Zim

ℹ️️**Notice**This character is **not a canon character in Glad you Came.** It is from an entirely different series and is known as a **crossover character**

**Zim** is the villainous main protagonist of the 2001-2006 television series *Invader Zim,* and the main antagonist of the 2019 Netflix film *Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus*.

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) 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 races. There, he became quick rivals with Dib Membrane. Zim's primary desire is to conquer Earth, mostly to prove his superiority and impress his leaders.

However, as mentioned by Dib’s younger sister Gaz in "Bloaty's Pizza Hog", "He's so bad at it." As the protagonist, he often has much more screen time than GIR, Dib and especially Gaz. Despite this, Zim is considered a villain morally and ethically.

The debate about him being a sympathetic villain is ambiguous because he is seen as evil due his "job" as an Invader, but has been mistreated and ridiculed by his species for almost his entire life, though he is oblivious to their hatred and considers his actions "good for the Empire", despite evidence to the contrary such as obliviously almost annihilating their entire civilization.

He usually only causes chaos and destruction for either himself, his own race, or Earth. Despite all this, he occasionally shows some kindness towards certain characters (such as GIR in "Walk of Doom" and "Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy") and Minimoose in "The Dookie Loop Horror", suggesting some affection for his minions.

The viewer knows that Zim is an alien, but in the IZ world humans are very blind to this with the exception of Dib and Gaz, who are the only ones that know that he is not from this world.

## In Glad you Came

Zim, for the moment, has appeared briefly at the end of the scenario of Dib meeting Kisame and Josurin in both of his disguises

## Personality

***\*Information from the Invader Zim wiki\****

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, a scapegoat, or a figure of contempt by his own species, a fact that he is either oblivious to or simply chooses not to notice; this is hinted at by the fact that due to his self-absorbed nature, it prevents Zim from seeing his failures, past and present. He claims to be proud of all the past disasters he has caused, and rarely acknowledges his defeats in his present mission on Earth (often blaming them on other characters, or other factors, or completely changing the subject). When he is told by Tak in "Tak: The Hideous New Girl" that his "mission" was really an attempt to get rid of him, he simply rejects her statement as a lie. It is not entirely clear whether Zim is aware of his failings in the eyes of his leaders and is desperately trying to compensate for them, or whether he really is just completely oblivious to the opinions of others, as he had deluded himself into thinking he's "amazing" and can do no wrong.

Despite this, Zim is innocently 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, to the point that he is zealously willing to endure pain or hardship in order to gain their respect. In the episode "Planet Jackers", Zim even undergoes a rather severe beating in the name of protecting his mission and Irken interests.

Zim's laugh and mannerisms are overly theatrical, which is fitting for his dramatic personality. As seen in "Future Dib" and "Bolognius Maximus", he can let his maniacal laugh linger for too long and be unaware of the disturbance he causes.

By turns this would-be Invader can be petulant, critical, paranoid, humorous, sarcastic, pretentious, pedantic, depressive, melodramatic, and even occasionally whimsical. He is often curiously attached to random objects, such as his robot bee ("Tak: The Hideous New Girl") or Li'l Meat Man. He is immensely proud of anything he creates, yet is often frustrated when his devices fail to live up to his grandiose expectations.

It's clear that Zim is highly intelligent (in his own crafty sort of way) and is a keen manipulator of tools and devices, but has absolutely no apparent interest in thinking things through to their logical conclusion. The fact that creating and unleashing a giant water balloon on the city from orbit in "The Wettening" will also destroy his house (but not his base) doesn't seem to enter his mind; when he hijacks the Massive in "Backseat Drivers from Beyond the Stars" he only considers (incorrectly) that the Tallest will be appreciative of his efforts. Nor does he really consider the consequence of restoring the natural time-flow of a city-leveling explosion in "Walk For Your Lives", despite being warned several times, by GIR no less, until his base was coming down around him. An alternative explanation is that he is aware of the consequences of his actions, but believes that they are worth reaching his goals and is willing to amend them after he does so.

Zim clearly is more than capable of destroying Earth, but he hardly ever uses this capability correctly. For instance, when he is accidentally sent a Megadoomer robot, he decides to use it to kill Dib, when the robot obviously has the destructive power to do better things. He has often come very close to taking over the planet, only to be thwarted by Dib or Gaz, Jhonen Vasquez has gone on record by saying that Zim has a "horrible sense of direction" and he is so preoccupied with unimportant "threats" that he doesn't get anything done, this may be a result of his paranoia.

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 conquer Earth, it has been hinted that he would not actually want to enslave humanity or rule the planet himself. In "Attack of the Saucer Morons", Zim gained a group of human worshippers who would be willing to do his bidding, Zim, however, panics and tries to escape from them, believing that they are trying to capture him for dissection and study. In the *Nickelodeon Magazine Special*, in which Zim somehow finally takes over the world, he doesn't stay to rule for very long, instead leaving Earth forever (along with Dib, GIR and Minimoose) to ride alien bunny rabbits and drink soda.

Zim shows no remorse for the people that are harmed due to his actions and almost never takes responsibility for his mistakes, priding himself on causing destruction in the name of the Irken Empire, even when said destruction is aimed towards other Irkens.

More or less he considers everyone else but himself (even members of his own race) expendable for his own plans, often exploiting them to reach his own goals with apparent disregard for their safety or well-being. For example, in "Hobo 13", Zim sends the soldiers under his command to their dooms when other, safer methods could be taken (even using Throbulator, the last soldier in his unit, as a battering ram), causing Sergeant Hobo 678 to fail him automatically despite the fact that Zim manages to survive the obstacle course. Another example is when Zim destroys a candy machine in "Tak: The Hideous New Girl", ending Tak's mission to become an Invader and he either doesn't realize that she's trapped or, more likely, he doesn't care. His behavior and unawareness of his actions are most likely the result of him being Defective, as revealed in the cancelled episode "The Trial".

Zim is most comfortable in ensuring destruction rather than gaining power and when he *does* gain power, he seems not to care much for it, treating it more like a means to an end since it has been heavily implied that he only seeks to take control of the planet to mainly earn the praise and respect of his leaders. An example of this was seen in "The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever", where he easily got the entire human race to worship him when he disguised himself as Santa Claus, but rather than to build an empire for himself, he cared more about sending the humans away to the Tallest and thus, their own doom. Towards the end of *Enter the Florpus*, Zim grows bored of the humans' panicking at the Florpus Hole, saying "why don't you bow down before me or something?".

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. In "Walk of Doom", he yells at GIR for leaving behind his guidance chip and stranding them in the middle of the city but when GIR starts to cry, he forgives GIR (despite the fact that he was crying because he missed the cupcake he ate).

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.

In fact, Zim enjoys tormenting and humiliating Dib even if it is unprovoked that he would just do it for the fun of it, making Dib's hatred for him real and his efforts to beat the Invader all the more personal. 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.

In *Enter the Florpus*, it was shown that Zim has the potential to be an actual threat if he puts his mind to it, as he successfully hijacked Professor Membrane's Peace Day ceremony, but only after Dib unintentionally inspired him (and he even rubs it in his face about it).

Earth was moments away from being destroyed and taking humanity with it, Zim showing a complete indifference towards his own life because his mission, even if it was his last one, would've been complete.

Zim sounding so triumphant while stepping into his own doom is quite fanatical because his loyalty to the Irken Empire knows no bounds and he is no doubt willing to go out like a soldier doing his duty.

## Zim's PAK

Zim, like all Irkens, was fused at birth with a mechanical device called a PAK. Zim's PAK provides him with life support, all the necessary nutrients for survival, and an array of different weapons and tools.

These tools include a set of four spider-like mechanical legs, an organ harvester, scanner pads, hand-held communicators, memory drive, charging cell, atmospheric processor, high tech infrared/night vision binoculars, holographic transmitters, and four rocket boosters, as well as a sort of biomechanical rebreather mask used in environments without air or with polluted air. It can also be 'rebooted' and revive Zim after a sudden shock to the system (like the wave of raw stupidity in "Plague of Babies").

Zim's PAK, due to his actions after Operation Impending Doom I, has him re-encoded as a Fast Food Drone; this was part of his banishment to the Irken snacking planet of Foodcourtia, and is confirmed by Frylord Sizz-Lorr during the episode "The Frycook What Came From All That Space." Interestingly, the episode "Career Day" also shows that the job that is the most suitable for Zim is fast food services.

As said by Tallest Purple in the canceled episode "The Trial", an Irken PAK contains all of a single Irken's memories, personality, and high scores. An Irken assigned to a specific task has their PAK 'encoded' for that task by an Irken Control Brain, similar to formatting a hard drive.

In the same episode, Zim's true status was determined to be "Defective". Although a Defective is supposed to be an individual with a flawed PAK, and Zim's PAK was undoubtedly as the *most* defective as Smeet Zim stated that it had "40 shmillion mistakes" and the unawareness of his destructive actions is most likely the result of him being a "defect", however, it can be seen in the episode that the process of determining an Irken's 'defectiveness' is highly subjective.

In another scripted, but never completed episode by Rob Hummel, "Ten Minutes to Doom", Zim accidentally loses his PAK, which is then stolen by Dib. Zim himself begins to quickly deteriorate and it is revealed that Irkens can only survive ten minutes without their PAK. The PAK attaches itself to Dib and begins to assert Zim's personality in Dib. Although Zim is almost dead by the time he retrieves his PAK, once he has it back on he is very quickly rejuvenated. As Dib states in the episode, "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."

It should be noted that only Irken biology is compatible with the PAK. When Dib wears the PAK the madness of Zim's personality is far more overstated than usual. Zim later states that the PAK would have destroyed Dib if he had worn it for more than ten minutes. However, this is contradicted in the comics by the existence of Zib, a version of Dib who has his universe's Zim's PAK fused to his head, and has survived with it attached for months.

In a deleted scene from the episode "Abducted", Zim is falls through a hole with fire, knocking him unconscious. His PAK automatically releases its spider legs and catches on to a railing. It then carries his body to another room and places him safely on the ground. This reveals that Irken PAKs are sentient and will work even when the Irken is unconscious. In "Ten Minutes to Doom", Zim's PAK attempts to find and re-attach itself to Zim (although it was most likely programmed to).

## Powers and Abilities

Despite his incompetence, Zim is actually shown to be intelligent. He is an excellent engineer, being able to tool with many devices and equipment. He has a very impressive arsenal, and he was able to fix GIR's behavior using a behavioral modulator and enhance his guidance chip. He also created Minimoose, who has been known to be very powerful and dangerous (although Zim doesn't know how to use him properly).

Zim is a very skilled pilot. However, in some episodes, he is shown crashing and his ship in flames, which hints at the possibility that while he can pilot certain ships, he is prone to accidents.

Throughout the show, there are subtle but noticeable hints about Zim's biology. He is shown to do many things that no human could do, hinting that he might have powers or inhuman abilities of some sort. Zim has been shown to have super strength - in "Attack of the Saucer Morons", he body slammed a woman who was twice his size and overweight and knocked her over, while in "Backseat Drivers from Beyond the Stars", he is shown throwing a child into another person hard enough to knock them off their feet. However, Dib was easily able to pin him down for a short moment in "Megadoomer", though this could have been because he was caught off guard.

He is shown to be very fast and agile. In "FBI Warning of Doom", he is able to evade most of the booby traps set in the mall, in "The Frycook What Came From All That Space", Zim was able to outrun Sizz-Lorr, and he was also able to outrun Dib in "The Nightmare Begins".

He also seems to have inhuman stamina as he doesn't need to sleep (thanks to his PAK). However, he still eats food.

Zim is also shown to have incredible durability, as he is shown taking hits from stronger enemies such as Oog-Ah, Sizz-Lorr, and Sergeant Hobo 678. In many episodes, GIR has been shown falling directly on his head, but he's usually fine afterwards. He has also survived falls from heights, such as in "Battle of the Planets" and "Walk of Doom". He also has been seen surviving crashes; in "Attack of the Saucer Morons", Zim survives two crashes (the first in his Voot Runner, the second in the Voot Carrier) and he also survived an even more disastrous crash in "Hamstergeddon". In "Zim Eats Waffles", Zim was attacked by a demon flesh eating squid and zombie soldiers and was only covered in bruises. In "Tak the Hideous New Girl", he and GIR are thrown into the Voot Runner, causing it to fall from the sky, and he walks away unharmed. In "Battle of the Planets", Zim is shown to be impervious to fire (or at least physically resistant to it). He also survives an explosion which decimated the entire city in "Walk for Your Lives". At the end of *Enter the Florpus*, Zim's head is caved in by a puppy GIR had recently shot into space. While not shown, he most likely survived this and was only knocked unconscious.

Zim is shown to be extremely lucky, as he has survived countless incidents that would have ended in certain death, as exampled above.

Zim has been shown to have regenerative powers, as he's been shown to heal from bruises, broken skin (or skin deformities), and broken bones. He has healed from a popped zit, meat fused to his head, and his skin torn off his head and body ("Rise of the Zitboy", "Bolognius Maximus", and "Lice"). In "Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom", Zim is left with a broken spine, and implies it will heal soon. It is unknown how powerful Zim's regeneration powers really are, it should be noted however that this is all possible as a result of his people's genetic engineering, so these abilities are more than likely common among the Irkens.

## Weaknesses and Immunities

Zim is severely allergic to several Earth substances, including meat, barbecue sauce, beans, pizza, and most school lunches. The last item may not be considered a weakness exclusively to Zim, as the food in the cafeteria has been shown to be harmful to humans as well. Exposure to excessive grease leads to the creation of an enormous transparent, semi-permeable, hypnotic pimple, known first as Pustulio.

It's unclear whether these effects are due to Zim's alien biochemistry or because the Earth itself appears to be, in the timeframe of *Invader Zim*, excessively polluted. The episode "Bolognius Maximus" offers an additional suggestion that the Irken body may be physiologically and biochemically much more delicate than a human's. Zim's genetic structure breaks down and turns into bologna much faster than Dib's after exposure to an identical infusion of bologna-DNA.

However, for each weakness Zim has found a compensatory mechanism, he discovered that germs could be repelled by covering his body in "space meat" and using conventional Earth disinfectant sprays (despite the meat then fusing to his flesh). He also discovered his pimples have hypnotic properties over humans. In the episode "Zim Eats Waffles", he thinks that eating enough Earth food will allow him to build up an immunity to it. Whether it has or not wasn't seen.

In addition, in "The Wettening" after Zim found out about bathing in the school glue, he could be protected against water, at first it appears that he developed a layer of glue that permanently fused to his outer epidermal layer, but it was revealed that Jhonen Vasquez planned to have more scenes where Zim would be seen bathing in paste to have the viewer remember that he needs protection against water but couldn't due to time constraints.

It is first seen in "Door to Door" that Zim can withstand a large amount of water (when the character who Zim asked sprays him with a hose). This was seen in "The Frycook What Came From All That Space", where Zim crashes and has a small splash of water from a hose. In the DVD, Jhonen commentates that "Zim is resistant to water, but he's exposed to polluted water only."

Zim also has an intense fear of germs and anything "filthy." In the episode "Germs", Zim orders a pair of "microgoggles" that allow him to see germs, portrayed in the usual cartoonish fashion of large, pulsating green blobs. Zim panics when he realizes that germs are almost everywhere and begins to spray them with disinfectant. In "Rise of the Zitboy", Zim obsessively rubs his face with soap after being hugged by a grease-soaked GIR.

An unknown substance secreted by his skin kills lice almost instantly, this could mean that he is also immune to other pests on Earth.

His biggest weakness, however, would be his immense ego as it makes Zim do incredibly reckless things almost all the time. This is best shown by Issue 12, as in the future a more competent Zim has conquered Earth.

## Disguises Worn in Public

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; in the same episode, he was mistaken for a hobo and later for a bank robber. Ironically, this is the only disguise Zim wore that nearly got him arrested and even discovered, as was the case in "Attack of the Saucer Morons."

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'. His face was undisguised, but no one saw through it as it was revealed humans saw a human face. This disguise was first seen in "The Girl Who Cried Gnome" and briefly during "The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever".

A similar disguise was seen in *Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus,* where Zim kidnaps Professor Membrane and takes over his labs for his new evil plan*.* The only differences from the above human disguise were that Zim was dressed as a scientist of sorts and was using his contact lenses.

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.

## Relationships

### Dib

Dib is Zim's mortal enemy during his "mission" on Earth. It's quite evident that the two hate each other, but because Dib is the only one (aside from Gaz) to know he's an Irken Invader, Dib has made it his mission to expose Zim for the "evil menace he is". The two enemies have spent a lot of time together due to them trying to stop the other from their goal of saving/destroying Earth, and as a result they know each other rather well, and have even teamed up on several occasions for the same goal, making them reluctant allies at best and willing to betray the other at worst when a situation goes south.

People have often mistook them for friends, much to their shared disgust, but ironically because they rely on each other to have a meaning in their lives, this would make the two adversaries "frenemies" of sorts. It is also quite evident that they share a few traits, such as both being outcasts in their respective societies, intelligence and height, as well as the fact that they have a grudging respect for each other, makes their rivalry all the more complex.