| “ | I will destroy you and everyone you love! | „ |
| ~ Rob's catchphrase. |
| “ | I was one of the world's mistakes. (..) But you only cared about Molly. You saved her and left me there to rot. But I clung to life! And I came back... (..) but at a cost. You left me disfigured, a nobody! But now you've given me a part to play in the world. I will be your worst nightmare. I will destroy everything you care about! I will take away everyone you love! I will be... your nemesis. | „ |
| ~ Rob during his flashback. |
Rob, briefly known as Dr. Wrecker, is the main antagonist of the animated series The Amazing World of Gumball. He was initially a minor character, but as of the episode "The Nobody," he became Gumball Watterson's arch-nemesis.
Rob was banished into the Void for being one of the world's "mistakes," implicitly the result of being a nondescript and unused character in the show, but he managed to escape via holding onto the back of Mr. Small's van, Janice, resulting in his disfiguration. He found a role to play in Elmore as the arch-nemesis of Gumball, bitter and seeking revenge over his abandonment; this also allowed him to have an identity and sustain his existence within reality.
To fulfill this role, he wreaked havoc on Elmore and the Wattersons. Eventually, he discovered that the universe was going to be erased by the Void. Despite his best efforts to save everyone, he ultimately failed, leading to total destruction and his return to the Void as the first among all.
He was voiced by Charles Philipp. As Dr. Wrecker, he was voiced by the late David Warner. In his Superintendent Evil disguise, he was portrayed by Garrick Hagon.
His Evil Ranking[]
His Villainous Deeds[]
In General[]
- Despite feeling as though he was forced to be a villain in order to sustain his existence, he is still shown to be sadistic and vengeful, taking it out on Gumball and his family for amusement and satisfaction. This behavior is not excused by his metaphysical circumstances because it is personal.
- Also, Rob is very arrogant and hypocritical, as he blames Gumball for turning him into a villain in spite of the fact that he carved out this role in the story himself. Gumball never meant to inadvertently sentence him to the Void (by virtue of being the protagonist) and only left him behind during his adventure as a complete accident.
- The contradiction in his justification is shown at the end of "The Rerun," where he has the Universal Remote and a nearly eliminated Gumball, things he claims would allow him to become whatever he wants - yet, he rewinds time, partly due to admitting that he still wouldn't know what else to be, even in Gumball's absence.
- Also, Rob is very arrogant and hypocritical, as he blames Gumball for turning him into a villain in spite of the fact that he carved out this role in the story himself. Gumball never meant to inadvertently sentence him to the Void (by virtue of being the protagonist) and only left him behind during his adventure as a complete accident.
- He has resorted to very petty villainy at times, such as antagonizing Banana Joe in "The Ex" simply because his personality was annoying, and even restoring his rivalry with Gumball in the same episode because his trap was foiled.
- Despite trying to compensate for the Void's cataclysm in season 6, he's not a redeemed character, as the arc ended too abruptly and his methods were extreme to the point of being villainous.
- While he is comedic, his actions are still taken more seriously than most villains in the series and are written with higher stakes, especially in "The Disaster" and "The Rerun."
Season 2[]
- He assisted an angry mob in trying to hurt the Wattersons in “The Finale,” although it understandable, as it was due to Darwin kicking him down a manhole in "The Pony."
Season 3[]
- Sometime between the events of “The Void” and “The Nobody,” he broke into Gumball's house and lived there for several months without the consent of the Wattersons, hiding in their basement while stealing various things, indirectly getting Gumball and Darwin punished instead of him.
- He vowed to destroy Gumball and everyone he loves because he was accidentally left in the Void.
Season 4[]
- He made various, potentially lethal traps to try to get Gumball and Darwin in “The Nemesis”, including attempting to launch a car battery at their heads, drop a tree on them, hit them with a car sliding down the road, and suspend them upside down with a rope.
- He tried to flood Elmore by destroying a dam, and while it didn't work since the dam was actually a damage center and all he destroyed was a vending machine, the intent was still there.
- When Gumball and Darwin let themselves get caught in one of his traps to try to make him happy and beg to be helped down, Rob started laughing sadistically and left them there.
- In "The Bus", he tricked Gumball's school into taking a field trip about "why you shouldn't skip school", doing so by having various adults disguise as criminals, allowing him to ransom money from the police and attempt to blow up the bus with a bomb, which would easily harm multiple people on the trip.
- This resulted in a chaotic scenario involving a high-speed police chase and a plane wing cutting through the bus, endangering everyone, and he also tried to get Gumball arrested by framing him for trying to blow up everyone with the explosive briefcase.
- When the Van Shopkeeper handed him the universal remote in “The Disaster,” he stole it from him after the shopkeeper insists he hand it back over his decision to use it for revenge.
- He recklessly decided to test the remote by abusing its power, stealing money from an ATM and changing the time of day, and eventually used it to kill the shopkeeper to avoid paying a mere $12.99, making him one of the few characters to successfully and explicitly kill someone in the series.
Season 5[]
- During the events of “The Disaster” and the “The Rerun,” he used the universal remote to ruin Gumball's life in various ways:
- Sending multiple cars crashing into the Wattersons' car with them still in it, destroying the car and leaving the family atop a pile of smashed cars, making Gumball's family believe he was the one responsible for the crash because he was playing with the window.
- Using captions to make Darwin think Gumball was saying horrible things to him regarding his adoption, causing Darwin to hate him.
- Altering the personalities of Nicole and Richard to cause them to divorce.
- Turning down the brightness to cause a distraught Anais to go missing.
- Framing Gumball for cheating on his girlfriend Penny and then having him push her off a balcony by accident.
- Sealing Gumball in the Void, presumably to leave him in limbo for eternity and redefine the show's universe.
- Reveling after Gumball's parents were turned into babies, which resulted in Anais being erased from existence and Darwin devolving into a normal fish, him dying from the lack of water, and Gumball nearly dying.
- Although this was technically caused by Gumball who hit rewind while fighting Rob for the remote, Rob doesn't feel remorse for it at first, and has the remote in hand which could easily fix it. Even worse, he taunts a distraught and incensed Gumball immediately after he witnessed Darwin suffocate to death, and doubles down on his intent to destroy "everyone [he] loves," indicating he was satisfied with the outcome.
- He contemplated turning Gumball "off" using the Universal Remote after endangering him by running away from his help in the Void, though he eventually decided against it.
- Despite reversing the damage he caused in "The Rerun," some statements and mannerisms of his detract from his remorse a bit:
- He was initially primarily concerned with what would become of him after eliminating Gumball as opposed to the depravity of the act itself, stating, "What am I gonna do?"
- He insisted that Gumball was still easy to hate simply because the latter mocked him for coming to his senses too late.
- He expressed annoyance at the Van Shopkeeper requesting payment for the Universal Remote, and later at the Watterson family singing gleefully about looking forward to a wonderful day during which nothing could go wrong, seemingly showing contempt that his plans were foiled.
- He tried using various violent traps to kill Banana Joe in “The Ex” just because he found him annoying, including attempts to obliterate him with an exploding burger, crush him with a stack of bricks, and squash him with oil drums rolling down a road. He also stalks him all day in the process.
- He handed Gumball a box containing photos of him taken from a long distance lens, including one with a crosshair pointed at his head, batteries from his smoke alarm, among other items that, according to Rob, are also nefarious.
Season 6[]
- He tied up the sapient Internet and exploited him to hijack the show's broadcast in “The Spinoffs.”
- Although he had good intentions, in "The Future," he kidnapped Banana Barbara and kept her in a warehouse for over a week in order to decipher her prophetic paintings.
- When Barbara acted incompetently or cryptically, even though she consistently did what he asked of her, Rob strangled, threatened, and abused her, and even attempted to crush her with a metal bar before stopping himself. He also threatened to eat her alive.
- He chucked a metal bar at Banana Joe's face, which caused his head to fold backwards and him to collapse.
- He fought Gumball and Darwin ruthlessly, using a bazooka, a crack in the floor, and a shark, all of which he painted into reality. This was extremely hazardous: it nearly crushed Gumball and Darwin with a falling car, inadvertently magnetized a series of sharp objects toward Gumball, almost led to him getting run over by a derelict bus, and caught the duo in multiple explosions.
- He endangered everyone present at the scene by recklessly fighting Gumball over Barbara's brush, which caused incisions in reality and the near-collapse of the warehouse. It also nearly led to Darwin being erased from existence.
- Although he had the aforementioned intentions, he forced nearly the entire Elmore Junior High School staff and children to become realistic against their will using transmutative technology, enforcing a strict, abusive rule with no tolerance for dissent in "The Inquisition."
- He abused the students in multiple ways: Banana Joe was forced to stand "upright," which split his normally curved body into multiple pieces. Teri was forced to erase her drawn-on face due to the prohibition of "tattoos," which caused her to accidentally puncture a hole in her ear and tear apart Anton in her resulting blindness. William, despite being an eyeball, was forced to open a door "the normal way," which involved him smashing himself against the door until eventually turning the handle by forcing his body into it, inadvertently getting himself locked in a broom closet when he squeezed his way inside. Alan Keane's balloon body was contorted and forced to have a "body," and it is implied that his lower intestine is in his mouth "judging by the taste." Carrie Krueger was buried under a grave of manure due to being undead.
- Later, he brainwashes his victims into following his orders, and tries to have all of the transformed students capture Gumball and Darwin by chasing after them.
Why Doesn't He Stand Out?[]
- While he passes the baseline due to trying to flood Elmore and his extreme personal villainy towards Gumball, he fails the in-story heinous standards to Bobert 6B, who tried to wipe out humanity, Mr. Chanax, who enslaved countless workers into mindless zombies, and even to Gumball himself, who killed Anton 50 times in a row and endangered the entire universe on two occasions.
- Despite having an artifact capable of altering reality at large with virtually unlimited power in "The Disaster" and "The Rerun," that being the Universal Remote, he only uses to eliminate two of Gumball's family members in standard "kill-the-heroes" villainy (and the shopkeeper), meaning he holds back on his resources and fails the individual capacity; all of the victims were all later revived by his own volition. His other crimes, such as planting a bomb on a bus and causing destruction, are too standard in severity for characters in the series (Evil Turtle's babies, Hector Jötunheim, etc) and mostly amount to trivial villainy.
- His personal villainy towards Gumball also fails to stand out in-series from, ironically, Gumball himself, as he has tortured individuals like Alan or Larry out of pettiness and pure boredom.
- He is genuinely tragic because he was initially a relatively friendly individual but he was sent to the Void for being a mistake of the world, condemning him to a long time in isolation that was supposed to be eternal, all through no fault of his own. He eventually escaped, only to have his body disfigured and deconstructed, and his memory and identity wiped. When he does regain his memories, he remembers how Gumball and Darwin left him there in the Void to rot, which makes his hatred for them understandable. For the rest of the series, he lives with existential dread because of the newfound awareness he gains from this, and eventually falls into the Void after failing to save everyone due to the cast either not listening to him or trusting him.
- He also has insecurities which the audience is supposed to feel sympathy for, such as feeling like a "nobody" without any purpose or identity, and is consistently portrayed as a sympathetic character considering Gumball saved his life twice out of remorse for hurting him.
- Gumball also notes pitifully that Rob doesn't have any friends or family (the latter is also noted by Rob himself), implicitly because he wasn't important enough to have any.
- He is also a scapegoat, as not only was his initial banishment and disfiguration completely undeserved, but many of his initial plans would backfire on him painfully, such as when he mistakenly ran away with a detonating bomb in "The Bus," which blew up in his hands and violently launched him back to the main crime scene, or was constantly the victims of his own traps in "The Nemesis." His ejection into the Void in "The Rerun" is portrayed as inordinate as well, considering that Gumball feels remorse for dooming such a lonely individual to "limbo" and goes in to save his life. His defeats in "The Future" and "The Inquisition," where he was erased from existence in the former and smashed into the ground, knocked unconscious by Tina Rex, and left to fall into the Void in the latter, are also massively disproportionate considering that he was only trying to help in those episodes, even if through abusive methods.
- He is a villain by proxy, as he doesn't even want to be a villain, but he is forced to because it was the only role left for him to play due to having no initial characterization, and he understands that Gumball's status as the hero forces him to be a villain. Rob believes that he cannot find meaning or an identity otherwise.
- He is On & Off:
- In "The Nemesis," his plan to flood Elmore fails because he cannot escape via bus, so he consults Gumball and Darwin and, with their help, tries to stop the entire town from flooding.
- In "The Rerun," he was unable to finish Gumball off after ruining his life, undid everything he did with the Universal Remote, and apologized for his actions, recognizing Gumball's selfless actions in trying to rescue him; this also shows his underlying respect for him. He also destroyed the Universal Remote after realizing it was too dangerous despite the power it granted him. This also undid their reconciliation and forced Rob back into the role of a villain, something that Rob did not desire but forwent for the greater good.
- In "The Ex," he is affable to Gumball and has a few Pet the Dog moments, including when he apologizes to him about leaving him for another nemesis, returns his stuff, and later befriends him through their shared stakeout at Banana Joe's house.
- He is an anti-villain and a well-intentioned extremist in the sixth season, as although he kidnaps and abuses Banana Barbara while forcing her to paint the future, and later turns everyone into humans against their will, he does it for a truly admirable cause, as he wants to save everyone from being sent to the Void when it destroys the world. Because he went the extra mile to save everyone instead of just himself, his plan ultimately led to him falling into the Void, making it selfless in nature.
- He can be incompetent at times, such as failing to flood Elmore because he mistakenly destroyed a vending machine instead of the control room or running away with his own bomb in "The Bus," leading to its detonation in his hands. However, this is a minor prevention, as there are nonetheless many moments in the series where he is treated like an actual threat, either displaying little to no incompetence.
- While he is taken more seriously than most villains from The Amazing World of Gumball, he does have many comedic moments that detract from his villainy, such as being incompetent at times, being highly irritable, and having a running gag of Gumball getting his name wrong.
Trivia[]
- Rob was originally approved as Inconsistently Heinous and left as such for a long time, but upon reevaluation and reexamination, it was decided that he fails the heinous standards to other villains and holds back on his resources.
External Links[]
- Rob on the Villains Wiki
- Rob on the Inconsistently Admirable Wiki
- Rob on the Moral Ranking Wiki
- Rob on the Shonen Villains Wiki
- Rob on the Seinen Heroes Wiki
- Rob on the Entertainingly Detestable Wiki
- Rob on the The Amazing World of Gumball Wiki
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 Villainous Benchmarks
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TV Shows Codename: Kids Next Door Samurai Jack Teen Titans Star Wars: The Clone Wars Ben 10 The Boondocks Adventure Time Regular Show The Amazing World of Gumball Steven Universe We Bare Bears Dodo See Also | ||