Dexter's Laboratory/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • In "Ego Trip", why is it all of the Dexters had different voices, but all of the Mandarks had the same?
    • Doesn't only the surprisingly buff Dexter have a different voice, and the Twenty-Something and Old Man Dexters are the same voice actor just making Dexter sound nerdier and old (respectively)? Either way, I'd say Rule of Funny. There's no funnier voice that you can have for an evil overlord than that of Eddie Deezen.
    • Dexter's voice changed along with his personality. Mandark's personality was the same in every time period and thus his voice was the same.
    • Another thing about Ego Trip: Mandark and Dexter were there to witness Dee Dee pushing the button and saving the future as kids, young adults, adults, and elders. The kids get the excuse of not knowing anything, and the adults get the excuse of being old. Since kid Dexter and kid Mandark know they will be led to the future for this same battle as young adults, why even bother going when they both know they will lose?
      • Probably because both of them have egos the size of Mount Everest.
  • The old Apple, Cherry, Blueberry R2 clue Dee Dee left for Dexter to end up eating a mud pie, now how in the heck does that make sense. I'm mo maths genius - far from it - but I looked up R2 on The Other Wiki and found it to mean the "coefficient of determination" and there didn't seem anything to do with pi in it, although that play on words was invoked for the joke. Can someone more versed in high-end calculus or such tell me how pi relates to the coefficient of determination? I mean, it might have something to do with it, but seeing as Dexter put the clue into his computer to solve it, maybe Dexter's not as smart as we all thought (although how he makes his lab dimensionally transcendental is beyond me too - did he mug a Time Lord for the technology?)
    • R2 should be read as "R squared". So a list of flavors followed by "R squared" would immediately make you think of pi(e) to complete the formula (pi*r^2, the area of a circle.)
    • Not to nitpick, but you seem to have gotten episodes mixed up. The mud pie came from the episode when their mother was sick; Dee Dee tried to do cooking and made a literal mud pie. The clue you mentioned led Dexter to eat the apple, cherry, and blueberry pies that the mother had just finished baking.
  • In the episode where Dexter infiltrates a photo processing place James Bond-style, what did the guy at the toll gate have against Dexter?
  • I don't know if they ever revealed this on the show but is there a reason why Dee Dee keeps going into Dexter's Lab? I mean what is in there that she keeps coming back for?
    • She wants to play with him, but always get distracted by whatever she sees in the lab.
    • I always figured she just liked to troll him.
  • Ok, this one would question Dexter's common sense and thinking but, it's established that Dexter does have a device that if his parents ever find out about the secret laboratory, he would use it to erase their memory of it, now... WHY HASN'T HE USED THE DEVICE ON DEE DEE? If he did then not only would she not be in there but she would even forget it's existence. Either Dexter never thought of it nor he probably has a reason to allow her to keep the knowledge of Dexter's Lab.
    • One episode showed that without Dee Dee, Dexter would just end up getting bored of the same routine every day. In one episode, Dee Dee is abducted by aliens, which Dexter is happy with, until he spends a while without her, gets bored, and goes to rescue her.
      • More specifically, a good portion of his waking hours are spent repairing/recapturing/undoing her numerous screw-ups. No Dee Dee = no playing Mr.Fix-it = too much free time. This actually mirrors real life: most young children will soon get bored and/or into trouble without some kind of external direction. Even if they're little Einsteins.
  • Do Dexter and Dee-Dee have canon ages?
    • I think that I read something that said 8 and 13 respectivly, but I could be wrong.
    • An info-book I read somewhere said they were fourth and sixth graders, which makes sense considering they apparently go to the same school.
  • Speaking of ages, how old is Mandark supposed to be? I refuse to believe a kid Dexter's age can be that tall.
    • Well, Dexter seems unusually short. It's possible that they are the same age, just at opposite ends of the height spectrum.
  • In the episode Oh Brother, if Dee-Dee is stated to be sixth-grade, why does her male form look like a 19 or 20-year-old man? Not to mention the Getting Crap Past the Radar and the attempts at dealing with transgender identity in a supposedly kids' cartoon. As for the physique? Is that realistic? Not in terms of animation, rather more that this is Played for Laughs, not Played for Drama. A weird, weird episode, that certainly is full of Headscratchers.
  • Ok, an official legit crossover of "Dexter's Laboratory" and "The Powerpuff Girls"... WHY HASN'T THIS HAPPENED YET?
    • Because the creators know better.
  • Just why is Mandark so attracted to Dee-Dee?
    • The same reason any boy Mandark's age (he's 16) is attracted to women that they wouldn't ever get along with. Though I suppose if they ever did get married Mandark and his lab would just become a replacement for Dexter and HIS laboratory.
  • In "Dexter's Debt" how on Earth did Dexter become indebted to NASA for $200 million? Since when does NASA grant loans, let alone ones so large?
    • Rule of Funny, my good friend.
    • [WMGing here, but maybe that's where he gets all the electronics and other equipment that he uses to build his lab and his experiments.
  • Another thing, why couldn't Dexter have provided some of his inventions to NASA to pay off his debt? In fact, he's invented things that would any one of them ALONE would be worth way more than $200 million.
    • It's called "completely giving away the existence of his secret lab".