Di Lung

Watch where you're goin', ya fool!

- Di Lung's main quote

Di Lung is a recurring character and antagonist of Courage the Cowardly Dog. He tends to serve as something of a plot device in the series and sometimes serves an antagonistic role, such as turning Courage into a fly in "Courage the Fly", and creating Mecha Courage to replace him in "Courage vs. Mecha-Courage".

Appearance[]

Di Lung is a young man of Chinese descent from ShanDong. He has somewhat scruffy black hair and wears black sunglasses. He is most commonly seen wearing a white V-neck T-shirt, navy blue shorts and pink sandals with flowers on them.

In his debut appearance in "Hothead", his hair is a dark brown color, and he wears a yellow shirt.

In "Scuba Scuba Doo", Di Lung has a tanned appearance, likely because of the beach setting, along with red trunks and a white band.

In "Courage in the Big Stinkin' City", he wears a black jacket and blue jeans.

Personality[]

Di Lung is intelligent, but has a rather temperamental, egotistical, and arrogant personality. He can be likened to that of a mad scientist, as he often belittles others and likes to show off with his incredible inventions. He also has a more sadistic side, delighting in watching Mecha-Courage beat down his original counterpart.

Di Lung often speaks English with a Chinese-American Brooklyn accent. This is further explained in several episodes as he has many Chinese traits.

History[]

He and his twin aunts, the Good Empress and the Evil Empress, appear in the episode "Squatting Tiger, Hidden Dog".

He makes a minor appearance in "Courage in the Big Stinkin' City", where he bumps into Eustace on the sidewalk. This makes the farmer drop his hot-dog (much to Eustace's dismay), even though Eustace had been standing still and Di had walked right into him (to which he exclaims "Watch where you're goin', ya fool!"). This makes Eustace sarcastically repeat the same phrase, directed at him.

He also made a robotic version of Courage known as "Mecha Courage" in "Courage vs. Mecha-Courage". He is over confident in his talents to the point that he calls himself "perfect."

In "Campsite of Terror", Di Lung is shown to be quite wealthy, possibly because his aunt is the Empress of China, so this wealth probably funds his scientific inventions. He also had a TV show where people give him their wallets, checkbooks, and credit cards; implying that it will make the giver rich, but it was truly to make him richer, which proves him as a con artist operating a pyramid scheme.

He also makes minor appearances in "Record Deal", where he is seen attending Velvet Vic's concert, "Scuba Scuba Doo", where he is seen with a tan, surfing, "So in Louvre Are We Two", where he is seen exiting the museum, "Angry Nasty People", where he is seen at Jean Bon's diner Burgers Really Cheap, and "Le Quack Balloon", where he wrecks his bike by hitting Courage's leash.

Lastly, he was revealed to be a former student of the Perfectionist in "Perfect", being able to build an exact representation of the Eiffel Tower out of toothpicks. Although it's heavily implied that she was not real, so this is likely not true.

Powers and Skills[]

Technology[]

Di Lung is an incredible inventor and has vast knowledge of machinery and technology. In "Courage vs. Mecha-Courage", he even makes a robotic version of Courage as an attempt to show that he can make a better dog. He is also shown to perform body enhancement as well, as he claims to have invented an extra toe in "Courage the Fly".

Durability[]

Similar to Eustace and Courage, Di Lung is incredibly durable, being run over by a truck and still being able to talk.

Trivia[]

He is seemingly of royal heritage, as his aunt is the Evil Empress.
Di Lung is the most frequently-recurring villain in the series, making 16 different appearances throughout the show.
In Chinese, his name (大龍, Dà Lóng) means Big Dragon, which probably supports the fact that he's royalty (nephew of the Chinese Empresses). The "Di", or 大, in his name is pronounced as "dye" and not "dah" (da) or "dee" (di, Pinyin romanization). This may be because Di Lung speaks Cantonese, the most common Chinese language among Chinese overseas communities. The Cantonese Jyutping romanization is "daai6" with the 6 indicating a low tone, as Cantonese (and indeed most Chinese dialects) is a tonal language.
- His name may also be a sly reference to John R. Dilworth himself, due to the recurring theme of the name "Dil" from within the series' lore.
He owns a red, open top sports car which appears to be based on a 1950's Cadillac Deville. His license plate also reads "Tim" as seen in "Hothead", likely a reference to his voice actor.
The sheer irony of his "Watch where you're goin', ya fool!" catchphrase is the fact that it almost always has him be the one not paying attention when he yells it.
- In "Hothead", he yells it at Eustace after parking his car in the middle of an open road and nearly causing Eustace to crash his truck in the process. His (Di Lung's) following "90-degree" turn is so exceedingly sloppy that it nearly causes said car to slip off of said road altogether.
- In "Courage in the Big Stinkin' City", he yells it at Eustace after HE (Di Lung himself) bumped into Eustace (who was NOT moving at all) and thus making him drop his hot dog; naturally, this actually causes Eustace to publicly and very openly mock him for how much of a hypocrite he is being (by yelling the same catch phrase back at him).
- In "Courage VS Mecha-Courage", he yells it at the driver of a truck that he gets hit by while standing in the middle of an open road (for a long-enough period of time for him to somehow be able to make an entire Courage VS Mecha-Courage comparison chart during said period, no less).
- In "Scuba Scuba Doo", he yells it at Ma Bagge while surfboarding in a tsunami that she is swimming in.
- In "Fishy Business", he yells it at an octopus after said octopus removes him from its natural habitat.
- In "The Nutcracker", he yells it at Courage after Courage uses him as a foot-stool in order to avoid the glue trap that he is stuck in; rather humorously, this actually causes the rats surrounding him to hatefully glare at him as their way of pointing out his hypocrisy.
- In "Le Quack Balloon", he yells it at a clearly walk-signal-following Courage while recklessly barreling straight toward him on his bicycle; roughly two seconds later, said bicycle runs directly into Courage's leash, sending him (Di Lung) flying and tumbling in a very cartoonish fashion.
- In "Squatting Tiger, Hidden Dog", he yells it at Courage while running right next to him atop the Great Wall Of China (one could argue that this is simply his way of saying that Courage doesn't belong in China itself, let alone atop its Great Wall, but then again, neither does he)
- In "Muted Muriel", he yells it at Courage after nearly running him over with his car, then gets crushed by the very same monster that Courage is fleeing from, which is perhaps the show's most extreme example of him being able to survive absolutely anything.
- In "Food of the Dragon", he yells it at the episode's titular dragon for smashing his car, which is rather surprisingly his only actually accurate canonical usage of the phrase.
- In "Cabaret Courage", he yells it at Eustace after bumping into him and thus causing himself to drop his photographs of himself. He then threatens to "make sure that Eustace never finds work in this town again" as punishment for Eustace damaging his ego.
Di Lung's voice actor, Tim Chi Ly, was an animator and graphic designer for Courage the Cowardly Dog, providing his natural voice for the role. Creator John R. Dilworth felt that Tim "could make any line sound fantastic" (despite not being a trained voice actor), which is why Di Lung is among Dilworth's top 3 favorite characters.^[1]

Quotes[]

"Watch where you're goin', ya fool!"
"This not acupuncture, this de-boning. I'm taking out your bones! A ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
"I don't think so, ya fool."
"I told you I built better dog."
"Stupid dog never know when to give up!"
"You no good as dog, two times!"
"Yo Aunty, what's up?"