Invader Zim/Fridge

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Fridge Brilliance

• The whole business with the Megadoomer usually flies over people's heads on the first viewing. Why, that thing couldn't be any stupider if the engineers who designed it had been deliberately trying to undermine it or something! Then those same engineers provide Zim with the Santa technology that runs amok in the Christmas episode, and intentionally give Zim the schematics for the Massive knowing it'll piss off the armada... are we seeing a pattern here? It's always, specifically, Vortian technology -- and the Vortians, we learn, used to be Irken allies who were conquered and had their whole planet turned into one gigantic prison. Maybe the Irkens ought to be a bit more wary of technology provided by a race of people who have every reason to hate their guts.
  • This comes to an in-universe head in "Backseat Drivers From Beyond the Stars," when Zim secretly contacts an imprisoned Vort scientist for help on hacking into the Massive's computer...

Prisoner 777: "That would be wrong! It'd infuriate the armada! I helped design that ship, you know. *Beat* Here you go!"

• Some people have postulated that the bacon that was in the soap was made when Gir lit that piggy on fire.
• In "Attack of the Saucer Morons", Zim criticized the police car for its "defense capabilities" being "minimal". Seconds later, a mere bee collides with the Voot Runner and causes it to crash. Zim believed it was an extraordinary bee, but it could just be that his vehicle has poor defenses.
• In the Invader Zim episode "Bestest Friends", Keef mostly acts like a Stalker with a Crush. A crush... on Zim. And... wait for it... his shirt boasts a rainbow on it. -Upside Pickle
• Another point of Fridge Brilliance in Invader Zim. Zim implies that he's older than any human alive, but upon arriving on Earth, he goes to elementary Skool, where he fits in perfectly. I always thought this was explained by him being an insane alien. However, consider his timeline. In the first episode, he shows up uninvited at the Assigning. The Tallests remark that he was banished to Foodcourtia, but Zim tells them that when he heard about the assigning he quit and came right over. Fast forward to "The Frycook What Came From All That Space." Because he is still registered as a fry cook, he is kidnapped and taken to Foodcourtia. Why? The Foodening is about to begin. It lasts 20 years and no one is able to leave Foodcourtia during that time. Zim escaped from Foodcourtia just before the last Foodening. Which means it started right about the time Zim shows up at the Assigning. It took Zim 6 months to reach Earth, and by this episode, he's still in the same class at Skool, so he's likely been on Earth less than a school year. That means over 20 Irken years are equal to just one or two Earth years. By that count, Zim could well think he's older than any human alive, but actually be around Dib's age.
  • Pretty sure that's been Jossed, with Jhonen Vasquez saying in the DVD commentary that Zim is older than any human alive.
  • You have to go out of your way to convince yourself the "20 years" business in that episode makes sense even though the fact that it explicitly does not is the basis for a joke. If the Foodening were 20 years long, Sizz-Lorr should still be trapped, and he realizes this, but nonsensically tries to Hand Wave it. (Not that he's lying, probably it was 20 years long. It's not supposed to make sense. That's the joke.) The statement about Zim being "older than any human alive" was from a (now really dated, but still accessible) interview with Jhonen Vasquez, meaning that it can't be explained away by Zim being "mistaken" on the issue either.
• In the DVD commentary, Eric Trueheart states that a possible future plot for Dib would have been eventually revealed him as an artificial human created by Membrane, which would make Gaz's attitude towards her brother make perfect sense. She disregards him entirely just as she would any of her father's other insane science projects, because that's exactly what Dib is.
  • Presuming Gaz's behavior towards her brother needed some kind of justification beyond her general sociopathy.
• GIR is shown eating something almost every episode. Where exactly does all that food go? He could be one of those biomass-eating robots.

Fridge Horror

• Invader Zim: "Ten Minutes to Doom" gives us a revelation that only gets more horrific the more you think about it. The Irkens are nothing more than walking meat shells for the real technological brain that's contained in their paks, and their biological processes are so utterly dependent on it that they die if separated from the pak for as much as ten minutes. That couldn't have happened in nature. It would have to be something another sentient race did to them... or they did to themselves. Talk about Body Horror.
  • What's more, Irken smeets go through gestation and birth before being paired with a PAK. Dib's mind was being taken over when Zim's PAK attached to him. What is an Irken's body before it is given a PAK? Is it a mindless husk, or a creature with its own mind that the PAK overrides and destroys to replace with the PAK's mind?
  • Can't be. In the episode about parent-teacher conferences, Zim has a flashback about who his parents are. There are no parents, but it shows the pack being fused to his back. And he was perfectly healthy and happy without it. (I think that's the episode.)
    • Actually, no--Baby!Zim is pulled out of a tube (yeah, apparently all Irkens are cloned) and he falls lifeless on a table, only moving and actually living when the Pak is attached to him and he receives an electric shock. Yikes...
• And the episode "Bestest Friend" has a scene where Zim conducts some weird experiments on three kids to find out which one of them is worthy of being his friend. Considering he tested how well they conducted electricity by shocking them, just what was Zim doing to the kids using that beaver and toy taxi cab?
  • Word of God said Jhonen originally wanted blood to splatter on the wall during that scene.
• In the episode "Plague of Babies", it is shown that the aliens - who look just like human babies - had called their ship for help, asking to be teleported back. But wait, the ship has the wrong coordinates and pulls a room full of human babies to outer-space instead. WHAT HAPPENED TO THOSE BABIES?!
  • Double bonus! In the same episode, Zim stupefies the aliens that attack him and sends them all back to their "homes". Doomed them to live for the rest of their lives at the mental maturity of an infant. OUCH.
• And in the unfinished episode "Return of Keef" Zim throws some sort of goo on Dib that makes anyone who is happy explode. Why would Zim specifically make something that would cause happy people to explode? It's just silly. Then you remember that Zim had a human test subject, Nick, that is always happy because of a happy probe in his brain. Zim probably killed Nick.
• "GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff" has a double one. When the human with a squid brain (or squid with a human body) returns to the sea, the audience directly realizes 'Oh god, he can't breathe underwater'. Quite a fridge horror on its own, but then GIR happily comments: 'He's gonna get eaten by a shark'.
  • In the cop's I Have a Family outburst, he mentions having children and pets a toilet, but no wife. Did Zim orphan this guy's kids?
    • And if he did... well, that dog in the guy's photos looks pretty damned dangerous. Two small children are alone with a dangerous dog that needs to wear a muzzle...
  • What about the library scene partway through the episode? The guy who gets his RETINAS REMOVED because he had two overdue discs. Does he get them back for returning the discs? How does a library get sanctioned for taking the eyes of patrons with late discs? Who else met such a fate?
• In episode "A Room with a Moose" there is a scene where a possible destination for Dib is a universe of pure itchiness and This Troper thought to himself, well that doesn't sound that scary... Then This Troper read this . Gulp.
• The episode "Dark Harvest" was full of Nightmare Fuel already...then you remember what Zim replaces the hall monitor's organ with: a hall-pass. A hall-pass in the form of a metal collar that will explode if you leave school grounds. As soon as that kid starts for home or is sent to a hospital for his horrible stomach pains...ka-boom.
  • But he shows up unhurt in "Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom", so he must have survived somehow.
• In "Bloaty's Pizza Hog", Gaz mentions that this is the only time all year she can spend time with her dad, due to him being extremely busy. A Tear Jerker in itself, but could years of Parental Neglect have turned her into what she is?