>>110012664It's not really clear how PAK's work.
Dib's Wonderful Life of Doom suggests that Zim is the Irken.
Zim's birth leans more into the idea that Zim is the PAK and the body is more like a host.
The comics show Zim as a chair when the PAK activates its emergency mode and asserts Zim's consciousness into the chair.
And we would've seen a similar thing happen to Dib in 10 Minutes to Doom, where Dib's personality is overwritten by Zim's PAK.
But we would've seen that Zim retains some part of himself even without his PAK.
My personal theory is that the PAK fills in the gaps where the cloning process is unable to produce fully functioning Irken brains.
The PAK provides a base for the personality, controls subconscious bodily functions, backs up the Irken's memory and boosts intelligence (amongst the other things we see it do)
While the Irken's brain develops the personality and does most of the actual thinking involved.
The only time the PAK can act independently is when its host is unconscious, brain dead or the PAK is removed from the host.
When Zim lost his brain in Dib's Wonderful Life of Doom, the PAK could've taken over the body and used a Zim backup to control the body until a new brain were grown for him.
