Aluminum Christmas Trees: The Winnebago tribe is an actual Native American ethnic group from Nebraska, not just a joke about Brock being the size of an RV.
There's a good argument that the real stars of the show is Rusty and Monarch, especially given the revelation of the series finale film that Monarch is a clone of Rusty, and thereby the other brother of Rusty and Jonas Jr..
The sheer jackassery of Rusty Venture has caused some people to believe he is a Villain Protagonist. Dr. Killinger believed this as well and tried to help him become an Evil Scientist. The episode in question ends with Rusty, while rejecting Killinger, earnestly asking Brock about whether or not he's a bad guy and Brock being reluctant to answer. Although there's an alternate interpretation there since Rusty was kind of naked at the time.
Both the boys are subject to this, but as of season 4 its particularly applicable to Hank. The Load? Or a serious case of Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass who's constantly held back because everyone underestimates him, and refuses to give him any degree of responsibility.
Alternatively: Brock is well aware Hank is competent later in the show, he's simply unwilling to put him at risk.
Another option: Brock knows Hank is capable, but also knows he's undisciplined and could easily turn into a Wild Card in dangerous situations.
Gary doesn't show any particular angst over the death of all his fellow henchmen, despite the fact he bulked up and trained his fellow henchmen after 24's death to prevent more henchman deaths.
Red Mantle and Dragoon apparently suffer no trauma from being stitched together beyond lamenting casual inconveniences. Upon realizing it had happened, Dragoon is horrified for only a moment before moving on, while Red Mantle merely declares it a stupid thing to have done.
Archive Panic: So many characters undergo so much development, and so many changes happen to everyone, that starting to watch the show in its latest episodes and understanding what's going on will prove nigh impossible. Continuity Lockout plays into this, with the creators even discussing how self-referential the show had become in the commentary for the season four finale Operation P.R.O.M. (And it would only grow more from there.)
Some viewers found the twist that Col. Hunter Gathers only had a sex change for the purpose of gaining membership into Molotov Cocktease's all-girl hitman squad and quickly had said surgery reversed when Molotov began to suspect that he was spying on her to be this.
Hank and Dean getting shot down in the season 1 finale. A literal one is Rusty getting crushed by a giant disco ball in the penultimate episode of season 5.
Base-Breaking Character: Sgt. Hatred is either a sympathetic and likable portrayal of a recovering pedophile who had a really good Heel–Face Turn character arc, or he's a creepy old guy who underwent a massive Badass Decay as the show went on. Fans are very divided on his character.
Better on DVD: When the episodes are watched all-together, the jokes layer on top of each other, the epic stuff gets more epic, and the "aren't we pathetic" stuff gets time to breathe. Additionally, watching on DVD allows viewers to have a better chance of catching the Brick Jokes, and the creator commentary fleshes out several details that fell through the cracks of the show's "show-don't-tell" storytelling.
Monarch's little...tribute to his Butterglider serves no other purpose than to show how deeply in love he is with the thing.
A great example is the Bear in "Bright Lights, Dean City". During the Revenge Society's recruitment drive a man in a very creepy bear suit that shows no features of the person within at all and looks scarily realistic shows up. He has no registration forms, says no lines, is soaked in blood and carries a large knife with blood dripping off it. He is never mentioned again and was presumably just there to make us wet our pants (and to make a movie reference). He is reused later on to reveal to Hank that his girlfriend is cheating on him with his brother.
The late 24 calling upon the spirits of Speedy and Woodrow Wilson during Pinstripes And Poltergeists. And what is 21 supposed to do for them? Showing off his ability to recall celebrity signature perfumes. It makes more sense later when it turns out that Gary is hallucinating 24 and he simply is imagining a scenario where his nerdy knowledge is handy. Also it's implied that he knows said knowledge because of the perfume advertisements in comic books, so it fits his character.
Almost any episode/scene in which General Treister appears has a tendency to lapse into this, whether it's his grandstanding at the O.S.I./Guild summit and naming the delegates after pop culture figures, challenging Hunter Gathers to a wrestling bout in lieu of "negotiation" for a prisoner, or piloting the O.S.I. hoverquarters clothed only in a toga made from the American flag. That these events are not lampshaded in any way is a testament to the bizarre nature of the Venture Bros' universe.
Broken Base: Season 6 is divisive to a lot of fans. With the premise of Rusty inheriting his dead brother's company and now being a millionaire super scientist in New York City along with a season-long story arc involving the Blue Morpho, many argued whether the change was good or not. Supporters saw the season as a massive breath of fresh air with the new settings and characters ultimately preventing the stagnation that season five was criticized for. Detractors say that the show changed too much to the point of almost being a Soft Reboot and that many of the new introduced characters were not fleshed out of enough (or killed off too quickly) to be that entertaining. It didn't help that many older characters like Dr. Orpheus (and The Order of the Triad as a whole) or Dermott were nowhere to be found until next season. However both sides usually agree that the season could have ended betternote Due to the shortened episode count, it ended with "Red Means Stop" the penultimate episode before the three-part finale.
After getting away with his dickishness in almost every previous appearance, "The Bellicose Proxy" finally gives St. Cloud the treatment he deserves, where he proves he's a completely incompetent villain and gets an off-screen ass-kicking from Rose.
Rusty giving the GCI and OSI "The Reason You Suck" Speech. After all the childish and murderous actions of the two groups throwing Rusty's already shitty life into chaos, it's amazing that he can call them out on all their bullshit, force them to make a deal, and finally surpass his asshole father for once.
21 rallying his fellow henchmen to take out the obnoxious, irritating, and thoroughly unlikable Tim-Tom and Kevin. It's unfortunate that the pair are merely Killed Offscreen, but Dr. Mrs. The Monarch at least confirms their deaths in Season 6 (thankfully sidestepping previous Word of God that a character is only dead if you see them die).
The Chris Carter Effect: Avoided. The writers have stated that they don't plan anything, but they're usually pretty good at introducing and then tying up plot points. They've described their writing style as coming up with stuff on the fly, then writing future plots to remain consistent with what has been written while expanding on any detail that looks interesting. Notable questions they have answered include "Who is the Sovereign?/Is he really David Bowie?" and "What actually happened to Jonas Venture?" The question "Who are the Investors?" hasn't been fully answered, but All This and Gargantua 2 gave us a bunch of extra clues and information about them. While they've blatantly told the audience that there will likely never be an answer to "Why does Monarch hate Venture so much?", The Morphic Trilogy did give us some clues.
Complete Monster: Dr. Jonas Venture is the self-absorbed and abusive father of Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture who masquerades as a noble and beloved adventurer and scientist. Taking Rusty on dangerous adventures since he was three years old, Jonas allowed him to be trapped, tortured and put in harm's way, to allow himself the excitement of "rescuing" Rusty as the hero. When working on scientific inventions, Jonas frequently grew bored of his works with dire consequences, in one instance leaving a group of orphans to suffer drug-induced nightmares after an A.I. he created ran rampant, much to Jonas's apathy. His own team meaning nothing to him, Jonas viewed his bodyguard as property, taking him from his "best friend" Blue Morpho as "payment", and turned another into a violent Blood Knight by forcing him to use dangerous drugs. Ruining Morpho's life, Jonas coerces the happily married man into an orgy, then blackmails Morpho with the knowledge and forces him to do his dirty work, and later resurrects Morpho into a cyborg slave, which earned the disgust of his team. After spending several decades in a mostly-dead state, Jonas attempts to have the cyborg Morpho killed so that he may steal his body for himself, and then flies into a rage and tries to do it himself once this order is refused. Killing any villains he grows bored of, Jonas proves under the exterior of grand heroics he paints himself with to be an utterly despicable Psychopathic Manchild.
General Treister, on top of being a general badass, launched himself into space, wearing an American flag as a toga, frozen in a salute with gritted teeth and a post-it note stuck to his external pacemaker that says "Fix It". The best part? It worked!
Orpheus' Master takes on the form of Santa Claus and uses a Spirit Bomb to nuke a zombie outbreak to kingdom come.
Phantom Limb when he becomes "Revenge." Completely insane, thinks a toaster, a high heel shoe, and a coffee cup are his allies, and manages to use them amazingly well. Despite being insane, he manages to completely put the screws to the Council.
Creator's Pet: Oddly, Billy Quizboy and Pete White were a mild case of this (minus the Character Shilling) early on. The fans didn't like them and the producers wanted them gone after season 1... possibly because they're a lot like 21 and 24 in terms of mostly talking about bullshit, but with worse enunciation. But Hammer and Publick kept giving them screentime, so they got a chance to come into their own and now they're pretty popular. So it worked!
Jackson Publick: People don't love White and Billy as much as we do [...] ["The Invisible Hand of Fate"] was us beginning to re-embrace them, after being scared off. Or it was just us being jerks and going, "You don't want White and Billy? We're gonna hit you with a lotta White and Billy!"
Rusty: "Might be, kind of. I mean, I didn't use the whole thing!"
In the second season premiere, we find out the boys have been killed and then cloned back to life fourteen times. Cue a montage of them dying in increasingly violent, bizarre ways, occasionally cutting back to Doc and Brock laughing over silly minor details vaguely related to them, like the time they both grew mustaches. Even Dr. Orpheus is shocked and horrified. Then the episode uses still shots of the various murders for the credits sequence.
Dr. Venture: Look, when you have a clumsy child, you make him wear a helmet; when you have death-prone children, you keep a few clones in the lab!
In one episode, Brock interrogates one of Baron Underbheit's henchmen by squeezinghis testicles, then stops when he notices that the henchman has testicular cancer.
The OSI committing multiple war crimes during the Pyramid Wars, some of which parallel real-life ones? Horrifying. All to a song parodying GI Joe? Hilarious.
An in-and-out of universe one: Red Death describing the Movie Night Massacre? Chilling. The fact that fans can't tell if he's genuinely traumatized or sees it as a fond memory because of how messed up he is? Hilarious.
Fanon: It's a relatively common interpretation that Dr. Quymn, Rusty's childhood friend/crush and almost one-night stand, is actually his paternal half-sister, based off the fact that they share similar facial features and that her mother and Jonas Sr. were involved.
Growing the Beard: Season One is a crass parody of Johnny Quest that's pretty funny, but amateurish and poorly animated at times. Characters begin to show some depth in the final episodes of the season when they begin to push back against their archetypes, and Season Two opens with the reveal that this show does not do Negative Continuity; the boys really were killed, and the end of the episode reveals that they're merely another entry in a long line of clones. From then on the series really begins to play with archetypes as the cast gets better developed, the animation improves, and the writing skyrockets. By Season Three, the show really hit its stride and all elements of the show became great.
In "Victor Echo November", Phantom Limb is seen attempting to sell a Rembrandt to an uncultured mobster who insists on the Mona Lisa instead, prompting Limb to point out that just because a painting is more famous, that doesn't make it necessarily better. The painting in question, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, along with the other paintings seen on Limb's wall on that scene were all stolen during the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum heist, one of the biggest art thefts in history. The heist heavily puzzled investigators not only due to not finding any clues of the perpetrator's identities but also why those paintings were chosen: the museum housed far more valuable and famous paintings and some of the items stolen were fairly worthless, which led investigators to speculate that the thieves weren't particularly versed in art. In other words, we are meant to assume that Limb, knowing too much about art, stole the paintings due to his own Wicked Cultured taste and is now incapable of selling them.
After hired killer Le Tueur is killed by Brock with his own sword, Brock asks the boys to call the cleaner and tell them "they have a Damien Hirst" on their hands. Damien Hirst is a well known conceptual artist who frequently uses large amounts of splattered animal blood on his art pieces. More specifically, it refers to the Damien Hirst piece "Mother and Child (Divided)" - the preserved bodies of a cow and calf, each split in two lengthwise - in the same way that Brock bisected Le Tueur.
On one of the commentary tracks, the creators have saidthey do so much research for the show that a lot of it flies over some viewers heads or gets left on the cutting room floor for time.
The Hand of Osiris and the Eye of Osiris have shown up as mystical artifacts and MacGuffins. This may be a reference to how in Egyptian Mythology, Osiris was cut into pieces which were scattered across the land.
While at the same time referencing the Dungeons & Dragons artifacts the Hand of Vecna and the Eye of Vecna, another god with a connection to death.
In "The Lepidopterists", 21 and 24 spend the episode lampshading their borderline-unnatural tendency to escape certain death, predicting that the well-prepared and evidently competent "Henchman #1" won't even last the mission (he doesn't). Only three episodes later, 24 is suddenly Killed Off for Real. And to add insult to injury, Scott Hall, a.k.a Henchman #1, a.k.a Zero, was revealed in season 4 to have survived his encounter with Brock.
In "Hostile Makeover", one of the first things Rusty does after inheriting his brother's tech company is to fire the company's management team, which already backfires when the Pirate Captain has to pull double-duty, leaving Rusty to manage things at their Manhattan headquarters by himself. In October 2022, real life Tech Bro Elon Musk would buy real life company Twitter and one of the first acts as "Chief Twit" (as he actually referred to himself as) are a string of layoffs of the company's top executives, including Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal.
Hank's heartwarming scenes in Season 6 and early Season 7 with his new girlfriend Sirena become a lot harder to watch after Sirena cheats on him with Dean near the end of Season 7.
The Sovereign being unceremoniously killed by Headshot becomes this now that David Bowie has passed on, even though it wasn't really Bowie. The timing (within a year) is eerie.
Michael Sinterniklaas voices Dean, who died repeatedly and kept getting replaced with clones. However, here it was mainly played for (very dark) laughs. The next time he played a role like that, it would be shown in a much more serious light.
The Blue Morpho tricking Dr. Z into having sex by him by disguising himself as Billie Jean King is Played for Laughs in Season 6. Come Season 7, it doesn't seem so funny anymore once you realise that Jonas Venture was blackmailing the Blue Morpho into doing it among other dirty deeds, essentially committing Rape by Proxy on both Dr. Z and Blue Morpho.
In "Past Tense", all the way back in Season 1, The Action Man threatens Dr. Orpheus, who uses his magic to look into his future and says "two years and seventeen days... by a stroke" somewhat smugly. Cut forward two years and seventeen days In-Universe to Season 7's "Arrears in Science" and The Action Man actually has a near-fatal stroke, which Orpheus regards with quiet horror.
One Deleted scene between Dean and Jared absolutely drip with this, to the point that Sgt. Hatred gets the wrong idea about them.
A rather bizarre example occurs in the episode "Guess Who's Coming to State Dinner?": After Lincoln's Ghost possessed Dean, the first thing he does is trying to kiss Hank.
Lincoln's Ghost: Like you boys never experimented.
Billy and Pete, just pretty much all the time. They act Like an Old Married Couple in almost every possible way. Spanakopita even has them sharing a bed and accidentally getting all half-naked touchy-feely when Billy has a weird dream. Billy's mother and her friends all end up assuming they're actually a couple and they don't bother to correct her.
The pilot suggests Rusty just straight-up has an unrequited crush on Brock. He acts like he's desperate for his attention, even though Brock ignores him, and gets massively disappointed when Brock (half-naked at the time) dodges his attempt to pat at him. Pete White even says he thinks something's "going on there" since Rusty and Brock are always together... to Billy, who he's always with.
The Monarch and 21 in later seasons. Moreso from Dr Mrs The Monarch's perspective, though, since the only reason they tango with each other and pretend they went out on a date is to hide from her what they're really up to. (Considering the fact the Monarch and Dr Mrs swing and have previously expressed that it's no big deal that 21 and Dr Mrs kissed, it's not surprising that she barely even raises an eyebrow at it.) But the Monarch admiring 21's "beefy" physique and running his hand suggestively down 21's stomach... that's just because he wants to.
As soon as the season five finale aired, many fans guessed that the decrepit mansion that Phantom Limb (and later, the entire Revenge Society,) used as their headquarters was really the childhood home of the Monarch, who was about to move back in with his wife and #21. The opening sequence of "All This and Gargantua-2" confirmed it.
The Investors and Dr. Killinger being of the same species/class of beings/organization was another popular fan theory proven correct by "All This and Gargantua-2" as well. The theory hinged on both having similar abilities, but who use them in different ways. Killinger acts a benevolent Trickster Mentor who helps his clients earn what they want most, and helps them make important realizations about themselves. Meanwhile, the Investors give their clients what the clients seek, but as part of a Deal with the Devil style deal.
The fan theory of Dr. Venture and The Monarch being brothers were heavily suspected by fans for years, citing their similar facial features, builds, and hair color. "Arrears in Science" suggests it to be all but true.
As of the Series Finale: They're both clones of the original Rusty Venture, with The Monarch having 2% baboon DNA spliced in.
Dr. Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture, who knows he hasn't even come close to amounting to his father's success which was constantly beating him in the face as a child. To quote This Very Wiki at several points, "it's a miracle he can even function as poorly as he does".
The Monarch is a very petty and at times infantile man whose hatred of Rusty Venture is completely inexplicable. However, his parents died in a plane crash when he was a kid, and it becomes obvious over several seasons that he's desperately starved for affection to distract him from how miserable his life has become. It doesn't help that he becomes increasingly aware of the gaps in his memory, starting with him being genuinely bereft and disturbed when he finds out that he was friends with Rusty when they were children. Then he's only reunited with his father right when he father dies for a second time, this time right in front of him and inadvertently because of the Monarch's own actions. At the end of the day, he's as much of a hot mess as the man he hates so passionately.
LGBT Fanbase: The series is decently popular among the LGBTQ+ crowd thanks to having some pretty great representation.
The Alchemist and Shore Leave are both campy, flamboyant and very effeminate homosexuals yet also incredibly hilarious and badass. Shore Leave especially, as he's a sassy and snarky gay gunslinger who is practically the only one that could keep up with Brock freakin' Samson.
Colonel Hunter Gathers is also loved for being a pretty great transexual character. Especially with how proud and open he is about wanting to be born with "big beautiful tits".
The Grand Galactic Inquisitor's shouting at the top of his lungs to "IGNORE ME!!!" at the end of every sentence.
The reoccurring background villain Brick Frog became this for how amusingly lame his gimmick is.
A "Rusty Venture" has become one as well. note A Rusty Venture is some sort of depraved sex act, but nobody can agree on what it is.
MECHA-SHIVA!note Dean and Hank reminisce about joining together to form a giant robot called Mecha-shiva. When other people recall the same scene it's revealed that Dean just climbed on Hank's shoulders and the two of them waved their arms yelling "MECHA-SHIVA!" over and over again.
Eat the pennies. note St. Cloud has Billy and Pete at his mercy and will let them go if Billy eats $1.00 worth of pennies. Billy refuses to and Pete yells at him to "Eat the pennies!"
The term "Brock Freakin' Samson". note Whenever somebody (most commonly The Monarch or Henchman 21) refers to having to deal with Brock Samson, they tend to reiterate by saying "Brock Freakin' Samson!"
One-Scene Wonder: The nameless...villain(?) known as "Scare Bear". He has thirty seconds of screen time in one episode, and does nothing in that single scene except for wear a bloody bear costume and stand there holding a knife, but he proved a big enough hit with fans to return with a plot-critical role in an episode three seasons later and has inspired a huge amount of varyingly crazy fan theories about his motivations and origins.
Rooting for the Empire: The Monarch and Doctor Girlfriend are supposed to be the villains, but many viewers root for them not only because they are cool but also because they are often much more likable than Rusty.
Replacement Scrappy: At least some fans consider Hatred to be Brock's Replacement Scrappy, when he takes over the bodyguard role in season 4. Unlike with other examples, however, Brock still makes regular appearances on the show, just not every episode.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: As noted under Creator's Pet, Pete White and Billy Quizboy were very unpopular from the start. Most fan opinions turned once they got A Day in the Limelight in The Invisible Hand of Fate, which provided some much-needed backstory about their relationship and basically cemented their status as part of the main cast. Now episodes focusing on the two are frequently considered some of the series' best.
The Murderous Moppets/Pupa Twins, get this due to their extreme hostility and overall creepiness. Doesn't help that they're strongly implied to be the ones who killed 24. What does help is that the Monarch also views them as suchas did the writers.
Dermott isn't seen as a very likable character. But isn't that the point? He just isn't really supposed to be a Hate Sink either.
Seasonal Rot: Season 5 seems to qualify for some fans, even though many of the issues are just the natural result of a shorter season. The Monarch has a much reduced role, and while this season gave us major changes,note this is the season where the Venture bros. discover that they are clones and Dermott learns that he is a Venture (half) brother everyone seemed to end Season 5 in more or less the same place they were at when it started.
Signature Scene: Ask any fan and they'll say that the most defining and memorable scene in the entire series would be the ending of "Operation PROM". Where Brock makes a mad dash back at the compound before Molotov's Black Hearts massacre Rusty and his friends while "Like A Friend" by Pulp plays in the background.
Spiritual Successor: With The Tick. They share a creator/writer (Jackson Publick), an actor/voice actor (Patrick Warburton), and numerous themes (including various genre deconstructions.) Tick creator Ben Edlund is also the only person to write an episode (¡Viva los Muertos!) of The Venture Brothers outside of creators Publick and Doc Hammer.
Suspiciously Similar Song: In "Perchance to Dean", Rusty introduces Dean to progressive rock. The music very clearly pastiches Yes' songs "Close to the Edge" and "Roundabout", even though the band's identity is only hinted at in dialogue. The sleeve of the record Rusty puts on looks more like an Asia album, while Yes' album Fragile can be clearly seen in the record crate (along with King Crimson's debut.)
The Monarch delivers a rather chilling low-key one to the Murderous Moppets. He tells them in no uncertain terms that if they ever defy his command he will kill them and feed them to dogs.
St.Cloud not being let in the nightclub for supervillains in "Bot Seeks Bot" for no real reason.
As noted under Catharsis Factor, "The Bellicose Proxy" devotes its plot to humiliating St. Cloud under The Monarch's tutelage.
The Grand Galactic Inquisitor gets axed after one episode, despite being one of the funniest characters yet. Similarly the G.I. Joe parody characters (Sphinx Commander and his gang and the unique OSI operatives seen in "O.S.I. Love You") get barely any screen time and mostly serve as Cannon Fodder.
The quite brilliant Andy Warhol/Lex Luthor pastiche Doom Factory are all slain in the episode they are introduced.
The writers quickly did away with Kim after only two appearances, even though the idea of an apathetic teenager basically "whatever"-ing her way into becoming a supervillain had a decent amount of comedic potential, even if only as a Brick Joke.
Triana Orpheus. Even if she was doomed by Real Life Writes the Plot, note The creators said she was too "well-adjusted," unlike the other characters, which made her harder to write for, and being played by Doc Hammer's (now) ex probably didn't help either. she was still pretty popular and probably could've been given magic powers like her dad or some kind of angst or something other than what she got.
"The Lepidopterists" episode. Imagine: a season-long arc of the Monarch arching Dr. Venture, Jr. with many adventures in-between, and Dr. (Rusty) Venture playing second fiddle. This all culminates into the Batman Gambit of the Monarch finally getting his true arch back, like he did in that episode. So much potential.
"The Revenge Society", anyone? This episode features the return of Phantom Limb and David Bowie, a callback to "ORB", a Guild assault on the Venture compound with only Sgt. Hatred and Hank to defend it, and the revelation that Brian Eno, Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper are members of The Guild of Calamitous Intent. And it all proceeds to add up to an episode where nothing happens for a good 2/3s of the ep, with little jokes in the interim, with an ending that comes out of nowhere. Definitely should be a record there for most plot wasted in a single episode.
To be fair, the show creators REALLY like to play with this trope. While there have been a few genuinely epic moments in the series, major plot points are just as likely to be resolved in mundane, boring, or off-screen ways. It all ties into the whole "failure" thing.
Dean's changes in season 5 had a lot of potential. But with his extreme lack of focus and more focus on Hank, only a few episodes touched on his new attitude.
Tough Act to Follow: "Red Means Stop" is by no means a bad episode. In the eyes of most people it is seen as a great episode that introduces Ensemble Dark Horse character Red Death. However it has the misfortune of being the season six finale despite not concluding any of the story arcs established; not even functioning as a good Cliffhanger ending. It does not help that it came right after "A Party for Tarzan" which many fans agreed could have been a way more fitting season finale.
Villain Decay: Richard Impossible in season three. This is probably intentional considering the breakup with his wife. Baron Ünderbheit and Phantom Limb were pretty damn scary, but both eventually succumbed to inevitable embarrassing failures endemic to the Venture universe.
In his first appearances, St. Cloud is a low-tier but still sinister and threatening villain who comes close to beating or killing Billy and Pete a couple of times. When he comes back in "The Bellicose Proxy," he is a whiny, spoilt manchild who gets his ass kicked by Billy's mom.
Jonas Venture Jr, who despite achieving more in about a month than his brother did in his entire life, never met his father (though that might be for the best) and spent over forty years trapped inside Rusty's body. And then he gets cancer and has to sacrifice himself in a massive explosion.
21/Gary, who was kidnapped as a child and inducted into supervillainy, witnessed his best friend die in an explosion, left the Monarch to work for SPHINX, only for them to leave him the following episode, and spent the next few episodes after SPHINX was blown up just prowling around the Venture Compound before finally crawling back to his old boss.
Dean Venture, whose girlfriend (kinda) dumped him right before he found out that he had died about fourteen times in the past and is only a copy of his true self.
Sgt. Hatred, whose wife left him before he went to work for Venture Industries, where the boys don't really respect him as they did their old bodyguard. And that is to say nothing of his intense self-loathing over his pedophilic urges, which were a product of the experiments that turned him into a Super-Soldier.
Cody Impossible. His exposure to cosmic rays gave him the power to spontaneously combust whenever he has contact with oxygen. What it didn't give him was immunity to fire.
Don't forget Hank who is considered the unfavorite to Rusty and usually over looked in favor of Dean. Then Brock, his only his father figure (that actually gives him support) leaves him with no goodbye or contact for at least a year (give or take) and then is replaced with a guy who he hates for molesting(?) him. Then when he goes out for his dream job as a spy at SPHINX, he passes all their tests only to be rejected just because they didn't want him. Afterward, his first time having sex is with his half-brother's birth mom which traumatizes him so much he has to have that memory erased. Season 7 adds to this; he and Serena get together and are pretty happy, however he’s so obsessive and clingy that he pushes her away and she sleeps with Dean. After discovering this he falls into a coma where it’s implied his godfather died. This combined with the emotional neglect of his father encourages Hank to run away by the end of the season.
The Original Blue Morpho - one of very few people that was tormented anywhere near as much as Rusty. Not only did the fanatical loyalty detailed by Dr. Z stem from Jonas Sr. blackmailing him with a sex tape into doing terrible things such as murdering Jonas' arches and seducing Dr. Z, but Jonas seduced his wife. Then, when he died in a plane crash, Jonas Sr. rebuilt him as a borderline brainless cyborg to serve as a glorified butler, eventually threw him in the trash, and then planned to steal his robot body.
And of course the hydrocephalic Billy Quizboy, whose simple desire to be liked and respected by Doctor Venture is consistently rewarded with humiliation.
, one of the biggest art thefts in history. The heist heavily puzzled investigators not only due to not finding any clues of the perpetrator's identities but also why those paintings were chosen: the museum housed far more valuable and famous paintings and some of the items stolen were fairly worthless, which led investigators to speculate that the thieves weren't particularly versed in art. In other words, we are meant to assume that Limb, knowing too much about art, stole the paintings due to his own Wicked Cultured taste and is now incapable of selling them.