Invader Zim: Difference between revisions

* [[Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female On Male]]: The way Gaz treats her older brother, Dib is a non-romantic example. No wonder She's nicknamed "Dib's scary sister".

* [[Adults Are Useless]]: And how. So are most of the other children, for that matter. And a lot of the aliens. Really pretty much every one and every thing in this show is useless.

** Even human children have an odd mixture of names. Nick, Kevin and Mary coexist with the likes of Dib, Gaz and Moofy.

** The common pathron appears to be monosylabics, as every three-leter name is one (Dib, Tak, Zim, GIR, Gaz, and even concepts as Irk and PAK) and most of the other names are this too (Spleen, Keet, Tenn).

* [[Aliens of London]]: Tak has a British accent while none of the other Irkens do. [[La Résistance|Lard Nar]] has one too, though we only have one other Vort to compare him to.

* [[Aliens Speaking English]], although the Irken language [[Fridge Logic|had its own alphabet]].

* [[Aliens Steal Cable]]: How Zim does a portion of his 'research.'

* [[All Crimes Are Equal]]: Seargent Slab, Mall Security.

* [[Animated Series]]

* [[Animesque]]: Not at first glance, however. According to [[The Last Airbender|Bryan Konietzko]] and Ian Graham, [[Jhonen Vasquez]] was a big fan of anime, which influenced the show a lot. Mostly through angles and speedlines.

* [[Applied Phlebotinum]]

* [[Arbitrary Skepticism]]: Dib in "Lice". But hey, at least he admits he was wrong and apologizes.

* [[Awesome but Impractical]]: The Megadoomer, a [[Humongous Mecha]] with a stealth feature that makes the mech invisible, but ''not'' the pilot; it's also a massive power draw. Actually, just about anything Zim does.

** The Megadoomer was made with those two flaws ''intentionally'', as a "[[Take That|screw you]]" from the Irken-enslaved builders.

* [[Babies Make Everything Better]]: Horribly averted in Plague of Babies.

* [[Bad Humor Truck]]: "{{smallcaps|You like ice cream. You like ice cream. You love it. You cannot resist ice cream. [[Resistance Is Futile|To resist is hopeless]]. [[Serious Business|Your existence is meaningless without ice cream.]]}}"

** Unintentionally, of course. GIR seems not to be able to tell the difference between good and bad news.

** There's also the Resisty member who tells Lard Nar how their engine core has been replaced with "a new horrible one!"

{{quote| "Yes, yes, so you blame me for your horrible life, blah, blah, big deal!"}}

* [[Butterfly of Doom]]: When Zim starts sniping at Dib via a temporal displacement device, Dib starts accumulating more and more debilitating injuries, and is eventually driven to the point of death... After which he is revived and equipped with a [[Giant Mecha|bionic exoskeleton]] by Professor Membrane. All further attempts on Dib's past life result in upgrades to the exoskeleton.

** And, of course, when Zim uses the last pig to send a message to his past self to never use the time machine, the pig replaces his brain.

* [[Butt Monkey]]: Dib, to the point where when he and Zim are piloting Mercury and Mars respectively in "Battle of the Planets", Dib is piloting the ''Butt'' of Mercury, and gets there by a spaceship that was once used to shoot ''monkeys'' into space.

* [[Continuity Lock Out]]: Played with in-universe in [[Christmas Episode|"The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever"]]. Zim's motive for trying to conquer earth and where the Santa suit came from [[Memetic Mutation|COMPLEEEETLY ELUUUUDES]] one of the kids Mr. Slushy is telling the story to, because he didn't elaborate on it. His response is to[[Crowning Moment of Funny|pick the kid up and tuck her 'under' the bed.]]

* [[Continuity Nod]]: Strangely, the use of the [[Snap Back]] did not serve as a deterrent to the use of this as well. In "Gaz, Taster of Pork" there's actually a [[Continuity Nod]] to an episode that ''was'' a [[Snap Back]]!

* [[Cool and Unusual Punishment]]: A lot of it, perhaps best exemplified by a room... ''With A Moose!''

** Banishment to the "Realm of Eternal Screaming and... Restlessness".

{{quote| '''Dib''': Dad, do you know what this means? This device... it IS Zim. It's his brain and his life support. That means his body is just... something to carry his PAK around.}}

* [[Dark World]]: The Halloween episode features Dib flashing into an evil version of the normal world with monstrous versions of his already-weird home reality.

* [[Department of Redundancy Department]]: The [[Show Within a Show]] "Mysterious Mysteries of Strange Mystery".

** Not to mention that a lot of Zim's lines tend to use this. ("Let us rain some doom upon the doomed heads of our doomed enemies.")

** In "Walk of Doom", Zim walks into the tallest building to get to the top to get his bearings of the city. As it turns out, that building is a bank that was just robbed, and his human disguise looks just like the bank robber. Cue [[Chase Scene]].

* [[Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat]]: Zim'd be a lot more effective if he could just learn when to quit. In "Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy" Dib had lost just about all of his ability to represent a threat to Zim, but his continued attempts to KILL him after he'd already been crippled backfired rather spectacularly.

* [[Disproportionate Retribution]]: Zim and Gaz in particular. In Zim's case, some examples (such as "The Wettening") overlap with [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill]].

** The episode "Dib's Wonderful Life of Doom" is practically made of this trope. Dib throws a muffin at Zim during lunchtime at Skool one day. What does Zim do to retaliate? He constructs a brilliant [[Lotus Eater Machine]] for Dib based on everything the boy wants to do in life, and in Dib's twilight years, while being interviewed on a TV show celebrating his accomplishments, the TV host asks Dib if he'd been the one who threw the muffin at Zim all those years ago. Dib answers yes, and suddenly, Zim's face appears on the faces of everyone in the audience. Dib wakes up, in the real world, connected to a machine in Zim's lab. With this unpleasant little fact known, Zim coldly tells Dib to get out. Crushed, Dib begins walking away, only to have a gigantic gun aimed at his face. What fires out of the gun? A muffin.

* [[Energy Beings]]: The Meekrob.

* [[Eskimos Aren't Real]]: After Dib proves that "Chickenfoot" is a fraud.

'''Reporter 2:''' And [[Flying Saucer|UFOs.]]<br />

'''Reporter 1:''' And [[The Last of These Is Not Like the Others|hobos.]]<br />

* [[Evil Is Petty]] - Zim and Gaz.

* [[Messy Pig]]

* [[Wicked Weasel]]: "Computer! Take me to the ''WEASELS!"

* [[Evil Duo]]: Zim (ego) and GIR (id).

* [[Evil Laugh]]: Zim, regardless of onlookers.

** Subverted with Mr.Elliot. He's so happy it makes you want to choke a kitten.

* [[Evil Versus Evil]]: Zim vs Tak.

** "Zim Eats Waffles," "Career Day."

** Many [[Planet of Hats|Planets of Hats]] have notably obvious names, such as Foodcourtia (a planet of almost nothing but restaurants) or Dirt (which Tak was assigned to clean).

* [[Follow the Leader]]: After Invader Zim hit cult status and became immensely popular with the preteen demographic, many other animated TV shows started turning towards dark and random humor. Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Courage the Cowardly Dog, The Misadventures of Flapjack, Adventure Time, and Making Fiends are a few examples.

* [[A Form You Are Comfortable With]]: Spoofed; not only was the original form not that uncomfortable, but they turned into ''shoes''.

** Bloody GIR, to an extent.

* [[Friendly Enemy]]: Zim and Dib in the Pilot.

* [[Kids Are Cruel]]: But also stupid.

** Pretty much the entire reason for "Room With A Moose."

* [[Knight Templar]]: The Delouser in "Lice," being rather [[Anvilicious|pointedly]] [[Not So Different]] from Dib. Slab Rankle, the security guard from "FBI Warning of Doom," could be argued as one too.

* [[Konami Code]]: It's a code for extra lives in one of Gaz's games.

* [[People Jars]]: Where little Irkens come from.

* [[Perverse Sexual Lust]]: A lot of it. It's that kind of fandom. The Irkens in general seem to get the most of it, perhaps because [[Evil Is Sexy]].

* [[Planet of Hats]]: ...sort of. The planets that have been conquered are retrofitted to suit the Irkens' needs: Foodcourtia, the food court planet; the convention center planet; the shipping center planet; Hobo 13, the military training-planet; and so on...

** Played <s>straight</s> straighter with some mentioned planets and dimensions such as: Exploding head planets, broken glass planets, a dimension of pure itching (you can't tell from the photo, but that stuff's really itchy), and a dimension of pure... [[Toilet Humour|organic material]].

* [[Regional Bonus]]: In "Game Slave 2", Iggins mentions that he already had the Japanese version but wanted the American version as it had a new level.

* [[Religious Russian Roulette]]: How guidance counselor Dwicky lost his faith in aliens.

** Since the introduction episode was never shown, it was initially planned to show a montage of scenes from the series with Minimoose [[Stylistic Suck|crudely pasted into them to go with the joke]], but the idea was scrapped for time.

** In the very first episode, Zim tries to pull this off in-universe as a method of discrediting Dib's allegations:

{{quote| '''Zim:''' But...I ''must'' get my battle tank or I...[[Captain Obvious|won't get it]]! }}

* [[Shouldn't We Be in School Right Now?]]: Fairly well averted, as very little seems to get past Mrs. Bitters. Zim or Dib (mostly Zim) will mysteriously go absent occasionally, usually to plot revenge, but all battles for world domination must take place after school, or under the guise of a bathroom break.

* [[Show Within a Show]]: The Scary/Angry Monkey and Mysterious Mysteries of Strange Mystery.

** Probing The Membrane of Science With Professor Membrane!

(cut to Zim's lab) Zim: "GIR! The Space Time Object Replacement Device is ready!" }}

* [[Space Trucker]]: The Planet Jackers are quite reminiscent of long-haul truckers.

** "Squeedlyspooch" is the correct spelling for an Irken organ, but "squeedily-spooch", "squeedly spooch", and "squeedilyspooch" have also been used.

** "Darkbooty" vs. "Darkbootie" is also an example, as is "GIR" vs "Gir" and "MiMi" vs "Mimi".

{{quote| '''Ms. Bitters:''' The lesson is that dreams inevitably lead to hideous implosions.}}

* [[Stand-In Parents]]: Zim has robots to stand in as his parents, and despite them being horribly malfunctioning, nobody notices.

* [[Stealth Pun]]: After GIR gets a ride home from a pig in "Germs," we hear the sound of a motorcycle engine. As in, [[Don't Explain the Joke|hog... you know, Harley-Davidson...]]

* [[The Stinger]]: [[Once an Episode|In every episode]], a brief quote is played over the Nickelodeon logo following the credits.

* [[Suck E. Cheese's]]: Bloaty's Pizza Hog.

* [[Suddenly Shouting]]: Oh man, everybody does this.

** In one episode Dib tries to take over an Irken computer, hoping out loud [[Independence Day|that they just happen to use the same operating system as him]].

* [[Temporal Paradox]]: Discussing them makes GIR's [[Your Head Asplode|head blow up]].

* [[Tertiary Sexual Characteristics]]: Female Irken (there aren't that many of them) are distinguished by having fuller eyebrow/lashes and curly feelers. [[Self Fanservice|Fandom typically chooses to ignore this.]]

* [[Theme Naming]]: The main characters all have three letter names: Zim, GIR, Dib, Gaz.

* [[Third-Person Flashback]]: Lampshaded. Zim remembers escaping from Frycourtia, and Sizz-Lor coming in and swearing to recapture him. Back in the present, Sizz-lor asks how he can remember that last part if he already left. Zim doesn't have an answer.

* [[Third Person Person]]: Zim does this a lot, especially when he's [[Chewing the Scenery|hamming it up]] (and when is he not?).

* [[Toilet Humor]]

* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: The vast majority of the human race.

* [[Totally Radical]]: Parodied by Poop Dawg in "Door to Door".

* [[Transformation Sequence]]: GIR doing a [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?]] version of putting on his dog costume.

* [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]]

* [[Two-Teacher School]]

'''Zim''': '''''<big>ISN'T IT!?!</big>''''' }}

* [[World Gone Mad]]

* [[World of Snark]]

* [[Yank the Dog's Chain]]: "Dib's Wonderful Life of Doom" is ''all'' this, but "Vindicated" is probably worse.