Almighty Tallest Red



"On the left is Almighty Tallest Red, a co-ruler of the Irken Empire. I know this guy is a brother to Almighty Tallest Purple."

--Su Ji-Hoon, Operation Impending Doom III

Almighty Tallest Red is the co-ruler of the mighty Irken Empire alongside Almighty Tallest Purple. As their title suggests, Red and Purple oversee and dominate their species as they spread their reign across the universe. Although they are nearly identical in appearance, their personalities are starkly different: When there is a crisis, Tallest Red is the most likely of the two to solve it. In terms of authority, however, both Red and Purple are little more than figureheads. The Control Brains hold all the real power; even the Tallest must accept their rulings.

Appearance
Along with Purple, Red's design and body structure is much different from that of a normal Irken: He has a slender build. His arms end in unusually bulgy gauntlets, he has only two thin fingers (instead of the normal three for an Irken), and an unusually thin waist and neck. His feet may also be different from that of an average Irken, but it is hard to tell since he is always levitating. This appears to be the case for all of the Tallests as concept art of Almighty Tallest Miyuki and Spork showed them as having the same design.

Both Tallests were re-designed in the middle of the show's first season; Jhonen Vasquez decided to make their torsos thinner, as well as other major updates to their suits and overall physical appearance. This bizarre physical structure was implied by the Invader Zim crew to have been at least partially the result of surgical enhancement: they stated that all Tallests traditionally have their thumbs chopped off in a ceremony to show they can rule the Irken Empire with only two fingers (they also noted that the current Tallest would likely have foregone this procedure in favor of simply hiding their thumbs in their gauntlets).