Kim Possible/Headscratchers

Kim Possible
""Bonnie's playing you girl. What good is saving the world if I have no one to share it with?""
 * Kim's meant to be a spy right? Exactly what spy stuff does she do? Use gadgets to bring down foes? I may be missing something but she seems to operate more of a soldier type (sneak in, steal\smash something) than actually spying on what Drakken is up to then calling in Global Justice or something.
 * It's the highly stylised definition of "spy" created by the likes of the James Bond movies and The Avengers and such: stocked with neat gadgets, jetting around the world, foiling supervillains bent on world domination and blowing things up, just like True Lies or Spy Kids or Totally Spies!. There isn't much relation to real espionage work. It's not John Le Carre.
 * Sure, I can accept rule of cool in terms of spies. It was something I thought worth noting. Bond for example, he does proper spying from time to time, and for all the homage to the spy parody the closest we get to Splinter Cell is a throwaway gag. Kim would be more at home in Metal Gear than the Cold War.
 * I can think of three times when they were spying on villains instead of just looking for a fight: The Bermuda Triangle Club in So The Drama, the villain's convention in "Bad Boy" and Killigan's island in "Graduation". But I don't think Kim is ever called a spy in the show: what she does in usually referred to as "crimefighting" or "hero stuff".
 * Is she ever actually labled as a "spy"? It seems like she just takes on dangerous missions to help people.
 * I've put up a couple of defences for Kim here, but now I have a point of my own to raise. By So the Drama it's pretty obvious Kim loves Ron. Whether it be visual cues (the Spiderman bit in Fearless Ferret) subtle clues (Kim hits on Ron, suggesting he take her as a date in Bad Boy) or basically all of A Very Possible Christmas, where she acts like she did when she had the moodulator, albeit milder. (Don't forget her episode-long 'jellin' fit in Gorilla Fist!) So how come she spends most of the film freaking over being with Ron?
 * Denial? He's been a friend for so long that she just doesn't see him that way: when her father gets antsy about her asking for advice, she says "It's not a question about boys, it's about Ron." They're both reassured. Also, she worries about her place in the high school popularity "food chain", and the likes of Bonnie make her think she should be dating someone more on a level with the head cheerleader and captain of everything.
 * Monique addresses this, telling Kim that Bonnie should eat her low carb words.


 * Why does Kim bother to look for a job occasionally if she's a secret agent? Doesn't she get paid to do the things she does?
 * No -- otherwise, she'd be like Team Impossible.
 * She's basically a mercenary for free, rather than a secret agent. I get the feeling that a lot of the reason she gets called in so much is budgetary concerns. "Look, you guys. Doctor Drakken stole our thing. Our thing! We need it back. But if we can't get it back, we'll need a new one, so try not to spend a lot of money." "No problem, we'll call the cheerleader with the kung-fu klutz sidekick and the rat.
 * As I understand it, her payment is future favors. "Hey, remember that time I saved you/your daughter/your village/the world? Can I get a ride/some equipment/a little info?"
 * Also, saving the world is just her hobby; she got into accidentally. Presumably, she has some other ambition. Her parents encourage her to follow in their respective footsteps instead of joining Global Justice, or something like that.
 * She was looking at global diplomacy at one time.
 * In "So The Drama," how did Shego survive being kicked off a roof, electrocuted, and a building falling on top of her?
 * "Slayer powers" (ie. she can't die because she's a woman, and women are the stronger sex).
 * Because she's a likable, eccentric, popular, badass *primary* villain in a kids show.
 * The same way she survives getting thrown across rooms, several-story falls, getting buried in cheese, collapsing buildings, the Vacrometer's lightning, flying car crashes, explosions, monkey stampedes, and everything else. She - like other characters on the show - is Made of Iron.
 * Wild Mass Guessing goes that she has a healing factor among her superpowers.
 * The last minute addition of the scene where they lock her and Drakken into the police van with some mooks. Test audiences interpreted it as Shego being killed by Kim (which was actually never supposed to be the case), so they made it more clear that she did survive.
 * Why does Shego keep filing her gloves?
 * There are claws built into them. No lie.
 * Fanon says she channels her plasma blasts through little vents in them, and that the vents thus need cleaning.


 * Shego worries that if her superhero past came to light her villainous reputation would be ruined. But how can it be her dark (light?) secret? She hasn't changed her appearance, and superheroism isn't a low profile activity.
 * Go City seems weirdly insular. Kim's never heard of Aviarius, who lives in the same city as his hero foes, and Hego has never heard of internationally-infamous Dr. Drakken and is clearly (and perhaps willfully) ignorant of the high-profile crime his sister has devoted her life to. Shego, if you'll excuse this odd and tortured simile, is like a small-town prom queen who went off to the big state college: Nobody knows anything about where she came from, and none of it matters anymore anyway because she's swimming in a much larger pond now.
 * The world of Kim Possible is a really weird place. Like, really weird. Evil is unionized, Hench Co. does very good business, and crime is fought around the world by superheroes, Global Justice (a super-spy organization ala James Bond), and some cheerleader. No one recognizes Shego as a FaceHeelTurned former superhero from Go City because there are probably teams of superheros (or something similar) protecting every major city around the world, hence why Kim and company don't recognize Hego or Aviarius -- it's just another superhero-supervillain face-off. No big.
 * If Wade made the Battle Suit so overpowered that it made Ron and even Larry, the nerd with half the strength of an average child, so powerful that they became the strongest people in the series just by wearing that Battle Suit, why did Wade not create more Battle Suits? This Troper blames it on very bad writing...
 * This Troper reckons they had to hold back the phlebotinium and write out the battlesuit as much as possible to avoid making Kim too powerful. When they added it in So The Drama, that was the series' finale, so they didn't have to worry about that, but with the fourth season it must have become a bit of a nuisance.
 * Unless I'm mistaken Wade said in So The Drama that the battlesuit was still in the testing phase. Until he irons all the kinks out of it he probably doesn't want to make some more (we also see the Battlesuit malfunctioning in one episode). That, or Kim hid it somewhere to keep Ron's paws off it after episode 4.1 and forgot about it.
 * Also, there's the threat of having it hijacked again.
 * Maybe Kim didn't want it anymore after Larry had it.
 * Question about the show's final. So did Ron actually killed Warmonga and that other guy since getting thrown in a crashing spaceship seems a a pretty secure death.And if that's the case how come that Ron doesn't seem somehow affected by something like that
 * Well nothing was really confirmed and the finale was pretty quick to end to be fair. If I were to guess... They are either, simply dead, or they are made of iron like most of the characters. They are 8 foot something and made of huge muscles and armour, oh, and they are aliens... so I wouldn't put it past them surviving. And if they did die, why would Ron care... he just saved the world from the aliens, graduated and seemed to be flying to the moon with Kim. What more can you ask for...
 * I believe Word of God said that they died. Although Word of God have said lots of things...
 * Aw, too bad, no snoo snoo for you, Drakkhen.
 * Why does no one question some of the scientists that the villains steal from? I believe they might have touched briefly on it in the mind control episode, but they didn't bother with it any more. And they completely ignored it in the mood-controller episode. The guy's lab even LOOKS like a lair; it had a door that was kind of hidden in the wall.
 * Stranger than that, with the bracelet that grows into a battlesuit, Kim tries to contact them, but they're closed for the weekend. Our secret military project has been stolen, but it can wait till Monday. They do talk to scientists in charge of the Pan-Dimensional Vortex Inducer and Ray X, but those times, they were called in by them.
 * As for Dr. Bortle, how does he get away with it? He's working on mind control, with the mood-controller and the compliance chip. If he tried using them, they'd bust him as a villain. Both times Kim and Shego suffer for it; maybe one of them arranged an "accident" for him later.
 * One of them being Shego. Kim seemed too busy hitting on Ron (the next episode has her hinting to be brought along as a date).
 * The show as a whole takes mind control pretty lightly. Hell, Kim even used the compliance chips on her brothers with no consequences, despite calling them "ferociously unethical" earlier in the episode.
 * The mind-control devices in this show are Nightmare Fuel potential bad. Ron is easily turned into the worst villain on the show twice, and if he got away, I'm sure the first thing on his mind would be zapping Kim evil, installing a mind control chip just in case she turns into a rival, as well as slapping a moodulator set to make Kim fall in love with him just to increase his control over her, she'd be evil, but so in love with Ron she'd do what he says, without the obvious signs of being mind controlled. I'm sure he'd also have a few control chips spare for Tara, Yori, Monique, Zita and Bonnie as well.
 * Bortle appears to be a mix of Mad Scientist and Arms Dealer (he was selling the moodulators in an online auction, apparently indifferent to what the highest bidder wanted them for). So the answer comes down to: he gets away with it the same way Jack Hench does.
 * Also, mind control might be a minor sideline for him -- the device Drakken and Shego came to steal in "Emotion Sickness" was something else altogether.
 * To the extent that Bortle could be considered amoral bordering on villainous, he's a Villain with Good Publicity -- note that Kim dismisses the notion that he'd create something as "ferociously unethical" as mind control chips. It helps that Bortle has the good grace to be embarrassed and dance around the issue (rather than brazenly weasel the way somebody like Jack Hench would).

"M. Uggle: How was your weekend, Kim?
 * What's with the random design change for Tim and Jim? It can't be puberty, right?
 * Since they had Kim and Ron growing up, dating and eventually graduating from High School, they grew the tweebs up as well. I think they also switched the voice actor.
 * In Camille's second appearance why is she suddenly unable to perfectly nanomorph into people? When she nanomorphed into Kim she didn't change the colour of her eyes or skin.
 * The animators apparently only wanted to make it obvious to the viewer. After all, Camille was treated as perfectly-nanomorphed in-universe. Ron got totally fooled (although that's not something hard) and Monique realized who was the fake over a fashion factor, not a mistake in Camille's transformation.
 * Why don't Shego's siblings really look like they were hit by a comet? Only their hair colors have changed, while Shego's hair is the same but she has greenish skin.
 * Well, Mego's skin is fairly purplish, as for Hego and the Wegos, they retain a "normal" look, but do a close check. Their skin tone IS different from one another, even though the fact they are brother would suggest they should look more alike. The Wegos's skin color is closer to red, while Hego's skin (When wearing his Go Suit) goes a bit pale, as if approaching light blue. It's clear that they have been affected too, it's just not too notable.
 * Why did Monique have no pupils?
 * Because most minor characters are like this (Alex Saffic, for example). This was fixed in the second season.
 * Am I the only one missing romance between Drakken and Shego minus that mind control episode and the finale? They seemed like brother and sister to me. It seems like they jumped the shark with them hooking up.
 * It was more of a Sure Why Not, but yeah the fact that they hooked up just like that is quite odd. Then again, maybe something happened during Season 4 (Which This Troper refused to watch). I'm not too thrilled with Kim and Ron hooking up in the first place, either. Then again, it's what the fans wanted on both accounts, right? After all, any guy and girl that spends that much time together obviously has feelings for each other. Platonic Life Partners? THERE'S NO SUCH THING!
 * Wow. Bitter, aren't we?
 * You try being on the receiving end of it every day and see how long it takes YOU to become the supervillain!
 * In any case, Dr. Drakken had to have some appeal to Shego, considering she kept working with him. Maybe one of his schemes actually working was what she needed to push things from fascination to love.
 * If you watch Season 4 from Shego's perspective she is actually taken through a recap of all her past or possible relationships.
 * First there's Junior, who frees her from prison to help him steal a birthday present for his dad. There were some sparks between them in the episode where she became his Evil Teacher (also he is young, buff, rich and dumb, totally her type). Shego realizes, however, that for Junior she will always come second to his father.
 * Then there is Motor Ed. He frees her so she can ride in his new cool car. For him she is an accessory. He says it in these precise words. Shego is not amused.
 * She even gets a chance to try a non-evil relationship when she gets turned good. She hooks up with the principal from Kim's school and appears to be happy with him. But after she's turned back he simply doesn't match her anymore.
 * After going through all this in one short season, Shego probably decided to stick with the one guy she knew she was compatible with.
 * Bonnie doesn't have a visible belly button. Kim does. They're wearing identical cheerleading outfits. How is this possible?
 * Maybe she's wearing a skin tight bodysuit that's the same colour as her skin.
 * How could Bonnie maintain Alpha Bitch status? Kim is one of the most popular girls in school, though she doesn't really have any close friends outside of team Possible aside from Monique. Enough people know her (and Ron) well enough to cheer when Kim/Stoppable happened in the first movie, and Kim is, at least later in the series, known to be this freelance Secret Agent by a number of people, who have mostly seen her in Middleton-saving action. And it can't be that everyone puts up with Bonnie because nobody's ever questioned her authority, because there have been at least a couple of times when she was abandoned at the end of a scene stamping her foot like an angry monkey because Possible got attention and she didn't. If they got back to being her "friends" because they felt sorry for the poor pretty girl who has a tragically undersized kindness gland, why do they let her unload all that... that... popular bother on Kim?
 * There are plenty of possible reasons:
 * 1) Bonnie is pretty much the high school equivalent of a Villain with Good Publicity, seeing as despite her failings as a person, she still is popular enough to have influence. The fact that she's rather good looking (Guys want to date her, girls want to be her) helps.
 * 2) We don't know how everyone else is very well. For all we know, they could see Bonnie as either a jealous bitch or actually agree with her.
 * 3) The fact that Kim's best friend is considered a social pariah (To the point where it's believed he is on the bottom of the social ladder by himself) does give her leeway with a lot of people. If you were to proudly hang with someone who, in their point of view, had no redeeming qualities, your tastes (As well as judgement) would be in question, too.
 * 4) Status Quo Is God, most likely...
 * Kim probably has very little social life compared to Bonnie, since she spends all her free time off fighting evil and such, while Bonnie actually hangs around to get to know people and has time to get into people's good graces/intimidate them into obeying her. I can't imagine the cheer squad appreciates having Kim bailing on them all the time.
 * It may be that the other students find Kim admirable, but pretty difficult to relate to. She dashes out of classes to save the world yet still seems to have a finger in every pie from the yearbook to the swim team, and is rather breezy about her exploits. You can imagine them talking to her:

Kim: Oh, rescued Mrs Murphy's cat, saved a village in Guatemala from a mudslide, stopped Dr. Drakken from causing earthquakes in Japan. How about you?

M. Uggle: Um..."


 * The creators pretty much tied all the loose ends in the series, except we never learned Shego and her brothers first names. Why not? They gave Kim's parents names. This Troper still thinks Shego's Sheik and Mego's Mitch.
 * I just always assumed Shego's first name was Sheila. You're right though, this is bothersome. Maybe someone should ask the creators, if they're still open to questions about the series, what their names are.
 * Sheila...That works too.
 * They were supposed to go into Shego's ankle pouch thing, too. No one has any idea what it's really for.
 * What's with Shego's fingers? They're..Pointy and claw-like. At times, and at other times they're "normal".
 * Power side effect?
 * The end of "So the Drama", about Shego. What the fudge!?!
 * That is one of the biggest reasons for which Shego having Healing Factor is pretty much not just Fanon, but Canon. Hell, I think even one of the producers confirmed it in an interview.
 * It was supposed to be the final episode ever, and the original versions didn't show the aftermath for Shego/Drakken. When they screentested, people went "OH MY FUCKING GOD KIM JUST KILLED SHEGO", as it's basically a typical Disney Villain Death and they had various views of "OH HELLS YEAH" and "OMG KIM IS A MONSTER" so they added the "take them away boys" scene. I personally think it would have been an awesome ending, showing that Kim has grown up, and is now out of the teenage Competence Zone, and that she's now in the "real world" where Thou Shalt Not Kill expires. Especially as the Drakken/Shego planned Diablo attack would surely have taken many lives.
 * Eh, debatable, they really aren't those kinds of villains, Shego can do it but lacks motivation, besides it always feels weird to have The Rival die outside of high fantasy, greek tragedy, or shounen martial arts. Defeat Means Friendship and all, and they made a big point out of having her cherish her time as 'Ms. Go'
 * And Thou Shalt Not Kill is just a teen thing? Um, look at Batman, who is most definitely NOT anywhere near the "teenage Competence Zone." He has a code against killing and he fights some of the most murder-happy villains out there. You say Animation Age Ghetto, I say superhero morals.
 * Also, Shego had the least fault in what was making her angry. The whole deadly plot wasn't a "Drakken/Shego" plan like you state, but just a Drakken plan, and Eric was the one who broke her heart. Shego was just doing what she normally does, so Kim killing her would make no sense whatsoever because Shego just did not deserve it. Plus, Kim would have to be arrested, as she'd have gone above the law.
 * It would have been a different thing, had it happened mid-battle. But it happened during the immediate after-math, at a point where Shego was trying to get away from the scene rather than stick around and fight. (Note her surprised gasp when Kim suddenly appeared in front of her.) Killing the villain's right hand when the battle is already won is not exactly something an idealistic hero should do.
 * Lastly, it should be mentioned the number-one reason Kim killing Shego would never, ever fly. There are way too many fans who love Shego. In all truth, it would feel very jarring to have a character with plenty of humanization throughout the series (she celebrated Christmas with Kim and her family, for crying out loud!) to get killed off so casually, and since the movie could have been the Grand Finale, Kim would end the series The Scrappy rather than The Hero.
 * Why does Ron always say Shego is old, though in his debut he liked her? Like in "Clean Slate". She can't be more then twenty four, and she looks pretty young.
 * By season four she's probably in her late twenties, or at least that's my guess. She's a college graduate and has a few years of supervillainy after that; at least, it puts her in a different age bracket to the high school kids. Besides, when Ron makes those comments (in "Clean Slate" and "Stop Team Go") he's trying to pull Kim away from her, and so playing up any difference.
 * Mid twenties, I suppose. Isn't it Word of God she was in her early twenties at the beginning of the show?
 * To a teenager, anyone over 20 is 'old'.
 * To a teenager with a functioning sex drive, still shaggable though. I'm going for the 'being a distraction' interpretation, though, since Ron might be nerdy but he's not the sexless type.
 * When Shego has Ron pinned down in A Sitch in Time (at least I think it was), he tells her that she actually looks pretty cute. But I don't think that thinking she is old and thinking she's attractive are mutually exclusive.
 * Does Shego wear black eye liner? In certain episodes (like Bueno Nacho) her eyes have a black ring look to them, in some her upper eye is black and in some her eyes are plain.
 * Right. Because it'd be completely impossible for a woman to wear make-up some days, but not others. Really, that minor an inconsistency in character design is hardly something to get worked up over, especially when it's about aethstetics/cosmetics (I guess Limited Wardrobe is so ingrained we don't think about the possibility of "she's not wearing that today" or something).
 * Clean slate. Were they lamp-shading the fandoms views on Kim and Ron or the fact that they Jumped the Shark by suddenly making Kim and Ron like each other and hook up?
 * Do you mean "Clean Slate" the episode or just how the show seemed to put them together? For the former the show did have them dating for six months, so the ending where Kim remembers she did love Ron works. For the latter, if you watch through the series you can see a number of subtle clues. Like? Like the Spider-Man scene in "Fearless Ferret", or "Steal Wheels", when she's jealous of Ron spending time with Felix. "Emotion Sickness" and "Gorilla Fist" has it well established by this point that she has feelings for Ron, not to mention "A Very Possible Christmas", but "Bad Boy" had Kim slyly hinting to take her on a date. Even the first season episodes had a few moments that implied them being more than just friends.
 * ...No, not really. Very subtle moments but they still seemed to be more on the Just Friends side of the spectrum.
 * Kim/Ron is a pretty typical Just Friends ship, where it gets teased by friends and family, there is some Green-Eyed Monster from both sides, some wondering about if it'll ruin their friendship, and finally one goes for it. It's only real complication is the fact they save the world, and arguably this just helps them realise what they really feel for each other.


 * Is the name Dr. Drakken supposed to have any meaning to it?
 * Probably not. It just sounds 'supervillainy'.
 * That's about the reason, I reckon, and it sounds similar to "dragon".
 * Or possibly "Draconian".
 * "Drache" is the German word for "dragon", and it's pronounced in roughly the same way.
 * With all the Meaningful Names in this show, why does DNAmy have a plain surname like Hall? Was it chosen because it sounded good or is there a reference I'm not getting?
 * Dunno if its a reference, but Amy Hall is a pretty common name, so probably...
 * During Kimitation Nation Shego grabs onto the plane which makes it fall due to an electrical overload, or something. Why didn't she just turn her powers off? Back then she had no super powers (the gloves made the glow), but did she forget to turn it off since she was mad?
 * In the Bad Future, was Bonnie actually evil and working for Shego of her own free will? Apart from the scruffy hair and what appear to be bags under her eyes she seemed perfectly fine.
 * Based on what we have seen of Bonnie being the Alpha Bitch, one can easily assume that she did join Shego's power-structure out of her free will. Though I don't think she would consider herself anything else than pragmatic in joining the powers that be. Also, don't forget that "A Sitch In Time" happened before the Character Development that gave Bonnie her Freudian Excuse for her behaviour.
 * At the end of one episode Monkey Fist was shown staring lovingly at a framed picture he has of DNAmy, but the next time we see them together he's repulsed by her. Is this Negative Continuity or is Monty just a Hypocrite bothered by Amy's new gorilla arms?
 * If I remember correctly those episodes were pretty far apart, a lot could of happened between them. The evidence seems to point to her becoming a Stalker with a Crush.
 * Since SHE was the one talking when the image of Fist with her picture came up, its possible it was her delusion. Fist is part monkey and she does like mixed animals.
 * It could also be that Monty Fisk appreciated what she did for him (turning him into a man monkey) but as boyfriend and girlfriend, no.
 * Why did Shego never work as a supervillain for herself (and only herself) before the movie "A Sitch In Time" and never do it again after that? I mean, its always been obvious that she's more competent than he is, she could probably steal more money then he pays her, and she doesn't even seem to like him much, so why does she work for him?
 * The most obvious reason is lack of ambition. Also, Drakken's lairs provide her with a hideout (a useful thing if you're wanted in eleven countries). And, of course, Drakken is always good for mockery-gold entertainment.
 * Because she won. In teaming up with Dr. Drakken, she often finds herself in a fight with a very competent Kim Possible and has to actually work to salvage the plans or make them work. And really, it seems like the outlandish schemes would be more fun to pull off than Pragmatic Villainy.