#also VERY IMPORTANT headcanon that i must stress: the monkeys are not familially related

[rararazaquato]

monkey headcanon doc

be warned: VERY LONG POST, will be putting it under a cut.

The white spots on the chest and their muzzles are the only parts of the actual monkey that show through the cybernetics, with the exception of helmet removal for brain inspection and repair.

Too long without the helmet will kill the monkey. Probably a 10-minute timer a la that one half-finished Invader Zim episode. The one where Zim loses his PAK and he only has ten minutes to live. That one.

The rest of the monkey is in there still, but removing the cybernetic armor would certainly be painful. Plus, again, 10 minute timer.

“so how is Mandarin surviving without his helmet” well on the HOOP the prison staff were basically just force feeding him fluids or whatever, so he had a little more than half an hour left in him by the time he tried taking over Shuggazoom in Sixth Monkey. However, he was nearly a corpse by the end of the whole ordeal. Muscle Bod Mandarin was crafted to have extended “battery life” by Skeleton King, and Skelemandarin has no more need for being on what is effectively Villainous Life Support. Then again, he’s basically a corpse barely clinging to life at this point. His face post-s2, with one blind eye? That’s not scar tissue around it. That’s rot. He’s a rotting corpse. Peace and love ❤️

Sparx, Gibson, and Otto’s lenses aren’t actually black. They’re tinted red, blue, and green respectively.

Similarly, Antauri’s fur in his original form isn’t exactly black. It’s a very dark and desaturated purple, but it’s still definitely purple. Think Shiny Gengar.

Speaking of Antauri, remember how I said the snout sticks out of the cybernetic parts? When Antauri gets his fully mechanical body, there’s obviously no more snout. The body was never meant to house an actual monkey, so there’s no snout built in. Antauri’s head is basically an orb.

Still, Antauri’s head is evenly divided between the actual silver on the top half (which also has a slight purpley hue) and the white of his original muzzle on the bottom half. Poké Ball lookin’ man.

Antauri can still “eat”, in a sense. He has taste receptors in his mouth, but any food he swallows is all converted to energy and stored in a spare battery pack. To make sure he has enough energy for his physical form to keep going, he usually does the robo-equivalent of carbo-loading before intense missions.

Each monkey has a physical feature that sets them apart from each other.

Antauri has sharp claws even when not using his weapons. When he gets his new bod, his hands are normal, but as previously mentioned, no muzzle.

Sparx wears those stupid Dirk Strider glasses. However, those conceal his actual differing features - his pupils are triangular instead of circular like the other monkeys. This is how we get a similar visual effect to his eyes going all “sharp” when he goes Fire of Hate mode - he takes off his glasses when hanging out with Valeena and Mandarin.

Gibson’s tail ends in a sharp point that’s the same blue as the rest of his body. This point also glows when he’s experiencing heightened emotions or is using his drill attacks.

Nova has extra face fluff. Basically, she looks like Tails from Sonic. I think it’s cute.

Otto’s weird little head fin thing has two sections instead of one. This is to make it resemble a ponytail, and a mechanic would need to keep his hair out of his face!

Mandarin is the closest to canon, because he has no distinguishing features (since he was the first monkey given a cybernetic body).

The monkey snouts have a little nose now! Reason: it is cute

I think the two pieces above really show off the way my headcanons for the monkey’s appearances work. One is the dialogueless version of a comic I did where Mandarin gets kicked off the team for getting into NFTs, and the other is a collection of Gibson being gay as hell (the Otto design used in the second piece is my current one, the Mandarin comic one has a different fin style).

The monkeys are about 3 feet tall, maybe a little less. They’re all about the same height, too, although Mandarin always seemed like the shortest due to his tendency to slouch. Antauri’s silver body is also a little smaller, so he ends up being “the short one”.

They can regulate their outside body temperature. Are you too hot? Gibson’s an ice pack now. Too cold? Otto is a hot water bottle. This is kinda canon with Snowbound, but I like to think they have a lot of control over their temperature. Unfortunately, Nova’s thermal regulators were busted when she had that confrontation with Mandarin in the training room, so she can lose control of how warm she gets pretty easily. The same probably applies to her cooling abilities, i.e. she can basically turn anyone that touches her into a popsicle, but she hates even her outside body temperature being cold that much that she hasn’t bothered to try.

However, the exposed parts of the monkey maintain regular… monkey… temperature? What is the regular monkey temperature? idk lol

Each team member takes care of their chest fur differently.

Antauri combs his fur exactly 99 times in the morning and exactly once before bed. He also washes it every other day with shampoo and conditioner, as is recommended for many humans. He doesn’t have any in his robot form, though. Bald.

Sparx puts hair gel in his fur and slicks it into a stupid little spiral shape. Washes it every other day.

Gibson is actually the least careful with his fur. He’ll quickly comb it out if you bring it up, but it usually goes unbrushed. Do not ask him when he last washed his fur. He’s too busy doing science and research and being tormented by Sparx! The man loves dry shampoo.

Nova brushes her fur every day and washes it every day as well. She also pays special attention to the fur around her muzzle, as it gets tangled and matted easily.

Otto isn’t anywhere near as bad as Gibson, but he’s not exactly the most bothered about his appearance. He washes and brushes his fur when it gets something like oil stuck in it, which is actually pretty often, but he isn’t doing it for appearances. He’s doing it because it feels weird to have goop in your fur!

If you so much as tap Mandarin’s fur with a comb it will all fall out.

Also, music tastes!

Antauri doesn’t listen to music? If he isn’t on high alert with the team, he’s either sleeping or meditating, and he doesn’t like music when he meditates. Sometimes he’ll put on rain sounds or, like, whale songs or something while sleeping.

Sparx has a whole music career! Unfortunately, his album has become a laughingstock among bald music critics. Meta jokes aside, he likes most subgenres of rock and the occasional hip hop song.

Gibson mostly listens to classical music, although he is also known to partake in Lo-Fi Hip Hop Beats to Relax/Study To. Also, because this show was made in 2004, he has an “embarrassing” interest in Britney Spears’ music. No one else on the team finds it embarrassing. Except Sparx. But, as mentioned above, his own music career was a flop, so he can’t exactly judge, now can he?

Put on any gym playlist. That’s Nova’s music taste. Bonus points if it includes Eye of the Tiger.

Otto listens to the most obnoxious hyperpop you could imagine. Somehow, he has the best music taste of the group. He and Sparx composed the team’s theme song in-universe.

Mandarin, like Antauri, also doesn’t listen to music. Unlike Antauri, where he just doesn’t have time, Mandarin doesn’t listen to music because allegedly that’s one of the telltale signs of a future serial killer.

Not a monkey, but Chiro likes to roll down the windows of his little car thing and blast My Chemical Romance and other emo people music. That’s what he was doing at the beginning of Girl Trouble. He also likes generic guitar solo music as evidenced by the same episode.

Obviously, the monkeys don’t like bananas, but they have their favorite foods.

Antauri actually enjoys those healthy smoothies from Wonder Fun Meat World. Chiro will pretend to do shots of them, much to Antauri’s chagrin (and Sparx’s amusement. “Hey, Antauri, after we save the universe, we should send Chiro to university. I think he’d have a great time!”)

Sparx is convinced that carrots actually do help with eyesight, so he does his best to eat as many as he can. He also has a sweet tooth, so his absolute favorite food is carrot cake.

Gibson drinks black coffee, like some kind of freak.

Nova loves Otto’s cooking, whatever he makes. The clam chowder from Night of Fear? Chef’s kiss (she said this and Otto responded with “huh? chefs kiss? do they really?”)

Otto, on the other hand, loves fast food hamburgers. He found out about the Gakburger “secret ingredient” and kept eating it. When he retires from saving the universe, he plans on starting an ethical Thingy-fur farm to make sure Mr. Gakslapper doesn’t have to shadily shave the Thingies behind the counter. He is also the only monkey who doesn’t dislike bananas. He doesn’t love them, but if given the choice between a banana and one of Antauri’s smoothies, he’d much rather take the banana.

Mandarin has been living off of nothing but fluids for the past god knows how many years.

Antauri’s “sensing” powers actually detect signature electromagnetic waves. Like a shark.

Antauri and Gibson are Chiro’s legal guardians. Chiro’s full legal name is Chiro Niyelli Gibson (“Niyelli” being a corruption of “Nieli” in the same way “Chiro” is a corruption of “Ciro”).

Again, not monkey, but Chiro’s birth parents were actually the Sheenkos, and Valeena was his older sister. They went all freaky Skeleton King mode and turned Valeena into a perfect cult sacrifice/put Chiro in the orphanage when he was a baby. yeah i know this probably has a lot of timeline loopholes and is probably not anywhere near canon but shhh

And Clayton Claymore is his great uncle, making the Alchemist his great uncle through, well they never got married but he and Cpt. Shuggazoom were effectively married so Skeleton King is Chiro’s great uncle, basically. And Valeena’s. No one involved has any idea. again don’t talk about the timeline here

All of the frogs from Brothers in Arms are evolutionarily related to poison dart frogs. They probably aren’t poisonous, though, since the diet needed to create poison in frogs is very specific and you probably can’t be too picky in space. Although, I do like to think Otto’s frog counterpart is still poisonous, both as a parallel to Otto’s ability to fix/”heal” the Super Robot (although that frog is also shown to be a mechanic by the end of BiA) and as a callback to the original pitch bible for SRMTHFG, where Otto was learning how to control his mean streak (almost like it was his toxic side).

Mr. Cheepers is fully sapient. (also, fun fact, in the Japanese dub, his name is Pi-chan) (another fun fact: Mr. Cheepers was actually one of the few things I remembered from the show as a child before rewatching it. Did not remember any of the monkey’s names, but by God did I remember Mr. Cheepers).

Well, that’s it for now! Please DM me for more headcanons I have so many thoughts.