Changes: Zim

Revision as of 15:44, 1 March 2009

Zim arriving at The Great Assigning in the episode The Nightmare Begins

This article is about the Character. For the cartoon, see Invader Zim.

Biography

Zim is the main character of the cartoon. He is a short Irken defective, but despite his size he feels that he is superior to and unchallenged by the other Irkens and universal creatures, due to his intelligence, ingenuity, skill in many applications, and destructively inclined nature. He can be a very irritable, impatient, and anger-driven character, but enjoys a good snack and loves to invent and create new things.

Some fans think that because of his occasional displays of naivety that Zim is a complete, incompetent moron, but this assumption is incorrect and merely derived from a somewhat superficial examination of the character. Jhonen Vasquez, the creator of the show, states in an IGN interview: "I always imagined Zim as just being utterly unaware of his shortcomings, to a dangerous extent even. He's not really stupid, but he's got some problems getting priorities straight. He's this alien from an incredibly advanced race (technologically anyhow), with access to a universe of power. And yet he stays in school all day, enduring it, hating it, fearing it and freaking out about it. The thought of sneaking out or setting a robot in his place never crosses his mind. He gets so caught up with the most unimportant details, he ends up getting nothing done; He gets a giant robot, and his plan is to go beat Dib up. It was cool to remind people that he really was in control of some impressive stuff, but that his sense of control was so horrible that it didn't matter if his plans were foolproof."

Zim is extremely loyal to the Irken Empire throughout the series but his instability somewhat renders this loyalty somewhat unreliable. Zim is held in contempt by most of the Irken race, primarily by The Tallests, Red and Purple, whose empty opinions matter to nearly all of the Irken race. Sometimes, especially during one small moment when he is insulted by Tak, it seems as though he knows his mission is a lie, and that his race hates him; but he either seems to be in denial of these facts or possibly he still try's to do it so he can prove himself to the tallest.

All Irkens, including Zim, do not have families or relatives. This fact is proven in the episode, "Parent Teacher Night", and shows Zim as having been created in an Ir]en birthing facilty, and removed from an incubation cylinder by nothing more than a "cold, unfeeling robot arm."

After ruining Operation Impending Doom 1, Irken Invader Zim was demoted from the actual "Invader Class" to "Food Services" and banished to Foodcourtia, a planet that exists as the galaxy's biggest food court. When the Almighty Tallest began assigning new Invaders, Zim sped to Conventia, the convention hall planet, to be assigned a planet to conquer as well as "a robot slave" of his own, which became GIR. In response to his urgent pleas for a second chance, the Almighty Tallest sent him to a far away, backwater planet shown as a sticky note on the edge of The Tallests' map. This was merely to rid themselves of him, and six months later, they're surprised to receive a transmission from the planet we know as Earth...

Having already exceeded the Tallests' expectations by even arriving on this planet, Zim continues by establishing a base of operations, arranging disguises for himself and his SIR unit, and even creating the Robo-Parents. To go a step further, he enrolls himself in the nearest "Skool", where he hopes to attain information concerning this planet's weaknesses and possible destruction. During his first day in class, he is recognized by and becomes instant enemies with Dib, a young Paranormal enthusiast who had overheard a satellite transmission of the Great Assigning from his rooftop one night, and knew SOMEONE was coming... From this day on, Zim attempts to take over this insane, diluted planet, though Dib stands alone to stop him at every turn.

Zim often wears various persona108lly manufactured disguises in an attempt to conceal his identity from the humans that he plans to eventually conquer. Although some of his disguises appear to be lacking in judgement and quality, they rival even many of his peers' attempts at "fitting in"--- some examples of which are briefly demonstrated at the beginning of the episode, "Planet Jackers". Considering the fact that no Irken until Zim even knew that the planet Earth existed, his disguises are considerably convincing--- though little effort is required to decieve such clueless subjects as the humans.....

Zim's usual disguise consists of some contact lenses and a black hairpiece. When interrogated by Dib in the first episode, "The Nightmare Begins", concerning the flaws in Zim's disguise, Zim quickly explains away his clearly visible green skin as merely being an unnamed epidermal condition, and in the episode Vindicated!, when one of his contact lenses becomes dislodged, he claims that his red eye is due to pinkeye, "...a normal human illness." He's been known to wear other costumes as well, like an old man disguise, an elderly woman disguise, a bear suit (actual purpose unknown), a parent costume, and a Santa suit made from a Vortian liquid material (he assumed that if he imitated Santa, he would be able to rule the Earth).

Many logical and creative theories from these Zim-fans to this very question have been attempted and are existent, one concerning the well-known, "ONE YEAR LATER" caption in "Invasion of the Idiot Dog Brain" as well as many other similar occurrences. These are merely for humorous effect, and are not meant to be taken literally. A speculation regarding this matter is the fact that if Zim had been on Earth for that extra year, he would have been more familiar with and even used to Earth customs and holidays like Halloween trick-or-treating, to give just one example; but on "Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom", an episode aired a while after "Invasion of the Idiot Dog Brain", we see Zim just as perplexed as ever concerning these aspects of Earth culture. An official response to this vexing query comes from Jhonen Vasquez himself, stating that the characters have no definite ages; but that most of the kids in Dib/ZIM's class would be around 11, Gaz would be one year younger then her brother Dib, and Zim would be older than any human alive. Jhonen has stated he is 159 Earth years, and 16 in Irk years.

Debut: The Nightmare Begins
Complete Filmography

Disguises

Main Article: Zim's Disguises

In order to blend in with the inhabitants of Earth, Zim has made a series of creative disguises.

Biological Weaknesses

Any typical Irken's skin sizzles and smokes on contact with water from Earth, demonstrated by an episode called, "The Wettening". After learning this the hard way near the beginning of the episode, Zim later runs some tests on a glue sample he brought home with him from the Skool, and is able to counteract the weakness by coating himself with some glue he manufactured in his labs. It apparently never wore off, because at the end of the episode and throughout the rest of the series, his skin appears to be completely immune to water's harmful effects. Judging from later episodes, it apparently doesn't make his skin insusceptible to everything... another Irken weakness, one that apparently has no remedy, is the inability to process Earth foods in any way. Throughout the run of the show, it it demonstrated that human food causes Zim to have multiple allergic reactions; and the fact that he was covered head to toe in meat at the end of an earlier episode entitled, "Germs" (in an attempt to immunize himself to Earth pathogens) is not necessarily a contradiction to this statement, as can be proved by some of the Tallest's dialogue in the episode, "Battle of the Planets", pasted below:

Purple: Heh... Re... Remember.. Remember the time Zim called us and he was... he was covered from head to foot in meat?

Red laughs.

Red: Yeah! The meat ended up fusing to his flesh, hehe, and he almost went blind when it invaded his eye sockets!

Zim's PAK

All Irkens are issued a PAK, which at birth are fused to their spines. Not only do these devices regulate Irken's minds and systemic functions, but they also contain the host's entire personality, which can be altered by a process called 'reencoding'. In this way, The Tallest (or whoever is running Irk) can keep close tabs on every Irken, making sure they stay in line; Zim's pak, however, was defective and therefore cannot alter his personality, and never did. As shown in a 'The Trial', a later, unmade episode, Zim is among the rank 'Defective', that is, his PAK was flawed and therefore had resulted in a flawed Irken. Defective Irkens are given trials for their lives and, if found to be guilty, have their PAK removed and erased. If an Irken's PAK remains dislodged for longer than ten minutes, the hosts' death will immediately follow. (see "www.scarymonkeyshow.com" for further details)

Affections?

Although Zim seems tough and unemotionally inclined, he does have a fondness for his minions, GIR and later on Minimoose, and he does occasionally show a softer side.... "I love you, cold unfeeling robot arm!" (from Parent Teacher Night) is just ONE reference to such emotions that apparently the collective of the Irkens possess and exhibit, while another is his decision to allow GIR to play in his anti-Dib rubber piggy supply in Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy when the robot's eyes tear up.

In an IGN interview with himself and Rikki Simons, Jhonen briefly states, "Ultimately, my idea was to take his sights off world domination, as Zim begins to understand that there is a beauty in human life, an understanding that sets him on his path to becoming a public legal defender. I was very inspired by the powerful courtroom scenes in Daredevil, and I wanted to move people to tears like those scenes moved me. But the show was canceled before any of that, thus leaving our audience of ten unfulfilled." It should be noted that it is highly possible that this quote was meant sarcastically by Jhonen.

A vexing question of some of the fans of Invader Zim is if Zim himself, let alone any other characters on the show, have any love interests, and that answer is unknown. Mentioned in the commentary for Tak: The Hideous New Girl, there is no official romance at all in the series, but only two members of the staff were present for that episode's commentary, neither being Jhonen. Zim and Tak are mortal enemies, and Gaz repeatedly tells people about how she thinks Zim is "too stupid to take over the earth...." and how "he's so... bad at it....", leading to popular opinion being an absence of love. Jhonen did, however, make some comments about Zim caring for GIR and Minimoose as family.

Voice

Zim was voiced by Richard Steven Horvitz and by a female voice actor (Nao Nagasawa) for the Japanese dubbed version. In the pilot episode, titled "Food Fight", Zim's voice was provided first by the famous actor Billy West who does the voice of Fry in Futurama, then by Mark Hamil (popular for his role in Star Wars) who also tried out for the part of Zim's voice, but lost the part to Horvitz because he could not scream as loud and as long.

In an Interview with the voice cast, "The Voices of Zim" (can be found on Vol. 1, disc 2) Horvitz was asked "...if being the voice of Zim was hard on his voice," and he says, "...Yes..... I would sometimes have to recouperate for a day, or a day and a half, beyond that. Originally, we were supposed to do sometimes like two episodes a session, and it was just impossible........ ya know, because in general, it's like it was more than just actual screaming... if you notice... Zim screams a lot just when he's talking......" followed by some examples by Richard himself.

Also, in the commentary for "Backseat Drivers From Beyond the Stars", (found on Vol. 3, Disc 1) Jhonen Vasquez was asked by Horvitz, "....you know, as I listen to this, I remember back to a conversation you and I had, Jhonen, about how... you heard Zim in your head one way, which wasn't anything like the way I did it?" Jhonen replies with a chuckle, "No, no, no, no... that's.... wrong... I heard him exactly how you did him, but with other stuff, that was pretty....cool."

Fun Facts

-It's possible that Zim's favorite color is purple, as suggested by a few lines in, "Nubs of Doom" (the transcript for an episode that would've been made later had the show gone on. All other transcripts can be found at "www.thescarymonkeyshow.com"). Zim is creating Minimoose and asks a Vortian engineer for some "....really scary, insanely powerful weapons..." to build into him. This engineer (possibly Prisoner 777 from "Backseat Drivers"?) offers Zim a "...top secret experimental VORTIAN DOOMSDAY device," and upon examining it, Zim says, "It's purple!", followed by the Vortian saying, "Thought you'd like it."

-Ironically, both he and his greatest enemy, Dib, are essentially similar in that they are both outsiders and isolated because their respective species and acquaintances consider them to be either crazy or stupid.

@@ Line 10: / Line 10: @@
 "I always imagined Zim as just being utterly unaware of his shortcomings, to a dangerous extent even. He's not really stupid, but he's got some problems getting priorities straight. He's this alien from an incredibly advanced race (technologically anyhow), with access to a universe of power. And yet he stays in school all day, enduring it, hating it, fearing it and freaking out about it. The thought of sneaking out or setting a robot in his place never crosses his mind. He gets so caught up with the most unimportant details, he ends up getting nothing done; He gets a giant robot, and his plan is to go beat Dib up. It was cool to remind people that he really was in control of some impressive stuff, but that his sense of control was so horrible that it didn't matter if his plans were foolproof."
-Zim is extremely loyal to the Irken Empire throughout the series but his instability somewhat renders this loyalty somewhat unreliable. Zim is held in contempt by most of the Irken race, primarily by The Tallests, Red and Purple, whose empty opinions matter to nearly all of the Irken race. Sometimes, especially during one small moment when he is insulted by [[Tak]], it seems as though he knows his mission is a lie, and that his race hates him; but he either seems to be in denial of these facts or he possibly still try's to do it so he can prove himself to the tallest.
+Zim is extremely loyal to the Irken Empire throughout the series but his instability somewhat renders this loyalty somewhat unreliable. Zim is held in contempt by most of the Irken race, primarily by The Tallests, Red and Purple, whose empty opinions matter to nearly all of the Irken race. Sometimes, especially during one small moment when he is insulted by [[Tak]], it seems as though he knows his mission is a lie, and that his race hates him; but he either seems to be in denial of these facts or possibly he still try's to do it so he can prove himself to the tallest.
 All Irkens, including Zim, do not have families or relatives.  This fact is proven in the episode, "Parent Teacher Night", and shows Zim as having been created in an Ir]en birthing facilty, and removed from an incubation cylinder by nothing more than a "cold, unfeeling robot arm."