Invader Zim (character)

Invader Zim is the titular protagonist of the series by the same name.

Zim is a member of the alien Irken race, and a former Irken Invader; however, since his actions usually lead to disaster (having nearly destroyed the Irken homeworld during Operation Impending Doom I) his leaders, the Almighty Tallest, banished him to Foodcourtia. While there, however, Zim heard of Operation Impending Doom II, and - obviously not understanding the purpose of his previous exile - "quit being banished" and ventured to Conventia in the hope of getting an assignment. Chagrined, the Almighty Tallest sent him on a "secret mission" to Earth, in order to keep him occupied and away from the real Operation Impending Doom II. After arriving on Earth, Zim enrolled in the nearest elementary skool to begin his infiltration and gather information about the indigenous race. There, he became quick rivals with Dib.

Zim's primary desire is to conquer Earth, mostly to prove his superiority and impress his leaders. However, as mentioned by Gaz in "Bloaty's Pizza Hog", "He's so bad at it."

Although he is the protagonist, Zim is morally, and ethically a villain, being an overall fairly unsympathetic character, though he occasionally shows some kindness towards certain characters, (such as GIR in "Walk of Doom"), and is usually only causing chaos and destruction for either himself, his own race, or Earth. As well, almost everyone else he comes into contact with at any time. His unawareness of his destructive actions is most likely the result of him being a "defect", as revealed in the cancelled episode "The Trial".

Also Known For Stephen Squirrelsky

 * He is one of the main characters and is also Andrew and Stephen's friends.

Appearance
Zim's appearance, like that of most of the Irken race, seems to be based off the typical "little green men from outer space" stereotype.

Many Irkens are about the size of a preteen schoolchild, but Zim is exceptionally short, earning him ridicule from his fellow Irkens who are respected only if they are tall in height.

In "The Nightmare Begins", Zim was shown to be even shorter than the notoriously diminutive Skoodge. In addition to his short stature and green skin, he also has round teeth (resembling gums more than actual teeth), and a long, worm-like tongue.

Zim also has ruby-colored eyes; a very common trait in Irkens. It was also mentioned in "Walk of Doom" that Zim's eyes contain ocular implants. Since the eyes he was born with are not visibly different from subsequent appearances, it can be assumed that these implants are subcutaneous. As he considers himself to still be an Invader, he continues to wear the standard uniform: a red tunic-like garment with three black stripes and a triangular pink collar and sleeves, as well as black boots, leggings and gloves. His PAK is light gray with pink spots.

He also possesses a pair of antennae; their exact function is unknown, but they seem to function like human eyebrows; rising and lowering to convey emotion. It is possible that they also function as an organ in place of ears, as they picked up vibrations in "Battle of the Planets".

Personality
While most Irkens are expected to be ruthlessly loyal to the Empire, Zim is considered overzealous even by their standards: Brash, arrogant and overconfident, Zim's tendency to cause wanton destruction makes him a danger to himself and his own people, yet he still considers himself a mighty Irken warrior. In addition, he is acutely narcissistic and megalomaniacal, congratulating himself on even the smallest of successes; these, however, are few and far between.

Despite his self-proclaimed greatness, Zim rarely succeeds in his attempts, and is held up as a complete laughingstock by his own people - a fact that he is either oblivious to or simply chooses not to notice. Zim is cluelessly loyal and obedient to the Tallest, the Irken Empire, his planet and his people, and is willing to go to ridiculous lengths to please his leaders. However, his self-absorbed nature prevents him from acknowledging any of his failures, and he chooses only to speak about the better things that came from each incident.

Zim's laugh and mannerisms can be said to be somewhat derived from a masculine equivalent to the unpleasant "ojou" stereotypes common in anime and manga, and "rich person"/"popular schoolgirl"/"spoiled brat" stereotypes of Western animated cartoons and movies, combined with the "overconfident alien invader" stereotype seen in sci-fi shows and movies. Despite his frequent displays of stupidity, it is clear that Zim is highly intelligent in some respects - being a keen manipulator of tools and devices - but has absolutely no apparent interest in thinking things through, and wastes much of his time fretting about or dealing with unimportant "threats." Moreover, it is evident that he is more than capable of conquering the Earth, yet he hardly ever uses this capability properly, and has often been very close to taking over the planet, only to be thwarted by his own negligence.

One of Zim's abilities is his somewhat inconsistent skills at piloting; while in a tense situation he flies masterfully, but seems to crash on most other occasions, and his skills pale in comparison to opponents adept at hand-eye coordination or overall agility (such as Gaz). Zim also has admirable engineering ability; in "Walk of Doom", he singlehandedly improved the SIR unit guidance system chip, and in "Walk for Your Lives", he hand-built a variable time stasis field capable of altering individual time-fields. He is immensely proud of anything he creates, yet is often frustrated when his devices fail to live up to his grandiose expectations.

Even though Zim often affirms that he wishes to enslave Earth, it has been hinted that he would not actually want to rule it. In "Attack of the Saucer Morons", Zim gained a group of human worshippers who would be willing to do his bidding, yet his only thought was escaping them. In the non-canon Nickelodeon Magazine Special, in which Zim finally took over the world, he did not stay to rule for very long, instead leaving Earth forever to ride flying alien rabbits and drink soda.

Zim usually shows little to no affection, often claiming to "need no one", but he occasionally lets a softer side of him slip by accident. In "Parent Teacher Night", when Zim thought back to when he was born, he remembered the first thing he ever said was that he loved the "cold, unfeeling robot arm" that "hatched" him from his incubation capsule and activated his PAK.

Strangely, it would seem that Zim also relies on the presence of his mortal enemy, Dib, for motivation. He said in "A Room with a Moose" that his mission might not be as "exciting" without Dib around to "annoy him", but also seems to dwell on the big-headed human quite a bit, sometimes more so than his actual mission. This importance was particularly highlighted in "Mopiness of Doom": When Dib briefly decided to give up his pursuit of Zim, the Irken lost all motivation to take over Earth, or do anything in general.

Disguises worn in public
In order to blend in with the inhabitants of Earth, Zim has made a series of creative disguises. Zim often wears disguises to try to conceal his identity from the "earth-monkeys" that he plans to eventually conquer; they are often unconvincing and hastily constructed, but he knows that the humans are too oblivious to recognize that he is an extraterrestrial visitor anyway.

Zim's school disguise consists of some contact lenses and a bouffant wig. The contacts give his eyes a human appearance, and the wig covers his antennae; however, everything else about him, including his uniform and green skin, is left unchanged. He explains away his skin color and lack of ears as a skin condition in the "The Nightmare Begins", and has passed off being caught without his contact lenses as a bad case of pinkeye. It was discovered in the first episode that the sleeve of his right glove can become a self-destruct device, most likely to get rid of an Irken soldier if they believe their mission has been compromised.

He occasionally wears an old man disguise, such as in "Walk of Doom" and other episodes, which he used throughout the first season. This disguise consists of a flowered hat and a white fake beard. It makes him resemble a short, crazy old man, and in "Walk of Doom", he was mistaken for a hobo. In the second season of the show, Zim added another disguise to his arsenal: a floppy, huge-headed human suit with a cape, a sewed-on handbag and stuffed puppy, and a name tag reading 'human'.

Other costumes worn include a fat lady outfit used to hide the time field explosion in "Walk for Your Lives"; a bear suit (use unknown, possibly an I Feel Sick reference) in "Battle of the Planets", a "Baby Inspector" disguise for interrogating "Noogums" ("Plague of Babies"), and the Santa Claus suit and Easter Platypus disguises used to manipulate the public in "The Most Horrible X-mas Ever"; the former was by far one of Zim's most ambitious and advanced disguises, being made from a Vortian liquid substance.

The Pilot also featured an over-sized robotic battle-suit shaped like Zim's school disguise for use in the food-fight that occurred.

Brief on-screen appearances of other Invaders in "Walk for Your Lives" and "Planet Jackers" showed that almost all other Invaders use even shoddier disguises, so Zim's ineptitude in this regard is not unique.

Voice Actors
Zim has had several voice actors before the series had officially started.

In Jhonen Vasquez's original pilot episode, Zim's voice was provided first by Mark Hamill and then by Billy West. According to his DVD commentary, Vasquez ultimately rejected him because Futurama was still on the air, and he didn't think there should be two sci-fi/humor cartoons with the same lead actor. The pilot episode with West's voiceover track is available as an extra feature on the second disk of the Zim DVD set. Hamil wasn't cast because Vasquez considered that he was unsuited for the role upon hearing his recordings, while Nickelodeon considered that he sounded too old.

Richard Steven Horvitz revoiced Zim as a tester on the third pass of the pilot and was finally chosen to be the character's permanent voice for the remainder of the American series. If The Angry Beavers had not ended by the time Invader Zim aired, Andy Berman, the voice of Dib, would have voiced Zim. This final version of the pilot was unavailable to the public until Christmas Eve, 2011, when the pilot aired on Nicktoons. At this point, the late Gary Coleman was considered to voice Zim, but according on his blog, Vasquez didn't wanted to cast a celebrity to voice the show's titular protagonist.

Horvitz's style of voicing Zim was influenced heavily by Vasquez's own inflections, and those of Vincent Price. Interestingly, Horvitz played a similar character (Orthopox) in the video game Destroy All Humans!, with similar inflections and personality. On behind the voice actors, it was shown that Melissa Fahn had voiced Zim as a smeet in "Parent Teacher Night"; her only line as Zim was: "I love you, cold unfeeling robot arm."

His foreign dubbers are Nao Nagasawa in the Japanese dub, Magda Giner in the Spanish dub, Bjorn Schalla in the German dub and Shihab Ibrahim in the Arabic dub.

Facts of Doom

 * Zim is fittingly the first Irken to appear in the series, albeit only the upper part of his face is seen in "The Nightmare Begins."
 * Zim could've been considered the first Nicktoon villain to have ever killed anyone onscreen had the show not been cancelled, since the unfinished episode "The Trial" confirms that he doomed two previous Irken leaders by accident; and, during a flashback in "The Frycook What Came from All That Space", it was shown that he blew up all the other Invaders at the beginning of Operation Impending Doom I, and considering that Sizz-Lorr said Zim nearly "destroyed their civilization" it's heavily implied that he is responsible for the death of thousands maybe millions of Irkens, or perhaps the near-death. However, Invader Dib was going to show Zim wanting to protect his people from further deaths and atone for the crimes he has been said to have committed.
 * Zim may have appeared in Jhonen Vasquez's comic book Squee! before the start of the series. A poster featuring an alien that looks Irken and wearing a wig like Zim's bouffant wig appears above Todd's bed. The image looks less like Zim, though, since the head is rounded and has mere stick figure hands.
 * Zim has been seen in a commercial on Nickelodeon holding a sandwich, to which he has bad allergic reactions. In it, he was knocked off a wire he was sitting on and thrown into a light, making it explode. This commercial was a crossover of other series on Nickelodeon. After the cancellation of Invader Zim, Zim was replaced with Jenny from My Life as a Teenage Robot, which was also cancelled. However, Jenny wasn't knocked into the light.
 * Zim is known to smell things and scents even though he does not have a nose, or his nostrils are so small that they're not visible, as evidenced in "Germs", when he is seen sniffing the scent saying it was the "stink of clean."
 * In Jhonen Vasquez's Meanwhile... comic "Jhonen Vasquez V.S The Devil," there are aliens flying a ship similar to Zim's Voot Cruiser, though the aliens inside the ship look nothing like Irkens.
 * It's revealed in "Tak: The Hideous New Girl" that he promised the moon to GIR.Zim and bee 1.jpg
 * In one episode of Fanboy & Chum Chum called "Dollar Day", Zim can be seen on a comic cover in the background. His skin is faintly green and he is wearing his disguise, so one must be careful when looking for him.
 * At some point in the series, Zim had learned to read human writing, as he is seen reading the newspaper, and understand what it says, in "Zim Eats Waffles".
 * Zim's weaknesses have little consistency within the show. For example, in "The Wettening", it is made obvious that he gets burned by water, but in many other episodes, he comes into contact with water and is just fine. Although this inconsistency could be explained offscreen by Zim possibly putting paste on himself on a daily basis, a substance that protects him from burning from water.
 * Zim is a playable character in Nicktoons MLB alongside Gaz; best used as a first base-Irken, his bat is one of the strongest in the entire game if Turbo Hit is activated and he maintains his concentration. His clothes and overall body rendering are the same as in the show, only he wears a pinkish baseball cap that transforms into a first baseman's helmet when he is in first base. He also has a collectible card that mentions that he was almost cut from the roster when it was discovered that he was pulling a prank on fellow team players (tying their shoelaces together). His 'up to bat' pose is an action movie-style jump. Gaz cheers him on when he gets a home run, as do the hundreds of Irkens in the stands when he knocks the ball out of the park.
 * Ironically, Zim is the closest thing Dib has to a friend.
 * Only three people during the whole series have been shown to intimidate or frighten Zim; which are Sergeant Hobo 678, Sizz-Lorr and Gaz.
 * Zim's name is spelled in capital letters in the official voice scripts.
 * Other media forms stylize his names in the same fashion, and some people consider it the canonical way of writing his name.
 * Jhonen Vasquez stated that Irkens write in all caps "because they are annoying"
 * Whenever Zim writes his name in the show, he writes it as "ZiM", capitalizing the "Z" and "M" but leaving the "i" lowercase. This is how his name appears in the show's title card as well.
 * Zim makes an appearance in two of Snafu's webcomics: PowerPuff Girls Doujinshi, and Invader Zim: Manifest Doom.
 * In the Japanese and Latin American dubs of the show, Zim is voiced by a woman. In the latter, his Spanish voice actress's voice is pitched down to sound more male in initial episodes.
 * In Japanese, Zim's name would actually translate into Jim, as Zim would be too difficult to translate into kanji.
 * The unfinished episode "The Trial" implies that Zim may have an actual disorder, as the titular trial amounts to a process of Zim being declared legally insane or suffering from paranoia and mania.
 * Zim is the only known Irken defective to not be deactivated seeing as the Control Brains themselves became insane from all the bad data in his PAK.
 * In "The Nightmare Begins", Zim draws his base on a tablet first. If you watch closely, this shows that Zim draws it with his left hand. Yet in "Career Day" while taking the ink-blot test, he writes with his right hand. So Zim is ambidextrous.
 * In some earlier episodes Zim has four fingers, but later he has only three, this was probably done so as to make him appear more alien.
 * In the game "Don't Starve Together", he is shown as a character mod. He is also a model in Gmod.
 * Ironically despite Zim wanting to enslave or destroy the human race, he seems to have a decent amount of "popularity" among not just the Skoolchildren but with a few citizens as people often side with him rather than Dib even when it is painfully clear that he hates humanity, at least for the majority of episodes that were completed before cancellation.
 * Jhonen claimed that Zim isn't really stupid, he just has a horrible sense of priority and wastes time on unimportant threats, as a result he doesn't end up getting anything done.
 * Zim has the most appearances of the four main characters in both the TV series and the comics. This is unsurprising, since he is the main character.
 * So far, Recap Kid and Zim are the only two characters to have appeared in every issue of the comics.
 * In Issue 13, Zim admits that he has trouble telling human genders apart. He's shown making this mistake in Issue 17, when he refers to Dib as a lady. This could be a reference to Dr. Zoidberg from Futurama, since he is also an alien who makes the same mistake all too often.
 * Coincidentally, Billy West, who voices Dr. Zoidberg, voiced Zim in the pilot and almost voiced him for the entire series had Richard Horvitz not landed the role.
 * Assuming that the comic series is canon, Zim will eventually grow out of his "defective" nature, finally conquering Earth and succeed in earning the Tallest respect as seen in issue 12.
 * In an interview when someone asked Jhonen Vasquez if Zim would ever conquer Earth, he laughed and said yes. The episode "The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever", however, suggests otherwise.
 * Issue 25 shows some of Zim's backstory as an Invader in training. But at the moment, it's unknown if future issues of the comic will show more of Zim's past.
 * Issue 28 reveals that Zim doesn't know what hot dogs are made of and claims that "No one knows."
 * Zim has shown to have memory lapses in many instances, such as in "Gaz, Taster of Pork", when he said that Dib was "making it up" when Dib brought up the events of "Bolognius Maximus"; in "The Frycook What Came from All That Space", when he initially didn't remember working on Foodcourtia; and in the end panel of Issue 3 where he didn't remember the events of that issue. This is often used to play with the series' floating timeline, as other characters can remember certain events, but Zim can't. Alternatively, Zim does remember but pretends not to.
 * Amazingly, Zim is at the same time capable of remembering things he's not even present for, as he's able to remember something Sizz-Lorr said when Zim was nowhere in sight.

Trivia
Zim Zim
 * His and Gir's appearances in the Stephen Squirrelsky and Friends' movie spoof travels are The Sword in the Stone, Vanellope Von Schweetz, The Train and the Boat, Toon Age, Cub and Company, Beauty and the Grizzly Bear, The Secret of NIMH, Nikki's Adventures of Sing Along Episode 6, Skunkules, and The Reindeer and the Deer and will even be in more movie spoof travels.