The Venture Bros.

Premise

Characters

• Dr. Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture, a former boy adventurer and inspiration for the "Rusty Venture" cartoon series, runs what remains of Venture Industries, a once-leading global corporation established by his super-scientist adventurer father Jonas. Since Jonas's death, Venture Industries has declined to a shadow of its former glory, now occupying only a portion of the vast and deteriorating Venture compound and external locations including a base on Spider Skull Island, which his father captured, and the space station Gargantua-1, which his father built. Rusty dropped out of college shortly after his father's death and his academic credentials have been questioned. It is stated he only holds an honorary degree from a Tijuana community college. He attempts to follow in his father's footsteps by becoming a super-scientist himself. His competence frequently falls short of his father's and he often demonstrates questionable ethics, leading others to claim that his occasional successes merely capitalize on the work of his late father.
• Hank and Dean Venture are the titular fraternal twin brothers of the show. Hank is the more adventurous and Dean is the more timid and bookish of the two brothers. The two teenaged brothers often wind up in perilous situations, and have been killed over a dozen times, only to be replaced with exact clones who have no memory of their own deaths. The title The Venture Bros. has taken on different meanings throughout the series with the introduction of Rusty's fraternal twin brother Jonas Jr., and Hank and Dean's illegitimate paternal half-brother, Dermott Fictel. The identity of Hank and Dean's mother remains the subject of some debate. At the end of the series finale movie The Venture Bros.: Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart it is revealed that Rusty Venture grew the boys in an artificial womb that he attached to his own abdomen, and it is suggested that Deborah Majeure, daughter of supervillain Force Majeure and actress Bobbi St. Simone, is the boys' genetic mother.
• Brock Samson is the longstanding bodyguard to the Venture family. Appointed by the Office of Secret Intelligence, the muscular and hyper-masculine Brock frequently uses his license to kill to protect the Venture family from any threat with sudden and brutal violence. He is a ruthless hand-to-hand combatant, usually preferring to use a combat knife, his hands and feet, or his vintage Dodge Charger rather than firearms; the Monarch refers to him fearfully as Venture's "Swedish murder machine". In the fourth season, Brock Samson is replaced as a bodyguard by Sergeant Hatred, a former supervillain. Prior to becoming their bodyguard, Hatred was assigned to be the Venture family's arch-enemy. Hatred is also a "cured" pedophile; his pedophilia is actually controlled by an experimental drug given to him by the OSI and its effectiveness has varied wildly between episodes. Season 6 sees Samson return to his position as the Venture's official bodyguard while Sgt. Hatred becomes security for the new Venture compound in New York City.
• Dr. Venture's deceased father, Dr. Jonas Venture, was the model super-scientist of his day. He was a visionary who changed the world with his inventions and stands as the inspiration for most other protagonists in the series. He formed "Team Venture", a collection of friends and associates that helped him fight crime and subsequently save his son from his arch-enemies. To help his son cope without a mother figure, he developed a loyal and rather emotional robot named H.E.L.P.eR. that accompanies and assists the Ventures. Early in the series, he was portrayed as a model man and father. However, later episodes show him as callous and uncaring about his son's well-being, while showcasing questionable ethics, both medically and socially. In the fourth-season episode "Self-Medication", there is a scene showing the young Rusty Venture receiving psychotherapy from his father. As Rusty says that he longs for a normal childhood, Jonas is shown to have snuck out of his study while Rusty elaborates upon his desire to not follow in his footsteps; after tiptoeing back to his desk, Jonas interrupts him and insists that Rusty blames his father for all of his problems, and is ungrateful for the opportunities given to him. In general, Jonas' portrayal has shown him to be less and less of a sympathetic character as the series progresses, eventually leading Rusty to proclaim that he was a "far worse" father than he is.

• The Venture Family's primary nemesis is the pernicious but ineffective super-villain the Monarch. Assuming the motif of a monarch butterfly and "arching" Dr. Venture since college, the Monarch will stop at nothing to antagonize Dr. Venture. Accompanying the Monarch is the masculine-voiced Dr. Girlfriend, referred to by the Monarch as "Dr. Mrs. The Monarch" after their wedding.
• Baron Werner Ünterbheit is a former dictator of Ünterland and bears a grudge against Venture. He blames Venture for the loss of his jaw in college, explaining "One is always supposed to look out for one's lab partner!" The season three premiere reveals that the Monarch was responsible for the explosion that destroyed Ünterbheit's jaw, in an early attempt to kill Venture.
• Phantom Limb is another villain, a former lover of Dr. Girlfriend, and a rival to the Monarch. He is very snobby and debonair, and has invisible arms, which can produce energy and electrocute opponents. Phantom Limb was a high-ranking Guild member, until he tried to usurp the Sovereign.
• The Ventures' friends and acquaintances include expert necromancer Doctor Byron Orpheus and his apathetic, teenage goth daughter Triana, who rent a portion of the Venture Compound; the albino computer scientist Pete White, a former college friend of Dr. Venture's; hydrocephalic "boy genius" Master Billy Quizboy ; and Dr. Jonas Venture, Jr., Dr. Venture's formerly parasitic fraternal twin brother who has succeeded in all of the areas that Rusty does not. Surviving members of the original Team Venture have also appeared as well as Dr. Orpheus's teammates in the Order of the Triad.

  Episodes