Vanessa Doofenshmirtz

"Whatever."

- Vanessa's catchphrase

Vanessa Doofenshmirtz is a supporting character in the Disney Channel animated series, Phineas and Ferb. She is the teenage daughter/apprentice of Heinz Doofenshmirtz.

She is voiced by Olivia Olson.

Role
Vanessa tends to assist her father in few of his schemes, though she expresses disapproval of it. In the first season, she considers her father to be an embarrassment at best, believing that his shenanigans are threatening her reputation over other people. She also is exasperated of his attempts to bond with her by having turning into the art of evil, to which she doesn't care for. In addition, similar to Candace trying to bust her brothers to their mom Linda of their ideas of fun, Vanessa tries to catch her father in doing something evil and bust him to her mother Charlene, but she miserably fails every time when Charlene arrives to the scene and calls it off, which has left Vanessa really upset. She also feels extremely miserable in her birthday because her father always put up a childish party every year that makes her feel embarrassed, though this was changed when Heinz's nemesis, Perry the Platypus, helps him out in putting up her 16th birthday party, which turn out to be a success.

However, in the second season, this all started to change when Heinz bought in a Mary McGuffin doll, exclaiming that he spent years searching for the discontinued doll ever since Vanessa was 7 years old and that he couldn't care less of his reputation as an evil scientist as long as her happiness remains important to him. Realizing this, Vanessa returns the favor by thanking her father for the doll. She even appreciates of the time of when he actually taught her how to drive a car. As the series progresses, Vanessa's relationship with her father starts to improve for the better; in the episode Brain Drain when Heinz puts an spectacular rap beat on the DJ box (with Perry's help) to impress Vanessa's friends at the DJ party, a touched Vanessa kisses her father on the cheek as thanks. She even shows spontaneous affection for him, one great example is in the episode Minor Monogram, where she explained that she is attracted to the bad boy types because of her father's reputation as a villain, and she even hugged him to prove the point when he suggested that she stop going for the bad boy types, a statement she would later agree on.

As of currently, Vanessa starts to become a little tolerant over her father's eccentric behavior. Also, despite denying it so many times, she admits to being a little evil in nature, having swiped off her Mary McGuffin doll from a little girl, stealing a scooter in Paris, and deceiving and threatening Major Monogram and Perry by using her hairdryer as a gun to save her father from being arrested. She was even impressed that her father had managed to build two giant propellers that can actually dislodge the Tri-State Area from the face of the Earth. Starting off in the episode Sipping with the Enemy, Vanessa is dating Monogram's son Monty, as they both keep their relationship as a secret from their warring fathers.

In the episode Doof 101, Vanessa is shocked to find out that her dad will be her new science class teacher, since his last scheme puts him in trouble with the authorities and that he was given a chance to do community service as a teacher rather than getting a sentence in prison. At first, Vanessa is very uneasy about this, feeling that she might get embarrassed by him again, but after he puts up a good lecture on genetics and manages to rectify a situation (with the help from Perry) involving a mutation on her ex-boyfriend Johnny, she decides to accept her father as her new teacher.

In the series finale Last Day of Summer, Doof learns that Vanessa is intending to move out, believing that she thinks of him as a loser because of his past failures, just as he formulates his latest plan to create a Tri-Governor's Mansion in Danville so that he can become the first Tri-Governor of the Tri-State Area. Through a series of time loops (due to a previous -inator he built), Doof manages to succeed in his goal and showed this to Vanessa to prove that he's no longer a loser anymore. However, Vanessa isn't impressed by this (though she does find her new First Daughter suite to be pretty) and later reveals the true reason why she's moving out: she only wants to have an internship at O.W.C.A. and that she can't join it if she is still living with her father, since he is one of O.W.C.A.'s wanted enemies. Vanessa adds that both the internship and her father's aim in doing evil are creating a dilemma for her, which is making her very depressed. She then asks her father if he's really happy with his new job as Tri-Governor, which made Doof realize that he's unhappy in ruling the Tri-State Area (due to his overly-crowded schedule). Deciding that Vanessa's happiness is more important, Doof decides to give up his evil ways and allows Vanessa to join the internship, much to her delight. She is last seen talking with her father, Norm, and Perry about their past adventures while having muffins.

Personality
Vanessa tends to be sarcastic and generally acts like a normal teenager. She cares about her reputation, especially when her clothing gets switched with Candace's clothing. Vanessa has always be found with the "goth" or "punk rock" crowd, as seen in her childhood photos and her friends' appearance.

Her desire to have a car of her own is quite clear. She tries to prove she is responsible enough to own her own car by trying to get a rare element that her father needs in the Superduper Mega Superstore, though this was foiled by Perry, much to Vanessa's dismay. Her desire is also evident when Doofenshmirtz told her he'd brought her a gift, and she exclaimed "A car?" with excitement. She was disappointed when she found out it was just a doll that she had wanted when she was seven, but later on, she starts to appreciate it, finally seeing how much her father cares for her in spite of his reputation as a villain.

Although Vanessa tries to deny it when being around, she admits that she is a little evil, as evidenced in "Phineas and Ferb Summer Belongs to You!", as she stolen a motor-scooter and lied to Phineas and the gang that she rented it, pointed a hairdryer at Major Monogram by pretending it was a gun, and even hijacked Agent P's hover car to help herself and her father escape. She also took a Mary McGuffin doll from a little girl, and has aided in parts of her father's plans, though she expresses strong disapproval in the latter. In Tree to Get Ready, she even used one of her father's -inators to brainwash several pigeons into following her father's orders. Vanessa was once impressed when her father implanted two large propellers to physically dislodge the Tri-State Area from the Earth and raise it up to the sky, and when he does so (in a short period of time), she finds this to be cool. She was even surprised to see that her father had successfully started up a zombie apocalypse with his Repulse-inator, though it turns out that he had no intention of doing so. She also admires her new First Daughter suite inside the newly-built Tri-Governor's Mansion after her father is successfully elected Tri-Governor.

Trivia

 * Vanessa is allergic to bees, just like her father.
 * Vanessa is shown to be terrible in making cupcakes, as shown in the song Lies in the episode "Let's Bounce", where her father finds the smell of her cupcakes to be horrible, but pretends to eat one in order to spare her feelings.
 * Ferb, who serves as one of the protagonists of the series, happens to hold on crush on Vanessa, and would often try to help out; at one time, he even helped her find a rare substance for her father to buy so that she could get a car, thought this was foiled by Perry. Despite being grateful, Vanessa is unaware of Ferb's true feelings for her. However, in the episode "Act Your Age" (which takes 10 years after the series), Vanessa is shown to have a relationship with Ferb and has her own car.
 * She once dated a punk boy named Johnny, but later broke up with him in Minor Monogram after hearing that he thinks that a video game is more important than their relationship. In the same episode, she started to develop feelings for an exchange student named Rodrigo, who holds the same feelings for her while being mentored by Doofenshmirtz. However, it wasn't until Rodrigo betrayed Doofenshmirtz in an attempt to destroy the Tri-State Area for his own selfish pursuit of taking over the world. This had left Vanessa furious at Rodrigo for betraying her father and led her to dating Monty Monogram, the same boy who defeated Rodrigo in his tracks and arrested her father's rival Rodney for his attempt to send the Earth into a new Ice Age.
 * In the 2011 TV film Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension, Vanessa and her alternate reality counterpart make a cameo appearance in deleted scenes, as shown when the movie was released on DVD. Vanessa's alternate counterpart would later return in the 2014 episode sequel, Tales from the Resistance: Back to the 2nd Dimension, where she turns out to be very evil and loyal to her evil family.