List of ''Invader Zim'' episodes
Invader Zim is an American animated television series that was produced by and aired on Nickelodeon. The series revolves around an extraterrestrial named Zim from the planet Irk and his ongoing mission to conquer and/or destroy a dark and satirical version of the Earth. His various attempts to subjugate and destroy the human race are invariably undermined by some combination of his own ineptitude, his malfunctioning robot servant GIR and his nemesis Dib, one of very few humans not oblivious enough to be unaware of Zim's identity.
Invader Zim premiered on March 30, 2001. It was targeted at children in their early teens, and met with critical acclaim. However, after the first season the show's ratings[1] began to suffer. Before the second season was completed, Nickelodeon cancelled the series, leaving at least sixteen episodes unfinished.[2] Because of its continued fanbase and above-average DVD sales since cancellation, Invader Zim has been called a cult hit.[3]
The series consists of a pilot episode, 46 episode segments, and at least 17 episodes that were in production at the time of the series' cancellation. As of August 19, 2006, all produced 46 episodes have aired on television and been released on DVD. On December 24, 2011, the pilot episode finally aired on television. 38 episode segments were originally broadcast in pairs, each 12-minute episode segment debuting in the same half-hour. There are eight double-length episodes. This list is ordered by the episode order in the DVD releases, with broadcast dates noted. Almost every episode was directed by Steve Ressel; the only exception is the pilot, which was directed by Jordan Reichek.
In April 2017, Nickelodeon announced that there will be a television film based on the series.[4]
Series overview
| Season | Episodes | Originally aired | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First aired | Last aired | Network | ||||
| Pilot | December 24, 2011 | Nicktoons | ||||
| 1 | 20 | March 30, 2001 | September 28, 2002 | Nickelodeon | ||
| 2 | 7 | December 10, 2002 | August 19, 2006 | Nicktoons (episodes 21–26) Nickelodeon (episode 27) | ||
Episodes
Original pilot (1999)
A pilot was produced for Nickelodeon in 1999, featuring Billy West as the voice of Zim. This pilot was never aired during the original run of the series. It was later released as a special feature on the Invader ZIM: Vol 2 - Progressive Stupidity DVD set on August 31, 2004. It eventually made its television airing debut on Nicktoons on December 24, 2011, as part of their "Nicktoon's Winter Funderland" block.
| Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Pilot" | Jordan Reichek | Rob Hummel, Ed Scharlach, Jhonen Vasquez & Eva Almos Jhonen Vasquez (story) | December 24, 2011 | |
| Zim finds that he is severely allergic to the school cafeteria's food, and Dib uses this fact to try to prove to the other children that Zim is an alien. Zim escapes and uses a listening device planted on the back of Dib's head to spy on Dib's house—Zim discovers that Dib intends to kill him with the cafeteria food. Zim and Dib stage an apocalyptic food fight in the school cafeteria, which ends with Zim escaping and Dib being blamed for the food fight. | ||||
Season 1 (2001–02)
| No. | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "The Nightmare Begins" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez & Rob Hummel | March 30, 2001 |
| The Irken race is having a great assigning for Operation Impending Doom II, where all Invaders are assigned a planet to conquer. Zim is not invited, as he nearly destroyed the planet Irk during Operation Impending Doom I; yet turns up anyway, and hoping to never deal with him again, the Almighty Tallest send Zim on a fake mission to the edges of their known universe and issue him a dysfunctional Standard Information Retrieval unit who called himself "GIR", where they hope he will die/be lost and never found. Unfortunately, there is a planet called Earth on the outskirts of the Irken universe, and when Zim finds this world (months later), he assumes this is the subject of his "mission". After arriving on Earth, Zim attempts to fit in and fools everyone except his schoolmate Dib, a young paranormal investigator, who vows to capture Zim and prove that he is an alien. | ||||
| 2A | "Bestest Friend" | Steve Ressel | Rob Hummel, Roman Dirge, & Jhonen Vasquez | April 13, 2001 |
| Zim notices that all the other children in the school have friends except him. This is seen as a threat to his all-important mission, as well as a potential exposure of his real identity. He decides that as he doesn't want to appear strange, he must also have a friend. Zim chooses an annoying classmate named Keef to be his best friend and once people have acknowledged that Zim has a friend, he attempts to abandon him. Keef, however, does not take the hint and so Zim must use more drastic methods to dispose of him. Keef tries to throw a surprise party for Zim, which does not come as a surprise on account of GIR, but instead, Zim makes Keef mistake him for a squirrel. | ||||
| 2B | "NanoZim" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez & Rob Hummel | April 13, 2001 |
| 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. When Dib reveals he has a copy of the disk hidden in his house, Zim travels to Dib's brain to delete the memory of where the disk copy is hidden, and, as an added bonus, damage Dib's brain to the point where he will never be a threat again. Dib then swallows a mini-submarine (a creation of his dad's) and begins to fight Zim, using controls that look uncannily like a video game. However, due to Zim being inside of him, Dib begins to lose control, and Gaz, who thinks this is merely an online game, takes her brother's place and begins to play what she thinks is a video game. In the end, she manages to defeat Zim, thus saving Dib's life. Dib goes to the bathroom and throws Zim in the toilet, with Zim screaming as the words "The End" come out of the toilet. This episode also features more intense computer-generated sequences. Computer-generated imagery had been used in the series already, but this episode was the most demanding so far.[5] | ||||
| 3A | "Parent-Teacher Night" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez & Rob Hummel | April 6, 2001 |
| Parent-Teacher Night is approaching and Zim is confronted with the fact that he doesn't have any parents (Irkens are cloned from a gene bank). He makes use of his robot parents to attempt to fool the students, teachers and parents. However, Zim knows that the Roboparents aren't equipped for such a job. Dib, who brings his dad's communication device, tries to prove that Zim is an alien. The robotic parents malfunction and wreak havoc during the meeting, but nobody discovers that they aren't human or that Zim is an extraterrestrial. | ||||
| 3B | "Walk of Doom" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez & Rob Hummel | April 6, 2001 |
| Zim goes on an outing to the downtown area in order to test a new guidance chip he installed in GIR, but when GIR removes the chip before leaving to store a cupcake, Zim and GIR are left lost and have to resort to public transport to find their way back. Their journey home is complicated further by Zim temporarily losing his vision by looking at the sun, his disguise being mistaken for that of a bank robber, and his escape from the police being wrecked by GIR replacing his extra rocket fuel with tuna fish. | ||||
| 4A | "Germs" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez & Rob Hummel | April 20, 2001 |
| Zim sees a B-rated movie reminiscent of the 1953 film version of The War of the Worlds, where advanced extraterrestrial species are thwarted by common germs. Zim becomes acutely germophobic and dedicates himself to studying and exterminating all of the Earth's bacteria. He embarks on incredibly thorough cleaning sprees and uses germ spray on himself and GIR. After running out of germ spray he heads out to buy more, but GIR runs off to MacMeatie's (a parody of McDonald's). There Zim discovers that he can protect himself from germs using a germ-resistant hamburger "meat" made of recycled napkins, which is sold there. | ||||
| 4B | "Dark Harvest" | Steve Ressel | Eric Trueheart & Rob Hummel | April 20, 2001 |
|
When a pigeon lands on Zim's head in class, he is sent to the nurse's office for having "head pigeons", but he becomes concerned that the nurse may discover that he is not actually human. To avoid this, Zim steals human organs from other children and replaces them with other objects and ingests them himself, resulting in him having multiple hearts and spleens. After Dib notices Zim has been out of class for a long time, he finds out what Zim has been doing and tries to stop him. In the end, Zim passes his examination, and after it is discovered that Zim had swapped a mooing can toy into Dib's body, he is immediately dubbed inhuman by the nurse, and is called a "hideous mooing cyborg boy" in a resulting newspaper article. Note: This episode (and the series in general) became controversial when it was mentioned at Scott Dyleski's trial. | ||||
| 5A | "Attack of the Saucer Morons" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez & Eric Trueheart | April 27, 2001 |
| Zim's spaceship is sent spiralling out of control after an encounter with a bee and it crash-lands in a park. Zim attempts to recover it, but a UFO-cult finds Zim's ship before he has a chance to take it back to his base. Zim is captured by the group once his disguise falls apart, and they begin to worship him as their prophesied alien god (prophesied, according to the leader, by... Frank, another member of the cult). Zim cannot contact GIR directly after the crash due to GIR's attendance of a rave party. Eventually, Zim gets in contact with GIR who is able to rescue Zim and recover the spaceship, only to crash once more in the midst of yet another UFO-cult as a result of the same bee. | ||||
| 5B | "The Wettening" | Steve Ressel | Roman Dirge, Eric Trueheart & Rob Hummel | April 27, 2001 |
| During a rainstorm after school, Zim discovers that water (or rather, the pollution in it) has a harmful effect on his Irken skin. Dib also learns this and attacks him by splashing him with a puddle and, later, a water balloon. Zim realizes he must defend himself and he discovers that paste protects his skin from the harmful effects of water. Dib constructs an automatic water balloon-launching weapon over the weekend to destroy Zim. On Monday morning, Dib turns up at school with his weapon, and prepares to annihilate Zim but when he attacks, he finds Zim has been replaced with a holographic decoy. Zim is in fact on a space station with his own over-the-top water-based weapon. The space station siphons all the water on Earth (including all oceans, lakes and rivers) and into a massive water balloon of his own, which he subsequently drops upon the Earth — causing catastrophic flooding and destruction (though no major characters are harmed). The whole water balloon plan was to kill Dib (and possibly any other Zim finds annoying, the more humans gone, the better), but, as usual, Zim goes completely overboard. At the end, Zim marches off to what's left of his base, saying he's going to immerse himself in paste. But then his head gets caught in an actual toilet instead of the fake toilet that he uses to access his underground lair, because he gets mixed up between the remains of his base and the remains of a men's bathroom that GIR was playing in. | ||||
| 6A | "Career Day" | Steve Ressel | Rob Hummel | May 4, 2001 |
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It's career day at school and Dib has been paired with a paranormal investigator named Bill, while Zim goes to work at a fast food restaurant called MacMeatie's. However, after discovering Zim is moulting due to the galactic equinox, Dib tries to convince his new mentor to help him expose Zim. The moulting process, while disgusting and explosive, only lasts a few seconds, so it is crucial that Bill pays attention. Bill, however, is not interested, and Dib must trick him into going to the restaurant. Bill is distracted but fails to see Zim moult. After moulting, Zim is fired from MacMeatie's. Guest star: Adam Paul as Bill | ||||
| 6B | "Battle-Dib" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez & Eric Trueheart | May 4, 2001 |
| Dib desires to do a presentation about Zim for a meeting of the Swollen Eyeballs, a secret society which attempts to track down aliens and other such paranormal beings. However, the society requires that he must have a permission slip signed by his father, Professor Membrane, before he can do this. Professor Membrane is very famous, so he has a television show and Dib must endure various trials (including a Thunderdome) to gain access to his father. Dib fails the trials, but is successful in getting his father's signature. However, he cannot give his presentation as he lost his suitcase during the trials (which contained proof of Zim's alien heritage). This is the first of the three episodes to not feature Zim. | ||||
| 7A | "Planet Jackers" | Steve Ressel | Rob Hummel & Jhonen Vasquez | August 31, 2001 |
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Zim is spying on the other Invaders, checking on their progress via a massive telescope, when static appears on-screen instead of the desired Invader. Zim summons GIR only to find that GIR did not do anything to the telescope. Then various earthquakes begin on Earth, breaking his telescope, and Zim attempts to find out why. He first tries using Dib's giant telescope, but Dib won't let him. So he has no choice but to set off in his Voot Cruiser. He says something about adjusting the Cruiser's G-Force compensators before rocketing off of the surface of Earth at ridiculous speeds. He is only stopped when they hit what turns out to be a giant TV screen, and discovers that the planet is being stolen by the Planet Jackers, aliens who use planets (like the Earth) as kindling for their dying sun. After failing to persuade them to leave the planet for his conquest, Zim goes about stealing the planet back and is eventually successful. The citizens of Earth have no idea what was happening (although the "sky" inside of the capturing shell appears to pulse) and the Planet Jackers never realize that they lost the Earth. This is the first episode that Zim saved the human race, though he said that he saved it just so he can destroy it. Note: After this episode, Earth is back in its original orbit. This means that it was either put back into the solar system by Zim, or the effects are temporary, or that the show uses the reset button technique.Guest stars: Sherman Howard and Rob Izenberg as the Planet Jackers | ||||
| 7B | "Rise of the Zitboy" | Steve Ressel | Frank Conniff & Roman Dirge | August 31, 2001 |
| Zim is experimenting one day when Dib tries to sneak into his base in a ceramic squirrel costume. Zim sees through this disguise and kicks him out, but not before learning that Dib has found a weakness in his security system. This is confirmed by a pizza boy walking straight through his robotic guard gnomes and delivering a pizza. Zim goes inside, pondering the flaw, when GIR eats the pizza and then jumps on Zim, covering him in grease. This causes Zim to get a zit. GIR enjoys the zit very much and draws a little face on it, which Zim fears will make him stick out even more. After the zit grows he discovers that its motion has hypnotic powers so for a little test he uses it on GIR which hypnotizes him. Zim takes a little body from his GEARS/CIRCUITS/HEADLESS BODIES box and attaches it to the zit, which he names Pustulio and passes off as a friend. Zim uses this hypnotic (albeit disgusting) zit to gain control of the school children, and then forces Dib into revealing the weakness in Zim's base defenses. At that point the pimple grows even further to monstrous proportions and explodes; Zim then leaves to reinforce his base's defenses to remove the weakness, while Dib is forced to clean up the mess with a tiny sponge. | ||||
| 8A | "Invasion of the Idiot Dog Brain" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez & Rob Hummel | August 24, 2001 |
| During maintenance of Zim's underground base, GIR's brain is accidentally put into the house's operating system. Zim cannot control GIR and attempts various methods at getting control of the house back. Eventually GIR decides he wants tacos and burritos, and makes the house morph into a four-legged walker vaguely resembling a dog. The house, with Zim inside, then travels in full view to the restaurant to collect food. When discovering that he no longer has a mouth to eat the food, GIR lets Zim rectify the situation, much to Zim's distaste. | ||||
| 8B | "Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy" | Steve Ressel | Eric Trueheart | August 24, 2001 |
| By using a time portal device, Zim hopes to make a Hunter-Destroyer machine travel back in time and kill Dib when he is a small child so he can't interfere with his plans in the future. The device is simple: throw in an object from the present and it will swap it with a selected object from the past. However, Zim discovers that the Hunter-Destroyer is incompatible with the time portal device. Out of frustration, Zim throws GIR's rubber pig at the machine and it bounces into the portal by accident, replacing a tricycle Dib had been riding when he was a small child and in pursuit of an alien, which turned out to be a kiddie bop-bag. As a result, he crashes the piggy (which had replaced the trike) and becomes maimed by the accident. Zim continues to send a series of rubber piggies into the past to harm Dib until he is reduced to a catatonic state. However, this provokes Dib's father into building high-tech cyborg battle armor to protect his "accident-prone" son. Now the effect is reversed; when Zim sends a rubber piggy back, Dib gets even more badly hurt which makes his father redesign the armor to become even more resilient and dangerous. To stop this entire chain of events from happening, Zim sends a pig back to himself with the message not to use the portal device. Unfortunately, as the piggy must replace an object in the past, the piggy supplants Zim's brain. Zim is now reduced to the mental status of a three-year-old (which raises the question of how he could possibly send the piggy back to replace his brain; see the grandfather paradox). | ||||
| 9A | "A Room with a Moose" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez & Rob Hummel | August 17, 2001 |
| After reminiscing about his mistreatment at the hands of his schoolmates, Zim orchestrates a fake field trip, intending to launch the rest of his class into a wormhole in a spaceship disguised as a school bus. The wormhole leads to an alternate dimension which consists entirely of a room occupied by a moose in which they will meet their moosey fate. How the moose is meant to menace the children is not made explicitly clear, however Zim implies that upon arriving in the alternate dimension, the school bus will materialize inside the moose's mouth, to be eaten whole. After an internal struggle, Dib thwarts Zim's plan by weighing down the right side of the bus, causing it to veer onto an alternate path through the wormhole, which leads safely home. | ||||
| 9B | "Hamstergeddon" | Steve Ressel | Eric Trueheart | August 17, 2001 |
| Zim's class at school gets a new hamster, and Zim decides that its cuteness can be used as a form of mind control. Zim attaches a device to the hamster which causes it to grow to Godzilla-like size and develop several superpowers, such as the ability to fire a laser beam from its mouth. Unable to control it, Zim instead allows the hamster to rampage throughout the city. But when the hamster heads for Zim's base, Zim is forced to team up with Dib and use alien technology to launch the creature into deep space. This is the second time in the series that Zim inadvertently saves the human race. | ||||
| 10A | "Plague of Babies" | Steve Ressel | Rob Hummel | September 7, 2001 |
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The episode begins with Zim and GIR falling out of the sky in their smoldering Voot Cruiser, which has been presumably damaged by GIR. Zim is headed underground to the repair bay, but fears that he has been seen out of disguise by a human baby. Believing the baby to be a threat to his mission, he attempts to interrogate it. After a fruitless attempt at getting information, he is warded off by a horrible smell caused by the baby. He is in his base when the doorbell is rang. He answers the door, and no one is there. He goes back in, only to discover a platoon of babies in strange uniforms. He then finds out that they are in fact extraterrestrials that have been stranded on Earth for seven years, when they were accidentally swapped with human babies during an information-gathering mission at an Earth hospital. In order to get back to their home planet the aliens attempt to steal Zim's ship, but Zim makes it to the repair bay before them and finds GIR messing with the power amplifier (again), creating a field that induces stupidity. Zim is able to incapacitate them with this field and pass them off as human infants once again. Guest star: Phil LaMarr as Noogums/Shnooky | ||||
| 10B | "Bloaty's Pizza Hog" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez & Rob Hummel | September 7, 2001 |
| Dib goes out to defeat Zim. When Professor Membrane tells Gaz that it's her turn to pick a restaurant to eat at during the Annual Family Night Out (Prof. Membrane is VERY busy), she chooses Bloaty's Pizza Hog. Two hours pass by and when it is time to go and Dib still has not returned, Professor Membrane says this is a family night, so everyone must attend, otherwise he would have to cancel the whole thing and put it off until next year. In order to be in time for the rare family dinner at her favorite restaurant, Gaz tries to persuade Dib to come home via a communicator watch, but her brother refuses to listen to her. Dib, still at Zim's base, is captured by Zim and taken to a station orbiting Earth for experimentation and vivisection. Gaz is forced to go to save him. She nearly decides to let Zim attempt his experiment of taking out Dib's organs but thinks that Professor Membrane wouldn't allow them to go to the restaurant without reassembling Dib, so Gaz releases Dib and forces him to an escape ship that Zim foolishly guides them to. Zim chases them in another ship but is taken down by Gaz's superior flying skills (most likely due to her gaming skills seen in "NanoZim"). Gaz, Dib and Professor Membrane meet at Bloaty's Pizza Hog and are about to enjoy their meal when Zim bursts through the door. Dib protests that he should finish Zim off but Gaz has left him strapped on a floating disc so he cannot move. However, Zim is terrified by the singing animals and runs back out the door. | ||||
| 11A | "Door to Door" | Steve Ressel | Eric Trueheart & Courtney Lilly | March 29, 2002 |
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The Skool starts a candy fundraiser in order to get some finances. Zim isn't interested at first, until he finds out about a secret prize. Zim later tries to sell some candy with GIR, but has a hard time selling them. Dib of course tries to out do him, so Zim would fail at something else. Poop Dawg (the mascot of the candy drive) appears in front of Zim as a "gangsta specter of defeat" and tries to make him give up, but Zim only becomes more interested in the mystery prize. Zim then starts to sell like an invader by putting head devices on people showing them what would happen if they didn't buy his candy (basically, an apocalyptic scene depicting the end of the world). Zim wins by selling 1.2 million candies, but finds out at Skool that the mystery prize does not exist, as it was a lie to make kids sell more. He then receives a can of tuna as a consolation. Guest star: Phil LaMarr as Poop Dawg | ||||
| 11B | "FBI Warning of Doom" | Steve Ressel | Frank Conniff | March 29, 2002 |
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Zim gets scared after finding an "FBI Warning" on the movie GIR keeps watching. Zim takes the DVD back to the mall. However, it is closed, but that doesn't stop Zim. After Zim gets in, Sergeant Slab Rankle catches him, takes the DVD and puts him in a cell with everyone else who breaks rules. Zim escapes with the help of the prisoners, and steals back the DVD to take it to the video store. After Slab Rankle finds the DVD is missing and releases a zombie army, Zim easily defeats them (they're too mindless to attack), and puts the DVD in the return slot. Then Slab Rankle asks Zim to join him, but he refuses and leaves. Guest star: Robert Cait as Slab Rankle | ||||
| 12A | "Bolognius Maximus" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez | September 21, 2001 |
| Dib throws bologna at Zim during the lunch break at school, which dissolves his skin. As revenge, Zim places a thumbtack on Dib's chair, which he then sits on. The next day Dib discovers that he smells like meat and is ridiculed by the other children, and at that point Zim informs Dib that his vengeance is complete. Dib discovers that Zim has infected him with a virus that is altering his DNA and turning him into bologna. As revenge he infects Zim with the same virus, and as they start turning into sausages (and coming close to being devoured by ravenous feral dogs) they both work together to try to find a cure — only to fail and hide in a deserted house. However, it should be noted that in the following episode, Zim and Dib are right back to their normal selves, suggesting that either the virus is temporary, or the show uses a floating timeline. | ||||
| 12B | "Game Slave 2" | Steve Ressel | Eric Trueheart & Jhonen Vasquez | September 21, 2001 |
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Gaz is in line for a newly released handheld games console when the person behind her, who introduces himself to her as Iggins, tricks the salesperson into giving the final console to him. Gaz is on the trail of this video game fan boy and pursues him to his home where she removes and destroys all the batteries. Desperate for batteries so he can save his game, Iggins heads to the shopping mall. While in the elevator Gaz scares him into handing over the console. She then puts some batteries into it and continues playing. This episode is the second of three episodes not to feature Zim. Guest star: Paul Greenberg as Iggins | ||||
| 13 | "Battle of the Planets" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez | April 5, 2002 |
| Zim sends out probes to planet Mars to see if the planet's any use for the Irken Empire. When the probes send back artificial-looking structures, Zim and GIR then travel to Mars to find out what destroyed the "Marsioids" and to possibly use it to destroy the humans. When Zim lands, he finds the face and finds out that it is really a panel to control the planet built by the "Marsioids". Zim then plans to squish all the humans with Mars. Back on Earth, Dib uses another probe to overhear Zim planning to destroy Earth; he then runs to NASAplace to tell the Members, but like always, they don't believe him. He finds Agent Darkbootie to be the janitor, and Darkbootie helps Dib by sending him to Mercury, which has been modified the same way Mars has. After Dib controls the planet, Dib finds Zim and tries to stop him. Dib also has cameras to record Zim. However, GIR ends up distracting Dib and stealing the cameras in the process, preventing Dib from exposing Zim. The battle ends with Zim stupidly controlling the planet into the asteroid belt and being forced to abandon it. Later, Mars crashes into the Irken Armada completely unnoticed by the Almighty Tallest. | ||||
| 14 | "Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez & Rob Hummel | October 26, 2001 |
| Dib is doing experiments with his father's equipment until it goes wrong. Dib manages to launch a portal into a monster world in his forehead. Dib now starts passing in and out of an alternate dimension where everything is evil. He manages to force Zim to come into the dimension with him. The monsters capture Zim and say they won't release him if Dib doesn't "surrender his head". It is revealed that Dib's head is the only portal out of the dimension, and all the evil creatures within it want to go through it. Zim saves Dib so that he can get through the portal but he then leaves Dib to the monsters. The monsters have a look through the portal but turn back as they are disgusted by the sight of GIR eating candy. | ||||
| 15A | "Mysterious Mysteries" | Steve Ressel | Courtney Lilly & Rob Hummel | March 22, 2002 |
| Dib goes on his favorite TV show, Mysterious Mysteries, to tell the world the story of Zim and to share a video of Zim he had filmed. To Dib's surprise, Zim, GIR and Gaz also appear on the show to tell their sides of the story. They each tell their own versions, which are then performed in reconstructions on the show for the benefit of the viewer. The presenter of the show decides that Dib and Zim are crazy and tells the viewers that nobody will ever know what truly what happened in the video, leaving Zim's cover saved, once again, by the show's characters' stupidity. Although he shows signs of insanity himself, the show received strong ratings because "people love crazy". | ||||
| 15B | "Future Dib" | Steve Ressel | Rob Hummel | March 22, 2002 |
| Professor Membrane constructs an energy-creating device and Zim gets the idea to sabotage it to destroy the world. Dib realizes that he must stop Zim, but during his preparations he discovers a version of himself who is beaten up and hurt laying in his bed. This version tells Dib that he is from the future and he needs his help to stop Zim as he's too weak. So Dib goes to where future Dib told him to go, but it is a trap set by Zim, and the future Dib is in fact a robot controlled by Zim. Dib is stuck in a cage with a monkey while future Dib goes to the starting of the energy device to destroy it. Gaz is annoyed by Dib and beats him up, preventing him from causing the destruction. She then realizes he is a robot after one of its robotic eyes pops out. Zim quickly gets over his loss and decides to watch the real Dib getting tormented by the monkey. | ||||
| 16A | "Hobo 13" | Steve Ressel | Eric Trueheart & Danielle Koenig | July 12, 2002 |
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Zim requests more powerful weapons but the Almighty Tallest do not want to give them to him, so he is sent to the deadly training planet Hobo 13 to prove he is worthy of the new equipment. Zim, through extreme selfishness and sacrifice of his teammates, surprisingly gets to the end of the trials. The commander, who is appalled at how Zim has acted, decides to take Zim on in a ring fight, but Zim manages to beat him by using the power from his opponent against him. Guest star: R. Lee Ermey as Sgt. Hobo | ||||
| 16B | "Walk for Your Lives" | Steve Ressel | Eric Trueheart | September 28, 2002 |
| Zim is doing time-related experiments on Dib, but the experiment explodes. Dib manages to escape but he is "slowed down" and can only move very slowly. Also produced is an explosion, which is also exploding very slowly. Zim decides that the explosion needs to be put into the city cesspit to stop it from exploding and destroying his base. After some frustration and against the advice of GIR and the computer, Zim decides to throw Dib into the explosion to cause it to speed up. The explosion then explodes at normal speed. | ||||
| 17A | "Megadoomer" | Steve Ressel | Roman Dirge, Eric Trueheart, and Jhonen Vasquez | April 26, 2002 |
| Due to an angry prisoner who sorts packages, Zim is accidentally shipped a high-powered robot with a cloaking device and he immediately heads off to destroy Dib with it. The robot does not come with batteries, however, so every few blocks, the machine has to be plugged into a new power outlet to stay cloaked. What's more is that the robot is cloaked, but Zim inside is not, making him visible for everyone to see. (Also, the power cord isn't invisible, either.) When he gets to Dib's house the cloak fails, and Dib attempts to take pictures of the robot. However, Dib forgets to take the lens cap off his camera, and Zim destroys the robot so Dib cannot get any pictures of it. | ||||
| 17B | "Lice" | Steve Ressel | Rob Hummel | April 26, 2002 |
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There is an infestation of head lice at the school and so a lice hunter comes to investigate the huge outbreak. She quarantines the entire school and Dib believes she is crazy, but it is revealed that there is a giant lice queen beneath the school. The lice hunter soon discovers that the only one who is immune to the infestation is Zim, and uses Zim's immunity to fight the lice queen in a parody of Aliens. Guest star: Mindy Sterling as Countess von Verminstrasser | ||||
| 18A | "Abducted" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez & Rob Hummel | April 12, 2002 |
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Zim and GIR are abducted by two aliens who think of them as human and dog specimens. Zim immediately informs the aliens that he is not human and GIR is not a dog, but they don't believe him as they are stupid. Escaping is not difficult, as the aliens have only managed to stop one specimen from escaping in the past. (The specimen that hadn't escaped had been "fused" with far too many things, making his body too heavy to move.) Zim and GIR escape the aliens and return to the base. Guest stars: Brian George, Jim Wise. | ||||
| 18B | "The Sad, Sad Tale of Chickenfoot" | Steve Ressel | Roman Dirge & Eric Trueheart | April 12, 2002 |
| Frustrated at how people see paranormal science, Dib sets out to disprove the urban legend of the Chickenfoot, who is actually a man stuck inside a chicken costume. The zipper on the costume got stuck after a microwave exploded at a chicken restaurant. Dib manages to unstick the zipper and remove the suit, but now people are suggesting that all legends, even ones that Dib believes in, are false. Dib protests, but, because the humans find him mentally unstable, they didn't care. This is the last of three episodes not to feature Zim. | ||||
| 19A | "GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff" | Steve Ressel | Eric Trueheart | May 24, 2002 |
| Zim is frustrated with how useless GIR is, and puts him in permanent defensive mode. Things start to go wrong when GIR sees Zim himself as a threat to their mission on Earth. GIR escapes to gain more knowledge of the humans so that he can complete the mission. He also tries to zap Zim with his laser vision. GIR is very hard to capture when he's being dutiful, but Zim follows him and manages to put him back into his normal, malfunctioning mode. | ||||
| 19B | "Dib's Wonderful Life of Doom" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez & Eric Trueheart | May 24, 2002 |
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Zim is hit by a muffin during the school lunchbreak and suspects it is Dib, but he cannot know for sure. That night, in a dream, Dib is visited by aliens and they say they have given him special powers. Dib then uses these powers to threaten Zim, who then willingly turns himself in and has GIR self-destruct. Time passes and Dib spends his life solving other mysteries and thwarting aliens. Finally, at a very old age, Dib is being interviewed on TV when he is asked if he threw the muffin at Zim and Dib admits it. At that point it is revealed that Zim had simulated Dib's entire life just to find out whether or not Dib was the one who actually threw the muffin. He then proceeds to throw his own muffin at Dib, who then replied "you stink, Zim" and left. Guest star: Greg Ellis. | ||||
| 20 | "Tak: The Hideous New Girl" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez & Eric Trueheart | May 10, 2002 |
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A new girl at school, Tak, joins the class and "has a crush" on Zim according to the other children. Tak is actually an Irken, and reveals herself after many failed attempts by Zim of trying to get Tak to be his "love-pig" so he can find out more about the humans. Tak reveals her plan to hollow out the Earth's core and fill it with snacks as an offering to the Almighty Tallest. Zim, Dib, Gaz, and GIR team up to try to stop Tak. Zim distracts her in his spaceship while Dib turns off Tak's machine, while GIR and Gaz manage to wreak havoc remotely. At the end, Dib laments that he is unable to explore beyond Earth, only for Tak's abandoned ship to crash right in front of him. This is the third time in the series that Zim saved the human race. Guest stars: Olivia d'Abo, Rob Hummel | ||||
Season 2 (2002; 2006)
The second season of Invader Zim aired in 2002. After the season's first episode, the show was cancelled and the episodes that had been completed prior to the cancellation were not shown. The remaining finished episodes were released on DVD in 2004, and finally aired in 2006 on Nicktoons even though the episodes had aired in several other countries before the United States. Due to the cancellation, Season 2 was not completed.
| No. | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 | "Backseat Drivers from Beyond the Stars" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez | June 10, 2006 |
| Zim desires to bring his masters to Earth to witness his next plan for world domination involving a brain parasite, so he remotely takes control of the "Massive". However, at the time he takes control, the Tallest are under attack from a resistance group known as "The Resisty" (a name met with breathtaking laughter from the Tallest). Meanwhile, Dib has been attempting to salvage/reverse engineer Tak's spaceship (which he acquired in "Tak: The Hideous New Girl") and manages to repair enough of its systems to establish a remote connection of his own to get into Zim's computer and wrestle for control of the Tallest's ship. When the Tallest realize what's going on, they transfer Zim's control over to the Resisty so he brings their ship in and they self-destruct. The Tallest then contact Zim to punish him for what he has done, only to find that he's under attack from the brain parasite. | ||||
| 22A | "Mortos der Soulstealer" | Steve Ressel | Eric Trueheart | June 17, 2006 |
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Dib summons a mystical beast called Mortos der Soulstealer to attack Zim and prevent him from taking over the world. Mortos will grant Dib anything he wants, but is tired and requests time and food to regenerate. It soon becomes clear that Mortos just wants to have fun, and spends time eating and trying on clothes. Dib confronts Zim with Mortos and demands that he fulfill his request to stop Zim, but Mortos grants a random person's request for ice cream instead, and then returns to his realm to rest. Guest star: Wally Wingert as Mortos | ||||
| 22B | "Zim Eats Waffles" | Steve Ressel | Eric Trueheart | June 17, 2006 |
| Dib has managed to get a spy camera into Zim's base in the hopes of recording some evidence that will prove he's an alien. Unfortunately for Dib, his hard drives aren't working and need to be automatically repaired, so Dib watches Zim while this is happening. It is a quiet day for Zim. GIR is trying to get Zim to eat waffles, but every now and then he reveals part of an evil plan, or gets attacked by a giant flesh-eating squid. Every time this happens Dib tries to contact a member of the Swollen Eyeball to witness it, but by the time they answer Zim is eating waffles again, and he eventually throws up on Dib's camera. Dib's hard drives finally repair, but then the cyborgs sent by Zim destroy them. | ||||
| 23A | "The Girl Who Cried Gnome" | Steve Ressel | Rob Hummel | July 15, 2006 |
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A girl selling cookies gets her foot trapped in Zim's frontyard and it attracts the attention of the neighbors, press and the Earth president. The girl loves all the attention and won't let anyone simply pull her out. Dib manages to persuade the president to use a digging machine to dig under the girl to get her out. He suggests this because then Zim's base will be discovered. Zim finally decides that enough is enough and simply pulls the girl out of the hole. Guest stars: Eliza Schneider as Moofy, Jeffrey Jones as the President Man | ||||
| 23B | "Dibship Rising" | Steve Ressel | Eric Trueheart | July 15, 2006 |
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Dib is again working on Tak's crashed spaceship, which turned on him the last time he activated it because its computer AI is a digital copy of Tak's mind. To stop it from acting so hostile to him he downloads his own personality into the ship. This does not go as planned because the ship then starts to believe that it is Dib. Zim discovers what Dib has done and reminds the ship that it is Irken technology and must do what Zim says. Zim commands the ship to throw Dib into the city sewage plant but the ship remembers that it is Dib, and throws Zim across town. The ship is so depressed that it is "Dib" that it deletes its personality. Guest star: Olivia d'Abo | ||||
| 24A | "Vindicated!" | Steve Ressel | Danielle Koenig | July 22, 2006 |
| Dib sees the school's counselor, Mr. Dwicky, about his problems at school, and Dib tells him about how Zim's an alien trying to take over the Earth. Surprisingly Mr. Dwicky says he believes him and that he wants to help him out. He later reveals to a colleague that this is just a ruse to get Dib to trust him. They trick Zim into thinking aliens are coming to meet him in the woods to give him super weapons but after a while of waiting, Mr. Dwicky reveals he doesn't really believe Dib. At that point some real aliens turn up and offer to take Mr. Dwicky with them. As he loved aliens as a child he jumps at the chance and Dib is left behind with nobody else believing him. | ||||
| 24B | "The Voting of the Doomed" | Steve Ressel | Eric Trueheart | July 22, 2006 |
| Zim decides to use the school's election to gain power, so Dib becomes the manager of his opponent to try and stop him. Zim streaks ahead after making many promises to the students that are crazy, but wins them over anyway. Dib counters this by using a cellphone to feed dialogue to a boy who is opposing Zim so he can debate with him properly. Dib's candidate wins the election, but the school faculty brings him to a lab where they (very painfully) remove his individuality and free will, making him nothing more than a mindless figurehead for the oppressive school. Needless to say, Dib is not pleased, as it would have been Zim who would have met this fate if not for Dib's efforts. | ||||
| 25 | "Gaz, Taster of Pork" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez | August 12, 2006 |
| Dib discovers that his electronic spell drives still have two credits on them, which allow him to cast spells. Not knowing what the spells would do, he casts one on his sister Gaz instead to see what would happen. The result of the spell is that Gaz tastes pigs no matter what she eats, apart from hot dogs. Gaz upsets at Dib who decides to go to another dimension to request the spell be undone. Gaz answers three questions correctly to reverse the spell. Dib, however, is stuck cleaning toilets with brushes on his head, as part of a deal he imposed on the creator of the spell. | ||||
| 26 | "The Frycook What Came from All That Space" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez | August 19, 2006 |
| While in school, Sizz-Lorr kidnaps Zim and takes him into space. It is revealed that he is an Irken who was previously Zim's jail master before he escaped in the first episode. Zim works in a fast food restaurant on the Irken snacking planet of Foodcourtia but manages to escape before a massive amount of snacking causes the gravity to prevent anyone leaving the planet for 20 years. | ||||
| 27 | "The Most Horrible X-Mas Ever" | Steve Ressel | Jhonen Vasquez & Eric Trueheart | December 10, 2002 |
| Zim discovers how much people like Santa Claus and decides to use this in a plan to take over the world by dressing up in a Santa suit full of data about Christmas. Dib realizes his father dislikes Santa. The Santa suit malfunctions and engulfs Zim, effectively turning him into a real Santa Claus before Dib beats it and then launches it into space. The episode ends two million years in the future in which it is revealed that the Santa suit (now massive) returns to Earth every Christmas to wreak havoc and eat milk and cookies. | ||||
Home release
46 of 68 episodes (not including the pilot) of the completed Invader ZIM series have been released on DVD, along with the pilot, an alternate cut of The Most Horrible X-mas Ever, and audio from seven of the unfinished episodes. Later, a DVD boxed set including both the seasons was added to the market. This came with a box shaped like Zim's house with a GIR figure, 46 episodes and all 6 DVDs. The last "new" episode aired in 2011.
An "Invader Zim Seasons 1–2" DVD was released on May 4, 2010 by Amazon.com as an on-demand title. These DVDs contain all the episodes, but do not have any commentary or special features.[6]
An Invader ZIM DVD was released on February 22, 2011 titled "Operation Doom", which features the highest-rated episodes of the series.
References
- ↑ "Mindspill » INVADER ZIM Fact #2". Questionsleep.com. 2010-03-02. Retrieved 2012-06-14.
- ↑ Adam Tierney (1 September 2004). "An Interview with Jhonen Vasquez and Rikki Simons (page 2)". Retrieved 2007-05-08.
- ↑ De La Cruz, Edwin (March 28, 2004). "'Invader Zim' invades Home Video". Video Game Magazine. 26 (13): 30. Retrieved January 25, 2015.
- ↑ Snetiker, Marc (April 4, 2017). "Nickelodeon reviving Invader Zim for TV movie". Entertainment Weekly.
- ↑ Jhonen Vasquez: "this was the very first episode where we tortured the CG guys". ("NanoZim" DVD commentary)
- ↑ "Invader Zim Seasons 1–2". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2012-06-14.
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