Directly pulled from Jhonen Vasquez's earlier comic book series Squee! (where she was the title character's unnamed teacher), she evidently possesses paranormal powers, including the ability to materialize out of shadows, levitate, and adopt snake-like movements.
In "Parent Teacher Night", it was shown that she records her classes for whatever reason and revealed that she's been teaching for a long time as she told the parents of her current students that when she taught them they would grow up to be nothing, showing her contempt for the "failures" that her former pupils grew up to be.
In "Career Day", Ms. Bitters stated that she had once wanted to be an astronaut. Another strange factor is a scene during the "Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom" in which Ms. Bitters is shown in a flashback as having once been a fairy princess before flying straight into a bug zapper, to the horror of her students.
Ms. Bitters as a Bug Queen as theorized in Issue 15.
Her exact origin was later questioned by her students in Issue 15 of the Invader Zim comic series during her absence. Although many of the children's theories seemed plausible, the most likely was Gretchen's. She believed that Ms. Bitters was an extremely intelligent bug queen who spread a message to her servants to study human strengths and weaknesses.
They pursued the second part of Ms. Bitters' plan and started a war with the humans. They lost a lot of bugs, but still gained the upper hand and the humans retreated. Ms. Bitters and her bugs, now low in numbers, burrowed under the Skool, and now they wait patiently in hiding for the right time to strike again.
If Ms. Bitters truly was an insect queen, this would explain her odd tendency to be covered in cockroaches in some of the show's earlier episodes as well as her prolonged immunity of lice, and the insect-like appearance of Nightmare Bitters, who also happened to be the leader of all the other doppelgängers. A Ms. Bitters bug was also spotted by Poonchy, smirking at him menacingly as he watched in horror and awe.
Appearance
Ms. Bitters' appearance.
She is a tall, slender old woman of unknown age or origin, her first name, if she even has one, is unknown, other details on her history are a mystery though in Issue 15 some possible explanations were given.
Due to the fact that her eyes are never seen because of her glasses, there's the possibility that Miss Bitters has quite a terrifying evil eye or worse, demonic eyes.
Ms. Bitters' cloak.
Whatever she is, it has been revealed that she cannot survive in direct sunlight, as seen in "The Voting of the Doomed". In this episode, she was wearing a black, hooded cloak like a vampire, thought to protect her from the sun, this seems to imply that her species is nocturnal, also despite the fact that Miss Bitters is not being human, she still resembles one, this suggests that she either can change her appearance at will or her species has some humanoid characteristics.
True to her surname, Miss Bitters is a mean, grumpy old hag who is devoid of any positive emotion and full of demonic hatred for the sun, children, her job, and life in general.
When her students displease her, Miss Bitters habitually looms over them or bends freakishly with her twisting, serpentine length, clawed hands, appear from shadows and bared teeth while emitting a low-pitched, bubbling growl, feeding the possibility that she is inhuman.
She greatly dislikes children, and has expressed frustration at school overcrowding, as well as disdain for traditional holidays such as Halloween or Valentine's Day (although dislike for the latter could be justified, considering an unknown event in the past changed Valentine's Day tradition from giving out chocolate and cards to giving "Valentine meat slabs"). In the animatics for the DVD, she said that she had a Valentine once which turned out to be a squid.
She has shown to be greatly annoyed with the shenanigans of both Zim and Dib who undoubtedly had caused disturbances in her class but doesn’t seem to be this way with all her students as it’s been implied that her favorite student is Zita as she gave her an "A" for calling Dib crazy, suggesting that she can have small moments of where she isn’t completely harsh towards children or at the very least her class.
Miss Bitters are she was seen in the comics.
She has been known to be unusually hard with her students as in “A Room with a Moose” she told Zim he would be using his last bathroom break for the rest on the Skool year while in “Hamstergeddon” she forced Aki to sit upside down, in “The Wettening” due to a paste incident she had a day dedicated to erasing the minds of her class and in “Rise of The Zitboy” she forced Dib to clean the mess made by Zim using a tiny sponge and was not allowed to leave until he was done while in “Door to Door” she commented how the parents of her class would be receiving phone calls “instructing them to love their children less now”.
Similar to Gaz, Miss Bitters has also been known to have a short fuse but unlike her, the teacher has never struck anyone, most likely because she knows such an action wouldn’t be tolerated by the Skool board and the parents, this may be why she prefers using other methods such as the underground classrooms to “get rid” of students such as Rob to make room for Tak or Brian because she “got tired of him”.
Miss Bitters has been shown to be highly misanthropic as she greatly dislikes interacting with her former pupils as seen in “Parent-Teacher Night” and has expressed hatred towards the Skool Principal for lessening the misery of the skoolchildren, she also dislikes physical contact as in one case Zim hugged her and she of course hated the experience.
Since Ms. Bitters is one of the most petulant teachers in the skool, she often horrifies her students with grotesque "recollections": she claimed to have once been a fairy princess until she was shocked with a bug zapper in "Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom". Also, in "Career Day" and the original Pilot she claimed to have been an astronaut until her spaceship imploded.
She also has a dark disposition, which she puts to good use in her "lessons". In "A Room with a Moose", one of said "lessons" was to memorize the copyright information of one of the textbooks, and she stated there would be a quiz on it.
She was similarly horrific and inept at teaching in Squee!, as she taught the class that Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1429 instead of 1492, even screaming "DESTROY THE NONBELIEVER!" when Squee corrected her, turning his classmates into "textbook zombies".
Facts of Doom
Ms. Bitters was voiced by the late Lucille Bliss. She was the voice for Anastasia Tremaine from the 1950 Disney movie Cinderella, as well as the voice of Smurfette on The Smurfs.
In the Latin American dub, she was voiced by the late Rosanelda Aguirre. She also dub-voiced Shenzi from Disney's The Lion King.
In the Latin American dub, Miss Bitters kept her Original name as her Spanish name in the show would have been “Señorita Amargada” which was considered too long to translate.
In the Latin American version of the series, in the episode “ Tak: The Hideous New Girl ” Miss Bitters claimed she had a suitor rather than a Valentine.
In the French dub of Invader Zim, she is given the name Mme. Vinegar.
It was revealed in the DVD commentaries that many more of Ms. Bitters' flashbacks were to occur in the series, and many more were to come had the show not been cancelled, but they constantly had to be cut due to time constraints.
Ms. Bitters' movement are based on those of ghosts, snakes, and the velociraptors from Jurassic Park.
Despite her hatred of children, her favorite student seems to be Zita while her least is Dib. She also harbors some respect for Zim but still shows clear disdain towards the disguised Irken.
As mentioned above, before making her debut in "The Nightmare Begins", Ms. Bitters also appeared in the Squee! comics as Todd's teacher.
Ms. Bitters is a character that can be rescued in Nicktoons: Globs of Doom, with Candi Milo providing her voice instead of Lucille Bliss.[1] When you rescue her, she actually congratulates you for doing so, which is something she rarely does on the show.[2]
Bliss' health was beginning to fail by the time the game was being made, so Milo was cast to succeed her.
In the early episodes of the show, there was a minor animation error where she was seen wearing her black dress in one scene and a purple one the next, as that was the case in “Parent Teacher Night”.
Interestingly, Ms. Bitters has a similar negative disposition to Gaz, but Zim isn't intimidated by her. However, he does show some signs of respect towards his teacher, something he doesn't show for anyone else on Earth - perhaps because he recognizes her as being the Skool's "Tallest", it's also possible that Zim is aware that Miss Bitters isn't human, which would explain a few things.
The biography on the back of the Nickelodeon electronic trading card (written by Eric Trueheart) states that Ms. Bitters isn't human and that she did not come to work at the Skool, but rather, was always there and the Skool was built around her.
Zim has been the only student who has ever seen hugging her, as seen in "Parent Teacher Night", after Zim daydreams back to the day he was born. She, of course, hated the experience.
Jhonen Vasquez said once that Zim is older than any living human, but seeing as Miss Bitters isn't human, it's possible she's older than her Irken student.
Despite being one of the most intelligent characters on the show and as mentioned above that Ms. Bitters isn't human, she still can't tell that Zim is an alien.
It's also possible she secretly knows he is an alien but, similar to Gaz, she doesn't care.
Zim and Miss Bitters are the only two individuals at the Skool who aren’t human.
Ms. Bitters' cameo in "Linc or Swim".
Despite the fact that Miss Bitters shows plenty of paranormal abilities, Dib never once attempted (at least in the produced episodes) to expose her like he has with Zim for being a paranormal entity. In fact, in Issue 15, he outright claims that she's completely normal, just creepy. This could be as a result of his sister Gaz who is just as scary if not more than his demonic teacher, which possibly made him believe that such things are not out of the ordinary for the opposite gender to be capable of doing.
During a scene in another Nickelodeon series, The Loud House, a number of senior citizens are present at a public swimming pool, several of whom are obvious visual references to other elderly characters from various Nickelodeon shows. In addition to one looking like Mrs. Bitters, the others resemble Grandpa Phil from Hey, Arnold!, Ms. Fowl from Jimmy Neutron, Grandpa Lou from Rugrats, and Iroh from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Of these cameos, only Ms. Bitters lacks a known full name.
Evidence of this being a reference to the character rather than an actual appearance include her use of a walking cane (something the real Ms. Bitters lacks) and her being present in active daylight (something the real Ms. Bitters is extremely averse to).
Other than a non-speaking cameo at the beginning, she is the only principal character in the franchise to not appear in Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus, most likely due to Lucille Bliss' death.
Despite being a recurring character in both the series and comics, Miss Bitters did not appear in The Dookie Loop Horror.
Since Ms. Bitters is similar to Zim, being an alien disguised as a human, and also highly misanthropic, it is possible that she plans to take over or destroy Earth herself as hinted in Issue 15, though whatever planning was made it never came to fruition.
Similar to Zim and Gaz, she is misanthropic and dislikes most other humans.
She and Gaz were criticized by a now defunct Christian magazine due to their dark nature and mean demeanors which was controversial for a children’s show.
