Invader Zim / Tropes N to S

Invader Zim Trope Examples
A - C | D - F | G - M | N - S | T - Z

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N

• Negative Continuity:
  • "Attack of the Saucer Morons" has not one, but two fairly-large groups of humans discover ZIM's true identity. There's also the time ZIM and Dib got turned into baloney, apparently permanently.
  • ZIM never returns Earth to its proper place at the end of "Planet Jackers", plus the moon falls onto it.
  • The same goes for the ending of "Hobo 13", where ZIM is sent to the sun on a ship with locked controls by the Tallest. We never know how he managed to get out of that situation either.
  • "Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy" ends with ZIM's brain replaced by a rubber pig.
  • "Backseat Drivers from Beyond The Stars" ends with Zim getting his brains eaten by a parasite.
• New Media Are Evil:
  • Inverted with Professor Membrane, who believes the reverse.
    Prof. Membrane: Video games develop hand-eye coordination, and make children into better human beings.
  • Possibly played straight with Gaz, who has freaked out every character but GIR and Membrane.
• "Nighthawks" Shot: The setting at the start of one episodes is not dissimilar to Edward Hopper's painting called Nighthawks.
• Nightmarish Factory: The skool's boiler room. Surprisingly though, it has plenty of guard rails, averting No OSHA Compliance.
• Night of the Living Mooks: Spoofed in "FBI Warning Of Doom" has the villain of the week try to kill ZIM with zombies. Except that the zombies just sort of wander about uselessly and run into things. As it turns out, a mindless corpse that just sort of shambles towards people trying to bite them isn't exactly a huge threat.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot:
  • The "Ninja Ghost" Dib claimed to see in his toilet. The giant, flesh-eating, demon squid. The giant, flesh-eating, demon squid's cyborg demon minions. And so much more.
  • When trying to come up with a name for their resistance movement, one of the suggestions for the Resisty's name was "The Pirate Monkeys."
    "Issa awesome name!"
• Nobody Can Die:
  • Executive Meddling forced a number of changes in this department, although some deaths did manage to make it past the radar.
  • The most humorous example of this is the mutated hamster episode, which ended with a still frame saying that nobody died. If you listen to the commentary of that episode Jhonen and the other cast members off-handedly mention "Oh, he's/she's dead" and completely ignore the still frame.
• No Ending: As mentioned under Negative Continuity, a lot of episodes just end with no resolution to the conflict of the episode.
• No Full Name Given: Dib and Gaz do not seem to have a last name (ZIM's holographic Meekrob refer to Dib as "Dib... whatever-your-last-name-is"). A Nick.com e-card for the show claimed that Membrane's first name was Professor, but Jhonen (and the original flash version of official website) says that, in fact, Membrane is the professor's first name and his last name is a mystery like so many other things about him. Despite this, it's finally confirmed in the comics that "Membrane" is the family name.
• No Indoor Voice: ZIM basically speaks in screams. Richard Steven Horvitz was forced to record on alternating days so he wouldn't permanently damage his voice.
  ZIM: Miss Bitters, I have a MIGHTY NEED to use the restroom once again.
  • Also, Screamy, a Skool student from the unfinished episode "10 Minutes to Doom." To the point where his head explodes.
  Screamy: HI DIB! HOW YA DOIN'?.
• Noodle Implements: The final tier of ZIM's test to see who is most fit to be his friend involves a toy taxi and a stuffed beaver. Whatever happened, it took half an hour and left the other participants barely conscious.
• Noodle Incident: Several, especially concerning Dib's past:
  Professor Membrane: Son, there better not be any walking dead up there!
  Dib: It's nothing to worry about, dad! And I said I was sorry about that!
  
  Citizen: "Hey, you're Dib, aren't you? Tell me, did you ever get that ninja ghost out of your toilet?"
  Dib: "Yes, no thanks to you!"
  • Then there was this little gem in "The Nightmare Begins":
    The Letter M: Yeah, what's wrong with you? All you talk about is aliens and ghosts and seeing bigfoot in your garage!
    Dib: He was using the belt sander...
  • Don't forget whatever gave the Mysterious Mysteries host his scar. Honestly, it's probably safe to say that Dib's entire life is one big Noodle Incident.
  • ZIM's actions during Operation Impending Doom 1 would have been one of these if not for a very revealing flashback.
  • Also, whatever changed the way Valentine's Day is celebrated to include meat instead of cards and candy.
  • Then there's what ever it was that happened to the previous guidance counselor...
  • The beginning of "Tak the Hideous New Girl Part 2", where Zim destroys a mysterious meaty monster who he has clearly been fighting, and casually remarks: "What a horrible adventure with that ham demon".
  • In "Voting of the Doomed", Miss Bitters catches Dib shoving half of a phone into Willy's ear and rebukes him in a way suggesting that this isn't the first time Dib jammed something in a classmate's ear.
• Not Me This Time: In "Planet Jackers", ZIM initially thinks GIR is responsible for screwing up his telescope, but this turns out to not be the case.
  ZIM: Something is broken, and it's not your fault?
  GIR: I know. I'm scared too!
• Not Worth Killing: The Irken empire have no desire to conquer Earth. They consider it a remote dump, the climate is horrible, and the natives are mostly morons. Only two rogue invaders are obsessed with claiming it for the Tallest. Tak (who was driven to insanity), and Zim (who has always been insane). The Tallest don't acknowledge them, and as long as Zim occupies the planet in exile, it makes the world even less desirable to the alien race.
• Note to Self: Seen in "Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy".
• The Not-So-Harmless Punishment: "Gaz, Taster of Pork" ends with one. And, of course, the "Room With a Moose."

O

• Oblivious Younger Sibling: Sort of — Gaz isn't oblivious, she just doesn't care. See above.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Parodied in "GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff".
  Squid Man: I want to thank you. That was quite an adventure! The car wreck... the library fight... and the galactic space battle that happened on the way to this beach.
  Zim: Yes, yes, very nice. Now into the ocean where you can tell no one of these things.
  • Also in "Gaz Taster of Pork", Dib and Gaz are trapped by the police but in the next scene they are seen in Beaver suits exiting a car.
  Dib: Woo! What an incredible and daring escape! That was amazing!
  Gaz: I liked the part where the giant robot squid launched missiles at us.
• Old Media Are Evil: ZIM despises television, which is constantly portrayed as garbage. Commercials in particular.
• Ominous Adversarial Amusement: When Zim breaks up with Tak, she starts laughing uproariously before she reveals her Irken appearance.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Meats of Evil, "Bolognius Maximus".
• One-Man Army: Apparently skilled-enough and well-equipped Irken Invaders are capable of conquering the planet by themselves, though it seems it's mostly a case of leaving it up to their technology to do it once they enter the planet.
  • Hell, a single functional SIR unit seemed pretty capable of conquering the planet, as shown during the episode where GIR gets (temporarily) repaired, and with Tak's functioning SIR unit.
• One-Product Planet: Foodcourtia, the food court planet, Callnowia, the mail-order planet with Conveyor Belt Planet for shipping, Blorch, which is now the parking structure planet... the Irken love doing this.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Drives the plot of both "Planet Jackers" and "Tak, the Hideous New Girl," as ZIM won't tolerate an attempted takeover/destruction of Earth from anyone else. Justified in that Zim was the one assigned to Earth, not Tak; and in the case of "Planet Jackers", Irken invaders don't destroy planets, but prepare them to be terraformed for reasons unstated. The Planet Jackers wanted it for their own gain.
  ZIM: The Earth is mine to devastate! And I already promised the moon to GIR.
• Only Sane Man:
  • Dib. Even moreso than Gaz, who's content in just letting ZIM screw himself over.
  • Gaz gets antsy if it involves video games...
  • On the Irken side, Tallest Red.
  • Zim gets to be this in "Abducted", after being abducted by what may be the only alien species dumber than the Plutonians.
  • The female doctor who is the only person besides Dib that can tell Chickenfoot is simply a guy stuck in a suit.
• Organ Autonomy: Arm-control nerve.
  "Arm-control nerve?"
  "Arm control nerve."
• Organ Theft: "Dark Harvest".
• Outrun the Fireball: Or "Walk for Your Lives", as the case may be.
• Overly Long Gag:
  • The Doom Song, again.
  • The dodgeball fight in "Vindicated".

P

• Painting the Medium:
  • GIR eats the floating splitscreen for the snowman in "The Most Horrible X-mas Ever".
  • In the original storyboards for "Backseat Drivers from Beyond the Stars" (which can be seen on the DVD), one of the scenes had Tallest Purple licking donut crumbs off your TV screen.
  • Zim wishes you a Merry Christmas at the end of "The Most Horrible X-mas Ever."
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Almost every single one.
  • Zim's human disguise only consists of a wig and a pair of contact lenses.
    • There's also his secondary disguise from "The Girl Who Cried Gnome" and "The Mose Horrible X-Mas Ever", which has his undisguised face peeking out through the mouth of the costume. Hilariously, at the end of "Girl who Cried Gnome", an artist's rendition of the "hero who saved the little girl" shows that they saw through the disguise, but still thought he was human as the depiction shows a normal human face peeking out of the costume's mouth.
  • GIR's dog disguise is green with a visible zipper.
  • Zim's robot "parents" only bear a superficial resemblance to actual human beings, yet fool a roomful of people at Zim's parent-teacher conference. Even when the "dad's" arm blows off in a shower of sparks, ZIM is able to handwave it.
    "My Dad lost his arm in, uh, the War."
    "That was my squeezin' arm! They took my squeezin' arm! Why my squeezin' arm?"
  • Then there's the literal paper-thin disguises of the aliens in the episode "Abducted". They were basically thin smocks with an image of a human body, and what appears to be papier-mâché masks. (This is made even funnier by the fact that they're supposed to be husband and wife, and they got the nametags mixed up.)
  • In "Planet Jackers", when Zim is looking through his telescope at the other Invaders, the only one we see in disguise basically has a rock strapped to his head, making Zim's costume look brilliantly thorough in comparison. It is apparently sufficient to fool the natives, however, who are seen fanning him.
  • Tak, at least, had a reasonable disguise, though.
• Parody Sue: In "Dib's Wonderful Life Of Doom," when Dib gets superpowers (or seems to).
• People Jars: Where little Irkens come from.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Zim treats GIR noticeably better than everyone else, and actually expresses concern for his safety multiple times. He gets a few other moments where he treats people surprisingly well, but for every moment Zim gets, he gets three Kick the Dog moments in return. This prevents the audience from forgetting that Zim is a bad guy.
  • Had the series continued, Minimoose would have been the source of even more of this. The unfinished "Nubs of Doom" sums it up well:
    Zim: If I were capable of love... (in baby talk) I might actually love you, maybe.
• Pick on Someone Your Own Size: An interesting subversion, as Zim and Dib are the same size, and Zim is from a culture that directly equates worth with height. The result is a rivalry that by all logic should be completely one-sided, as an alien older than any human on Earth, equipped with technology they could only begin to understand, finds an arch-nemesis in a grade-schooler.
• Planetary Core Manipulation: Tak's plan in the season one finale is to hollow out the Earth using the giant magma pump that is her base and fill the planet with snacks as an offering to The Tallest.
• Planetary Relocation:
  • "Planet Jackers" has the threat be the titular Planet Jackers moving the Earth while putting up a fake sky so nobody notices and throw it into their dying sun in order to sustain it like kindle to the fireplace. It doesn't seem to occur to them that they could just move their own homeworld around a healthy star instead.
  • Enter the Florpus has Zim, learning Earth isn't anywhere near the Tallest's path of conquest, eventually teleport the planet into their path to prove himself to them.
• Planet of Hats: ...sort of. The planets that have been conquered are retrofitted to suit the Irkens' needs: Foodcourtia, the food court planet; the convention center planet; the shipping center planet; Hobo 13, the military training-planet; and so on...
  • Played straighter with some mentioned planets and dimensions such as: Exploding head planets, broken glass planets, a dimension of pure itching (you can't tell from the photo, but that stuff's really itchy), and a dimension of pure... organic material.
• Planet Spaceship: The planet Mars itself was converted to a spaceship by its natives, because it was cool. And it turns out that they did the same to Mercury as a prototype.
• Plug 'n' Play Technology: Apparently, the Irkens use the same operating system that Dib uses. Lampshaded, and considering the way the line is delivered, it's likely a Take That! at Independence Day.
• Politeness Judo:
  Dib: The only way back home is through my head! Anything happens to me and you're stuck here forever!
  ZIM: NOOOOOOOO! CURSE YOU!...Wait. I can still do stuff to your legs, right?
  Dib: I guess, but — wait! No!
  ZIM: NOOOOOOOO! CURSE YOU!
• The Pollyanna: Keef. Getting his eyes plucked out, screwed completely over by Zim, and the kid is still happy and cheerful. He even tries to make friends with him again in the unfinished episode "Return of Keef".
• Pragmatic Villainy: Zim is frequently forced to save the Earth from threats more dangerous than him... because he wants to rule the Earth himself.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Zim, Chicken Foot... Too many to count.

R

• "Rashomon"-Style: The episode "Mysterious Mysteries" features Dib and Zim being invited onto the titular Show Within a Show to dispute some of Zim's footage of Zim and GIR out of costume, with Gaz and GIR getting brought in for their views of what happened as well. Dib presents it as a classic "hero vs alien invasion" plot (complete with Gaz as a Neutral Female), Zim presents Dib as a bully blackmailing Zim with fake footage for lunch money, Gaz presents Dib and Zim as drooling morons incapable of doing anything but grunt inaudibly, and GIR goes off onto a nonsensical tangent about a giant squirrel.
• Really 700 Years Old: We're never actually told how old Ms. Bitters is, but Word of God is that she teaches at the school because they built it around her. ZIM is "older than any human alive."
• Reassigned to Antarctica: How ZIM came to Earth.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Used most prominently in "Rise of the Zitboy." Zim is red and Dib is blue.
  • Zim is red and GIR is blue. Check out their eyes. On one hand, Zim may be more normal by default but he throws away all common sense when pursuing a goal. On the other hand, while he is the one to always act insane by default, GIR somehow holds it together.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Professor Membrane parodies this. He's quite capable of creating such things as a Perpetual Energy Machine but will also on a whim decide that the populace is undeserving.
  • He also averts it. The official website stated that he routinely creates miracle cures for all the ills of the world (according to Gaz, Taster of Pork, he considers it incredibly horrifying that he still hasn't found a cure for "pigmouth" after one day of trying). With apparently no effect, since the world still sucks.
• Regional Bonus: In "Game Slave 2", Iggins mentions that he already had the Japanese version but wanted the American version as it had a new level.
• Religious Russian Roulette: How guidance counselor Dwicky lost his faith in aliens.
• Remember the New Guy?: Parodied. "Oh, that's Minimoose, my other sidekick! Yeah! Been with me the whole time!"
  • Since the introduction episode was never shown, it was initially planned to show a montage of scenes from the series with Minimoose crudely pasted into them to go with the joke, but the idea was scrapped for time.
  • In the very first episode, Zim tries to pull this off in-universe as a method of discrediting Dib's allegations:
    Zim: Yeah, he's always saying stuff. I remember that one time—
    Dib (incensed): YOU JUST GOT HERE!
• Rent-a-Zilla: Ultrapeepi.
• Reset Button:
  • After catastrophically screwing up with a time machine that replaces objects in the past, ZIM sends himself a note not to use the time machine. By replacing his past-brain with the note.
  • Almost the same thing in "Dib's Wonderful Life of Doom," except it never happened to begin with.
• Revolutionaries Who Don't Do Anything: The Resisty is shown to be this, though to their credit they did almost take down the Massive... though only because Zim inadvertently helped them.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Peepi the hamster. ZIM attempts to weaponize his cuteness, resulting in the world's most adorable kaiju.
• Ridiculously Human Robot: GIR. He is undisputably the most insane character in the entire series. "He" eats with Extreme Omnivore tendencies, (in Halloween Special of Spooky DOOM he attacked every trick-or-treater in the vicinity of ZIM's house, apparently getting a sugar rush, then eating all their candy and becoming even fatter than the guy in the costume at Bloaty's Pizza Hog.) drinks, sleeps, has a sense of smell (in one episode, for no discernible reason, he held a smelly dog in front of ZIM and yelled "look what I found! He smells reeeeeealll bad!), cries, parties down and basically acts like a human child. "He" is also assembled from random bits of garbage, and is dangerously (and often explosively) defective.
• Rise of Zitboy: Trope Namer, as in the episode of the same name, Zim develops a massive zit due to his Bizarre Alien Biology reacting to pizza grease. After GIR draws a face on it, Zim learns that its bouncing has a hypnotic effect, which he uses to his benefit.
• Robot Antennae: GIR has one on top of his head.
• Robot Buddy: GIR, obviously, but the house computer to a lesser extent.
• Rude Hero, Nice Sidekick: Zim is a brash, foul-tempered Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist, while his ditzy Minion with an F in Evil GIR is much friendlier.
• Rule of Cool:
  Mars-oid: My people worked themselves to extinction converting this planet into a navigable space vessel.
  ZIM: Why would you do all that?
  Mars-oid: Because it's cool.
  GIR: Mmm-hmmm.
• Running Gag:
  • Dib's (supposedly) big head, Membrane considering Dib insane, and spinal injuries.
  • The mentioning of moose.
  • If there's a long enough Beat, someone will start scratching their butt.
  • During a crowd scene with people cheering, there's usually gonna be someone yelling "[Thing we're cheering about] rocks!"
  • ZIM losing interest in whatever he's doing at the moment.
  Dib: You're going to use it to walk right past security at the generator, aren't you?! (ZIM takes a few seconds to finish drinking his soda)
  ZIM: Ah... What? Oh...(turns on the Large Ham) OH YES!
  • Whenever a minor character is made to think hard about something, they close one eye, stick out their tongue and begin acting as though they're having an aneurysm.
  • While a lot is made about how terrible ZIM's disguise is, if you pay attention you'll notice that all of the invaders we ever see in disguise are pretty terrible. Apparently tying rocks to your limbs or a prosthetic nose is all you need to get by as a covert agent. Tak alone seems to be the only invader to avert this.
  • DVD Commentary Running Gag: Several.
    • "Hi, I'm Eric Trueheart, and I had nothing to do with this episode!" (This was repeated to the point where, when an episode he did write gets commentary, everyone else involved absolutely refuses to believe he actually did write it. Richard Horvitz thinks Trueheart just transcribed it or something.)
    • "America loves GIR!"/"America hates Dib." (And, fittingly. "America loves Rikki!"/"America hates Andy.")
    • Pronouncing homage "oh-mah-g" in a drawn-out manner.
    • "How's it goin'?" said in the voice of Old Kid from the first episode.
    • "Did you color this, Rikki?"
    • Rikki Simons recollecting his consistent fear about being out of a job after each completion of the more... er, questionable episodes (such as "Dark Harvest").

S

• Sacrificial Planet: The show has an alien race called the Planet Jackers that captures other planets in a giant transportation sphere and throws them into the dying sun that orbits their world in order to stave off their own destruction, even though they could easily just move to a different, more stable planet instead.
• Sadist Show
• Same Content, Different Rating: "The Nightmare Begins" was initially rated TV-Y and the the rest were rated TV-Y7 FV.
• Sanity Ball: GIR seems... different... in the episode "Walk For Your Lives". He's a lot more focused than usual, and is quick to point out the obvious flaws in ZIM's plans.
• Santabomination: In the Christmas Episode "The Most Horrible X-mas Ever", Zim downloaded all Christmas and Santa knowledge into a gel-based Santa suit as a means of disguising himself as the titular Santa as a plot to conquer Earth. Unfortunately, A.I. Is a Crapshoot and the suit slowly starts to take control whenever something especially Christmasy happens (like children asking for hugs or when GIR starts singing Christmas songs). Zim manages to free himself of the suit before it grows into a monster, with Dib banishing it into space. In the distant future, it is revealed that the Santa suit is not only still alive, but it returns every Christmas to wreak havoc, cities since having been enclosed in protective domes with giant milk and cookies left to placate its rage.
• Save the Villain: Dib agonizes over whether or not to save ZIM in "Hamstergeddon" — on the one hand, Zim's the only one who can stop Ultra Peepi, but on the other ZIM will return to his attempts at world-demolition if Dib saves him. In a funny subversion, ZIM recovers just fine on his own while Dib is agonizing over the decision.
• Scare Chord: Unsurprisingly
  • "Dark Harvest" gives us the music that plays when Dib goes looking for Torque after losing sight of him.
  • The credits music and the theme music (especially that growling/screaming noise at the end when the title "Invader Zim" comes up)
  • In "Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy", you can hear what sounds like a ticking clock in the background starting after Dib is hurt for the second time and lasting up until he flatlines.
• The Scream: Too many to count.
  • The guy in "Battle of the Planets" might be the best.
  "AHHHHHHHHH! AHHHH! AAHHHHH! NO! NO! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"
• Screamer Trailer: The host of "Mysterious Mysteries of Strange Mystery" has these regarding Dib.
• Secret-Keeper: Gaz is a subversion.
• Selective Enforcement: "Hey! That kid's throwing punch!"
• Selective Obliviousness: It's obvious in the first episode how hated ZIM is by the Tallest. ZIM never notices.
• Serious Business:
  • Mall security, lasers (and Smoke Machines!), lice, video games, parent-teacher-night, pizza... hell, is there an episode where this didn't feature?
  • Not to mention the fact that apparently the library confiscates your retinas if something is overdue.
  • Poop Cola Candy.
  • Played with in the first issue. Dib singing his own montage music isn’t important because he is the only hope for the human race, but if he doesn’t train he’ll go back to being The Pig-Pen.
  • Gaming to Gaz.
• Shadow Discretion Shot: A running gag in the series. Most notably with Keef getting his eyes ripped out, or in "ZIM Eats Waffles" when he grabs something (slightly resembling a plunger) and blasts away the demon squid.
• Shaped Like Itself: Quite a bit, actually...
  ZIM: But...I must get my battle tank or I...won't get it!
• Shouldn't We Be in School Right Now?: Fairly well averted, as very little seems to get past Mrs. Bitters. ZIM or Dib (mostly ZIM) will mysteriously go absent occasionally, usually to plot revenge, but all battles for world domination must take place after school, or under the guise of a bathroom break.
• Shout-Out: So very many.
• Show Within a Show: The Scary/Angry Monkey, Mysterious Mysteries of Strange Mystery, and Probing The Membrane of Science With Professor Membrane!
• Shrug Take: "ZIM Eats Waffles" ends with Dib about to freak out, but he can't get into it, breaks off with an irritated "whatever" and rolls into bed.
  Sizz-Lor: Wait, how can you remember what I said if you weren't even there?
  ZIM: *shrug*
• Silicon Snarker:
  • GIR is normally idiotic for a robot, but he's managed to have a few Cuckoosnarker moments here and there towards Zim, especially when he's in "duty mode".
  • Zim's sentient computer is always snarking at Zim for his failures and general incompetence.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Invader Zim might be the most cynical kids cartoon ever created! Everyone is either apathetic, a complete moron, ungodly cruel, or all of the above.
• Smart Ball:
  • ZIM gets spiked in the face with one of these whenever Dib threatens to blow his cover, pulling off such stunts as nanoscale laser brain surgery, zit-based hypnosis and bulk organ theft.
  • Dib also catches hold from time to time, repairing alien spacecraft and hacking into supercomputers.
• Smart Jerk and Nice Moron: Zim is a Smart Jerk while GIR is a Nice Moron. Zim wants to enslave humanity and has far better technology let alone keener common sense than the human characters on his show (minus Dib). GIR isn't evil or hellbent on enslaving humanity like Zim is, he just wants to watch TV and eat pizza all day.
• Snap Back: Quite a few. Some could plausibly have an off-screen explanation, like "Planet Jackers," while others apparently stand in total defiance of canon ("Future Dib"). Likewise there are a few time skips that remain unacknowledged.
  Sizz-Lorr: There was a time-warp or something.
• Solar CPR: The Planet Jackers transport planets so that they can drop them in the sun of their own home planet, to prevent it from shrinking away.
• Space Trucker: The Planet Jackers are quite reminiscent of long-haul truckers.
• Spanner in the Works : A small chain of it. Zim is the spanner in the works to the Irken Empire, ruining Operation Impending Doom I, killing the Almighty Tallest, destroying part of the Irken fleet with Mars, and countless other failures such as forcing Tak to have to work as a janitorial drone. GIR is often the spanner in the works to Zim's plans, however idiotic they may be. And to top it all off, a spanner (or spanners) in the works for the Irkens (or a member of La Résistance, or just a slave really pissed at the Irkens) is sending machinery meant to help invaders to Zim, and malfunctioning machinery sent by the Tallest just to kill him to Invaders that are actually doing their job.
• Spider Limbs: Zim's PAK.
• Spoof Aesop: The morals to Ms. Bitter's life stories. Usually extremely pessimistic and spirit crushing.
  Ms. Bitters: The lesson is that dreams inevitably lead to hideous implosions.
• Stalker with a Crush: Keef certainly has shades of this in 'Bestest Friend', and was upgraded to complete stalker by the time of 'Return of Keef'.
• Stand-In Parents: Zim has robots to stand in as his parents, and despite them being horribly malfunctioning, nobody notices.
• Stay with the Aliens: Dwicky. The jerk.
• Stealth Pun: After GIR gets a ride home from a pig in "Germs," we hear the sound of a motorcycle engine. As in, hog... you know, Harley-Davidson...
• The Stinger: In every episode, a brief quote is played over the Nickelodeon logo following the credits.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: In "Abducted" two non-Irken aliens come to earth in terrible disguises and introduce themselves to ZIM as "perfectly normal human worm babies," the exact phrase ZIM used to describe himself in the first episode.
• Stylistic Suck:
  • In an ironic bit of What Could Have Been, the writers wanted to do a bit in the last produced episode that retroactively "introduced" the planned character Minimoose by having him crudely pasted into old scenes as if he'd been there all along, but the idea was scrapped for time — yes, an intentionally crappy montage had to be cut for the amount of time and effort it would have taken to make it look bad on purpose.
  • To a lesser extent, GIR being played by a non-actor. Word of God says that having someone who couldn't actually act play him was meant to emphasize how he was "broken."
• Suck E. Cheese's: Bloaty's Pizza Hog is a grimy parody of Chuck E Cheese packed with screaming children and nightmarish animatronics.
• Sucky School: The elementary school in the setting is simply called Skool, and is a massive Take That! against public schools in America, being portrayed as an underfunded hellhole.
• Suddenly Shouting: Oh man, everybody does this.
  Tallest Red: I was curious to see when you'd shut up on your own, but it's been three hours now, ZIM. THREE HOURS!!
• Superior Species: Provides the trope's current page quote. Although his mission is to blend in with Earth, ZIM hilariously can't resist rubbing it in everyone's face how far more advanced and superior the Irkens are.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The episode "Walk of Doom" just deals with Zim getting lost in the city and being unable to deal with the Earth's customs. First, he stares deeply into the sun and temporarily becomes blind. Moments before that, he tried to ride the bus without paying, only to get kicked out and called a weirdo.

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