It really is so incredibly funny how, like, the one thing Zim and Dib can agree on is that they’re the only two who take Zim’s Earth-Conquest Mission seriously. GIR can barely care about it more than his own shenanigans and weird capricious desires, Gaz doesn’t know that Zim’s mission is bogus but still doesn’t see him as a serious threat, and everyone else is either fully aware that Zim is just allowed to play-act at Invading to get him out of the way (most Irkens) or are just unaware Zim is an invading alien in the first place (most Humans).
And they’re both invested in maintaining the illusion that Zim is a Real Competent Invader for the exact same reason - for the sake of their own egos and their own self-image. Zim obviously needs to convince himself he’s actually Irk’s greatest Invader and Dib’s whole fantasy of being the Hero Saving the World is based on the idea that he’s Saving the World from an actual credible threat and not the laughingstock of the Evil Space Empire.
Honestly, on some level that makes me more interested in seeing a canon exploration of Dib’s reaction to finding out that Zim’s mission is a lie more than I do for Zim’s reaction.
Cause, like, with Zim there’s no way for him to really Process that information without Breaking the Concept of the Show - so in any canon work you kinda know he has to snap back to his delusion by the end somehow (you know, just like what did canonically happen in ‘Enter the Florpus').
But with Dib I can easily see him finding it out, processing the information, struggling it for quite a bit in an interesting way… before coming to the conclusion that, Real Invader or not, backed by the actual Irken armada or not, Zim is still a credible enough threat to Earth that Dib has a duty to stop him.
So the general conceit of the show would still remain as it is in every canon IZ Work, but that reveal will at least bring some sort of actual change to the status quo.
