Founder of the Legion of Doom.
History[]
Gorilla Grodd appears in Justice League voiced by Powers Boothe. Contrary to stereotypes, this version hates bananas and resents being offered them. In his first appearance, the two-part episode "The Brave and the Bold", Grodd is a fugitive from the secretive Gorilla City, a spurned would-be tyrant who vows vengeance on his fellow primates. Maintaining an e-mail relationship with Central Cityscientist Dr. Sarah Corwin, he comes to Central City to cloak the metropolis in a similar shield as Gorilla City's. This provides him a hidden base from which to launch a nuclear assault against Gorilla City, while he controls the populace of Central City with his mind-control helmet. While the League hurries to stop the bombs, Flash, Green Lantern, and Solovar (re-imagined as the head of security for Gorilla City rather than its ruler) rush to defeat Grodd himself. Grodd becomes incapacitated when he tries to use the mind-control helmet on Flash, not knowing that Flash had switched around various wires at high speed. Later in Gorilla City, Grodd is shown in a zoo-like prison cell, appearing as though he were brain damaged. As the League and Solovar depart from the area in the last few seconds of the episode, the camera zooms in on Grodd's face as he comes to his senses and gets an angry look on his face. Grodd's return in "Secret Society" showcases a different side of the villain. No longer focused on Gorilla City, Grodd becomes an opponent to the League as a whole. With his loyal follower Giganta, he recruits Killer Frost (who simply enjoys murder), Parasite (who hates Superman), Shade (who Grodd offered to become a master criminal), Sinestro (who has a hatred for all Green Lanterns), andClayface (who Grodd promised to find a way to restore his human form) to make a sort of anti-League dubbed the "Secret Society". Revealed in this episode is that Grodd's accident with his mind-control helmet has given him mental powers, which he utilizes in this story as a subtle type of tampering with the League's emotions. Having watched the League via secret cameras for weeks, Grodd manipulates their feelings until the Leaguers start lashing out at each other and end up walking away from the team. Having separated them, Grodd tries to capture each Leaguer and invades a football halftime show to try to do away with the heroes publicly, only to be foiled by J'onn J'onzz, who frees his teammates after impersonating Clayface. The Society battles the League one last time, but fails to beat them and subsequently, Grodd is defeated by Superman.
Justice League Unlimited[]
In the first season Justice League Unlimited episode "Ultimen", Giganta teams up with Bizzaro in an attempt to break Grodd out of prison, only to be defeated by Wonder Woman and Long Shadow, a member of the Ultimen (Grodd does not actually appear in the episode, however). In the second season, Grodd (voiced again by Powers Boothe) turns up as the leader of an expanded Secret Society (based more on the Legion of Doom). As he describes it, the new Secret Society is a sort of co-op for supervillains with each free to act on their own, but (for twenty-five percent of their spoils) able to call in help should they need it against the expanded League. After having the Secret Society seek out various valuable artifacts over the course of the season, Grodd reveals his master plan: to turn every human on the planet into an ape. The plan however is thwarted by the Justice League, and an unimpressed Lex Luthor usurps Grodd's position as the new leader of the Secret Society. Obsessed with reclaiming the god-like power he briefly tasted when merged with the now-destroyed Brainiac, Luthor keeps Grodd prisoner in the Secret Society's headquarters in the hopes that he will reveal how to reconstitute the living supercomputer from the last remaining fragment. When he attempts to probe Grodd's mind, bad fortune leads to Lex switching minds with the Flash, who has a psychic resonance to Grodd's mind due to once being under his control. With the discovery that Brainiac had a base in deep space that was subsequently destroyed (see "Twilight"), Luthor has the Secret Society refit the headquarters for space travel, promising them a place of leadership in the new order with himself as absolute ruler. Because of Luthor's heavy-handed leadership and romantic disinterest, the spurned Tala eventually releases Grodd, who then arranges a mutiny with many other villains. Grodd and Luthor eventually finally find themselves alone together and engage in fisticuffs. Grodd attempts to use his mind-control ability on him. However, Luthor had anticipated this and turns Grodd's power back on him, giving Luthor control of Grodd. Luthor forces him to step into an airlock after first humiliating him. Grodd is released from Luthor's mental grip and then shot into space.