A differential variational system is defined by an ordinary differential equation (ODE) parameterized by an algebraic variable that is required to be a solution of a finite-dimensional variational inequality containing the state variable of the system. This paper addresses two system-theoretic topics for such a nontraditional nonsmooth dynamical system; namely, (non-)Zenoness and local observability of a given state satisfying a blanket strong regularity condition. For the former topic, which is of contemporary interest in the study of hybrid systems, we extend the results in our previous paper, where we have studied Zeno states and switching times in a linear complementarity system (LCS). As a special case of the differential variational inequality (DVI), the LCS consists of a linear, time-invariant ODE and a linear complementarity problem. The extension to a nonlinear complementarity system (NCS) with analytic inputs turns out to be non-trivial as we need to use the Lie derivatives of analytic functions in order to arrive at an expansion of the solution trajectory near a given state. Further extension to a differential variational inequality is obtained via its equivalent Karush-Kuhn-Tucker formulation. For the second topic, which is classical in system theory, we use the non-Zenoness result and the recent results in a previous paper pertaining to the B-differentiability of the solution operator of a nonsmooth ODE to obtain a sufficient condition for the short-time local observability of a given strongly regular state of an NCS. Refined sufficient conditions and necessary conditions for local observability of the LCS satisfying the P-property are obtained.