Stitch

Stitch, also known as Experiment 626, is one of the titular protagonists of the Lilo & Stitch franchise. He is an illegal genetic experiment created by Jumba Jookiba, whose original primary function is to destroy everything he touches. He is designed to be abnormally strong, virtually indestructible, super-intelligent, and very mischievous. His one true place is with Lilo and her ʻohana.
Stitch, also known as Experiment 626, is one of the titular protagonists of the Lilo & Stitch franchise. He is an illegal genetic experiment created by Jumba Jookiba, whose original primary function is to destroy everything he touches. He is designed to be abnormally strong, virtually indestructible, super-intelligent, and very mischievous. His one true place is with Lilo and her ʻohana.
== Background ==
=== Development ===
Chris Sanders first created the character of Stitch in 1985 for a planned children's book that never came to be.
Years later in 1997, when production on Mulan was currently wrapping up, he had the opportunity to pitch a film version of his planned story, beginning the development of the film.
In early drafts, Stitch was originally slated to have landed in Kansas, but the setting was changed to Hawaii since the location would provide a greater degree of isolation from large cities, and the islands were among some of Chris Sanders' favorite places. Also, the character himself started as an intergalactic gangster rather than a recently created genetic monster. In these early drafts, his gang (including ex-gang member Jumba) would have been the ones hired by the Galactic Federation to hunt him down.
=== Personality ===
: “626 was designed to be a monster, but now he has nothing to destroy. You see, I never gave him a greater purpose. What must it be like to have nothing, not even memories to look back on in the middle of the night?”
: ―Jumba giving an example of Stitch's instincts
Throughout the course of the entire Lilo & Stitch franchise, Stitch is depicted as a character who is unlikable to many people except Lilo (on rare occasions, even she falls out with him, most notably in Lilo & Stitch 2, where she declares that he is "bad and always will be bad!" after he has an uncontrollable glitch attack) due to his destructive and temperamental behavior. It is interesting to note that individuals who are averse to Stitch (such as Mertle Edmonds, Gantu, and Dr. Hämsterviel) describe him as "ugly and deformed", while those who do love him (like Lilo, Nani, and Jumba) describe him as "cute and fluffy". This reflects the basic idea behind Stitch (and his cousins) that counters what societal standards are for good physical appearance. Despite having odd features such as an extra pair of arms, misshapen head, or unusual coloring, Stitch and his kin prove that you don't have to look "normal" to fit in.
Whether Stitch is displayed in his true alien form; complete with an extra set of arms, antennae, and spines on his back, or in his "dog" form (the one the audience is accustomed to seeing), sans the aforementioned features, his overall "cuteness" belies his extremely aggressive and destructive personality. This is especially apparent during and immediately after his escape from the Galactic Federation. He proves to be a complex character as he comes to terms with his own "good" and "bad levels" and struggles to find his place in the world. According to his creator Jumba, Stitch is a "machine" who was made without a greater purpose than to destroy. The fact that he becomes trapped on the island of Kauai, which has no large cities, he has more time to contemplate and reflect on alternative occupations. Although Stitch seeks to destroy because of his innate programming, he has a personality of his own (a fact that only Lilo and Jumba truly understand) and shows that he has the will and ability to make the choice not to follow his original design.
In comparison to his super strength and computer-like intelligence, Stitch is emotionally fragile, behaving almost like a child having a tantrum at times. Lilo relates to this and believes that a couple of main reasons for his naughtiness are because of some past trauma and receiving little to no understanding or sympathy from others. Of course, Stitch eventually becomes much more well-meaning after his betterment, but is frequently unable to control all of his impulses toward antisocial actions. Fortunately for him, Lilo (and later Reuben and Angel) is always there to support him, and he returns her support willingly.
There is a common misconception from viewers that Lilo is dependent on Stitch for protection and support; if anything, it is Stitch who is more dependent on Lilo. Despite her having her own troubles to contend with, Lilo makes every effort to help Stitch in life and, as the story progresses, he becomes more self-conscious and capable of making the right decisions. By the end of the series, Stitch has friends, family, loved ones, and a purpose worth believing in.
Stitch is still prone to having temper tantrums when things do not go as well as he hopes. He also gets easily angered by inanimate objects, especially the toaster. After it popped toast in his face once, he has since beaten the toaster and juiced it at least twice. Despite these tantrums, Stitch can sometimes display a little common sense and be more mature than Lilo. For instance, he occasionally sees when Lilo goes too far in using the other experiments for her own personal gain (examples of which were seen in her schemes involving Sprout, Slugger, Checkers, Morpholomew, and PJ), believing it to be very selfish of her.
=== Physical appearance ===
Designed by his voice actor Chris Sanders, Stitch is a blue alien genetic creation standing around three feet tall. He strongly resembles a hyena a rabbit a koala or a French Bulldog and is referred to as both throughout the franchise, especially since humans (with the exception of Lilo, Nani, Cobra, and David) are completely oblivious to the fact he is an alien. He has sharp teeth inside his mouth along with a long pink tongue. A short, stumpy tail cuts out from his rear. He has a limited ability to change his physical appearance, only able to retract his second set of arms, his antennae, and the three spines on his back into his body.
When Stitch was first introduced by Jumba, and during his time as a criminal, he donned a red spacesuit with an upside-down triangle consisting of a red border and yellow center on the chest. Similar patches adorned the elbows of the sleeves and square patches consisting of a dark red border with an orange center showed on each of his legs. He also wore a black belt with a crimson square buckle, and his cuffs, anklets, and collar were also black. The suit survived when he crashed on Earth, but it was torn to pieces when he was run over by a convoy of trucks.
When Stitch was captain of the B.R.B. 9000, he donned a black spacesuit similar to that of Gantu's which consisted of a black shirt with thick red brims on his shoulders. Unlike Gantu's tank shirt, this suit features wrist-length sleeves with red cuffs, along with matching vertical linings on both sides of the shirt and trousers. He also wore a gray belt with a light gray "V" on the front, along with a small gray mark on the upper left chest that resembles a tear drop with a black dot on it. The suit was destroyed during his fight with Leroy.
=== Powers and abilities ===
While explaining his creation to the Galactic Council early on in Lilo & Stitch, Dr. Jumba gives the following rundown of Stitch's powers: "He is bulletproof, fireproof, shockproof, and can think faster than [a] supercomputer. He can see in the dark and can move objects 3,000 times his size. His only instinct: to destroy everything he touches!"
* Feral mind (temporarily): In the original Lilo & Stitch film, Jumba claimed that Stitch's "destructive tendency was taking effect" and that he would be irresistibly drawn to large cities to "back up sewers, reverse street signs, and steal everybody's left shoe."
* Superhuman durability/Dense body tissue: Even though we rarely see Stitch shot at with a bullet, he does survive the crash of his spaceship without even a scratch, is only briefly stunned by a fall of several thousand feet, and has to be run over by three tractor trailers in succession to be knocked out.
* Fireproof skin: He drives a tanker truck of gasoline into a volcano and ends up only a little singed from the resulting explosion.
* Bulletproof skin: Rounds fired from plasma guns seem to cause him some discomfort, although he can hold the material in his hands long enough to throw the plasma back at his enemies.
* Shockproof: He has some resistance to electricity since he was able to take a direct electrical attack from Sparky, quickly recovering from it. However, he can still feel pain from these types of shocks despite his immunity to it.
* Hyper-cognition: Thinking faster than a supercomputer is harder to quantify, but he does escape from captivity fairly ingeniously; builds a model of San Francisco after only glancing at a postcard; grabs a crossword puzzle from the table and finishes it in about seven seconds; builds a bomb out of a plasma bolt, a doll, and a roller skate; creates a "bucking bronco" out of a toaster, vacuum cleaner, and a lamp; reads aloud a description of a local museum's display, showing he is able to understand written language at a remarkable speed; manipulates his moral compass by using a human being as a shield in Jumba and Pleakley's presence; and generally picks up quickly on what is happening around him.
* Lingual intuition: Stitch can converse fluently in over twenty different languages, but prefers Tantalog (his native language).
* Parallel computing: He is an information repository, containing an internal dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, and experiment catalog, and records every moment of his life in a reserved portion of his brain that can theoretically store up to 300 PB.
* Instrument player: He is also skilled at playing musical instruments, most notably the ukulele, thanks to his quick learning.
* Vehicle intuition: Stitch can drive any sort of vehicle from something as simple as a tricycle to complex machinery like intergalactic spaceships.
* Superhuman strength: His ability to lift objects 3,000 times his own size and weight is seen several times throughout the franchise, including incidents where he picks up a descending blasted door, hits Dr. Jumba with a thrown Volkswagen Beetle (shouting gleefully, "Blue punch buggy! No punch back!"), and stops an 18-wheeled tanker of gasoline dead in its tracks. The reason why Stitch can lift 3,000 times his own weight, even though he has small arms, is because his muscles contain excessively compressed amounts of myofibril within one muscle cell. This muscular arrangement makes Stitch's muscles contract 1,000 times faster than a human's, making him much, much more powerful. The ability is sometimes joked about in the later series; for example, in Stitch! The Movie, when Hämsterviel has Stitch physically restrained for a cloning experiment, Stitch's restraints counter his strength at, as Hämsterviel loudly declares, to "three thousand and one!" times Stitch's weight, though he later admits it was intended as a joke. This was further validated in the Lilo & Stitch: The Series episode "Swirly", when Gantu correctly guessed that Stitch cannot lift even an ounce more than 3,000 times his size when he adds a small ticket to the given load.
* Quadrupedalism: Stitch can run and walk on all fours in a quadrupedal manner, similar to a dog.
* Wall crawling: While Stitch's claws are very strong, the pads on his hands and feet can secrete a sticky substance, allowing him to scale and adhere to almost any surface, such as buildings and walls. He can also stand on walls and ceilings.
* Spherical form: His skeletal system is very flexible, allowing him to put his feet into his mouth and roll like a ball. This allows him to squeeze through tight spaces.
* Superhuman speed: Stitch can move and run faster as shown when moving past Lilo and Pleakley while carrying Jumba, during a bet made with Lilo to catch Experiments 501 (Yin) and 502 (Yang), and hurrying from Gantu's ship back to the fundraiser while carrying Lilo. His speed is also usually used when he's in his spherical form. When Stitch runs, his speed doesn't automatically increase and can only achieve this by putting effort into his muscles.
* Superhuman jump: Stitch's legs are small but, thanks to the muscle advancements mentioned above, are powerful enough to enable him to jump several feet into the air.
* Superhuman agility: Stitch has extraordinarily greater agility, dexterity, balance, and body coordination, capable of doing feats far beyond an acrobat, such as leaping far distances, jumping off from wall to wall, swinging from vines, and standing on branches, wires, and narrow platforms. He is also capable of standing and walking on his paws. The reason is Stitch has a very flexible skeletal system that also allows him to squeeze through tight spaces.
* Superhuman reflexes: Stitch is able to react and dodge plasma bolts from the plasma guns from Jumba and Gantu. When Jumba tried to shoot him, Stitch caught the plasma bolts in his hands. He was also able to catch some tennis balls with his four arms and even threw them back in the pitching machine.
* Superhuman stamina: Stitch's advanced musculature produces fewer fatigue toxins, allowing him to exert himself for extended periods of time. Stitch can still fight, run, and even eat without tiring out; even when hunting for other experiments, he would hunt them for an entire day to when night comes.
* Electromagnetic vision: Stitch's eyes can magnify objects and pick up various forms of light, filtering out one eye or the other if necessary. Using normal vision, his eyes are a glossy, solid black and also magnify his vision for better visibility.
** Night vision: When activated, Stitch's eyes turn green, permitting him to see clearly at night or in dark places.
** Infrared vision: When activated, Stitch's eyes turn red, permitting him to locate targets by their body heat. He most notably uses this in "Houdini" to track the titular experiment who can turn things, including himself, invisible.
** X-ray vision: When activated, Stitch's eyes turn bright green, permitting him to look through walls and other obstacles.
* Audio amplifier: He can act as an audio amplifier, radio, and/or microphone, illustrated when he uses his claw as the needle on a record player and plays music through his open mouth like a sound horn.
* Enhanced hearing and smell: He has an acute sense of smell and hearing. Concept designs detailing Stitch's anatomy describe the sensory filaments of his nose being so dense and extensive that, if unraveled, could blanket Earth. While listening for Jumba and Pleakley, who were hiding on a hill outside the dog shelter, he was able to detect Pleakley speaking at a whisper.
* Skilled hand-to-hand combat: He is dexterously skilled in hand-to-hand combat, whether using all four arms or just two.
* Marksmanship: He is also dexterously skilled in marksmanship, using plasma blasters (even loaded with net to capture experiments).
* Venomous spines: In anatomy drawings of Stitch from the film's production, his spines are described as being poisonous and connected to venom sacs in his spinal cord.
* Shapeshifting: In his alien form, he has three spines on his back, two antennae on his head, and an extra pair of arms. However, he is able to retract all of these features to look more like a dog while on Earth and used this to become Lilo's "pet".
* Semi-immortality: Stitch cannot age. When Skip flashed ten years ahead, he did not age whatsoever, but, for some reason, Babyfier's powder regressed him into an infant. This could simply mean he stops aging once he is physically mature.
* Vacuum adaptation: Along with the rest of his "cousins", Stitch can survive in the vacuum of space due to being a genetic alien.
* Power immunity: Stitch has some resistance but not total immunity to the other experiments' powers. He is shown to be immune to some of the experiments' powers, such as Angel's siren song and Checkers' hypnosis, since Stitch was created after them. While Stitch was put to sleep by Drowsy, he was able to wake up on his own without the need to be sprayed with water.
Both of the two East Asian animated spin-offs add additional abilities to Stitch not shown in the original Western continuity.
* Battery Storage: The third season of the Stitch! anime shows that he also has a natural battery in his body that can supercharge his powers.
* Transformation: In Stitch & Ai, it shows that Stitch has a metamorphosis code in his DNA to assist him in carrying out his primary function. When the metamorphosis programming is activated, he transforms into a gigantic and unstoppable monstrosity with four tentacle-like blasters capable of destroying not just cities, but planets and potentially entire star systems.
* Quill Retraction: In "Tell the World", he is also seen sprouting quills around his neck.
* Gliding: In "The Phoenix", Stitch sprouts a patagium—a parachute-like membrane found in bats, birds, and other animals that assists in gliding or flight—to glide through the air, mainly for the sake of having some fun while he, Ai, and her cousin Bao head to a shrine that the titular phoenix heads to. (The trio were using a hang glider during their journey, and Stitch deliberately jumps off it so he can glide through the air without hanging on to the glider itself.) Unlike the metamorphosis program, neither the quills nor the patagium have any major factor into the episodes' plots or the metamorphosis program itself.
=== Weaknesses ===
* Program limits: Stitch's primary weakness lies in his programming.
** Water: Stitch's greatest weakness is his inability to float, let alone swim, in water due to his molecular structure being much denser than the average human or animal. This causes him to instantly sink like a stone. Stitch originally had an instinctive aquaphobia (which was even used against him by Spooky), but he was able to overcome it thanks to Lilo's influence.
** Glitch (formerly): In Stitch Has a Glitch, it is revealed that Stitch's molecules were not fully charged after his creation, which is proven to be very deadly once his molecules run out of power. As a result, Stitch frequently experiences periodic glitches that have him revert to his original destructive programming; basically, suffering from a seizure disorder and having nightmares of destroying everything and everyone in his path, including Lilo. However, his suffers from these glitches were gone permanently after Lilo's love for him caused him to be fully charged at last.
** Memory erase from Crezonyte: It is shown in "Kixx" that if Stitch consumes two different elements which form to create a particular chemical compound called Crezonyte, all of his training skills will be wiped. Eating the rubber of a tennis shoe and palmitoleic acid (found in macadamia nut oil) together will result in this.
** Mucus drain: Stitch is 62.7% mucus, which is similar in chemical composition to Snootonium. If this is drained from his body, he will become temporarily exhausted from dehydration (evidenced when Snooty siphoned Stitch's mucus).
** Sonic blasts/Sensory overload: Another weakness is the fact that his super-sensitive hearing can lead to temporary deafness when exposed to sonic blasts, such as Yaarp's destructive sound blast.
** Strength limit: As stated above, he cannot lift even an ounce past the "3,000 times his weight" limit.
** Experiments' powers: While Stitch is immune to Angel and Checkers' powers since he was created after them, there are some experiments whose powers he is vulnerable to, such as Amnesio, Babyfier, Spike, Bugby, Lax, Dupe, French Fry, Swapper, Swirly, and Houdini. Stitch can also be put to sleep by Drowsy, but he was able to wake up on his own without the need to be sprayed with water.
** Blades/Durability limit: While Stitch can withstand plasma bolts, being beaten, and even the most hazardous environments, it is implied that Stitch isn't resistant to bladed objects. This is shown when Stitch was pierced by a Sample Extractor and able to take out his blood.
** Trash ingestion: If Stitch consumes vast amounts of trash, he will become incredibly sick as shown in "Ploot". He first gets sick to his stomach and sneezes, then his fur turns yellow, his tongue becomes orange, and his nose turns red. Another symptom is, with each sneeze, an arm grows from random areas of his body. Stitch's garbage-eating illness was theorized as a rare space disease by Jumba. Stitch was cured when he drank a barrel of orange juice and took medicine from an eyedropper, though it was only for a few seconds. When he sneezed again, he developed yellow stripes and grew legs instead. The only permanent cure is inhaling steam from a vaporizer.
** Sauerkraut: According to Lilo, Stitch is apparently allergic to sauerkraut. However, it was never shown what kind of allergic reaction he has to sauerkraut or if he even actually has an allergy to it.