Invader Zim / Tropes A to C

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

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• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: It doesn't blend perfectly with the flat animation, but it still looks pretty good. The creators lampshade it in the DVD commentary for "A Room With a Moose", claiming that they spent the whole season's CG budget on the 3D walnuts.

A

• Absent Animal Companion: Played with. In one of his possibly pre-recorded messages to his children, Professor Membrane reminds them to feed the dog. This reminds the pair that hey, they used to have a dog, didn't they? And they take a minute to look around in confusion. The viewers, however, never heard of it before.
• Adults Are Useless: Exaggerated to the extent that so are most of the other children, for that matter. And a lot of the aliens. Pretty much everyone and everything in this show is useless. The person who comes the closest to being non-useless is Dib, yet at times even he is useless.
• Aerith and Bob:
  • The Irkens must have some interesting naming conventions, as the individuals who are identified are ZIM, Tak, Skoodge, Spleen, Tenn and... Bob.
  • Unproduced episode The Trial would have introduced Irkens named Miyuki and Spork.
  • Even human children have an odd mixture of names. Nick, Kevin and Mary coexist with the likes of Dib, Gaz and Moofy.
• Agent Mulder: Dib and the Swollen Eyeball people.
• The Ahnold: The Ice Cream Truck voice in Episode 1.
• Air-Vent Passageway:
  • How Zim escapes the Mall holding cells in "FBI Warning of Doom".
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot:
  • ZIM's computer, after admitting it doesn't have enough information about the FBI, just makes up a bunch of crap. Then again, it only did so because ZIM ordered it to make some "educated guesses" when it didn't have any info to work with.
  • After being modified by a fed-up ZIM, GIR loses his Cloud Cuckoolander tendencies, and becomes very dedicated to "the mission". Unfortunately, he judges ZIM himself detrimental to the potential success of "the mission"...so he decides to eliminate him.
  • GIR himself. He randomly shifts between a rather scary, red-eyed "duty mode", and his usual, hilariously stupid (and blue) persona. This may have something to do with being cobbled together from junk parts.
• Alien Among Us: The premise.
• Aliens Are Bastards: The Irkens like to conquer other species for no good reason, and all seem to be pretty warped and sociopathic in their own way.
• Aliens of London: Tak has a British accent while none of the other Irkens do. Lard Nar has one too, though we only have one other Vort to compare him to.
• Aliens Speaking English: Although the Irken language had its own alphabet. Some fans have interpreted the grunts and snarls heard briefly in "Mysterious Mysteries" as Zim speaking native Irken without the English filter for the viewers. (Which may be why he makes similar noises in his every-day speech.)
• Aliens Steal Cable: How ZIM does a portion of his 'research.'
• All Crimes Are Equal: Seargent Slab Rankle, Mall Security.
• All Part of the Show: The Mysterious Mysteries host experiences an in-universe Creator Breakdown in the middle of the show. It saves his show from being cancelled.
• Almighty Janitor:
  • Agent Darkbootie, a high-ranking member of the Swollen Eyeball, apparently has a day job as a janitor at NASA.
  • Sizz-lor is a very high ranking Irken ... Fry Cook. Oddly justified given how snacks and food are a major part of Ikren culture, to the point that a snack rush stands people like Sizz-lor on a food court plant for years at a time.
• All There in the Manual: A lot of minor aspects of the setting and background for ZIM and the Irken race as a whole are only known thanks to Word of God from Jhonen Vasquez. Much of this backstory and extra info would have been shown later on in the series.
• All Planets Are Earth-Like: One of the first things that Dib did upon landing on the Gargantis Array was hoping that there was a breathable atmosphere, then cheering that he didn’t die.
• Always Chaotic Evil: It isn't explicitly stated or anything, but one could infer this about the Irkens.
  • Partially deconstructed as their vile natures and society make it so that for all the heinous things Zim did to their race, the crime that would've marked him for termination in "The Trial" was having a faulty PAK.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: ZIM's Robot Parents. Unusually for this trope, it's his own fault they're like that.
• An Aesop:
  • Everyone is weird and different in their own way and there is no such thing as "normal".
  • Don't make fun of others who are different or have different interests as you.
• And I Must Scream: This is what the Console does to people imprisoned in it — it chooses a gamer randomly to control the victim in a simulation remotely while their consciousness and feeling remain intact.
  • Virooz's ultimate fate: the makeshift PAK holding his consciousness is left attached to a couch on an abandoned planet, presumably trapping him there forever.
• And Then What?: Tak’s A.I said it best to Dib in Issue 2:
  Tak’s Ship: You’re going after Zim. An Irken Invader with untold decades of military training and a history of violence and mayhem. You don’t know where he’s going or what he plans to do. And you are a feeble, unarmed human in a stolen ship that you have no idea how to use. When you catch Zim. You are going to... what exactly?
  Dib: Well... stop him.
  Tak’s ship: Right then. Tracking Zim’s garbage signature for the earthbaby with no plan.
• Angry Dance: At one point in "Tak, the Hideous New Girl", Gaz is forced to dance by GIR in order to get him to carry out his part of the attack against Tak. She's appropriately pissed off about it.
• Animated Series
• Antagonist in Mourning: In the unproduced episode "Mopiness of Doom," ZIM loses all motivation when Dib takes a 10-Minute Retirement to learn "real science".
• A Planet Named Zok: Irk.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Dib in "Lice". But hey, at least he admits he was wrong and apologizes.
• Arch-Enemy: Dib to ZIM and vice-versa. The only time they team up is when circumstances and ulterior evil threaten Earth.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The supplies Zim requests at the start of "Hobo 13".
  Tallest Purple: Plasma-armed battle tanks, Maim-bots, death ray cannons, a sack of taquitos?!
  Zim: Just a few supplies I need to complete my mission.
• Art Evolution: Subtly. Most prominent when ZIM and the other Irkens are suddenly drawn with two fingers and a thumb, to set them apart from humans.
• Art-Shifted Sequel: Predominate in the first-look footage of Enter the Florpus. The artstyle seems to shift in a less-restricted blocky style into a more subtle bubbly artstyle used in most of the comics.
• Artificial Human: In the DVD writer's interview, Eric Trueheart said that had the show gone on for several years, Dib would have discovered (while on a quest to discover why his life was so horrible) he was one, created by Membrane.
• Artistic License – Biology: In-universe, Played for Laughs and lampshaded. Dib's organ structure is laughably unrealistic: "Arm control nerve? In my... belly?"
• Artistic License – Space: All over the place in "Planet Jackers". Parodying the Twin Cities bit from Fargo, one of the pilots points out a binary star system, implying it's a rare sight. However the truth is that most stars in the galaxy, or at least the most visible ones, are part of a binary system.
• Asshole Victim:
  • In "Game Slave 2," Iggins is stalked, harassed, terrified and almost killed by Gaz in retribution for taking a console she felt was rightfully hers. On the other hand, he's a loudmouth braggart who claimed a false identity in order to take the GS2 from Gaz who WAS ahead of him in line, so the episode's narrative basically extends no sympathy to him whatsoever. The fact that Iggins actually survives the episode at all is a result of Executive Meddling.
  • A very argumentative example, but there's also Gaz in "Gaz, Taster of Pork". Some feel she's the most deserving example in the entire series.
• Asteroid Thicket: In "Battle of the Planets".
• Audio Adaptation: Seven of the unfinished episodes already had their voice tracks recorded, so they were released on the Special Features DVD.
• Author Appeal: Well, more like Creator Appeal, as Jhonen has a thing for saying the words "Doom" and "Dooky", makes references to piggies, and has a good number of morbidly obese jokes in some episodes.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The Megadoomer, a Humongous Mecha with a stealth feature that makes the mech invisible, but not the pilot. It also has such a massive power draw that it requires an extension cord.
  • This trope is taken up to eleven in the 'Battle of the Planets' episode. (See the Rule of Cool entry below.)
  • The console slot Dib is imprisoned in Issue 5 of the comic book was specially made so that while he's in a simulation, a robotic boot kicks him in the butt.
    Dib: Wh... why?
    Lord Voxelrot: Because the future!
  • Dib using Tak's ship — it can't properly function while it has Dib's personality uploaded to it because, well, it's Dib. However, Tak's personality hates him so not only does it constantly warp his instructions, but also tries to override his command so that it can kill him.
  • An Egopolis where every street is named after yourself.

B

• Babies Make Everything Better: Inverted in "Plague of Babies", where Zim is attacked by a race of aliens that happen to look like human babies and have been forced to impersonate human babies because of a mission gone wrong.
• Backing Away Slowly:
  • In "Bolognius Maximus", Gaz backs away from Dib when he yells "Gaz! Taste me--I'M DELICIOUS!"
  • In "Bestest Friend", Zim goes up to a kid and says he's looking to see if he's interested in being his friend. The kid says "I was born with webbed fish toes, like some kind of horrible fish boy. Wanna see?" and Zim quickly backs away with a disturbed look on his face.
• Bad Humor Truck: The first episode featured an ice cream truck with a voice blaring out propaganda over the speaker phone.
  You like ice cream. You like ice cream. You love it. You love it. You cannot resist ice cream. To resist is hopeless. Your existence is meaningless without ice cream.
• Bad News in a Good Way:
  • GIR does this all the time. Unintentionally, of course. GIR seems not to be able to tell the difference between good and bad news.
  • There's also the Resisty member who tells Lard Nar how their engine core has been replaced with "a new horrible one!"
• Bad Santa: In "The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever," ZIM takes on the identity of Santa Claus in order to bend humanity to his whims. Unfortunately, the sapient Santa suit he built to help him pull off the deception eventually goes rogue and continues to threaten the earth two million years later.
• Bad Vibrations: In "Megadoomer".
• Balloon Belly: Zim in "Zim Eats Waffles" after GIR stuffs him for awhile.
• Bedlam House: "We think Dib's even crazier than normal today! Can we use one of our crazy cards to send him to the Crazy House for Boys?"
• Bee Afraid:
  • A bee causes Zim's ship to crash in "Attack of the Saucer Morons".
  • Zim thinks Tak is after his robot bee. When it flies away, he is very upset.
  • Twice, in "Walk of Doom" and the backup strip for Issue 17, GIR is shown to keep live bees in his head, which get out and attack Zim.
• Berserk Button: You do not dance in front of the monsters in Dank Souls.
  • For Gaz, it's losing to a noob, or someone interrupting her games.
• Big "NO!": ZIM and Dib each get their fair share, but the Soda Can Guy in "Battle of the Planets" takes the cake.
• Big Red Button: Parodied briefly in Tak: the Hideous New Girl
  Dib: How did I miss that?!
• Bilingual Bonus: At the end of "Walk of Doom," when Zim and GIR wind up in a vaguely Mexican town, a little girl offers them candy labeled "fio," Spanish for "ugly."
  • The music playing in this scene is titled "Carne Beat." "Carne" is Spanish for "meat."
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Moofy, and Tak somewhat.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: The whole character of Nick (ZIM's human test subject with an inserted happiness brain probe) appears to be a Take That! at Nickelodeon.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Naturally. ZIM has green skin, antennae, enormous bug-like eyes, and on the inside, a mass of unidentifiable organs which he referred to as his "squeedlyspooch". He apparently breathes through his eyes, too.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: The ZIM vs. Dib dynamic, on average. ZIM is an evil alien invader with plans to exterminate humanity (and who is no less callous and selfish when dealing with his own kind either). Dib wants to save the world, but it's mostly just so he can get respect as the guy who saved the world.
• Black Comedy: Only Jhonen Vasquez could make the hostile alien takeover of our world so twistedly funny.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Do not try to understand the ways of the Irken people. Of course, given that Zim waited for years inside a toilet for the sake of a plan, Dib is not sure he wants to.
• Body Horror:
  • Dib and Zim slowly morphing into giant bologna sausages in "Balonious Maximus".
  • "Dark Harvest" is probably the most egregious example in the series, as Zim runs around removing peoples' organs, replacing them with random objects, while stuffing himself with them until he's a blob.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: ZIM with Dib, especially of the Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him? variety. It's particularly noticeable in "Dib's Wonderful Life of Doom," where he had Dib helpless in his base, and shot him... with a muffin-firing gun, and then just let him go.
• Boot Camp Episode: In "Hobo 13", ZIM is sent to the military training world 'Hobo 13' and told that if he survives he can have a big sack of battle tanks.
• Bottled Heroic Resolve: It turns out Poop Cola is this to a secret society of wizards.
• Bottle Episode: "ZIM Eats Waffles" mainly consists of Dib watching Zim at his home, meaning that there aren't many backgrounds visited.
• Boyish Short Hair: Gaz and Tak (in her human disguise mode.)
• Braces of Orthodontic Overkill: Gretchen has ginormous braces.
• Brain with a Manual Control: In the episode "NanoZIM" (Season 1 Episode 2B), Dib sneaks into Zim's base, takes incriminating pictures of Zim without his disguise on, and puts them on a floppy disk. Zim discovers Dib and shrinks to microscopic size to enter Dib's body via microscopic submarine. Zim accesses Dib's nervous system, giving him control of Dib's arms, and, as a result, making him crush the floppy disk.
• Breather Episode: "Zim Eats Waffles" was confirmed by the crew to be this, as they wanted to do a cheap, jokey episode to save money for bigger ones they were planning.
• Bribe Backfire: When Dib tracked Zim to the Galaxy’s Largest Space Donut he asked the gift shop owner if he knew what Zim’s plan was. The owner replied that if Dib brought a few items it might jog his memory. It turns out that not only did he not know anything he didn't even know what a bribe was and was just trying to sell his merchandise.
• Brick Joke:
  • In "Career Day," ZIM is told his ideal career is as a fast food slave, and the episode, like most others, suffers from Negative Continuity and so the viewer thinks nothing much of it. Fast forward to "The Frycook What Came From All That Space," and we learn that an Irken Control Brain reprogrammed ZIM's PAK to register him within the Irken Empire as a fast food slave on Foodcourtia. The joke started even earlier, in the first episode:
    Tallest Purple: Weren't you banished to Foodcourtia? Shouldn't you be... frying something?
  • Super Toast, from the first episode to "Future Dib".
• Buffy Speak: All the time.
  "All while gathering crucial information, assessing the planet's weaknesses, making it vulnerable to our big... space ship... gang!"
  "Score one for the human race! Score nothing for the ZIM... thingy... race."
  "By the way, it's not called parent teacher night, it's called ZIM doom parent... ZIM doom ZIMMY... doom... night."
  • and so on...
• Burger Fool:
  • This trope is taken to an absurd, horrific degree, to the point that it deters people from eating fast food and watching the show with a clear conscience. Pretty much every fast-food chain is portrayed as a disgusting, horrible place to eat or work, with the likes of Crazy Taco, McMeaties, Bloaty's Pizza Hog, and Chicky Licky.
  • Taken to it's logical extreme with Foodcourtia, an entire planet dedicated to fast food. Apparently because of Zim's banishment there, inflicting this on Zim is now Sizz-lor's job description. And he likes it.
  • McMeaties for "Career Day". Think about it, Zim is picked up to witness his future career at fast food restaurant by an employee on his time off who needs to get back before his break is over, Zim is put to work for the restaurant despite not being an actual employee nor being old enough to work at a restaurant (going by Zim's cover as pretending to be an elementary school student), required to ask the shift manager if he can "get a break" despite Zim is supposed to be there to witness his guide's career and not to work there, and being "fired" on a whim by the manager after Zim molts. It makes you wonder if the teenage employee who was Zim's career peer example was picked up from his elementary school on Career Day, put to work at the fast food restaurant, and never has stopped working there since that day!
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: ZIM's reaction to Tak telling him how he ruined her life could qualify as this trope:
  "Yes, yes, so you blame me for your horrible life, blah, blah, big deal!"
• Butterfly of Doom: When ZIM starts sniping at Dib via a temporal displacement device, Dib starts accumulating more and more debilitating injuries, and is eventually driven to the point of death... After which he is revived and equipped with a bionic exoskeleton by Professor Membrane. All further attempts on Dib's past life result in upgrades to the exoskeleton.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Dib, to the point where when he and ZIM are piloting Mercury and Mars respectively in "Battle of the Planets", Dib is piloting the Butt of Mercury, and gets there by a spaceship that was once used to shoot monkeys into space.
  • Zim fares slightly better compared to Dib, but he's been kicked around several times as well. Be it due to his various horrible injuries, frequent failures, or being despised by his own species due to his own incompetence and violent nature.
  • Invader Skoodge, so much.

C

• The Cake Is a Lie: In "Door to Door", ZIM and Dib's class is selling Poop candy bars for a fundraiser, promised that the student who sells the most candy bars will win a mystery prize. ZIM goes to ridiculous lengths to get it, eventually selling 1.2 million candy bars, only to find out that there was no mystery prize, it was just made up to get the kids to sell more candy bars. But hey, they gave him a can of tuna as consolation.
• Camera Obscurer: Megadoomer had this happen at the end, with the Humongous Mecha's Invisibility failed and Dib tried to take pictures of it.
• Cardboard Prison:
  • From the Christmas special.
    Dib: Hey. (tastes the bars) these are made of real candy canes.
  • Immediately lampshaded and subverted with this.
    ZIM: And this time throw him in the actually strong jingle jail.
    Dib: Why didn't you throw me in the strong one in the first place?
  • There was also an episode where ZIM got abducted by aliens even dumber and more incompetent than he was... all their prisoners escaped in no time at all.
  • In "The Frycook What Came From All That Space", it's revealed that Zim was banished to a planet called Foodcourtia, where (as the name implies) he was forced to be a Burger Fool for the rest of his life under Sizz-Lorr. Security doesn't seem to be a huge priority in Irken Culture, though: once he catches wind of Operation Impending Doom 2, Zim easily and promptly escapes. Sizz-Lorr, on the other hand, learns from his mistake and Zim is actually forced to figure out a way to escape a second time.
• Cassandra Truth: Normally targeted at Dib.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • GIR: "I love this show." or "This is my favorite show." or just, "TACOS!"
  • Professor Membrane: "My poor, insane son."
  • Dib:
    • "MY HEAD'S NOT BIG!"
    • "You jerk."
  • Zim: "I AM ZIM!"
    • Also, "SILENCE!", "DOOM!" and "LIES!"
  • Police Chief: "GET HIM!"
• Character Overlap: In the Johnny the Homicidal Maniac spinoff, titular character Squee is in Ms. Bitters's class (although she is never given a name here), and nearly gets abducted by the two idiotic aliens from the ZIM episode "Abducted" a total of three times. The aliens first appeared in the original JTHM comics.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • When we first see the nurse in "Dark Harvest", she's playing with a mooing can. At the end of the episode, ZIM uses it to replace Dib's lungs.
  • Nick the perpetually happy child is being brainwashed with a happy probe that looks like a screw in his brain. In the Christmas episode, to prevent the Santa suit from taking over his mind from too much holiday spirit, Zim inserts a similar-looking probe to counter the effects.
• Cheerful Child: Keef. This being Invader ZIM it doesn't end well for him. But he gets better.
• Chewing the Scenery: Professor Membrane is really fond of this. As is Dib. And GIR. And the Tallest. And pretty much the whole cast except ZIM, who's like this almost constantly.
  Professor Membrane: Not now, son! I'm making [electrical arcs flash from his workbench] TOAST!
• The Chew Toy: Poor little Invader Skoodge... he gets reassigned from a plush assignment to a planet full of vicious rat people, gets shot out of an orbital cannon as a "reward" for conquering said planet (because he's too short and ugly for proper propaganda purposes), and after getting sent to boot camp gets dragged off by a flesh-eating monster.
• Christmas Episode: "The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever" is based entirely around Zim using Christmas beliefs to try and Take Over the World.
• Citywide Evacuation: The city evacuates in "Walk For Your Lives" to escape Zim's slow-speed explosion, though because it's so slow people take their time leaving.
• Clark Kenting: Zim's Paper-Thin Disguise is a pair of contacts and a wig, yet it fools everyone.
• Comically Missing the Point: Oh, so much. GIR is a constant invoker of this trope, but other characters occasionally get in on it as well. For one instance, in "Bestest Friends", ZIM is greeted by Keef, who is cooking breakfast in ZIM's kitchen and wasn't supposed to be in ZIM's house. ZIM angrily shouts at Keef to get out of his house, to which Keef replies "You don't like waffles..?"
  • After Lord Voxelrot's rant about how he constantly forces everyone to hear about his interest despite them not caring, Dib, realizing that he must know him, replied that if he did he must know how important everything he does really is. Then, after Voxelrot reveals that he was Gaz, Dib took everything as a some complicated prank and demanded that she let him go so he could get back to saving mankind. Gaz had to force herself not to throw her food at him.
  • After Zim defeated the Space Pants, Dib went out and taunted all of the confused survivors, telling them that their pants look stupid eventhough they were being controlled by Puppeteer Parasite when they attacked him.
• Compulsory School Age: ZIM's older than any human alive, and in "NanoZIM" he taunts Dib that he's been flying ships since before Dib was born, yet he attends what appears to be an elementary school — and with his height, he fits in, although he really shouldn't. He opted to do so, believing it to be the best way to retrieve information about the species he intends to conquer. When he's elsewhere, he dresses up as a crazy old man as Obfuscating Insanity as to why his mannerisms are off.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Dib and the Swollen Eyeball Network.
• Continuity Lockout: Played with in-universe in "The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever". ZIM's motive for trying to conquer earth and where the Santa suit came from COMPLEEEETLY ELUUUUDES one of the kids Mr. Slushy is telling the story to, because he didn't elaborate on it. His response is to pick the kid up and tuck her 'under' the bed.
• Continuity Nod: Strangely, the use of the Snap Back did not serve as a deterrent to the use of this as well. In "Gaz, Taster of Pork" there's actually a Continuity Nod to an episode that was a Snap Back!
  • Probably the best example of this is the way it's possible to trace the fate of planet Vort — it's singled out for conquest in "The Nightmare Begins," seen briefly in "Walk for Your Lives" as the Tallest check up on the Invaders, is in the very next episode ("MegaDoomer") mentioned to have been conquered, in "Backseat Drivers" we learn it was turned into a prison, and in "Frycook" we hear about the faulty security systems that were initially put into place, presumably explaining how the Resisty's Vortian captain (Lard Nar) is out and about.
  • In the unproduced script "Day of Da Spookies" ZIM taunts Dib with knowing nothing about aliens, perhaps a nod back to "Room with a Moose" when Dib did not even know what ZIM's home planet was called. However Dib gives an update on what he's learned since, touching on other episodes in the process: ZIM is from a race of planet-stealing aliens called Irkens ("The Nightmare Begins"), their brains are contained in their backpacks ("Ten Minutes to Doom"), their eyes are synthetic implants (somewhat implied by "Planet Jackers"). The display thoroughly spooks ZIM.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: A lot of it, perhaps best exemplified by a room... With a Moose! Banishment to the "Realm of Eternal Screaming and... Restlessness".
• Cool Chair: Lard Nar, leader of the Resisty, has a chair that does not hover but has an extended attachment that lets it move around the ship.
• Cosmic Horror Story: The Halloween episode.
• Crapsack World: It is a show made by Jhonen Vasquez, after all. Humans are generally stupid, ignorant, and repulsive and the world they live in is polluted and unclean. The episode "Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom" featured creatures from another almost hell-like dimension crossing over under the impression that the other side is a perfect world that they can ruin, but they are so repulsed by their first impressions that they immediately retreat back into their own world. The Irkens, the other main civilization featured, are a cheerfully xenocidal species that decide rank by the individual's height and whose main form of entertainment is the extermination of entire planets while eating nachos and curly fries.
• Couch Gag: Where ZIM is at after the world is wrapped in metal cables and it zooms out to show it in a thought bubble in the opening credits varies in episodes, though there are only a few variations.
• Creator Cameo: Various writers and animators were drawn into recurring background characters (including Frank Conniff, a.k.a. TV's Frank). Series creator Jhonen Vasquez provided the voices of both ZIM's computer and Minimoose. Vasquez eventually asked that they stop doing this after he realized that it might be distracting.
• Credits Gag: Done in the episode FBI Warning, with the titular FBI warning in the beginning of Intestines of War. Apparently, most FBI warnings are made by people threatened by smelly piggies.
  "The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigates allegations of criminal copyright infringement. They will hunt you down like the dirty monkey you are and force you to wear a moose skin and ride a greased piggy while singing folk tunes. They’re forcing me to ride the piggy as I write this. The piggy is smelly!"
• Creepy Child: Gaz, Keef, Melvin
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass:
  • Zim is an idiot, but he is also a genius at times and shouldn't be underestimated.
  • GIR also qualifies. While he's generally the ultimate Cloudcuckoolander, he occasionally has moments of hypercompetence, if only by accident, and rarely screws up missions by himself.
• The Cuckoo Lander Was Right: Dib spots right away that ZIM is a dangerous alien. And nobody will listen.
• Cuteness Proximity: Invoked by ZIM with Ultra-Peepi.
• Cut Short: Jhonen Vasquez already plotted out a finale right before the series was canceled.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: "Ten Minutes to Doom."
  Dib: Dad, do you know what this means? This device... it IS Zim. It's his brain and his life support. That means his body is just... something to carry his PAK around.
• Cyber Punk Is Techno: The theme song and some of the soundtrack.

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