Rob is the main antagonist in the animated series The Amazing World of Gumball. He's a cyclopean humanoid who is disfigured into a glitch-like form after escaping the Void dimension, later serving as Gumball Watterson's arch-nemesis.
Physical Description[]
Original[]
In Seasons 1 and 2 of the series, Rob was a tall, blue, humanoid cyclops with one large magenta eye. He had a thin build with long limbs, pink hands with visible nails, and light-brown hair at medium length. His outfit consisted of red shorts with two light orange stripes on one side, a yellow cropped T-shirt, dark orange shoes with blue laces, and a brown backpack.
Post-Void[]
After escaping from the Void, Rob's appearance became fragmented and distorted. His head, now grey and twelve-sided, floats without a neck and has TV static effects on both sides of his face. His eye changed to pale yellow with a figure-eight shaped pupil (later changed to oval shape in Season 5), while his mouth and tongue became pink and yellow respectively. His hair changed to dark brown and broke into three sparse, yet large and dense, angular shapes.
His limbs transformed into static, with one foot appearing as lime-colored wireframe and the other as a dark-grey geometric shape. His hands differ, with one becoming grey and angular while the other stayed pink and normal-looking. His clothes took on an angular appearance, with his shirt now sleeveless and torn. His backpack changed to a floating brown six-sided shape without straps. The middle section of his body alternates between pink and static.
His new appearance is regularly shown glitching and warping.
In the episode "The Future," he gained a pig tail after being painted back into the timeline.
Personality[]
At first, Rob was a fairly outgoing and friendly individual, regularly socializing with his fellow students. However, when Gumball and Darwin failed to recognize him during a sidewalk encounter, he became confrontational and upset. Still, he helped them recover their CD from the sewer, even though Darwin had deliberately kicked him down there to get rid of him. When they again couldn't remember his name right after interacting with him, he angrily threw their CD down the street. This behavior showed that while Rob was generally a good-natured and forgiving person, he struggled with anger, confrontation, insecurity over being forgettable, and feelings of entitlement.
His personality underwent a dramatic shift in "The Nobody." After being discovered in the Wattersons' basement and fleeing, he later revealed his complete amnesia about his previous life, feeling purposeless and empty. He politely accepted Gumball and Darwin's suggestions to create a new identity, as he was now lost and completely lacking in self-confidence. However, upon remembering that he had been abandoned in the Void, Rob became bitter and vowed to get revenge on Gumball and Darwin. Despite his menacing threats, "The Nemesis" revealed him to be a remarkably ineffective villain, failing repeatedly in his attempts to harm them. When he suggested they forget about him due to his incompetence as an enemy, they instead helped him improve his villainous abilities. This gave Rob renewed purpose and determination to exact revenge on Gumball, and he began to enjoy his role as a sadistic troublemaker.
While he initially embraced villainy from anger and desperation, he later admitted he "never wanted to be the villain." After revealing to Gumball his awareness of their fictional nature, he explained that Elmore centered around Gumball as the protagonist, forcing Rob to become a villain to justify his existence. This led him to attempt trapping Gumball in the Void to reshape the universe and his place in it.
Behind his hostility lies a deeply traumatized and insecure teen grappling with existential questions about his world and purpose. He mainly looks for dignity, recognition, and self-determination. Moreover, he does show concern for others, undoing his evil actions in "The Rerun" and later attempting to save everyone from the Void's universal destruction by turning them into humans, presumably enabling their escape to reality. However, his message went unheeded, mainly due to his confrontational nature, controlling tendencies rooted in his Void trauma, arrogance, destructive methods, and poor communication skills.
History[]
Initial Appearances[]
Rob's first appearance was a brief cameo in "The Party" at Rachel's (Tobias Wilson's sister's) party. He was later seen among students watching the Gumball vs. Tina Rex fight in "The Fight."
His first lines came in "The Pony," where he enthusiastically greeted Gumball and Darwin Watterson but became angry when they didn't recognize him. After blocking their path to argue about this, Darwin kicked him into a manhole. Later, he refused to give them a DVD they wanted. During "The Finale," Rob joined other angry Elmore residents attempting to attack the Wattersons before reality reset itself.
In "The Void," Rob appeared briefly in the titular dimension next to a discarded version of the Watterson house, suggesting he was counted among Elmore's mistakes sent to the Void.
Turn to Villainy[]
During "The Nobody," some of the Watterson family's belongings start disappearing. Nicole grounds her sons Gumball and Darwin, suspecting them of theft. The brothers deduce there must be an unknown person living in their house and discover evidence like a hidden food storage area in their fridge. Their search eventually leads them to the basement where they find their missing items and confront the mysterious resident. After chasing the stranger through Elmore, Gumball accidentally causes destruction that forces the intruder to give up.
When questioned, the stranger explains he's lost his identity and has nowhere else to go. Gumball and Darwin suggest various roles he could take in Elmore, but find all positive positions are taken. They propose he become their enemy, specifically "the worst guy the world has ever made." These words trigger his memories – he's Rob. In a flashback, he explains that while in the Void, he tried getting Gumball and Darwin's attention during Molly's rescue. He grabbed onto Mr. Small's van (Janice) during their escape, which distorted his body. After being thrown from the Void, his appearance remained permanently glitched and disfigured. Rob then swears to destroy everything they love, embracing the evil role that they suggested.
In "The Nemesis," Rob struggles to effectively antagonize Gumball and Darwin, briefly giving up as a result. They decide to help improve his villain skills by following him around town to convince him. Though initially frustrated, Rob warms up to their suggestions, including the name "Dr. Wrecker," a modified voice, cardboard armor, and a signature catchphrase. His plan to flood Elmore by destroying a dam fails when he learns there isn't actually a dam – he only damaged a vending machine. To cheer him up, Gumball and Darwin deliberately fall into one of his earlier traps, allowing Rob to leave while laughing evilly as they beg for help.
Rob makes brief appearances in "The Uploads" and "The Love," swearing revenge in an Elmore Stream-It video and participating in the "What Is Love" song respectively.
In "The Bus," Rob masterminds a complex scheme involving a fake hostage situation that he reports as real to police, replacing a suitcase with a bomb to steal ransom money. This leads to a highway chase ending at an airport, where the bus is cut in half, and he and Gumball fight on a plane wing over two briefcases – one with money, one with the bomb. Rob tries framing Gumball but accidentally takes the wrong briefcase, resulting in an explosion that lands him on a police car, leading to his arrest.
In "The Disaster," Rob escapes prison and steals a universal remote from the "Awesome Store" van. He discovers it can control time, reality, and the episode itself. After accidentally revisiting his abandonment in the Void, he resets his voice and declares himself in control. He demonstrates his power by deleting the van's owner and causing a car accident involving the Wattersons. At the mall, he manipulates events to separate Gumball from his loved ones: making Darwin think Gumball insulted him, causing his parents to consider divorce, getting Anais lost, and making Penny think Gumball betrayed her love. When confronted, Rob explains he never wanted to be a villain but must oppose Gumball to reclaim his place in the world. During their fight over the remote, Rob manages to trap Gumball in the Void by throwing the supposedly malfunctioning device into it, forcing Gumball to follow to save his family. The episode ends with Gumball retrieving the remote and rewinding to the beginning.
"The Rerun" shows Gumball reliving these events with foreknowledge. He manages to thwart several of Rob's plans but accidentally triggers a time paradox that kills Anais and Darwin and turns his parents into babies. During their final confrontation, Gumball ejects Rob into the Void but realizes his mistake and tries to save him. Rob initially refuses help but can't bring himself to turn Gumball "off" when given the chance. They reconcile briefly before Rob travels back in time to destroy the remote, preventing their friendship but fixing everything else.
In "The Ex," Rob tries making Banana Joe his new nemesis, claiming he's "easier to hate" after the emotional complexity of the aforementioned episode. This upsets Gumball, who tries various methods to regain Rob's antagonism, eventually succeeding by accidentally ruining Rob's trap for Banana Joe, forcing Rob to hate him yet again.
Rob appears in "The Spinoffs," attempting to hijack the show's broadcast through Timmy (the Internet) to showcase various spin-off ideas, ultimately giving up.
In "The Future," Rob kidnaps Banana Barbara (Banana Joe's mother) to understand why her prophetic paintings now only show static instead of tangible future events. When confronted by Gumball, Darwin, and Banana Joe, Rob uses Barbara's paintings as weapons but is eventually erased from existence using white paint. Though Gumball has him repainted back to life (with an added pigtail), Barbara indicates there is no future, showing a painting of Rob falling into the Void.
In the series finale "The Inquisition," Rob disguises himself as Superintendent Evil, forcing students to act realistically and using technology to transform them into humans. After being stopped by Gumball and Darwin, who restore everyone, Rob explains he was trying to save them before something unspecified happened to their world. Later, ranting alone at midnight and claiming his plan was to help everyone escape to "the other place" (the real world), the floor crumbles beneath him revealing the Void. As he hangs from the edge, he realizes "it's started" before falling screaming into the abyss. The episode ends with a freeze frame of his descent, matching Barbara's painting from "The Future," accompanied by an eerie, incomplete version of the show's end credits music.
Rob's ultimate fate remains unknown.
Powers and Abilities[]
- Intelligence: Rob is one of the most intelligent characters in the series. He creates complex plans that often come close to succeeding. In "The Bus," he orchestrates a scheme where adults pose as criminals to teach students about skipping school, while simultaneously trying to get ransom money from police and planning to blow up the bus to frame the adults. His ability to set traps improves over time - while he struggles in "The Nemesis," he later creates effective traps against Banana Joe in "The Ex."
- Metafictional Awareness: Rob understands that his universe is fictional and can interact with this knowledge. This lets him send Gumball outside the universe in "The Disaster," take control of the show's broadcast in "The Spinoffs," predict the ending through Banana Barbara's paintings in "The Future," and create technology to turn characters human in "The Inquisition." He's the only character who consistently knows about the fictional nature of their world.
- Combat and Athleticism: Rob is competent in physical confrontations. He can beat Gumball in direct fights, as shown in episodes like "The Disaster" and "The Bus." He demonstrates speed and endurance, running across town in "The Nobody" and surviving significant damage in fights, including a bomb blast that throws him onto a car. He's physically strong enough to tip over a vending machine, push a car, and carry a treadmill without difficulty.
- Post-Void Input: After escaping the Void, Rob's body became permanently disfigured and deconstructed. His glitchy form randomly warps or spasms in a defective fashion. He can be controlled using a TV remote, which can alter his voice, volume, other characteristics. The distorted static on his new body can also display menus, status symbols, and change color based on his emotions.
Gallery[]
See Also[]
- Rob on the The Amazing World of Gumball Wiki
- Rob on the Villains Wiki