| Dick Hardly | |
| Name: | Dick Hardly |
| Alias: | Old Dick (by the Professor) Master of Evil (by a Bubbles XTREME) |
| Gender: | Male |
| Age: | Same age as Professor Utonuim |
| First appearance: | Knock It Off |
| Last appearance: | Knock It Off |
| Episode count: | 1 |
| Voice actor: | Jeff Bennett |
Professor Dick Hardly (voiced by Jeff Bennett) was Professor Utonium's old college roommate, who leeched off of him instead of studying. It's revealed in flashbacks that Professor Dick is also a womanizer. He appears to be around the same age as the Professor. His only appearance was in the episode "Knock It Off", where he was amazed over the girls' powers. He wanted to make a profit off of them, but Professor Utonium angrily refused the offer and kicked him out.
As a result, Dick came up with a wicked plan: if he couldn't have the girls themselves, he would create his own and make billions. While picking them up from Pokey Oaks Kindergarten, he asks the girls how to create his own little girls. So, after learning the ingredients, Dick goes into an abandoned factory and creates the Powerpuff Girls Xtreme. However, his versions turn out to be cheap knockoffs and some of them are disfigured, horrible, ugly mutants as well.
When the girls found out what Dick's true intentions were, they confronted him inside his factory and demanded for the Chemical X back. But Dick deliberately swallows it and transforms into a monster. As a monster, Dick's size is increased a hundredfold, his skin turns green, spikes grow out of his shoulders, blue tentacles burst out of his chest, his ponytail turns into a tentacle, his normal glasses are gone, his eyes turn black (while acting similar to normal sunglasses), and the only bit of his clothing left are the remains of his pants.
In this form, he easily defeated the girls as Utonium goes into the factory. Dick captures the girls and using a machine, nearly drains all of their Chemical X and life force. But as Utonium is about to be taken away to make more Chemical X, the other Powerpuff Girls Xtreme realized that Dick never gave them love or care. So, in their anger, they sacrificed themselves to destroy him, and Utonium gets the girls out in the nick of time as the factory burns down, killing Dick in the process.
Once outside and seeing the factory going down in flames, Professor Utonium bursts into tears at the loss of his daughters, however, his fatherly love revives them. Delighted to see them alive again, he says: "Old Dick may have gotten the formula right, but the only ingredient he forgot was LOVE. Let's go home, girls." Then Dick is heard bellowing in agony a final "NO!" as he's ambushed inside his lab one millisecond before he dies, and the factory is destroyed for good.
Personality[]
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Dick Hardly was extremely dishonet and manipulative, living by pretending to care about other people as a way of getting whatever he wanted. He always tricked Professor Utonium into finishing his college work for him, while Dick would go hang out with people and flirt with women. Although Utonium always viewed Dick as a friend, his ex-colleague exploited him so that he didn't have to get anything done by himself, showing an unwillingness to do any hard work but still willing to reap the rewards from the effort made by others.
After college, the two went their separate ways with Utonium beginning his own career in science. Meanwhile, Dick had become a drifter as he couldn't find anyone of Utonium's aptitude to sponge off of. Only years later, when Dick blatantly tried to get the secret of the Powerpuff Girls, did Professor Utonium wise up to the fact he had been used by Dick for years and ordered him out of his life.
Dick also acted the same way towards the Powerpuff Girls. He referred to the girls as a product, when he first saw them, and told Professor Utonium they could profit off them but this got him kicked out. He manipulated the girls by pretending to be nice to them, just so he could gain the ingredients and a sample of Chemical X to create his Powerpuff Girls Xtreme. At first glance, Dick made it appear like he wanted to rid the world of all crime.
However, inside of his factory, he was seen being a completely different person: A cruel, calculating, tyrannical, slave-driving, vicious sadist who only wanted as much cash as he could get his hands on and had no remorse for scamming people for their money. He often yelled at the employees in his factory, not caring about the long hours they pulled or how exhausted they became and while it wasn’t stated, it was heavily implied that Dick didn’t pay his workers much, preferring to have as much money as possible for himself.
Also, despite the word “Xtreme” being used in his scheme, Dick intentionally made sure that the Xtreme clones were made in poor quality so he could be able to sell more to unsuspecting customers. He even destroyed a perfect Buttercup clone just for her Chemical X. Unlike the Professor, he treated the Xtreme clones like products instead of real children.
Unknown to Dick, however, his greed and lack of compassion ultimately proved to be his downfall. Right when he was successfully draining all of the Chemical X from the girls, his army of clones turn against him when they found out he never gave them the love they needed and used their powers to defeat him, to his horror.
Powers and Abilities[]
Powers[]
- Mutated Form (after exposure to Chemical X
- Superhuman Strength he become incredibly strong able to overpower the powerpuf girls
- Regeneration He can regenerate from injuries.
- High durability He can withstand significant damage.
- Tentacles He sprouts tentacles from his chest and ponytail that can be used for various attacks in the draining ein chemical. X
- Claws and Fangs He gains Sharp claws and fangs combat.
- Energy absorption He tentacles from his chest and ponytail which can be used for gabbing whipping and absorption can drain Chemical X from the Powerpuff Girls.
Abilities[]
Human Form
- Genius-level intellect
- Expert in chemistry
- Charisma and manipulation
- Vast wealth
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
Dick's cameo in Villainous.
- He was one of the few characters to die on-screen, the others being Abracadaver, the Broccoloids, Bunny, the Gnome, and the Rowdyruff Boys (although the Boys were later revived by HIM).
- Despite being a one-shot character with no official appearances outside the 1998 series, Dick Hardly is amongst the franchise's most memorable villains due to lacking any comedic or likable moments, both of which are demonstrated by even Mojo Jojo (the Girls' archenemy) and HIM (the literal embodiment of all evil). While his greed and sleaziness are embellished to the point of being cartoonish, neither trait is used for humor.
- Dick, along with Mojo Jojo, Sedusa, Mike Brickowski, Lenny Baxter, and the Gangreen Gang, is one of the few villains to successfully capture all of the Powerpuff Girls.
- Funnily enough, in the leaked script, Utonium's counterpart in the show has a very similar personality to Dick, as he created the Powerpuff Girls, explicitly in hopes of profiting off of their success.
- Dick looks rather similar to Dexter’s Dad from “Dexter’s Laboratory” and fans are aware of the striking resemblance to the point that there is a fan theory that Dick and Dexter’s Dad could be brothers, however Neither Craig McCracken or Genndy Tartakovsky have confirmed nor denied this.
- Kip Snip from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends is similar to Dick Hardly.
- Both characters even have similarities:
- Both deceived at least one of the protagonists (Bloo and the Powerpuff Girls respectively), making them think that they were a hotshot Hollywood producer and a noble scientist respectively, manipulating them in order to get what they want (keeping Bloo as a slave, with Bloo himself unaware until later on that he signed not an acting contract, but adoption papers, thus making Kip his legal guardian / Tricking the Powerpuff Girls into providing a bottle of Chemical X that would be used to create knock-off Powerpuff Girls).
- Both men are very greedy and to them, the only thing that matters is money and influence, showing no concern for Bloo and the knock-off Powerpuff Girls, to the point of neglecting them (Kip refuses Bloo many luxuries or food and forces him to sleep in a dog cage / Dick treats the clones like nothing more than "merchandise and goods".
- Both men were frauds and liars, deceiving everyone they can to get a benefit, and even resorting to illegal acts.
- Case and point Kip was promoting a deodorant product that was a scam, as the product not only doesn't work as advertised, but in Kip's own words, makes people smell worse, while Dick was trying to steal the credit for Professor Utonium's work during their early years, and then upon discovering the formula for creating the Powerpuff Girls, abusing it to mass-produce knock-off versions of them on an assembly line.
- Both men get their comeuppance in the end for their actions (Kip was arrested for fraud, scamming, false advertising, and mistreatment toward Bloo / Dick perished at the hands of the knock-off Powerpuff Girls because he showed no love to them, viewing them as mere servants) and they are among the most evil villains in their respective shows.
- Both men let out a big “NO” towards the end of the episode.
- Two big difference between them is that Professor Dick is far more evil than Kip, and also their ultimate fates during the end of the episodes they debut in as Dick dies by the hands of his own creations due to his lovelessness, while Kip doesn’t get killed and is still alive, but gets arrested by the police and taken to jail, presumably for years if not life imprisonment.
- Both characters even have similarities: