| Dylan Prescott "Dil" Pickles | |
|---|---|
|
File:Dylan Pickles.jpg Dil as seen in All Grown Up! | |
| First appearance | The Rugrats Movie (1998) |
| Last appearance | Bad Blood (All Grown Up!, 2008) |
| Created by | Klasky-Csupo |
| Portrayed by | Tara Strong[1] |
| Information | |
| Nickname | Dil or Dilly |
| Species | Human |
| Gender | Male |
| Family |
Didi Pickles (Mother) Stu Pickles (Father) Tommy Pickles (Brother) |
| Relatives |
Grandpa Lou Pickles (Grandfather) Trixie McGee-Pickles (Grandmother; deceased) Lulu Pickles (Grandmother; Grandpa Lou's second wife) Angelica Pickles (Cousin) Drew Pickles (Uncle) Charlotte Pickles (Aunt) Boris Kropotkin (Grandfather) Minka Kropotkin (Grandmother) Ben Kerpackter (Uncle) Elaine Kerpackter (Aunt) Aunt Mariam (Grandpa's Cousin) Dylan Prescott (Didi's cousin) |
Dylan "Dil" Prescott Pickles is the younger brother of Tommy Pickles, and cousin of Angelica Pickles on the Nickelodeon shows Rugrats and All Grown Up! . Named after Didi's cousin, Dil 'Dylan' Prescott, he was born in The Rugrats Movie (released November 20, 1998[2]). His name is a pun of dill pickles.
In Rugrats[]
Dil as seen in Rugrats
When Dil joined the Rugrats cast in 1999, his age was moved up to 3 months. From the very beginning, Dil had curly yet limited hair on his head, and he almost always wore yellow trap-door pajamas (though in the movies, his pajamas were purple). Because of his age, Dil could not say as many words as the other Rugrats. For the final five years of Rugrats' run, Dil had to learn on how to be a Rugrat. He always wanted everything at his age and would always do whatever he could to get anything. When he grabbed something, he would often say, "Mine!" (Which incidentally was his first word). He was just as selfish as his cousin Angelica, and always cried until something would get his attention. Dil's cuteness, however, saved Dil from becoming an Angelica-clone. When Didi was pregnant with Dil, she expected him to be a girl and she and Stu planned to name him "Trixie" after Stu's mother (Tommy also reveals that another name they had considered was "Delilah") but named him after Didi's cousin Dylan.[3]
Dil would always call Angelica "Yucky" (or "YAKEE", as he pronounced it), and he was also a hair puller. His favorite sports were tennis (as evidenced in "Silent Angelica") and baseball (as revealed in "Hand Me Downs"). Sometimes Dil would say "poopie" whenever he was about to poop on his diaper. And Dil would always be called up to save the other Rugrats at the right time (as when Dil found the treasure in "Club Fred"). Dil remained the same height until a 2003 episode titled "Back to School" when he, according to his father, Stu Pickles, "grew an inch."
In All Grown Up![]
Dil Pickles with his Sherpa hat.
At 9 years of age, Dil may still be the youngest of the gang, but he has come a long way from when he was a 3 month old. Dil now has red hair, like his mom Didi, and he has developed an unusual personality (caused by either being dropped on his head as a baby by Phil and Lil, or by his DNA from his father Stu's side of the family, as evidenced in "Truth or Consequences" when Vice Principal Pangborn analyzed him). Dil had an imaginary best friend in Izzy in the episode "Izzy or Isn't He?". Dil has a pet goldfish called Pablo and in "Lucky 13," Dil showed that he is fascinated by dolphins, believing that they share 'a bond with our alien brethren' - possibly inspired by Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. And in "The Big Score," Dil becomes the mascot for the middle school soccer team by dressing up as various animals, including a slug and a monkey not unlike the Los Angeles Angels' Rally Monkey. Dil, in fact added soccer to the list of favorite sports early on in the series (since then however, most of the soccer is focused on Phil and Lil DeVille). Dil is a team laser tag player, as shown in 'Tommy Foolery'. Dil also shows his side as an inventor in "Tweenage Tycoons," proving that Dil is a smart boy.
Dil believes strongly in aliens and the supernatural, and he actually gets to interact with an extraterrestrial race in "Tommy Foolery". Dil also believes strongly in the theory of karma and has tried to train Angelica to build up her karmic residue to get rid of a zit on her cheek (It's Karma, Dude). Dil celebrates both Jewish and Christian holidays (Hanukkah and Christmas for example), this is due to his Father and Mother being Christian and Jewish, respectively. In fact, in the Christmas episode of All Grown Up!, Dil and Tommy wrote a Hanukkah song and performed it after Susie sang the first verse of The First Noel.
Dil is not only an unusual boy; but he also is a mix of several international cultures. Thanks to his unusual behavior and originality, it's been thought that Dil was intended to be a breakout character. This happened on the last seasons of the show which most of the story-lines included him and even in the last series episode "All Broke Up" he masterminded both plots. As a result, Dil was ranked number one in the most recent poll for favorite character.
Multi-cultural practices[]
Dil loves embracing different cultures. It is known that he wears a sherpa hat (as evidenced in "A DeVille House Divided") in almost every episode, and he wears the kilt part of Scottish culture and in the episode 'Memoirs Of A Finster', he was seen eating with chopsticks and wearing Japanese shoes and wearing a Mexican poncho. On 'Dude, Where's my Horse?', it is known that Dil is also interested in different languages like Spanish (which is the language of one of his favorite Soap Opera "¡Hospital de Tentacion!" ) and Portuguese as seen in 'Curse of Reptar'.
Role as a little brother[]
During the series Dil has changed his role of little brother, on Season 1 and 2 we saw a continuity of how Dil looked up to Tommy, in All Grown Up he worshiped Tommy until Season 3 where Dil seems to get independence from his own brother, on Season 4 he finally breaks that feeling of worshiping and on Season 5 the rivalry of the brothers is more seen as Dil is totally independent from his brother, and as seen in Golden Boy he shows that he can be better than Tommy in almost everything, and defeating him in the forest with his skills that include: Talking to animals, constructing campers with things he can find in the forest etc.
Gift of invention[]
Like his father Stu before him, Dil Pickles possesses the gift of invention. However, Dil's inventions tend to be somewhat as weird as he is. "Tweenage Tycoons" featured many of these inventions:
- The "BeltQuarium", a belt-like aquarium that Dil built so he could keep an eye on his pet goldfish, Pablo.
- "Shades With a View", shades that act somewhat like Fisher-Price's View-Master toy, with is a button on the top of the lens which allows the user to flip through different slides.
- "Shillows", as Dil describes them, "shoes with pillows".
- A tie with a watch face that allowed the wearer to quickly glance downwards and see the time, instead of lifting his hands to see the time.
The episode "All Broke Up" also shows him inventing a board game called "Impatience."
Also, another invention appeared briefly in "Truth or Consequences" that allowed Dil to read while walking backwards on his hands. As Dil passed by, it prompted Phil to ask, "I wonder what Dil would be like if we never dropped him on his head?"
Also in "Tweenage Tycoons", there were also several inventions and ideas that Dil considered during his inventor's block, that didn't turn out so well (some of which didn't even leave the drawing board!):
- Talking socks
- Blinking underwear
- Mayonnaise Wallpaper
- Ideas during his brief "normal" phase which had been done before like a rubber band ball, a file cabinet, and glue.
Voice[]
Tara Strong was already a frequent Rugrats guest voice before officially joined the cast as the voice of Dil Pickles. Her most notable voice before being Dil was Timmy McNulty. Dil's Rugrats voice has been reused on another cartoon, The Proud Family, in which she is the voice of BeBe and CeCe Proud. In fact, until Rugrats ceased production Tara had recorded Dil's lines separately from other cast members, a job she did again as the voice of 3-month-old Dil for the video release "Tales from the Crib: Snow White," which was released on VHS and DVD on September 26, 2005.
National background[]
Dil has mixed religious heritage with a Jewish Mother and Christian Father. He is a Russian-American having Russian Grandparents (Boris and Minka) and an American father (Stu). Dil's grandpa Lou's mother is Scottish (as evidenced in All Grown Up! episode "Bad Blood").