Germs (Invader Zim)
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Germs is an episode of the series Invader Zim, produced and aired as episode 4A on April 20, 2001.
[edit] Plot
Gir is watching an alien movie when Zim walks in. Zim then notices that in the movie, germs are the weapons that kill the aliens at the end. Zim laughs it off as ridiculous propaganda, until his base computer backs the claim up... then he immediately buys a pair of green goggles that detect germs. Soon, Zim is blasting every single germ he can possibly find.
Zim quickly descends into paranoia, wearing a shower cap and tissue boxes on his feet, despairing and killing every single germ. After he starts to run out of antiseptic spray, he braves the outside world to get more. This excursion goes awry when GIR runs off, Zim in tow, into a local MacMeaties fast food restaurant. He finds that the meat in the McMeaties burgers are completely clean, with no germs. He learns from a worker that they were originally going to be SPACE MEAT, but McMeaties instead make their meat from used NAPKINS. So Zim comes up with an idea to be completely clean.
The next day, he shows up in class covered, from head to toe, in meat.
[edit] Parodies
- As Zim deteriorates, his tissue box-covered feet and shower cap parody billionaire Howard Hughes who, as he got older, became increasingly obsessed with germs.
- The film ZIM and GIR watch in the beginning is a parody of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds.
- When Zim and GIR are at MacMeaties, there is a poster in the background that says "JUST SAY YES" This is a parody of the "Just say NO to Drugs" posters.
[edit] Trivia
- Invader Zim Creator Jhonen Vasquez makes a cameo appearance, in McMeaties. A script for the first episode, The Nightmare Begins, is sitting on the table.
