Nibbler (Futurama)

Nibbler
Futurama character
Nibbler eating a cat
First appearance	"Love's Labours Lost in Space"
Voiced by	Frank Welker
Information
Species	Nibblonian
Gender	Male
Occupation	Nibblonian ambassador to Earth
Origin	Planet Eternium

Lord Nibbler is a fictional character from the animated television series Futurama. He is voiced by Frank Welker, who provides not only his speaking lines but also the various noises he makes when not speaking English.

During most of the series Nibbler masquerades as an innocent, cute and unintelligent pet. In very rare circumstances he may break his undercover identity and suddenly be discovered to be super-intelligent, equipped with unique technology and strange natural abilities, which he uses as part of his secret mission to preserve the existence of the entire universe. In most instances everyone else's memories of his true nature are erased but, as of Futurama: Bender's Big Score, the entire Planet Express crew is aware of his sapience, and he shifts between identities more frequently and casually. In "That Darn Katz!", he becomes a fellow crew member.

Character creation

Nibbler's existence and intentions were planned well in advance by the series' creators. Nibbler reveals his intelligence and true origins in the episodes "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid", "The Why of Fry", and "That Darn Katz!", as well as the movies Bender's Big Score and Bender's Game. However, a clue to his purpose is seen in the first episode of the series, where he can briefly be seen as Fry is leaning back in his chair and his shadow can be seen under the table after the chair falls over, indicating he was always intended to have a secret purpose. The shadow is even shown in the storyboards and animatic, showing it was intentional. Another clue is seen in "Jurassic Bark", when the scene of Fry's freezing is reshown. In that episode, Nibbler's third eyeball can be clearly seen, poking out of the garbage bin.

Fictional character biography

Nibbler was initially shown to have pushed Fry into the cryogenic freezer that resulted in him showing up in the year 3000. However, in "The Why of Fry", it was Fry himself, with encouragement from Nibbler, who did the actual deed. Nibbler then spent the next thousand years on Vergon 6 until being picked up by Leela before the planet imploded.

Nibbler's true name is not revealed, because "in the time it would take to pronounce one letter of [his] true name, a trillion cosmoses would flare into existence and sink into eternal night." Leela took him for a pet when she found him on the soon-to-be-destroyed planet Vergon 6 in the episode "Love's Labours Lost in Space" and named him "Nibbler" (while he was chewing on a nut), just before observing his ability to rapidly consume animals far larger than he. When with other Nibblonians, he is referred to as "Lord Nibbler," though this name is only used for the sake of nearby humans.

Physiology

Nibbler is highly intelligent and capable of communication, but uses telepathic manipulation to simulate human speech because his natural speech is incomprehensible jabber. For most of the series he masquerades as a rather unintelligent animal in order to avoid suspicion while he goes about his mission of protecting the Earth in general and Fry in particular from the evil Brainspawn. He reveals his mission to anyone else only when expecting to wipe their memory of it afterward, something done twice so far. In Bender's Big Score, however, he forgets to blank the minds of the Planet Express crew, who nonetheless continue to treat him as a cute pet because, in their minds, knowing of his true nature makes him cuter. He wipes people's memories by emitting a bright flash of light from his third eye (similar to the Neuralyzer from Men in Black). This appears to telepathically reorder information in the brain, as per Fry's comment that it makes everything "taste purple for a second." His eye is also able to fire a heat ray in Bender's Big Score. Literally omnivorous, he has the ability to belch up unwanted portions of anything he ingests, such as antlers, ham bones, and even chlorine gas from swimming pool water he drank (as seen in "Crimes of the Hot").

Nibbler's feces consist of dark matter (as all Nibblonians' feces do), which could initially be used as starship fuel. It is an extremely dense material, "each pound of which weighs over ten thousand pounds", according to Professor Farnsworth. Bender and the 1X Robot are the only ones shown able to move the droppings, although in a very short scene in Bender's Game, Fry can be seen lifting a piece of the dark matter a short upward distance to help refuel the ship. In "The Why Of Fry", when taking Nibbler for a walk, Fry is confronted with picking up Nibbler's dropping. Professing that it "weighs as much as a thousand suns", Fry is unable to pick it up and is promptly fined for "failure to scoop". After the events of Bender's Game, all dark matter is rendered inert.

Nibbler, like the rest of his species, is capable of devouring life forms much larger than he is, as shown when he ate every animal aboard the Planet Express ship. He is probably able to hold so much food because of his ability to condense it and excrete it as dark matter. He is, according to Leela, "an adorable, unstoppable killing machine". Of normal human foods, he has a special taste for ham. Bender's Big Score suggests that his stomach may link to an alternate dimension of some sort: when Bender's actions cause a tear in the fabric of causality, Nibbler yells "Everyone out of the universe! Quick!" and devours himself, disappearing in a flash of orange light. Exactly where he went after this is unknown (possibly to another universe or dimension); he returns in Bender's Game, though it is never revealed how. The "alternate universe stomach" theory is also supported by the fact that while his food and waste weigh much more than he does, his own weight remains the same, as seen in "Love's Labours Lost in Space", when the dark matter produced from Nibbler causes the ship's weight to shift, despite no actual change in total weight distribution. However, in Bender's Game, when the dark matter reacts to the crystals by glowing, a ball of dark matter is shown glowing in his stomach.

The Nibblonians

Nibbler's race, from the planet Eternium (located at the "Exact Center of the Universe" in inconceivable dimensions), is referred to as the Nibblonians, after Leela's name for him. Just as with "Nibbler" itself, the name is only used as a convenience for outsiders. However, the Brainspawn, despite knowing their true nature, also refers to them as such in "The Why of Fry".

Nibbler's voracious appetite is shared by other members of the species, who commemorate great events with feasts they consume in a matter of seconds, such as "The Feast of a Thousand Hams" or "The Feast of a Thousand Beasts".

According to the Nibblonians, their race is ancient and powerful, because when the universe was formed with the Big Bang, their race was already 17 years old, making them the oldest known species ever to have existed. Individual Nibblonians "live long", according to Nibbler, himself at least 1000 years old, though a human veterinarian once incorrectly speculated that the number of rings within a tooth extracted from Nibbler might indicate his age as five ("I Second That Emotion").

Some Nibblonians also display cat-like behavior, purring when their heads are scratched or playing with simple toys, also hissing like a cat which shows in the episode "That Darn Katz!". This is distressing to Nibblonians, as it discourages outsiders (as well as each other) from taking them seriously. "Sometimes I fear we are cute," bemoaned Nibbler during "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid" (to which Fiona replies, "Aww, niggle-snoosh," thus simultaneously dismissing and confirming the claim).

References

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