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This Villain was Headlined on August 2019. | ||
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| “ | We are number one! HEY! | „ |
| ~ Robbie's famous quote during his song "We Are Number One". |
| “ | Lazytown will stay lazy forever. AH HA HA—ah ha ha ow! | „ |
| ~ Robbie swearing to rid Lazytown of Sportacus. |
| “ | It's disguise time! | „ |
| ~ Robbie Rotten's catchphrase. |
| “ | Don't let your kids watch it! Before you know it, they're gonna be eating sports candy and moving and running and jumping and dancing, and being healthy! | „ |
| ~ Robbie Rotten warning parents to not let their kids watch LazyTown. |
Robbie Rotten (also known as Glanni Glæpur in the Icelandic version) is the main antagonist of the Icelandic children's program LazyTown. He is the arch-nemesis of the series' main protagonists, Sportacus and Stephanie Meanswell, who promote exercise, healthy eating and an active and healthy lifestyle.
Being extremely lazy, Robbie naturally opposes their attempts to spread a healthy influence to the people of Lazytown and employs various schemes to discredit healthy living and run "Sportaflop" out of Lazytown in every episode, although his plans are always foiled in the end. He’s based on his incarnation from the original musical.
He was portrayed by the late Stefán Karl Stefánsson.
Appearance
Robbie has fair skin, greenish-gray eyes and black hair. He usually wears a two-piece suit of maroon and purple with gold pinstripes, formal shoes, a navy blue shirt with cuffs and cuff links. He’s also shown to be the tallest character in the show, even more so than Sportacus.
Personality
| “ | It's a perfect day to do nothing at all! | „ |
| ~ Robbie Rotten |
Robbie Rotten is an immature, conniving, egocentric and manipulative trickster with many vices. Normally, he's a very lazy and greedy person; he's apparently proud of these traits, and works hard at keeping his status as a villain. Robbie is shown to have an awful diet, being a lover of sugary treats that he eats throughout the show, such as ice cream and blue frosted cake (which he then tops with whipped cream), and even ate a cake containing sand. Despite his flaws, Robbie shows certain degrees of brilliance, though his presence in a children's show restricts his success and cruelty as a villain.
Nonetheless, he's a true mastermind inventing all manner of devices, and his disguises actually fooling people. Despite his laziness and desire to inspire laziness in others, Robbie himself is slim and (when he has to be) hardworking, incredibly strong (as seen when he lifts a massive cannonball twice the size of his head in Robbie's Dream Team), as well as intelligent. Though, he's also often a very childish buffoon. He also has poor social skills when he isn't scheming. He has a strange and contrasting attitude towards everyone in town, but he deeply despises Sportacus. Generally, Robbie is extremely bitter, obnoxious and vituperative towards Sportacus in particular, desiring to humiliate him and have him ostracized just so that he'll leave Lazytown forever. Towards other LazyTowners, he's argumentative and grouchy, though in his disguises, he's sociable, charming and funny, all in his bid to make a slothful life seem like an attractive alternative to Sportacus's example.
He sometimes appears to be extremely friendly, empathetic and compassionate on terms with the Lazytown residents at times. In the episode "The First Day of Summer", it's actually revealed he really likes everyone in Lazytown, including Sportacus, and has nothing to do if they're all gone. He even danced along with Stephanie and the others at the end of the episode after Robbie is happy to see everyone return. In the very same episode, he actually becomes very good friends with a fly, and in another episode, he builds a robot dog, which he also really likes. Beneath their rivalry, Robbie has an underlying fascination and obsession with Sportacus, leaping into his arms and touching him at any given opportunity; he also tends to spend a lot of time talking about Sportacus, usually by himself.
Biography
Once, LazyTown (fitting its name) was full of people who did nothing but play video games, eat junk food and be generally unproductive. The man who encouraged this behavior and was an expert at doing so was Robbie Rotten, and he loved every single second of it. When Stephanie Meanswell tried to introduce sports and get people active and tried to make everyone try to eat healthy fruits and vegetables (or also known as "Sports Candy"), Robbie stopped her, but when she summoned the slightly-above-average hero Sportacus, he was unable to stop everyone from doing everything he despised.
Embittered that his lazy days were now spoiled by noise pollution, Robbie concocts all sorts of nefarious schemes to exact his vengeance, typically using some kind of disguise or gadget to inspire the kids of LazyTown to follow his lazy lifestyle or using them to try and get rid of Sportacus. Although he sometimes comes close to succeeding, in the end, like almost all villains in children's television programs, Robbie is always defeated by the show's protagonists.
Internet Popularity
| “ | Alright! I can see that I will have to teach you, how to be... VILLAINS! | „ |
| ~ Robbie preparing to sing "We Are Number One". |
Robbie is constantly getting memes created around him, this is probably due to how over the top that he has played. His first meme came from his song "You are a Pirate" which became "lol limewire". Robbie's second meme came from the episode Robbie's Dream Team from his song "We Are Number One". In the aforementioned episode, Robbie ordered three other villains like himself on the phone and is disappointed to find out that they are not "real villains" and trains them to catch Sportacus. While they eventually succeed, they let him go out of boredom. A music rip by the YouTube user "SiIvaGunner" was uploaded with the name "We Are Number One - Lazy Town : The Video Game". Like every music rip that was uploaded to the channel, it was a remix. There were several edits of the original song with a title of "We Are Number One but ________".
In later events, a GoFundMe foundation started for Stefán Karl Stefánsson (The actor of Robbie) as he was diagnosed with cancer. The internet managed to reach many goals of the foundation, and as of that, Stefan and the actors who played Bobby, Tobby and Flobby performed "We Are Number One" at a Facebook livestream.
By 2017, the song that was uploaded by the original LazyTown channel reached over 10 million views, and the song was awarded #1 meme of the year by Know Your Meme. In 2018, the song reached over 48 million views.
Another such meme involved a promotional spot from the series in which, towards the end, Robbie Rotten steps in front of a scene showing Sportacus and Stephanie and pulls down a purple curtain, urging parents "Don't let your kids watch it!" because "...before you know it, they're going to be eating sports candy and moving and running and jumping and dancing and being healthy." This was followed by a green-screen version of Robbie pulling down the curtain and stating "Don't let your kids watch it!" The memetic videos would generally start with a clip of the original promo, before cutting to a scene from a target the uploader considered an amusing choice, such as a scene from SpongeBob Squarepants or other viral video, following by Robbie pulling down the curtain and declaring "Don't let your kids watch it!" or simply "Don't watch it!" Videos made for this meme typically ended with a brief playing of the song "We Are Number One" in acknowledgement of the popularity of that meme.
Trivia
- Glanni Glæpur was the inspiration of Robbie Rotten. "Glæpur" is an Icelandic term that means "crime", thus fitting Robbie's character.
- Robbie's character was inspired by The Grinch. They both live in secret lairs, they wear disguises to fool the townspeople and they both hate noise. They both even have canine sidekicks to aid them, although Robbie's Robo-Dog only appeared in one episode.
- Ironically, Robbie's actor, the late Stefán Karl Stefánsson, also portrayed the Grinch in Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical in 2015.
- Despite Robbie being the villain, the kids of LazyTown are sometimes nice to him.
- One additional trait of how Robbie is the complete opposite of Sportacus is that, while Sportacus lives in a blimp in the sky, Robbie lives in an underground bunker.
- Robbie chooses to sleep in a Lay-Z boy recliner chair rather than in a bed.
- Robbie often eats junk food, such as blue cake richly covered in white frosting (which he then tops with whipped cream), and also has proven to enjoy pizza, cheeseburgers, French fries, salt water taffy, soda and ice cream. Despite this, Robbie has never gotten overweight or obese, and remains slim.
- He might have a high metabolism that makes him able to eat a lot without gaining weight, since it can happen in real life, or his constant work in planning and carrying out his schemes actually burns the calories off his body (although this obviously wouldn't make him very lazy).
- The most ironic thing about Robbie is that he wishes for LazyTown to be lazy again, but considering how much effort he puts into his evil schemes, he himself has become one of its most active citizens.
- During a Reddit AMA (ask me anything) Stefan Karl revealed that Robbie wishes he could be friends with the kids of LazyTown although it never happened due to him likes being a villain and that the kids are his enemies.
- During the same AMA, he also states that both Robbie Rottens are "obviously related".
- In the series LazyTown Extra, a bunch of comedic shorts starring Robbie, he is usually trying to break some world record or tries to show off sports are not all that impressive by doing them himself.
- In one episode, Robbie created a life-sized music-box figurine named "Rottenella" (portrayed by Kristjana Sæunn Olafsdóttir) after Robo-Robbie failed to cooperate, mainly because he rung with the wind-up key on his back every time. She was entered in the dance contest by Robbie to represent him, but only to lose to Stephanie (despite her stiffness at first).
 Villains
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Television Musical | ||
