Invader Zim/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions
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*** 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.
*** ...[[Mind Screw|You make my brain hurt so much that that actually makes sense]]! ...Possibly. ...[[Voodoo Shark|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?
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* 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 [[Wham! Episode|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.
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*** 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?
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* 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'...
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**** "Garbage Idiot Robot"
*** [[Shaped Like Itself|It stands for "GIR"]].
** [[
** 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.
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** 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 [[Rule of Funny|comedy]] but it still annoys me that Zim's [[Paper
** 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 [[Selective Obliviousness|oblivious to anything paranormal]] because the world likes screwing [[Butt Monkey|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 [[Did Not Do the Research|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 [[Getting Crap Past the Censors|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 [[What an Idiot!|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 [[Rugrats|some]] [[
**** ''[[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 [[Ho Yay|one]] [[Ten
* 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.
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* 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
*** He does not "hate his fandom." That he's been exasperated on occasion I don't doubt, that he's felt people [[Completely Missing the Point|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 [[Accentuate the Negative|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 [[Crapsack World|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 [[What Do You Mean
** It's not that we miss it. [[Selective Obliviousness|It's that we don't care.]]
** This troper doesn't have anything against [[Slash Fic|slash]], but she is pretty amazed by the huge amount of [[Portmanteau Couple Name|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
*** 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-[[Sarcasm Mode|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.
*** [[Sarcasm Mode|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.
**** [[
* [[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 [[Pure Awesomeness|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 Good to Last|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
** 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).
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* 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.
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* 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.<br /> 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 Villain|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 [[Obstructive Bureaucrat|stupid]] or [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|evil]] or [[Stupid Evil|both]]. In reality, I think they could have done better by the show, but ''Zim'' wasn't quite as [[Screwed
* 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?
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* 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 [[Crapsack World|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
*** 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. [[Wild Mass Guessing|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.
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** [[Completely Missing the Point|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 <s> school</s> Skool, and a lot of the examples of said bullying are pretty harsh, especially if you've been bullied yourself. Examples include [[Groin Attack|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
* 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?
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*** 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.
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*** 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 [[
** 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 ([[Disney Death|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'' [[Buffy
** 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.
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* 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 [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|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...
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** [[Hypocritical Humor|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 Ending|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 [[Darkness
** 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, [[Cloudcuckoolander|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 World|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.<br /><br />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 [http://www.buzzyworld.com/zim/archives/askstevearchives.html he would not come back to the show]. 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 [http://www.buzzyworld.com/zim/archives/askstevearchives.html Ressel's jackassary], and [
**** 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???
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