Gloom

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## Background information

### Inspiration

Depression disorder
The Invisible Beings of *Spirited Away* (Conceptual Art)

## Character information

### Personality

Mysterious, ghostly, depressing, oppressive, invisible, gloomy, pitchy, shadowy

### Goal

Grow up and take control of Riley's mind
Prevent Joy from returning to Headquarters (both failed)

### Enemies

Joy, Sadness, Riley, Anger, Fear, Disgust.

### Likes

Riley being sad, taking control of the power console

### Powers and abilities

Grow larger as he becomes important in a person's mind
Ability to make the person become insensitive

### Fate

Banished from the console after Sadness removes the light bulb

*Guys, we can't make Riley feel anything. - Fear.*
*What have we done? - Anger.*

**Gloom** is the main antagonist of the 2015 Disney/Pixar film *Inside Out*. He is a mental disorder of black color, accidentally created by Riley Andersen's emotions.

## Description

Gloom is a mysterious and dark character. He only appears as an antagonistic and invisible force, literally as a hidden shadow. He may come from the void Memory dump and can destroy things that are forgotten. During depression the whole mind becomes dark. His abilities are to grow and become bigger as he becomes important in a person's mind, and is able to make it become insensitive. In the film, it is accidentally created by Sadness and becomes bigger and stronger when Anger destroyed almost all of Riley's personality. In the end it was Sadness, who, persuaded by Joy, ends up stopping him once and for all by taking out the light bulb with the idea of ​​run away to Minnesota; with the result that both emotions form a new mixed Core Memory.

## *Inside Out*

During the beginning of the film, Gloom had not yet been created when Joy was in charge of Riley Andersen's mind when she and her emotions lived a long life of happiness and joy for eleven years in her hometown in Minnesota. It was until Riley turned eleven, when she and her parents had to move halfway across the country to San Francisco. She and her emotions tried to enjoy their first day as in the past, without success. However, from that day on, everything would change: while Riley and her mother talked about everything about the trip, the latter asked her what was the best part they had on the trip. Joy selects the memory of the time in which Riley and her parents visited a dinosaur theme park.

Everything seemed fine, but the memory that Joy had chosen turned blue and sad. The emotions realize that Sadness had touched the memory, and that it could no longer return to its original state. Disgust tells Joy that there is one more staircase up front. Joy asks Sadness not to touch another memory. Upon reaching the ladder, the Goofball Island is activated for Riley to slide down the railing. However, Riley is saddened and rejects that moment probably because of Gloom, causing its Core Memory to leave its place, and deactivate Goofball Island. Sadness tells Joy that the memory was twisted and then fell. Joy puts the Core Memory in place in time, so the Island recovers its functioning, and it manages that Riley slide down the railing. After their first day is over, when Riley prepares to sleep, Fear, Anger, and Disgust disagree if they should be happy as in the past, but when Riley's mother asks her daughter to be happy to cheer up her father, all emotions decide to help.

On the first day of school, Joy tries to get Sadness away from the command controls for today by closing her in a circle, to avoid another accident. But strangely Sadness gets out of her circle and accidentally makes Riley cry in class, after touching another happy memory; so Joy and the other emotions try to remove it, but their efforts are in vain. And once Joy removes that memory, she finds out that Sadness is using the console (only with the intention of helping). Joy takes her away from the console and Sadness apologizes.

Afterwards, a new Core Memory is formed (which, unlike the others, was a sad memory), causing the entire Headquarters to go dark at the time of its creation. In a desperate attempt, Joy tries to get rid of the new Thought, and Sadness tries to stop her, starting a dispute between them. And despite Joy's efforts, she accidentally knocks the tray of the Core Memories, causing them to fall out of their place and all the Islands of Personality are turned off. In an attempt to retrieve all the Core Memories, Joy ends up being sucked in a tube and expelled from Headquarters, along with Sadness and the Memories.

In Headquarters, on the other hand, Anger, Fear, and Disgust take control of the console in the absence of Joy and Sadness. But Anger ends up upsetting Riley while she and her parents dined at home, causing Family Island to shake and be the first to be affected and Goofball Island to fall down into the Memory Dump.

During Joy and Sadness' return trip to Headquarters, Riley begins to isolate herself from her friends and colleagues and wear black clothes. She even ended her friendship with her best friend Meg and left a hockey game because of Anger, causing Friendship Island and Hockey Island to fall into the dump as well; so the latter concludes that it was best to return to Minnesota, and that Riley's life was better there than in San Francisco. But after Fear woke her up, Anger inserts a lightbulb with the idea to run away to Minnesota and incites Riley to steal her mother's credit card, causing the mind to go gray and Honesty Island to crumble, causing the derailment of the Train of Thought (in which Joy, Sadness and Bing Bong were traveling). Joy tries to return to the Headquarters using a recall tube in a failed attempt, and as Family Island began to fall, she is sent into oblivion along with Bing Bong, who sacrifices himself for Joy to save Riley.

The other emotions that remained in Riley's mind could not get the light bulb out of the console, because there was "no return". Unsuccessful in removing the bulb, Gloom seizes control of the console, gradually turning it black. It is then that Anger, Disgust and Fear try to handle the console, but cannot make Riley feel; Fear tells his partners that they can no longer do anything, and they all end up scared. Just when there was no hope, Joy and Sadness managed to reach Headquarters safely. Realizing that she had arrived too late and that she could not do what she could to help Riley, Joy entrusts Sadness to face Gloom, and although the latter tells her that she does not know what to do, she says yes; because Riley needed Sadness. Sadness manages to successfully remove the idea of ​​returning to Minnesota, causing Riley to finally react and go home. At the end of those days of Gloom's command, everything returns to normal, so his current parallel is unknown.

## Trivia

* He is one of the 27 emotions that were chosen for the film by the writers.
	+ Gloom was originally going to be a visible penumbra that was going to get bigger as he got more important. The first concepts of him can be seen in the Book *The Art of Inside Out*.
	+ Another attempt was to do him as a male emotion and a visible character, as depicted in conceptual art.
* Gloom's original design is inspired by the Invisible Beings of *Spirited Away*.
* He is the first Pixar villain to be created and is also the second main antagonist without any lines of dialogue, the first is Mor'du, from *Brave*.
	+ He is also the first Pixar antagonist (the first and only character) not to be named in the entire film, but his name can be known to appear in concept art.
* Although he did not reveal his physical appearance, as the film progresses, it is discovered who was behind all this mess (according to Anger's opinion), and it is implied that Gloom was there as the main antagonist the entire time. This begins with Sadness turning memories into sad moments, and then Gloom manifests himself for the first time when Riley is saddened in an unknown way, causing a Core Memory to leave its place and almost cause the emotions to lose Goofball Island. After that, Sadness creates a new Core Memory, the school scene by accidentally causing Riley to cry. Headquarters turns dark, the Personality Islands go offline and Goofball Island is destroyed. Riley begins to wear clothes of black color (symbolically indicating her state of depression), Anger crumbles the other Islands of Personality (only to make Gloom even stronger), Riley's mind becomes a cloudy sky, and Headquarters' walls look gray instead of purple as it used to be. Anger introduces the idea bulb in the console in order to return to Minnesota, not knowing that it was actually part of Gloom's plans. The console was velvet black and disconnected when the black wave (Gloom) extends from where the light bulb is, making the emotions unable for Riley to recover. Sadness is the only emotion that could defeat Gloom.
	+ This could imply that Gloom (the main antagonist who manifested as a penumbra in the world of mind that Riley and her emotions would fight when he entered Riley's mind) exists in the Inside Out universe. If Riley's depression worsened, Gloom would have manifested himself in a larger character as in the original plan.
* Gloom appears in the climax of the film and, of course, has an idea bulb that Sadness removes by defeating him once and for all.
* Gloom is completely opposed to Joy for several reasons, and these are as follows.
	+ Gloom has no physical body because he is a creation and is born of darkness, and because his beam is black. In the case of Joy, she has a physical body because she is born of light, and has several beams of colors which are blue, gold, purple on one side and white on the other.
	+ Gloom has no feelings because he is a mental disorder, while Joy does.
	+ Gloom is the carrier of depression and melancholy, while Joy is the carrier of happiness.
	+ Gloom does not like Riley to be happy, while Joy does not like her to be sad. From the moment he was created, he tried to keep Riley from being happy, managed to drive Joy out of Headquarters, and even tried to stop her from returning and tried to usurp her.
* Like the colors represented in the other emotions, Gloom also has his meanings. Black symbolizes depression, absence, gloom and darkness.
	+ Black also used to be the color opposite to yellow, and is the third color opposite the latter already mentioned (after blue and purple). While yellow (the main color of Joy) is the most intense of all colors, black is the absence of all of them. This is another one of the main reasons of which this character is the nemesis of the protagonist.
* When Anger, Disgust and Fear look at the console and the black wave (Gloom) appears, the latter says: "What is this?"; and when wanting to look for options to stop him, he also says: "How do we stop it?", referring to the fact that there is actually another character.
* Many people think that Inside Out does not have a character who is the villain of the movie, because it does not appear physically. Anger, Jangles and Forgetters are undoubtedly the closest that the film ever got to having an antagonist, and even Joy shows tones of antagonism towards Sadness. In spite of this, just to the last minutes when Riley loses all her personality, it reveals who is the villain of the film and turns out that it is Gloom.
* It is presumed that the light bulb he was in was destroyed and killed him so that he would not harm Riley again. And although his current state is unknown, he may still be alive and return in "Inside Out 2" as the main or secondary antagonist, but this time with a physical appearance. It is currently unknown if Gloom will reappear.