Top 10 Invader Zim Characters Besides Tak, Skoodge, and Zib Who Should've Made a Comeback in No Particular Order:
There's like a million Godzilla movies + giant robot anime to draw inspiration from for a sequel. We saw at the end of Hamstergeddon that Peepi crash landed back on earth somewhere. So he could be in hiding, burrowed underground, or he could've mutated further and grown gills to hide deep in the ocean. Just invent another monster so there's an excuse to go and awaken Peepi to fight it and make the concept as stupid as you want. The show even already established that a giant Santa monster revisits the planet annually, so the return of Ultra Peepi could double as a sequel to the Most Horrible Xmas Ever. Give me Ultra Peepi King of the Monsters.
A big issue with Gaz is that being apathetic and wanting nothing to do with Zim or the paranormal as core facets of her character makes it difficult to create interesting storylines for her. So she mostly ends up just existing to be someone Dib delivers exposition to and to make snide remarks at his expense. GameSlave 2 worked really well for her because there was actually something for her to care about and you got to see how Not So Above It All she is compared to Zim and Dib when it comes to the few things she's passionate about. So it seems like if you want to do more episodes centered around Gaz it'd be a good idea to bring Iggins back as a recurring thorn in her side. Maybe it starts off with her not taking him seriously and beating him without much effort, so she can still see herself as not being like her brother. But then Iggins starts to really get under her skin and she feels like she has to teach him a lesson, but he just never learns. Like Zim, Iggins is too egotistical and overconfident to admit defeat, and it starts to drive Gaz crazy after awhile and eventually she becomes just as obsessed as her brother with trying to beat him and prove once and for all that he sucks.
I would love an episode about him fleeing the empire after they attempted to kill him and joining the Resisty. Actually, what would really be funny is if they did the concept I came up with where they do a Resisty story, but troll the audience by only showing them little slivers of what sounds like a really exciting story as cutaways from a silly, inconsequential no-stakes story completely disconnected from it. But like, in those brief glimpses, you'd get just enough references to what's happened off-screen to form an impression of this whole Zuko-esque character arc that Bob's been through of having his eyes opened and unlearning Irken propaganda and being at war with himself before finally deciding to join the Resisty and then having to win their trust and establishing deep bonds with the rest of the group. And then it all ends with one cutaway indicating that they're about to go into the final all-or-nothing battle and then the last cutaway reveals that everyone died and their actions made no impact on the status quo and will never connect back to Zim in any way.
I think there was a lot of missed potential with Chammy's first appearance. It's hinted that she has actual supernatural abilities, which makes her vaguely unsettling, but the story didn't really go anywhere with it. I think a good way to bring her back would be if she just appeared with no explanation and started harassing Zim and Dib again but this time it seems like it's actually working and it's freaking them out. Eventually, they figure out that Chammy got back to earth by using her powers to brainwash everyone in her path into being her friends and cooperating to help her get home. Now that she's back she's not going to try to reason with Zim and Dib anymore, she's going to make them be friends whether they like it or not. So it's no longer even a question of whether Chammy's just wrong about their relationship or if Zim and Dib are just being stupid, stubborn idiots who can't see that their lives actually would be better if they became friends. The issue now is that their free will is being violated and she's treating real people like dolls she can mash together and make kissy-noises with.
I think a lot of Tenn's popularity is owed to her being one of very few female Irken characters and one whose brief appearance in Megadoomer gave rise to a lot of speculation about what might've happened to her next. The earliest versions of the fake fanon Invader Dib storyline involved an attempt to rescue Tenn from the Meekrob, but I kinda like the idea of her ending up in Moo-Ping 10 and teaming up with Tak to escape. Really though, there's an infinite number of possibilities for whatever happened to Tenn after Megadoomer. Was she left for dead? Did the Tallest blame her for failing her mission even though it wasn't her fault and banish her to a place like Dirt or Foodcourtia as punishment? Did she ever find out Zim blew up her Megadoomer?
The dog that terrifies Zim turning out to be an alien was such a good twist and I wish we could've seen him make good on his promise to get revenge on Zim for his betrayal. I think he has an interesting personality that sets him apart from a lot of the Zim cast but we never got to see what he's like in retribution mode.
Outside of Career Day I think we only see Bill once more briefly in Chickenfoot and then again in the Lil Meat Man story, where I don't remember him really doing any of his usual schtick of wasting Dib's time and making his field of expertise look bad, they just kinda drive around together trying to catch Zim but always getting to where he's been after he's already left. I think there could've been some more funny episodes with Bill stepping on Dib's toes. Like Dib needs to follow Zim into a location but Bill is blocking him because he thinks there's a real monster in there and Dib's trying to convince him that it's just a cereal mascot and the real threat is Zim. Or Dib and Bill are investigating the same phenomenon but they disagree about what's causing it. What it actually is is plainly obvious to Dib, but people either believe Bill instead because some poorly timed coincidences make Bill's theory look right, or they just buy into his absurd leaps of logic because they think the complexity of the theory makes it more well thought-out than Dib's simpler, more straightforward explanation. Basically Bill is like a YouTube pop culture theorist making garbage arguments and Dib is the person making debunking videos that unpack all the logical fallacies, glaring omissions, and outright lies used to support his flimsy thesis that ignores what's overtly communicated by the text.
I feel like there's a bit more mileage that could've been gotten out of getting Dib's hopes up and teaching him a harsh lesson by having Dwicky repeatedly promise to help him, only to flake out, until Dib finally realizes that just because he's an adult and he believes him doesn't make him reliable or a worthwhile ally.
We only see them briefly in the comics but I really want to know more about Dib and Gaz's grandparents and what relationship they have with them. Are they even still alive? Do they visit ever? Membrane apparently chooses to believe in Santa because he can't bear to think his parents would give him socks for Xmas, so he must otherwise have positive feelings toward them which makes the disappointment of getting socks feel too contradictory to his perception of them to reconcile with. But then again, Dib and Gaz seem to be pretty fond of Membrane, but as outsiders the audience can see that he's a terrible parent and hope that when they get to be teenagers they'll start to realize it. I just feel like if we got to know more about their grandparents we could understand better why Membrane is such a bad father. And who doesn't love a good story about unpacking generational trauma?
It's a fucking crime this space cat didn't become a regular cast member. Like I've said before, Snarl could've been like Dib's GIR. An adorable-on-the-outside-but-actually-horrifying little creature who fucks things up for Dib more than he helps, but Dib would never dream of parting with it, and Hot Topic could print money off of it.
