Crypto VS Zim

 

"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."

-Arthur C. Clarke 

Crypto, the Furon warrior

Zim, the Irken invader

Outside of the confines of our tiny blue marble that we call home exists a vast universe - but what exists in the unknown? For these two alien soldiers, they live in disguise among humans, and will stop at nothing to complete their solo mission and conquer Earth - even if said mission is total BS, and they would inadvertently end up ironically saving the Earth from other alien threats. I mean, who really cares when all that's really important is destroying things? Between the Furon soldier Cryptosporidium-139 and the Irken invader Zim, who will win in a DEATH BATTLE?

Background

Crypto

"A Cryptosporidium captured by a bunch of monkeys?? We gotta go in, we gotta crack some brainiums, we gotta rescue me-him, he's gonna rescue me, I mean- we gotta, I gotta, brains man, when do I get to blow things up???"

Have you ever gazed up at the night sky and wondered at the possibility of life on other planets? What marvelous beings might exist out there, hands extended in friendship, awaiting the moment when we humans take our first tentative steps into space? What tales will be told of that glorious day when we are first contacted by our brothers from beyond the stars?

There exists a mighty alien Empire known as the Furons, who have conquered thousands of civilizations. Eons ago, they battled the native species of a little planet called Mars - although ultimately successful, the result of this nuclear war caused an unfortunate mutation within the Furons where they lost their reproductive organs. To combat this existential threat, the Furons invented cloning technology to effectively achieve immortality. However, as time went on, they would find that their DNA was becoming more and more degraded and watered down with each new clone. Fortunately, they discovered that during the Martian war, some furons had procreated with primitive humans on Earth, leaving strands of pure Furon DNA within each human, offering an opportunity. 

And so, Orthopox-13 and Cryptosporidium-136 were sent on a mission to… Destroy All Humans! Or, more accurately, harvest a select few communities of humans. However, Crypto-136 was promptly captured upon impacting a rocket test, so Cryptosporidium-137 was sent to Earth to investigate what happened. He would use his alien technology and magnificent mental abilities to defeat the United States military and Majestic-16, and become President of the United States… until he died too, leaving Cryptosporidium-138 to resume the mission.

Crypto-138 would investigate the destruction of the Mothership, before finding that the Martian race known as the Blisk had survived, and had disguised themselves as notable Russian communist figures to take over the world. After exterminating them, he would crash his saucer in Las Paradiso, leaving Cryptosporidium-139 to take the mantle. After being attacked by Nexosporidium warriors and honing his latent mental abilities, Crypto and Orthopox would find out that the Furon Empire has developed synthetic Furon DNA, rendering their entire mission pointless. Enraged, Crypto went back to his home planet and destroyed Emperor Meningitis, making Orthopox the new Emperor. Finding the artificial Furon DNA to be poor quality, Crypto would go back to Earth, still determined in doing what he does best, destroying all humans.

Zim

"Fools! I am Zim: Irken Invader Zim! I am responsible for the safe obliteration of the human race, not you!"

Beneath the noses of our ignorant populace lies an impostor among us - an invader from outer space, hell bent on subjugating and/or annihilating the human race for their alien overlords. This otherworldly threat is known simply as ZIM!!!!!!!

The Irken empire, whose hierarchies are reliant entirely on one's height, employ many Irken soldiers to a planet in order to gather intel on their populace and prepare them for invasion by the Irken armada as part of Operation Impending Doom II. One Irken among them however, seemed to get the short end of the stick… literally. Zim is an impossibly short Irken who had ruined Operation Impending Doom I by devastating their own planet before they left - as such, he was banished to Foodcourtia to serve as a fry cook. If nothing else though, Zim was persistent. After he quit being banished, he was insistent on being given a planet to invade, and so the Tallest decided to send him to a far off, unnoticeable, random planet not in their flight path, called Earth. Along with him was a shoddily crafted SIR unit known as GIR.

Upon arriving on Earth, Zim took up the guise of a normal school boy and attended class with who may become his greatest nemesis; a weird loner kid who was invested in the paranormal, Dib. He would actively thwart Zim's daily plans to take over the planet, while trying to expose him to the world. However, while Zim might not be the Irken armada's best invader, he always seems to somehow manage to keep his identity a secret to… most people.

Although he may not always be successful, Zim always seems to get back up to hatch new schemes and bring doom to humanity. Who else is going to be the greatest alien invader of all time? 

Equipment

Crypto (on-hand)

Orthopox

Existing as a holopod, Orthopox will very rarely actually be in the vicinity of Crypto's battleground. However, he still possesses the means to communicate with him directly, and can give him information on missions, as well as possess sensors to warn Crypto about any imminent threat. He can also manually clone Crypto, if he were to ever become incapacitated. Orthopox is an experienced Furon general, conquering many civilizations over the course of eons, and will provide the strategic mind to Crypto's battles and missions, often giving him advice on what to do. Hey, his voice sounds familiar…

Jetpack

Crypto carries a jetpack with him to soar through the sky and give him aerial mobility. It has a cool down mechanic, however after it's used up Crypto can still use it to safely hover to the ground, and it's longevity can be upgraded.

Shield

At all times, Crypto keeps an energy shield around his entire body. It can be used to blunt damage and can regenerate itself if damaged. It seems to be unaffected by EMPs, unlike most of his other tech.

Space Suit

When Crypto landed on the moon, his suit was able to create a helmet around his head in order to help him breathe, even when there was no oxygen.

Zap-O-Matic

Crypto's most iconic weapon, and the one he starts with in every game. The Zap-O-Matic is a weapon capable of firing a continuous stream of electricity that can chain to multiple opponents at once, as well as immobilize them while being electrocuted. In addition, it appears to be able to bypass and short circuit technology, as it can be used to weaken the Blisk alien's own shields. Unlike most of his other weapons, the Zap-O-Matic has no ammo and thus can never run out, however it does have a cool down period if it is used continuously for so long. It can be upgraded to decrease the cool down period, as well as increase it's longevity.

Disintegrator Ray

One of Crypto's most reliable weapons, the Disintegrator Ray is a gun he keeps that shoots anti-matter at foes to incinerate them. It has a plentiful amount of ammo, and can be shot repeatedly.

Ion Detonator

Perhaps one of his strongest on ground weapons, the Ion Detonator shoots out a grenade-like projectile that sticks to objects and opponents which Crypto can manually set off. It creates a massive explosion, completely annihilating anyone in it's vicinity. Interestingly, the Ion Detonator has been modified to work while time is frozen, and can also transmogrify objects it contacts.

Anal Probe

The Anal Probe is a, unique weapon, capable of firing a strange, green projectile into the rectum of anyone unfortunate to be caught by it. It will cause their heads to implode, leading out their brain stems and DNA. Interestingly, the anal probe can also revert transformations and mutations, seen with how they can change back humans who have mutated into the Blisk.

Dislocator

The Dislocator shoots out a purple disc like object that, when in contact with an opponent, will drag them across the air before dropping them into the ground. It seems that sometimes, Crypto prioritizes his amusement rather than sheer effectiveness.

Meteor Strike

Okay, forget the Ion Detonator - this is an absolute beast of a weapon, capable of locking on and summoning whole meteors to the ground, destroying large buildings and city blocks in the process. At its max upgrade, it can summon three meteors, as well as a small planetoid to rain terror on anyone unlucky enough to be in its path.

Gastro Gun

The Gastro Gun summons a holopod of fellow Furon, Gastro - as well as with a plasma machine gun attached to it. Gastro will aid Crypto by helping to mow down opponents, giving him another set of hands, er, guns.

Burrow Beast

An ancient beast sealed away by the legendary alien God Arkvoodle, the Burrow Beast can be summoned from the ground to chow down on a number of opponents. Crypto's gun shoots out a ball that attracts the Burrow Beast, and he can move the ball to move the beast's position.

Ball Lightning

With the ball lightning, Crypto can send out a ball of electricity that shocks and chains to multiple enemies at once, as it slowly floats independently of Crypto. Useful for taking on multiple opponents.

Zombie Gun

By shooting someone with the Zombie Gun, Crypto can transform others into flesh eating zombies. These zombies will then be able to attack other people and in turn, turn them into zombies as well, although they don't appear to be hostile to Crypto.

Shrink Ray

(I'm sorry I looked this is seriously the best quality footage of it I could find on the internet) the Shrink Ray is one of Crypto's more bizarre weapons. It is able to shrink enemies down to miniscule size, making them rather easy to defeat.

Venus Humantrap

Crypto can summon a Venus Humantrap, a massive alien monster from the once lush planet Venus to cause mass devastation. It will eat any humans nearby, however Crypto can only summon one at a time.

Superballer

The Superballer is a strange weapon, capable of blasting forth a ball with a rainbow after trial that will richochet around the area, and once it hits someone, it will blast them into the sky.

Black Hole Gun

One of his more obviously powerful weapons, the Black Hole Gun is capable of forming a localized singularity to create a black hole that sucks in everything around it, lasting for a limited amount of time before imploding.

Crypto (Vehicles)

Saucer

Crypto's saucer is his main method of transportation, and also his main method for causing mass amounts of destruction and destroying entire towns and cities. With it, he is able to fly across the entire planet within a few moments, as well as to the moon, and even to his home planet of Furon, which is located in another galaxy. Crypto crashed his original saucer in an alcoholic bender, however Orthopox created a new, updated one for him in Path of the Furon.

Death Ray

The primary weapon of Crypto's saucer, the Death Ray shoots out a continuous laser that can mow down enemies and buildings. It does have a cooldown feature however, but it can be lengthened with upgrades.

Sonic Boom

The Sonic Boom weapon fires out goblets of anti-matter, causing a massive explosion and shockwave, easily destroying houses and buildings. Good for defeating tanks and giant monsters, too.

Quantum Deconstructor

The most powerful weapon of Furon technology, the Quantum Deconstructor sets off a massive blast capable of destroying entire city blocks. It is so powerful, that it could potentially even rip a hole in the space-time continuum.

Anti-Gravity Field

The Anti-Gravity Field allows Crypto to shoot a projectile, which will then activate a large area that will function against gravity - lifting everything in it into the air.

Electro-Cone

With the Electro-Cone, Crypto's saucer will be surrounded by an electric field. Anything that comes near it will be met with an electric shock.

Seeker Drones

Crypto's saucer can fire out multiple energy missiles. These projectiles are able to home in on and seek out opponents to hit, and can be fired repeatedly.

Plasma Cannons

The plasma cannons are dual rapid fire cannons that the saucer may utilize in vanquishing aircraft and large building structures alike.

Tornadotron

The Tornadotron is built to represent a force of nature, summoning a massive tornado around it to wreck entire city blocks. Crypto can steer the tornado while using the saucer's cloaking device, making it a useful tool for mass devastation without anyone even knowing of his existence.

Abduction Beam

What kind of UFO would it be if he didn't have an abduction beam? Using it, Crypto can drag humans and objects into the saucer for DNA extraction. He often does this as a way to upgrade his weapons or abilities. Crypto can also use the saucer's abduction beam to drag around vehicles, or other objects of his choosing.

Drain

If his saucer were to ever run low on health or energy, it has a draining feature to literally drain the energy out of objects and vehicles to fuel itself. The vehicle will usually be immobilized as it is being drained.

Cloak

Now, having a giant alien saucer roam around a heavily populated city can be a little eye catching. Thankfully, Crypto's saucer comes with a cloaking device to make it entirely invisible, or make it appear as a regular blimp. This ability only lasts for so long, however, so Crypto needs to take care when using it.

Big Willy

To dispose of the landfills of human corpses that Crypto leaves behind, Orthopox created a fast food chain that resells human heat as hot dogs. In order to protect the chain, Crypto is given a giant mech, the Big Willy. Big Willy is an incredibly strong ground mech that can throw other vehicles, and is no less powerful than the saucer - however, it does deplete energy fairly quickly. Crypto can either recharge it with the Zap-O-Matic, or have the mech eat nearby humans. It has shown to be immune to most EMPs, however an especially powerful one might work, as Col. Cluckin's EMP attack was able to disable it.

Regurg-A-Tron

Big Willy possesses the ability to belch a large cloud of gas that can apparently melt apart humans and tanks. It is a good close range option, although it is fairly limited.

Heat Beam

With the Heat Beam, Big Willy can fire two green lasers from his eyes, burning through any enemy in its way.

Windbreaker

Big Willy's final weapon, the Windbreaker releases a wave of explosion from itself with flammable flatulence, perfect for taking down hordes of enemies around it.

Zim (on-hand)

GIR

All Irken invaders are granted Standard-issue Information Retrieval units, or SIR units, to aid in their conquest. However, Zim was given a unit built out of spare parts and with literal garbage for a brain, named GIR. GIR is Zim’s loyal-ish assistant and the closest thing he has to a real friend. Due to his intentionally faulty design, GIR is extremely hyper-active, has trouble following orders, and is generally pretty stupid. Despite this, GIR is still an incredible asset and has sometimes proven to be even more competent than Zim himself. He can fly with rockets from his legs, shoot lasers from his eyes, has a guidance system advanced enough to locate and zoom in on distant planets, can see through solid objects, can scan animate and inanimate objects to obtain information, can rapidly absorb information from electronic devices, and has a ton of other weapons. His body also has an insane amount of storage space. Most impressive of all though is GIR’s “Duty Mode,” in which he returns to his original programming. In this state, GIR becomes deadly serious and highly intelligent. This mode can be activated remotely by Zim using the Behavioral Modulator but it comes at the risk of GIR turning on Zim if he is deemed a threat to the mission.

Computer

The Computer is a sentient AI that controls the functions of Zim's base, and occasionally the Voot Cruiser. Zim can command the computer to serve any function he wants, although it can be unresponsive and at times spiteful to Zim. Zim can communicate with the Computer remotely through his PAK and Voot Cruiser to give it orders.  It is capable of accessing information from across the entire galaxy in an instant

Roboparents

To complete his disguise as an Earth child, Zim needed fake parents so the Roboparents were created. Although their intelligence is very limited, they do possess many notable traits such as rocket propulsion in their legs and incredible strength.

Lawn Gnomes 

Station in Zim's lawn are several gnomes that act as sentry turrets. They can overwhelm would-be intruders with physical force or fire lasers that vaporize targets instantly.

Leprechaun Cat

One of his robotic minions, Zim possesses a leprechaun cat. Why is the cat a leprechaun? Why not? This irish feline can be rolled out as a ball by Zim, and will explode upon impact.

Membrane Bots

(Not actually employed by Professor Membrane) After taking over Membrane Labs, Zim has at his disposal hordes of robots to help serve him and attack any of his foes.

Mini-Moose

Zim's self purported greatest creation, the Mini-Moose is capable of channeling enough energy from all the children in the world holding hands to teleport the planet Earth into the direction of the Irken armada. But without that, it still has some, limited form of telekinesis, and can be used as binoculars.

Monkey

It's… just a monkey.

Robot Gopher

An unfortunately designed robot gopher that will dig underground to drag someone's foot into the dirt. This left one poor girl stuck for quite a while, though the exact difficulty of which she could have just pulled her leg out remains up to debate…

Irken PAK

Immediately upon birth, the Irken species are surgically implanted with a PAK, which connects to their upper back. The PAK acts as the processor for an Irken's true "brain", and if their mind is significantly altered, they can reset their mental state. Fitting for its name, the PAK also holds a large assortage of technology which can assist Zim.

Forcefield

Zim’s Irken PAK is able to produce a forcefield to protect him from incoming danger, or to help him roll down a chute.

Binoculars

Zim's PAK allows him to utilize binoculars that help the Irken invader to see far distances and search out locations.

Metal Arms

From the PAK, Zim can summon four long metal arms. These arms have a lot of uses, but are mainly for helping Zim maneuver around. They are also strong enough to grab cars out of the sky.

Lasers

The PAK's tendrils are able to shoot out continuous energy blasts, powerful enough to tear through walls.

Grid Lasers

Using all of the PAK's tendrils at once, Zim can connect their lasers to either release a massive beam of energy, or silently burn out an opening through a window.

Jetpack

Attached to Zim's PAK is a jetpack. It will release a burst of fire from it that can make Zim fly fast enough to cross the planet in seconds.

Space Suit

Zim has a space suit, an armored suit that comes with an air bubble to help protect Zim while in the vacuum of space. His PAK is still usable while wearing this.

Shock Spears

This pair of electric rods deliver a horrifying zap to any victims, burning their bodies to a crisp in just a few seconds. They are especially handy when trying to decide who will become your new bestest friend.

Organ Harvester

In order to uh, suck the organs out of the school children, Zim used a device that replaces internal organs with a random object, as long as it's in its close vicinity.

Holograms

Using a small device, Zim can project a perfect hologram of himself to fool his enemies. On the flipside, the hologram is completely immobile.

Bologna Tack

This small tack, if it punctures skin, can manipulate someone's biology to eventually transform them into bologna, though it happens over the course of a few days.

Projection Helmet

These helmets will fly onto people's heads in order to show them a vision of a dystopian future, in order to persuade them to do what Zim wants. Zim made these in order to sell school charity cookies.

Voice Changer

Zim Has a small voice changing laser that, if aimed at his neck, can be used to adjust the sound of his voice. 

Micro-Goggles

Zim carries micro-goggles with him that allows him to see microscopic organisms, such as germs, wherever they may be lurking.

Sewage Injector

For whatever reason, Zim carries a canister full of human dookie along with an injector to inject anything, mostly cows, with feces.

Zim (vehicles)

Voot Cruiser

Also sometimes called the Voot Runner, this out-of-date Irken spacecraft is Zim’s primary mode of transportation across the universe. It possesses an on-board guidance computer that is capable of communicating and following verbal commands, even over long distances. The cruiser is capable of flying between solar systems, or "schmillions of lightyears" when it needs to.

Tractor Beam

It would be very disappointing if the alien ship did not come with a tractor beam, but thankfully it does. This beam can be shot from below the Voot Cruiser to carry anything, even large objects like a hot dog shop.

Explosive Projectiles

The Voot Cruiser can shoot out two spheres from it that can explode upon impact.

Energy Beam

The Voot Cruiser can shoot big lasers and energy blasts. Pew pew!

Laser Pods

Equipped on the shoulders of the Voot Cruiser are two large pods that can take off and fire a piercing laser. Zim used these to bisect a large shell around the Earth.

Net Discs

Zim's Voot Cruiser carries various discs that can transform into large spheres, capable of sending cables around an object and propelling into the sky. They were strong enough to do this to a ferris wheel, as well as a giant hamster monster.

Nanoship

Zim can shrink himself to use a small nanoship in order to enter someone's body and attack their organs from the inside, or to manipulate their brain. The nanoship can also transform itself into a small mech robot to battle other, nano-sized mechas.

Base

Zim's home base, his house, actually serves multiple functions on its own. It can release large cables that drain energy from other objects, including living things, has multiple wires and metallic appendages inside of it that can be used to grab onto people, and can even grow legs and take off into a giant mech form. The Computer is usually the one to control most modes of the base. 

Space-Time Object Replacement Device

Underneath the base lies Zim's Space-Time object replacement device, a portal that can be set to any time period and when an object is sent through it, it will replace something in that past time. Zim used this to alter Dib's history, however it seems that Zim can't control what object he will replace, and the effects on the current timeline can be incredibly unpredictable, which is why his changes to the past ended up backfiring on him.

Orbital Water Balloon

In order to win a water balloon scuffle with his nemesis Dib, Zim created a gigantic Orbital Water Balloon machine in space that will launch a massive water balloon onto the ground, capable of completely flooding an entire city all at once. Overkill is Zim's game.

A Room With A Moose

By trapping the school kids in a school bus that will then fly off into space, Zim can adjust the bus to fly into a wormhole that leads to a room with a moose. His victims will only have so much time to direct the bus out of its direction in order to avoid a moosey fate.

Abilities

Crypto

Furon Biology

Unlike the Blisk, the Furons are rather physically delicate, however they more than make up for this with their superb mental capabilities. The most powerful of the Furons have a range that extends across an entire planet's length and can affect time itself, and particularly strong willed ones are even immune to mind control outright.

There exist four core mental "paths" that a Furon can progress in; the path of the mind, which is attributed to their hypnotic abilities, the path of the body, which refers to their body snatch ability, the path of space, which refers to their psychokinetic telekinesis, and the path of time, which relates to their powerful ability to stop time itself. Through meditation, a Furon can increase their efficiency in each of these paths, and achieve a higher state of mental faculty than before.

Psychokinesis

With the power of psychokinesis, Crypto can move objects, such as large vehicles, with his mind. He frequently uses this power to battle his opponents, either by redirecting projectiles, holding them in place to shoot them more easily, or by just slamming them into walls and the floor. Crypto can also use his psychokinesis to disrupt technology - he can scramble devices, or influence machines directly from his mind.

PK Magnet

An extension of his psychokinesis, when moving things, Crypto has the ability to magnetize them to nearby objects. What this means is that other objects or people can become pulled to whatever Crypto is magnetizing simply by being near it.

Brain Extract

To secure DNA, Crypto will often combust one's head, blasting their brain out of their heads to collect their DNA.

Transmogrify

Crypto is able to transmogrify objects into whatever he wants, completely changing their form - though he usually just transforms them into additional ammo. Crypto is only able to do this to objects and vehicles however - when performed on a living being, it will cause their heads to combust.

Cortex Scan

By scanning the minds of others, Crypto can read their thoughts, and gain useful intel from them mid-battle. Scanning minds also has another use, as it can replenish Crypto's psychokinetic energy.

Hypnotize

Crypto possesses the ability to hypnotize people! By controlling minds, Crypto can force others to do a variety of things, such as protect him and aid him in battle, do his bidding, forget his existence entirely, put them to sleep etc. Crypto can actually upgrade his hypnotism to affect enemies that are immune otherwise, meaning that his mind control should be fairly well layered.

Holobob

One of his methods for disguising himself, Crypto can create a perfect hologram out of others. This saps energy over time, however Crypto can replenish it by scanning minds.

Body Snatch

By body snatching someone, Crypto can enter someone's body and control them manually. Unlike the holobob, Crypto needs to overpower their willpower first, (though he can bypass this in Path of the Furon) and it does not consume psychokinetic energy - rather, it consumes the host's life force. Once depleted, the victim will die. In Path of the Furon however, Crypto is able to extend their life energy by Cortex scanning other humans. This body snatch ability is also fairly layered, as it can be upgraded to affect enemies who were previously unable to body snatch.

Free Love

Crypto can inflict "free love" or "disco fever" on a large group of people at once, which will make them all forget his existence and dance around in a trance-like state.

Mind Flash

A powerful ability awaked in Crypto after being subject to numerous tests, Crypto can stun every person on the planet for a few minutes. He can only use this ability once in a fight, however.

Time Stop

An advanced and incredibly powerful Furon ability, Crypto has the ability to stop time itself for a short amount of time. Most of his weapons and abilities won't function properly during this, but it is still very advantageous for him in a fight.

Temporal Fist

The Temporal Fist is a powerful Furon ability which allows him to use psychokinesis during his time stop ability. Objects sent in a direction will not move until time is resumed, however once it does, they will be sent with much more speed and force than they would otherwise. 

Cloning

Possibly Crypto's most important, and deadliest ability, is the unique trait of the Furons to clone themselves after death. After dying, Crypto can immediately respawn in the immediate area out of seemingly nothing and continue the fight. The only problem with this cloning is that, due to the watering down of Furon DNA over the course of eons, each clone may become more and more degraded over time. However, given this is no real in-game danger and Crypto has collected a massive bounty of Furon DNA from humans over the course of several decades, this is likely not a realistic issue for him.

Zim

Irken Biology

The Irken species possesses many unique traits. Their bodies heal at accelerated rates, being capable of repairing major skeletal damage, regrowing their eyeballs in hours, and recovering from other wounds very quickly. They can even place their eyeballs back into their head to reattach them instantly or even survive without their brain. The species does not require sleep, but can choose to rest when they desire. Irken invaders in particular have surgically-installed ocular implants that grant them greatly enhanced sight over long distances. Irkens can also produce two extra arms from their torso at will, something even Zim didn’t know.  They are also capable of greatly expanding in size to make room for foreign objects such as in a… certain episode. (They showed this to KIDS?)

Pustulio

If Zim's face becomes greasy enough, then he may develop a pimple that will grow into the great Pustulio. The gooey appendage has a seemingly hypnotic trance on anyone who sees it wobble to and fro, even robots. However, it also doesn't last very long - after only a few minutes, it will explode into a gush of early 2000s gross out humor.

Lice Killing Skin

Something about Zim's skin makes him effectively immune to lice. When used in a cannon, it was able to easily kill large lice-like creatures.

Feats

Crypto

Overall

• Was able to make an interstellar satellite out of a few spare scraps of junk

• Defeated Robo-Prez and Silhouette, destroying the American Majestic organization 

• Defeated the Blisk

• Defeated Emperor Meningitis, the ruler of the Furon empire

• Fought soldiers, giant robots, kaijus, the KGB, ninjas, yakuza, mutants, alien crab monsters from Mars, etc…

• Constantly battles waves of trained soldiers by himself

• Destroyed a multitude of towns and cities

• Kept his operation stable for several decades

Strength

• With his psychokinesis, he is able to lift and throw large buses, tanks, and other massive vehicles

• Crypto's Meteor Strike at its maximum level can summon three meteors from the sky, as well as a small planetoid (1.13 Megatons)

• Defeated Kojira, who caused a magnitude 4.2 Earthquake (30 Tons of TNT)

• The sonic boom shoots out goblets of anti-matter, erupting in an explosion this powerful (1.5 Gigatons)

• With the Tornadotron, his saucer is capable of creating a giant storm around a tornado 

• His saucer is powered by the power cells, which have enough energy to vaporize all of Capital City (739 Megatons)

• His Black Hole Gun is likely legitimate, as the black holes form from a singularity (potentially outlier)

• The Quantum Deconstructor is the most powerful Furon weapon devised, making it stronger than other notable weapons such as the Meteor Strike, Sonic Boom, Black Hole Gun or Tornadotron, and can even rip a hole in the space-time continuum. It can also completely annihilating humans on the edge of its explosion (20 Kilotons)

Speed

• Can move in tandem with and dodge bullets, military grade missiles, and energy blasts

• Him and his opponents can move in tandem with his sonic boom weapon, which should move faster than sound

• Is much faster than his own meteors

• Outsped an explosion that destroyed the Blisk base

• Can dodge fragments of the Mothership falling to Earth in an incredibly short timeframe (Mach 703)

• With his Mind Flash ability, his psychokinesis can travel the entire planet in about a second (Mach 37485)

• His saucer can fly from Earth to Furon in a relatively short time period, which resides in another galaxy, which he can manually drive (1% SoL)

Durability

• Even without his shield, Crypto can survive a limited amount of fire from bullets and missiles

• Crypto-136 briefly survived this explosion, although was rendered unconscious moments later

• Survived having his saucer shot down and crash in this impact

• Shrugged off this explosion which took down an entire building

• Crypto's shield is capable of withstanding his own Ion Detonator 

• Crypto's shield can withstand some amount of punishment from his own meteors

• Crypto's shield can withstand attacks from enemies who can fight the saucer and withstand meteors, such as Kojira or the Blisk

Zim

Overall

• Saved the Earth from the Planet Jackers

• Defeated and reverted GIR back to normal after he turned against him while in duty mode

• Capture Dr. Membrane and took over Membrane Labs

• Defeated Ultra Peepi, a giant hamster monster 

• Used the Membracelets to teleport Earth across the universe

• In an alternate future timeline, successfully conquered Earth

Strength

• Can destroy doors and walls fairly easily

• Blew a large hole through the skool

• Strong enough to kick a shape-shifter so hard that it perfectly ricocheted around an alien complex

• With his voot cruiser, was able to launch a giant hamster into the sky

• Comparable to Professor Membrane, who created this massive crater (32 Kilotons)

• The Voot Cruiser's lasers blasted through the Planet Jacker's shell to bisect it (35.9 Kilotons)

• The Orbital Water Balloon launches a massive water balloon from space, capable of devastating a city (2.9 Teratons)

Speed

• Dodges a grappling hook

• Evaded mall security lasers

• Avoids multiple energy blasts

• Pulled GIR in front of a flying edged projectile

• While in his voot cruiser, can avoid a large amount of tank fire

• Battled Dib while piloting planets moving across the Solar system (Mach 16.8)

• Can dodge attacks from GIR, who can pilot the voot cruiser as it was catching up to the Planet Jackers ship flying to another solar system (Mach 25)

• Flew across Earth with his jetpack in nine seconds (Mach 2082)

• Comparable to Professor Membrane, who:

• NOT SCIENTIFICALLY POSSIBLE!!!!!! (70 m/s)

• Can easily evade missiles

• His voot cruiser can fly from the Irken Armada to Earth in 6 months, which is "schmillions" of light-years away.

• Another irken cruiser could fly to a distant galaxy and back in less than day

Durability

• While in his voot Cruiser, survived crashing through multiple buildings

• Survived being crushed under a large metal arm

• Crashed into a plane, then was burned in a deep fryer

• Survived a taxi cab crashing into Earth from space with him in it 

• Survived Dib crashing into him from space, making this explosion 

• Withstood the explosion of a giant meat hill

• Was relatively unharmed from this massive explosion

• Comparable to Dib, who:

• Survived being at the epicenter of a massive water balloon (11 Tons of TNT)

• Survived being launched into an explosion that leveled a city (90 Tons of TNT)

• Survived crashing into Earth from another planet (42 Kilotons)

• GIR withstood crashing into Earth from the Moon relatively unharmed (777 Kilotons)

• Survived listening to the "Doom Song" for 6 months straight

Weaknesses

Crypto

Crypto is an excellent soldier, but is not without his faults. The majority of his technology can be negated through EMPs, and a lot of his weapons have a limited ammo reserve. In addition, Crypto is rather rash, preferring to just blow things up and ask questions later (although he will follow strategy if he needs to or is told to by Pox). Also, Crypto himself is kind of physically frail, which is why he has a shield protecting himself.

Zim

Despite his accomplishments, Zim is still, well, Zim. He is incredibly prideful to a fault, and most of his plans are, well, to be frank, completely stupid, and he borders on being totally delusional at times. This isn't helped by the fact that most of his minions tend to be outright disobedient to him. Zim's greatest obstacle is, much of the time, himself.

Summary

Crypto

Advantages:

• Tech and shield are generally stronger

• His weapons are more combat oriented

• Far, far more competent

• Cloning makes him nearly impossible to kill

• Please just play his games they are so fucking good ong

Disadvantages:

• Physically weaker

• Generally slower

• Lower number of allies

• Better off on his own

Zim

Advantages:

• Physically much stronger 

• Generally faster

• Can acquire a numbers advantage 

• Can cause a greater level of mass devastation with the Orbital Water Balloon

• Richard Steven Horvitz

Disadvantages:

• Much more incompetent 

• Gadgets are less combat oriented

• Tech generally isn't as strong

• Doesn't have an easy way to bypass Crypto's shield

• Doesn't have an easy way around Crypto's cloning

Before The Verdict

Invader Zim Comics & Canon

You may have noticed that, throughout the blog, we have included some feats from the Invader Zim comic books, and yet haven't included any of his equipment from it. The reason for this is majorly an attempt to emulate the compositing process from Death Battle, in that we chose to include non-canon feats if they are consistent with the primary media. Thankfully, all of the physical feats in the comics were actually very consistent and in line with what is shown in the main series, even if it slightly buffed Zim and GIR's physical stats, however much of his extraneous equipment from the comics were not deemed to be standard. For the purposes of this blog, we do consider the Invader Zim comics to be non-canon.

The Invader Zim show may be episodic, but it still follows a somewhat linear timeline and makes references to past events and overarching plot threads, such as Tak's ship. The Invader Zim comics actually quite clearly establish themselves as a separate universe from the main universe that the show takes place in. Even on a more meta level, Enter The Florpus begins with a reference to something that happened in the comics - being that since Invader Zim was canceled, Dib has grown unfit watching Zim, yet these events diverged into different storylines entirely - despite the fact that the comics were ongoing when Enter The Florpus was released. This comes off as an intentional decision to separate the comic continuity from the primary one as two distinct entities.

However, even beyond that, there are many feats from the comics that have been spread through the internet that, more often than not, don't even work within the context of the comic's storyline. I'd want to take some time to address many of these scenes.

Here we see what is apparently a scan of Zim's voot cruiser growing massive tendrils and shifting the rotation of the Earth, certainly an impressive looking feat, however also probably one of the grossest examples of cropping scans out of context. In the actual comic this comes from, Zim and Dib were trapped in a space prison and forced to convince their captor that one of them was more righteous than the other, so Zim made up a bogus story about changing the Earth's rotation away because Dib's head was so big it was blocking the sun. Dib immediately calls him out for making such an outrageous story.

Here, we have another image I've seen before quite commonly of Zim seemingly blowing up an entire planet. Actually, it is true that Zim used a bomb to blow up a planet, but what scans like these neglect to show is that in this comic, Zim arrived on this planet after gathering a large amount of super weapons from Blastropolis, and the bomb he used destroyed all of them that he left behind. Obviously, this then throws into question whether this bomb was actually one of Zim's inventions, or one of these super weapons that he had for a short time period. As you can imagine, it is difficult justifying giving Zim an item that a different universe version of him had where the entire joke is about how little use he got out of it.

This is possibly the most infamous feat from the Invader Zim comics, where Zim and Dib work out so hard that they bend the fabric of space and time and transcend to a higher state of being, affecting an infinite amount of universes. So what is the problem? Well, aside from being far and above many leagues beyond anything else they've done in the series, Zim and Dib were actually cheating - they were using special equipment that would enhance their performance. Not only that, but they only achieved this state after a prolonged period of time and exercise with the equipment - and in addition, the act of going outside of the multiverse was only achieved once they got to that state. What this means is that in order for the equipment to get them to such a power in the first place, Zim would be essentially self-BFRing himself, and has not shown to be able to go back normally. While he has some level of influence over Zims from all across the multiverse, this is only to continue to do sit-ups. He hasn't shown to be able to accurately fight in the normal universe while his consciousness is in this state.

In another comic, Zim has GIR build these robotic beavers which were sent out to an alien far away that exploded in an apparently planet sized explosion. Admittedly, this is probably the most understandable argument, however there are still a few issues that make using this problematic (aside from being from an alternate continuity.) 

In the comic, the beavers were built with a rare resource called "Splodium", which Zim needed to find more of to retrieve, as GIR had wasted the ones he used. Once he retrieved it, they were immediately used to battle another alien, destroying all of his beavers and Splodium in the process - basically, they aren't exactly a standard resource that Zim had much opportunity to utilize to begin with, and are not easily replicable. 

In addition to this, the presentation of the explosion in the above panel is possibly exaggerated, as it is inconsistent with what we've seen otherwise from them. In the aforementioned battle, all of his beavers end up exploding, and the explosion is significantly smaller than what we see before, only creating a small crater.

Aside from these, most of Zim's other weapons and tools in the comics were generally not going to be very impactful in this fight, so we thought it best to just try to be as accurate as possible.

Verdicts

(Art by Ashuto)

The Monster King

Yes, that's what tmk stands for.

When I joined the Death Battle Discord server, it was sometime in 2019, around the time that the Destroy All Humans remake was announced, and when Enter The Florpus was released. As such, I think that the matchup kind of grandfathered its way into my #1 most wanted spot for Death Battle for quite a while. It also helps that I really like both of these franchises, and while it was popular, I never saw anyone say it was their favorite, so it kind of stuck out for me to stick a niche on. It was also my first DeviantArt script (don't read it, it's bad) so this match means a lot to me, I really wanted to go all in here. And I think I'm happy with how this blog turned out. I can see Death Battle keeping this match on some tab to do for a while, maybe they'll get to it eventually.

Anyways, who wins? I think this fight has a lot to cover, so I'm going to split it into sections.

AP

Who do I think is stronger? Well this is kind of a trick question, because Zim physically is much stronger. Without his telekinesis, weapons or shield, Crypto only has like, surviving a few bullets as a feat, meanwhile Zim consistently (Maybe too consistently) gets into the kiloton range of power, his best scaling being from GIR surviving crashing into Earth from the Moon getting lucky triple 7 kilotons. Of course, with his tech, psychokinesis and shield, Crypto can dish out and deal with attacks from things like Kojira, who can fight his saucer, which has weapons getting into the several megatons and even into the gigatons. Technically, Crypto can also transmogrify objects into energy for his Meteor Strike, which directly scales his psychokinesis to such levels without even needing his saucer - his saucer, of course, has enough energy to vaporize all of Capital City (a Washington D.C. stand-in), and the sonic booms can reach into a gigaton of force, as they shoot globules of anti-matter that explode upon impact. Generally speaking, Zim isn't going to be able to break through his shield, and Crypto could deal serious damage to Zim if given the opportunity. 

Speed

Speed is probably the most confusing part of this debate. At minimum, Crypto can react to and dodge fragments of the Mothership flying at Mach 700, and Zim can fly around the Earth over two thousand times the speed of sound. There is one laser dodging feat for Zim that I think is interesting; he dodges these mall lasers that seem to be consistent with light lasers and are called such. However, they also lack a consistent thickness at times, and while Zim does move in tandem with them, he never runs directly out of their fire - upon closer examination, he runs out of their range before they fire. They have generally similar "piloting" feats as well, although if you accepted this, Crypto would probably be provably faster because he can fly to Planet Furon, which is located in another galaxy. I think it's also worth mentioning that the speeds of their exact piloting movements could probably be scrutinized further, as when you are traveling such large distances, you are given much more time to react to oncoming objects. Generally all of Zim's piloting feats fall under this problem, but I think that if you are going to be fair to both, they will be somewhat even.

Tech

Here is where the fight gets interesting, trying to compare their technology. Generally, Crypto is going to have far more useful and varied weapons at his disposal, meanwhile Zim might be able to compensate with his greater number of minions and allies. However, I would say that Zim is going to have a harder time dealing with Crypto's weapons than Crypto would in regards to Zim's minions. Crypto is used to battling entire platoons at once by himself, it's kind of what he does - but more than that, almost all of Zim's units are robotic, meaning that Crypto can transmogrify them in order to ensure that his ammo supply never runs out, effectively giving him an infinite source for energy. Or alternatively, he could just get in his saucer and mow them all down at once. In addition, both have methods of interfering with technology, but only Crypto can do so remotely without having to physically connect to an object.

Cloning

Before we talk about their exact win conditions, something that needs to be addressed is Crypto's cloning. Is it usable mid battle? Well, if you read the cloning section, you'd know the answer is yes. Personally, I wasn't entirely sure about whether or not it would when I started this blog, but yes, he can immediately reclone on the battlefield out of nothing if he were to die. This is not linked to his saucer or whatever, as he was able to reclone after crashing and destroying his saucer in Path of the Furon. Orthopox has a statement in Big Willy suggesting that he manually reclones Crypto after every death, however in that same game, you are able to reclone while his holopod has been messed up and you are actively trying to fix it. On that same note however, Crypto did not reclone when Crypto-136 was killed, so it's probably more likely that the cloning is a result of Orthopox. As this is a core gameplay mechanic throughout the series and Orthopox has every single incentive to keep Crypto alive, I think it is justifiable to assume he'd do so here. There is also the matter that furon DNA degrades gradually with each new clone, but they have been cloning for eons before they even realized this and we don't know how many times it would take to take effect. This also isn't an actual threat in gameplay, so it would probably require killing Crypto… A lot of times.

Win-Conditions

Now that we have covered how Crypto's cloning works, let's go over their specific abilities and win conditions, to see how effective they would be.

Crypto:

Brute Force - Through either his PK or his weapons, Crypto scales high enough to be able to kill Zim through simple attack power.

Mind Control - Crypto's mind control is very well layered, however Zim's PAK can reset his mind if it has been significantly altered, so it is likely he can do this if Crypto were to attempt to mind control him.

Disintegrator Ray - The Disintegrator Ray fires anti-matter at opponents, which is not something Zim has shown a resistance to.

Transmogrification - Crypto can transmogrify many of Zim's robots, however Zim himself is organic. Still, Crypto can attempt this which would kill Zim by exploding his brain, or he can even try transmogrifying his PAK.

Anal Probe - Crypto can send a probe up Zim's butt that will then explode his head. Effective enough.

Zombie Gun - This would likely fail for a similar reason that his hypnosis would fail

Shrink Ray - Crypto can shrink Zim down to size, then just step on him or something. Zim has shown to have size altering technology, yet we've never seen how exactly he uses it, let alone grow himself back. Still, if this happened, he could possibly escape and have his computer and allies continue the battle from within his voot cruiser.

Burrow Beast/Venus Humantrap - Crypto could try to summon these beasts to consume Zim, nothing particularly wrong with that.

Black Hole Gun - Um, yeah, I think this would kill Zim.

Extract - This basically follows the same logic as the anal probe and transmogrify, which should likely work. 

Body Snatch - This is interesting. Crypto can enter people's bodies and suck out their life force as he uses them. I'm not entirely sure what would happen if Crypto did this to Zim, as Crypto seems to be physically controlling them from inside rather than by some mental influence. 

Zim:

Brute Force - Zim lacks the necessary AP to destroy Crypto's shield or his saucer, so this method would likely fail. 

Organ Harvester - the Organ Harvester has a limited range to it, which is actually too small to affect Crypto from outside of his shield.

Bologna Tack - Not only does this take too long to occur, but Zim would not be able to place it somewhere for Crypto to incidentally land on it either. His shield protects him from landmines, which means that it must cover his feet as well.

Nanoship - Zim would likely need to prepare in order to do this first, and he'd also need someway to bypass the shield. Otherwise, it's not very convenient.

Space-Time Object Replacement Device - Maybe? Zim would need to enter his base to do this, and since he doesn't know Crypto, he'd only be able to target him at the beginning of the fight. He also has no control over what object actually gets replaced, and doing this has actually proven inconvenient for him when he attempted this.

A Room With A Moose - As silly as it is, this is actually Zim's best possible method for getting rid of a Crypto. He could theoretically try to trap Crypto in a bus and send it into a wormhole. However, this would be fairly difficult to do, and even if he does do it, Crypto could probably just… Bust out? Orthopox would no doubt aid him in such a situation as well, but nothing is really stopping Crypto from just blasting a hole in the bus and leaving. Alternatively, he could use his telekinesis to drive the bus into a different direction.

Orbital Water Balloon - It is true that the Orbital Water Balloon is technically much stronger than any of Crypto's weapons (well, except for the black hole gun), however because it is so large, Crypto would only have to survive a very small fraction of its energy. In addition, Orthopox can warn Crypto ahead of time, and he can use his saucer to escape, as it has the necessary travel speed to do so.

Pustulio - Furons with a powerful enough mental state should be capable of withstanding mental influence - hell, even some regular humans were able to resist Crypto's hypnosis, before he upgraded it. As his mental capabilities should far exceed them, he should be able to resist Pustulio. In addition, Pustulio only lasts for a very short length of time, and Zim lacks many means for ending the fight within that timeframe.

As you can see, there is a very stark difference between their methods at winning the fight. Zim is far more limited in this avenue than Crypto is, and none of that even mentioned Crypto's cloning capabilities. However, let's say that he somehow was able to kill Crypto, for the sake of argument. In that scenario, we need to analyze how he could potentially deal with Crypto's cloning.

DNA Degradation - This is the most simple answer, just kill Crypto over and over again until his Furon DNA degrades to a certain point. Zim would need to do this potentially millions of times over, which is far less likely than Crypto killing him once. In the scenario that Zim was much faster and stronger than Crypto, Crypto would still likely be able to take out Zim before this happens. He is capable of stopping time, and that in conjunction with Zim's, well, incompetence, and the fact that Zim lacks the necessary stamina to do so means that Crypto would eventually be able to formulate a plan and take Zim out.

Destroy Orthopox - How? Well first off, Zim wouldn't even know that Orthopox is causing Crypto to revive, and even if he did, how is he going to find him? Orthopox does not usually hang around Crypto while he is fighting or off on a mission, he keeps himself disclosed to another location until the battle is over. In addition, Orthopox's holopod model is also used by Gastro, who battles alongside Crypto, implying they have a similar level of durability. 

Hack Orthopox - or, more accurately, somehow interfere with Pox's holopod's technology. Orthopox has actually shown to be susceptible to having his holopod tampered with in Big Willy, so maybe it could theoretically work, but it still runs into the problem that Zim has no way of even knowing about Orthopox. There is nothing showing that it's potent enough to affect technology from the other end of a communicator, so it will be forced into the same position as the previous method.

Orbital Water Balloon - This could potentially flush out Orthopox, but as covered previously, his holopod would only need to survive a very small fraction of the energy from the water balloon. If Pox thought he was in any serious danger, he could also tell Crypto to pick him up in his saucer, which might help Zim in finding Pox, but this is already incredibly circumstantial and contrived as it is.

This paints a very poor picture for Zim. He lacks the tools or power necessary to defeat one Crypto, let alone deal with his cloning, meanwhile Crypto has various means of ending the fight whenever he wants.

The Obvious…

Okay, so I don't actually believe that Zim is completely incompetent. He has proven his worth a few times, like with saving the Earth from the Planet Jackers or clearing the Hobo-13 training thing, but it would be obtuse to say that he is a genius or marvelous fighter. His stupidity, vanity and absurdness is a constant point of reminder in his own series, and he has self sabotaged himself on more than one occasion. Compare that to Crypto, a Furon soldier who's lived for eons and successfully defeated Earth's forces and overthrew his own empire with very little support. Even Zim's mechanical prowess, which should be his Forte, isn't especially impressive considering that Crypto can construct an intergalactic satellite with only a few spare scraps of junk. In addition to this, Zim has no defenses against Crypto literally reading his mind in the fight, and has Orthopox to aid him in battle. Crypto takes any and all tactical, intelligence or skill based advantages in spades.

Conclusion

This debate has been in kind of a gray area for a while, given that both of them were fairly under researched and are prime to hearsay arguments and internet rumors. However, once you actually take the time to look at this match in its entirety, the winner becomes fairly clear. Crypto's "stronger", has better weapons and tech, is far smarter, can stop time, has a plethora of useful abilities, and effectively can't die. The only possible point of leniency we can grant to Zim is maybe giving him being faster, but that is not enough to overcome Crypto's myriad of advantages. I honestly believe that, even if we had granted Zim all of his standard gadgets and weapons from his comic line, the result would not change, and I have read his entire comic line twice over. I know that people generally wouldn't assume a sandbox ps2 game from 2005 would be that powerful, but no, Crypto is actually a very big menace. 

All in all, maybe I've been a little harsh on Zim. It was very fun to look through all his feats, and he is a pretty intriguing character to put in vs. He's done a lot and has a lot in his own right, and I don't mean to squander that, but Crypto is just too much for him. He got Cryptowned.

TheoryCrafter

Aliens!

There are many cartoon shows that people desperately want on Death Battle.  Adventure Time, Regular Show, Amphibia, the Owl House, the Simpsons, etc.  With all of these other huge series clamoring for attention, I think some really quality matchups tend to get forgotten because their franchises are not currently being talked about.  But with Enter the Florpus releasing a few years back and Destroy All Humans releasing remakes, this matchup deserves some time in the limelight.  I am not a superfan of either series but I hate to see a fun idea buried under waves of matchups for a handful of insanely popular franchises.

Now onto the matchup itself.  I feel like I need to start by addressing a bit of a contention between myself and other members of this blog related to Zim’s stats.  While watching the show for this blog, we came across an interesting feat in the episode “Planet Jackers.”  In the episode, aliens place a giant metal sphere around the Earth and drag it to their solar system in order to throw it into their Sun.  We are shown multiple times throughout the episode that the ship flies a very far distance, such as them passing multiple nebulae in one scene and then the nebulae being completely absent a few scenes later.  Even assuming that they only went to the closest star to Earth that isn’t the Sun, that is still a bare minimum of 4.2 light years.  The episode itself takes place over the course of a single night and the earthquakes at the beginning of the episode indicate that the planet jackers were not moving the planet before the episode began.  Suffice it to say, it is very clear that the ship itself was moving massively faster than light.

Now piloting feats are always contentious and rightfully so but this one I think holds up very well.  While the planet jackers themselves did not need to react to much while flying, Zim did.  Multiple times throughout the episode Zim’s voot runner is able to move faster than the planet jackers’ ship while making tight turns, such as flying in a helix motion around the ship.  There are many counter arguments to this feat so let me address some of them really quickly.

1. Couldn’t the planet jackers just have been in hyperspeed while off-screen and then slowed down when they approached their own solar system?

While the idea makes sense, it is not founded in anything we actually see.  At no point is any hyper speed even alluded to and based on the trucker aesthetic the planet jackers were clearly based around, it is likely that their trips are meant to be a gradual one, maintaining similar speeds over long distances rather than jumping to super speed for a short portion of the trip.  Also, for the scenes we have of the planet jackers in space, we can tell they are already moving massively faster than light.  In one scene, they acknowledge a nearby binary system, a solar system with two stars, which is drawn in detail for the audience.  However, a few scenes later, when they spot their sun, the surrounding space is blank except for distant stars.  We get numerous angles and this star system that was previously very noticeable is completely gone.  Considering that we only ever see the planet jackers fly in a straight line and we get many different angles of the ship after this point with none showing the binary system, it is clear that even while casually flying they are moving incredibly fast.  Finally, when the jackers do see their sun, one of them actually orders the other to INCREASE their speed, showing that they are now moving faster than they have been.  Overall, the arguments for the planet jackers having used some equivalent of Star Wars hyperspace are completely unsubstantiated and highly unlikely.

2.  How does Zim even scale to this, wouldn’t all of the feats be over large enough distances that any reaction feat would be drastically toned down?

This is a common issue with piloting feats but it very much does not apply here.  I will give numerous examples of moments in the episode where Zim/Gir would need to react at comparable speeds to the ship with rough timestamps.  At 6:45, Zim flies in a helix maneuver around the shaft connecting the planet jackers’ ship to Earth.  It is clear that Zim’s ship is moving very closely to the shaft yet is still able to make precise turns to avoid crashing the ship.  We can also tell that the voot cruiser’s horizontal velocity, relative to the shaft is at least in the same order of magnitude as its forward velocity, which would have to be faster than light in order to keep up with the planet jackers.  Next, at 8:29, Zim exits the voot cruiser and begins flying forward on his jetpack.  Zim is able to propel himself forward on the ship’s central shaft, which means he must be moving faster than it.  Zim’s travel is not entirely in one direction though, as he moves at an angle, flying both forward along the ship’s shaft and down towards its surface so he can land.  Like the previous feat, Zim’s movement towards the surface of the ship must be in the same order of magnitude as his movement forward (or else the angle of his descent would have been infinitesimal).  Since Zim is able to react in time to use his PAK to land safely on the ship, he must be able to react while moving at such immense speeds.  A very similar moment occurs at 10:33, where Zim is able to accurately maneuver around the planet’s shell, past the connecting shaft, and onto the main ship.  As I keep repeating, in order to accurately change his height relative to the ship while still keeping up with the forward velocity, Zim must be reacting at speeds less than but still comparable to the ships’ movement speed.  Finally, to further hammer in the point, let me just drop some moments of the Zim/Gir piloting the ship with incredible efficiency and control at these incredible speeds, 8:25, 9:50, and 11:50.

3. Why should we take the binary system vanishing as proof that they have moved a far distance?  Isn’t it more likely that the creators did not want to draw that star system in the background over and over and its disappearance has no real significance?

I understand not wanting to take every animation inconsistency as “proof” of some incredible feat and there are times where I would take that side of the argument, this is not one of them.  The binary system is not just a nebulous (ba dum tiss) background element.  It is drawn in great detail from multiple different perspectives and openly acknowledged by the characters in universe.  It is a definitively established part of the surrounding environment and its disappearance clearly demonstrates a change in location.  Of course, plenty of media and especially cartoons have inconsistent proportions and backgrounds but when an element of the background is directly addressed in one scene and then removed mere minutes later, that is more than just a simple animation inconsistency.  There are also those who will claim that using the disappearance of the binary system as evidence of a massive change in location was not the author’s intention.  My response to this is two-fold.  First, this claim is completely speculative.  Without direct confirmation or deconfirmation from the creators, we cannot assert what they intended with the scene.  I could make the argument that the binary system disappearing was absolutely meant to demonstrate a change in location and I would have just as much evidence to support the assertion.  Secondly, and arguably more importantly, whether or not the creators cared enough about the background for the disappearance of key pieces to make sense in canon is largely irrelevant.  There have been many feats that came from where the creator clearly did not think very deeply about the implications of what happened on screen and we still use them.  The best example I know of is the Danny Phantom vaporization feat which Butch Hartmann himself openly admitted they just did because it looked cool without much more thought.  We still use the feat though because, regardless of intent, it still happened in the material’s universe.  While the inconsistencies of media are important to recognize, that does not mean that moments can be dismissed out of hand with the vague notion of them “not being what the creators intended.”

Now after that deep dive into Zim’s speed, I must believe that it is really important to this matchup right? 

…No, not really.  Crypto himself has similar piloting feats that could also be well above the light speed range.  Both are incredibly hard to calculate accurately due to the inherently fictional planets and stars used in the material which do not have stated distances relative to each other.  Zim likely would be faster overall from what has been shown, but the difference is likely not enough to completely tilt the fight in his favor.

But on that topic let's get to…

Stats

This section will be relatively short considering how clear cut the stats are in this case (with the colossal exception of the aforementioned speed).

For Crypto, his telekinesis’ upper limit appears to be about 1.13 gigatons of TNT while his technology can reach up to 739 megatons.  Considering the nature of both these feats, it is unlikely that Crypto’s physical body scales to them.  This is especially notable since he is routinely shown to be able to be defeated by simple human gunfire.  However, Crypto’s shield is a different story.  It is able to protect him from at least some of the damage from his meteors, meaning it could possibly take some fraction of the aforementioned 1.13 gigatons.  This is admittedly a very generous estimate but it is a good high ball for Crypto’s durability.

Likewise there is an important distinction between Zim’s physical feats and his feats with technology.  On his own he can take at least 42 kilotons of TNT and potentially up to 777 kilotons if scaled to Gir.  But with his technology he can do so much more.  A single orbital water balloon had about 2.9 teratons of energy behind it.  That is enough to level a country.

So Crypto cannot keep up with Zim in a purely physical confrontation and the destructive potential of his weaponry pales in comparison to that of Zim’s.  However Crypto’s shield and telekinesis are both stronger than Zim’s physical showings.  So while Zim would be able to kill Crypto with relative ease with a punch, he would have a lot of trouble being able to land those kinds of hits.

Then we need to know if Zim’s abilities and equipment can overcome these obstacles.

Abilities/Equipment

One of Zim’s biggest advantages in this fight is that he is not fighting alone.  Far from it.  Zim has a veritable army of minions at his pointy fingertips.  With the membrane bots, roboparents, lawn gnomes, and various robotic animals Zim can cause havoc on Crypto while keeping himself out of harm’s way.  But by far the most useful of the minions are GIR and the computer.  

While GIR is usually even more incompetent than Zim, which is saying a lot, he still has a host of incredible abilities.  With his incredible arsenal of weaponry, absurd guidance system, and ability to absorb information in seconds, GIR is a very valuable asset.  Likewise the computer also allows Zim to gather information but can also operate his various technology remotely and call it to Zim.  The computer can remotely operate both the Voot Cruiser and Zim’s base.  

As for Zim himself, he still has PLENTY going for him.  The Irken PAK is filled to the brim with useful technology such as robotic appendages, a forcefield, lasers, a jetpack, and even an organ harvesting machine (seriously what was that episode).  In a direct fight, Zim can definitely hold his own.  He also has a bunch of more situational weaponry such as the bologna tack or his projection helmets but I will cover those a bit later.

Onto Crypto who has even MORE crazy weaponry.  His Zap-o-matic, disintegrator ray, ion detonator, and so much more allow him to absolutely dominate the battlefield.  The flying saucer and big willy are even MORE powerful and allow Crypto to create chaos from a safe distance.  His telekinetic and telepathic abilities are just as deadly whether it be calling down meteors, hypnotizing his foes, or just pulling out their brains.  The Cortex Scan especially can obtain large amounts of information in a second and replenishes Crypto’s psychic abilities.  Possibly most powerful of all though is the time stop and accompanying temporal fist.  While it does limit his offensive options a good deal, being able to freeze everything else in time for a few seconds is incredibly useful in a fight and can be used to get Crypto out of some tight spots.

However, we need to address the elephant in the room, Crypto’s cloning.  Is it really as overpowered as we have made it out to be?  Well yes actually.  Crypto can clone himself a practically unlimited number of times to resume the fight if he dies.  These clones can come from seemingly anywhere.  The only restrictions to clones seem to have is that the cloning process needs to be triggered by something.  This role can be fulfilled by Crypto himself or the digital consciousness of Orthopox that he is in communication with.  So unless both of these are taken out, the cloning will continue.

In the interest of keeping this relatively concise (I already wasted your time with Zim speed), I will address the counterplay between these two in the form of answering questions.

Can Crypto defeat all of the minions Zim can throw at him?

This is an easy yes.  Crypto is already well established to be able to take on platoons of enemies single-handedly and this is hardly different.  While Zim’s minions might be large in number, they generally lack overall abilities and could never keep up with someone like Crypto.  More importantly, the transmogify weapon could turn most of Zim’s minions into ammo for Crypto.  The biggest threat to Crypto is likely GIR given his incredible arsenal and occasional competence.  It is even possible that Zim could use the remote to force GIR back into permanent duty mode.  But this is unlikely as Zim has never used this as a tactic and, knowing him, might have forgotten he can even do it.  While GIR would likely cause trouble for Crypto, Crypto’s abilities are still far too vast for GIR to handle.  Crypto could just use the dislocator on GIR to take him out of the fight and GIR would probably not even resist.

What is stopping Crypto from just mind controlling Zim?

Mind control is always a dangerous ability to contend with but Zim actually has a perfect counter.  Zim’s Irken PAK contains all of his memories and a backup of his own consciousness.  Even with Crypto’s hypnosis being somewhat layered, Zim’s PAK being able to completely reset his mind counters it very nicely.

Can Zim overcome Crypto’s shield?

This is a complicated question given just how powerful the shield has shown itself to be.  The shield can take a lot of punishment up to some fraction of his own meteor strike ability.  But don’t take that out of context, Crypto is only likely taking a very small fraction of the meteor’s kinetic energy, given how if he is ever too close he will instantly be killed in-game.  With that being said, it is entirely possible that Zim could eventually overwhelm this forcefield with his far superior physical stats along with his army and various weapons.  The voot cruiser especially has been shown to back some very powerful weaponry which could gradually wear down the shield such as its explosives and lasers.  

Can Zim stop Crypto from just cloning himself over and over again?

This is the question that ultimately decides the fight.  If Zim is able to stop the cloning process, then he could put down Crypto for good and secure a victory.  If not, then Crypto’s victory is assured.

So can Zim do it?  Maybe but it will be very difficult.

Zim would need to take down the Orthopox AI and kill Crypto to stop this endless cycle of cloning.  I have previously established that I do believe that Zim could eventually overcome Crypto’s shield which would allow him to kill Crypto.  However, each additional Crypto clone has all of the abilities and technology of the previous Crypto.  So each clone would need to be dealt with from a near completely blank slate.  This is in contrast to Zim whose arsenal would be gradually worn down as the fight progresses.  

But none of this matters if Zim cannot learn about Orthopox and shut it down.  Theoretically Zim’s computer or GIR would be able to identify Orthopox.  The computer has shown the ability to access intergalactic information and do large planetary scans before so it is possible Orthopox would be identified.  GIR has also shown the ability to rapidly absorb massive amounts of information from technology in mere seconds and has highly-advanced scanning and locating capabilities.  It is thus possible that GIR could use a deceased Crypto’s technology to learn of Orthopox and maybe even its location.  With that Zim could potentially find the holopod and destroy it to end the cycle or attempt to hack into it remotely using the computer or AI.

However, all of this is very circumstantial and relies on one very big factor, Zim being competent.  I recognize that Zim is not a complete moron and scientifically is brilliant, but planning was never his strong suit.  Knowing Zim, he would likely not even think to analyze Crypto’s technology unless specifically prompted by the computer or duty mode GIR and even then he might just ignore the idea because he wasn’t the one to come up with it.  With Zim’s gradually dwindling options as the fight progresses, this plan also becomes less and less likely to work.

It is also not like Crypto is just going to sit back and let this all happen.  He will constantly be putting the pressure on Zim with his incredible abilities, not giving him even a moment to breathe.  If Crypto thinks Orthopox is threatened, he would likely take countermeasures of his own to protect it.  Considering that Crypto’s arsenal is far less likely to deplete than Zim’s and he is actually really good at his job, he could likely protect the AI very well.

But what about the bologna tack or the projection helmet or the room with a moose?  Could they be used to stop Crypto from coming back.  Probably not.  While the bologna tack could interfere with Crypto’s DNA, the cloning is not based on the immediate host but a large storage of Furon DNA so the tack will not compromise the cloning’s genetic pool.  While the projection helmet could trap Crypto in a hellish virtual reality, Orthopox could always just notify him to take the helmet off or just clone a new Crypto preemptively.  There is a similar issue with Zim sending Crypto to the room with a moose.  While this would completely remove Crypto from the fight without killing him, Crypto does not need to be dead for a new one to be cloned so this would similarly fail.

Conclusion

Does Zim get stomped?  Not quite.  He definitely has some noteworthy advantages and is able to protect himself from a decent bit of Crypto’s arsenal.  However, Crypto’s arsenal is just far more versatile and dangerous overall.  Possibly more importantly though, Crypto is far better at fighting and is intelligent enough to work around some of the crazier stuff Zim could throw at him.  His weapons and telekinetic abilities also provide him plenty of options to put Zim down for good.  Even if Zim were to manage to kill Crypto, the cloning would be too much for Zim to handle in the long-term.

So that is my decision.  In this battle of alien invaders, Crypto will be the one to claim Earth as his own.  I hope this result does not anGIR any Zim fans, I know it can IRK people to watch their favorite characters lose.  But after looking through both, I believe that Crypto is FURON his path to victory.

Rina Antiqua

Good match, would like to see it happen, glad to be here

Stats are first, as always. Generally speaking Zim is definitely a lot stronger physically. Crypto doesn’t really have many impressive physical feats to his name, and the ones he does have are outclassed by stuff like Dib surviving a giant blast or Zim falling from orbit. That said, Crypto’s tech is way stronger than any of Zim’s. His weapons harming Kojira who can scale to Crypto’s saucer allow his weapons to scale to the saucer’s megaton to gigaton feats (vaporizing a city and antimatter affecting a bunch of air). Any hit from his weapons means Zim is getting turned into green paste, and given his shields and telekinesis also scale, Zim is going to have a hard time getting any hits in. As for Speed, piloting feats have the issue of not needing to move as fast as the ship to react to projectiles and stuff, so I don’t really buy any of theirs. Zim’s Mach 2000 scaling against Crypto’s Mach 700 means Zim should hold an edge in the speed department, though it’s not as drastic, and Crypto’s shields can allow him to keep up

Really the biggest downside to Zim is that his tech as a whole is far inferior to Crypto’s and isn’t suited to fight him. All of Zim’s creations are robotic, which act as an endless fuel supply for Crypto, who can transmogrify them and never run out of ammo. He’s also highly experienced fighting platoons of enemies, so it’s really just another Tuesday for the fellow. But even beyond all that, stuff like anti-matter, anal probe, extracting, the fucking black hole gun, all are easy and viable ways to put the annoying alien down for good. Conversely, Zim has far more limited options for taking out Crypto. Pustulio can be resisted, Crypto’s shields protect him from the Bologna Trap, etc. Zim’s best win con is brute forcing his way through, but with Crypto’s telekinesis, shields, and saucer, that’s easier said than done. All of this is ignoring the fact that Crypto can be cloned and “revive” from death, meaning Zim has to kill Crypto a bunch of times as opposed to Crypto just ending the fight with any of his multiple tech

Add all of that with far better combat experience and competency, and Crypto is really just the clear cut winner here. Uhhhhh something something pun thanks for having me

Random Guy No. 7

So being entirely real, I was never a big Invader Zim guy as a kid. In fact I used to avoid it any chance I had. It's a shame my tastes didn’t grow in time before the show got taken off the air, because I think it's pretty great nowadays.

Destroy All Humans on the other hand has been a present part of my childhood and I have a lot of fond memories with it, so to have it get attention like this really makes me smile. I think this idea has a lot of potential, in case you haven’t caught onto that already with everything you’ve been reading.

I’ll keep the actual debate analysis short here, considering my judgment is at the bottom of the blog, and you’ve probably read a lot of the main points already. However there are some things that I think are still worth talking about.

You’ve already caught onto the fact that Zim’s main way to win here is overwhelming Crypto, which between everything he has going for him is a very difficult task. Between the saucer, Crypto’s shields, and of course the main elephant in the room, cloning. Which pretty much serves as a big slap in the face to Zim even assuming he gets lucky.

While its true Crypto’s time stop limits his offensive capabilities by a major degree, the weapon he is allowed to utilize it with is a pretty damn good one to be stuck with. Using the Ion Detonator during the time stop basically means Crypto can stack explosives with transmutative effects on them to really give him more time to breathe. On top of that even outside of the time stop, the Ion Detonator has the added effect of slowing down time with its explosions thanks to upgrades.

So basically Crypto is being rewarded here for being on the offensive by giving him even more breathing room to fight and even more openings to use his various game winning weapons on Zim. Plain and simple to me, Crypto just has too much going for him in this fight for Zim to make any major headway in this fight. In other words, Zim loses because he can’t INVADE Crypto’s space enough to clutch a win. Zim gets DESTROYED. Ok that one was a bit lazy, I’m sorry.

Team Crypto: The Monster King, TheoryCrafter, Rina Antiqua, Random Guy No. 7

Team Zim: