Kim Possible (character)

Kimberly Ann Possible (usually known as Kim Possible) (voiced by Christy Carlson Romano) is the title character from Disney's animated television series Kim Possible. She debuted in the series opening episode in June 2002, and starred in all the episodes of Season 1-4. Kim is a high school student and freelance hero/secret agent. She is unusual in this field in that she has no secret identity - for the most part, her classmates are aware of her work but do not comment on it unless it affects them directly. At school, she is cast as one of the popular kids, head of her cheerleading squad at school, and a straight-A student, rather than as a misunderstood outsider/underdog.

Background
Prior to the start of season 1, Kim was an ordinary young girl leading an ordinary life. By her early teen/late preteen years, she was wishing to supplement her allowance, so she decided to start up her own babysitting business and set up her own website, "KimPossible.com", under the slogan, "I can do anything", to advertise her services. Soon after her site went live, Kim was accidentally contacted by Mr. McHenry who was in trouble, and was trying to contact a different group of heroes, "Team Impossible". Due to a typing error, he contacted "KimPossible.com" instead of "Impossible.com" After the rescue, Kim's fame as a hero grew until she was being contacted for help by people all over the world, including governments and royalty.

Personality
Kim is a confident and assertive teenager whose awareness of her own abilities is reflected well by her motto "I can do anything". Her typical state of mind is to be bright and cheerful, and she has a kind and caring heart that compels her to help others and to put their well being above her own, although she can be arrogant at times, especially when people appear to do things better than she can. Her competitive nature and drive for perfection, as well as some of her insecurities, are consistent with a Type A personality. They also lead her to set high standards for herself, and sometimes give her a tendency to be bossy and to set standards for others that are too high - as was evident when she attempted to coach her brothers' soccer team - or to try and do things herself in order to save others from potential failure or harm.

Despite being a freelance hero, Kim is still a teenage girl, and is susceptible to most normal teenage insecurities and growing pains. She gets embarrassed by her parents, is pouty when she doesn't get her own way, and has a strong desire to fit in, the latter of which is often one of her biggest weaknesses. Kim's personality traits were most clearly demonstrated when her school was hit by a fictional personality-guide fad known as animology, under which she is classified as being a blue fox: a born leader who can't resist a challenge, is driven to excel, and who is a perfectionist. During the career fair at her school, Kim was drawn toward international diplomacy: a demanding, extroverted field.

Kim has a tendency to be worried about - and frequently fooled by - appearance. As such, she is often overly concerned about her image and the way in which others see her, sometimes even going so far as to extend these anxieties to others (primarily Ron) even though they do not necessarily feel the same way. Owing to this element of her personality, Kim has a tendency to succumb to peer pressure, something she never really manages to overcome until the very end of the third season, and she is often unable to see beyond first appearances, or deeper than other people's defense mechanisms.

It is this element of her personality which appears to form the foundations of much of Kim's rivalry with Bonnie, who is similarly competitive and concerned about appearances, and it is often through this rivalry that we see the less desirable elements of Kim's competitive nature in play, including incidents when she has engaged in tit-for-tat revenge or one-upsmanship, and when she has competed purely because she doesn't want Bonnie to succeed.

Due to her type A personality, Kim also has a strong tendency to become frustrated, impatient, or insecure when faced with a field in which she does not instantly excel. This tendency has been displayed several times throughout the franchise, usually in conjunction with an episode subplot or Mcguffin revolving around her social life, and is often made more notable by the fact that these fields are ones in which either the often inept Ron or the immature Tweebs excel. Examples of such fields include cooking and video games, car mechanics, and the duties required of her when she worked at Bueno Nacho during season 1.

In addition to the recurring problems caused by her competitive personality and her weakness in the face of peer pressure, Kim has also demonstrated many of the weaknesses that have become cliché to teen-high school comedy/drama, most of which have been highlighted in individual episodes, but are not evident across the franchise as a whole. Such clichés include trapping herself in a position in which she tells an escalating series of lies in order to cover up a much smaller lie, attempting to sabotage an opponent's campaign during a school election, and allowing herself to be baited into angry or unwise courses of action by a rival.

In the pilot episode, Crush, Kim was rendered incapable of coherent speech in the presence of Josh Mankey, her first confirmed love interest. As take-charge as she is in the other areas of her life, when faced with asking Josh on a date, Kim was at a complete loss for what to do.

Kim lives to please, as she confirmed herself in the episode Queen Bebe. When Ron asks her why she doesn't "just say no," to a request for help, she replies that she's "just not programmed that way." This accounts for why she finds herself unable to refuse a date with Brick Flagg in All the News, since she agrees to do it so that Brick won't be so depressed that he'll blow the football game.

Although Kim is generally reasonably mature in the usual give-and-take with her parents over what she can and can't do (how late she can stay out, even if it is on a mission saving the world, if she can get a loan to buy new clothes or must instead get an after-school job, etc.,) if she really, really wants something it looks like she won't be able to get, she has a "puppy-dog pout" that has been seen several times during the show. It becomes a running gag, and the pout has been used by others against her.

School
Kim is a naturally intelligent student who maintains a high GPA despite her adventurous lifestyle by using the time she spends traveling to and from missions to study, and by always making sure that she gets a handle on assignments as early as she can in case she is called away on a mission at the last minute. Plus she makes time for cheerleading practice after school. As a result of these diligences, it is only on rare occasions that her grades suffer or that she has problems with assignments. Despite her intelligence, Kim remains the least scientifically-minded member of her family, not understanding many of the terms and phrases, or inventions that her father and brothers build and use, for example, in the episode The Twin Factor, she immediately passes off her brothers' invention of a handheld Silicon Phase Disruptor as a "stupid toy", or believing that the Mind control chip in the same episode is "ferociously unethical". She also doubts her brothers' high intelligence, believing their early advancement to high school is the result of a mistake in the records, and is truly shocked when she discovers from Mrs.G'day, Jim and Tim's S.K.I.P program counselor, that it was legitimate.

Physical description
Kim is slightly tall, slender, and very strong. She has large, bright green eyes and long fiery red hair, which comes down to her shoulder and when seen from behind is shaped as a heart. She wore her hair in pigtails when she was in pre-k, and as a preteen wore it in a long ponytail.

Abilities
Kim is extremely athletic and has excellent reflexes that have been honed through years of cheerleading practice, allowing her to perform death-defying moves like somersaulting between laser beams with little apparent effort; although A Sitch in Time presents Kim as being a good fighter before being a cheerleader. She is also highly skilled in martial arts, knowing 16 types of kung fu (as revealed when she threatened Ron in the episode Hidden Talent), including Praying mantis kung fu. Her skills are aptly demonstrated by the fact that she is able to go toe-to-toe against Shego, an older and more experienced villain whose super powers allow her to tear through reinforced concrete with ease.

Kim is also a fast learner and is able to pick up new skills quickly, and adapt to new situations as they arise. Among the many talents that she has demonstrated during the series are a high level of proficiency in various extreme sports; such as hang-gliding, skiing, and rock climbing, and even Space Shuttle piloting. She also discovers her ability to sing in the episode Hidden Talent.

Age
Kim's age has been debated quite a bit because nothing has been stated that she was any specific age other than 'high school' age (14-18). However, in the Season 2 episode Car Trouble, Kim is stated as old enough to get a driver's license, which in most states (the show takes place in the United States) is 16. Kim also had mentioned that Ron had to take 12 years to kiss her in Homecoming Upset which indicates that she was 17 as of that episode. Graduating from high school and considering college acceptance letters in the series finale Graduation would likely put her at a few months shy of 18. During the episode Hidden Talent, Wade constructs a class ring with a mini Kimmunicator inside of it; the ring had an Emerald in the setting, signaling that Kim's birth month could be May (traditional class rings within the United States are often adorned with the wearer's birthstone). Also in a few episodes she shows her love for being a senior as people stare at her, implying that she is a 17 to 18 year old student.

Home State
The location of Kim's hometown of Middleton is often a point of debate, as there are three possibilities on where it can be located.

The first possibility indicates that it could be located in Colorado, as evidenced by the episode The New Ron, in which Senor Senior Sr. states that he plans a missile strike on her "hometown", and the map shows Colorado as the target area. If so, one could transpose Middleton for the location of the actual city of Littleton, Colorado, though the homes pictured more closely resemble those in Highlands Ranch, Colorado.

The second possibility could be northern West Virginia, as evidenced in the episode Downhill, when Kim asks Wade for alleged sightings of a snow beast that Ron and Barkin are looking for; the map shows an area in northern West Virginia as a target area.

The third possibility is Kansas, shown in Odds Man In, when the Geography Club at the high school is said to meet at 98"35'W, 39"50'N. This is the geographical center of the continental United States, rounded to the nearest minute.

Phineas and Ferb
In the Phineas and Ferb Spot the Diff episode, "Lawn Gnome Beach Party of Error" a changed episode from "Lawn Gnome Beach Party of Terror", Kim Possible is seen fighting with Perry the Platypus and Heinz Doofenshmirtz.

Alternative versions
As with many Disney cartoons, Kim's physical appearance has remained static throughout the franchise and has not been changed between seasons to represent aging. However, several different versions of Kim have been introduced, at various points in the franchise, to represent Kim at different ages prior to her appearance in Season 1.

During the first 3 seasons, two younger versions of Kim were introduced. The first version to appear on screen was a pre-school version, and the second was a version representing Kim in her early teens/late-preteens.

Pre-school Kim was first introduced through flashbacks in the episode October 31st, and was later visited several times through Seasons 2-3. She made her first in person appearance in the feature length production Kim Possible: A Sitch in Time when she was targeted by a cohort of time traveling villains who sought to destroy her confidence during her first day in pre-school, in order to prevent Present Day Kim from thwarting their plans. Ironically, in an altered timeline that has since been erased, this intervention led to Kim stepping in to fight to save Ron for the first time, bringing about their first meeting outside the classroom and leading to their becoming friends.

Pre-School Kim is very similar to present day Kim, but with the addition of freckles and pigtails. When first introduced, she also lacked the confidence of her present day counterpart.

Early teen/late-preteen Kim made her first appearance in the feature length production Kim Possible: A Sitch in Time. She was introduced when Kim's present day foes (Drakken, Shego, Monkey Fist, and Duff Kiligan) traveled back through time on a mission to sabotage her first mission. Initially, the villains planned to sabotage the mission in order to crush Kim's spirits, thus preventing her from ever becoming a teen hero. However, after a brief discussion, they decided to kill her instead. Early teen/late-preteen was saved by the intervention of Present Day Kim and Ron. Due to the closing events of A Sitch in Time, the timeline in which her early teen/late-preteen self appeared was erased, leaving Present Day Kim with no memory of meeting her past self, nor vice-versa. Since her initial appearance, early teen/late-preteen Kim has appeared in several flashbacks, most notably during Hidden Talent, which revealed that she was an excellent singer (but unable to hit high notes), and in Team Impossible, when the events of Kim's first mission were replayed, minus the intervention from the future (that timeline having since ceased to exist).

At this point in her life, Kim is shorter and slimmer than her present-day self, and minus a bust line, but with the addition of braces (which is the reason Bonnie called her "Tinsel Teeth"). She is always shown with her hair in a ponytail and her bangs to the side. Her clothes consist of a purple long sleeved shirt, darker purple shorts, matching shoes with a white sole on the bottom, and a black choker with a round yellow jewel.

An older version of Kim was introduced in an interactive featurette that was included in the DVD of A Sitch in Time. Little was revealed about Kim's older self, except that she was still fighting crime in her 40s, was a member of the PTA, and that she wears a patch over her left eye, ala Nick Fury. Older Kim is also shown wearing a Global Justice uniform similar to that worn by Dr. Director (who coincidentally also has an eye patch, though the reason remains a mystery as well). As of Season 4, older Kim has not appeared in the series and her exact place in Kim Possible canon remains uncertain.

Father
Kim has a close, but diverse, relationship with her father. For much of the series he treats her as a mature and responsible young lady, expecting her to babysit her younger brothers, instructing her to get a part time job if she wants expensive new clothes, and accepting her going on dangerous missions without a second thought - believing that she is skilled enough to stay out of harms way. However, because of the closeness of their relationship, he sometimes forgets that she isn't a child anymore and treats her as if she were much younger, failing to see that she doesn't always enjoy doing the same things that she did when she was little, and not being able to see when his behavior might embarrass her. His nickname for her is his "Kimmy-Cub", which she sees as a sign of affection, except when it is said within earshot of Bonnie.

Similarly, because of their close relationship, Kim often finds it hard to tell her father when he embarrasses her, or to explain how she has grown out of things that she used to enjoy, for fear of hurting his feelings. He is voiced by actor Gary Cole.

Mother
Kim's relationship with her mother is given less airtime than her relationship with her father, but it is often scripted when emotional depth or conflict resolution is required, usually in relation to Kim's teenage angsts.

While Kim's father is often either oblivious to, or uncomfortable with, many of the teenage issues that Kim faces throughout the series, Mrs. Possible is much more in tune with her daughter's feelings and frequently acts as an emotional anchor for Kim—helping her to put her feelings into perspective, and reminding her that things aren't always as bad as they might seem.

Aside from helping her daughter to battle peer pressure, one of Mrs. Possible's main duties has been to help Kim to get through various issues in her friendship with Ron. Whether Kim was jealous of Ron's newfound friendship with Felix, feeling guilty about ditching him in favor of Monique, or was afraid that his eagerness to be accepted was leading him down the path to embarrassment, Mrs. Possible was always there to have a mother-daughter moment and to provide her with sage advice. She is voiced by actress Jean Smart.

Siblings
Kim's relationship with her younger twin brothers - whom she usually refers to as the Tweebs - is analogous to many other TV brother-sister relationships in which there is a notable age gap that leave one side teen and the other pre-teen.

She often finds Jim and Tim to be juvenile and embarrassing, and she resents the fact that babysitting them impinges upon her social life. She also frequently becomes angry at them when they invade her privacy, or attempt to embarrass her in front of her friends, by reading her diary or posting sneaked photographs of her on the Internet. Despite this, she loves her brothers and goes out of her way to protect them, even if it means putting her own life on the line. They were voiced in the first three seasons by actor Shaun Fleming, and were voiced in the fourth season by actor Spencer Fox.

Ron Stoppable


Kim has known Ron since their first day at pre-school, and has been best friends with him ever since.

Kim and Ron have a very distinctive relationship of opposites that covers both their personalities and their natural aptitudes. While Kim is Type A teen; a perfectionist who sets high standards for herself, and who is concerned about image, Ron has Type B personality and is laid-back, ambivalent, and somewhat random. Equally, Ron does well in almost all of the areas in which Kim does not (for example, cooking and resisting peer pressure), and vice versa. Kim and Ron complement each other, and their relationship works well; as they headed into season 4 and their senior year of high school, they had advanced from best friends to boyfriend and girlfriend. At the end of season 4 they are still together and have each successfully graduated high school.

With his more relaxed attitude toward life, as well as his flexibility and ability to see the good aspects of bad situations, Ron often provides a balance to Kim's ambitious nature and image orientated character. As such, he often encourages her to slow down and keep things in perspective, to be less competitive and not treat everything as a challenge that must be met head on, and to be less image conscious.

Doctor Drakken
Kim and Drakken rarely interact, but when they do, Kim tries to hurt Drakken's ego by reminding him, in various ways, how he lost the last time. Drakken has met the entire Possible clan: her mother (in Mother's Day), her father (in Attack of the Killer Bebes, So The Drama, and in college), and even her extended family (in Showdown at the Crooked D and The Golden Years). Strange interactions between them include saving Drakken's life (in Rewriting History and Cap'n Drakken) and teaming up with Drakken (in Bad Boy & Graduation) and even celebrating Christmas with her immediate family.

Bonnie Rockwaller
Bonnie and Kim have a highly rivalrous relationship with each other. This includes frequently going to great lengths to get the better of the other.

Shego
Kim and Shego's many meetings usually result in fisticuffs. However, unlike the rivalry with Bonnie, Kim and Shego are more professional in their interaction with each other, as Kim is more comfortable trading punches with Shego than dealing with Bonnie's barbed comments (as stated in "So the Drama," by Kim, "Bonnie is High School Evil, Shego is real world evil.") Her rivalry has proven to have some sense of honor, as Shego respects Kim as an adversary, and desires to be the only one to defeat her. Despite being enemies, they both have a lot in common. Shego and Kim managed to become friends when Shego temporarily turned good to the point Kim saw Shego as the older sister she never had. She is voiced by actress Nicole Sullivan.

Love interests/crushes
Over the years, Kim has had a lot of crushes. She has also been the subject of a few. Here are the many that are mentioned:
 * Walter Nelson: Walter never actually appeared on the show. What is known is that Kim had a crush on him in middle school. He kissed Kim and their braces locked, leading to an embarrassing trip to the orthodontist. This is suspected to be Kim's first kiss. At least that is what Kim tells her pre-superhero self in A Sitch in Time. In So the Drama, Ron recalls that he was the one Kim called for help because of the brace incident and that Mrs. Stoppable, Ron's mother, was the one who drove Kim and Walter to the orthodontist.
 * Señor Senior Junior: In Animal Attraction, Junior begins to nurse a crush on Kim when he finds out that she's his soul mate (according to Animology).
 * Brick Flagg: Brick thought Kim had a crush on him in All the News after Ron misquoted Kim in the school paper as saying that she "thought Brick Flagg was totally hot." Kim was not actually interested in Brick romantically. Brick "dumped" Kim after he thought Kim was "trying too hard," thinking she had staged his kidnapping by Adrena Lynn.
 * Josh Mankey: In seasons 1 and 2, Kim was infatuated with Josh Mankey. Prior to season 3, over the course of which hints of a potential and later actual romance between Kim and Ron arose, Josh received the most adoration from Kim of all her love interests as he was the main object of her "calf love" affections. While Ron was disapproving of this relationship at first, he later grew to accept it. Kim's infatuation with Josh was revealed to have died down "last semester" in the episode Emotion Sickness, which allowed the creators of the show room for the coupling of Kim and Ron. Josh was a mellow and nonchalant young man. Some fans opine that Kim and Josh would have been more interesting a pairing than Kim and Ron, due to their social schematics predating season 3; conversely, many fans opine that the coupling of Kim and Ron was a better choice.
 * Hirotaka: Kim grew interested in Hirotaka (an exchange student from Japan). Hirotaka showed interest in her, or at least in her martial arts abilities, but he was more interested in seeing Kim fight with her best friend, Monique, over him. He also appears to have been dating Bonnie Rockwaller all along, and refers to her as his "Number One Girlfriend".
 * Bobby Johnson: Kim only mentions him in The Truth Hurts. She admits that she's not sure if she likes him because she likes him, or because he asked out Bonnie first. The scene in which Kim mentions Bobby Johnson is significant, because the reporter, in said scene, inquires as to whether Kim is crushing on anyone, and, forced to tell the truth, she must answer the question sincerely, naming those she is crushing on.
 * Eric: Eric was a Synthodrone made by Drakken to distract Kim from the plans Drakken had formulated in So the Drama. Eric was tall, well-built, attractive, serious, and incredibly convincing as a regular human being. (Voiced by Ricky Ullman.) It was mostly due to his involvement that Kim and Ron eventually realized their feelings for each other and became a couple.
 * Ron Stoppable: Originally Kim's goofy best friend and sidekick, over time their friendship became something more and they are now a couple. The directors of the show, as stated in an interview, had chosen to couple Kim and Ron so as to impart the moral, "give geeks a chance". Kim and Ron had a very durable friendship before their romantic involvement in So the Drama. Apparently as implied in the movie their classmates have been expecting this so they cheered when the pair made their entrance. This is suspected by some fans to be a type of maxim communicating the idea that a strong friendship should first precede romance. As of season 4, Kim and Ron are dating. It was believed by some fans that the addition of the element of romance would be a positive thing, although some others were opposed to it and feared it might cause the show to jump the shark. (During the episode Ill Suited the show makes reference to this when Ron asks Kim if she had ever water skied over a shark, as she had in his dream.) Schooley and McCorkle noted the potential risk, admitting that while Kim and Ron's blossoming love gave them a chance to do something new with the characters, the relationship had to be handled delicately to avoid turning the series stale. In the episode Clean Slate, Kim acknowledged that she loved Ron. The fact that her impending death spurred him to destroy their adversaries in Graduation would illustrate the fact that this love is indeed mutual; the ending of the series finale heavily implies that Kim and Ron's relationship will endure.

Disney Parks
Kim and Ron appeared at the Disney's Hollywood Studios park as walkaround characters on the Streets of America. They also star in the Kim Possible World Showcase Adventure game at Epcot guiding guests on their missions through Kimmunicators while they travel around the lagoon.

Fan reaction
Although the franchise's primary focus is to be an adventure/comedy, the Kim romance/crush angle has proven to be a surprising hit among fans. With audiences both reacting well to the relationship issues and themes aired in the show, and adding to them though fan-shipping (fans projecting romantic imagery onto franchise characters) in their own fan-fiction and artwork.

In several episodes leading up to So the Drama, there was a running gag where Ron would react in a jealous manner if Kim showed interest in or spent time with another boy, and vice versa, where Kim would react in a jealous manner if another girl appeared to show an interest in Ron; both tended to react in an angry, defensive manner if they thought someone was implying they had romantic feelings for the other. For example, in Overdue, when Shego asks Ron where Kim is, he angrily shouts, "She's NOT my girlfriend!"; in Gorilla Fist, Kim shows clear jealousy of Yori and her interest in Ron, even going so far as to suspect her of being an agent of Monkey Fist on the basis of virtually no evidence. This prompts Monique to accuse her of 'gellin', i.e., being jealous of Yori, which Kim angrily, defensively denies.)

According to the shows creators, the reaction to Kim's relationships with other characters was clearly demonstrated to them when a Disney Channel poll, held prior to kiss scene in So the Drama, revealed that Emotion Sickness; an episode in which Ron is forced to address his feelings about Kim, was, by a wide margin, the most popular episode of the time. After seeing the results of the poll, Schooley and McCorkle took it "as a sign" of fan approval, and used it as part of their justification for progressing Kim and Ron's relationship to the next level in the Season 3 finale, culminating in them kissing during the closing montage. In turn, this proved to be extremely popular with fans and led them to maintain and formalize Kim and Ron's boyfriend-girlfriend relationship when Disney renewed the show for a fourth season.

Although the primary focus of audiences has been towards a Kim-Ron relationship, fans have also engaged in a certain amount of shipping directed at other pairings that were never fully explored in the franchise, such as Kim/Josh pairings or pairings with characters other than Kim (for example, Ron pairings). There have also been a number of less conventional fan pairs that that diverge substantially from series canon. Among the most well known of these is the Kim and Shego slash pairing (known as Kigo), which has been derived from audience interpretations and projections of series subtext, and has proven popular with fan-artists, and slash-fiction enthusiasts.