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20px-Cquote1.png Dumb like a moose, Dib, dumb like a moose!
Zim
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Invader Zim Episode
Bolognius Maximus
Bolognius Maximus (Title Card)
Chronology
Previous: FBI Warning of Doom
Next: Game Slave 2
Information
Episode No: Episode 12a
Production No: 12a
Airdate: September 21, 2001
Credits
Writer(s): Jhonen Vasquez


"Bolognius Maximus" is the 1st segment in the 12th episode of the first season of Invader Zim. It premiered on September 21, 2001, on Nickelodeon.

Plot Summary

SPOILER WARNING OF DOOM: This section or article may contain spoilers!

Laughing Dib

Dib will rue the day he messed with Zim.

When Dib once again notices that Zim isn’t eating his food, he throws a piece of bologna at him in order to taunt him. This instead causes Zim immense pain, and fuses with his skin.

Zim vows to get his revenge after all the other Skoolchildren laugh at him. During the next day of Skool, Dib sits on a tack, which causes Zim to begin laughing hysterically.

Dib believes Zim is just being pathetic, but is oblivious that Zim really is planning something as that night in his lab the Irken looks with satisfaction at a monitor, mockingly telling Dib to "sleep well, for it will be the last peaceful sleep he will ever know."

Bolognius 1

Zim is gloating.

The next day, Dib notices that not only does he taste good, but all of the neighborhood dogs seem to think so too. Dib assumes that Zim just got something on his skin to make him smell and taste like something that dogs love, but the rest of the class and even Ms. Bitters think that Dib smells awful.

He gets sent to the bathroom to wash himself in the toilet, even though Willy was the last one to use it. In the bathroom, Dib runs some tests on a sample of his skin and the tack he sat on yesterday, and discovers that Zim actually introduced a foreign DNA sequence into his body, causing him to turn into bologna. Dib returns to class and threatens Zim to give him a cure, but Zim tells him there's no cure and begins to laugh evilly while their peers cover their noses in disgust and Dib runs away screaming.

Transforming into Bologna

Zim and Dib agree to work together to find a cure.

Later, Zim is walking home from Skool and finds Dib surrounded by dogs. Dib admits that Zim's plan was pretty good, and holds his hand out in defeat. Zim reaches out to shake it when he believes Dib has finally conceded to his will, only to get pricked by the same tack that he had Dib sit on.

Dib tells Zim that now he has to find a cure to save himself as well, but Zim declares that he will find a cure and keep it all to himself. However, Zim starts transforming into bologna much quicker than Dib, to the point where his base thinks that Zim is an intruder. Having no other choice, Zim goes to Dib for help, and the two try to find a cure together.

You Jerk

Zim and Dib fully transformed.

When they finally think they got it, Dib drinks it and only turns more into bologna, the process having been actually sped up, this makes Dib angry, and blames the whole thing on Zim, but Zim says it's Dib's "inferior equipment" that is at fault, and they start fighting.

However, the fight ends when Zim and Dib realize they are surrounded by dogs, they run away screaming, eventually they find refuge inside an abandoned house, fully transformed into giant bologna sausages, Dib has the last word by calling Zim a jerk in disgust.

End of Spoilers: There are no further spoilers for this section or article. You can breathe now.

Facts of Doom

Cultural References

  • This episode's story is heavily based on the sci-fi horror film The Fly, starring Jeff Goldblum. However, instead of transforming into a fly, Zim and Dib transform into something else.
  • When she tries to identify who in her class is smelling awful, Ms. Bitters resembles the movements of the Velociraptors from the film Jurassic Park.
  • When Dib shoves Zim through the vent near the end, a panel reading "DMZ 34" can be seen in the upper right. This may be a reference to the Korean Demilitarized Zone, which divides North and South Korea and lies on the 34th parallel south

Trivia

Bologna Bite

Gaz takes a bite out of Dib's head.

  • Dib may have scared Gaz for the very first time; when he tells her to "taste him" because "he's delicious", she takes a few steps back before running away. Paradoxically, she eventually takes a bite out of her brother's head later on.
  • Willy first appears in this episode. He is based on an identical-looking character, perhaps an early design of himself, who appeared in the Pilot.
  • One of the bathroom walls reads "Zim IS AN ALIEN", and another reads "He really is!". This is possibly another reference to the original pilot, where Dib had to write "Zim is not an alien" hundreds of times on a chalkboard and you can see those very lines on the board.
  • Zim is the only one in the classroom that isn't bothered by Dib's smell, but in the beginning, he hated the smell in his food tray.
  • This is one of the rare cases where Zim is seen using human technology and seems to use it properly to a degree; later in Enter the Florpus, it was revealed he has grown more familiar using it.
  • This episode has a reference made about it in "Gaz, Taster of Pork", when Dib states: "I helped you when we were turning into giant bolognas!", to which Zim replies with "YOU'RE MAKING IT UP!". This scene proved that the events of Invader Zim do occur in a floating timeline. How they recovered from the virus was never explained, but it may be possible that they eventually found the cure or that the virus was just temporary.
  • In the comic series, it has become a running gag to reference the events of this episode:
    • In Issue 13, Dib mentions the time that Zim turned him into baloney as one of the reason why they're not friends.
    • In Issue 25, one of the scenes on Fitzoo-Menga's computer is of Zim and Dib as walking bolognas.
    • In Issue 26, Carl thinks that Zim smells like bologna.
    • In Issue 47, it's shown that Zim 1989 A.K.A The Meat is an alternative version of Zim that was never able to reverse the effects of the bologna (which Dib states is quite easy, though he's interrupted before he can explain how to do so).
  • The script was written in December 2000
  • This is the sixth episode GIR doesn't appear in.
  • This episode, along with "Game Slave 2", are Jhonen Vasquez's most favorite episodes of Season One.
  • The plot of this episode is based on the fact that when Vasquez was a child, he used to daydream about people being turned into bologna.
  • Zim says that "Irken babies" play with more advanced toys than the equipment in Professor Membrane's lab, when he should have said "Irken smeets".
  • It would be revealed in “Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom” that Professor Membrane forbade Dib from using his equipment for his “para-science”, however both he and Zim were in the lab without permission or disturbance from the Professor.
    • It’s possible that after the destruction that was left behind trying to find a cure, Professor Membrane banned Dib from using the equipment in the lab.
  • The episode has the most references to the original pilot.
  • This is the first time an episode ends with Dib saying “You Jerk” to Zim, the second and last time would be in “Walk for Your Lives”.
  • In the Latin American version of the episode, Dib tells Zim that he’s “good for nothing” rather than calling him a jerk when they’re fully transformed into bologna.
  • This is one of the few episodes in which neither Zim or Dib win in their battles.

Things You Might Have Missed

  • At the beginning of the episode near Zim's table, Dib can be seen behind in a different table. What's odd about this is that he's not sitting next to Gaz but rather with other children, which is surprising since the other schoolchildren would rather avoid him like in "A Room with a Moose".
  • The moose that was pictured in the survival manual is the same one seen in "A Room with a Moose."
  • When Dib starts screaming and the camera pans to the bathroom stall next to him, Billy Slunchy, the kid in that stall, wets his clothes.
  • When Dib jumps at Zim when he’s back in the classroom and demands the cure, Miss Bitters is seen for a frame looking very angry/annoyed.
  • The trays at the beginning of the episode have meat grease under them, which could mean that the school doesn't clean the trays each lunchtime of the day as a part of the filthy theme in the world of Invader Zim.
  • Iggins can be seen in one of the lunch tables in the second shot near the cafeteria entrance. You might not notice him since the back of his head faces the screen. Iggins would incidentally play a major role in the episode paired with this one.
  • In the beginning of this episode, Zim's plate has a red substance underneath, which is probably leftover ketchup from the bologna.

Inconsistencies and Animation Errors

Bologna Explosion

Dib and Zim's bodies are fried and they share a look of worry.

  • At one point while Zim is in Dib's lab, when they get repelled by the mixture, Zim's eyes are seen as their normal ruby color when he should have his disguise on.
    • However, it might not be a definite mistake, as his lenses could have slipped off given that they can apparently slip quite easily as implied by the many times they have done so in public.
    • Another clue that this is not an animation error is the fact that Zim doesn't seem to be wearing his wig either.
  • When Gaz takes a bite out of Dib's head, look carefully, she has three fingers instead of the standard four.
  • While Dib is talking about how Zim never eats the food, the boy in the background is sipping from a milk carton. The straw's layering is messed up during that scene and it was going through.
  • When Dib tells his excuse in being late to Ms. Bitters, Brian, the boy who sits next to Zim in class, is seen bald despite the fact that he has hair.
  • As the thing Dib is holding zooms, it goes to the next scene and it takes a couple of seconds for the thing and his hand to go away.
  • When Dib enters the classroom in anger and stares at Zim, while Zim is saying he's innocent, the students in the back of the class are gone.
  • When Zim snatches the DNA tractor out of Dib's hand, a few frames later while he runs, it disappears from Zim's hand.
  • While Sara smokes and faints in her seat, her right eye is closed and her left shows her pupil.

See also

References

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