After discovering that Zim gets burned by Earth water, Dib tortures him with water balloons. When Zim learns that covering himself in paste protects him from water's harm, he plots his revenge.
Tropes
- Bait-and-Switch: When Zim approaches Gaz, we're led to believe he plans on taking her umbrella to shield himself from the rain...only to pick her up and use her to shield himself from the rain.
- Bigger Stick: Zim retaliates against Dib's water balloons with one roughly the size of the moon.
- Disproportionate Retribution
- How to Zim get back at Dib for hurling water balloons at him? By draining the city of all it's water to make his own water balloon, roughly the size of the moon, from a space station orbiting above the Skool, then dropping it from outer space onto where Dib is standing, causing a highly destructive flash flood.
- Also, Miss Bitters threatens to erase the students' minds as punishment for the paste incident at the beginning of the episode.
- Grimy Water: Downplayed, but
Word of God is that the only reason that water is toxic to Zim is from how contaminated it is, rather than the water itself. - Is It Something You Eat?: Zim says that the rain on his planet was "delicious."
- Kill It with Water: Dib intends to do this to Zim (or at least expose/neutralize him) after learning that Irkens are weak to water, going from simply taunting him with a leaky faucet to throwing water balloons at him. Unfortunately for Dib, Zim's Disproportionate Retribution has him retaliate with a water balloon big enough to flood the entire city.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Dib and all of his classmates are visibly terrified when Zim drains the world's water and sends a gigantic water balloon their way.
- Zim himself, when he accidentally gets stuck in his toilet and starts drowning.
- Laser-Guided Karma: After flooding the entire city, Zim gets his head stuck in the toilet and presumably drowns. Of course Negative Continuity ensures that none of this is permanent.
- Paste Eater: The episode opens with Miss Bitters shaming one of the students for doing this.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Through a combination of Zim's his general ignorance about Earth water, his vulnerability to it and Rule of Funny, a simple water balloon fight becomes a literal battle of life or death.
- Shout-Out
- Silence Is Golden: The entire episode is very light on dialogue, with the climax having almost no dialogue at all.
- Snap Back: The episode ends with the entire town flooded and Zim all but stated to have suffocated inside his toilet. Naturally, none of this is ever brought up again in future episodes.
- Title Drop: While lying face up in the water left by Zim's flood, a traumatized Dib croaks "The wettening... the wettening..."
- Uncertain Doom: Zim's fate in the end when he is flushed down in a toilet and likely drowns to death.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Zim doesn't get a lot of time to enjoy his victory over Dib before he gets stuck in the toilet and starts drowning.
