Characters / Invader Zim: Zim And Allies

aka: Invader Zim Zim

Main Character Index | Zim & Allies | Membrane Family | Irken Empire | Skool | Aliens, Monsters, and Weirdos

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Zim

Voiced by: Billy West (pilot only); Richard Steven Horvitz (series), Melissa Fahn (as a smeet), Nao Nagasawa (Japanese)

"I am Zim, and Zim shall rule!"

A pint-sized alien from the planet Irk, with an ego as big as he himself... isn't, Zim is a walking disaster area that somehow remains oblivious to his own shortcomings and the contempt his people hold him in. He thinks he was sent to Earth as an Invader to ready the planet for hostile takeover, but really his leaders were just trying to get rid of him by sending him as far away as possible (they didn't even know there would be a planet there for him to try to conquer). On Earth, he aims to Take Over the World, but is of course continually thwarted, either by his nemesis Dib's interference, GIR's stupidity, or his own incompetence.

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• Abusive Alien Parents: Like all Irkens (which are aliens), Zim was grown in a cloning tube and raised to serve the Irken Empire as a soldier from birth. The second he was born, he clung to a metal pipe and said, "I love you, cold, unfeeling robot arm!"
• Accidental Hero: In Enter the Florpus, he opens the titular interdimensional space hole that the Massive ends up flying into, possibly dooming the Irken Armada and putting the kibosh on Operation Impending Doom II for the forseeable future. With this in mind, Zim may have just saved the entire galaxy from the Irken Empire. Not that he's aware of it.
• Aliens Speaking English: He comes from planet Irk, yet somehow still knew English before even coming to Earth.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Even though he's completely oblivious to it, his reputation among the other Irkens is less than amiable. He's not really liked on Earth, either, though he generally fares better there than Dib. He doesn't care about being popular; he'd rather his classmates believe that he is human like them rather than alien.
• Ambition Is Evil: He's an extremely driven and ambitious little guy who never gives up, and is also a wannabe conqueror of worlds with almost no empathy.
• Amusing Alien: It's amusing to look at his schemes unless you're Dib.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Despite being an enormous thorn in their side, the Tallest and the Control Brains usually just punish Zim by demoting or banishing him. That's for all the death and destruction he caused. The crime that ultimately puts him on the fast track for termination during "The Trial"? Having a faulty PAK. Then again, as noted in Awesome Backpack, that PAK is pretty much Zim's backup brain, meaning that its existence proves Zim is inherently messed-up.
• Asshole Victim: Whenever his plans backfire in painful ways, it's very hard to argue he doesn't deserve it.
• The Atoner: He is in part driven by his desire to make up for his disastrous incompetence during the original Operation Impending Doom. Not out of any kind of guilt, mind you; just so that the rest of his species will get off his back about it.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Zim has incredibly poor listening skills, and seems to retain only information he likes. "Walk for Your Lives" is probably the worst example, where Zim ignores literally everyone around him (even GIR) telling him that to speed up a time-locked, city-destroying explosion would produce... exactly that.
  Dib: Zim, you're just going to blow us all up?!? This is stupid! This... is stupid stupid!
• Awesome Backpack: If you don't think that a backpack with spider legs, an organ-stealing device, goggles, an entire personality and history, memories, and a hologram device isn't cool, then you need to taste some DOOM. That backpack is part of what allows Irkens to live. Without it, they literally can only survive for ten minutes at a time, and it also serves as a backup brain, effectively making them amnesia-proof. Unfortunately, according to the unaired episode "The Trial," Zim was given a defective PAK, which is the reason (or at least part of the reason) why he is so uncontrollable.
• Ax-Crazy: Incredibly so. It's clear as day that he's completely unhinged.
• Bad Boss: He can competently rally complete strangers to his causes, but he has no qualms about ditching them when they're no longer useful. It's Played With regarding his treatment of GIR. He frequently belittles his robot servant for his incompetence, but he never considers disposing of him and usually just hangs around him in his off-time. It's also averted outright with Minimoose, who he treats well.
• Bald of Evil: He has no hair, being an Insectoid Alien, though he wears a wig in his human disguise.
• Based on a Great Big Lie: His mission to take over Earth was assigned to him simply to get him out of the way of the actual operation to conquer the universe, and holds no actual significance whatsoever. Despite this fact being blatantly obvious, Zim's Blind Obedience to the Almighty Tallest generally causes him to ignore any evidence that suggests it. The only time he even comes close to noticing this is in Enter The Florpus where he tracks the Tallest's flight path and realizes that they aren't even coming to Earth, causing him to go into a brief depression before getting the idea to use Professor Membranes technology to warp Earth to the Tallest.
• Benevolent Boss: He is rather friendly towards his two Co-Dragons (GIR and Minimoose), and in Enter The Florpus Zim gets distraught for his Mecha-Mooks when Professor Membrane destroys Zim's robot army.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Zim is deeply silly, but he's also dangerous and tends to cause mass amounts of wanton destruction when left to his own devices.
• Big Bad Triumvirate: On any other given day, Zim falls squarely into Big Bad Wannabe, but the only time Zim ever comes close to proper Big Bad status is in Enter the Florpus. He's the cause of all the mayhem that ensues, including putting Earth at the mercy of the two other major threats in the form of the Tallest and the Florpus Hole.
• Big Bad Wannabe: He's set on conquering Earth and hatches multiple schemes to accomplish this, but his general incompetence hampers him every step of the way, and on the off chance he does succeed, it's often for petty revenge over furthering the invasion. Even in Enter the Florpus, though he succeeds in teleporting Earth into the flightpath of the Massive, the real threats to Earth come from the Tallest just deciding to blow up the planet rather than deal with Zim, and the Florpus Hole Zim unwittingly created by teleporting Earth in the first place. GIR even notes that despite Zim claiming victory when the end of the world is happening, none of the humans are even looking at him or aware of his involvement.
• Big "NO!": This is basically one of his catchphrases.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: "Gah, my squeedlyspooch!"
• Blatant Lies: He tends to tell very obvious lies about being human and not being an alien, but most humans are too stupid to realize this. Who has a skin condition that includes earless and noseless side effects?
• Blind Obedience: He recognizes that GIR is defective on sight and shows clear confusion about why the Irken Empire would have any interest in taking over a planet as backwater as Earth, but graciously accepts the duty of overseeing both due to his loyalty to the Tallest, who assigned them to him.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: While he can still be an exceptionally vindictive bastard, most of what Zim does is determined by what he deems necessary to fulfil his purpose as an Irken drone. As such he's willing to go to very bizarre and dangerous lengths to achieve this, and fails to understand why it's wrong to do so. However, there are a couple instances where Zim explicitly calls what he does "evil", like that time he (nearly) killed Dib in "Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy".
• Blunt Metaphors Trauma: Almost Blunt Words Trauma. Although Zim speaks perfect English, he has a tendency to mix up words, or in some cases he just doesn't listen and ends up hearing the wrong thing.
  Dib: You're just jealous!
  Zim: This has nothing to do with jelly!
• Burger Fool: Zim was banished to a planet called Foodcourtia where he had to do community service for royally screwing up Operation Impending Doom I. Also, he works in a fast food restaurant on Earth in "Career Day".
• Butt-Monkey: He fares slightly better than Dib most of the time, but is still constantly beaten up and humiliated.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Zim has the means to destroy the Earth, but since he's ostensibly there to conquer it, his hands are often tied. However, he is not averse to letting mankind wipe itself out (with a little assistance from him) if the opportunity arises and slaves are just a nice bonus to the Irkens and not necessary acquisitions.
• Card-Carrying Villain: "Now...back to my filthy evil, I guess..."
• Chaotic Stupid: He has repeatedly shown himself to be determined enough to not only easily conquer Earth but the entire galaxy, yet his impetuous nature and his COMPLETE lack of consideration for the consequences of his actions results in utter failure and/or the deaths of people he WASN'T trying to kill.
• Character Catchphrase: "YOU LIE!!", "SILENCE!!!", "I AM ZIM!!!" and "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
• Character Development: While just as much of a lunatic as ever, in Enter the Florpus, Zim is presented as a far more patient chessmaster with his infamous impulsiveness from the show downplayed.
• Characterization Marches On: His hamminess noticably comes in spurts in the pilot episode, as opposed to being his default state as it is for the rest of the series.
• The Chessmaster: In Enter the Florpus, where Zim is at his most cunning and meticulous when it comes to his planning, having his bases covered far more than ever.
• Clark Kenting: Zim's human form is basically himself but with human eyes and a slick hairstyle.
• Cloudcuckoolander: In one episode, when confronted by fully mobile talking babies, he stated that 'I knew it! Earth babies come from space!'. More pointedly, in an unfinished episode called "The Trial", he is kidnapped and brought to court among his people; in spite of the flagrant evidence that it is, in fact, a trial for his continued right to exist, he insists on believing it to be a party in his honor. In what was to be that episode's ending, Zim is scanned for defects by the robot "control-brains" that run the planet. His insanity drives the machines to madness, and they declare him the greatest of all Irkens. The Tallest weep as Zim is given ten free minutes of piloting the Massive and proceeds to gleefully smash it into everything like a little kid driving a bumper car at an amusement park.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: To GIR all the time, even though he's a Cloudcuckoolander himself.
• Comedic Sociopathy: Most of his insane, self-centered and spiteful deeds are Played for Laughs.
• Complexity Addiction: In "Dib's Wonderful Life of Doom", he traps Dib in a Lotus-Eater Machine simulating decades of life (from childhood to old age), all to find out if he was the one who threw a muffin at Zim.
• Cosmic Plaything: Sometimes. There's a good chance that circumstances will contrive to force him in the most hilariously painful way possible... then again, sometimes he succeeds and that doesn't really matter. But when his leaders want him gone, or for him to fail, it will blow up in their faces. More than any situation involving him usually blows up in someone's face, considering that it's seemingly impossible for him not to destroy anything.
• Crossdressing Voices: As a baby. Some foreign dubs also give him a voice actress, probably to facilitate his more high-pitched voice, as Richard Horvitz has a range that's unattainable for most male voice actors.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: When he does put up a fight ("Hobo 13") or comes up with a good plan ("Enter the Florpus"), he can be surprisingly competent and clever.
• Deadpan Snarker: Usually Zim is Sarcasm-Blind thanks to his massive ego and craziness, but he does get a few moments occasionally to get his snark on (usually at Dib's expense).
• Decoy Protagonist: In Enter the Florpus, it becomes more apparent as the movie goes on that Dib is the main character, with Zim being less the Villain Protagonist and more the plain ol' Big Bad.
• Despair Event Horizon: Though it doesn't last long, in Enter the Florpus Zim becomes despondent when he finds out that the Almighty Tallest had no intention of coming to Earth.
• Determinator: Continuing his "mission" even after being exiled due to his entire species loathing his very existence, although there's disagreement as to whether he merely ignores their scorn or he really is that stupid.
• Devil in Plain Sight: Or with a Paper-Thin Disguise...
• Didn't Think This Through: One of his main personality traits; Zim's plans often fail because he tends to think precisely one step ahead of his current problem. This is best shown in "Walk For Your Lives", where the explosion of his time stasis field device is slowed down, but will eventually grow to destroy Zim's base and the whole city. Not wanting the Tallest to see an embarrassing screw-up like this, Zim desperately works out a way to get rid of the explosion. His solution? To cancel the stasis field under the assumption that once the field is canceled, the explosion will be gone forever, not factoring in that doing so will annihilate his base and the whole city. He ultimately goes through with it, despite his computer, Dib, and even GIR all telling him that it's an absurdly bad idea.
• Disguised in Drag: At one point in "Walk For Your Lives", he's disguised as a giant old lady.
• Doom Magnet: Thanks to his stupidity, insanity, and lust for violence, he tends to cause wanton destruction everywhere he goes. He's both hated and feared among his own people for this very reason.
• The Dreaded: Hated, ridiculed and feared by his entire race. Not that he notices.
• Enemy Mine: Despite his enmity with Dib, Zim is willing to team up with him on some occasions, such as the time when Tak tries to take over Earth. It doesn't last long, obviously.
• Enfante Terrible: He wasn't even two minutes old when he accidentally caused a massive blackout on Irk that lasted five years and came to be known as "Horrible Painful Overload Day". And then when he was ten, he caused another one that lasted four more years and was called "Horrible Painful Overload Day, Part II".
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: In his case, GIR is the closest thing of a loved one that he has given his behavior toward him. He also has shown slight slivers of affection towards the Roboparents in "Parent Teacher Night".
• Even Evil Has Standards: It's a comparatively minor one, but in Battle Of The Planets he's confused and flabbergasted why the Martians would work their entire species to extinction building a Planet sized ship just because it's "cool."
  • Before mellowing out and experimenting with various hobbies in the Grand Finale of the comic, Zim exploited the "Groundhog Day" Loop of the titular Dookie Loop Horror to kill Dib enough times that he was able to create an entire, bulging scrap book full of his rival's many, many deaths. This was all in good fun apart from one very gristly murder where GIR decapitated Dib and used the rest of his body to make a "people pie", the sight of which was so horrifying to Zim that he never wanted to see it happen again, and the smell of the process was so foul that it briefly overpowered the Chrono-Dumper dung that causes the time loops.
• Evil Is Hammy: Most of Zim's plans come with long tirades that he just loves to inflict on whoever he's forcing to listen.
• Evil Is Petty: Despite being older than every other human on Earth, Zim's greatest rival comes in the form of an 12-year-old child no one even believes. The biggest example is when he put Dib through a Lotus-Eater Machine where he lives a fulfilled life and is adored by everyone...because he threw a muffin at him.
• Evil Laugh: Incredibly good at this. In the show's opening, he is seen laughing maniacally in an Imagine Spot of succeeding in his conquest.
• Evil Virtues: Valor and Loyalty. Despite the numerous obstacles in his way (namely Dib's efforts and his own stupidity), Zim will never ever give up trying to conquer the Earth. He's also incredibly loyal to the Tallest and determined to carry out the mission that they gave him, even if it was a joke of an assignment meant to get him out of their antennae.
• Expressive Mask: His contact lenses change pupil size like real eyes. Somehow.
• Fatal Flaw: He has two — his vanity and unwillingness to abide by common sense. The truth is that Zim is genuinely brilliant and a deadly invader when he applies himself. Unfortunately, he's more than aware of this, which leads him to concocting insane half-plans under the arrogant assumption that they will work without issue. And every time, they blow up in his face. If it weren't for (most) of the human population being stupid and the universe making Dib its chew toy, Zim would have been defeated long ago under normal circumstances.
• Fantastic Racism: To say that he hates humans would be a massive Understatement.
• Faux Affably Evil: The few times Zim teams up with Dib to stop an even worse/more chaotic evil, Zim usually tries to put on a vague facade of politeness but it's still obvious that he utterly hates having to work with the human.
• Failed Attempt at Drama: In the 2017 teaser trailers for Enter the Florpus, he tries to scare the audience with a video message about his return and newfound plans to conquer Earth, only to get interrupted by GIR.
  Zim: (in a deep and ominous voice) People of Earth...did you really think you'd seen the last of me? Don't you know an Invader never stops until their mission is complete? I've been watching you. Waiting. And soon your world will be MINE!
  (GIR giggles)
  Zim: (returns to normal voice, annoyed) No, GIR! I'm being serious!
  GIR: But I like your voice! It's funny!
  Zim: I'm not being funny! I'm being, you know, terrifying and spooky!
  GIR: Oooooh, okay!
  Zim: (resumes deep voice) Soon your world will be... (normal voice) ...Nope! You've ruined it, GIR! Nice going!
  GIR: Awww.
• Galactic Conqueror: As the show's title speaks for itself.
• General Failure: He really is a moron. His stupidity is usually what prevents him from conquering anything at all (if Dib or GIR has no interference). The most common assumption for this is that he carries a defective PAK, which is basically an Irken invader's brain, knowledge and competence. An interview with Richard Horvitz said this is partially because of his blind allegiance to his planet. Horvitz said Zim would tell right away GIR was just trash, but because the Tallest said he was "advanced", Zim instantly believed them.
• Genius Ditz: It can be hard to credit, but he's demonstrated some true cunning on occasion. He's more insane than stupid, but his insanity is what makes him do stupid things in the first place, so it's hard to tell the difference. Word of God has noted that Zim is best described as a genius with horrifically skewed priorities and no common sense.
• Girl Scouts Are Evil: When he's selling Poop candy bars for a school fundraiser to get the mystery prize in "Door to Door".
• Goal in Life: To conquer Earth, enslave all humankind, and impress the Tallests. Due to his stupidity, he's never going to accomplish it.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: He's known for his anger issues.
• Harmless Villain: If it isn't Dib who stops him, it's usually his own stupidity. Gaz herself lampshades it in "Gaz, Taster of Pork" and "Enter the Florpus", where ironically in the latter's case, he's actually proven to be a Not-So-Harmless Villain when he really applies himself.
• Hated by All: Outside of GIR (and even then that's almost only because of his stupidity), nobody likes Invader Zim. This is for a multitude of reasons, such as Zim's utter insanity and incompetence (most characters), Zim trying to take over the world (Dib), Zim ruining their life (Tak), etc. And even though the children defend Zim from Dib's accusations, they still hate the Irken's guts. Even GIR has been shown to hate Zim in "Duty Mode" and his base's computer is very snarky towards him. In addition, his entire race despises him, often mocking Zim behind his back, and the Tallest only made him an Invader so he wouldn't horribly derail their plans for universal conquest. Not that Zim is aware of this contempt, of course. It also helps that, given the nature of the show's setting, it's a rare day when a human character shows anything but contempt towards a stranger, Earthling or not, and the Irkens as a race are composed almost entirely of selfish dicks who are out to conquer the galaxy and gleefully heap abuse upon each other whenever it is most convenient, some of which are even worse than Zim himself.
• Hates Being Touched:
  • In "Mortos Der Soul Stealer", Dib wasn't touching him per se, but holding him down so Mortos could steal his soul. Zim reacted very negatively to it.
  • In "Germs", he really doesn't want to be hugged by GIR, though this could be due to his germophobia.
  • This dialogue in "Bestest Friend":
    Keef: (hugs Zim) I'm so happy!
    Zim: (pushes Keef away) Don't touch me.
• The Heavy: Like all Irken invaders, Zim acts as an agent for the Tallest, being charged with conquering Earth.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With GIR. The two have gone on countless missions together and are the closest things to friends each other has.
• Hidden Depths: When he doesn't have time to let himself swell up in his own ego, he can be quite dangerous and a really skilled opponent. He's very intelligent, just reckless and too loyal to his race for his own good. He also has disturbingly vivid fears: he's very obsessive-compulsive (to the point of breaking down crying when he discovered how filthy his house is) and has very specific fears of being discovered by humans, mutilated, and kept in a dark room for the rest of his life. In addition, despite the militarised conditioning that Irkens go through as soon as they're born, his reaction in "Parent Teacher Night" to remembering the robot arm that first greeted him indicates, if anything, the capability to experience love and further a desire to be loved, and he looks both relieved and downright euphoric to see the Roboparents take him into their arms at the end of the episode.
• Hijacking Cthulhu: Many a plan of Zim's involves harnessing a force greater than himself. Ex. the Wormhole Moose, the Mars-ship, the Star Donkey, the Pants-parasites, the Brain-Eating Parasite, and the Florpus Hole. In most cases it backfires on him...and quite often everyone else.
• His Own Worst Enemy: Having demonstrated his intelligence and genuine competence time and time again, it has been increasingly clear just who is in his way of becoming the greatest Invader of them all: Zim.
• Humanoid Aliens: He has the general shape and proportions of a human child but also has green skin, no ears, a lizard-like tongue, red insect eyes, and antennae. Funnily enough though, everybody on Earth except Dib and Gaz is so stupid that with just contacts and a wig he's able to pass off his green skin and lack of ears as a "skin condition".
• Humans Are Ugly: A firm believer of this. In fact, he sticks with his counter-productive Paper-Thin Disguise because he doesn't want to look too human.
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: Sees them as stupid and revolting, which to be fair, is not entirely inaccurate when it comes to humans in this show. Secretly, though, he's also terrified of humans; one of his recurrent fears is being captured and mutilated by human authorities.
• Hypocrite: He condescendingly pities "poor, deluded Skoodge" for thinking the Tallest still hold him in favor. The irony of this really needs no explanation.
• Hypocritical Humor: (laughs) "Inferior human organs! ...Ow, my squeedlyspooch!"
• I Have Your Wife: Coerces Vortian Prisoner 777 for information by holding his children hostage and threatening to "erase" them.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Deconstructed. While it's hard not to pity Zim at times given how much he goes through trying to fulfill his purpose,with his leaders brushing him off as a defective failure, his sheer devotion to the Irken Empire's genocidal agenda, as well as the fact that he's capable of some truly vile and horrifying deeds, reminds you how much of a monster he is.
• Insane Troll Logic: "My Tallests, a new child attacked me with meat. My conclusion? SHE'S IN LOVE WITH ME!" Amusingly, given that the customary Valentine's gift on Earth in the Invader Zim universe is meat, this might in fact be one of the few times Zim was actually paying attention to the humans.
• Insectoid Aliens: Zim, and all other Irkens, resemble generic humanoid bugs, not helped by the fact that their PAKs contain mechanical spider legs.
• Insufferable Genius: Zim is brilliant with alien technologies and even an effective strategist at times, but he overestimates his own abilities and likes to declare out loud that he's an incredible genius.
• Insufferable Imbecile: He is a selfish, Lethally Stupid jerk whose evil plans often fail due to his own stupidity (as Gaz even points out).
• I Reject Your Reality: Zim's remarkable ego is a great example of this. Any evidence that suggests the Tallest don't like him and that his mission to conquer Earth is a lie meant to get rid of him will go in one ear and out the other. A notable example occurs during Dib's failed attempt at an Enemy Mine in "Gaz, Taster of Pork":
  Zim: Help you!? Why should I help you!?
  Dib: Hey! I helped you when we were transforming into giant balonies!
  Zim: YOU'RE MAKING IT UP!!
• It's All About Me: Zim is absurdly selfish and cares about no one else.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Though he would never admit it, he's occasionally shown to care about GIR.
  • In Battle of the Planets, when GIR was actually being helpful (in his standard crazy state, no less), he said to himself: "Maybe that little robot isn't such a bad evil minion after all."
  • In an unfinished episode, he screamed in sorrow when he thought GIR transformed into ground beef.
  • "And I already promised the moon to GIR."
  • In "Halloween Spectacular Of Spooky Doom", he was worrying if GIR could take on all the "zombies" all by himself.
  • Once Zim gives GIR a lollipop when he cried, though it was mostly to shut him up.
  • When GIR gets the two lost and Zim snaps at GIR, causing him to cry, Zim looks uncomfortable and comments that yelling will get them nowhere which is as close to an apology as Zim might ever get.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Sometimes, sometimes not. The most prominent example is "Dark Harvest", where he gets no repercussions for stealing his classmates' organs to avoid being found out as an alien.
  • In Enter the Florpus despite his actions endangering the Earth, he gets off relatively scot-free and still continuing his plans for world domination. It eases the sting in that, though he's still up to his old tricks, his actions seem to have inadvertently doomed the Almighty Tallest and virtually all of the Irken Empire to the Florpus Hole, a fact that he remains oblivious to. Also, a pug falls on his head from space.
• Kill All Humans: That or enslave them — he changes it from enslaving, ruling, killing, poisoning their food supply and cutting their legs off depending on the episode. The bottom line is that the Earth needs to be ready for the other Irkens to conquer, so the humans need to either be gone or easy to enslave.
• The Kingslayer: An unproduced episode reveals that he is responsible for accidentally killing the two Almighty Tallest, Miyuki and Spork, who came before Red and Purple. His actions in the movie may have lead to the deaths, or Fate Worse than Death, for Red and Purple as well, bringing the number up to 4.
• Lack of Empathy: He has no empathy for anyone unless it's GIR or the Tallest.
• Large Ham: His hamminess is so large that it has its own gravitational pull. He can barely speak what should be a standard, non-hammy phrase or queston without screaming at least part of it and Milking the Giant Cow:
  Zim: Ms. Bitters? I have a MIGHTY NEED!!!!!! ... to use the restroom once again.
• Laughably Evil: Yes, his intentions are to conquer the Earth and he's overall a raving villain, but Zim is still the funniest member of the whole cast by a wide margin, providing a lot of laughs thanks to his utter insanity, absurdly disproportionate ego, bitter sarcasm, and stupefying incompetence.
• Lethally Stupid: He was originally exiled to Foodcourtia after he went on a killing rampage on his own home planet. In the unfinished episode "The Trial", it's revealed that he destroyed several planets by scratching himself. Unfortunately, where it's required for him to actually destroy everything (Earth) he doesn't quite succeed.
• Loners Are Freaks: He's a social outcast at Skool (and in general), but has no interest in cultivating friendships. The one time he attempted to make a friend was solely as a means of avoiding being outed as an alien, and ended just as quickly as it began.
  Zim: Tch... humans and their friendships... Invaders need no one! NO ONE!
• Mad Eye: This is a Jhonen Vasquez production, after all.
• Mad Scientist: He was once a military scientist, but was exiled to food service after accidentally killing the Almighty Tallest. He's still prone to performing unethical experiments in the series proper; often with live test subjects.
• Made of Iron: Probably another good reason the Tallest fear him. He gets burned by toxic rain water, gets his lenses boiled by the sun, takes a brutal beating from a Planet Jacker, gets flayed alive in "Lice", gets grotesquely swollen up by a cosmic eclipse, and gets feasted upon by a brain parasite, among other injuries. He never loses his confidence, and if anything these just seem to encourage him to keep trying.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: In the unproduced episode "The Trial," it's revealed that he has, in fact destroyed more than one planet. By scratching himself.
• Mirror Character: He and Dib share a lot in common. Both of them are looked on as incompetent or crazy by regular members of their respective races due to past incidents. Both of them are capable of being legitimately dangerous in spite of their quirks. Both of them are mocked by their own race for a perceived physical quirk (being small in Zim's case, having a big head for Dib). Both of them are obsessed with proving their worth and success to their peers. This is something Dib even briefly acknowledges in Enter the Florpus during Zim's Despair Event Horizon.
  Dib: You know... my dad doesn't respect what I do, either.
• Mood-Swinger: While he's most known for being a Large Ham, the occasional moments when he's shockingly nonchalant are often just as funny. "Zim Eats Waffles" in particular features him oscillating between his usual diabolical ranting and a more laid-back casualness.
• Most Definitely Not a Villain: He passes himself off as a human and nobody else but Dib and Gaz notice that he doesn't look much like a human.
• The Napoleon: He is from a society that determines rank from height, and is the size of a human child, due to him being hatched prematurely. For comparison, he is roughly the same age (if not older) than The Tallest, but doesn’t even come up to their knees. As a result he's perpetually eager to please his leaders, but being a Too Dumb to Live Genius Ditz he only succeeds in making things worse.
• Neat Freak: In "Germs", he starts to get obsessed with cleanliness due to becoming germophobic to paranoid levels.
• Never My Fault: Thanks to his massive ego, he is utterly incapable of seeing that his plans fail because of his own faults and that everyone in the Irken Empire despises him for his incompetence. A truly hilarious example comes from the series premiere, where he says he made the fires he made in Operation Impending Doom I "better".
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: His efforts to get the Almighty Tallest to notice him in Enter the Florpus ultimately results in most (if not all) of the Irken Armada getting sucked into the titular Florpus, freeing the galaxy (at least temporarily) from their conquest. Zim is completely oblivious to this, of course.
• No Indoor Voice: Zim tends to be pretty shouty most of the time ("You lie! You liiiiiiiiiiiiie!") This trait of his is lampshaded in "Issue #17" of the comics, where Dib tells him that he yells too much, and that he never realized how annoying it was until spending time locked up with him.
• Not Me This Time: One of the comics has him try to infiltrate the local equivalent of the Girl Scouts. Dib bursts in and yells that there's an alien in disguise trying to take over the earth here... and the scout leader rips off her rubber mask and reveals herself. Turns out Zim was only there to steal cookies to bribe GIR with.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain:
  • Several episodes such as "The Wettening" or "Dark Harvest" show that he can be a pretty big threat.
  • This becomes a plot point in Enter the Florpus, where he goads Dib into assisting him in the (improvised) Phase Two of his plan by allowing Dib to bring him to his father's convention, giving him the opportunity to take Professor Membrane's place as the world's leading scientist and trick the children of the world into holding hands wearing recalibrated Membraclets so that he could teleport the Earth straight into the Tallest's path. Gaz herself admits that this is a step up from Zim's usual incompetence and that she was wrong for thinking he'd just mess up his plan on his own.
• Oblivious to Hatred: He is utterly blind to how much his entire species hates him, due to both his insanity and big ego tainting his view of things.
• Odd Friendship: With GIR, his robot sidekick. Zim's a megalomaniacal, egotistical world conqueror while GIR's ditzy, cheerful Cloudcuckoolander, but they seem to get along fine for the most part.
• Older Than They Look: Jhonen Vasquez has stated that Zim is far older than any human on the show and is only treated as a kid due to his height. This only makes his feud with a 12-year-old boy look that much more pathetic.
• Omnicidal Maniac: He even embarked on a destruction spree on his own planet. Either he didn't understand how much devastation he caused or he just doesn't care.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: During a conference call in one episode with The Tallest, Zim has a complete breakdown thanks to his new bout of germaphobia, descending into a gibbering, panicking ball of madness before ending the call abruptly. With his hammy exterior, emotional extremes are nothing new from Zim, but But considering that he's arguably the least sane invader out of the alien race, the sight of him in a full-blown panic attack is enough to concern The Tallest.
  Purple: [after the aforementioned panic episode] ...Did that scare you too?
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Consists of a wig and contact lenses (that apparently are very uncomfortable and can be knocked out just from hitting him in the head) doing nothing about his vibrantly green skin. Which may make you think at first, since Irkens have the technology to make themselves look completely human, but he only picked that one because he thinks he's too attractive to be covered up. He claims he has a skin condition, which is also the reason why he doesn't have ears... The funny part, though, is that given later episodes, Zim is shown to actually put the most work into his disguise compared to other Invaders.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Tricky to place, but Zim does do a lot of damage, intentionally or not. According to the unmade scripts, he single-handedly started a crippling global blackout when he was about four minutes old. And according to that same script, he once seemingly blew up a planet just by standing there while scratching his butt. In fact, he was sent to military research because, in the words of the Tallest Miyuki (the Tallest at the time) "He destroys everything he touches!"
• Pet the Dog:
  • Rather literally, Zim has had a few moments of genuine-seeming kindness directed at GIR, whose disguise consists of a dog.
    Zim: It's over, Tak! The Earth is mine to devastate! ...And I already promised the moon to GIR.
  • Amusingly downplayed in "Tak: The Hideous New Girl". When he's summing up the episode's events to the Tallest at the end, he briefly admits that he couldn't have defeated Tak without the assistance of "the filthy humans" (read: Dib and Gaz). Of course, he immediately goes back on that and claims that he used mind control on them to get their assistance with his plan, but considering how Zim sees all of humanity as only fit for either extermination or being Made a Slave, that's still a pretty noteworthy moment of humility from him.
• Pick on Someone Your Own Size: His rivalry with Dib... although, technically, they are the same size...
• Pintsized Powerhouse: He's absolutely tiny compared to a lot of characters in the series but he's ridiculously destructive. And insane.
• Pragmatic Villainy: He usually will team up to stop a greater threat from destroying the earth, but make no mistake this is because he wants to ravage the planet for himself.
• Psycho for Hire: He prefers Humongous Mecha and his Kill Sat instead of killing and maiming directly, but it's hard to ignore the maniacal glee with which he steals organs or reduces cities to rubble.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He's an adult by Irken standards (the Almighty Tallest are actually his peers in age), but he's also childish enough to have a mutually intense rivalry with a twelve-year-old human boy. Let's just say that it's no wonder he's able to easily convince the skool of being a child school student despite his Paper-Thin Disguise.
• Puppeteer Parasite: His PAK would have been revealed to be one in "Ten Minutes to Doom".
• Really 700 Years Old: Word of God has him "older than any human alive," at any rate.
• Real Men Wear Pink: His uniform is pink and he looks like he's wearing a dress.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: The Tallest sent him to invade Earth (which they didn't know actually existed) simply to keep his incompetence from screwing up the more important plans of Irken conquest.
• The Remnant: By the end of Enter the Florpus, a combination of his shortsightedness, the Tallest's stupidity and the Membrane family's resistance results in the entire Irken fleet becoming trapped inside an interdimensional hellscape, which may have ended Operation Impending Doom II and potentially the Irken Empire itself. Zim himself is totally unaware of this, and continues his effort to conquer the Earth in preparation for the Tallest's arrival. Assuming this isn't handwaved away by Negative Continuity, his mission, which was already a Snipe Hunt to begin with, is now truly of absolutely no consequence.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: In Enter the Florpus, Zim realizes that the Almighty Tallest and Irken Armada will never actually come to Earth. However, Zim thinks that this is a punishment for him forgetting "Phase 2" of his plan and wasting their time earlier, when in reality the Tallest were never going to come to Earth regardless (as they both hate him and Zim is The Exile).
• Sanity Has Advantages: He has proven himself several times to be pretty badass and can be very intelligent. Heck, if he wasn't totally out of his mind, he'd be the best soldier the Irkens could have. As it is, his erratic nature, immaturity, and delusions mean that he's more a threat to the Irkens than to anyone else.
• Secret Identity: On Earth, he has a secret identity through his Paper-Thin Disguise.
• Selective Obliviousness: Due to his massive ego, Zim cannot conceive the idea that his superiors hate him and want nothing to do with him, no matter how plain they make their contempt for him known. Even in Enter the Florpus when Zim discovers that the Irken Armada isn't coming to Earth, he assumes it's because the Tallest are angry at him for failing to think of a Phase 2 of his plan to conquer Earth and not that they were never planning on coming in the first place.
• Screaming Warrior: Mostly averted; Zim attempts this but usually ends up with a high-pitched squeal.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: He screams like a little girl when he's afraid or in pain.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The Manly Man to GIR's Sensitive Guy.
• Sheathe Your Sword: The first issue of the comic has Zim reaping the fruits of a very simple and effective Batman Gambit he set up against Dib. By doing absolutely nothing for a prolonged period of time, he knew that he'd make Dib so paranoid as to what he was plotting that he'd waste all his time and energy trying to seek him out with his surveillance equipment, neglecting his body and turning himself into a fat, noodle-armed impotent who would be incapable of interfering with Zim's real scheme. Enter The Florpus starts with the end-result of him doing this, and he takes advantage of it by switching around people's mail, read newspapers he doesn't have a subscription for, and kick over trash cans.
• Skewed Priorities: invoked Despite his reputation, Zim is in fact a genius with a lifetime of incredible scientific achievement under his belt. The problem is that he's easily distracted and is horrible at prioritizing his goals. Jhonen Vasquez has listed the episode "Megadoomer" as the perfect example of this trait, where, after receiving the most powerful weapon the Irken Armada has ever created, he rationalizes that the best use of the machine would be petty revenge on Dib (rather than attacking a strategic target or fixing the machine's faulty power systems).
• Skin-Tone Disguise: Averted; while his gadgets COULD give him the perfect disguise to appear like a human, Zim is so inept he rejects that option in favour of a "disguise" that retains his green skin. Dib points this out as soon as they meet, yet nobody else ever thinks his skin colour is unusual.
• Slasher Smile: In many of his Ax-Crazy moments, he grins in an unnerving fashion.
• Small Name, Big Ego: He is despised by his species due to the combination of this trope and Too Dumb to Live.
• Smug Snake: His massive ego is what usually prevents him from succeeding, because when he doesn't have time to let his ego have any impact on his decisions, he's actually quite badass (especially prominent in "Hobo 13").
• Snipe Hunt: His mission originally began as one of these, as the Irken Empire wasn't entirely sure there was a planet where Earth was, and he was simply sent there to get rid of him. When he finally reached said planet six months later, the operation "upgraded" into a case of Reassigned to Antarctica.
• The Sociopath: Given that he is part of a race who're obsessed with conquering planets for petty reasons, it's not surprising that he has virtually zero empathy for other people and is willing to hurt people without remorse. Justified still, since he isn't very good at acting out false feelings, however, the humans are too stupid to notice.
• Sole Survivor: As we don't know if Tak or Skoodge are still around, and assuming that the Almighty Tallests got all the Irkens inside the Florpus hole at the end of Enter the Florpus, Zim may be the last survivor of the Irken species.
• Spanner in the Works: Single-handedly ruined Operation Impending Doom I by accidentally devastating the Irken homeworld as a result of being too short to see over the control panel of his Humongous Mecha. He ends up doing the same with even more catastrophic results in Enter the Florpus, where his moving the Earth to be along The Massive's warpath ends up creating the interdimensional Florpus that the entire Irken Armada gets trapped in, not only slowing/stopping Operation Impending Doom II but potentially destroying the entire Irken Empire.
• Spider Limbs: He has spider-like legs emerge from Awesome Backpack.
• Square Race, Round Class: Being an (ex-)invader runs counter to Zim's destructive talents. As Red accurately put it, invaders are supposed to "observe" and sabotage planets rather than annihilate them outright.
• Stop Worshipping Me:
  • In "Attack of the Saucer Morons", he gets discovered and captured by a group of alien-worshipping cultists who proclaim themselves his loving servants. Zim, who finds humans repulsive, wants nothing to do with them and tries to escape their clutches as fast as possible.
  • In Issue 7, he's initially happy to have the rapidly-evolving amoebas worship him. However, they quickly get on his nerves, to the point where he repeatedly tries in vain to get them to leave him alone.
• Stupid Evil: He veers between this and Chaotic Stupid:
  Zim: I put the fires out!
  Tallest: You made them worse!
  Zim: Worse... Or better?
• Sycophantic Servant: He goes to extreme lengths to impress the Tallest.
• Take Over the World: The premise of the show is that he attempts to conquer Earth. Key word being "attempts".
• Temporary Bulk Change: He becomes enormously bloated in "Dark Harvest" as a result of stealing organs from his Skool classmates and eating them.
• Terrified of Germs: In "Germs", he panics when he sees germs on every surface of his house while looking through his germ-finding goggles.
• That Liar Lies: Zim's proclamations of lies, and how they usually bring out his hamminess, is a Running Gag.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: If it's not his personal motto, it ought to be.
• They Would Cut You Up: Zim fears this would happen if he were caught by Earth's natives. Dib explicitly threatens him with it. At one point he's seen vividly imagining his fate, human scientists stuffing him in a jar, dancing around his helpless body, cutting out limbs and eyes and keeping him a dark room for the rest of his life.
• Third-Person Person: "I am Zim, and Zim shall rule!"
• The Starscream: Normally averted completely, since he’s obsessively loyal to the Tallests despite them blatantly not caring about him, but in his Motor Mouth message to thank them for (accidentally) sending him the Megadoomer, he apparently wants to rule the universe himself, though even then he says they “won’t be forgotten”
• Tomato Surprise: After adapting the opening of the comicbook series, the film's plot is kicked off when Zim finds out that the Almighty Tallest have no intention of ever coming to Earth, wrecking Zim's usually unflappable confidence and giving Dib (who has become fat and filthy due to Zim's manipulations) a chance to stage his own comeback.
• Too Clever by Half: Yes, Zim is an Evil Genius with access to advanced technology, but his massive ego, Skewed Priorities, and faulty programming all combine to prevent him from taking over Earth.
• Too Dumb to Live: Unable to learn from his various lethal mistakes... and it doesn't help that he often comes out of them unscathed.
• Took a Level in Badass: While in the series he was typically portrayed as a ridiculous Not-So-Harmless Villain, Zim in Enter the Florpus is portrayed as more of a genuine threat to the entire universe, albeit one who is still quite Laughably Evil and so incompetent that his plan would've completely blown up in his face anyhow.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: In the unproduced episode "The Trial", he is declared a defective by the Control Brains, who sentence him to execution and attempt to erase the data from his PAK (which he needs to live). But his PAK is filled with so much bad data that absorbing it drives them insane and causes them to instead declare him the most incredible Irken ever and grant him ten free minutes of piloting the Massive. The Tallest can do nothing but stand by and weep as Zim gleefully smashes the Massive into everything.
• Twitchy Eye:
  Zim: We cannot fail, Gir. Even as a small Irken smeet my dream was to pass Probing Day like a sloorbeeze passes her young. JIGGLY! And full of juice. (twitch twitch)
• Uncertain Doom: Due to Negative Continuity, many episodes end with Zim potentially dying/revealed to the public. In "The Wettening," we last see him drowning in a toilet. In "Hobo 13," he possibly flies into a sun when The Tallest tamper with his new ship's controls. In "Backseat Drivers From Beyond the Stars," we last see him screaming in pain as his own brain-eating Parasite procceeds to eat his brain. In "Dibship Rising," Tak's Ship throws Zim into space and we don't see him again. And in "Attack of the Saucer Morons," both he and GIR have their true forms revealed to two different groups of alien-worshipping cultists and UFO investigators.
• The Unfettered: Zim will stop at absolutely nothing to achieve his dream, even if it's for petty grudges, such as dropping a giant water-balloon on Earth just to win against Dib in a water fight.
• Undying Loyalty: To the Tallest and the Irken Empire. Unfortunately for them, "loyal soldier" is not equivalent to "competent soldier".
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Played for Laughs in a flashback. The first thing he does upon being born — aka awakened by a Control Brain following his creation in an underground lab — is to affectionately glomp onto the robot.
  Zim: I love you, cold unfeeling robot arm!
• Vague Age: While Zim is short enough to pose as a human child, he also claims that he's been flying ships since before Dib was born. This, combined with Irken biology and their societal views based on height, makes it difficult to place how old Zim actually is. Word of God says that he's an adult by Irken standards, but still leaves how old this actually makes him vague.
• Villain Protagonist: His goal is to conquer the world under the assumption that doing so will assist the Evil Empire that he serves in taking over the galaxy. Outside of this, he's generally violent, destructive, ammoral and cruel, with little in the way of obviously redeeming traits.
• Villains Blend in Better: His disguises are garbage, but he can be rather charismatic and deceptively personable once he has enough information about his targets. In the comics, he uses his newly-acquired knowledge of the alternative art scene pretension and related lingo to create a front for an enormous mechanism to summon the Star Donkey.
• Villainous Breakdown: He suffers this roughly every other episode, flying into bombastic rage and despair when things don't go as he planned, although he gets over it pretty quickly.
  • In the episode "A Room with a Moose" for example, when Dib manages to foil the Irken's diabolical plan to send his classmates into a wormhole, Zim completely loses it and wails "NO! NOOO, THE MOOSE HAS FAILED ME!"
  • This tendency, however, has been averted on the rare occasion: when another one of his plans (involving a robot copy of Dib and a monkey beating up the original), Zim screams "NOOO!!!" for a few seconds, but his anger peters out after a few seconds and he loses interest.
• Villainous BSoD: He suffers a complete breakdown and falls into a depression in Enter the Florpus upon finally realizing the Tallest have no intention of seeing his conquest of Earth. Unfortunately, Dib ends up being the one to give him the motivation and plan needed to renew his efforts.
• Villainous Valor: Whenever he goes up against a bigger, nastier horror (often of his own making) he remains incredibly diligent and is willing to take a beating to overcome any challenge to his mission.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: A one-sided case with GIR. Zim often belittles GIR and displays frustration over the latter's antics, but hangs out with him constantly and displays more tolerance for GIR than he would anyone else. GIR, despite his insanity, is extremely loyal to Zim in return.
• Vocal Evolution:
  • His voice was artificially pitched up in the early episodes, causing it to sound lower as the series goes on.
  • Zim sounds a little hoarser in Enter the Florpus, likely because it's been well over a decade since the show and Horvitz is a fair bit older.
• Weaksauce Weakness: To water. It was supposed to be to polluted water only, but that didn't come across to the writers/animation team/storyboarders. Though, given Earth's state in this setting, one could argue that all water has been polluted.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Though the Tallest are his leaders instead of his fathers (in fact they're apparently around the same age), a lot of Zim's motivation for conquering the Earth comes from a childlike desire to make them proud, not unlike a little kid wanting his parents' recognition.
• Won't Take "Yes" for an Answer:
  • A Running Gag with him is that he'll continually interrupt people trying to tell him something, demanding they tell him about the very thing his interruption is preventing them from saying in the first place.
    "Who are you?"
    "I AM —"
    "Who are you?"
    "I AM —"
    "WHO ARE YOU?"
  • Another is for him to randomly accuse people of lying for no apparent reason.
    Zim: Hey, these [waffles] aren't bad. What's in 'em?
    GIR: There's waffle in 'em!
    Zim: YOU'RE LYING!!
• Worthy Opponent: He admits on one occasion he sees Dib as this.
  Zim: You're one of the only people who can appreciate the amazingness of this plan, so I'm going to let you in on what "it" is...
• Would Hit a Girl: In "Bestest Friend", he tortures Gretchen just off-screen.
• Would Hurt a Child: Considering that he is actually an adult and that he has no issues with trying to kill or harm any children who get in his way, he is an example of this. Sometimes, they don't even need to be in his way. In "Attack of the Saucer Morons," for instance, he deliberately veers his escape ship so that it's heading straight for a baby. Note the look on Zim's face.
• You Don't Look Like You: His Series 2 Palisades toy doesn't have a PAK.

GIR

Voiced by: Rosearik Rikki Simons

"I like waffles!"

Zim's robot sidekick, on Earth disguised as a dog. Supposedly a "SIR" (Standard-Issue Information Retrieval) unit assigned to all invaders, but GIR is an "advanced" model the Tallest specially gave Zim. And by "advanced", we of course mean "moronic," thanks to having a head literally full of garbage.^note To be precise, Tallest Purple's pocket lint. While usually too flighty to be of any consistent help, GIR will now and again go into "Duty Mode," signified by a change of eye-and-panel color from blue to red, and act like a real SIR.

---

• Achievements in Ignorance:
  • Without even trying, he's very good at blending in with humans. In "Attack of the Saucer Morons", he has fun dancing with some girls at a nightclub.
  • In the unproduced episode "The Trial", he successfully conquers Earth while Zim is being held prisoner on the Massive.
  • His very creation is a case of this. He was literally slapped together with random lint and garbage for a "brain"/CPU, with a body made from spare parts and according to Word of God, a defunct frozen yogurt maker. And yet the end result was still a fully functional robot assistant. Even with his insanity, the fact that he can turn on and perform even the most basic functions, all things considered is a miracle.
• Affably Evil: Definitely more amiable compared to Zim.
• Aliens Love Human Food: GIR has a bottomless appetite and will eat almost anything, his favorites being tacos and waffles. "Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom" has him ballooning to a massive size after eating loads of candy stolen from trick-or-treaters.
• Ambiguous Innocence: GIR is, indeed, innocent — it is hard to imagine he even has the mental capacity to understand that there is a difference between right and wrong, much less know what that difference is. GIR often relishes in destruction only seemingly without malice, but an increase in understanding and competence (such as in the episode "GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff") would simply provide the needed motivation to apply that destructive force purposefully. In short, just because he's dumb and innocent doesn't mean he'd be a sweet-tempered do-gooder if left to his own devices.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Nearly anything can distract him—squirrels, piggies, waffles, the Scary Monkey show, whatever.
• Ax-Crazy: He's prone to random acts of violence, such as repeatedly launching a pug into space, eating a baby and baking Dib into a pie.
• Badass Adorable: He's a pretty cute robot taking over the world all by himself in an unfinished episode, and he wasn't in duty mode.
• Bag of Holding: The inside of his head can hold dozens of rubber piggies.
• Berserk Button: Don't make the Taco Man die in front of him, not even if it's fake.
• Beware the Nice Ones: It would be hard to say if he is nice or mean, but he isn't as evil as Zim, and he's too dumb to realize how evil he is... and when he's in Duty Mode...
• Beware the Silly Ones: In one episode, Zim locks GIR into "Duty Mode" (the red-eyed, serious version), and he promptly becomes much more evil and competent than Zim himself, including deciding that Zim is a threat to the mission and needs to be eliminated. Long story short, Zim just barely turns him back to normal in time to prevent a Klingon Promotion.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: We have absolutely no idea why he does anything he does, and if we could look into his thought processes, our brains would a-splode.
• Big Eater: He's very gluttonous, eating lots of waffles and tacos mostly. He also comes off as a messy eater due to how fast he eats.
• Bumbling Sidekick: He is Zim's incompetent lackey.
• Chaotic Stupid: Even more than Zim, due to his utter lack of reasoning capabilities or self-restraint.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • "TAACOOOS!"
  • "Okie dokie!"
  • "Ooooooo..."
• Cheerful Child: He’s very hyperactive and not a lot gets him down for the most part.
• Chick Magnet: He was seen dancing with a bunch of girls at a club, then dropped off at the house hours later by his new friends.
• Children Are Innocent: How "innocent" is highly debatable but GIR essentially has the mind of a small child who doesn't fully comprehend the magnitude of his actions paired with the tools and weaponry of a planet conqueror.
• Cloudcuckoolander: However, Jhonen has gone on record to say that humor involving GIR isn't random as it's all rooted by the fact that the robot's brain is literally junk.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Blue/green = regular GIR. Red = duty mode.
• Cranium Compartment: He can open the top of his head and uses the space within to store items. As his behaviour demonstrates, his CPU doesn't take up much space at all in there.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: His duty mode proves this without a doubt, especially in "GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff". Not to mention that he managed to Take Over the World all on his own in an unfinished episode.
• Cuckoosnarker: During his moments of clarity, GIR can be pretty snarky towards Zim.
  Zim: You now possess superior geographic guidance abilities, GIR.
  GIR: Finally.
• Cuddle Bug: "Aww, somebody needs a hug!"
• Cute, but Cacophonic: GIR is undeniably cuddly looking and has a loud, high pitched scream when he's upset.
• Curtains Match the Window: Well, not quite — his eyes are the same color as the lightbulb on the antenna on the top of his head.
• Death Glare: When delivering his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Zim in duty mode in "GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff".
• Death Seeker: Played for Laughs. For seemingly no reason, GIR has an innate desire to want to explode. At the end of "Plague of Babies", he sounds disappointed that he didn't end up exploding, and when Zim tells him to self-destruct in "Dib's Wonderful Life of Doom", he shouts an excited, "FINALLY!"
• The Ditz: He is amazingly ditzy. He often heads into Cloudcuckoolander territory, depending on the local humidity and/or piggy count.
• The Dragon: SIR units as a whole fulfill this purpose for their masters, and GIR, being Zim's robotic sidekick, fulfills the same role... just with much less effectiveness than the standard model. When Minimoose comes aboard, he and GIR share the role.
• Dumbass Has a Point: More often than you would expect. It's not uncommon for him to pick up the Smart Ball when no one else is around to be Zim's Straight Man.
  • When Zim gets freaked out about a baby spotting them^note In fairness, it was actually an alien that looks like a human baby., GIR says this:
    GIR: Dib's seen us before. And he knows where we live.
  • He gets another moment in "Walk For Your Lives." When Zim decides to cancel out the stasis field slowing down a city-busting explosion, not taking into account that said explosion will still annihilate his base and the entire city, GIR of all people insists to Zim that going through with this plan is not a good idea.
  • In the movie, Zim tries to pull a You Didn't See That, only for GIR to say "YES THEY DID."
    Zim: Now this is what I like to see, GIR! Pathetic human scum fleeing in terror at the sight of ZIIIIM!
    GIR: Nobody even lookin' at you!
• Dumb Is Good: invokedSubverted; GIR's impulsive stupidity leaves him with little regard for others' safety, and he causes destruction for entertainment on a whim. Note that portraying him as "good" was never the intent, but the fandom picked it up and ran with it. GIR is often misconstrued as a harmless or even compassionate character rather than a merely stupid one. "GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff" was in part a measure dedicated to correcting that; without his mental issues distracting him, it turns out he's naturally as cold and evil as any other SIR unit.
• Easter Egg: The infamous "Bloody Gir" (an image of GIR in duty mode and covered in blood), hidden as a Take That! against the network for not allowing the image into a scene.
• Eating Optional: Being a robot, GIR doesn't need to eat, but he does anyway out of enjoyment of Earth food.
• Eating Machine: He loves to eat, mainly waffles and tacos. And burritos... and chicken... and pretty much everything else.
• Eccentric A.I.: It's been confirmed that his brain is nothing but junk, and this shows in his Non Sequiturs and general idiocy that often causes Zim's plans to fail.
• Extreme Omnivore:
  • To name a few... A live chicken, tacos, burritos, taquitos, cupcakes, waffles made outta peanuts and soap, a fish (or tried to), pizza, Acne Blast acne cream, puppies (maybe)...
  • In the first issue of the comic, GIR claims to have eaten a baby. This joke is repeated verbatim in Enter the Florpus.
    GIR: I ate a baby there!
    Zim: He did.
• Floating Limbs: His metal legs. Averted in the toys, where his legs are attached to his body.
• The Gadfly: The unfinished episode "Mopiness of Doom" sees GIR stash burgers in the ceiling with the intent of annoying Zim, and he's disappointed when Zim doesn't yell at him.
• The Glomp: He loves anything cute and especially clings to Zim more than once.
• Genius Loci: In "Invasion of the Idiot Dog Brain", his brain is accidentally uploaded into the central hub of Zim's house, allowing him to control it and eventually turn it into a Humongous Mecha.
• Hanlon's Razor: Well, he actually never has an malicious intent whenever he does help Zim, but in duty mode...oh boy, is this trope ever averted.
• Head Pet: He rides on Zim's head in a few episodes such as "Battle of the Planets" and "Attack of the Saucer Morons". In "Tak, the Hideous New Girl", he uses Dib's head instead.
• Heh Heh, You Said "X":
  Zim: I'm going to attempt to lock you into duty mode with this behavioral modulator.
  (GIR giggles)
  Zim: What?
  GIR: Doody.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Zim. The two have gone on countless missions together and are the closest things to friends each other has.
• Hidden Depths: The sentence "Do anything is real?" can be seen among his childish scribbles along the walls of Zim's house in Enter the Florpus, implying that he possesses an understanding of existentialism that we otherwise get no insight into.
• Hidden Disdain Reveal: While in duty mode, GIR eventually decides that Zim has to die for the sake of the mission. When Zim protests and says that GIR used to be his servant, GIR has this to say.
  GIR: Yes. I didn't like it.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: In duty mode. Unfortunately for Zim, that usually only lasts for a few seconds. Although non-duty mode GIR has moments of surprising clarity that Zim repeatedly fails to pay any heed, like in "Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy". The best example of this would be the time he tried to point out to Zim that speeding up a slowed down explosion (It Makes Sense in Context) would be a bad thing.
• Keet: His electronic robot voice coupled with his bizarre enthusiasm for everything makes him a very notable example.
• Klingons Love Shakespeare: He loves watching human TV programs, especially the Scary Monkey show. This causes some trouble in "Parent-Teacher Night" when Zim puts him in charge of making sure the Roboparents absorb information from a videotape of human parents' behavior towards their children, but GIR changes the channel to a bunch of random shows and commercials instead. Hilarity Ensues.
• Lethal Chef: In "Zim Eats Waffles", he makes waffles and begs Zim to eat them. Zim enjoys them until GIR reveals that the waffles contain peanuts and soap.
  Zim: GIR, your waffles have sickened me. Fetch me the bucket!
• Lethally Stupid: Especially in "Invasion of The Idiot Dog Brain".
• The Millstone: If it isn't Zim himself or Dib who foil his plans, it's usually Gir who does.
• Minion with an F in Evil: Sometimes; GIR is legitimately too stupid to grasp morality and he holds no malice toward Dib (or anyone, usually) helping him on occasion. However ignorance of the ramifications doesn't stop GIR from engaging in mayhem, violence, or destruction.
• Morality Pet: Literally. GIR is one of the very few things Zim cares for beyond himself. Though Zim would never admit it, he's displayed affection for the little robot and several of his Pet the Dog moments involve GIR in some way.
• Nominal Villain: Unless he "goes crazy and stuff". Usually he's too interested in snacking or television to do anything actually evil, and the few times he's lucid enough to act like the killer robot he was intended to be, they don't last long enough for him to accomplish anything before going back to his relatively harmless insanity.
• Not Afraid to Die: His reactions to impending doom can be downright gleeful, and he's even expressed disappointment at avoiding it. Doesn't quite cross the line into Death Seeker territory, though.
  GIR: Aww. I wanted to explode.
• Not So Harmless: Jhonen has gone so far as to describe him as an "amoral baby monster" who has a tenuous grasp on reality due to how he was made.
• Ocular Gushers: Whenever he cries, expect bigass streams of tears to come flowing from his eyes.
  "WHYYYYYY?! WHY, MY PIGGY?! I LOVEDED YOU PIGGY! I LOVEDED YOU!"
• Odd Friendship: With Zim, his leader and boss. Zim's a megalomaniacal, egotistical world conqueror while GIR's a ditzy, cheerful Cloudcuckoolander, but they seem to get along fine for the most part.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: His dog disguise isn't much better than Zim's own "human" disguise, up to and including the prominent zipper.
• Person of Mass Destruction: In Invasion of the Idiot Dog Brain.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: In duty mode, he can put up an impressive fight in spite of his small size. Occasionally in his "normal" mode as well. In "Megadoomer" he was able to carry a contact five times his size without any troubled effort.
• Plucky Comic Relief: While most of the cast is comedic to some extent, GIR's Cloudcuckoolander tendencies, Blue-and-Orange Morality and endless supply of non-sequiturs land him squarely in this category.
• Punch-Clock Villain: He only does what Zim says because he is his servant. Not that he often does what is asked of him, anyway.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: For some reason, he enjoys eating food, watching TV, consistently demonstrates emotions, and is even able to cry. And then, of course, there's the fact that his constantly malfunctioning A.I seems to be suffering from schizoaffective disorder.
• Robot Kid: Although not intended as such in-universe, GIR's personality strongly resembles that of a hyperactive small child.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The Sensitive Guy to Zim's Manly Man.
• Series Mascot: Outside the show, GIR is very recognizable due to the large amount of merchandise produced featuring him in his dog suit.
• Servile Snarker: He's not always making remarks at Zim's expense, but can be this during his moments of clarity. Not to mention when he's in duty mode.
• Stepford Smiler: If one is to take Word of God in the commentary of "Bestest Friends" literally, "GIR hates life and he wants to die", which would make him Type A. His glee at being ordered to self-destruct in "Dib's Wonderful Life Of Doom" seems to back this up, as does his admission in "GIR Goes Crazy And Stuff" that he despised being Zim's servant even when he was his normal self. According to his voice actor, GIR's usual behavior is the result of him being a broken unit and "duty mode" GIR is the real deal trapped in an And I Must Scream scenario.
• Stylistic Suck: When Zim enters GIR's mind during the comic's Virooz arc, it greatly resembles the Grid from TRON, but it's a deranged and largely broken version of it.
• Suicide as Comedy: In "Dib's Wonderful Life of Doom", GIR shrieks a delighted "FINALLY!" upon being ordered to self-destruct. An early draft of the script made it more explicit by having GIR shout "SWEET RELEASE!" instead.
• Talkative Loon: A lot of what he says are complete non sequiturs to show just how bonkers and ditzy he is.
  "OOH! LEPRECHAUNS!"
• Tantrum Throwing: Having the mind of a small child, GIR will sometimes do this when Zim does something he doesn't want. When Zim returned a DVD to the rental store, GIR ran around in circles screaming and crying for about five seconds before randomly falling asleep on the living room floor.
• Temporary Bulk Change: The metal he's made of is apparently very flexible because he grew to a massive size in "Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom" from eating the candy stolen from a bunch of trick-or-treaters.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: In "GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff", we get a brief glimpse into his thought process when he looks at some cows in a field and sees them as sausages in top hats and tuxedos, saying, "Dance with us, GIR! Dance with us into oblivion!"
• Too Dumb to Fool: Possibly why Tak's Mind Control doesn't work on him.
• Trademark Favorite Food: He loves tacos, pizza and waffles.
• Transformation Sequence: The first time he assumes dog form, he leaps into the air, poses amid a field of spinning bones, lets out a slow howl, and lands, picking up his costume and zipping it on snugly.
• Undying Loyalty: For all the time he spends goofing off, he still sticks by Zim the way a loyal pet does for his owner. Even when not in Duty Mode, he's come to Zim's rescue on a few occasions.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: A one-sided case with Zim. Zim often belittles GIR and displays frustration over the latter's antics, but hangs out with him constantly and displays more tolerance for GIR than he would anyone else. GIR, despite his insanity, is extremely loyal to Zim in return.
• Wild Card: There's no way of knowing what he'll end up doing in any given circumstances, making him serve as a regular Spanner in the Works for Zim's plans.
• Wolverine Publicity: Good god. If we had a dollar for every individual piece of merchandise that featured GIR in his dog suit, we'd have enough money to bribe Nickelodeon into uncanceling Invader Zim.
• You Don't Look Like You: In the toys that feature Robot!GIR, his legs are connected to his torso instead of floating apart from it, for obvious reasons.

Duty Mode GIR

When in "duty mode", GIR switches to a completely different personality: highly intelligent, calculating, and efficient, even more so than Zim.

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: While GIR's usual level of helpfulness is questionable at best, when Zim temporarily locks him into hyper-competent Duty Mode, GIR decides that Zim himself is a threat to the mission and decides to take over.
• And I Must Scream: According to Rikki Simons, there is a perfectly competent "inner-GIR" desperately wanting to fix the outer "broken GIR" in order to get out and/or gain control of himself.
• Ax-Crazy: In duty mode, he takes his invasion job very seriously and will not hesitate to do away with anyone who serves as an impediment toward the Irken cause.
• Character Catchphrase: "Yes, sir!" or, "Yes, my master!"
• Cute and Psycho: In "GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff", this adorable robot becomes psychotic.
• A Day in the Limelight: Most episodes only have him show up for a few seconds, but his biggest role is in "GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff".
• Evil Sounds Deep: His voice noticeably deepens, which is also the state where he is at his most transparently evil.
• Flat Joy: This line in "GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff":
  Duty!GIR: Blend in with the indigenous life, analyze their weaknesses, prepare the planet for the coming badness. Yay.
• Gone Horribly Right: In "GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff", Zim gets tired of GIR's incompetence screwing up his evil plans and uses a behavioral modulator to lock him into duty mode, keeping him focused exclusively on the mission. GIR becomes focused and competent, indeed...so focused that he becomes more competent than Zim, and then concludes that Zim's incompetence is a threat to the mission and decides to "terminate" him.
• Killer Robot: In this mode, he becomes psychotic and violent.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Delivers one to Zim in "GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff".
  GIR: You are no commander! You are a threat to the mission! Your methods are stupid! Your progress has been stupid! Your intelligence is stupid! For the sake of the mission, you must be terminated!
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: This GIR has glowing red eyes and is much more dangerous than his normal self, since he has a completely functioning brain and is dedicated to completing his mission of taking over Earth.
• Robotic Psychopath: GIR is one of the few cases where A.I. Is a Crapshoot is a good thing. In just the ditzy sense, he is always this, but in the Ax-Crazy sense he's this in duty mode. Zim learnt this the hard way when he locked him into duty mode...
• The Starscream: In GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff, a newly hyper-competent GIR decides that Zim's stupidity is a threat to their mission and attempts to correct the problem by terminating his master. Especially since the episode was made in attempt to show fans that he isn't supposed to be good-natured.
• Super-Persistent Predator: When he decides Zim is a threat to the mission, he'll stop at nothing to hunt him down and kill him. He's only stopped by being turned back into his normal goofy self.
• Superpowered Evil Side: GIR's Duty Mode briefly becomes this when Zim locks him into it.
• Twitchy Eye: When locked into duty mode permanently, and Zim leaves the room, you can clearly see his twitching.

Minimoose

Voiced by: Jhonen Vasquez

"Nyaaa!"

A floating, purple, noseless moose who's Zim's second sidekick. Originally envisioned as Zim's ultimate tool of destruction, whom he created to replace GIR, since the series was cancelled before his debut episode could be finished, he was instead simply retconned as being with Zim "the entire time." Minimoose's actual power is finally showcased in Enter the Florpus where he ends up being crucial to Zim's evil plan.

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• Ascended Extra: He only appeared in one episode of the original series, but gains greater prominence in Enter the Florpus, where he gets to show off how powerful he truly is. He also made numerous appearances in the comics.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Despite being a floating moose creature, it's also a weapon of mass destruction that almost destroyed the entire Earth as part of Zim's plan in Enter the Florpus. Issue 50 of the comic also implies Minimoose killed someone with a hammer.
• Co-Dragons: With GIR as Zim's henchmen.
• Easily Forgiven: In Enter the Florpus, Zim blames Minimoose for his plan's failure. After a short squeak, Zim just laughs it off and says he can't stay mad at him.
• Intelligible Unintelligible: Even though Minimoose only articulates in squeaks, Zim and others are able to understand him quite clearly.
• Last Episode, New Character: Minimoose was introduced in the final episode of the show The Most Horrible X-mas Ever. He was originally intended to be introduced in the episode Nubs of Doom, which would show his actual origins, but after Nickelodeon cancelled the show, they only allowed the animation team the choice to finish one episode and they went with the Christmas special.
• MacGuffin Super-Person: Minimoose is the only being in the known universe with the ability to harness enough cosmic energy to teleport Earth through schmillions of miles through space into the direct path of the Tallests' flagship. This also means getting Minimoose away from Zim is the only way Dib, Gaz and Professor Membrane can teleport Earth back before it's destroyed by the Florpus Hole.
• Puzzle Boss: The most literal example ever, since activating him to save the day basically involved solving a moose-shaped Rubik's Cube.
• Psychic Powers: He's always levitating and displays some telekinetic powers in Enter the Florpus.
• Remember the New Guy?: Lampshaded and Played for Laughs. When someone Zim's abducted asks what Minimoose is, Zim just introduces him as Minimoose and says he's been there "the entire time". The crew was originally going to go a step further and crudely insert Minimoose into scenes from earlier episodes but they didn't have enough time.
  Zim: Oh, that's Minimoose, my other sidekick! Yep. Been with me the whole time.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: It may be a weapon of mass destruction, but it's an adorable one!
• Team Pet: More-or-less serves as this for Zim, and yet he still manages to be more useful than GIR.

Roboparents

Voiced by: Mo Collins (Robomom), Michael McDonald (Robodad)

"Welcome home, son!"

Two poorly-made robot decoys that pose as Zim's "parents" in order to further his disguise as a human child.

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• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Their programming is terrible and causes them to malfunction constantly, doing all manner of bizarre things. Luckily for Zim, he can get away with it because nobody in-universe is smart enough to notice that they're not humans. The series bible actually semi-justifies this by saying that their sole function is to be seen for a few seconds from a distance when they greet Zim when he arrives home, and aren't programmed to be capable of doing much else.
• Anime Hair: Robomom has an odd hairstyle that vaguely resembles the wig Zim wears in his human disguise.
• Ax-Crazy: Robomom sometimes has random, sudden and violent outbursts, such as repeatedly poking a woman in the face until she cries or holding another woman down and forcibly scrubbing her mouth with a toothbrush.
• The Cameo: They appear briefly in Enter the Florpus.
• A Day in the Limelight: "Parent Teacher Night" is the closest to this during the series proper. The cancelled episode "Roboparents Gone Wild!" would have also been one for them.
• Large Ham: Robodad hams it up in "Parent Teacher Night".
  Robodad: (after his arm pops off) That was my squeezing arm! THEY TOOK MY SQUEEZING ARM! WHY MY SQUEEZING ARM??? (screams)
• Lethal Chef: Robomom's idea of "dinner" is to dump a sack of flour on Zim's head.
• Noisy Robots: They can be heard whirring whenever they move.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: Parodied. Despite them having facial stitches, metal claw-like arms, and wheels for feet, no one in-universe can tell that they're not human. Even when Robodad's arm falls off and starts giving off electric sparks, Zim is able to explain it away by saying, "My dad lost his arm in, uh...the war!"
• Rummage Sale Reject: While Robodad dresses normally, Robomom wears a pink ballerina tutu with overalls and yellow rubber gloves, probably because Zim doesn't care enough to learn how humans usually dress.
• Standard '50s Father: Robodad is a riff on this trope, complete with glasses and smoking pipe.

Computer

"PROCESSING, PROCESSSING!!"

Voiced by: Jhonen Vasquez

"Something is happening at the front door. Something... horrible!"

The Artificial Intelligence that runs Zim's base. Thoroughly sarcastic and perpetually bored with having to serve his master's whims, and was once possessed by GIR for several months.

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• Brief Accent Imitation: It briefly puts on a British accent in Enter the Florpus when it's sassing back to Zim and pretending to sound like a butler.
• Deadpan Snarker: Quite possibly the most sarcastic character in the entire franchise.
• Even Evil Has Standards: As shown in its above quote, it found the Roboparents' rampage during "Backseat Drivers From Beyond the Stars" to be horrifying.
• The Evil Genius: It's typically the one to actually conduct necessary experiments involving Zim's mission, and also has Super-Intelligence by virtue of being a highly advanced supercomputer.
• Faux Affably Evil: It can put on more of a polite facade than Zim can, but is still just as dedicated to the extermination/enslavement of mankind.
• Genius Loci: An insanely advanced AI that runs Zim's Elaborate Underground Base.
• Large Ham: Often prone to Suddenly Shouting when doing mundane tasks.
• Manchild: Childishly shouts back "I DON'T WANT TO!" when Zim asks it to laugh with him during his Evil Laugh.
• Mission Control: Typically serves as this for Zim when he's engaging in certain tasks that take him far away from his base.
  • Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: The Computer is also deeply sarcastic and sometimes directly disobeys Zim's orders out of sheer apathy.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: It's stated several times that the Computer AI and Zim's base as a whole are very impressive when compared to the rest of Earth, but they're actually super-outdated by Irken standards, to the point where in Issue 39 of the comic, Tak's Ship and not Zim's base is described as being the most advanced piece of technology on the entire planet.
• Only Sane Man: Generally stands out as the most rational member of Zim's crew. It, Dib, and even GIR are the ones to point out how thoroughly idiotic Zim's solution to the slowed-down explosion in "Walk For Your Lives" is.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: Parodied. Despite being a bodiless AI, it's highly emotional and even coughs at one point (much to Zim's own confusion).
• Servile Snarker: While it loyally serves Zim, it often showcases a rather dry wit and snarks back at his more insane orders.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In both the comics and Enter the Florpus, the Computer is considerably more caustic and bitingly sarcastic towards its master than it was in the TV series.
• With Catlike Tread: Played for Laughs in Enter the Florpus, with it gaining the necessary power to figure out The Massive's flight path by violently shooting cables into any power source in the surrounding neighborhood, draining power from the whole city while screaming "SNEAKING!" at the top of its nonexistent lungs.

Clembrane

Voiced by: Jhonen Vasquez

Debuting in Enter the Florpus, Clembrane is a failed clone of Professor Membrane created by Zim in the past as part of an aborted plan to swap him out with the real Membrane and have him ground Dib forever. Zim gave up on him, not because the clone obviously looks, sounds and acts absolutely nothing like the real Professor Membrane, but because the clone couldn't make pudding just the way Dib likes... even though Dib doesn't even like pudding. Nevertheless, Zim does find a use for Clembrane in his plots eventually.

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• Anti-Villain: He does Zim's bidding but not out of malice. He really is convinced that he's the real Professor Membrane and that Dib and Gaz are his beloved children. Him essentially keeping them under house arrest is mostly so he can spend time with them.
• Berserk Button: More out of distraught than outright anger, but Dib insisting that he's not his dad will cause him to scream at the top of his lungs and thrash around.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Introduced as a minor gag early into the movie, but becomes a major presence in it later on.
• Clone Angst: Averted. Though he's a clone, he's convinced that he's the real Professor Membrane and is completely content with his lot in life. He even seemingly joins the Membrane household at the end of Enter the Florpus, still oblivious to the fact that he's a clone yet content with the "imposter" Professor Membrane living with him and "his" kids.
• Clone Degeneration: A deformed clone of Membrane who is clearly... out there.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: See Implacable Man. Plus, during the climax, he's actually able to knock out Membrane, who up until that moment had been a One-Man Army and his Heel–Face Turn is what marks Zim's defeat.
• Easy Impersonation: Even though Zim designed him to be a clone of Professor Membrane, Clembrane just looks like some kind of fish monster just wearing his clothes. Absolutely nobody mistakes the two of them, with only Zim, being Zim, believing the two look like a perfect match. Dib and Gaz only go along with the ruse because Clembrane throws destructive temper tantrums when they say he's not their dad.
• Gone Horribly Right: Zim wanted a clone of Professor Membrane that he could use against Dib. He failed in matching the clone to the real Membrane in almost every capacity except for one. Clembrane shares Membrane's love for "his" children.
• Heel–Face Turn: Though he only barely qualifies as a villain, he still turns on Zim at the end of Enter the Florpus and hands Minimoose over to Professor Membrane so he can use it to save the Earth from the Florpus.
• Implacable Man: Despite looking like some deformed fishman, his bizarre thought processes, and obsession with pudding, Clembrane is scarily competent at preventing Dib and Gaz from escaping the Membrane household. Gaz tells Dib she tried every way possible to get out only for him to stop her at every turn, and given what Gaz has shown herself to be capable of, it's surprisingly impressive.
• Lethal Chef: Clembrane is obsessed with serving Dib and Gaz pudding at every opportunity, but apparently Zim wasn't understating it when he said the clone was incapable of making pudding just the way Dib liked (even though Dib doesn't even like pudding). According to Gaz, it's the worst tasting pudding in the world. Though, as part of convincing Clembrane to side with her family, she lies and tells him it's the finest pudding she's ever tasted.
• Monster Roommate: At the end of Enter the Florpus, Dib questions if Clembrane just lives with the Membrane family now. Apparently the answer is "yes", even if the real Professor Membrane remains confused about the situation.
• My Beloved Smother: A male version. He's convinced he's the real Professor Membrane and that Dib and Gaz are his actual children and acts very overbearing towards them, smothering them and forcing them to spend time with him.
• Non-Mammalian Hair: He has a hairstyle that mimics Professor Membrane's, despite looking like some sort of fish monster.
• Portmanteau: Gaz dubs him Clembrane as a shortening of "Clone Membrane."
• Turned Against Their Masters: Though in this case, since his master is Zim and turning against him saves the Earth, it all works out pretty well.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Pudding! Granted, he doesn't seem to like eating it so much as he likes making sure Dib and Gaz eat it at every meal.

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