| “ | I'll get you next time, Wild Ratts! | „ |
| ~ Varmitech to the Kratt brothers, also his infamous catchphrase. |
Zachary Varmitech, more known as Zach, is the main antagonist of the 2011 children's television show Wild Kratts.
He's a genius inventor and robotics engineer in general, and also the CEO of Varmitech Industries, a money-making corporation that utilizes living animals in his inventions to provide his dirty work for his personal gain.
He was voiced by Zachary Bennett, who also voiced Gaston Gourmand in the same series.
His Evil Ranking[]
His Villainous Deeds[]
In General[]
- He has a massive ego that rivals, if not outright surpasses that of Donita, a character known for her ego.
- He uses animals to build robots without any regard for their well-being.
- He cheats in every competition to prove he's a better inventor than Aviva, and he occasionally steals animals to power his inventions.
- He frequently resorts to attempting to kill the Kratt brothers so they won't foil his plans, including trying to trap them in the past or on an iceberg in the middle of the Arctic.
- He frequently tries to steal the Miniaturizer for himself.
- He almost always harms the habitats of the animals he kidnaps, and only leaves out of cowardice when he realizes he is outmatched.
- He has an annual meeting with Donita, Gourmand, and (from season 4 up until season 7) Paisley in order to discuss their evil plans, trying to find various uninhabited areas to discuss their schemes.
Background[]
- When he first met Aviva and the Kratt brothers as a child at camp, he tried to prove his inventions were better than Aviva's, and developed a rivalry with her that continues into the present day.
Season 1[]
- In his first appearance in "Aardvark Town", he tried to use various animals in the African Savannah in order to dig him a swimming pool, using mind-control helmets on them, before settling on an aardvark making it dig all day before the Wild Kratts intervened.
- In "Platypus Cafe", he was invited along with Donita to eat platypus eggs that Gourmond had poached, having no qualms about what he was being invited to.
- In "Polar Bears Don't Dance", he kidnapped a walrus and polar bear cub in order to put on a show, before changing his mind and settling on their mothers and making them both fight.
- Also in the process, he sprayed the polar bear cub with his cologne, causing his mother's sense of smell to be negatively affected.
- In "Bass Class", he tried to steal Gavin’s bass fishing trophy, before insisting on challenging him to a bass fishing contest with the winner receiving the trophy, while using robotic fish to cheat, before the water in the finishing tank stripped the paint off.
- In "Mystery of the Weird Looking Walrus", he disguised a Zach Bot as a local girl from the region and stole a pearl from a museum, before having the idea to enslave all the walruses in the area to collect all the pearls from all the clams of the sea but was then stopped by the Kratt brothers.
- In "Let the Rhinos Roll!", he tried to brainwash rhinos in order to demolish an area to build a parking lot.
- In "Falcon City", he found a nest of falcons on his building when he wanted his building to be the "biggest and cleanest" and tried to clean or push it off with his Zach Bots.
- In "Koala Balloon" he found a koala in a potted tree he had and sent it off on a platform under a bunch of balloons, leading to the Kratt Brothers having to take him back to a eucalyptus forest while they were already trying a survival challenge with out their technology.
- In "Cheetah Racer", he challenges Aviva to a race to whoever could create the faster land terrain vehicle, dishonorably breaking both rules of no flying and no animals by having one of his Zach Bots kidnap a cheetah to use in one of the wheels in his ZTV vehicle, before he later tried to continue the race with a flying jet part of his vehicle, trying to disguise his flying by using a polyester string connecting a wheel to the ground so he apparently wasn't flying.
- In "A Huge Orange Problem", he tries to find a tree with the blackest wood he could find (which obviously wasn't possible) to build a coffee table, not caring about the orangutans and other animals in the forest, and would have likely cut down the entire forest had the Kratt Brothers not intervened.
Season 2[]
- In "Race for the Hippo Disk", he stole the Hippo Power Disk and later kidnapped a hippo calf named Hipster by Martin trying to trade him for the other power disks in order to find out their secret, but got a bag of cookies instead.
- In "Creature Power Challenge", he created the Disrupt-o-Bots to invade the Tortuga and take over its technology and override the Creature Power Suit code to transform into any of the animals they had transformed into before, even disabling deactivation to put on a show and even sadistically revealed to the rest of the Wild Kratts crew his plan and how they couldn't contact the Kratt Brothers, interrupting their competition deciding if elephants or rhinoceroses were stronger and more powerful.
- In "Shadow: The Black Jaguar" he has an idea to create bots out of the jaguars and kidnapped a black jaguar cub named "Shadow" by Martin in order to try a prototype, even trying to use a growth serum he tried to grow him to an adult and test it sooner.
- In "Aqua Frog", after he was done cleaning his ship, he decided to dump the toxic industrial waste he cleaned into a river leading to Frog Water Pond, which could have deformed the frog eggs in the lake altering the frogs in the future of their life cycle, though it was stopped by the Kratt Brothers.
- In "Rocket Jaw: Rescuer of the Reef", he works with Donita to use fish for her fashion designs and had destroyed a large part of the coral reef in the process.
- In "Skunked", he tried to use his new invention, The Bubble Bot, in order to stay clean and not be affected by the environment around him, and later saw his opportunity to steal some of The Wild Kratts' technology, though this backfired.
- In "Gila Monster Under My House", he tried to create wrenches out of Gila monsters and sell them, though it backfired.
Season 3[]
- In "Mosquito Dragon", after being bit by a mosquito, he had the idea to create mosquito bots to seek out The Wild Kratts' computers and steal their information, seeking out their heat to get to their computers.
- In "Bandito: The Black Footed Ferret", he kidnaps a family of black footed ferrets in an attempt to create robots to tunnel in and steal the Wild Kratts' technology, though it failed.
- In "The Amazing Creature Race", after the race he tried to kidnap an antelope near the end of the episode to make a running machine but was stopped by the Kratt Brothers.
- In "Under Frozen Pond", he hosts one of his annual meetings with Donita and Gourmand to discuss their plans while trapping the Wild Kratts and several of the Wild Kratts Kids under the lake in a miniaturized Amphapod (though this was unintentional), before deciding to try to play a hockey game with Donita and Gourmand against the Wild Kratts to determine who would stay in that particular location.
- In the special "Back in Creature Time", he sneaks onto the Tortuga with his invisibility cloak and held Koki and Jimmy hostage and cutting off their communication after deciding to trap Martin, Chris, and Aviva, and going up the time trampoline she created to the time of Tasmanian tigers before deciding to outright tell them he was trapping them and then trying to vaporize the time trampoline with a Zachbot so they couldn't escape, but they ended up defeating him and returning to the present at the last second just before the time trampoline became unstable and imploded.
Season 4[]
- In "Liturgusa Krattorum", he along with Donita and Gourmand decided to try to take a newly discovered praying mantis species named after the Wild Kratts due to their dedication to zoology and use them to their own means out of jealousy.
- In "Panda Power Up!", after Aviva's stuffed panda named Stuffo landed on his window, he was trying to come up with a child's toy to make and settled on a toy that was a mind controlled panda after seeing the toy panda, then drained nearly all the Wild Kratts energy apart from a small charge on one of the Creature Pods and smugly telling them he had drained their power, before kidnapping lots of pandas to create toys by mind-controlling them to hug people at the touch of a remote, even keeping them in a cage.
- In the Christmas special "A Creature Christmas", he alongside Donita and Gourmand decided to try to make as much money off Christmas as possible, he trying to make easily breakable toys to sell and kidnapped dozens of the Wild Kratts' animal friends to use as ornaments in his robot Christmas tree, even humiliating Aviva when she tried to rescue them the first time by tying her robot arms into a present bow. Later in the same special, he pretended along with Donita and Gourmand to have a change of heart and gave the Wild Kratts "Christmas presents" and trapped them before stealing all of their technology and stranding them on an iceberg, likely to die, even leaving them their creature power disks to remind them of their defeat. When they came back he later tried to stop them and tried to flatten Martin in a puffin power suit with his robot Christmas tree, when he was defeated along with the others he remarked on if there was anything to Christmas anyway.
- In "Golden Snub Nosed Monkey Man", he tried to find the Yeti to display for money and mistook him for Martin in a malfunctioning golden snub nosed monkey Power Suit and refused to let him go but was forced to later.
- In "Red Panda Rescue", he kidnapped a red panda mother to try to give her to Donita as a birthday present.
- In "Musk Ox Mania", he overheard Chris talking about his creature souvenir collection and how it let them power up with what ever animal souvenirs they had with them, so he went to the same location they lost it and tried to steal it to prevent them from doing it, eventually finding it and almost making it to his plane before being almost overtaken by wolves because of his fur coat.
- In the special "Creatures of the Deep Sea", he gave Gourmand a submarine that could go down to to lower parts of the ocean with payment of an unlimited seafood coupon, leading to Gourmand stealing dozens of deep sea creatures for him to cook.
Season 5[]
- In "City Hoppers", he enlists Paisley Paver as a new member of their organization to work with her along with Donita and Gourmand on their schemes.
- In "Choose Your Swordfish", he gets the idea to get all the fish in the ocean and sell them for his own benefit.
- In "Komodo Dragon", he was enlisted by Gourmand to use his Zach Bots to dig up all the komodo dragon eggs for Gourmand to use, having no qualms about what he was doing.
- In the Halloween special "Creepy Creatures", he decides to make a haunted house filled with scary animals to scare children to make money, even stealing the Miniaturizer when he wanted to enlarge the animals to make them scarier, though it ultimately backfired in the end when the Wild Kratts and several Wild Kratts Kids came and visited the haunted house when they weren't scared by the animals, and defeated his robot while saving the animals, with him even having to pay Paisley's paving bill.
Season 6[]
- In "Wolf Hawks", he tried once again to steal the Miniaturizer after reprogramming his Zach-Bots to be more coordinated and able to work together.
- In "Hammerheads", he tries to create hammerhead Zach Bots in order to break down the Tortuga doors to get access to their technology and possibly to find the lost creature power disks for himself.
- In "The Real Ant Farm" he tries to use the leaf cutter ants to take food from farms and even ends up almost killing them not knowing they could only eat a special type of fungus.
- In "The Vanishing Stingray", he tries to fix his invisibility cloak with the Stingray Power disks after trying to steal them.
- In the special "Amazin' Amazon Adventure" he tries to effectively destroy the Amazon Rainforest along with Donita, Gourmand, and Paisley with he, Donita and Gourmand using the animals for their own purposes and Paisley turning the entire place into a mall to sell it all.
- In "Adapto the Coyote", he tries to exterminate some coyotes who were on his property he didn't like being there.
- In the special "Cats and Dogs", he listens in on the Wild Kratts and learns they are learning about different wild versions of domesticated cats and dogs and decides to roboticize those different cats and dogs into products to sell.
Season 7[]
- In "Clever the Raven", he was annoyed at Clever for going around his area and tried to violently shoo him away.
- In the special "Our Blue and Green World" he works with Paisley Paver to turn a tropical beach ecosystem in Madagascar into a beach resort where his Zach Bots would be attendants and he and Paisley would share a profit. Later in the episode, after he confronts and tells the Wild Kratts to move the Tortuga out of his and Paisley's way, he has 4 Zachbots pick up the Tortuga and throw it into the ocean. After Martin in a Blue Whale Power Suit rams into one of Paisley's pavers, he tries to have his Zachbots likely injure Martin but was luckily pulled into the ocean by the Tortuga on time. He also uses his Disrupt-o-Bots on Chris' indri-anaconda power suit malfunction deactivating him and forcing his to dive into the ocean, and later sends his Zachbots after Chris in the water. After Paisley comes into the Tortuga and asks Aviva and the rest of the crew currently on board to move the Tortuga so she can continue paving, and after she redeems herself after seeing a coral reef on the screen and realizing why the Wild Kratts protect the environment after Aviva told her polyps built it and that Earth would turn barren if they didn't protect the environment, she told Zach she was defecting from his organization, to which his reaction was to be him being surprised and angry and proclaiming he will never stop taking what he wants from nature.
- In "Bumblezzzz", he is told by Donita to bring her copy of Villain of the Week back and decides to use a bumblebee drone to deliver it to her. He later is temporarily stopped by Koki, Aviva and Jimmy and told why he should stop and said he doesn't care before blowing them away with his Zachbot's suction arm. Later he attempts to stop the Kratt brothers from stopping him by using his Zachbots and later his drone, only to fail and have a humiliating defeat being scooped up in his drone and sent flying away after promising to leave bumblebees alone but not any other animals.
- In "Chimpanzee and me, he tries to use a chimpanzee mom he kidnapped to use as his mind controlled assistant. He later tries to kidnap her baby and kidnaps Martin in the process when he came to stop him after telling his mind controlled assistant to deactivate Martin's creature power suit and ties him up with his Zachbot's arm. After that he has a humiliating defeat after having his own mind control helmet cause him to dance away.
Why He Doesn't Stand Out?[]
- While he passes the baseline for such as his effects on the environment are very profound, attempting to trap the Wild Kratts back in time and orchestrating the attack on the Amazon Rainforest. Most of his other villainous actions are just standard animal cruelty and kill-the-heroes villainy making him fail to the rest of the other villains.
- He is far too comedic to even be NPE and there are moments where he isn't taken all too seriously, like his feminine screams, constant bumbling antics and tripping over things, and his Zachbots taking his orders literally, prompting him to exclaim his catchphrase "I didn't mean literally". His other catchphrase, "I'll get you Wild Ratts", which he says whenever he is defeated, always followed by one of the Kratt brothers correcting him that they're called the Wild Kratts, is also very comedic. Though the Zach bots takings literally mostly happen while the Wild Kratts aren't around making it an minor prevention at best.
- Despite being a genius robotics person and inventor like Aviva, he is somewhat incompetent and stupid at times as shown in a few examples, such as when he thought painted dogs could paint or when he thought a whale was a fish, even with Paisley having to correct him.
- He suffers from Fridge Horror, as his actions of brainwashing animals to turn into his robots are not confirmed to hurt them in any way or that they are suffering.
- Despite having the most screen time and several unique crimes under his belt, he fails the Heinous Standard to the other 3 major villains in the series: Donita, who traps hundreds of animals in a Fate Worse Than Death by posebeaming them and attempting to make the lemurs in Madagascar extinct by setting loose monkeys, just to distract the Wild Kratts, Gourmand, who is a rouge chef and the only one attempting to actively kill the animals to cook into meals, and trying to do the same to a third of the animals in the Amazon Rainforest, which would have resulted in millions of animal's deaths, and Paisley, who has a track record of paving over animals habitats to build useless masterpieces she thinks people will come to and trying to pave over the entire Amazon Rainforest while giving the animals to the other villains and build a mall where the villains would sell their merchandise.
- Despite him having least redeeming qualities compared to other villains, he is able to genuinely get along with the other villains of the show during their various meetings and team ups.
- He is shown to be somewhat honorable, as shown when Chris gave him the disk holder so he wouldn’t take the baby hippo Hipster to the plane, he kept his word and let them have Hipster (though Chris put cookies in there as a trick).
Trivia[]
- Although he’s a Villainous Benchmark right now, there’s a chance this will change in the upcoming Wild Kratts movie depending on what role he will play and how heinous he will be. If his crimes are no longer standard, he could become IH.
External Links[]
- Zach Varmitech on the Villains Wiki
- Zach Varmitech on the Wild Kratts Wiki