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| “ | I surrender and volunteer for treason! | „ |
| ~ Zapp Brannigan |
| “ | Stop exploding, you cowards! | „ |
| ~ Zapp Brannigan |
Zapp Brannigan is one of the two secondary antagonists (alongside Lrrr) of the adult cartoon series Futurama.
He is the oppressive and jerkish general of the DOOP (Democratic Order of Planets) and the corrupt and perverted captain of the Nimbus. His one and only goal is to invade every planet for the pleasure of his organization. He also Kif Kroker's abusive boss and Turanga Leela's archenemy.
He was voiced by Billy West, who also voiced Richard Nixon, Leo Wong, and Professtro in the same series, as well as Ren Höek in Ren & Stimpy.
Biography[]
He is considered one of the show's main recurring villains along with Richard Nixon, Lrrr, and Mom. Brannigan is a pompous, dimwitted coward. Despite his idiocy, he unfortunately also seems to hold considerable power and thus can cause trouble for the show's heroes.
Most of the time his actions tend to get in the way of the heroes' efforts. To the public at large he is largely recognized as a hero, but in reality, he is a fraud and imbecile who does not represent the heroic qualities he is known for, to which only those who truly know him such as Turanga Leela and his personal assistant Kif Kroker can see just how potentially dangerous and incompetent Zapp is.
Zapp is also despised even by his own crew-mates because he sends them on dangerous missions that result in their deaths, and he has completely no respect for anyone other than himself. Unlike Mom, he is not necessarily much of a threat, but is nevertheless a recurring problem for the Planet Express Crew - especially Leela (due to a rather unfortunate personal encounter, he simply won't let her forget). Zapp is way dumber than Fry and he kills innocent people because he thinks he can get promoted and thinks that it's to "save the world".
He is willing to use excessive tactics in battle that includes subduing weaker opponents, destroying ships or people who are unarmed and untargeted, or even deliberately sacrificing his own troops. In "When Aliens Attack", he had the The Planet Express crew and a fleet of many other ships fight against the Omicronians, but the ship they accidentally blew up was the Hubble telescope, and the Omicronians' ship soon appeared, then fought and exploded them. In "A Taste of Freedom" when they were at war with Zoidberg's people the Decapodians, Zapp foolishly gave the planetary defense code to one of them disguised as a Nimbus crewmember despite Kif's warnings and chose to blame Kif for their defeat as Kif was an alien. Plus, during "Bender's Big Score", he formed the Children's Brigade and the plan he drew out was to use them as a sacrifice in the battle against the scammer aliens, though his ship the Nimbus was taken out before the battle began. His incompetence is also the reason why the Earth Forces often lose in battle due to his poor leadership. Most of his plans even come from something an idiot would've made. So far, Zapp has only been an antagonist in three episodes, "Love's Labours Lost in Space", "Brannigan, Begin Again" and "Into the Wild Green Yonder". Leela stated that Zapp is the "sorriest" captain she ever met.
Zapp also dated Leela's mother Turanga Munda in the episode "Zapp Dingbat" following her divorce from her husband Morris, who is Leela's father. Munda initially believed in the exaggerations of Zapp's heroic image and they later came to marrying, but later at the wedding, Zapp revealed that their wedding was part of his plan to deliberately provoke war against the Carcaron race, using her as a pawn for this. This made Munda realize that Leela was right about Zapp and referred to him as being both a "bad man" and a "bad captain". After the situation was resolved Zapp performed the ceremony to remarry Leela's parents, after Morris came to win her back, but luckily Morris had to punch him in the gut a second time when Zapp tried to make a move on Munda again during the ceremony.
Much of Zapp Brannigan's humor comes from his continual use of innuendo as well as him being an empty-headed misogynist. As stated before despite his general incompetence Zapp is somehow able to keep the official rank of Captain, a rank which provides him with great power that he seems to enjoy abusing. He also disrespects his assistant Kif Kroker, having to treat him like a slave. Kiff also despises Zapp, having always insulted or complain about him. However Kif showed himself taking a stand against Brannigan by punching him hard in the stomach in "The Beast With A Billion Backs" for sleeping with Amy when he was dead before his resurrection, and turns against him in "Into The Wild Green Yonder". While Kif was extremely unkind and sexist towards women, he was also extremely shy and tries to only compliment his girlfriend, Amy. This was further discovered in the episode Amazon Women in the Mood.
The only reason why Zapp still keeps his rank because he once worked for the Planet Express (most of the employees except Leela who doesn't see how incompetent and dangerous Zapp is) and he abused and almost killed both Fry and Bender, even resulting Leela to lie about Zapp in order for him to be reinstated and get rid of him much to the Professor's dismay.
Appearance[]
Zapp is a tall and overweight male human with blond hair. He is usually seen wearing the DOOP military uniform.
Personality[]
| “ | Y'know, Zapp, once I thought you were a big, pompous buffoon. Then I realised that inside you were just a pitiful child. But now I realize that outside that child is a big, pompous buffoon! | „ |
| ~ Leela to Zapp after the former sees him for what he truly is. |
Although Zapp Brannigan is considered a great military hero by many people, most who have met him are more annoyed and frustrated by his goofy, arrogant, prideful, incompetent, perverted, phallic, selfish, jerkish, rude, naive, mean-spirited, lustful, stubborn, egotistical, cowardly, chauvinistic, oppressive, bossy, hypocritical, cocky, dim-witted, mischievous, misunderstood, manipulative, supremely vain personality, as well as his incredible stupidity.
Despite his stupidity and incompetence, he does display opportunistic cunning, such as deceiving unaffiliated aliens into signing treaties that significantly disadvantage them, whether declaring unprovoked war or them unknowingly surrendering all of their natural resources; although he most prominently uses cunning for hedonism. When his bravado failed to impress Leela and she insulted him, he acted hurt and dove into self-deprecation, eventually pulling such pity from Leela she slept with him - after which he acted as if seduced her. Similarly, when Kif dies from Zapp's own negligence, he feigns shared affection for Kif with Amy, all to trick the widow into sleeping with him. While his heinous disrespect and manipulation of women is continuous, it appears as though he had only "successfully" tricked Leela and Amy into actually having sex with him, which was only due to Leela's then unknown background (ergo, isolation) and capacity for compassion twisting her into agreeing, while Amy was fooled due to her grief - prior to fooling Amy, he would brag about his "sexual conquests" yet they were only about Leela. Arguably, his belt notches did increase with the numerous Amazonian women during the Snu-Snu to almost death, however, this was passive, irrelevant to his opportunism or cunning.
Unlike Fry who has enough common sense to learn about what is right or wrong, Zapp possesses none of these qualities and always thinks that he's doing what's right no matter how much it can endanger everyone around him or how immoral it is. However, due to the obliviousness and somewhat ineptitude of his superiors, he always gets away with his misdeeds and becomes a false hero. Few people, such as his own crew, soldiers, Kif and half of the Planet Express crew, know who he truly is.
Throughout the series, he is shown to have a very twisted sense of nationalism and is prepared to kill anyone if it can be somehow justified through his job. Despite this, he does have some sense of trust in Kif and does view him as a friend despite how badly he treats him.
Despite his misogyny, Zapp did display a capability of actually respectfully dating a woman, as he entered a relationship with Leela's mother, Turanga Munda, after she divorced Leela's father Morris. While Leela understandably thought it was another one of his gimmicks to seduce her, when she tested this theory, it revealed Zapp was both genuine and faithful to Munda. However, the relationship would be ultimately sabotaged by his countless other flaws, specifically his jingoism, as he wanted Munda's assistance to deceive the Carcaron, ignoring her protests from her sense of decency, thereby ending his one otherwise honest, positive romance.
Villainous Acts[]
- In "Love's Labour Lost In Space", Zapp tricks Leela into having sex with him after confining her, Fry and Bender when they try to go to a planet that was about to be destroyed to save animals. He only lets them go after sleeping with Leela.
- In "A Flight To Remember", Zapp drives the spaceship Titanic into a black hole on a joyride, endangering many lives and indirectly causing the death of Bender's love interest, Countess De La Roca in the process. He also placed Kif in command as Captain so the Captain could go down with the ship, allowing him to escape.
- In "Brannigan Begin Again", Zapp has Fry, Leela, and Bender confined again for bringing in large scissors, the uses the ship's laser to cut a grand opening ribbon for DOOP headquarters, despite Kif's warnings about it. This causes Zapp to blow up DOOP headquarter and he gets punished for it by being stripped of his rank as captain and dismissed from DOOP. He also framed Kif for the headquarter destruction, getting him punished as well. Zapp even tricks Fry and Bender into mutiny against Leela so he could launch an attack on the neutral planet in an idiotic scheme to get his old job back, which is thwarted by Leela. This ultimately forced Leela to lie in court to get Zapp reinstated to keep him off her ship.
- In "The Problem With Popplers", Zapp eats Omicronian babies during a diplomatic conference in front of Lrrr and Ndnd and continued to eat the babies even after Lrrr told him to stop. This happened after Zapp realized what Popplers actually were.
- In "War Is The H Word", it was revealed that Zapp got women banned from serving in the military because he sexually harassed them constantly. Later on he lies to his army on why Earth is at war with the planet of Spheron 1. It is also revealed that he and Nixon invaded the planet and that they hid a bomb inside Bender that was set to go off on someone saying the word "ass" in order to force the Spheroid army to surrender.
- In "Amazon Women In The Mood", Zapp gets himself involved in Kif's date with Amy at the Le Palm D'Orbit orbital restaurant by turning it into a double date and getting Leela to come along. Zapp then ruins Kif's date with Amy by giving him a book with bad pickup lines. After driving the guests away from the restaurant with his bad karaoke, Zapp forcefully takes control of the restaurant and causes it to crash land on the planet of Amazonia.
- In "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch", when the Holoshed characters became real, Zapp threatens them to return to the Holoshed at gunpoint. When he ignores their advice that it would damage the Nimbus and cause decompression, Zapp endangers everyone on the bridge when he causes it by firing his laser gun. It is only with the help of the moon from the Holoshed, that the decompression is stopped which saves everyone's lives.
- In "Three Hundred Big Boys", Zapp invades the planet of Tarantulon 6, where he plunders the planet's resource of silk from the native Spiderinians. It is strongly implied that he enslaved the Spiderinians still living as a tapestry of his conquest on the planet can be seen hung on a wall at a party. Zapp also claims that Spiderinians taste like king crab, implying that he ate some of the Spiderinians he killed. He also ran over Kif with a jeep during the battle.
- In "Bender's Big Score", Zapp forms a children's brigade during the battle for earth against the nudist scammers, forcing Cubert and Dwight to fight in war in the process despite being children. It was revealed that Cubert and Dwight's ship was shot down during battle, which almost kills them. It was only because of the Nimbus being taken out first, that the nudist scammers were defeated when both Leela and Hermes were able to take charge.
- In "The Beast With A Billion Backs", Zapp flirts with Amy Wong non stop during her Rubok ceremony with Kif. He later causes Kif's death by pressing the missile button nonstop due to a missile jam and while Kif was trapped with the missile. Zapp then takes advantage of Amy's status as a widow in order to seduce her. This places massive strain on Kif and Amy's relationship when Kif gets resurrected and finds out what happened.
- In "Into The Wild Green Yonder", Zapp helps Leo Wong destroy major portions of the Milky Way galaxy in order to make room for a gigantic miniature golf course Leo wanted to build. This endangers countless animal species. During his chase of the Feministas, he also ignores Kif's advice during an obstacle in the golf course, causing damage to the Nimbus and killing most of the crew aside from himself, Kif and Bender. He also forced Leela to take off her shirt so he could see her bare breasts.
- In "In-A-Gadda-De-Leela", Zapp allies with Leela to destroy a rogue deathsphere named V-GINY. After their attempt to destroy the sphere was botched, Zapp decides to try to trick Leela into having sex with him again instead of making another attempt to destroy the death sphere. He does this by removing Leela's clothes alongside his own while stashing them away in order to replicate the environment of The Garden Of Eden from the Bible while Leela was unconscious. Zapp then lied to Leela that V-GINY destroyed Earth and that both of them were on another planet.
- In "Neutopia", Zapp murders an unarmed rock alien after the alien accidentally inverted the genders of the planet express crew. Because of this, the entire crew was forced to live with their new genders until The Borax Kid came along to fix the mistake.
- In "Cold Warriors" Zapp tries to hurl the entire city of New New York into the sun with the Nimbus to stop the common cold from spreading and almost got everyone in that city killed.
- In "Zapp Dingbat", Zapp tries to trick the Carcaron race into going to war with DOOP with a fake peace treaty and uses Turanga Munda as a pawn for this. This causes the Carcarons to declare war when they find out about the deception, making Zapp responsible for endangering his crew in this situation.
- In “The Inhuman Torch”, Zapp causes a cave-in at a helium mining facility in the sun that traps 15 workers inside because he mistook an important console for a soda machine. Zapp does nothing to fix his mistake and the workers would have been killed in an agonizing death if it was not for the intervention of Fry, Leela, and Bender.
- In "Zapp Gets Cancelled" Zapp takes a public shower in the Nimbus cockpit in front of his entire crew during a space fight against a fire alien, using the ship's three year water supply in the process. He uses Kif as a loofah, punctures him in the head with a pen, squeezes his head to extract his blood and kill the fire alien then hangs Kif on a towel rack. This causes Kif to get fed up with the abuse and Zapp gets punished by being forced to take an 8 hour sensitivity course and being "cancelled".
- In “Otherwise”, Zapp crashes the funeral of the Planet Express Ship and forcibly takes control of the proceedings from Planet Express. He places a bomb in the ship that had a 15 second time limit, causing the crew to get trapped in a lake of alternate realities and become unable to escape until the end of the episode.
Trivia[]
- His favorite fabric is velour.
- Originally, Zapp Brannigan was going to be voiced by Phil Hartman. However, Hartman died on May 28, 1998 before production began on Futurama. Billy West's characterization of Zapp is based, in part, on Phil Hartman's voice.
- Zapp is intended to be a representation of William Shatner himself as captain rather than Shatner's character Kirk.
- The skirt (or kilt) and boots of Zapp's uniform are a tribute/parody of the outfit worn by the titular character of Russ Manning's comic book Magnus, Robot Fighter.
- He's considered to be the most idiotic character on the show, to the point of where he makes Fry look like a genius by comparison.
- He is one of only two characters to have had sex with both Amy and Leela (the other being Fry).
- Like Fry, he was almost snu-snued to death.
- He is at least partially bald, as his hairpiece can be seen flapping during the decompression scene in Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch.
- He was charged and found guilty for blowing up DOOP headquarters in "Brannigan, Begin Again".
- He was crushed while riding in an army tank with Kif, trying to destroy a giant version of Bender in 'Anthology of Interest I".
- Despite being one of the two secondary antagonists (alongside Lrrr) of the animated series, Zapp is considered one of the most hated characters in the series, he still looks for filth to deceive everyone at his pleasure like all of Planet Express' members. One of the worst example would be in the episode "A Flight to Remember" where he will cross the Moral Event Horizon never committed, just for having thrown Leonardo di Caprio's head on the Titanic II, inspecting the behavior of Fry and Leela, misdirecting his direction of his cruise spaceship, intervening romance between Fry and Leela, cheating on Leela to prove she's the limbo champion, forcing Fry to kiss Amy in order to deceive Leela, sending all of the passengers of the Titanic (including the Countess de la Roca) towards a black hole in order to kill them all and deceptively replacing Kif by putting his captain's sticker on him, despite being a Doop Military General that Poopenmeyer never knew that Zapp is a traitor since he proclaimed himself as the Titanic captain. If there is any galactic justice, it would demand Zapp's head for his crimes never committed.
- Despite his mischievous nature, it is very likely that Zapp having committed unforgivable acts that he will cost him his life. One of the best examples would be in the "Amazon Women in the Mood" episode where Leela finally burned the flowers bouquet as a punishment that he did to the entire crew of the Titanic (including the Countess de la Roca) when it was released at the orbital restaurant Le Palm d'Orbit, but also in the film Bender's Big Score where he sacrificed himself by one of the solid gold Death Stars launched by Nudar, causing the Nimbus to fall and to crash on Earth.
- He has the habit of pronouncing every word as if it is phonetic, e.g. bravo = bray-vo, encore = enn-core.
- Zapp is the most recurring antagonist in the series as he made a lot more appearances than Mom (who is the show's main antagonist).
External Link[]
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 Villains
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Major Villains Earth Government Others Supporting Villains Groups & Species Anthologies Video Games Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow Comics See Also | ||