Headscratchers / The Venture Bros.

• In "Victor Echo November", Trianna describes Hank as dressing "like Fred from Scooby Doo". In "Viva los Muertos!", however, we see an expy of the Mystery Gang, complete with colorful van. My question is, does Scooby Doo exist in this universe or not? It seems really unlikely that these guys happen to look like and have names so similar to the original Mystery Gang.
  • It appears that Scooby and the Gang were just like Rusty in that they really did exist, but also were more recognized for having an animated show about them. Action Johnny even mentions sleeping with Velma and getting VD from her during the group therapy episode.
  • There was also an episode where the Impossibles were mentioned as having won a costume contest dressed as the Fantastic Four (who inspired them) so it seems both the original character and their parody can exist without anyone thinking it odd.
• Okay, so in "Momma's Boys", Orpheus detects a sign of danger from one of the Venture brothers, but is confused when it turns out to be Dermott. This doesn't really make sense to me, as Orpheus saw the truth behind Dermott's birth in "Everybody Comes to Hank's", but here he seems to have completely forgot, and at the end of the latter mentioned episode it doesn't look like he got his memory erased.
  • He was in S.P.H.I.N.X., which unless I'm mistaken he wasn't allowed to know about. He probably got something like the day erased in the process.
    • His mind couldn't have been wiped by S.P.H.I.N.X., because as was shown earlier magic users minds can't be wiped by conventional means.
    • Additionally, Orpheus does not go to S.P.H.I.N.X. with Al and Hank at the end of "Everybody Comes to Hank's," so there's no reason to think they'd try to wipe his memory.
  • He may also have blanked his own memory because the vision was so unpleasant. We know he has the power to do so from the many times he wiped Triana's memory.
  • It could be a case of Obfuscating Stupidity. Orpheus, while hammy, is a nice guy, and I doubt he'd just drop a bombshell like that on Dermott with his usual theatrics. On the other hand, Orpheus and Rusty have a scene in the Halloween special discussing how Venture's behavior towards Dermott has changed, and Orpheus didn't say anything about knowing then either.
• I was rewatching the series from the beginning and the first episode of Season 2 bugged me. If Venture has been cloning the boys so many times that it doesn't faze him to the point of joking about it with Brock, then why did he seem so emotional at the beginning of the episode to the point Brock had to drag him back to "deal with what happened to the boys".
  • Well, Rusty Venture is one part horribly wounded person, and one part horrible asshole. He probably was upset over the boys' deaths, and then he remembered that they had clones and stopped caring.
    • He just forgot? That's it?
    • It's not that Rusty forgot that he could clone them, it's that he forgot not to be sad. A good example is "Assisted Suicide." Rusty is neglectful and distant from his kids, partly because he's a dick and partly as a defense mechanism for dealing with their many, many deaths. But once Orpheus steps inside his mind, we see zombie Hanks and Deans everywhere. Consciously, Rusty pushes his family away. Subconsciously, he obsesses over his dead children.
    • Considering the amount of medication he's on, it's more shocking he remembers. Anything. Ever.
    • Except the last episode of Season 1 ended with him emotionlessly telling Brock to get the clones ready. Maybe he was in shock then and the horror of what happened hit him later?
  • Just because he could clone them again doesn't mean some there couldn't be some amount of emotional damage involved. Seeing his sons die yet again, coupled with the excuse that they were no longer around, caused him to decide to go rethink life for a while. It's a combination of mental trauma and selfishness that characterizes Rusty that led him to run away, at least for a while.
  • I was under the impression that he wasn't upset at all, he just wanted an excuse to go traipsing off and do a lot of drugs.
    • Agreed. I think we were supposed to assume that it was trauma, when it was really Rusty taking an opportunity to go off and be more of a selfish prick than usual.
  • Relatedly, I often wonder what Orpheus ends up telling Triana about them (she seem clever enough not to buy the line "The boys never died"). She must know they are dead (she is seen comforting her crying father), but doesn't know they are clones when she talks to the Master. Has somebody been getting her memory wiped?
    • Well, Dr. Orpheus did wipe her memory after an argument about her closet being a portal. So yeah, that's probably what happened.
  • He's not sad about the boys, he's using their deaths as an excuse to run off and avoid responsibility. His "dealing with what happened to them" doesn't mean like, dealing with it emotionally, it means very literally dealing with the procedures of decanting some clones and more or less re-installing the boys minds. While he does love his boys, after a fashion, he doesn't like being responsible for them and likely puts off activating new clones for a bit of a break, but the longer he does it the more likely it is the boys will notice of course (e.g. their last memories are from the year before???), and the more likely people are to ask questions about where they've been.
• In season 2 episode 4 "Escape to the House of Mummies Part II" Dr. Venture expresses disbelief in magic, and refers to Dr. Orpheus as doing, 'Card tricks at children's birthday parties.' He then has a science vs magic argument with Orpheus, where he professes that his scientific mechanical devices are superior to Orpheus's magic. HOWEVER, In season 1 episode 5, "Eeney, Meeney, Miney... Magic!", Dr. Venture used the soul of an orphan to power his 'Joy Can', which would appear to be magical in nature. This leads to a contradiction in his later displeasure with Orpheus' magic.
  • It's explained in that same episode that both magic and science achieve the same results, just with different terms and methods. There is, then, presumably some scientific process by which Rusty could derive power from an orphan heart (shudder.)
  • The thing is, he doesn't not believe in magic, he merely doesn't respect it. Rusty spent enough time around mummy curses and ancient temples as a kid that he's fully aware that magic is real. He's just dismissive of it as a methodology when compared to science. But he's also a wildly amoral person who loves money more than principals, and frankly not a particularly good scientist - Rusty wouldn't respect harnessing an orphan soul using pentagrams and candles, but cramming one into a machine to power a highly saleable Joy Can? He's all about that kind of thing.
• Could someone explain to me what The Monarch's defense was in Shadowman 9? Actually I'm not even sure what he was charged with.
  • He was charged with illegal arching. Their defense essentially came down to Phantom Limb falling for a really stupid lie, and thus the entire thing must have been some sort of set-up. Largely, the entire interrogation was just a test to see how loyal they were to each other.
    • To put it more correctly, this was Dr. Girlfriend's defense for The Monarch. The Monarch's own "defense" was that he did not invent his supervillain identity purely to menace Dr. Venture, but also to try to seduce Dr. Girlfriend, as she would not have been as impressed if he stayed in his place as a henchman. Nevermind the fact that this claim, though true, does nothing to disprove the supposed accusation of The Monarch's unlicensed arching.
  • Right. To put this into real-world terms, think of The Guild as any other Union and The Monarch as a Journeyman who has been selling his services as a Master-level Guild Member. Monarch's defense basically came down to two points. First, that his becoming the Monarch was motivated just as much by his trying to impress Dr. Girlfriend/Queen Etheria as his desire for revenge on Thaddeus Venture, which negated The Guild's charges that he was basically a scab, flouting guild authority. Second, as Doctor-Mrs. Girlfriend-The Monarch pointed out, there was no way The Monarch could have operated as a pseudo-Guild member for so long without The Phantom Limb helping cover for him. This may actually be the gods honest truth, since Phantom Limb was the one who formally signed The Monarch up for Guild Membership in Season 2.
  • A minor correction. The Monarch was a Guild sanctioned villain before Season 2, he just spent several years before becoming one in full blown villain aggression against Dr. Venture. He was a henchman, and on the way to being a full villain, when he started being The Monarch, he just wasn't advanced enough yet. Remember, The Monarch had his own henchmen and Dr. Girlfriend as his Number Two, none of which would have been possible without the legitimate authority. It's just after Phantom Limb framed him in Trial of the Monarch he was expelled from the Guild for breaking their rules and let back in in Victor Echo November.
  • Another minor correction. There are non-guild super-villains in this universe. Indeed, SPHINX under Hunter's command was devoted toward going after them. And as there is a process for heroes without official arch-enemies to apply for one (as Dr. Orpheus did in Season 2) there is a process for unlicensed villains to apply for guild membership. We see St. Cloud do this in Season 5 to become Billy Quizboy's offical arch-enemy. So Monarch's crime isn't being an unlicensed villain (we know he was licensed in Season 1) - it's having entered into the Guild under false pretense as a full villain when he was already a member as a henchman for Phantom Limb. It's less that he's been treated as a scab and more as a professional claiming a doctoral degree when he only had a bachelors degree.
    • The best part about all this is the end of credits scene where it turns out that yes, Phantom Limb WAS dumb enough to fall for the Monarch's ruse.
    • ^ That, or he was already crazy, or when the Limb says no one gets off his Shit List, he means it.
• Why did Brock feel dissatisfied with his job at the end of season 3? His job didn't seem any different than in season 2 when he declined Molotov's offer.
  • Even from my perspective as a viewer, season 3 was waaaay weirder than the previous two seasons. Also, a fair number of the episodes feature Brock being very confused. He didn't quit because he was unsatisfied as much as because he had just had enough.
  • Alternatively, he might've known Rusty could go nuts and try activating the ORB and didn't want to be the one who had to kill him.
  • Also, he'd just watched all of the boys' clones be slaughtered. He's shown more affection for them than their own father has — watching dozens of members of his family die right in front of him probably broke his spirit pretty good.
    • Not only that but with all the clones dead the boy's "safety net" was gone. As death-prone as they are he probably didn't want to have to actually see them die for good. Getting a letter, or a phone call may be easier for him to take.
  • And in "¡Viva los Muertos!", he starts to feel bad about killing henchpersons as freely as he has in the past. The whole thing can likely be chalked up to character development.
• How could people actually work on The ORB and add to it but not know what it does?
  • How could scientists, authors, artists and inventors all "contribute" to a little metal ball? The point of the whole episode is that the ORB conspiracy is impossibly elaborate, like a Dan Brown novel. The fact that ORB itself doesn't make any sense is part of the joke.
  • Actually this is entirely possible on anything sufficiently complex with enough collaborators and is fairly common with programming and other large projects. An example would be the episode of O.R.B. itself. The actual animators of the show only really draw a few frames per animation, the "inbetweening" (drawing the 20+ frames in between the key frames) are usually done by other studios. The animators doing the inbetweening, while contributing to the project, probably have no real idea how the episode as a whole works and fits together, despite being instrumental in the process.
  • Or consider the movie Cube. They were so excited to find out that one of their number worked on the Cube project, only to learn that he only contributed to the outer shell, and has no idea about the inner workings.
    • Both the Cube and the animation examples only work because there's a direction team with a goal in mind running the project. The fact of the matter is that the ORB couldn't have worked or done anything impressive - that's part of the joke. The greatest minds of all time spent hours fiddling with a lump of metal believing it to be the Singularity or the Ultimate Weapon when all it was just a lump of metal.
• In the last episode of the third season, why didn't Brock and the others just call J.J. for a pickup to his island instead of desperately trying to reach him?
  • Maintaining radio silence.
• So why does Dr. Venture even bother to replace Hank and Dean when they die? Does he really love them or is it some other unexplained reason?
  • He genuinely loves them. He's just so fucked up its almost impossible for him to express it.
  • Or maybe he just doesn't want to explain what happened to them.
    • This seems unlikely as the boys died for a pretty legitimate reason with witnesses at the end of season one. If he just didn't care he could have always left it at that instead of activating another set of clones.
    • Based on recent events, I think they're Exactly What It Says on the Tin for him: Replacement Goldfish for the original Hank and Dean that died, I think, 12 clones ago? Having them around makes it feel like the boys are okay and nothing bad ever happened to them, but just talking to them for even a couple seconds makes it painfully clear that these immature shells are not his children that he loved and brings it all back. So he keeps recreating them because he needs them on an emotional level, but he can't actually bring himself to love them because he knows they're a lie.
  • Then of course there's the whole 'walking organ bank' thing - you never know when you'll need another kidney or two.
• When The Monarch starts arching Jonas Venture Jr., J.J. seem rather puzzled about how to proceed. But having apparently paid attention during the forty-odd year he was inside Rusty Venture, wouldn't he be intimately aware of what was expected?
  • Well, J.J. may have a front-row view of Rusty's life, but it was Rusty's life- a life of mediocrity and failure and chasing old fame. J.J. may have just thought of Rusty's fights with the Monarch as two pathetic wannabes slapping each other around, and tuned it out.
• Why does no one understand that Hunter got the sex change because He wanted and not that it was just part of the mission?
  • And you're basing this on...what?
    • You mean the supposed sex change that the season 4 opener reveals was just a faked bit of plastic surgery?
    • And in "Ghosts" he reveals that he actually DID get a sex change, but then reversed it (probably in the same way as Mr. Garrison).
    • Sorry, my bad. I rewatched the episode like immediately after I posted that and paid closer attention and realize what everyone else saw. I feel like such an ass.
  • Honestly, Hunter probably got the sex change because he wanted it and the mission was a good excuse for doing it.
  • This is confirmed as of The Silent Partners.
    • At least, he wanted the boobs. He doesn't mention wanting the other bits all that much.
    • "I miss my breasts! Somewhere inside of me there's a woman screaming to be heard!"
• In 'Doctor Quymm, Medicine Woman' Nancy and Drew are turned off by Hank after they learn he's uncut. But they're British and circumcision is uncommon in the UK! In fact I've heard British women express the reverse attitude, that circumcised penises are less attractive since they're used to uncut.
  • I guess they could have gotten used to having sex with the local, cut natives?
  • Doc and Jackson either think all teenage girls are grossed out by uncut penises or they're making fun of teenage girls that are grossed out by uncut penises. It's cropped up in the show from time to time.
    • "Stop bragging about your circumcision, Hank."
• Really? In the entire Venture compound, there is only one bathroom?
  • Maybe there are several others, but they all use supertechnology Rusty can't maintain, so only one of them still works, and he refuses to ask for help for the others.
  • There are at least three; the one Sgt Hatred was crying in, the one just off the boys' bedroom that Torrid was using, and the one off Rusty's bedroom where he first saw the 'hickey'. Maybe 24 didn't want to risk using one of the others and be caught with his pants down?
    • Sometime in season 4 they show that the hallway one is connected to the boys' room. So there are only 2 confirmed bathrooms.
    • A Series Continuity Error, then... The bathroom Hatred was in was fairly small, with the bath on the left (screen right) and sink on the right, while the one off the bedroom that Torrid was using was much larger, and had both the sink and the bath to the right of the toilet. The door was on the wall that the toilet's back was to in Hatred's, while in Torrid's, the toilet faced the door into the bedroom, and the second door was in a small nook/very short hallway behind the bathtub.
  • Well, the character's really only hang around that one specific part of the compound. It's a huge place, complete with factories and other apartments like Orpheus's, which probably have their own bathrooms. In season 4 it's shown that S.P.H.I.N.X has their own bathroom with a giant bath in the Venture compound factory.
• Why can't Rusty make new clones of the boys? If it's just because they're illegal and now that he's been caught out he can't keep it up that would be understandable, but the reason seems to be that he can only age the clones at normal human speed instead. However, in The Buddy System he has a clone of the boy slapped together by the time evening came; even though it was incomplete, the clone was obviously a grown (but gooey) kid and not a couple of hours old zygote, and it wasn't just one of Hank or Dean's clones quickly modified since Rusty mentions fixing his genetic propensity towards cancer. Not wanting to clone 24 as anything older than a baby is understandable, since the clone would come out of the vat without any memories and raising him from infancy would be easier than trying to teach a mindless adult, but he should have his recordings of the boy's memories stashed somewhere.
  • I'm more bugged by the fact that Orpheus was unable to bring back Number 24, claiming he can't bring back the dead. But he tried to do just that in the episode where we first discover the boys are clones, and he claimed to have resurrected several other people in the past, saying it's a relatively trivial matter.
    • He stated before that he needs both a body and a soul to resurrect the dead, and being unable to find the boy's souls is what stopped him the first time, 24 is just a skull now, he has no body to attach his soul to.
  • His equipment was probably seized by OSI.
    • He could still clone if he was motivated. He would've cloned 21 if he believed the comic was worth as much as it was, and he would've cloned Hitler if he wasn't, you know, Hitler.
  • I think he just doesn't want to, so that the boys actually learn survival skills by thinking that their safety net is gone. As long as they still use the "learning machine", they can be uploaded into a new clone body eventually. Or cloning is illegal in his world, and he doesn't want to risk it getting out.
  • I'm pretty sure in one episode they explicitly explain that cloning is illegal and now that he's been found out by the OSI, they're keeping a close watch on him.
    • Cloning has been illegal at least since the Brisbyland episode.
  • Plus when 21 wants to clone 24 Rusty says he'll be a baby, so I think all the clones start as babies...
  • For that matter, why would Brock go to so much effort to save Hank from the Goliath Serum rather than just killing him and booting up a new clone? Although, in a bit of Fridge Brilliance, it makes Dr. V seem like less of a Jerkass for taking two kidneys (one from each of them) rather than just one.
    • Because then he'd have to kill Dean too, to ensure that they didn't know they were clones. Also, no women, no children thing?
    • Plus, Brock isn't really pure evil and all?
    • That's probably it. Brock genuinely loves the boys, as has been shown time and time again. He's constantly risking his life to save them — he doesn't view them as disposable. I mean, he jokes around in the season 2 premiere when they're dead and their new bodies are cooking, but that's probably him coping.
  • The clones age as the brothers age- the fetus-like clones we see in "Perchance to Dean" are just the younger versions of the clones that were killed by the Monarch in Season 3. When 21 asks Rusty to clone 24, Venture says that he can't just make an adult- he can start the process, but then the clone has to age naturally. I think "instant cloning" is beyond the tech of the Venture 'verse- or at least, beyond Rusty's capabilities.
  • The Venture cloning facilities were destroyed in the season 4 premier, so they're unusable after that point. The reveal that Rusty himself is a clone also makes it pretty likely that Jonas was the one to build the cloning facility, not Rusty(as with most of the useful technology on the Venture compound). So not only would rebuilding the facilities be illegal and expensive, he probably wouldn't even know how to do it in the first place.
• Hunter is a pretty aware guy, a modern lorekeeper in a world of wizards, mummies, Japanese demons, superspies, villainous organizations and aliens, Hunter is THE man with the in-depth knowledge regarding many of the worlds conspiracies. But what on earth would drive him to tell his trainee and dear friend Brock Sampson that Vampires don't exist? Meanwhile, Jefferson Twilight, who was introduced only 4 episodes later, is on the prowl for Blaculas; black though they may be, they are still vampires, and not even the discreet, masquerading vampires that would seek to hide themselves either, since they raped Jefferson's poor mom right in front of him and let him live.
  • Have we seen any white vampires? I'm willing to believe that Hunter personally himself killed them all, and the thought of blackulas didn't even cross his mind.
    • dats racist.
    • Jefferson was not willing to rule out Caucasian vampires as the cause of the problem in "What Goes Down, Must Come Up". Presumably, they existed at one time, and if they've been wiped out, Jefferson isn't aware of it.
  • Hunter says that female vampires are fictional. To the best of my knowledge we have only seen male vampires. Maybe only males can catch the Vampire bug or whatever the hell it is.
  • A) It was the '80s when that scene took place. It's very possible that he had never encountered a vampire and just wrote them off as a whole, having assumed that because he had seen everything else, that they must not exist. B) Conspiracy theorists don't believe every single theory, no matter how crazy they might be, or even things that are definitely provable.
  • Vampires don't exist, but Draculas and Blackulas do.
• The entire episode Every Which Way But Zeus, just bugs me. We never see any more than four hoplite guards ushering henchmen into the arena. Four guys... and apparently Shoreleave and Henchman 21 can't kill all four of them in less than five seconds. Seriously. They are two of the most ass-kicking individuals in the show. You could make the argument that they were afraid of getting set upon by "Zeus" if they started anything, but I still think they (or even just one of them) should have been able to overpower the four guards while they were inside the barn, freed all the other henchmen and THEN went out to take on "Zeus" and Zero. I mean... its 21 and Shoreleave for crying out loud! One of them once took on a laboratory full of dudes with guns and the other went toe-to-toe with BROCK SAMSON. And when they finally DO take on the guards, they predictably have no trouble taking them out. It just really stretches credulity, even in this show.
  • They're also both smart enough to want to know what they're getting into before engaging. By the time they do fight the guards, General 21 has already figured out Zero's identity and the secret behind Zeus's appearances. Prior to that, for the information they have, yes, they COULD take down the four guards, and then Zeus can blast them both to death with a lightning bolt. Knowing your enemy is better than fighting blind.
  • There's also the fact that while Henchman 21 and Shoreleave could probably kill all the guards single-handed, there's little they could do protect the less combat-able henchman - most of whom were support-level techies like Billy Quizboy and Pete White. Shoreleave's too much of a hero to take the chance of innocents being hurt and there's probably some kind of Guild Law regarding selling out your fellow prisoners when taken hostage that 21 would adhere to, even ignoring his own latent heroic impulses.
• Also from Every Which Way But Zeus, assuming every Captain Sunshine has the same powers, did anyone else notice that "Zeus" apparently attacked Shore Leave at night?
  • The Monarch built a device that duplicates his successor's powers and happens to revitalize him if it's used on him at night. Maybe he stole or duplicated it specifically for night battles.
• Why does everyone have black eyebrows?
  • Making an outline and filling it in with color is hard when the object in question is tiny and thin. You basically have to make two almost parallel lines and then fix up the ends, it's a nightmare just for a still drawing, let alone animation.
    • But couldn't you just make the eyebrow a different color without outlining it?
    • I think it's because the show is paying homage to Johnny Quest and in that series all the eye brows were just black.
  • They don't. Young Billy Quizboy has reddish eyebrows like his hair.
• Why isn't Rusty sitting on a mountain of money? Noting, of course,that he actually seems pretty wealthy - Why doesn't he use his cloning process to provide human organs (like he's already effectively done for himself),making a killing in the process? Did he just not think of it?
  • Human cloning is illegal in the United States.
  • And the technology isn't perfect, it still takes a lifetime to grow something that's of any use.
  • He grew a clone from scratch in a *single afternoon*, which implies control over differentiation and what's to stop him from doing it in some other country?
  • Did you see that thing? It was hardly a perfect clone, it was hardly human at all, plus he pretty much admitted that it was mentally a blank slate.
  • Which stops him from cloning organs how...?
  • Think if it this way. In Doc's world a bunch of guys got a replacement metal heart.......because they really liked Iron Man. In Doc's world all of his awesome superscience that'd blow our minds is not only common place but his superscience is rather mediocre in comparison to everyone else's.
  • Basically another example of Reed Richards Is Useless. In the real world, organ rejection is a serious problem under even ideal circumstances. Presumably the science in this area isn't much better in the Venture Brothers universe. For all the things super-science can do, it can't cure baldness. And most of the super-scientists we've seen were less concerned about helping humanity than they were about getting rich/impressing people/getting laid.
• In Assisted Suicide, why exactly did Dr. Girlfriend and the Monarch have a Henchman 21-sized gimp suit?
  • The Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend were supposedly in an open marriage. Maybe those were leftovers from their last awkward attempt.
• The being "broke all of the time" story lines on this show really bug me. Rusty Venture has created numerous clones...had a successful TV show and his father was a millionaire inventor/scientist. If there are any situations that would mean that you DO have money, those are them (they?). The Ventures would have so much money,they'd be TIRED of having so much.
  • It was explicitly stated within the show by Rusty himself (during the O.R.B episode) that he has never seen a penny of any Rusty Venture, Boy Adventurer merchandise sales. Also, Rusty's shallowness as a person and failure as a scientist has been demonstrated time and time again, from the new car he just up and bought when he wanted to feel young again (during Mid Life Chrysalis), to the sentient "Joy Can" that he built which had to be destroyed before it could be sold (in Enie, Miney... Magic!). The cloning facility must have cost a fortune by itself and the fact that he kept it secret means he never reaped any profit from it beyond keeping his boys "alive" as he brought them along on dangerous expeditions. It's not hard to believe that Rusty has been constantly squandering his father's fortune over the past 20 years while the surely astronomical bills of maintaining a super-sonic jet, cloning facility and giant super-science compound have piled up without him making any significant contributions to the scientific community to make money off of.
  • Ok... so a lawsuit for the merchandising and as for the cloning...HUMAN cloning may be illegal; cloning animals is not. And I'm sure that even in the "Venture Universe" the utility of cloning animals can easily be seen. And even if it can't be and the act of cloning may be illegal, teaching people to clone is not.
    • I kinda assumed Rusty's just really poor with money. Were he to be more efficient with his spending, he'd likely be much wealthier, but due to his apathy, he's not really that motivated.
    • Rusty being bad with money is pretty much canon, after Dr. Killinger fixed his finances in about a week.
    • Jonas is what Rusty could be if he overcame his personal problems and bad habits. For starters, he doesn't know how to run Venture Industries. Because most of it was built by his father, he doesn't seem to care about it except for financial gain, and so many areas of the compound are abandoned and in disrepair. He also never had a staff, and seemingly tries to run everything by himself.
  • In season 6 its shown that Rusty Venture doesn't seem to understand how high level business and R&D works. This throw away moment seems to this troper as a moment of actually rather sweet character description for rusty in that he doesn't even consider consumer goods that just make the world more pointless as things worth making. He only tries for super science that makes the world a better place and doesn't realize that they aren't fiscally viable. His father might have been exactly the same since he got rich in the height of the cold war when the US government would throw around millions for anything to get them ahead of the Russians, which means that his father might have only gotten rich on those contracts instead of any of his actual inventions like helper and the X-1. This is further proven in that Rusty seems to not know any business contacts that aren't scientific symposium's and the military.
• In Operation P.R.O.M., Henchman 21 quits working for The Monarch and Dr. Mrs. The Monarch in disgust after he confesses to having a monster crush on the latter and having made-out with the latter over the comatose body of the former... and neither of them care because all super-villains are supposed to be swingers! Not only does this contradict everything we know about The Monarch, given his reaction to the "tell-all" book revealing Dr. Girlfriend's past "Number Two-ing" for various other villains (i.e. calling her a whore and kicking her out of his cocoon) - it also contradicts everything we saw in the Season 3 opener where Phantom Limb has MAJOR issues with his "Queen Etheria" having a quickie in the backseat of "Man-O-Taur"'s car.
  • Not to mention you'd expect Gary - who has been hyper-competent in Season 4 - to have kept better track of the movements of his bosses given his encyclopedic knowledge about everything else regarding their operations and his boss's likes and dislikes.
  • It's possible that they were just bluffing in order to sweep the potential drama under the rug. Either that, or their views on polygamy relaxed when they got married.
  • The Monarch doesn't mind because he believes he was part of a drunken threesome. It's the thought of Dr. Mrs getting it on with people he hates, like Phantom Limb and Dr. Venture, that enrages him. Guys she was with before him, same. If he knew that he was unconscious, and Sheila and 21 were bonding over how hard it is to work for the Monarch, he probably would be less okay with it.
  • I think the Monarch learned to be more mellow about Sheila's past sex life after season 2. And they might've started to experiment after marriage, after all. Besides, remember Monarch was already masturbating to the tought of his girlfriend cheating on season 1, so it's hard to gauge how mad he really was.
• Other than Rule of Funny, why did they have to erase Hank's memory of getting laid? They explain the memory eraser can't pick and choose memories to erase, that it erases the most recent memories... so can't they just erase everything AFTER him hooking up with her?
  • The only thing I can think of is the fact they might think it's more cruel to let him remember that and not realize the squick involved... but they were fine with the idea of not telling him and letting him be happy before.
  • I figured that the technology was thorough but imprecise - like they could erase entire days but not hours or minutes. Since Hank's getting laid and learning the truth occurred during the same day, there was no way to guarantee they'd be able to hit the precise point between when Hank had sex and when he learned the truth. Not that Hunter would care enough to try and do that in the first place, even if they could.
  • Remember how much squick there was from one night of them together? Imagine if he forgot why it was gross, and decided to go back. Now imagine how much squick there'd be if they had sex multiple times. Probably for the best that message Hank left for himself didn't specify who he did the deed with.
• What color is Dean's hair supposed to be? When the show first came out, I saw his hair as red, but now it seems more brown.
  • Ruddy brown that leans more to the brown end in most lights?
  • His natural hair color is auburn or dark ginger. At the start of season 5, he dyed it black or very dark brown. By season 6-7, his hair's faded and grown out, that's why it's still brown at the ends but now his original color at the roots.
• Was anyone else a little confused by the Monarch's "confession" in the Shallow Gravy special? He seems to imply he was directly responsible for killing HEL Pe R, which he was only partially. He had the bomb installed, but as we know he didn't activate it (the detonator was on Mrs. Monarch chair). So either he's embellishing the fact that he was basically the reason HEL Pe R "died", or he did actually activate the bomb. If the latter is true, it kind of defeats the whole mystery, especially since they had the lingering shot on the detonator to imply it was for the taking of whoever wanted it.
  • Would it be the first time that Jackson and Hammer resolve an important plot-point in a completely anti-climactic manner? They won't let Gary find the 'real' killer, so he would have to settle for the next best thing : the man who made H.E.L.P.E.R into an explosive gift for Dr Venture. The Monarch making little case of his henchmen, it's no wonder he doesn't realize that he's basically confessing to the murder of 21's best friend and making himself a very dangerous and personal enemy.
  • The Monarch is just taking credit for something he didn't do to make himself seem more badass. He did the same thing at the beginning of Season 7.
• How can Triana have been "afraid of [her] closet all her life" if she and Dr. Orpheus hadn't been living there that long?
  • 1) She always subconsciously (possibly due to her magical abilities) picks a room on the same side of the house where the portal to the Necropolis has to be. 2) Teenager exaggeration.
    • 3) Maybe it actually is the same closet. The large houselike area they reside in within the Venture compound hardly looks like it's actually an "old arachnid research lab"... maybe Doc Orpheus has the whole thing set up as some sort of pocket dimension that he attaches to a real world area so he can have an address to get mail at.
• Perhaps it's just Idiot Ball and Rule of Funny or something, but why the hell would Henchmens 21 and 24 (as it is implied if not outright confirmed) write "The Flight of the Monarch" in the episode "The Trial of the Monarch" if they knew it was only going to lead to trouble. It seems that a good deal of the plot on the second season, about the Monarch trying to get back Doctor Girlfriend could have been avoided if they just didn't make the damn book.
  • I don't think we know why they wrote it, but we know that 24 didn't think his pal was dumb enough to put the Monarch's face on the cover. So yeah, they knew the trouble it could create, but at least one of them thought of using some tricks to prevent their boss from reading it.
  • It's clear, though, that henchmen don't make a lot of money, and they do seem to have trouble with living expenses - 24 mentions he needs to pay his dad for the car they're seen driving, and 21 was living with his mom. So maybe the book was an attempt to make some extra money. Besides, it's not like they have any respect for the Monarch.
• Season three finale. Two questions—1) what on Earth was marching the Venture clone slugs between the two armys supposed to accomplish? Was it the ceasefire? Was that what they were expecting to happen? 2) What's with the Ventures and Brock jumping out of the coccoon after the first commercial when they arrive at the compound? How did they get there? Why didn't the Monarch just kill them while he had them in his ship?
  • 1. The clone slugs were supposed to be a distraction / disposable army to interfere with the OSI-Monarch battle. It's just that no one planned for the Monarch to get into his spinning, laser firing battle suit and slaughter all of the clones in less than three minutes. Besides, it got Hatred out of the Panic Room and not try to kill himself (there). 2. The Venture gang climbed into the coccoon as it was leaving so they would get a quick ride back to the compound. That was a place normally for henchman deployment so the Monarch didn't know that they were there.
• What is the name of the track often used in the show (the upbeat-ish sounding one with a chorus singing "zoom zoom zoom zoom" along with the melody), as seen here, and where can I find it?
  • Or this electronica-esque track? Both pop up in the show on more than one occasion, but are nowhere to be found on the official soundtrack.
• Could somebody explain to me why in the earlier seasons Dr. Girlfriend has such a huge problem with the monarch arching Dr. Venture but in the later seasons she doesn't?
  • Because he treated her much poorer than he does now, he took her completely for granted the first season. During season two, while she's with Phantom Limb, she sees the difference between someone whose just generally villainous, Limb, and someone witg genuine passion, Monarch, and she finds passion much more appealing. During their break up The Monarch also realised how much he really loves her so he's readjusted his priorities to place her at the top of his list. When the series started they were in a massive rut and The Monarch's obsession with destroying Venture was literally all he thought about, this has changed.
    • Not only that but she's now seen what he's like when NOT arching Venture.. In "Tears of a Sea Cow" he was equal parts chronically depressed and scarily homicidal. Letting The Monarch devote his sadistic tendencies to arching Rusty is clearly in almost everyone's best interests.
• Why does Brock's Sphinx uniform include some pistols holstered at his shoulders? His Doesn't Like Guns preference is one of his defining character-traits.
  • From a recent episode, it looks like he made them into holsters for his larger knives.
• When The Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend got married, she made him promise never to arch Dr. Venture again. When, how, and why exactly did she allow The Monarch to arch Rusty again?
  • It was in the episode "The Lepidopterists" when the Monarch arched Jonas Jr. and the latter used lethal force against the Monarch. This reached a certain level where Guild guidelines stipulated that the Monarch could seek retribution against Jonas Jr's family members, namely Rusty. From here on out the arching of Rusty was considered official. Considering that Dr. Girlfriend was the one who arranged it with the Guild to let the Monarch arch Jonas Jr., she likely counted on something like this to happen to get the Monarch back into his more tradition villainy against Rusty. One of the reasons that she didn't like the Monarch arching Rusty was because it wasn't official, after the events of this episode it's probable she didn't mind it anymore, now that it wasn't going to get her husband and herself into trouble with the Guild.
  • My main question is why Dr. Girlfriend allowed The Monarch to arch Rusty again, when she made it clear for their wedding that she didn't like it when The Monarch arched Rusty.
    • I think she explained to the Moppets that arching Rusty is something that makes The Monarch happier than anything else, so she might have let him go back on his promise.
  • In the Season 3 premiere, it's revealed that getting the Monarch to give up arching Dr. Venture is something the Council of Thirteen wanted her to do, not something she wanted for herself.
• Why does Triana need to move to her mom and stepfather to study magic? It doesn't make much sense, considering her father is said to be the more powerful necromancer/sorcerer/warlock than Outrider. Did I miss any further explanation?
  • Her mother seems to be a powerful sorceress in her own right, and the Master said "Forget your father, he wants to save you from his life, not yours" and that apparently included no magical education. Note that Triana seems to be taught magic in some sort of school rather than at home, so maybe that the Master believed that her father's home wasn't the best environment for her education, what with Orpheus apparently being bitter about magic on some level.
• In the Season Five finale, after multiple failed attempts to torture Dr. Venture, the Monarch lets him go. Little afterwards, he tells his wife that he finally managed to break Rusty. Am I missing something here? Was the Monarch just trying save face for being unable to torture Dr. Venture, or did seeing Rusty as a pathetic loser give him the victory he so desired?
  • Honestly, either is plausible.
  • The ending was essentially a Double Subversion of the Monarch getting his revenge. First, he fails pathetically at torturing Rusty and lets him go. It seems like he's finally let go of his obsessive vendetta against Rusty, and perhaps learnt that the two of them are not so different. Then, that is subverted when we see that the Monarch considers this his ultimate triumph over Rusty.
• In the episode Victor. Echo. November., Brock is super focused on saving the boys even after Rusty reports that most of his blood is on the floor. However, by this point, we know the boys are clones (though we don't know about all the slugs yet). Why is Brock so bent on protecting the boys in this case? Is it just easier not to have to make up a story about their deaths (again)? But if Rusty dies, wouldn't that be worse?
  • It all boils down to this; Brock loves the boys. He loves them enough that they override his training and his brain a lot of the time. I get the feeling that the clones act as a kind of emotional reset for whatever reason, clearly the memories aren't totally up to date and they don't start maturing as people until the clones aren't a thing anymore. Brock probably doesn't like that, and Rusty is sturdy enough to last the 20 minutes it would take Brock to get them.
  • Side note, Brock and Doc are running an illegal (even in the context of the show) cloning program. Kids dying from a random attack, or a no-name villain of the week? Easily glossed over. But this is a clear, organized assault. Hank and Dean's deaths will be confirmed by the Guild, which will make bringing the boys back a bureaucratic nightmare, to say the least.
• So how old are Hank and Dean?
  • As of the end of Season 5, my guess is the current Hank and Dean clones are 17-18. This is based on the fact that they celebrated their 16th birthdays in Season 2 (I Know Why The Caged Bird Kills), graduated high school in Season 4 (Pomp and Circuitry) and had a fair bit of time pass before the end of Series 5. IF they're still 17, they're on the verge of full legal adulthood. Of course the original Hank & Dean would be 3 years older since the birthdate on their drivers licenses was 3 years too young.
  • Season 7 reveals that only two years have passed in universe since season 1, so they're roughly 18. Ish.
• Is Dermott older than Hank and Dean? Or the same age?
  • He's younger than the original Hank and Dean but roughly 1-2 years older than the final clones. My guess is based on the fact that he was just barely old enough to qualify as a minor when attending the Rusty Venture day camp, when Hank and Dean were 16 and the fact that he had a job before starting to work at Hank Co. According to The venturefans.Org timeline, Rusty first had sex about 2-3 years before first being seen with baby Hank and Dean, putting Rusty's fling with Dermott's mom sometime in the year or two after Dean and Hank were born.
• Why did Sphinx reject Hank? He passed all their tests with flying colors. Was it because they just didn't want him or did Brock pull some strings? Or both?
  • Short answer - Hunter found Hank to be annoying and was hoping the kid would wash out. When Brock returned from his mission he likely told Hunter he'd take care of it and elected to take a more gentle route because he honestly didn't want Hank trying to imitate him. Never mind that Hank has a lot of experience in dealing with weirdness - he is still a naive, death-prone teenager with more guts than sense.
• Is Billy fully aware of what OSI did to him? Or did he get re-mind wiped at the end of "The Revenge Society"?
  • It seems like it in the post-credits stinger. He's waking up and shouting at Pete White about the weird dream he just had... right before he realizes Sgt. Hatred is next to him. At that point they probably had to wipe his mind a second time to erase THAT memory.
• What's with the Schedule Slip? Has it been cancelled?
• Did Vendata die along with the other Guild members in "All This And Gargantua-2!" or is he just MIA?
  • Answered with a vengeance in season 7.
• Why is the show described as being about Hank & Dean even "at first?" Watching season 1 it seems like Rusty and Brock are the main characters from the very start, and Hank & Dean are at best Supporting Protagonists. Unless the eponymous Venture "Brothers" of the show are Rusty and Jonas Jr.
  • There is a bit of Protagonist Title Fallacy going on, in that, while Hank and Dean weren't more of main characters than Brock and Doc during season 1, the show is a parody of Jonny Quest, which was titled after the Kid Hero.
• Just now noticing this, but why on earth did Paul "Humongoloid" Entmann stay small after he was released from the fallout shelter? The "grow" mode of the shrink-ray was shown to work between then and when he was crushed by a rocking chair, and he seemed like he would have been desperate to return to normal.
  • There's no way of knowing for sure but it's possible that growth effects of the ray aren't permanent on something that wasn't shrunk by it (hence explaining why it wasn't used to make giant piles of gold). So maybe he'd be returned to normal temporarily and then would shrink again. Since he wouldn't be able to operate the ray in his smaller form and since his "friends" wouldn't always be available to keep helping him return to normal size, that would explain him spending his time small. Of course, they may just not have bothered telling him about the shrink-ray.
  • I'm not sure the shrink gun would work on someone already affected by size-changing energies, either.
• So in "Powerless in the Face of Death", Orpheus uses his title as Necromancer in the traditional sense and says he can raise the dead. But in "Blood of the Father", he says it's basically just a meaningless title to replace wizard or warlock because they sound silly nowadays. Can he raise the dead or not? I mean, he might not have the actual power to do it, but his reasoning behind being called a necromancer in those two episodes is what really bugs me.
  • In "A Very Venture Halloween" a group of his magical friends got together and showed the ability to raise the dead, many of them having shown less power than Orpheus demonstrated. Orpheus was horrified by what they'd done. Similarly, he was horrified when he thought he'd brought Dean and Hank back as zombies. He only seemed to be willing to try resurrecting them because he felt guilty about their deaths and then because he thought they were zombies because of him. So while he may have it in his power to raise the dead (as zombies at least) he doesn't seem to think it's a good idea. So the name Necromancer is technically appropriate because he could resurrect the dead but he doesn't want to use the power so the name may not be all that meaningful, still he has to use it because all other names sound silly.
    • I mean another point is that in "Powerless in the Face of Death", he tells Triana that he's had many customers that he raised from the dead, including Reagan (until his check bounced). So he obviously has the ability to bring fully functioning humans back from the dead.
• Why was Dean named as the heir to the Guild in "The Revenge Society"? If his claim was that his great-grandfather was the original sovereign then shouldn't leadership have fallen to Rusty and/or Jonas Jr? Even if it went to Dean, as a twin shouldn't it have been shared with Hank? Don't get me wrong, he's the smart choice for the Sovereign to have made. Rusty would have run it into the ground. Jonas Jr wouldn't have seen the point in even having an evil organisation and would probably have tried to turn it into something else. Hank would have made everyone into Batman/Batman villains. Dean is the only one who would have just handed it back to him. It just seems like someone, particularly Rusty, should have questioned why it went to Dean.
  • It's possible that Guild law places the order of succession upon the youngest living heir, seeing as how Dean is the younger Venture brother (by a lousy 4 minutes).
• In "Maybe No Go" Billy is talking about how things would be different without that red ball and mentions this line "there's no RZA, and I lost my virginity to Side A of Wu-Tang Forever.” We know Billy lost his virginity to a trio of prostitutes he thought were vampires in "The Silent Partners". We saw no music playing nor any apparent opportunity for him to put any on. When exactly would Wu-Tang Forever or indeed any music have come into this?
  • It was established during the Monarch's "Crucible" with the Council of Thirteen that sometimes music might be playing during a certain scene In-Universe, but if the rights to the song are too expensive, we won't necessarily hear it.
• Related to the above, "Maybe No Go" was about stealing the ball from Duran Duran's breakout music video for "Is there Something I Should Know?" Did it never occur to anyone that the band could have simply gotten another ball?
  • The ball is implied to have some magical properties, though (or, at least, Billy and White believe as much.)
• So what's the deal with the Guild's E.M.A levels? THE MIGHTY MONARCH, with a supposedly bottomless supply of funds from his inheritance, a giant flying base of operations capable of sustaining the hundreds of henchmen in his employ, a brilliant right-hand-man and eventually a hyper-competent #1 Henchman, and a flying car, is only a Level 6; while Harangutan, a singular villain that live out of an RV, is a Level 10?
  • Following the events of "All This And Gargantua-2!", it's likely that The Monarch's rating - along with those of what remained of The Guild - were re-accessed as they were taking stock of their assets. By that point, Monarch had lost his cocoon base and most of his henchmen. While he still had his inheritance, he was operating out of his father's old house which was in need of major renovations to function as a home much less as a super-villain lair. Throw in the fact that with Dr. Mrs. The Monarch on The Council of Thirteen she's too busy with Guild business to act as his Number Two and The Monarch's threat-level on-paper isn't what it was. And that's ignoring whatever influence Wide Whale has been throwing around to screw with The Monarch...
    • Well, Wide Whale is leasing his arching time with Rusty to all kinds of people, from Red Death to Wes Warhammer to Harangtan. Maybe primaries can "rent out" their adversaries to lesser villains. The lessers get public exposure, and Wide Whale gets money, favors, and connections without having to do any work.
  • The Monarch was shown not to be a team player, when it comes to the Guild. There's a lot of politics involved, and he pretty much just bought his way in to arch Rusty - who was himself a decadent, lower-level protagonist. Red Death doesn't seem to have any henchmen or even a headquarters, yet he's a level 10.
• To what extent are we meant to buy into Rusty and Ben's rationale that Hank and Dean's clones are Hank and Dean? Sure, they may be functionally identical, but that doesn't make them the same person. It's clearly shown in more than one episode that the clones don't share the same consciousness as the originals. Effectively, Rusty just callously replaced his sons with different people. The rationale that the clones are just a way to patch a "really big boo-boo" doesn't really hold up except from Rusty's personal perspective. It doesn't make his actual sons any less dead. Yet, the argument seems to be made somewhat genuinely when Ben makes it. Are we supposed to call bullshit on it or not?
  • The memories from the previous batch are transferred to the new clones, but the combination of mental resets and Rusty's crappy parenting slows their development. Assuming the Season Two Hank and Dean never died, they saw more of the actual world, and not just the Boy Adventurer world Rusty keeps dragging them to. Also, once the clones were destroyed, Rusty's parenting slowly improved- no more dragging the boys into the jungle or to space or other hazardous environments.
  • Ben’s rationale is meant to work for both himself and Rusty, not nesscessarily for the audience. Ben explains that losing a child is so incredibly painful, the easiest the way to fix it is to simply make a copy. For this troper, it’s certainly NOT a healthy way of dealing with loss or how to raise a child. But Rusty is a very damaged person and presumably so is Ben. They believe that clones are the same thing because they simply cannot bear the thought of their children really being dead. To them, the clone are proof their child never died. But it obviously doesn’t work for everyone as Dean certainly doesn’t think he is the same the original Dean.
• Why is Henchman 21 so distraught over killing Harangutan and other villains? I'm pretty sure he's killed people in Season 4 (say, the gladiator games), and he definitely killed a little kid in Season 5 (by accident, but still)?
  • Because the Guild looks down on villains killing other villains that are part of the Union. Worse, it was a henchman who caused the deaths. So, the worst case scenario would be that the Monarch and Mrs. Dr. The Monarch could be killed for it.
• Hate to drag you all back to Season 1, but when we are first introduced to Phantom Limb in "Tag Sale, You're It!", the Monarch seems to be unaware of the former relationship between Dr. Girlfriend and Limb ("Didn't you work with him or live near him or something?"). This is pretty inconsistent with the Monarch's later-revealed backstory: He used to hench for Limb, and dressed up as the Monarch just to hit on Dr. Girlfriend at the Guild Ball, hosted by Limb.
  • Assuming it's not Early Installment Weirdness, we can work off of the fact that Dr. Girlfriend was never aware of the Monarch being a Henchman. (In particular, #9, the one with the staring.) The Monarch wouldn't want to reveal he knew more about their relationship than he theoretically should.
• Why did Kano stay silent about killing Doctor Venture Sr. in the episode ORB where later we found he killed the cyborg Venturion aka Don Fitzcarraldo aka Blue Morpho when answering Brock's question with a simple no or attested to having to do anything with possible murder of Jonas Venture Sr.?
  • Most likely because at the time, the creators hadn't decided if he really killed Jonas Sr yet. They're literally making this up as they go along.
  • Probably because he didn't want to admit his culpability in Jonas' potential death after Team Venture shattered his frozen body trying to load him into the PROBLEM module. They all might have thought his head didn't make it, and that it was their fault that he couldn't be revived.
• I only seen a few episodes of the series. Why are the super villains in this universe taking orders from an organization known as the Guild? They decide who you can or cannot arch. I can see street level super criminals obeying them, but high level super villains? Why does The Monarch put up with them? Why doesn't he secretly hire an assassin to kill the entire Guild? He would be free to arch Rusty, and do whatever he pleases. They're bad guys, so why the loyalty to them?
  • Partly to not provoke the OSI and start a war between factions, because the guild is now partially led by his wife and because the guild is much more capable than what we've seen.
  • The whole point of the Guild is that it was invented to tightly regulate super villainry, because otherwise it's hugely destructive, both to the world and the villains themselves. They basically take dangerous, mentally unstable people under their wing and direct them at carefully selected, safe targets. From the low levels' perspective, they get union help, a career path and a veneer of professionalism. From the high levels' perspective, they get to maintain a world order which benefits them with immense privilege, prestige and stability. Any freelancing villain is quickly gotten rid of.
  • "It's like this: if someone's pointing a gun at you, you call the police; if a bunch of guys are pointing guns at you, you call SWAT; if they're dressed in spandex and pointing a laser at you, you call the OSI, and they're dressed regular and pointing a super laser at your daughter, THAT'S when you call Sphinx. (Sphinx!)"
  • Well, why does anyone join a union of any kind? Without the Guild to help with rules and regulations and the like, villains can be eaisly picked apart one-by-one by, say, the OSI. The entire system of the Venture Bros. operates with the assumption that everyone involved is able to put aside short-term desires in the name of enlightened self-interest; it's simply better for all the villains to play along and join the Guild, especially if they think they can end up on top of the heap.
• Why doesn't Dr. Mrs. The Monarch have her own distinct identity now that she's part of the council of 13? Is there even a purpose to her new outfit otherwise? As the opening to The High Cost Of Loathing shows us, her new position prevents her from having a part in Monarch's threat level reassessment, so it genuinely does seem as if she's not affiliated with The Monarch in the eyes of the Guild any longer. Yet her villain moniker is still "The Monarch's wife". Is she considered her own villain or not, and if she is, why does she still have the relic name?
  • It's possible she willingly kept her villain name out of love and loyalty to her husband.
  • It probably has nothing to do with her affiliation, like someone who takes a last name in a marriage. Dr. Mrs. The Monarch is just who she is. Her moniker isn't so much a title so much as it is just her new name. What position she takes has no bearing on her villain name.
• In season 7, during his date with Novia, Doctor Venture mentions the last time he had sex was with one of the hookers he hired for Hank's graduation (back in season 4). Now, I'm wondering, why didn't he hire any hookers after he got rich in season 6? He has the money, he lacks the ethics, and, he's in New York, of all places.
  • He thinks himself too grand by that point to just have sex with an escort. He's after prestige, not gratification.
  • Relatedly: does this mean that he realises that his participation in the orgy in "The Unicorn in Captivity" (a much more recent episode) was a simulation?
• It is mentioned a few times that the Guild doesn't tolerate sexual assault - King Gorilla is kicked out because of it, and Doctor Orpheus instruction video mentions it as well. Then, how come Sergeant Hatred is allowed to molest children during the time of his affiliation with the Guild? He even mentions they consider it a "special skill".
  • The Guild might take slight issue with sexual assault, but it's not why King Gorilla was kicked out. He eviscerated and sodomized (half of) Vince Neil on national television. As Dr. Mrs. The Monarch has mentioned, the Guild is very strict on cold blooded murder, and the murder of a celebrity on national TV probably most likely elevated OSI/government response. As far as the instructional video, the villain used in the example regarding sexual assault is later revealed to be one of the Council of 13, so it's hard to say how seriously they take such offenses.
  • As I recall the Guild promises no sexual assault against their specific arch-enemy, not necessarily that they're banned from assaulting anyone.
• Why are vampires called Draculas?
  • I assumed it was a joke on the common tendency in pop culture towards A Kind of One, as in "a Medusa" (which has also been used in the show) or "a pegasus." Maybe people in the VB universe just have a tendency to call supernatural species by the names of their most famous individuals.
• In "The Bellicose Proxy", after Billy and Pete receive the Level 1 Guild threat, the rest of the team initially don't treat it with much concern (with Brock even asking if aspirin was needed), but shortly afterwards, they're treating it as if it were a much bigger thing (with Brock shooting them with paintballs simulating blood). Why the sudden change from nonchalance to actively practicing a real arching? Were they humoring Billy and Pete? Did the two insist on it?
  • The commentary says Doc is just "entertaining his idiot employees" or something like that. It's not until he sees that the Monarch is involved that he takes it even more seriously.
  • It might be a bit of a Radish Cure thing: Rusty and Brock wanted to show Billy and Pete what taking it seriously would really mean, so they'll quit making such a fuss. Like, if they want it taken seriously so bad, then that's what they'll get! And if it means being constantly ambushed and having to spar with Brock Samson (the threat of which apparently makes Pete cry), they might calm down and go back to work next time they get a menacing form letter. The cure (sparring with Brock) is worse than the disease (being arched by an inept manbaby). Then when the Monarch got involved then Rusty started genuinely caring.
• If Rusty's a clone, and has been since at least the age where he could be mistaken for Dean, does that mean that Jonas, who has been inside Rusty since the two were fetuses, is also a clone? Does that mean that if they had a clone farm like the boys did, they each had a JJ slug inside them too?
  • We've seen on the show that clones are sometimes defective and have to be disposed of. In this case, presumably two clone slugs on the embryo stage accidentally ended up in the same tube, and the one that was to become Rusty consumed the other, similar to a teratoma in a regular human pregnancy.
• I understand that Real Life Writes the Plot and the creators were forced to kill the Sovereign, but what was the In-Universe reason for him to try and off his allies on the council of 13? He seemed to be a competent leader of the Guild, then suddenly he's trying to make a self-coup.
  • If I'm not mistaken, long after he made the deal with the Investors, the Sovereign knew his time was running out. He wanted to get rid of them before they came after him, but to do so, he'd have to attack the spot where they'd most likely be at the time: Gargantua-2. Knowing the Council of 13 would never approve such an action (and probably try and stop it), it'd be better to kill them now than to potentially have them foil his plans. That's how I see it.
  • Additionally, it seems like he might have had added incentive to kill them so he could make a deal with the Revenge Society by promising them spots on the Council. He tells the Revenge Society that some spots on the council have just opened up. Kind of a minor reason, but the Investors are real scary. And like Dr Mrs says, he got in over his head and now his house of cards is coming down and all that, so he's probably planning pretty frantically.
  • And just for the record, the episode with Sovereign's death aired a year before the death of the real Bowie. It just became a tragic coincidence.
• When the Embarrassing Slide of White pops up in The Venture Bros S 3 E 11 ORB, he says it's "spring break, 1994". Which made me wonder, when does this show take place? I'd been assuming it matched real-world time at the beginning when it started in 2004, but that throws it off a little, considering that Rusty and Pete are the same age and Rusty already has teenage sons by the start of the show. The boys seem to be about 16 or 17-ish in the earlier seasons, then turn 18 at some point. But they're supposed to be 19 by The Venture Bros S 2 E 10 I Know Why The Caged Bird Kills, according to Myra at least. So ORB has to take place... maybe 2013ish at the earliest? It aired in 2008, so apparently the show really does take place 20 Minutes into the Future. (Unless of course some weird shenanigans were going on, like White was going to Cancun for spring break to try to score with co-eds in his 30s... striking out because chicks don't dig second-degree sunburns...)
  • Sliding Timescale. If you go by the boy's ages, then the entire series takes place over a short number of years. Like, two or three at best. And just like The Simpsons, the "current" year changes to match pop culture.
• In The Venture Bros S 4 E 5 The Revenge Society, Phantom Limb apparently takes Billy, Red Mantle, and Dragoon all the way to New Jersey before he has Billy attach Dragoon's head to Red Mantle's body. The Guild HQ, the Venture compound, and White and Billy's trailer all seem to be in Colorado or thereabouts. Why would they go so far first and why didn't Dragoon die by the time they got there?
  • Also, how does Billy end up switching between normal clothes and pajamas by the end of the episode? Actually Billy mysteriously ending up in pajamas happens in The Venture Bros S 4 E 15 The Silent Partners too. It seems like whenever he gets kidnapped his kidnapper helpfully grabs his pajamas or regular clothes for him. How thoughtful. (And yet in ''The Silent Partners' they couldn't find a set of scrubs in a size XXXS, apparently.)
• How old is Jared? Apparently some of his concept art said he's 30. His design looks like he could easily be approaching 40. But he lives in a college dorm and dated Sirena, who only just turned 18... is he actually a super-creep? Or is he Younger Than They Look and actually traditional college-student-aged?
  • My personal belief: he's just pretending to be a student as a Paper-Thin Disguise civilian identity, and he's not bright enough to realise that he's a bit too old to plausibly pass himself off as one. As for Sirena dating him, maybe she just has a thing for older guys?
• When Red Death reveals that he and his team were responsible for the Movie Night Massacre and the death of Jonas Venture, Brock initial rebukes it by saying that “every O.S.I grunt” knows that it was Sphinx who killed Jonas. While that may have been a lie by the Sovereign, the O.S.I still believed Sphinx to be the guilty party, so why is Jonas death treated as such a mystery? What’s more, during the events of ORB, Brock questions if Kano was the one who killed Jonas to keep him from using the Orb, per his orders from the O.S.I?
  • I think the mystery is more of the O.S.I not knowing how Jonas was murdered.
• Okay, so WHAT is up with the Morpho Cave suddenly transforming into a random ordinary basement when 21 tries to show it to Dr. Miss. Monarch in The Venture Bros S 7 E 2 The Rorqual Affair like it was some 'This was all in your head' mindscrew twist? It's never commented on again and we even see the Morpho Cave as it should be in just the next episode when Venturion/Vendata/the OG Blue Morpho returns to his home.
  • I'm guessing there's some kind of switch or whatever that can conceal/hide the lair with a different room.
• Brock abstains from using firearms mainly to prevent escalation of force, since henchmen won't use guns if he doesn't either. So how come The Monarch's henchmen don't start using guns after Sgt. Hatred becomes Team Venture's bodyguard? He's clearly got no problem with just shooting them, and apparently gunned down enough of the Fluttering Horde that they began to complain about their dwindling numbers.
  • They're henchman. Its unlikely they're even smart enough to use or be taught how to use a gun.
• Movie Spoiler Headscratchers: if Rusty is a clone, what is the deal with Jonas Jr.? If it is a thing congenital in all clones, does it means that the Monarch has a Jonas Jr. inside his body as well?
• Does Bobbi St. Simone know her connection to Hank/Dean, does she know she is their grandmother?
• Why exactly did Rusty want Hank and Dean in the first place? With how twisted his own childhood was, and how casually he seemed to treat repeating his father's mistake with his own sons, he didn't then seem like the kind of person who would even want kids, let alone go out of his way to create them in an artificial womb using super-science.
• Presuming Jonas Jr is also somehow a clone of the original Rusty, if the Monarch had to be spliced with baboon DNA to combat premature baldness, what's the justification for Jonas Jr's full head of hair?

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