass.

• Why does just about all the merchandise for this show feature GIR in his dog disguise? I guess it's cute, but after a while it gets old, where's a backpack/hoodie/etc. with another character? It's just dog!GIR, which makes it seem to me that people are getting the wrong idea about GIR, heck that's how "GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff" got its inspiration.
  • It sells, and teenage girls find it cute. It's what they can make the most money off.

• How can Membrane still not acknowledge the supernatural despite his son having summoned zombies in a Noodle Incident? The undead usually count as supernatural...
  • Think about a few things here: Membrane is an inventor, and a damned good one at that. Dib is his offspring, in some theories his clone. Zombies were an 'invention' of Dib's, so Membrane can definitely accept this willingly. Sasquatch, aliens, Chickenfoot, etc. are there without Dib's/Membrane's hand in creating them. To Membrane this is impossible.

• In Vindicated!, what DID happen to the old counselor? We hear a voice (presumably the old counselor) saying "Help...me..." from inside the air duct, followed by a Jittercam shot (accompanied by heavy breathing) from inside the air duct. Did they fire him and stuff him in there, did something in there capture him, or what?
  • Maybe Zim stuffed him in there after stealing his larynx in "Dark Harvest". Sure, that implies they took quite a while to replace him... but that seems business as usual for this school.
  • He probably did something to piss off the school. Stuffing him in an air vent is probably considered merciful to those people.

• Does anyone notice that Zootch (the kid with the blonde spike of hair and blue eyes?) is in Zim and Dib's class - but he's also seen in GAZ'S class? Also, there was an alien in Hobo 13 who looked remarkably like him...

• What the Hell is Ms. Bitters, anyways? The snakelike movements are one thing, but she burns in sunlight, and the lice won't touch her? What kind of infernal hell spawn is she, and why is she wasting time as a teacher?
  • And why the Hell was she also in Squee!?
  • To answer the first question: Snake People, and Eldritch Abomination. The second? Transplant from Squee!, that's all. The trope knows. The trope knooowwwwsss.
  • The lice don't avoid her, she just has a really high itch tolerance, probably a result of strong self-control. At the end of the episode, she is shown to scratch her scalp furiously once she's finally alone.
  • She was a fairy princess, until one day it all went horribly wrong! To add to the mystery, a Nickelodean trading card written by Eric Trueheart apparently says that she's not human and that she didn't come to work for the Skool - the Skool itself was built around her.

• If Dib is the son of the most important and respected man in the world, why don't the other adults treat him better? Wouldn't they want to kiss up to the Prof by being nice to his son (or at least by not actively being mean to him)?
  • Most of the people in Zim are too dumb to follow through the logic of "be nice to Dib so I can get on Professor Membrane's good side," and Dib would see through it pretty quickly anyway. Being the son of the most powerful man on Earth just pushes him deep into Lonely Rich Kid territory.

• Why would the size of Dib's head be a recurring joke when Gaz's and Zim's heads aren't much smaller?
  • That's the joke.

• Alright, this is a long, somewhat odd one: the one thing about this show that I wish I could change would be to add some kind of potential escape from the relentless negativity. It's not that I don't like Black Humor and only want Happy Endings. Bad endings and good endings and bittersweet endings (and sometimes even No Endings) have their place. I don't need morality tales either, I could understand the work being basically Spy vs. Spy — either no good guys or bad guys, or only bad guys. But Invader Zim is not that, though I've seen people try to argue it is. Basically that would make it less depressing because that would be your cue as a member of the audience to not invest any actual empathy in the characters. If you do start investing empathy, the world is about as bleak and depressing as it's possible to get. There is nothing affectionate in the kind of humor that is being used to tear down a world that recognizably has shades of our own, accentuated past the point of absurdity but not far enough that you won't see those targets striking home. It's funny as hell, but it's generally not thoughtful or constructive, it hits only our negative emotions and tends to bring out nastier sides of people. Surely you've seen that some fandoms can be uglier than others. Well, Zim's is nowhere near the worst. But it whispers to people's cynical sides, the part of us that looks around us in contempt. Contempt for other people, our classmates and neighbors and contemporaries. Fandom tends to set itself up in factions who are the only real fans who "get it" and what Zim's about. But of course most of our fellow fans are morons, right? And Jhonen probably hates them too. But what if they aren't and what if he doesn't? I don't think this show was intended as a condemnation or a warning, it was meant to be entertaining in a very dark but funny way. It seemed to me that they were building to something, too. We started seeing guys who were fighting the Empire. There were one or two times someone on Earth actually listened to Dib, who got his own spaceship. There was the potential capacity for hope, which you can only get in a story where you're supposed to care what happens to the characters.
  
  And then it got cancelled.
  
  Despite what some rumors will tell you, the show was cancelled for pragmatic (read: monetary) reasons rather than any but-think-of-the-children hysteria, but I resent it on such a deep level for this. The show wasn't just hysterically funny, it was going somewhere, and while not to the land of sundrops and lollipops I think it was going to go to a place where hope at least existed. It would have been hugely satisfying because of that — addressing that which the show did not directly address but always alluded to. The fact that it was left unfinished leaves it in the quagmire of cynicism and contempt with no outlet but the belittling of others... oh yes, and very funny, too. I'm grateful for that much, but I feel the show lost more than continued hilarity from its cancellation. I think had the show concluded people could have wrung more meaning and fulfillment out of it than it was allowed to do in the time it had, and what it's lost is so... inexpressible.
  • What's weird about this, at least for me, is that having listened to the unfinished episodes and found a handful of scripts, is that the really weren't going anywhere with it. Sure, there are some episodes that build on Irken society and Zim's backstory, but nothing that really moves the plot forward. There's no signs that the general trend of a growing force for good (or even any sort of solid arc) would've shown up except in a two-part finale that never made it past concept and some Word of God. I would've loved to see the sort of trend you're talking about, but the simple fact is that there's no hard evidence showing that's the direction the show was taking.
    • I can respect the hard evidence argument, though I would actually have held the Meekrob showdown and "Invader Dib" up as what I was getting at, but it's not just that. I don't so much get that feeling because of those things so much as because it seems like it's not something they needed to consciously build to anyway — that it was inevitable, if the show wasn't intended as a total condemnation, nor was it a serial where the audience wasn't supposed to care about the characters (Dib, in particular), that some sort of escape or outlet would become apparent over time. The cancellation short-circuited an inevitable evolution.

• So...Jhonen offered to design cover art for the initial Zim DVDs and recorded commentaries and interviews. He did an entire month's worth of Zim-focused articles on his blog when Nick made a big deal about bringing back reruns (at least, as much as he can be expected to focus on one topic for a month.) He gave a shout-out to a Zim convention and declined to show up because he hates conventions. Nick has mumbly things about bringing Zim back, and Jhonen says he's game. And yet rumors persist that he hated the show and would never consider doing anything with it again. How the hell does this even happen?
  • People get the impression he is more negative towards his fans and to his own work than he truly is. To be completely fair, he does take shots at some of his more obnoxious admirers from time to time. Couple that with the fact that he tends to feature Crapsack Worlds and you might be inclined to think he's truly cynical and embittered, when he's really just a weird (I mean that fondly), sarcastic guy who enthusiastically poured a lot of his life into the show. It's really unfortunate.
    
    There may also be some confusion with him for director Steve Ressel, who was more active with the fandom at the time of the show actually being on the air, who went on record as saying that he would not come back to the show. (See the Ask Steve Archives at http://www.buzzyworld.com/zim/archives/askstevearchives.html) For that matter Steve said Jhonen probably wouldn't come back, but Steve evidently said... a number of things about Jhonen, and Rikki, that fans should probably take with a grain of salt.
    • I am aware of Ressel's jackassary (see Ask Steve Archives), and the much-deserved character assassination he got from Rikki, but that was a long time ago and even if you're not following Jhonen's blog surely his heavy and enthusiastic involvement with the old DVDs (and explicit avoidance of the subject of Ressel on the commentary) should be more than enough evidence that he doesn't even badmouth the show sarcastically as much as the fandom thinks he does.
      • I'm trying to explain it, not justify it. People who are looking for the truth should certainly be able to find it — but you weren't asking about those people.
• A couple of episodes have GIR crying, like in "Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy". HOW???
  • The correct question is not, "How does GIR cry?" The correct question is, "Why was GIR constructed with tear ducts?" The answer to this question is, of course, the same as the answer to what the acronym GIR stands for.

• Is Zim's name supposed to be spelled with all capital letters?

• A couple of episodes show that Zim does in fact, win from time to time. For example, the slow-explosion effectively nuked the entire town. Why doesn't he just do that again a few more times? I'm cheering for him, and the one time he basically wins is never mentioned again.
  • Simple--it decimated his base as well. Plus, the city was successfully evacuated, and (discounting Negative Continuity as a possibility) rebuilt itself rather quickly. It's a net loss for him, really. Plus, the explosion itself happened by accident, how would Zim know how to recreate it?
  • I would cite Never Recycle Your Schemes except that I agree with the above point that there's no reason to think the event was reproducible, and if Zim considered it a loss he wouldn't want to in any case. Besides, how do you define "winning" in such a way that only "Walk for Your Lives" qualifies? I'd say he "wins" against Dib better than half the time, and almost always beats out the one-shots. If your criteria is "caused property damage on Earth" why not count "Hamstergeddon" and "The Wettening"? Finally Zim is 25% Genius Ditz to 75% Chaotic Stupid — there's no need to ask why he wouldn't do a seemingly logical thing when the entire show would be over in one episode if Zim were the type to regularly do the most seemingly logical thing.
• Okay, going a bit meta here, but what's with all the people questioning the logic of this show? It's so damn weird it's borderline surreal, and revels in and exploits that weirdness constantly. How can you apply any logic to that, or try to think up elaborate justifications? It's like looking at an M.C. Escher painting and trying to think of a reason for why the stairs can bend like that.
  • Well, what's wrong with that? The show's surreal, sure, but that doesn't mean it has no internal logic whatsoever, nor doesn't mean we're not entitled to think of some. The simple fact is that this sort of speculation is fun. (And besides, we're not picking at stuff that's supposed to be surreal. Note no one's asking what Presidentman's deal is or how the ending of "Bolongus Maximus" got undone.)
• How did Professor Membrane raise his kids if he's too busy to spend time with them more than once a year?