Nigel (Rio)

"Hello, pretty bird. What's the matter? Cockatoo got your throat?"

- Nigel to Jewel while strangling her

Nigel is the main antagonist of the Rio franchise.

He is Blu's arch-nemesis, Marcel's former "evil henchbird", and Gabi and Charlie's leader and boss.

He is voiced by Jemaine Clement.

Beginnings
Nigel was once the popular star of many animal TV shows, he was suave, handsome, and ambitious.

However, Nigel was later meanly kicked out of fame and replaced by a green parakeet called Petricious. Since then, Nigel hatefully despises all exotic birds and he became an evil, bitter, hideous, and mean-spirited bird.

Afterwards, Nigel became the "evil henchbird" of a group of human smugglers led by Marcel and he vowed to smuggle and terrorize exotic birds as revenge for his acting role being ruined.

Rio
Nigel is first seen as a "patient" at Tulio's aviary. However, his sickness is quickly revealed to be a front; that night, he tricks a guard into picking him up by pretending to be injured, then knocks him out with a chloroform-soaked rag and steals his keys. He then lets Fernando in and he steals Blu and Jewel and brings them to Marcel's hideout. When Jewel tries to escape, Nigel pins her down and starts choking her, taunting her by asking, "What's the matter? Cockatoo got your throat?". However, Marcel orders him to bring her back alive, so the cockatoo returns her to the cage. After Blu and Jewel are locked up, Nigel comes to them and explains the motivation of his evil nature through the song "Pretty Bird," saying that he plans on making them "ugly" as well. He then bids them sweet nightmares and flies off, laughing evilly. Later, Nigel hears them trying to escape and tries to stop them. The chase leads into the slums of Rio de Janeiro, where Nigel collides with an electrical transformer, blacking out the whole city of Rio in the process. After recovering, Nigel heads back to the smugglers' hideout.

Nigel is sent by Marcel to retrieve Blu and Jewel while Marcel and the other smugglers (Tipa and Armando) plan to use the Carnival show to hide the smuggling of the birds to get to the nearest airport.

Nigel then hires a horde of mischievous marmosets to help him catch Blu and Jewel, in doing so he abuses their leader Mauro and threatens to give them "flying lessons" if they do not find them by the end of the day.

Mauro and his henchmen manage to find Blu and Jewel, but they get into a battle with the Samba Club birds and they fail to capture them. When Nigel arrives at the place where the battle had been he finds a green bird and asks her a question on the whereabouts of the Blue Macaws. Nigel then abuses Mauro for his failure, then goes after Blu and Jewel himself. He eventually captures Jewel and uses her as bait to lure in Blu and his best friends, the plan works and he locks them all in cages.

After the captives are loaded into the smugglers' plane, the plane takes off. But, Blu manages to free himself and all the other captive birds, letting them escape out of the plane. However, as Blu tries to get over his fear of flying, Nigel attacks Blu, pins him and attempts to strangle him. Jewel tries to help but Nigel throws her aside, causing a cage to fall on Jewel's wing, injuring it. Nigel gleefully mocks the macaws, but, an angered Blu manages to hook a fire extinguisher onto the Nigel's leg and sets it off, sending Nigel flying out of the plane and into one of the propellers, seemingly killing him and eventually causing the plan to crash.

However, some time later, Nigel is revealed to have survived, but has lost much of his feathers and is humiliated by a "photo finish" by Mauro as payback for his abuse against him and the other marmosets earlier.

Rio 2
A few years after the first film, Nigel, who suffered the most undignified of indignities (defeated by what he calls the "pretty birds" and losing his feathers in the process), is back. However, he now flies like a chicken and wears an Elizabethan vest (which hides a large bald patch on his chest) due to his previous accident. He now works as fortune-teller's assistant at a third-rate street fair. Nigel is at the lowest point in his life and he's not happy about it at all.

When Nigel sees the blue birds that have caused him so much misery, he seeks vengeance. He follows them to the Amazon and is now hungry for payback. Along the way he liberates a big mute anteater called Charlie and a poison dart frog named Gabi from the street-fair. He enlists them as his minions and together they track Blu and Jewel to the Amazon and plan Nigel's revenge.

Nigel's predominant passions are Shakespeare, evil, alliteration, revenge, and attention. For Nigel, revenge is a dish best served cold...and with lots of blood-stained feathers

Nigel's dreams of show business glory take flight in a particularly telling moment. As he prepares to deal with Blu once and for all, Nigel ends up taking center stage, in disguise, at the auditions overseen by Nico, Pedro and Rafael. Nigel comes up with an act, on the fly, which sparks his inner artist. He goes under the name of Bob the bird to avoid the suspicion of Nico, Pedro and Rafael as they point out that he looked familiar to them.

He uses his new found attention to his advantage as he wins the audition, and plots to kill Blu with a poisonous dart, using a porcupine quill as a dart, Gabi's venom for poison and Charlie's long snout to fire the dart.

His performance is cancelled as the loggers attack the jungle and a battle ensues between the loggers and the jungle animals. Nigel attacks Blu when he is flying with a strap of lighted TNT away from a site of designated trees to be demolished, revealing himself to Blu just as the TNT blows up. Nigel and Blu are tangled in vines, upside-down and unconscious. When they both regain consciousnesses they have a feather fight and Gabi accidentally shoots Nigel with a poison dart. Nigel, thinking that he is about to die gives one last Elizabeth performance and falls off a branch to his presumed death while Gabi thinking that she killed Nigel and unwilling to live in a world without him drinks a drop of her own poison and presumably dies. It is revealed that Gabi wasn't poisonous at all, but was convinced that she was as a child. Nigel, still alive, makes one last attempt on Blu and Jewel's life, but Gabi drags Nigel away and smothers him with her love.

Nigel and Gabi are later captured by Tulio, and taken back to Rio to be observed.

Personality
Nigel is intelligent, cruel, greedy, malevolent, cunning, and vengeful. He exhibited highly anti-social behavior.

He is very violent, constantly seen using physical force to injure or terrorize other characters. For instance, Nigel threatened to give Mauro and his subordinates "flying lessons" in order to coerce the monkeys into helping him find Blu and Jewel. After the battle in the samba club, Nigel arrived at the scene and terrorized another bird into telling him where the blue macaws went by threatening to "pop" or "crack" her head.

He is also extremely sadistic, often taking great joy and pleasure in others' suffering. For example, he was shown in the smugglers' lair to terrorize the captured birds, and he later ridiculed Jewel when her wing was injured. In both situations, he laughed maniacally in response to seeing his victims' fear and injury.

He is also rather ruthless, he shows no pity or mercy to his victims and enemies. He also holds no remorse for his evil deeds.

Appearance
Nigel is a large Sulphur-crested cockatoo. He has greyish-white feathers, a black beak and yellow crest feathers. He also has pale red bags under his eyes.

Following the events of Rio, Nigel receives bald spots on his body and wears a vest to cover it up.

Trivia

 * Nigel is sometimes thought to be the secondary antagonist of the first film (because he is Marcel's henchbird).
 * His true first name is Cocks. It should be noted that "Cock" means a rooster or male chicken and has nothing to do with a cockatoo.
 * He is very similar to Lotso. Both of their paradises were ruined which turned them both into sadist villains who seek vengeance and they both take it out on others to make them share their pain.
 * Although a sulfur-crested cockatoos' diet consists almost entirely of insects or plants, Nigel was seen eating a chicken leg in the first film. It is mistakenly said by Tipa to be cannibalism. This is a mistake because Nigel is a cockatoo and chicken is from a chicken, not of the same species.
 * When he was a telenovela star, he starred in TV shows titled Fly Hard, All My Flock, and As the Cage Turns and participated in the Carnival parade. It was also mentioned that he was once popular all across South America.
 * The extended version of the song "Pretty Bird" mentions that when Nigel was pushed out of fame, he was replaced by a parakeet from Paraguay named Petricious. This may be the reason he was drawn to criminal activities. However, the reason just being that "they got a pretty parakeet to fill his shoes" was in both that version and the shortened version that actually was in the first film.
 * He is the only bird to be plucked of nearly all his feathers.
 * Like Blu, Nigel was a pet. Despite this, he was trained to do a certain task (smuggling birds), and Blu wasn't.
 * Surprisingly enough, he is somehow damaged by the Mighty Eagle's earthquake in Angry Birds Rio, which is unusual, being that he is never even close to the ground in levels when fought against.
 * Nigel is propably one of the evilest Blue Sky Studios villains ever.
 * Nigel was the one who pretended to be sick just to fool his enemies.
 * He was noticeably stronger than most other birds in terms of physical strength, considering both his size and sharp talons.
 * Nigel likes to torture birds and bring nightmares into their minds.
 * Nigel is almost a bit similar to Steele: Both are jealous, both lost their fame, both get revenge, both are still alive after getting beat by a hero, and both had a team.