nulland | Things to Know About Rob

Appearance

As you can see from the image, Rob looks...unique. You may be thinking "that just looks like a glitchy 3D model" but that's literally what he is. He used to have a more normal cartoon body, but things happened. I actually feel bad for spoiling it.

So one thing to note is the areas of static. Those are constantly moving, and can vary in intensity depending on his mood. They're almost always silent, at least.

Point number two is the aforementioned glitches. Rob has frequent, very brief rendering errors. Usually it's something along the lines of a chunk of his hair turning a random direction or parts of his face stretching or not showing up, but there are a variety. It's never his entire body, and it lasts less than a second, but it's definitely noticeable. As such, I probably won't mention it, but you are allowed to notice it's happening at any time.

For a better idea, he's in this segment quite a lot.

Apart from those glitches, his facial features (eye, mouth, hair) all float just over where they should be on his head. Also it's not shown on the picture, but there's just a small hole on the left side of his stomach. I don't know about that one, either.

Finally, I will note that in spite of all this, he's actually mostly solid. Touching him would just feel like touching any other cartoon cyclops teen.

Canon Quirks (Opt-In/Out)

If you've ever watched Gumball, you may have seen that they like to toe the fourth wall sometimes, but stop just before the characters realize they're cartoons. Except for Rob. I can only speculate when it happened, but Rob is completely aware his life is in a TV show. He has been known to make indirect references to this fact. He also literally has no family. Other characters mention that real life time is passing and that no one has aged.

I realize this is kind of weird for a vast majority of other canons. So, if you're not comfortable with someone who's aware of being a character and the impossible things that causes, please let me know and I'll do my best to leave it out of any threads!

Also, the Gumball writers love making references to other series. Some are indirect canon equivalents, others are as direct as they can get away with. Fortunately, Rob has actually never shown any interest in any of them (apart from the time he pitched spinoffs that were mostly references, but he may have thought they were unique), so by default I'm not going to have him mention it. But, if you actually want a character to give yours an existential crisis, Rob may be your guy. Again, just let me know!

Here's a list of what I remember is in the show, but it's a safe bet most things exist in some way, shape, or form. These are just the canons themselves that are in the show, not little Easter eggs in the scenes or minor characters based on other characters.

"Directly" referenced: Dragonball Z, Sailor Moon, Super Mario Bros., Pokemon, Sonic the Hedgehog, The Last of Us, Final Fantasy, God of War, the transphobe lady's Wizard Series, The Hunger Games, Scooby-Doo, James Bond, The Avengers (MCU)
Canon-equivalent series: The Legend of Zelda, My Little Pony, Star Wars