| “ | Jimmy: Nanobots, stand down! I order you to stop attacking people! N-1: Someone threatened you to make you say that! Where are they?'' |
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| ~ The Nanobots, "Safety First" |
| “ | N-2: Creator, stop! We wish to please you! N-1: That is why we must delete you!'' |
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| ~ The Nanobots in "Return of the Nanobots" after Jimmy accidentally programmed them to delete all humans |
| “ | N-1: Ha! Listen to their squeals of merriment! N-2: Yes, we are beloved by children of all ages! |
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| ~ The Nanobots, "Fundemonium" |
The Nanobots are recurring antagonists in The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. They are two tiny robots that were originally created by Jimmy to protect him from bullies via a flying saucer known as the Jim-Tech, which is armed with a myriad of weapons. However, perhaps due to a flaw in their programming, the Nanobots embraced this role too extensively and began attacking anyone who so much as looked at him the wrong way. Jimmy was able to stop their rampage and has since been trying to reform them so they could be used for other purposes. This endeavor has been in vain, as the Nanobots have committed other atrocities since that first incident, all caused by them misinterpreting Jimmy's commands and taking them to the extreme.
The yellow Nanobot (N-1) is voiced by Darran Norris, who has also voiced Cosmo and Timmy's Dad from Fairly OddParents, among other characters. The red Nanobot (N-2) is voiced by Tom Kenny, who has voiced numerous characters including SpongeBob SquarePants.
Appearance
The Nanobots are humanoid robots with a fairly simplistic design. They have tube-shaped bodies, a mouth on their chests, large round heads, and lanky arms. When Jimmy first created them in "Safety First", each of their heads consisted of one large eye, and their arms and legs were thin and wiry. However, following their upgrade in "Return of the Nanobots", their design has been improved upon. Their bodies are more rounded, their arms and legs are jointed so they resemble human limbs more closely, and their heads now have two smaller eyes.
Personality
N-1 is the more abrasive one of the duo, constantly asserting himself as the "captain." This is very likely due to him technically being older since his serial number is N-1 while his partner is labeled as N-2. N-1 is also prone to anger issues, and when the Nanobots fail a task he is quick to verbally or even physically abuse N-2.
N-2 is somewhat more mellow than N-1 and has been shown to have a sensitive side, but he resents N-1's arrogant mannerisms and often retaliates against his bullying, resulting in the two of them fighting often.
Both Nanobots idolize Jimmy since he is their creator. They do everything they can to try and please him; each of their failures only makes them want to try even harder to gain Jimmy's approval. Because of this, it could be said that the Nanobots aren't truly evil because while the scale of their misdeeds are quite monumental (as their actions have endangered the lives of many people on multiple occasions), their only goal is to do whatever they think would make Jimmy happy.
History
Safety First
In the episode "Safety First", Jimmy finds that he is the latest target of a bully named Terry Finster, who begins taking his school lunch and throwing him in the dumpster every day. Being too ashamed to tell his parents, Jimmy opts to build himself a personal anti-bully device in the form of the Jim-Tech, a flying saucer piloted by two Nanobots. Jimmy brings the Jim-Tech to school the next day and orders the Nanobots to protect him from Terry. When Terry approaches, the Nanobots attack Terry and send him running off. This causes Jimmy's other classmates to hail him a hero, at which point Jimmy reveals that the Nanobots are based on the same technology he used to create a microchip that makes pants pick themselves up, which had gone rogue in the episode "When Pants Attack." This fact makes Jimmy's friends feel unsettled, but Jimmy assures them that the Nanobots are second-generation and have a system of checks and balances in place so they can't go berserk. Unfortunately, this proves to be untrue...
Without any actual enemies to defend Jimmy from, the Nanobots become overzealous and start to treat every physical gesture directed at Jimmy as a threat. They become increasingly violent towards Jimmy's friends, driving everyone at school into a state of constant fear. Jimmy makes several attempts to shut the Nanobots down, but they refuse to obey his commands to stand down and won't let him dismantle the Jim-Tech. Jimmy is at a loss, but then he gets the idea to confuse the Nanobots into submission. He goes out into his backyard and starts beating himself up, which does exactly that since the Nanobots can't obey their prime directive and subdue Jimmy's attacker because Jimmy is the attacker. Unable to formulate a solution, their circuits overload and the Jim-Tech explodes, leaving them defeated on the ground.
Return of the Nanobots
In "Return of the Nanobots", it's revealed that Jimmy kept the Nanobots on lockdown since the events of "Safety First." He takes them out of lockdown and upgrades their neural circuitry, giving them new bodies in the process, to reduce the risk of them going berserk. Upon the upgrade's completion, Jimmy places the Nanobots inside a more primitive module, the Correct-o-Tech, and gives the Nanobots a new purpose: to correct his english homework for errors. To make sure they're ready, Jimmy has the Nanobots examine a poem he wrote about Cindy Vortex but makes the mistake of telling them that the poem needs to be absolutely perfect. This causes the Nanobots to become perfectionists, and they freak out over minor grammatical errors in the poem. After making many hapzard edits to the peom, the Nanobots decide to destroy the poem, accidentally smearing glue on Jimmy's face in the process. Realizing that the Nanobots are still too erratic, he puts them back into lockdown and leaves them to go to school. But the Nanobots are eager to please Jimmy, so they break out of the Correct-o-Tech and use the Jim-Tech to follow Jimmy to school.
The Nanobots reach the school during Jimmy's english class and begin annoying all the students and staff by pointing out errors in their behavior and forcibly correcting them. Jimmy and his friends team up to find the Nanobots and eventually corner them in the cafeteria. Jimmy tries to defeat the Nanobots by confusing them like he did last time, telling the Nanobots that humans shouldn't be corrected because their flaws are what make them perfect. However, this idea backfires; with their improved circuitry, the Nanobots are able to come up with a solution: label all humans as "extreme errors" and erase them from existence using the Jim-Tech's de-atomizer ray. They decide to delete Jimmy last so their beloved creator can have a chance to "admire their work," so they lock him in a closet and set out to delete everyone in the school building. After that, the Nanobots realize that the entire world is full of human error, so they must delete every human on earth. This buys Carl and Sheen just enough time to get Jimmy out of the closet and escort him to his lab, where Jimmy explains that the Jim-Tech's de-atomizer ray doesn't completely erase things; it just converts them into digital data and stores them in a virtual trash bin, so the human race can still be saved as long as the Nanobots are put out of commission before they empty the trash bin.
Some time later, the Nanobots return to Retroville and break into Jimmy's lab to delete him and his friends. They delete Carl and Sheen, but Jimmy narrowly escapes with Goddard's help. Eventually, they manage to catch Jimmy and are about to delete him when they realize that the Jim-Tech's hard drive is full, so they need to empty the trash bin. Luckily, Jimmy comes up with a solution at the last second and asks the Nanobots to grant him one last request. He asks them to correct his homework and gives them a modified version of his poem, which he uses to trick the Nanobots into calculating the value of pi. Since pi is a never-ending number, the Nanobots overload their circuits trying to calculate it, so the Jim-Tech explodes once again and everyone the Nanobots deleted is fully restored.
Fundemonium
In "Fundemonium", it's shown that Jimmy has the Nanobots on lockdown again, this time placed in a cage and strapped to chairs in a manner similar to Hannibal Lecter. Desperate to get on his good side, they try doing various small favors for Jimmy in hopes that he'll set them free in return, but to no avail. Later, though, Hugh enters Jimmy's lab to retrieve a toy tank that Jimmy had upgraded for him. Realizing that the toy needs batteries, Hugh notices the Nanobots, mistakes them for talking batteries, and places them inside the toy. The Nanobots are grateful to Hugh for setting them free and decide to repay him. When Hugh brings the toy to his job at the toy factory to show it off, the Nanobots overhear him talking about how it's supposed to be the biggest and most fun toy ever and decide to act on those criteria. They use the toy's controls to make it grow to gigantic size and ride all over Retroville with it, wreaking havoc and shooting deadly candy projectiles in the name of fun.
Jimmy finds out about the Nanobots' escape and quickly comes up with a solution. He confronts the Nanobots with a remote control for another toy he was working on, and adjusts the remote's radio frequency so it can control the Nanobots' toy vehicle. With help from Carl and Sheen, Jimmy gets close enough to use the remote on the Nanobots and gets them to spill the toy's fuel liquid, which shorts out the toy and returns it and the Nanobots to normal size, leaving the two tiny terrors defeated on the ground yet again.