Gargantua is the name given to two separate space stations built by Jonas Venture Sr. and Jonas Venture Jr. on The Venture Bros.
Gargantua-1[]
Gargantua-1
Created by Jonas Venture Sr., the Gargantua-1 was the original space station and was capable of housing up to 9,000 Venture Industries employees.
During the time of the Venture Industries Education Division film strip "Careers in Science" in 1971, the station boasted over 2,000 other employees, including 200 space welders, 74 flying nurses, and "one busy barber."
In 1987 a team from the Guild of Calamitous Intent, including Red Death, infiltrated the space station and performed an unsanctioned arching during a screening of the 1981 Burt Reynolds film Sharky's Machine. An unknown individual opened the cargo bay doors, sucking members of the crew and the Guild into open space in what came to be known as the Movie Night massacre. Jonas Venture Sr. was reportedly among those killed.
More than twenty years after the Movie Night massacre, Gargantua-1 was occupied by only two astronauts: American Colonel Bud Manstrong and Russian Lieutenant Anna Baldavitch. The station was also supposedly haunted by the "Phantom Spaceman", a legend that developed following the Movie Night massacre.
In Guess Who's Coming to State Dinner?, Gargantua-1 plummeted to Earth, landing in a terrorist hideout, which killed Anna and caused Colonel Manstrong to be declared a hero. In reality, Manstrong had simply been lucky, as Baldavitch wanted to "go out with a bang", and gave Bud a handjob, at which point he passed out.
Revealed in The Venture Bros. & The Curse of the Haunted Problem, what seemed to be an exceedingly vague error indicator, the PROBLEM, was actually a device for preserving life, and within contained the still living head of Jonas Venture Sr. This device had been recovered by Jonas Venture Jr. from the crash site of Gargantua-1 and was placed in the lobby museum of the VenTech Tower, where it took control of the building's automated systems after studying them from within for over a year.
Jonas Venture Sr., from within the PROBLEM, apparently awoke just prior to the events in Careers in Science and attempted to communicate with the Gargantua-1 crew via Morse code using the single flashing light on the PROBLEM. When this failed, Jonas attempted to reach out directly to the space station's operating system, assuming he'd be able to communicate with it because he built it. His command for the station to go HOME resulted in a system error that accidentally caused Gargantua-1 to crash, as seen in Arrears in Science.
Gargantua-2[]
Gargantua-2
Gargantua-2 was built by Jonas Venture Jr. to replace the first Gargantua space station, with construction of the Station beginning at some point around the episode The Silent Partners, where The Pirate Captain said that Jonas Jr. had to cannibalize parts of the X-2 in order to get parts for the new station. In the episode What Color is Your Cleansuit?, Jonas had commissioned his brother to construct a ray shield designed to protect Gargantua-2 from incoming asteroids; which was eventually completed.
It debuted in the Season 6 episode All This and Gargantua-2, where the main focus was on its grand opening and it was shown to function as an extravagant casino and luxury resort for the visiting guests on board; with several wealthy socialites, Venture Industries affiliate groups to attend the grand opening. OSI Agents led by Brock Samson would also attend the opening; anticipating that due to the high-profile event, chances are that the Guild would try to do an Arching.
In close proximity to Gargantua-2 was Meteor Majeure, a space station once owned by the Guild and served as the central base by Force Majeure; the predecessor of The Sovereign, whom had claimed Meteor Majeure as his private retreat once Force Majeure was killed and that the Sovereign usually kept the station abandoned.
The space station was held up by The Revenge Society; who staged their operations from Meteor Majeure in order to do their own Arching by doing a heist of Gargantua-2's casino to steal its' loot and be recognized as an equal threat to the Guild, but the original Team Venture were able to defeat them. Phantom Limb revealed that he had intended to betray the Society after making a deal with Sovereign in-order to try and reclaim a high-ranking position within the Guild again (unaware that Sovereign had started a purge of the Guilds' Council of Thirteen, and that Sovereign had intended to kill Phantom Limb as well). The station then faced a bigger problem when The Investors; whom Jonas Jr. had made a deal with to get the necessary materials to build Gargantua-2 in the first place would cause a core meltdown, as this shut the ray shields down in the midst of a barrage of asteroids. However, Dr. Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture and Dean Venture were able to reactivate the shields long enough for the guests to evacuate. Due to the Core still undergoing a meltdown and posing a threat to the guests that'd be caught in the blast radius, Jonas Jr. along with General Treister, ejected with the station's core to save the others from the resulting explosion. The majority of the Revenge Society would wind up dying aboard Gargantua-2, save for Professor Impossible who would mostly reconcile with Sally, along with both Phantom Limb and Radical Left using Fat Chances' Chance Hole to wind up back at Meteor Majeure before Gargantua-2's destruction.
Episode Appearances and Mentions[]
- Careers in Science (Gargantua-1)
- Guess Who's Coming to State Dinner? (Gargantua-1)
- Handsome Ransom (Gargantua-2)
- Bright Lights, Dean City (Gargantua-2)
- The Silent Partners (Gargantua-2)
- What Color is Your Cleansuit? (Gargantua-2)
- All This and Gargantua-2 (Gargantua-2)
- The Venture Bros. & The Curse of the Haunted Problem (Gargantua-1)
- Arrears in Science (Gargantua-1)
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