“ | Alas, the final failure of Professor Poopypants! | ” |
—Professor Poopypants [src] |
“ | A science teacher, hmmm? THE PERFECT COVER! MUHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!! | ” |
—Professor Poopypants [src] |
Tippy Tinkletrousers (formerly known as Professor Pippy Pee-Pee Poopypants) was a genius and inventive scientist from New Swissland. He is the main antagonist of the Captain Underpants franchise.
He is also the main antagonist of Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants and Captain Underpants and the Revolting Revenge of the Radioactive Robo-Boxers, the final antagonist of Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People, the overarching antagonist of Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers, and a cameo antagonist in Captain Underpants and the Tyrannical Retaliation of the Turbo Toilet 2000.
He is voiced by Nick Kroll in Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie and Len Forgione in the Sound-O-Rama Audiobooks.
About
In the books, he is insane, absent-minded, crazy, cool, calm, zen, forgetful, streetwise, kooky, and smart all at the same time. In the movie, he is dangerous, murderous, rude, grumpy, psychopathic, grouchy, selfish, crazy, insane, mischevious, and ruthless.
History
Early Life
Professor Poopypants was born in 1936 in New Swissland. He created the Goosy-Grow 4000 and the Shrinky-Pig 2000, as he wanted to solve global problems by reducing garbage and increasing food. He moved to America because he wanted to share his inventions with the world and solve the biggest problems they had, but he was laughed out of every single important college he had enrolled in, all because of his ridiculous name.
Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants
He got a job at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School in Piqua, Ohio as a science teacher, replacing Mr. Fyde who resigned. Everybody laughed at his name. He soon invented the Gerbil Jogger 2000 and showed it to the class. Everyone was impressed by it until they found out that his middle name was Pee-Pee, thanks to a snide remark from George. Later, he read a comic that George and Harold had wrote about him called "Captain Underpants and the Pied Pooper of Piqua". It destroyed his last bit of sanity and made him go crazy with revenge.
Using the Goosy-Grow 4000, he makes the Gerbil Jogger 2000 grow as large as a building and then gets inside. He shrinks the school and holds everyone in it hostage. He then unveils his plan to force everyone on Earth to change their names so that everyone will have a silly name instead of a normal one, and anyone who refuses will be shrunk. Professor Poopypants does this first on Mr. Krupp, who becomes Lumpy Pottybiscuits. All the children find this funny, until Professor Poopypants forces them and the staff members to use the chart to change their names as well.
George and Harold (now Fluffy and Cheeseball) find Mr. Pottybiscuits and turn him into Captain Underpants (now Buttercup Chickenfanny, but he refuses to change his name) to steal Professor Poopypants' enlarging machine, but unfortunately he gets caught and the Professor shrinks both him and the machine down in the process.
Fluffy and Cheeseball get on the roof of the school to try to enlarge it (along with the students and teachers) back to normal size, but get noticed and thrown off the school by Professor Poopypants, but Cheeseball makes a paper airplane that Fluffy enlarges. The plane flies into many threats, yet Captain Underpants rescues them and they end up in an abandoned alley. Fluffy tries to enlarge Captain Underpants (accidentally enlarging Cheeseball's right hand) to the size of Professor Poopypants' gerbil machine. Captain Underpants was now visible so he gets enlarged again so he could fight Professor Poopypants. Professor Poopypants was ultimately defeated and everyone gets their names back. The boys use the shrinking and enlarging machines to grow the school and shrink Captain Underpants back to normal size. Then Captain Underpants gets soaked with water, turning him back to Mr. Krupp.
Professor Poopypants is then hauled off to jail. On the advice of George and Harold, he changes his name so no one will make fun of it anymore (which he hadn't thought of until George noted that to him). Sadly, he chooses his maternal grandfather's name, Tippy Tinkletrousers, which the people at jail make fun of.
Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People
When George and Harold arrive in the alternate universe, Pippy Pee-Pee Poopypants/Tippy Tinkletrousers, like the rest of the villians, was seen as a good guy. He was working for the fire department along with Zorx, Klax, and Jennifer, who also became good.
At the end of the book, the original Tippy actually appears in a giant pair of robotic trousers and gets angry at two cops that laugh at his name. He then freezes the cops with his latest invention: The Freezy Beam 4000. He then announces "It's time for my revenge!". He then chases after George, Harold, Sulu and Crackers.
Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers
It is revealed here that what happened at the end of the eighth book did not originally happen, as Tippy and the robotic trousers were actually from the future and interrupted what was supposed to happen. In the original timeline, after George, Harold, and Mr. Krupp are arrested, Tippy reveals his newest robotic suit to his prisoners by claiming that he is building a statue for the warden. He then takes Mr. Krupp and breaks both of them out as he wishes to find George and Harold and get revenge on Captain Underpants for throwing him in prison.
He succeeds in finding the two boys due to Mr. Krupp telling him they are in the Piqua Juvenile Detention Center, but George and Harold snap their fingers in front of him, transforming him into Captain Underpants, but revealing to Tippy who the Captain is when not fighting crime. The Captain goes off to find a cape which he finds in the Everything Except Fabric Softener Store.
Tippy then interrogates the boys on everything they know about their superhero until the Captain arrives. They fight, but the Captain defeats the Professor with ease before the Captain tricks the Professor into freezing the suit's feet. The Captain then rips off the top of the suit, reducing it to the robotic trousers as seen at the end of Book 8.
Realizing that the Captain is too powerful for him to beat, the Professor decides to go back in time five years ago to escape from him. Tippy does so and successfully escapes from Captain Underpants. When Kipper Krupp and his friends run from an apparent ghost, Tippy appears in front of the sixth graders in his robot pants and states that it looks like they have seen a ghost. This causes the four boys to go insane and be taken to a reality-challenged institute as well as leaving Mr. Krupp to be blamed for all the events that happened in his school. He is fired from his position as principal due to everyone blaming him. Tippy, not realizing what he had just done, goes back to the future while also noting that kids 5 years ago were really different than he thought they were.
However when he returns, he sees the future ruined and destroyed. He learns from a small boy that the moon got blown up by Dr. Diaper, talking toilets started rampaging around the city, and giant zombie nerds began terrorizing the town. Realizing that he had created a huge mistake, the Professor tries to get back into his robot pants and undo the entire mess, but he is seemingly squashed by the giant zombie nerd George and Harold before he could do so. However, Tippy escapes at the last moment by placing a extra large novelty ketchup catsup packet under Zombie Nerd Harold's left food in the next book, which both of the zombie nerds didn't know that he escaped into his Robo-Pants.
Captain Underpants and the Revolting Revenge of the Radioactive Robo-Boxers
However, it's revealed that Tippy was not killed by the Zombie Nerd Harold, because zombie nerds are slow due to their incredible size and Tippy faked his death by placing a bag of ketchup under Harold's feet. Tippy went back in time to before he drove the bullies insane and froze them before they could see him. He shrunk his younger self and returned to the present with him. When the bullies thawed, history was restored to normal.
Tippy confronted George and Harold and froze the cops as was depicted at the end of Book 8. He attempted his revenge on George and Harold, but they escaped him and went back in time to return Crackers to the dinosaur age, bringing Sulu with them to protect him from Tippy and accidentally bringing Mr. Krupp with them due to him chasing after George and Harold.
Tippy sent his smaller, younger self back in time to find out where George and Harold disappeared to. Because of this, three Tippies existed at once: "Big Tippy," "Tiny Tippy," and "Slightly Younger Tiny Tippy." They traveled back in time after George and Harold, during which Tiny Tippy and Slightly Younger Tiny Tippy decided they didn't like being bossed around, so they snuck out and traveled through time to get the Goosy-Grow 4000.
Meanwhile, Big Tippy fought Captain Underpants, discovering that water turns him back into Mr. Krupp. Then Supa Mega Tippy appeared (with Slightly Younger Tiny Tippy aboard his robot unseen). Big Tippy told his bigger self about Captain Underpants's weakness, but they argued over who should destroy him, resulting in Big Tippy activating the timer of a nuclear bomb on his robot in an attempt to kill Captain Underpants himself. Even though the bombs couldn't be turned off, he didn't care as long as it killed his nemesis. Supa Mega Tippy traveled into the future with the others after kicking Big Tippy to Mexico before the bomb exploded, killing Big Tippy along with the dinosaurs.
Captain Underpants and the Tyrannical Retaliation of the Turbo Toilet 2000
The Professor only made two short cameos in this novel. First in the introduction comic, and the part when Melvin, Captain Underpants, George, and Harold arrive in the present. However in that part, he was only seen from behind.
Dog Man (Book)
Tippy is seen in the prologue chasing George and Harold with his Freezey-Beam 4000.
Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie
Professor Poopypants is the main antagonist of the film. Professor Poopypants is first seen looking at a poster advertising a position for a science teacher at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, and says it would be the perfect cover for his plan.
The next day, he shows up at the school and is interviewed and hired by Mr. Krupp (who is really Captain Underpants disguising as him). When he starts teaching class that day, he asks the students what they would like to change about the world, which leads to him telling the students that if he were to change the world, he would get rid of laughter. Then, he shows the children a diagram of the parts of the brain, with emphasis on the Hahaguffawchucklealamus, the part of the brain where laughter comes from. After this, George asks Professor Poopypants what the P stands for in his name. When Professor P says it is private, George thinks that his name is actually "Professor Privates", which angers Professor Poopypants and makes him send George and Harold to the principal's office.
Later in the day, Professor Poopypants is walking to the cafeteria when he sees two girls in the hallway. He asks them where the cafeteria is, but they laugh at him, so he locks them in a cage. When he walks into the cafeteria, children laugh at him when he enters because George and Harold have made a comic about him entitled Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants. Professor Poopypants then hyperventilates over the children laughing at him, which makes him flashback to the time he presented his pinvention, the Sizeirator 2000 at the Nobel Invention Prize ceremony.
During the ceremony, Professor P. uses his Sizeirator to smallify a car and largify a hot dog. A lady then presenting the award isn't sure if his name is really Professor Poopypants. After his name is revealed, the audience laughs at him, causing Professor Poopypants to get mad, and state that if it weren't for his silly name, he would get to do a lot of things, like "be on talk shows", "date models twice his size", and "protect baby seals". However, the lady asks him to accept the award, but Professor Poopypants refuses and shrinks her. After the lady asks him to accept the award once again, he yells at her to build her own invention to return herself back to normal. He then realizes he was talking out loud and asks how much of his rant was out loud.
Professor Poopypants spots Melvin Sneedly as a villain in the comic, "Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants." Infuriated by Captain Underpants' insistence that the comic should be taught to classrooms as a history book, Professor Poopypants leaves. However, the car driven by Out of the Road Driver hits him thrice on the way. Once he's done, he laughs at Poopypants' name upon hearing it.
Professor Poopypants teams up with Melvin (who is secretly his assistant) to take over the world after scanning his brain in his evil lair.
Professor Poopypants tries to take over the town with a giant version of the Turbo Toilet 2000, fueled by the school cafeteria's rotten leftovers left out by Edith and uses Melvin's brain to turn the children into glum, humorless zombies. George and Harold are caught by Mr. Krupp but to stop Professor Poopypants, the boys had no choice but to snap Krupp into Captain Underpants once again. Captain Underpants tries to stop the villain, but due to having no actual superpowers, is effortlessly defeated and thrown into the toilet. George and Harold are captured and nearly turned into zombies, but are able to escape after Professor Poopypants mentions the planet Uranus, causing the boys to laugh and damage the Turbo Toilet 2000's computer, restoring the children back to normal. Upon consuming the mutated leftovers, Captain Underpants acquires superpowers and, with George and Harold's help, defeats and shrinks Poopypants. Professor Poopypants easily escapes on a bee while the Turbo Toilet 2000 is sent to the junkyard for scrap.
Appearance
Professor Poopypants is a short man with a large grey puff of hair. He has a mustache. He wears semicircular glasses. He also wears a purple shirt with a blue bow, blue trousers, and black shoes.
Personality
Tippy was a promising scientist who planned on sharing his genius with the world. Unfortunately, due to his silly name, nobody took him seriously. The final straw was when George and Harold wrote a humiliating comic book about him, and he vowed revenge on everyone who made fun of him. He decided to force everyone to change their normal names into silly ones or risk being shrunken out of existence.
Trivia
- According to his resume in the film, his birthday is on April 1, 1953, likely as a hint since April 1st is April Fools' Day, and it could be an indirect reference to him being a fool.
- Pippy is a hero/villain in the book series, but a villain in the movie. He performs a Heel Face Turn at the end of the fourth book. But at the start of the ninth book, he betrays George and Harold by arresting them for their crimes.
- He's also the most recurring villain in the Captain Underpants series as he appeared in at least five books.
- He was the only character in the film to have his name changed from his book counterpart. In the movie, his full name is Professor Pee-Pee Diarrheastein Poopypants Esquire.
- He bears similarities to Superman's archenemy, Lex Luthor. Both of them are intelligent scientists that, though without superpowers, are typically a threat to their foes.
- There are two songs about him: Go Poopypants! and Hallelujah! (from Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie).
- If Pippy himself followed the name changing board, his name would be Doofus Hamsterfanny.
- He doesn't appear in The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants so far.
- Despite him being introduced in the fourth book, he was chosen to be the villain for the movie.
- There is an older revision that can be read here.
- Professor Pippy Poopypants was the only human being who got outright murdered in the books, while the other human villains like Melvin, Captain Blunderpants, Kipper Krupp and Dr Diaper got defeated in non-lethal ways.