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WARNING: This article contains major spoilers. If you do not wish to know vital information on plot / character elements in a story, you may not wish to read beyond this warning: We hold no responsibility for any negative effects these facts may have on your enjoyment of said media should you continue. |
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This article is for a character that is approved as a Silly Near Pure Evil example, meaning they are a character that fits the criteria while being consistently played for laughs. |
| “ | I'll get you next time, Wild Ratts! | „ |
| ~ Zach Varmitech's infamous catchphrase whenever he gets defeated by the Wild Kratts. |
Zachary "Zach" Varmitech is one of the main antagonists of the 2011 PBS Kids show Wild Kratts.
He is a roboticist and inventor who specializes in roboticizing animals into his robotic slaves and selling them.
He, alongside Gaston Gourmand, is voiced by Zachary Bannett.
His Evil Ranking[]
What Makes Him Close to Being Pure Evil?[]
In General[]
- He generally always builds robots out of animals without care for their well-being.
- This might seem like it suffers from Fridge Horror, but he makes them do brute force work while brainwashed, so while brainwashing the animals might not hurt them as much as it seems, the brute work he makes them do certainly would, which is what makes this not suffer from Fridge Horror.
- He also has a massive attempted kill count, when it comes to humans he has attempted to kill the Wild Kratts on numerous occasions, having tried to trap the Kratt brothers under 8 inch thick ice while they had Walrus Power Suits, also endangering the other walruses, attempting to destroy the Tortuga with "Rhino-Dozers" and the area around it to build a parking lot, while this was accidental, he still trapped the Wild Kratts and several Wild Kratts kids under the ice of a frozen pond (but he didn't know about this so it doesn't count), attempting to trap Aviva Corcovado, Chris Kratt and Martin Kratt back in time and holding Koki and Jimmy Z hostage, going along with Gourmand's idea to strand the Wild Kratts on an icefloe to kill them, dropping the Kratt brothers out of his plane, twice, during the "Cats and Dogs" special, and likely trying to kill Martin and Chris by sending Zachbots after them during the special "Our Blue and Green World".
- But when it comes to animals, he tried to kill a polar bear and walrus mother by making them fight, he tried to kill numerous walruses by trapping them under 8 inch thick ice, tried to kill falcons by sweeping them off his building so he could have the biggest as well as the cleanest skyscraper in the city, trying to cut down a forest to find black wood for a table (which obviously wasn't possible), endangering the animals in the process, tried polluting a pond with toxic waste he cleaned out of his plane just to get rid of it, not caring about all the animals he would kill/mutate (the frog eggs in this case), and finally, attempting to kill a third of the animals in the Amazon Rainforest on Gourmand's part.
- He has a large ego that can rival Donita's.
- He frequently tries to steal Aviva's inventions, most of the time it's the Miniaturizer, as seen in the Halloween special.
- As mentioned above, he harms the environments of the animals he visits whenever he tries to exploit them.
- He is also incredibly petty, as he tried to steal Gavin's fishing trophy, cheated during a race to try to win by brainwashing a cheetah to run in a wheel of his ZTV, tries to cut down a forest to find black wood, as mentioned before, tries to pour toxic waste into a pond after cleaning his plane, as mentioned before, and tries to exterminate coyotes on his property, just because he didn't want them there.
- He has an annual meeting with the main villains each year to discuss their plans and how to defeat the Wild Kratts.
- Given the show's comedic nature, while Zach does have many comedic moments like his defeats, childish behavior, feminine screams, constant bumbling antics and tripping over things, and his Zachbots taking his orders literally, prompting him to exclaim his catchphrase "I didn't mean literally!". His other catchphrase, "I'll get you, Wild Ratts!", which he says whenever he is defeated, is always followed by one of the Kratt brothers correcting him that they're called the Wild Kratts, they don't detract from his villainy and he is still taken seriously as a threat by the narrative and by the other characters.
Background[]
- He met Aviva and the Kratt brothers at a science camp and developed a rivalry that continues to the present. This is shown in "Tazzy Chris" when he flashes back to when he tried to create a Zachbot using frogs in a pond and the Kratt brothers stopped him.
Season 1[]
- In his first appearance in "Aardvark Town", he tried to use various animals in the African Savannah in order to dig him a swimming pool, using mind-control helmets on them, before settling on an aardvark making it dig all day before the Wild Kratts intervened. It is evident that this would have taxed the creatures, particularly the aardvark given it would be digging out the area of an entire pool.
- In "Flight of the Draco", he lets Donita use his Zachbots for security knowing he was helping Donita sell living Draco lizards.
- In "Platypus Cafe", he was invited along with Donita to eat platypus eggs that Gourmand had poached, having no qualms about what he was being invited to.
- In "Polar Bears Don't Dance", he kidnapped a walrus and polar bear cub in order to put on a show, before changing his mind and settling on their mothers and making them both fight.
- Also in the process, he sprayed the polar bear cub with his cologne, causing his mother's sense of smell to be negatively affected.
- In "Bass Class", he tried to steal Gavin’s bass fishing trophy, before insisting on challenging him to a bass fishing contest with the winner receiving the trophy, while using robotic fish to cheat, before the water in the finishing tank stripped the paint off.
- He also nearly let the sunfish eat an entire generation of bass eggs despite the Wild Kratts warnings to not do that.
- In "Mystery of the Weird Looking Walrus", he disguised a Zachbot as a local girl from the region and stole a pearl from a museum, before having the idea to enslave all the walruses in the area to collect all the pearls from all the clams of the sea by force feeding them clams and having them spit out pearls, before being stopped by the Kratt brothers. He also tried to kill the Kratt brothers and the walruses by trapping them under 8 inches of ice, as stated above.
- In "Tazzy Chris", he tried to make brainwash Tasmanian Devils to make Tasmanian Devil security bots to keep children away from his house.
- In "Let the Rhinos Roll!", he tried to brainwash rhinos in order to demolish the area to build a parking lot, and specifically targeted the Tortuga in the warehouse it was in and tried to demolish it, trying to destroy it in the process.
- In "Falcon City", he found a nest of falcons on his building when he wanted his building to be the "biggest and cleanest" and tried to clean or push it off with his Zachbots, likely wanting to kill the falcons in the process.
- In "Koala Balloon" he found a koala in a potted tree he had and sent it off on a platform under a bunch of balloons, leading to the Kratt Brothers having to take him back to a eucalyptus forest while they were already trying a survival challenge with out their technology.
- This is an example of how he can have a big impact on the story even when not involved much.
- In "Cheetah Racer", he challenges Aviva to a race to whoever could create the faster land terrain vehicle, dishonorably breaking both rules of no flying and no animals by having one of his Zachbots kidnap a cheetah to use in one of the wheels in his ZTV, before he later tried to continue the race with a flying jet part of his vehicle, trying to disguise his flying by using a polyester string connecting a wheel to the ground so he apparently wasn't flying. However, both of these backfired and he was sent flying into the distance.
- In "A Huge Orange Problem", he tries to find a tree with the blackest wood he could find (which obviously wasn't possible) to build a coffee table, not caring about the orangutans and other animals in the forest, and would have likely cut down the entire forest had the Kratt Brothers not intervened.
- In "The Gecko Effect", he steals the Miniaturizer to pretend he invented it to tell the other villains, before the Wild Kratts retrieved it.
- In "Quillber's Birthday Present", he takes numerous animals and tries to send them up to his blimp using balloons, likely to turn them into robots, but fails when Martin sends his blimp flying away using the last quill of his Porcupine Power Suit.
Season 2[]
- In "Race for the Hippo Disk", despite being saved from a hippo by Chris, he stole the Hippo Power Disk and later kidnapped a hippo calf named Hipster by Martin trying to trade him for the other power disks in order to find out their secret, but got a bag of cookies instead.
- In "Creature Power Challenge", he created the Disrupt-o-Bots to invade the Tortuga and take over its technology and override the Creature Power Suit code to transform into any of the animals they had transformed into before, even disabling deactivation to put on a show and even sadistically revealed to the rest of the Wild Kratts crew his plan and how they couldn't contact the Kratt Brothers, interrupting their competition deciding if elephants or rhinoceroses were stronger and more powerful.
- He also sadistically watched them suffer in the wrong Creature Power Suits and endangered their lives.
- In "Shadow: The Black Jaguar" he has an idea to create bots out of the jaguars and kidnapped a black jaguar cub named "Shadow" by Martin in order to try a prototype, even trying to use a growth serum he tried to grow him to an adult and test it sooner. However, this does suffer from Fridge Horror, as it simply doesn't have enough context on if it would hurt Shadow.
- However, he does try to brainwash Shadow into a robot, meaning this isn't too much Fridge Horror.
- In "Aqua Frog", after he was done cleaning his ship, he decided to dump the toxic industrial waste he cleaned into a river leading to Frog Water Pond, which could have deformed the frog eggs in the lake altering the frogs in the future of their life cycle, and could have killed numerous animals in the lake, though it was stopped by the Kratt Brothers and Aviva.
- In "Rocket Jaw: Rescuer of the Reef", he works with Donita to use fish for her fashion designs and destroys a large part of the coral reef in the process. This is one example of him severely destroying the environment to suit his desires and needs, not caring about what he did to the environment.
- In "Skunked", he tried to use his new invention, The Bubble Bot, in order to stay clean and not be affected by the environment around him, and later saw his opportunity to steal some of The Wild Kratts' technology, though this backfired, as he was sent running covered in skunk stink from a skunk Martin named P. U. and possibly Chris in a skunk Power Suit.
- In "Gila Monster Under My House", he tried to create wrenches out of Gila monsters and sell them.
- This is another example of not suffering from Fridge Horror as he makes them do brute force work, meaning it could hurt the Gila Monsters very badly.
Season 3[]
- In "Mosquito Dragon", after being bit by a mosquito, he had the idea to create mosquito bots to seek out The Wild Kratts' computers and steal their information, seeking out their heat to get to their computers.
- In "Under Frozen Pond", he hosts one of his annual meetings with Donita and Gourmand to discuss their plans while trapping the Wild Kratts and several of the Wild Kratts Kids under the lake in a miniaturized Amphi-Sub (though this was unintentional), before deciding to try to play a hockey game with Donita and Gourmand against the Wild Kratts to determine who would stay in that particular location.
- In "Osprey", he tries to steal the key to the Tortuga when it had been lost, which would give him access to all the Tortuga's technology. He later succeeding in cutting down the tree an Osprey chick Martin named Fluffy Flier almost drowning him, forcing Aviva and Koki to build an indestructible pedestal out of iron and titanium to make sure it could withstand the elements and not be thrown or blown or cut down.
- In "Bandito: The Black Footed Ferret", he kidnaps a family of black footed ferrets in an attempt to create robots to tunnel in and steal the Wild Kratts' technology, though it failed when the Kratt brothers rescued them with Black Footed Ferret Powers.
- In "The Amazing Creature Race", after the race he tried to kidnap an antelope near the end of the episode to make a running machine but was stopped by the Kratt Brothers.
- In "Praying Mantis, he tries to use praying mantises in his invention of praying mantis arms powered by actual praying mantises.
- In both parts of the special "Back in Creature Time", he sneaks onto the Tortuga with his invisibility cloak and held Koki and Jimmy hostage and cutting off their communication after deciding to trap Martin, Chris, and Aviva, and going up the time trampoline she created to the time of Tasmanian tigers before deciding to outright tell them he was trapping them and then trying to vaporize the time trampoline with a Zachbot so they couldn't escape, but they ended up defeating him and returning to the present at the last second just before the time trampoline became unstable and imploded.
- This is a big example of attempting to kill the Wild Kratts as mentioned above. He also destroyed something Koki and Aviva had worked on for a very long time, as mentioned before when the time trampoline imploded and became destroyed.
Season 4[]
- In "Liturgusa Krattorum", he along with Donita and Gourmand decided to try to take a newly discovered praying mantis species named after the Wild Kratts due to their dedication to zoology and use them to their own means out of jealousy.
- In "Panda Power Up!", after Aviva's stuffed panda named Stuffo landed on his window, he was trying to come up with a child's toy to make and settled on a toy that was a mind controlled panda after seeing the toy panda, then drained nearly all the Wild Kratts energy apart from a small charge on one of the Creature Pods and smugly telling them he had drained their power, before kidnapping lots of pandas to create toys by mind-controlling them to hug people at the touch of a remote, even keeping them in a cage, before the Wild Kratts stopped him.
- In the Christmas special "A Creature Christmas", he alongside Donita and Gourmand decided to try to make as much money off Christmas as possible, he trying to make easily breakable toys to sell and kidnapped dozens of the Wild Kratts' animal friends to use as ornaments in his Christmas tree robot in the center of his shopping mall Varmitech Village, even humiliating Aviva when she tried to rescue them the first time by tying her robot arms into a present bow.
- Later in the same special, he pretended along with Donita and Gourmand to have a change of heart and gave the Wild Kratts "Christmas presents" and trapped them before stealing all of their technology and stranding them on an icefloe to die, even leaving them their creature power disks to remind them of their defeat.
- While this was Gourmand's idea, he still had no problems and went along with it. When they came back he later tried to stop them and tried to flatten Martin in a puffin power suit with his Christmas tree robot, when he was defeated along with the others he and Donita and Gourmand remarked on if there was anything to Christmas anyway.
- Later in the same special, he pretended along with Donita and Gourmand to have a change of heart and gave the Wild Kratts "Christmas presents" and trapped them before stealing all of their technology and stranding them on an icefloe to die, even leaving them their creature power disks to remind them of their defeat.
- In "Golden Snub Nosed Monkey Man", he tried to find the Yeti to display for money and mistook him for Martin in a malfunctioning golden snub nosed monkey Power Suit and refused to let him go but was forced to later.
- In "Red Panda Rescue", he kidnapped a red panda mother to try to give her to Donita as a birthday present.
- In "Animals Who Live to be 100 Years Old", after getting the idea from Donita, he tried eating various animals that live for a long time to live for a long time, and eventually forever, but this failed when he was stopped by the Wild Kratts and the fact it was impossible to live forever that way.
- In "Musk Ox Mania", he overheard Chris talking about his creature souvenir collection and how it let them power up with what ever animal souvenirs they had with them, so he went to the same location they lost it and tried to steal it to prevent them from doing it, eventually finding it and almost making it to his plane before being almost overtaken by wolves because of his fur coat.
Season 5[]
- In "City Hoppers", he enlists Paisley Paver as a new member of their organization to work with her along with Donita and Gourmand on their schemes, and hatches a plan to get rid of the Wild Kratts once and for all, but this fails.
- In "Blue Heron", he tries to steal all the Wild Kratts' technology in one fell swoop, by miniaturizing it, even trying to saw it in half with a buzzsaw with the Wild Kratts still inside, endangering them in the process. He even waits for Aviva, Koki, and Jimmy to leave the Tortuga and realize they are miniaturized before trying to abuse and torment them before trying to cut it in half with them still inside, as mentioned before.
- In "Choose Your Swordfish", he gets the idea to get all the fish in the ocean and sell them for his own benefit, using the mako shark to brainwash to do so. This might seem Standard, but this is a rather large scale, so it's not really.
- In "Komodo Dragon", he was enlisted by Gourmand to use his Zachbots to dig up all the Komodo Dragon eggs for Gourmand to use, having no qualms about what he was doing.
- In the Halloween special "Creepy Creatures", he decides to make a haunted house filled with scary animals to scare children to make money, even stealing the Miniaturizer when he wanted to enlarge the animals to make them scarier, though it ultimately backfired in the end when the Wild Kratts and several Wild Kratts Kids came and visited the haunted house when they weren't scared by the animals, and defeated his robot while saving the animals, with him even having to pay Paisley's paving bill. While this entire episode may seem standard, the intent is still there.
Season 6[]
- In "Wolf Hawks", he tried once again to steal the Miniaturizer after reprogramming his Zachbots to be more coordinated and able to work together.
- In "Hammerheads", he tries to create hammerhead Zachbots in order to break down the Tortuga doors to get access to their technology and also likely tried to find the lost Creature Power Disks for himself.
- In "The Real Ant Farm" he tries to use the leaf cutter ants to take food from farms that didn't belong to him and even ends up almost killing them not knowing they could only eat a special type of fungus. This is also another high scale crime as it was trying to steal from a farm.
- In "The Vanishing Stingray", he tries to fix his invisibility cloak with the Stingray Power disks after trying to steal them.
- In the special "Amazin' Amazon Adventure" he comes up with the idea to effectively destroy the Amazon Rainforest along with Donita, Gourmand, and Paisley with he, Donita and Gourmand using the area's biodiversity, namely the animals for their own purposes and Paisley turning the entire place into a mall to sell it all.
- He didn't care about the destruction he would cause on Paisley's part and the animals he would cause to be extinct in Gourmand's case, and even took the Kratt brothers hostage and took them back to their camp, bragging about their plan.
- When they heard the Kratt brother's concerns on this, even hearing there would be less oxygen in the world, and animals going extinct in the world, he didn't care and stood in silence while Donita said it would all work out. However they were shortly defeated by Aviva and her Amphi-Trek XT and forced to retreat.
- He didn't care about the destruction he would cause on Paisley's part and the animals he would cause to be extinct in Gourmand's case, and even took the Kratt brothers hostage and took them back to their camp, bragging about their plan.
- In "Adapto the Coyote", he tries to exterminate some coyotes who were on his property he didn't like being there.
- In the special "Cats and Dogs", he listens in on the Wild Kratts and learns they are learning about different wild versions of domesticated cats and dogs and decides to roboticize those different wild cats and dogs into products to sell.
- He later accidentally catches Chris in an African Wild Dog Power Suit, and places him in a bag with a cheetah to activate Cheetah Powers, in front of the same pack of African wild dogs he had been with, forcing Chris to run from them. He then rockets back to his Tortuga with his Zachbot head and captures various wild cats and dogs around the world to sell as "pets".
- After he caught the Kratt brothers trying to rescue them he dropped them out of his plane, twice, as mentioned above, in an attempt to kill them and stop them from defeating him. He was later stopped by the Kratt brothers and was forced to retreat.
- He later accidentally catches Chris in an African Wild Dog Power Suit, and places him in a bag with a cheetah to activate Cheetah Powers, in front of the same pack of African wild dogs he had been with, forcing Chris to run from them. He then rockets back to his Tortuga with his Zachbot head and captures various wild cats and dogs around the world to sell as "pets".
Season 7[]
- In "Clever the Raven", he was annoyed at Clever for going around his area and tried to violently shoo him away.
- In the special "Our Blue and Green World" he works with Paisley Paver to turn a tropical beach ecosystem in Madagascar into a beach resort where his Zachbots would be attendants and he and Paisley would share a profit.
- Later in the episode, after he confronts and tells the Wild Kratts to move the Tortuga out of his and Paisley's way, he has 4 Zachbots pick up the Tortuga and throw it into the ocean. After Martin in a Blue Whale Power Suit rams into one of Paisley's pavers, he tries to have his Zachbots likely injure Martin but was luckily pulled into the ocean by the Tortuga on time.
- He also uses his Disrupt-o-Bots on Chris' indri-anaconda power suit malfunction deactivating him and forcing his to dive into the ocean, and later sends his Zachbots after Chris in the water. After Paisley comes into the Tortuga and asks Aviva and the rest of the crew currently on board to move the Tortuga so she can continue paving, and after she redeems herself after seeing a coral reef on the screen and realizing why the Wild Kratts protect the environment after Aviva told her polyps built it and that Earth would turn barren if they didn't protect the environment, she told Zach she was defecting from his organization, to which his reaction was to be him being surprised and angry and proclaiming he will never stop taking what he wants from nature.
- Later in the episode, after he confronts and tells the Wild Kratts to move the Tortuga out of his and Paisley's way, he has 4 Zachbots pick up the Tortuga and throw it into the ocean. After Martin in a Blue Whale Power Suit rams into one of Paisley's pavers, he tries to have his Zachbots likely injure Martin but was luckily pulled into the ocean by the Tortuga on time.
- In "Bumblezzzz", he is told by Donita to bring her copy of the magazine Villain Weekly back and decides to use a bumblebee drone to deliver it to her. He later is temporarily stopped by Koki, Aviva and Jimmy and told why he should stop and said he doesn't care before blowing them away with his Zachbot's suction arm, despite seeing the latter consequences of his actions on Koki's tablet.
- Later he attempts to stop the Kratt brothers from stopping him by using his Zachbots and later his drone, only to fail and have a humiliating defeat being scooped up in his drone and sent flying away after being forced to promise to leave bumblebees but still said he would not leave alone any other animals.
- Despite that, it is likely that he'll break his promise due to his own ego.
- Later he attempts to stop the Kratt brothers from stopping him by using his Zachbots and later his drone, only to fail and have a humiliating defeat being scooped up in his drone and sent flying away after being forced to promise to leave bumblebees but still said he would not leave alone any other animals.
- In "Chimpanzee and me", he tries to use a chimpanzee mom he kidnapped to use as his mind-controlled assistant. He later tries to kidnap her baby and kidnaps Martin in the process when he came to stop him after telling his mind controlled assistant to deactivate Martin's creature power suit and ties him up with his Zachbot's arm.
- He later tried to kidnap the baby chimpanzee after sneaking into the Tortuga. After that he has a humiliating defeat after having his own mind control helmet cause him to dance away.
- In "Shapes of the Armadillo", he challenges the Wild Kratts to a bowling competition to prove he is better than Aviva, and that his Zachbot shapes were better than nature's shapes. He ended up cheating and was exposed by Koki and Jimmy Z. However, this was all a ruse as he tried to kidnap the Armadillos the Wild Kratts befriended and presumably use them for their own purposes, before being dug into the ground by Chris and Martin in Armadillo Power Suits.
What Prevents Him From Being Pure Evil?[]
- He can genuinely get along with his fellow villains and meets with them annually in an undisclosed location to discuss their plans.
- He was shown to have at least a little bit of honor, as he gave back a hippopotamus calf Martin named Hipster to Chris in exchange for "Creature Power Disks" (which were actually cookies) and kept his word to Chris to give him back. However, this is minor, as he dishonorably tricked and trapped the Wild Kratts on an icefloe during the Christmas special.
Trivia[]
- He is something of a dark parallel of Aviva Corcovado. Both are arrogant, thinking that their abilities are superior to everyone else, with Aviva's arrogance not letting it get the better of her, as well as being biomechanical engineers who specialize in tech that utilizes the abilities of animals. The main difference is that Zach uses his talents for evil, while Aviva uses hers to help save the environment. Zach also lacks natural curiosity, which the entire Wild Kratts Crew have plenty of. Aviva also has four great friends she has deep relationships with, while Zach surrounds himself with soulless robots that only exist to obey his every whim.
- In the special "Amazin' Amazon Adventure", it was said where he could hear that destroying the Amazon would severely deplete oxygen in the world. If it was confirmed and not implied that he didn't care, it would make him much worse, as he would be endangering the entire world's population by doing so.
- It would also make all the other villains, especially Paisley, (before she redeemed herself) even worse because they were in on the plan as well.
External Links[]
- Zach Varmitech on the Ultimate Evil Wiki
- Zach Varmitech on the Wild Kratts Wiki
- Zach Varmitech on the Villains Wiki