| “ | You're sitting on a gold mine here! I knew you would turn one of your little inventions into a cash cow. We could make a fortune with these things! | „ |
| ~ Dick trying to convine Professor Utoniun to profit off the girls |
| “ | You know, I've been reading about you guys, and I think it's really great, what you do here in Townsville. But you know, I've been all over the world, and there sure is a lot of evil out there. It's too bad there aren't more of you girls out there to help save everybody. Gee, if there was only a way to make more of you girls, we could help save people all over the world... and that would be good, huh? | „ |
| ~ Dick tricking the girls into helping him.
|
Professor Richard "Dick" Hardly is the main antagonist of the Powerpuff Girls episode "Knock It Off."
He was Professor Utonium's college roomate and "friend," but it is later revealed (and Professor Utonium discovered) that he only ever cared about himself and money; in other words, his first name was a perfect description of his personality. When he saw the Powerpuff Girls, Dick wanted to use them so that he can profit off their powers.
He was voiced by Jeff Bennett, who also voiced Mozenrath in one episode of Aladdin: The Series, The Huntsman in American Dragon: Jake Long and Zs'Skayr in Ben 10: Alien Force.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
- When he and Utonium were roommates in college, he often used Utonium under the guise of being his "friend," to do all his work in classes while he enjoyed parties with girls as well as was shown to steal Utonium's ideas and pass them off as his own. When the latter dropped a liquid from an eyedropper into a beaker that created a shower of fireworks and two American flags, Dick switched the beaker with one that exploded when exposed to the liquid while distracting the professor. All this shows he actually only cared about himself and merely used Utonium for his own benefit.
- Though he was shown hanging around with women in college, there is no proof he cares for women beyond lust.
- This apparently comes back into light again years later, where he's shown holding two ladies in bikinis, who are seemingly just as money-minded as him, during the successful run of his own corrupt business. This may imply that he is a pervert.
- Various scenes show him to be an incredibly tough boss to work with, as he shows no care about how tired his employees were getting constantly manufacturing Powerpuff Girls, and would often bark orders at them to go even faster.
- When he comes to visit the Professor for the first time in years, he checks the Professor's mail and upon noticing it contained a science magazine, he hypocritically calls him a geek for being into science when he is a scientist himself.
- He lies to the Powerpuff Girls by saying that he wanted to create more girls to help fight crime when in reality, he doesn't actually care about fighting crime or helping the world.
- Despite not being exactly wrong when he claims that there's a lot of evil and corruption beyond Townsville, and that more Powerpuff Girls could indeed make the world a much safer place, he isn't exactly interested in solving these problems, so this doesn't count as a prevention.
- He intentionally makes Powerpuff Girls who are physically and mentally botched, which could be considered to be a crime against nature. Because they were not made with love and care, many of them physically fall apart after being purchased and all of them only live for a couple hours, but he is not concerned about this, as he can simply sell more copies afterwards.
- Not only that, but the copies have clear self-awareness.
- When one customer calls him about the knock-offs' short lifespan, he just brushes it off by saying the warranty said it only lasts three hours, and he can make better clones that lasted five hours. He makes thousands of them and sells them off for profit, and to market them off with expected good publicity as a hero who wishes to fight global crime.
- When he sees perfect replica of Buttercup, he has his employees melt her down to use her Chemical X to make more botched versions of the Powerpuff Girls. While this isn't shown onscreen, it is still implied to have happened, especially since we later see the gruesome process happen to the real girls later on.
- Despite fathering the Powerpuff Girls he created, he only cares about them as objects he can sell on the market to put money in his pocket. Unfortunately for Dick, these girls eventually realize that they were never given love when Professor Utonium proclaims his love for his three girls, and turn on him because of it.
- When he first meets the Powerpuff Girls, he constantly referred to them "things" in front of Utonium, proving that he sees them as mere objects made to make a profit off of simply because they were created and not born.
- During his commercial with Trevor, when the latter simulates on how crime works against the Powerpuff Girlz Xtreme to test out the functions and gets vaporized by the lasers of the product, Dick shows no concern for his safety and shrugs it off.
- He imprisons the Powerpuff Girls in a dome and sucked all of the Chemical X out of them, taking clear sadism in doing so, and when Utonium offers to make Chemical X for him for the rest of his life if he lets them go, Dick decides to kill the girls and keep the professor as his slave because he'll have more Chemical X either way. He is notably one of the very few villains who came close to pulling off that feat of killing the three main protagonists, while not even caring that they are children, let alone the children of his own college friend.
- His death is played for karma and satisfaction, but not sympathy, considering how he was willing to commit mass child murder to get rich, and was portrayed as being worth killing.
- He is indirectly responsible for his Powerpuff Girls' deaths as they sacrificed themselves to stop Dick for good. As the factory caught fire as a result of this, many of his workers inside his factory are implied to have also died.
- Unlike the other The Powerpuff Girls villains like Mojo Jojo, Fuzzy Lumpkins and HIM, Dick has no redeeming qualities to his character. In addition, he temporarily changes the tone of the normally lighthearted stories and is treated completely seriously. Even Mojo, the Rowdyruff Boys, Princess Morbucks, Femme Fatale, and Mike Brikowski did not go as far as he did, as the five aforementioned villains only commit fairly standard crimes and Dick exceeds all of them in terms of heinousness thanks to committing mass filicide.
- While his greed and sleaziness are both exaggerated in an over-the-top, cartoonish manner, nothing about his behavior is actually played for laughs. In fact, these moments just show how greedy, sadistic, vile, and egotistical he is. What's worse is that he especially becomes terrifying when he becomes a monster, as his appearance now matched his personality and nickname.
- While the way he swallows the Chemical X comes off as a bit funny and the moments before his transformation is somewhat similar to breakdance, these moments are the closest he came to be ''laughable'' and can't make him any less horrible.
- Despite not being as heinous as HIM (who, by way of comparison, is the embodiment of evil itself and does worse acts just for fun), he has less resources and he still passes the heinous standards of the series, as most villains' rampages on Townsville rely on Fridge Horror to confirm that they committed mass murder, not to mention his mass filicide is a unique crime in the series, making him to stand out regardless.
- Unlike the other villains that accept the fact that there's a "good" and "bad" in either Townsville or the entire world, showing that they have redeeming quallities despite being villains, there's obviously no indication that Dick Hardly accepts said fact, and the fact that he shows no concern for his own Powerpuff Girls' conditions debunks any possibility that Dick accepts the fact that there's a "good" and "bad" because he has no redeeming qualities.
Trivia[]
- Dick is the third Cartoon Network villain to be Pure Evil, the first being Katz and the second being Aku.
- Dick is the only Powerpuff Girls villain to be Pure Evil as all other characters (except HIM) fail the heinous standard to him due to having comparable or greater resources yet being unable to do worse than his mass filicide; while a few may have, they suffer from Fridge Horror to confirm this, may change with The New Reboot, where the original creator of The Powerpuff Girls, Craig McCracken, will be involved if an version of HIM or Mojo Jojo may qualify as Pure Evil, although it would be unlikely on Mojo Jojo's part.
External Links[]
- Dick Hardly on the Villains Wiki
- Dick Hardly on the Hate Sink Wiki
- Dick Hardly on the Powerpuff Girls Wiki
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 Pure Evils
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TV Shows Samurai Jack Star Wars: The Clone Wars Sym-Bionic Titan Transformers: Animated Other Adult Swim/Toonami Primal Other Fanon See Also | ||
 Pure Evils
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Scooby-Doo Jonny Quest Captain Planet and the Planeteers SWAT Kats The Powerpuff Girls See Also | ||
