i n v a d e r.

I recently did a small project and went through every single Invader Zim episode script to discover just how much Zim actually replaces first-person (I/me/my/myself) pronouns with his name, and whether he ever replaces first-person pronouns with third-person pronouns (he/him/his).  The answers to these questions pretty much lined up with what I remembered about his canon use of his name as a pronoun-replacement, and I would now like to share my findings, and a list of every time Zim refers to himself in the third person, with all of you fine people here on the Tumblr dot coms.

Observations

1)  Zim uses I/me/my pronouns the vast majority of the time he refers to himself.  He uses his name in place of a pronoun to refer to himself in 18 out of 27 full episodes, or 21 out of 46 segments (but see #5 below).  He says his name in a couple more instances than that but not in place of a pronoun. Technically, ‘I am Zim!’ is not an instance where he is replacing an I/me/my pronoun with his name, any more than me saying, 'Hi, I’m KidK’ is such an instance.  Really, when Zim says, 'I am Zim!’ he is reinforcing the fact that he uses I/me/my pronouns regularly and the fact that he likes to say his own name, without suggesting he replaces pronouns with his name as often as, say, Elmo the Muppet.  I therefore didn’t count instances of 'I am Zim!’ as pronoun replacements, but have made a separate list of them for the sake of interest.

2) Zim replaces 'me’ with his name as the object of a sentence rather than replacing 'I’ as the subject.  The only exceptions to this in the entire run of the show are 'Zim needs no vacation!’ from “The Frycook What Came From All That Space” and ‘Zim needs no meat!’ from “Tak: the Hideous New Girl.”  A more typical usage is lines like 'There is none so worthy as Zim!’ or 'Victory for Zim!’ Also, Zim only uses the possessive 'Zim’s’ once–'No one takes Zim’s mission!’ in “Tak.”  In all other lines when Zim wants to say something is his, he says 'the [thing] of Zim’–or, much more often, uses first-person pronouns 'my’ and 'mine.’

3)  Zim really really very does not speak like Elmo.  He tends to replace one first-person pronoun in a sentence with his name and leave the rest intact, rather than substituting 'Zim’ for every first-person pronoun in the line.  For example, in “The Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom,” he says, 'I break free and now I have to go back to rescue that little rat that left Zim to rot?’  Even this kind of sentence reinforces the fact that Zim uses I/me/my regularly and Zim-as-a-pronoun as a more infrequent thing to add emphasis or drama. 

4) The other way in which Zim is not like Elmo is that he never, ever replaces a first-person pronoun with a third-person pronoun.  Using the same example, notice he did not say, 'Zim breaks free and now he has to go back to rescue that little rat that left him to rot?'  (Zim did use ‘he/him’ for himself when he pretended to be a future version of Dib and thus needed to speak in third person about himself to keep up the ruse; these instances are not included in my count/list because that was playacting and not pronoun-replacement.  He also uses he/him and she/her to refer to other people, including other Irkens, but that’s a subject for a different kind of post.)

5)  Several of the times Zim refers to himself by name that I’ve included on the list are edge cases and may not be true pronoun replacements.  These are noted in the list.

6)  Zim starts referring to himself in third person more about halfway through the show’s run.  He does it a few notable times in episodes 1-15 but all the episodes where he does it a lot are from “Hobo 13″ on.  In fact, there are a few episodes where Zim does it a lot, and then in the others where he does it it’s only once, maybe twice.  The episode segments where Zim refers to himself by name in third person the most are “Hobo 13,” “The Voting of the Doomed,” and “The Frycook What Came From All That Space.”

7)  The first few instances of 'I am Zim’ aren’t just random exclamations, but places where Zim telling someone his name is a natural part of a conversation. It’s not until “Hobo 13″ and beyond that Zim starts yelling 'I am Zim!’ for no apparent reason other than to assert that he is, in fact, Zim I guess.

And now without further ado, below the cut is a list of Every. Single. Time. Zim refers to himself in third person in the series, broken down by episode, with a bonus list of every 'I am Zim!’ at the end.  In every other instance besides these listed times, when Zim refers to himself, he does it with a first-person I/me/my/myself pronoun. Yep.  He sure does know what those are, and uses them very frequently.  Use this information however you like.