| 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 lab and asked 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 lab. Dick captures the girls and using a machine, nearly drains all of their Chemical X and life force, but 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. As Dick dies before the factory is completely destroyed, Utonium bursts into tears at the loss of the girls. 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 screams "NO!" one final time as he's ambushed inside his lab one millisecond before he dies, and the factory is destroyed.
Personality[]
Dick Hardly was extremely vile, 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. 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 pretended to be nice to them, just so he could gain a sample of Chemical X and create his Powerpuff Girls Xtreme. Dick made it appear like he wanted to rid the world of all crime. However, inside of the evil factory, he was seen being a completely different person: An evil, cruel, calculating, tyrannical, slave-driving, vicious sadist who only wanted money and had no remorse for cheating others. He often yelled at the employees in his factory, not caring about how tired or exhausted they were. He intentionally made the Xtreme clones shoddy so he could get as much money as possible. 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 kill him, to his horror.
Trivia[]
- He was one of the few characters to die, the others being Abracadaver, the Broccoloids, Bunny, the Gnome, and the Rowdyruff Boys (although the Boys were later revived by Him).
- As a human, Dick Hardly slightly resembles Dexter's unnamed father from Dexter's Laboratory. They have the same voice actor as well.
- Despite appearing only once in the 1998 series and never in the various spin-offs or the 2016 series, Dick Hardly is among the franchise's most memorable villains. This is because he's the only member of the PPG Rogues Gallery who has absolutely no redeeming or comedic qualities. Most villains have lines they will never cross. However, Dick is ruthless enough to kill anyone in order to achieve his goals, even his own ex-friends. In fact, he manages to make HIM (who is nastier than Mojo Jojo) look like a saint by comparison.
- He appears similar to Kip Snip, a villain from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends also created by Craig McCracken.
- He, along with Mojo Jojo, Sedusa, Mike Brickowski, Lenny Baxter, and the Gangreen Gang, is one of the only villains to successfully capture all of the Powerpuff Girls.
- Innuendo: His name.