page_title: The Nightmare Begins
section_title: Origin of Invader Zim
hierarchical_section_title: The Nightmare Begins / Production / Origin of Invader Zim
caption_attribution_description: English: Richard Horvitz with autographed Invader Zim picture at JACON 2009 in Orlando, Florida.
context_page_description: "The Nightmare Begins" is the first episode of the first season of American animated science fiction comedy television series Invader Zim. It originally aired in the United States on Nickelodeon on March 30, 2001.
  This is the first official episode to feature Richard Horvitz as Zim. In the pilot episode, he was originally portrayed by Mark Hamill, and then Billy West. Shortly after the cancellation of The Angry Beavers, he was brought in as a potential voice of Zim, and was asked to record over certain lines for the pilot. Though neither his nor Hamill's cuts made to an official release, Horvitz remained the voice of Zim for the remainder of the series.
context_section_description: Prior to airing of Invader Zim, Nickelodeon desired a series to suit its "eleven to fifteen year-old" demographic. The network hired alternative comic book writer Jhonen Vasquez to create the series. Several ideas were considered by both Vasquez and the network, including a children-suited version of Mork and Mindy, but were dropped by the creator, who believed such ideas did not suit his genre of writing. Vasquez indicated that in the final version of the series, very little of his writing style was changed, other than restricting language and certain visuals that may not be suitable for children, including that of visuals deemed by the network as similar to the September 11 attacks The biggest difference that he cites is the change from working alone to working with thousands of people at Nickelodeon, calling it an "absolute misery". A pilot was originally pitched to the network in 1999, which featured many similar elements from the series, including a mysterious portrait of a monkey hanging in Zim's house.
  Vasquez asked his friend, Mark Tortorici, to produce ideas for the theme music for Invader Zim. The two settled on a direction for the music and Tortorici and produced a final version of the theme. Vasquez's team selected Michael Tavera to compose music for the pilot episode. Vasquez said that he asked for several of the tracks that Tavera produced to be discarded and that ultimately the team had less than half of the number of tracks that they planned to submit. According to Vasquez, he and Tavera were not creatively "a great fit" for one another. Vasquez described the pilot music as having a "more 'children's television' sound", with a "much more traditional and not as surprising" theme as he wanted, but added that the music "worked for the pilot". Tortorici's theme song and Tavera's cover version did not appear in the pilot as there was no credit sequence. Vasquez said that members of the Invader Zim crew laughed at Tavera's version of the theme because it was "cheesy", adding that the reaction was not mean-spirited and that Tavera had received little information about the series before submitting the music. Tavera did not become a part of the regular Invader Zim crew, while Kevin Manthei created the series' music.
caption: Richard Steven Horvitz was the third and final casting choice for Zim.
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