Dick Hardly

"I'm glad you came, girls. I need more Chemical X!"

- Dick Hardly when his lies were found out by the Powerpuff Girls. Dick Hardly  was a one-shot character in The Powerpuff Girls and the main antagonist in the episode "Knock it Off".

Biography
He was an old college roommate of Professor Utonium. Though Utonium initially considered him a friend, Dick always took advantage of him and unlike the former only sought financial profit in science. His first name may be a pun on the fact that he is, well... a jerk.

One day, when Hardly paid a visit to the Utonium residence, he believed the girls were worth a great deal of money, but Utonium demanded Hardly to leave when he realized how greedy he is. The next day, Hardly offers the girls a ride home from school and asks for the ingredients. Unaware of what he was planning, the girls then takes a flask of Chemical X from Utonium's laboratory and passed it to Hardley.



He proceeded to make his own clones of the girls, starting a business and selling them and o btaining fame and money. He gradually gets more and more greedy as a result, and treated the clones as nothing more than selling products, using minimum materials and Chemical X so that they would fall apart and he could continue selling more copies. At one point, his employees mistakenly created a seemingly perfect version of Buttercup, and he had her melted down for her Chemical X.

When the girls confront him about his stealing, he ingests the rest of the Chemical X to attack the girls, growing into a giant monster, who defeats the Powerpuffs easily. He then starts to drain the girls of their chemicals. Utonium comes and proposes Hardly to take him instead, offering to be his slave for the rest of his life, but he ignores his pleas and decides to take them both. However, when the clones see how much the Professor loves his daughters, they rebel against Hardly, who never showed any love to them due to his greed. Utonium escapes with the Girls while Hardly is killed by his numerous creations once his factory engulfed into flames.

Reception
The Mysterious Mr. Enter ranked "Knock it Off" #6 on his "Top 25 Most Disturbing Episodes of Kids' Cartoons" list, calling it the most "screwed up" episode of the show (even more so than "Speed Demon" and "Tough Love") due to Dick's actions in mutating the clones, having one of them killed because she was perfectly made and for nearly killing the Powerpuff Girls.

Trivia

 * Dick's last name happens to be a pun on the word "hardly."
 * Though only a one-shot villain, he is considered to be the most evil Powerpuff Girls villain of all, even worse than Him. He is also one of the few characters in the series to actually die, and the only villain to be taken completely seriously.