Film Theory: Dib Is An ALIEN! (Invader Zim)

of all the characters i've ever done theories about perhaps none is more hashtag relatable than dib from invader zim my name is dib membrane i'm 12 years old and i'm all that stands between sim and the annihilation of our this poor kid's a theorist after my own heart oh sure he sounds like a raving lunatic but he's proven time and time again to be right about some of the universe's greatest mysteries including the existence of aliens am i the only one here who sees the alien sitting in class right there you're crazy what about his horrible green head it's a skin condition plus he wears a cool jacket you all know how i feel about cool jackets [Music] hello internet welcome to film theory the show that's basically me pulling a dib for like 15 minutes every week you see actual proof that all the things i've been saying are actually right as you might be able to tell today's theory is all about everyone's favorite invader zim i am zim i am zim i am i am true after the original netflix movie enter the floor piss came out in 2019 i wanted to do a zim theory but nothing i thought of at the time worked out and yet there was something there something that stuck with me in the back of my mind like like some kind of small insane robot but then here at the top of the ear it all finally clicked it clicked after re-watching the series again i think there's been a secret hiding in invader zim from the very beginning a secret that turns the show's entire premise on its head a secret that unlike most of our theories i think is actually intentional by the creators of this show today i'm gonna prove to you that professor membrane earth's most renowned human person scientist and father of the proto matpat known as dib is actually an alien just like zim himself and now the man without whom this world falls into chaos and the inventor of super toast professor membrane now admittedly i'm a bit late to the party vader zim's been off the air longer than i've been making film theories so let's just get quickly caught up with the story so we're all on the same page many years ago the alien named zim was put in charge of operation impending doom a plan by the urcan race to invade many planets let us reign some doom down upon the filthy heads of our doomed enemies bad news is zim's enthusiasm was so overwhelming that he launched his attack on the home planet as a result zim gets banished to the planet food courtia where he's set to serve fast food for the rest of his life however when he hears of operation impending doom 2 he decides to quit being banished so he can lead another invasion the erkin society is led by their tallest members known as the almighty tallest when the tallest see that zim has returned they decide to really get him out of their hair and send him to an unknown planet later revealed as earth when he arrives at earth zim attempts to blend into society through some unconvincing means while most people accept that his green coloring is just a skin condition one of zim's classmates dib sees right through the disguise dib already obsessed with the paranormal loses his mind trying to prove zim's true identity throughout the entire process though his own father professor membrane stands in staunch opposition to his son's efforts so i find you here son you know not to use my tools for your parasites as one of the world's leading scientists professor membrane claims to have revolutionized every field of scientific study and he takes a hard stance against the existence of the paranormal membrane constantly tells dib that his fake science is inferior to membranes real science despite sometimes being presented with overwhelming evidence of the existence of aliens there are no aliens you've been watching those transmissions since you were a baby with an enormous head it's time to move on son and this is our first clue that professor membrane isn't all that he seems despite having a clearly scientific mind he absolutely refuses to acknowledge any evidence of alien life beyond the typical things that other earthlings write off like zim's appearance membrane is confronted directly with aliens in alien technology multiple times throughout the series but repeatedly chooses to ignore it in the episode bloaty's pizza hog which was fnaf before fnaf existed dib and his sister gaz call membrane from a working urcan spaceship no reaction later in the invader zim movie enter the florpis he's confronted with a garage of evidence but again declares it all fake as a man of science i need proof and i just haven't seen proof how do you need more proof than this everything i've collected for my countless battles with zim i wish just once you'd have my back wishing isn't very scientific son and it only gets worse considering by the end of that movie membrane is abducted by zim taken to space jail and surrounded by actual aliens rather than considering all the possibilities of such a wild discovery membrane instead acts like the whole thing was just a hallucination well that was very convincing because it's real dad he even admits confusion over the existence of his alien doppelganger clem brain i'm very confused right now but continues to deny the existence of aliens often going on tv to make such a claim even at the expense of his own son what about that glowing thing look at it that's no human glow possibly a weather balloon or swamp gas it's almost like he's trying to keep the public in the dark about aliens for some reason now one obvious reason for this could be that membrane himself is an alien first let's look at his character design shall we he wears a face covering lab coat with goggles at all times and i do mean all times he's been dressed this way since he was a child i asked santa to bring me 12 cases of uranium-238 it's very similar and look to what we see members of the irkan race wearing on the mother ship tall necked collars to hide the bottom of their faces and the goggles would presumably hide his alien eyes it's also worth noting that membrane happens to have the exact same hairstyle as zim's human disguise which the wiki refers to as a shark fin haircut coincidence maybe but perhaps most tellingly of all is membrane's lack of ears the show makes no small deal about zim's lack of ears identifying him as an alien and he's got no ears is that part of your skin condition zim no ears now look at membrane no ears maybe they're covered by the goggle strap but that would just make it really impossible to hear anything and also be super uncomfortable no it is much more likely that his ears are just gone and here's the kicker the one thing that goggles can't hide is membrane's lack of a nose nothing is there on his face and we know for a fact that something is drawn in the other characters all the other characters on the show have noses except for you guessed it zim the alien even the strange way membrane chooses to emphasize words feels very much like the speech patterns of our favorite alien zim it has been one day already and the cure for pig mouth still eludes me ms bitters i have a mighty lead to use the restroom once again now let's talk about advanced technology the earth of invader zim seems to be set in the early 2000s based on the gravestones that we see in the series and yet human society appears to have much more advanced technology than you would expect from that era why well it seems to be coming from membrane labs membrane labs who wants a better everything throughout the show we're shown that professor membrane is a combination of steve jobs elon musk and nikola tesla revolutionizing almost every facet of technology on earth and setting trends while he does it the whole ignorant world watches as professor membrane prepares to make the greatest announcement he's made since last week so is he just smart or is he actually an alien we see that urkin technology far exceeds that of modern earth even an idiot like zim can create a time travel device with a lab down in his basement and he shows a clear disdain for earth or can technology play with more advanced toys and we see that much of membranes technology is significantly more advanced than the average earth tech even things like his kitchen appliances are either sentient or potentially deadly be sure to take them out of the can or the explosion will destroy all human life now advanced technology alone doesn't necessarily mean that he's an alien the fact that his technology looks a lot like urkin technology though does a lot of membranes tech has weird vacuum tubes bulbous shapes and purple coloring all the signatures of alien and specifically urkin tech in one night membrane is able to add an entire wing onto his lab to research gaza's pig girl mutation which is something that we know urkin technology does and when it's done it happens to look a lot like the inside of an urchin base but it all goes beyond mere aesthetics here membrane labs tech is canonically urkin in one episode dib is taken captive by zim to escape dib needs to hack zim's computer and then this happens i only hope the erkins just happened to use the same operating system as me yes that's right the erkins used the same operating system as membrane os his father's computer system how could the membrane operating system interface match perfectly with urkin tech unless membrane himself knew about urchin tech in the first place heck how could dibbett found any operating system that could interface with alien technology unless there was already aliens on planet earth that just leaves us with one question why would membrane be here if he was indeed an alien after all the erkins only sent zim to earth's location to get rid of him in the pilot episode we see a post-it note on their board where earth happened to be so they must have had an idea that something was out there but they never got any hard evidence that it actually existed it seems to me like they've sent someone to earth before and i don't think it was on a mission of invasion and they never heard a report back one thing that we haven't fully explored yet is that urcan society runs on height two taller urchins are in leadership positions and everyone else is much much shorter you'd think that there'd be a bit more variability in the urchin race but there really isn't right now you just have two that are really tall and everyone else who is just really short there aren't any in the middle this seems to imply that the tallest actively cull out other tall urchin to make sure they stay in power now professor membrane is quite tall maybe even taller than the tallest it's possible that the tallest in order to retain their rule sent membrane out to earth to get rid of him just like they did to zim only membrane was smart enough to know what was going on so rather than destroy earth or call back to the mighty tallest membrane decided to conquer and rule the planet for himself and honestly this is exactly what he does once you understand that membrane is an alien invader things start to make a lot more sense in this universe humanity is kept stupid fat and helpless by the massive corporations which are all owned by membrane his technology is ever present throughout earth from the skiffs that they use to transport captured children in school to the wrist devices worn by everyone on earth even his commercials allude to a dark future where the technology turns on everyone there may come a time when we at membrane labs stop making the world more amazing that time is not now where zim doesn't understand an invasion to be anything but reckless destruction membrane truly invaded and conquered earth for himself the new membrane harnesses that childhood g tomorrow children will hold hands encircling the planet inner peace unlike any of the world has ever known those mem bracelets by the way have a weird added feature for a guy who doesn't acknowledge life on other planets son the mem bracelet is just for running apps and world peace but theoretically one could use it to create a galactic stargate of sorts yes it's certainly unusual unless of course it's a device used to show your final control over all the children of earth no wonder he was so excited for peace day it showed his final and complete dominance over the planet tomorrow is peace day and nobody is as excited for the big celebration as i am i am not scientifically possible so professor membrane could very well be an alien that successfully conquered the planet but that brings up the cruelest twist of them all dib dib is funny throughout the show everyone and i do mean everyone from aliens to demons comment on his head who's that large-headed kid i don't know but his head is large did you conjure a big head demon to give you a big head man that is a really big and not only is his head abnormally large but it's shaped similarly to zims we also hear talk of zim's inhuman organs and the fact that gaz also has those same organs bald my squeely spooch squiggly spooch did you hear that gas that's no human organ humans don't have squealy spooches i've got a squiddly spooch oh sure this could just be gaz being sarcastic or it could be that gazz knows and is comfortable with her alien origins and her alien body parts maybe this explains why she's membrane's favorite child we even have this one-off line from dib early on in the series that never really goes anywhere and is never fully explained i have vague memories being taken on board of an alien as ship's baby but i'm not sure when i think they were doing tests trying to create some kind of genius super baby perhaps it all fits with this final little detail you see theorists membranes children have no canonical mother she doesn't appear in any pictures she's not mentioned once by any character in the show movie or comics no one questions her absence this has led some fans to conclude that dib and gaz are clones of professor membrane or at least were artificially created from his genetic material and that is not just a theory eric trueheart one of the main writers of invader zim has said that dib in a future episode had the show not gotten cancelled would have gone on a quest to find out why his life was so horrible only to find out that he was a clone of his father and i think you can see where this is going dib is obsessed with his quest to prove that zim is an alien he wants to expose the world to the fact that aliens exist and that in fact one is living amongst them undetected but the cruelest irony of all is that he himself is an alien he is an alien clone of his alien father throughout the entirety of this show's tragically short run he's trying to expose everyone else to the truth without once realizing the truth for himself but hey that's just a theory a film theory and surely i can't be the only one coping with um well everything by shopping online right nothing like a bit of retail therapy currently my mission is to find out how many oversized plushies it takes to fill the void in my heart it's uh definitely more than six well with today's sponsor honey you can rest assured stephanie that your husband won't sink your child's college fund into collecting squish mallows probably that's because honey saves you money when you shop online it's a free browser extension that scours the internet for promo codes and automatically tests them when you're checking out here's how it works it is super easy you download honey with two simple clicks then when you're checking out at any of honey's 30 000 plus supported websites the extension alerts you to coupons that it's found online click apply coupons and boom instant savings money that remains in your pocket or i suppose more accurately in your digital bank account in all seriousness with this being the start of a new year we've been doing a lot of work trying to get organized i'm talking about shelves folders binders more shelves and honey has really come in clutch for online shopping at the depots that's right both home and office honey has made it really fast and easy to save money on the things that we need and that's why we've been so happy to partner with them for this episode and for the past couple of years so join honey for free today by going to joinhoney.com film theorists or because film theorist is really long and hard to spell just click the link in the top line of this description that's it that's all you need to do and from there you're two clicks away from saving money the honey community is all about saving money on all the products that you're buying anyway so not using honey is just stupid and us theorists aren't stupid we're a little bit over dramatic sometimes sometimes we're a bit of conspiracy theorists but there's one thing that we're not and that's stupid go get that 16-inch gur plushie that you've been eyeing since the beginning of this episode you deserve it until next time i'll see you next week

Channel: The Film Theorists

Views: 2,137,602

Rating: 4.9508362 out of 5

Keywords: invader zim, zim, gir, dib, gaz, nickelodeon, nicktoons, nicktoon, invader zim you lie, doom song, invader zim episodes, invader zim movie, invader zim full episodes, invader zim memes, zadr invader zim, zadr, invader zim theme, invader zim gir, dib is an alien, invader zim song, invader zim enter the florpus, invader zim trailer, invader zim movie trailer, film theory, film theorists, matpat, film theory invader zim, invader zim dib, cartoon, cartoon theory

Id: a_m3QRHALRc

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 28 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Ginger_Shepherd]

Could someone please explain to MatPat that sometimes people who make things we love will do things just because it's cool or easier to draw? Like... maybe ask Aaron Alexovich about the labcoat aesthetic? If he didn't say that the crew members left clues I'd applaud the video as a beautifully presented and fun interpretation of the final product. However, no, he doesn't have evidence that Aaron, Eric, or Jhonen or anyone on the crew had left intentional clues that Membrane is Irken.

Oh wait. I guess the Delouser's men are Irken, too, because of indiscernible noses while wearing goggles and labcoats. /s

On one hand, I can appreciate that it's hard to learn about Invader ZIM production because

• the show creator talks with his tongue superglued to his cheek and has one time implied he'd rather his answers not be permanent canon.
• ZIM fans keep spreading wild baseless assumptions as facts
• Fansites becoming less prominent as social media and YouTube take center stage so there's not enough centralized fan-created sources of information. Well, there's one and their lack of source-citing has become unignorable after Eric's book firmly but politely called it out.
  • [edit: I can't judge ZIM Wiki on that. They're good people doing their best with their free time and the major contributing team changes slowly but steadily like a snake shedding its skin. And besides, I'd be hypocritical. I've been the longest running mod on here and you're not going to get much out of me for valid reasons]

I'm sure Mat is an awesome guy. I love a lot of his videos. It's just... saying the crew intended for these clues is kind of.... bullshit? We're talking Invader ZIM by Jhonen Vasquez... not Gravity Falls by Alex Hirsch.

edit: to Mat's credit, I missed that he said 'might' have found clues rather than appeared confident.

[u/Gay_Honey]

Seems unlikely.

[u/10voltsam]

I feel like matpat gets too much hate for these videos :/

[u/Sir_Potoo]

Nah fam.

[u/New_to_the_app]

My dudes, stop being so hostile, it's literally just a theory, be critical, a theory should be analyzed, but do it in a respectful way, it ain't fact so don't be so angry

[u/Sammy6403]

I don’t believe this theory by any means, but it was an entertaining video nonetheless. Also, I’m just really happy to see Invader Zim still being talked about!

[u/pillowmantis]

I appreciate the attention this gave the show, but he failed to acknowledge the most important aspect of Irken biology that disproves this theory completely, the utter lack of a PAK on Dib.

[u/HalloweenLord31]

I think there's certainly enough here to suggest that Membrane would potentially be from another planet. At the very least, if they ever decided to take his character in that direction, there's enough groundwork for the idea so that it wouldn't seem completely out of nowhere.

This doesn't mean he has to be Irken though. As we've seen, the IZ universe is filled with countless other species besides just Humans and Irkens. And I actually really enjoy the idea of Earth already having been conquered by another alien race long before Zim could ever get to it.