This is a list of characters from the animated television series, ReBoot.
With the exception of a few characters, such as Bob, most ReBoot characters are named after technical computer terms or pieces of computer hardware.
Contents |
Guardian 452 and defender of Mainframe from both internal and external threats. Bob is often criticised by other Guardians for his unorthodox views regarding viruses: unlike other Guardians, who believe that viruses should simply be deleted on sight, Bob theorizes that viruses can be reprogrammed to live as Sprites (he cites Hexadecimal as proof of his theories). Despite this criticism, Bob is still respected as one of the finest Guardians ever to come out of the academy. Compared to Dot, he usually does things "on the fly", and is an extremely casual and laid-back hero in the first two seasons. After living and partially degrading in the harsh Web (under the alias Interface), he became slightly more cautious, more sensitive, and less impulsive than he used to be. Despite their difference in personality, he and Dot developed romantic tension that finally resulted in them coupling at the end of Season 3.
He is equipped with a Guardian Keytool, Glitch, which can transform into any device with a voice command. When a Guardian is first introduced to a Keytool, they exchange code.[1] In Season 3 and 4, Bob bonded with Glitch (referred to in My Two Bobs as 'Glitch-Bob') and gained energy-based Keytool powers as a result. As Glitch was broken at the time and because Bob's code was missing from Glitch (Megabyte stole the code from Glitch before crushing it at the end of Season 2), the merger did not quite work and continued use of his powers (including rebooting) was leading to total fragmentation. Eventually they were separated, with Glitch now upgraded in design and power and regained his original form.
While he was always in favour of non-violent solutions, in Season 4 he was now opposed to deletion of virals under any circumstances, which caused conflict with other characters like Matrix. The reasons for this change (as he had deleted viral Binomes by destroying ABC craft before) was not directly expressed on the show, but presumably it is the result of both Hexadecimal's reprogramming and his experiences of war-torn Mainframe. At the start of the "Code of Honor" webcomic, Turbo accuses Bob of causing a net-wide viral onslaught that's ruined tens of thousands of Systems, claiming his views have caused many Guardians to talk about "viral rights" and this led to the outbreak & the Collective's inability to hold it back. Bob has been left rattled by this, and attempted to take out Megabyte in a one-on-one battle before being called back.
Bob was voiced by Michael Benyaer in seasons 1 and 2, and Ian James Corlett in seasons 3 and 4, though Benyaer returned near the end of season 4 as the voice of the fake Bob and eventually as the voice of the real Bob, which led to a tongue-in-cheek comparison between the two where Dot commented that fake Bob "even sounds more like the real Bob."
The daughter of leading Mainframe scientist Welman Matrix, Dot originally was his assistant as a teenager. Now an adult and proprietor of Dot's Diner, Dot also acts as her younger brother Enzo's surrogate parent and guardian since the loss of their father. (What became of their mother is never mentioned in the series.) She later became the command.com of Mainframe in place of Phong. She is admired for her brilliant and invaluable tactical skills, which led to her becoming a workaholic with business interests in most of Mainframe. Although she and Bob took until Season 3 to admit it, they are attracted to one another and this sometimes leads to awkward moments between them. When their father was nullified in the Twin City explosion, Dot and Enzo became each other's only remaining family, and for a long while she was adamant about keeping him from Games.
As Command.Com, she had to fight two successive Viral Wars from a position of inferiority and was forced to make many morally grey decisions, such as having Enzo go into a Game and stay there until he grew into a new Matrix as an insurance policy. It is a sign of her tactical skill that she was able to keep fighting against Megabyte, even with the loss of Enzo and the Principal Office, and then be able to cause some serious damage to Daemon. The emotional stress of the Viral Wars took their toll after the defeat of Daemon, and she fell for Megabyte's plan to impersonate the original Bob out of a desire to get back to the good times and forget all the pain and horror. After this, she came up with a plan that captured Megabyte and his entire Neo-Viral army in one swoop, but this was undone when it was revealed they had only caught a copy of Megabyte and the real virus was inside the War Room. Dot was voiced by Kathleen Barr.
Her name is a reference to the method of using an array of dots to generate characters, symbols and images. The dot matrix was once widely used in the form of dot matrix displays and dot matrix printers.
Dot's little brother, Enzo, hero-worships Bob and intends to become a Guardian. He has a crackling, mid-pubescent voice and often uses catch-phrases such as "alphanumeric" and "high-density" in place of real-world utterances like "cool" and "awesome" to express enthusiasm. Enzo is very energetic and loves to play games like Jet Ball and Circuit Racing, and eagerly heads into the Games. Despite his youth, Enzo has proven to be extremely good at the Games and has several times been responsible for winning them.
With the destruction of the Twin City, most of Mainframe's Sprites were nullified and Enzo grew up with few friends to play with (it is unknown why he did not have Binome friends; presumably they avoided him because of his father's supposed role in the Twin City's destruction). His main friend growing up was Frisket until he met AndrAIa and brought her to Mainframe. The two have become inseparable since then.
When the Web invaded, Bob gave him a field rank as Guardian Cadet with the promise of sending him to the Super-Computer to be a real Guardian; when Bob was lost in the Web, Enzo found himself as the defender of Mainframe. He did well, gaining self-confidence and the approval of the populace, but eventually a Game came down he could not win, leading to his development into Matrix (see below). When Mainframe was rebooted at the end of Season 3, Matrix had accidentally left his icon in "Game Sprite" mode, causing the system to recognize Enzo as missing, and so created a second Enzo using the last available data on him: some time before "Talent Night".
The new Enzo looks up to his older self as much as he does Bob, and briefly wanted to be just like him and demanded everyone call him "Little Matrix". When Daemon took over Mainframe, Enzo (whilst wearing the Guardian uniform that Bob gave the original Enzo in season two) saved the System with the help of Frisket, Hack and Slash, getting Matrix to snap out of Daemon's infection and help disinfect others so they could fight the virus.
By the start of the "Code of Honor" webcomic, he's already become a Guardian Cadet and is the star pupil of the Academy. He's gained a next-gen keytool named Sparc, though it will only work for him when he proves he has "the heart of a Guardian".
It is revealed in "Talent Night" that the number on his shirt refers to his age, as written in binary notation, as it changes from "01" to "10" at the end of the episode.
His name may be based on the flag bits of a certain older microprocessor, which read E N Z O.
Adult Enzo Matrix, who, due to the dimensional difference of the game world (in the middle of season 3), aged quicker, making the time frame in the game world seem longer than it actually is. Ashamed of the child he used to be, whom he viewed as weak after his vicious defeat by the User Zaytan, he prefers to be addressed by his surname Matrix instead of his given name, which reminds him of his childhood. With a cold personality, violent behavior and a "built-like-a-tank" physique (so physically built, in fact, that he was nearly able to match Megabyte physically in a fight), he is nothing like the child he used to be. He was tempered by what was from his perspective a lifetime of fighting. Although he is quick to anger he has still shown a desire to help those in need (albeit in a very gruff and violent way) and his quest to return to Mainframe has let him bring many systems back from the brink of annihilation. He harbors an unparalleled hatred towards viruses and will not hesitate to delete them in a violent and merciless manner. He is in love with AndrAIa, who has now matured as well, but is also quite jealous and protective of her. Deep down, he had a fear that he might become or already be a hate-driven, uncaring killer who had forgotten about his home and family and would end up like Megabyte; he had to face his fears and get past them in the hallucinatory Number Seven episode (based on The Prisoner). He would several times show an extreme temper, aiming a gun at Ray Tracer during arguments, and he instinctively raises his gun when surprised by something that might possibly be dangerous (including if he is bumped into).
His right eye was severely damaged in the lost game that took him from Mainframe, but was at some point replaced with a cybernetic eye during his travels. This eye grants him extended visual powers, such as magnified long-range vision and X-ray vision. Matrix has also acquired a firearm, the aptly named "Gun", which has many functions that Matrix invokes with voice commands. Gun operates in a fashion similar to a Guardian Keytool, possibly because Matrix idolized Bob as a child. Matrix's mechanical eye also works in conjunction with Gun for lock-on targeting and tracking purposes. One of his guns functions is "Death Blossom Mode" (a reference to the movie, The Last Starfighter) which allows the gun to hover in midair spinning rapidly in 720 degrees autolocking to all targets in sight. It is being implied that the gun has extremely high caliber, from single solitary blasts to Full-Delete rounds among possible explosive capabilities when he is seen shooting pursuing ships from the Saucy Mare, a ship he recovered for the Crimson Binome to travel to the Web. Matrix also carried Bob's damaged Guardian Keytool, Glitch, having recovered it as Enzo after Megabyte launched Bob into the Web; however, this was mostly symbolic, as Glitch was rendered virtually nonfunctional. Matrix returned Glitch to Bob when they were re-united in the Web.
In a sign of development, Matrix finally spared a virus's life by not killing Megabyte when he was beaten and at his mercy. Megabyte immediately used this reprieve to escape and almost enter the Super-Computer (which Matrix had been trying to prevent) before he was sucked into the Web. As a result, he returned to his zero tolerance stance on viruses in the war against Daemon, deleting any infected Guardians. Having spent so long apart from Mainframe, he is filled with the desire to defend his home by any means necessary, making it seem as though Matrix had become much more belligerent during the first part of Season 4, and this stance caused a great deal of friction between him and Bob in Daemon Rising. Once Daemon was beaten, the two were much more friendly to each other, though Matrix was always having to deal with anxieties of what to do now there was no-one left to fight.
While he sometimes views the young copy Enzo (see above) as somewhat of an annoyance and grim reminder of what he used to be, he has come to accept the young Enzo as a little brother and strives to prevent him from becoming like himself.
With his tough-guy attitude, similar look (missing eye, sleeveless vest, and fingerless gloves), and imitative dialogue ("Call me Matrix!"), Matrix is likely inspired by the character of Snake Plissken, or possibly the gruff, muscular, gun-toting, anti-hero, Cable, of Marvel Comic's X-Men franchise. Despite Matrix's appearance, his actual age is only "11" (in binary), due to accelerated game time.
Matrix was voiced by Paul Dobson.
(Pronounced like the name Andrea in Italian) A backup copy of a Game Sprite who met Enzo in an undersea-themed game. She fell in love with him at "first sight." The original AndrAIa piggy-backed her icon on Enzo's. This allowed the backup to escape the game and stay in Mainframe with Enzo, but the original remained in the game.
Because of the nature of the game from which she was born, AndrAIa has many mermaid-like qualities: she wears fish-skin garments, wears starfish in her hair (which can be used like a shuriken with boomerang qualities), and utilizes such armaments as paralysis-inducing fingernails and a trident in combat. She also possesses a superior hearing ability. In her younger form, she was new to the ways of Systems, not used to anything but fighting Users. She also appeared highly naive, such as believing Enzo's lies about being a Guardian (though she later admitted she always knew the truth, but didn't care because of her feelings for him). Over time, she began adapting and learning how to operate, and knew to try to keep Enzo's confidence up during his early days as Guardian. During the period of her and Enzo's journey through the Games in search of Bob and a way back home, she matures into a statuesque beauty who continually tries to temper her lover's cynicism, and provides a more relaxed and diplomatic counterpart to Matrix, however has shown to become very lonely when separated from Matrix. It is also during this time when AndrAIa improved as a warrior and gained engineering skills.
During their journey, she is more than often the voice of reason, and despite Matrix's jealousy, befriends the newcomer Ray Tracer whom assists them in entering the WEB. Before actually entering the dimension; however, AndrAIa is bitten by a Web creature that steals her energy as well as part of her code. Through the majority of the trip in the Web she remained in a comatose state while the others fought against the environment in search of Bob and the creature that bit her. Incidentally, Bob finds them and heals AndrAIa with the recovered code and energy.
During Daemon Rising, AndrAIa saves Matrix from being transported to the Super Computer and is infected by Daemon. After Daemon's defeat, AndrAIa becomes a bridesmaid in Dot's wedding and is last seen with Mouse in the Principal Office catacombs during the beginning of Megabyte's Hunt.
The AI in her name is capitalized, as her name is a reference to Artificial Intelligence. As an AI Game Sprite, she is designed to adapt to her surroundings and experiences; as a result, she is a more adjusted sprite than Matrix despite suffering the same traumas. She also gets on better with the new young Enzo than Matrix does, effectively being a second big sister (Dot is still his first). Also, andraia (Ανδρεια) is a Greek word meaning courageous.
She also has a great fondness for motorcycles.
System administrator and keeper of the core for Mainframe who lives and studies in the Principal Office. He was also the command.com of Mainframe until passing the title to Dot. A wise old sprite somewhat evocative of Confucius, he often dispenses advice in the form of confusing and vague philosophical quotes gleaned from old README files. Very fond of Pong, one must defeat him in a game to be considered worthy of his knowledge. Phong is immune to infection by viruses, but not super-viruses (Megabyte was never able to infect him, but Daemon infected him quite easily). When the Viral Wars started, Phong was an invaluable aide and comforter to Dot. He was captured by Megabyte, decapitated (his head was later reattached), and had data extracted from his mind, but he refused to surrender and fought Megabyte to the last. One of his passwords was revealed to be "Yaddi Yaddi Yadda!"
Phong always has the right equipment or knowledge, often handy in whatever sort of situation; in one episode, Bob was shocked to find that Phong had prepared a countermeasure specifically to handle a giant monster made entirely of Nulls stomping around the city. He acts a wise therapist whom many come to for advice about their problems, but the majority of the time his advice isn't very helpful and he urges for sprites to figure things out on their own.
The character Phong's name is an allusion to the game Pong[2]—he has a rule that any who seek his advice must first play him in a game of physical Pong, shown on-screen in the first few episodes—and to phong shading, an interpolation method used in three-dimensional graphics rendering. Phong shading was used to render this character, as opposed to the simpler Gouraud shading used on other characters.
Mouse knew Bob from back when he arrested her from trying to hack in to the SuperComputer. A hacker extraordinaire with a sugary Southern accent, she is equipped with a katana to cut her enemies into small pieces, and a high-tech craft called Ship. Sometimes she is seen with another, smaller sword, but she rarely uses it. It is probably a wakazashi to complete a samurai's daisho, which consists of the two aforementioned swords. She is first mentioned in the episode "The Crimson Binome", which hints at an untold encounter between Mouse and the pirate crew of the Saucy Mare; Bob, imprisoned in the ship's brig, finds Mouse's calling card (a stylized drawing of a mouse) on the wall, a clue to an avenue of escape. She first appears on-screen in "The Great Brain Robbery", hired as a mercenary by Megabyte (during the episode, she calls him "big guy" and "Megababe"); she turned against him when it became obvious she had been double-crossed and was endangering a young child. She later returned in Season 2 to save Bob and Dot from Gigabyte and ended up as part of the main cast from then on. She had been hired by the Guardians to discover if there was a Web Creature in Mainframe; during the subsequent Web War and then the Viral Wars, Mouse's hacking skills became a major asset in thwarting Mainframe's enemies, including developing a Firewall so complex that Daemon could not get through it, and was blocked from multiple Systems. Due to her invaluable assistance, Mouse is allowed to upgrade her icon (and AndrAIa's as well) to a full Mainframe icon which, among other things, created a backup of her that allowed her to be restored along with the native Mainframers after the system crashed ("End Prog"). Mouse's voice was done by Louise Vallance.
Mouse's canines are developed into what looks like fangs, as specified in "Trust No One"; she is capable of snarling in a very animal-like way, displaying these canines as a threat posture. In "The Great Brain Robbery", she growls in a feral fashion at Megabyte when he tells her that he "doublecrosses whomever he pleases". She becomes a dear friend to Dot as one whom Dot can confide into and lean on when no one else is around; during Dot's wedding, Mouse was her Sprite of Honor. At some point between "End Prog" and "Daemon Rising", Mouse begins dating Ray Tracer.
In the current webcomic, Mouse and Ray were both apparently killed in the same battle that claimed the life of Turbo.
Her name is a reference to the computer mouse. This could also in part be a reference to The Grey Mouser.
Hack and Slash are twin robots, identical in form except that Hack is red and Slash is blue. The pair originally served Megabyte, carrying out his orders, often in a very incompetent manner - their first appearance had Bob tricking them into crashing into each other. By Season 2, they had degraded in villainy to the point where they twice ask Bob for help (Bad Bob when trapped on a speeding Megatruck and Nullzilla after losing Megabyte's pet null) and also assist him in battling Gigabyte (saving him at one point). Hack and Slash have great physical strength. They once lifted and destroyed a very large bridge with ease in the episode Medusa, and both proved strong enough to punch the greatly sized Gigabyte out to the floor, or even high and far up in the sky. Hack is also once seen to have three arms.
In Season 3, they reconsidered their loyalties after being instructed to kill Cyrus, who had betrayed Megabyte. Though both were reluctant to carry out those orders, Slash freed Cyrus at the last moment. When Hack pointed out how mad Megabyte would be, Slash responded, "Ah, what's new? I miss Bob. … Bob always stopped us before we did anything really bad. Now, nobody does." Meanwhile, Megabyte had grown weary of their incompetence and ordered them to take point when battling Hexadecimal. They were promptly blown to bits. Phong found and repaired them (as well as gave them PIDs), and they switched sides to Mainframe to work as bodyguards and gofers for Dot. Hack and Slash were the first regular characters to re-encounter the returned Bob and Matrix, and they were quite overjoyed to see them again.
In Season 4, they were often seen hanging around Enzo and helped him play a key role in stopping Daemon. They also assisted in a Game, the first one they were shown in since acquiring PiDs. Also, Hack refused to allow Slash to mention the "M" word out of fear that their old boss would ever come back. When Megabyte did return and began fighting Bob, Hack and Slash were unsure of whom to help. Later, they flew away screaming at the idea someone might be Megabyte. The two were last seen taking Dot out of the Command Center (and panicking), as Megabyte took over the Principal Office.
Hack and Slash are frequently torn apart, although they seem to take it in stride. They used to talk in very babbling and over-running dialogue, but halfway through Season 2 they became more coherent. They are quite dimwitted and bumbling, despite their strength. They have built-in jetpacks that allow them to perform and maintain VTOL flight. They can also control their limbs remotely - they often get blown up and can still operate every movable part even though they are literally in a thousand pieces. Phil Hayes voiced Hack for the first season and most of the second. Scott McNeil voiced the character from "Nullzilla" onwards. Gary Chalk voiced Slash for the entire series.
Their names are a reference to the hack and slash genre of computer games, and the keyboard characters \ (hack) and / (slash).[3]
A software pirate and captain of the Saucy Mare, he styles himself as "the Crimson Binome".
Capacitor is a one-binome armed with a hook for a left hand and a peg leg in place of his right leg. He fits the pirate stereotype perfectly, complete with pirate catchphrase mutations such as "Shiver me templates!" and "By the code!" At heart, he is a romantic, driven at times by a sense of honor, comradeship and a desire to never go down without fighting.
He and his crew were only in the pirate game for the profit, raiding the Ports of Systems with lightning speed and co-ordination, but this ended when they arrived in Mainframe and Dot showed him that he could make more profit by legitimate business. Gavin then became a business partner of Mainframe until its Net Ports closed after the Web invasion. He did not get the chance to find new Systems to trade with, as Daemon took over and the Saucy Mare was forced to go on the run.
The pirates teamed up with Matrix, AndrAIa and Ray Tracer, entering the Web to find and retrieve Bob. From there, they returned to Mainframe and assisted Dot's rebels in the war against Megabyte. To Gavin's regret, he had to sacrifice the Mare in order to wipe out Megabyte's remaining airforce, and mourned its passing. After the System restart, he worked on unrevealed missions designed to harry Daemon.
His last name is a reference to capacitors. His first name is clarified to be a reference to ReBoot co-creator Gavin Blair (in the art book, he used Gavin Capacitor as his image, and all three co-creators had one character named after them in previous episodes). He was voiced by the late Long John Baldry.
Codemaster Lens appears in one episode ("High Code") of the original series, but is a pivotal character in the webcomic continuation. He is a Net-born member of the Codemasters, one of the most feared and dangerous sects in cyberspace, who operate out of a city hidden in the depths of the Super-Computer.
Lens is a system bug, who was made an outcast when the User decided he was a mistake. He eventually became a Codemaster, possibly after having sought refuge in the refugee community outside the Codemaster's city.[4] He later came to Mainframe to challenge Codemaster Talon, who had taken refuge in Mainframe, but is known to the Mainframers as "Old Man Pearson". Amazed by the Mainframers determination to stand by Pearson, he left the System in peace.
Lens had a distinct code of honor, barely spoke to other characters, and was described as a terrifying hunter by Phong. Using his Gibson-Coil pike, he was able to teleport, knock over buildings, wield energy bludgeons, and imprison Bob's Keytool, Glitch, behind a force field. Lens refers to himself as belonging to "The Sixty-Second Brotherhood", and by the titles "the Reaper" and "the Clear Unfolding".
He returns in the first issue of ReBoot: Code of Honor, initially as part of the Guild's delegation to meet the Guardians and reveal their Gnosis super-weapon. As with the other Codemasters, he wore stocky white battle-armour. When he discovered the Guildmaster intended to use Gnosis to unlock all Code Command Words and give the Guild ultimate power of the Net, Lens spoke out and was made an exile. He forewarned the Mainframers of the plot and led them in a failed strike against Gnosis; he is now partnered with Bob.[4]
The main antagonist of the series, Megabyte (voiced by Tony Jay) is a virus, originally operating out of the Silicon Tor in Sector 1000 and dominating most of G-Prime. Megabyte plots constantly to corrupt and control Mainframe in order to turn it into his own domain, "Megaframe", and from there infect the Super-Computer and then take the entire Net. His secondary objective is to destroy his sister Hexadecimal, which is apparently just viral sibling rivalry. He is a malignant virus able to infect other programs, and commands an army of infected Viral Binomes. He has a brutal, almost psychopathic nature and speaks with a deep British accent. Megabyte possesses fantastic physical strength, super agility and reflexes as well as the ability to jump great distances. He can quickly scale high walls with vicious Wolverine-like extendable claws on his knuckles, as well as finger tips with extending nails similar to Lady Deathstrike. He has an exceedingly cunning intellect as well as the ability to infect and control objects. Another ability he has shown is the ability to read memory from certain sprites, namely Phong (Infected). He also manages to steal Bob's exchanged Guardian code with Glitch. Megabyte has no sense of morality and consistently takes advantage of others to achieve his own ends. He also seems immune to the energy-draining effect of nulls (as he has been seen holding his pet null "Nibbles", whom he once called "Father"). Megabyte can also store codes to control programs and functions of what ever system he is in, provided he has been given said codes. These programs are controlled by buttons located under a panel in his right arm.
Megabyte also has a sense of humor and musical talents, as shown in the episode "Talent Night" when he crashed into Enzo's birthday party, accompanied by armed guards, but instead of his usual evil antics, he began to play a rock song on a forked guitar, which led to his and Bob's famous rock duel. Afterwards, Megabyte remarked "I've always wanted to do that", and left, but not before giving Enzo his guitar as a birthday gift.
Megabyte's origin is revealed in the fourth season. He and Hexadecimal were once one virus (Kilobyte), who was scheduled for deletion by the Guardians, but upgraded into Gigabyte before it could be carried out. He mortally wounded Bob's partner and moved in toward Bob before being accidentally teleported away by Welman Matrix's gateway device. The results were devastating: the destruction of Mainframe's twin city (creating Lost Angels), everyone present being nullified (including Welman, who became Nibbles), and Gigabyte being split into Megabyte and Hexadecimal. Upon being separated, Megabyte observed his surroundings and walked off – intent to carry out his agenda on an unsuspecting city.
While always a villain, in earlier episodes Megabyte was often involved in humorous situations and rarely caused permanent damage; the exception to this was the first episode, "The Tearing", where he deliberately causes a whole Sector to be nullified. As time went on, and especially after ReBoot was no longer on the ABC Network, he became far more evil. He appears to have some small sense of honor, shown in one instance when Bob saves his life, Megabyte later let Dot go in the same episode, after which he commented "Now, we are even."
In the final episode of Season 2, Megabyte worked with Mainframe to close the Web portal that had opened in Mainframe, but not without heavy cost. Unfortunately, just before his "hardware" was fired at the portal to close it, he threw Bob into a rocket and sent it soaring into the portal. The portal was then closed, and he had his army move to crush the remaining defenders (CPUs) of Mainframe. For the first three episodes of Season 3 he had complete air supremacy and full run of Mainframe, while its defenders were trapped in the Principal Office. He also left Enzo alive so he could launch a propaganda campaign focusing on how the Guardian was an inexperienced boy, thus demoralizing the denizens of Mainframe. Obscenely, he also imprisoned Hexadecimal and forced her into becoming a living weapon, electrocuting her viciously via a collar at the slightest whim. "Rather good, isn't it?", he remarked to Enzo about his latest "weapon".
He was finally trapped behind an inverted Firewall that covered all of G-Prime. Unfortunately, shortly afterwards a rampaging Hexadecimal took out the Firewall; resulting in war between the viruses that devastated G-Prime (including the Tor) and neighboring Sectors. Needing a new base, and as the Principal Office shields were still offline (having been deactivated to provide energy for the Firewall) Megabyte was able to conquer it by force. Mainframe became Megabyte's long sought after Megaframe. Instead of re-building it "in his own image" (as he so frequently says), he more left it as a decaying and devastated system that was perpetually on the verge of crashing. When Matrix and Bob returned to the system, Mainframe's rebels were finally able to bring down the Viral forces. During the battle, Megabyte was confronted by Matrix, who was carrying his sidearm: Gun. Megabyte convinced Matrix to drop his weapon and fight him hand-to-hand, as the virus believed that "the boy" would be no match for him physically. However, this was proven to be false when Matrix ultimately defeated him in battle. Megabyte was enraged when Matrix spared his life, and as an act of desperation he tried to escape to the Super-Computer. However, Mouse managed to change the address of the portal Megabyte was using, and as a result he was trapped in the Web. He made a brief return in the form of a holographic simulation, which Megabyte had created to taunt anyone who went into the System's Core to prevent it from crashing.
Megabyte survived in the Web due to sharing some of Bob's Guardian code, and in the fourth season he became a Trojan Horse virus, gaining the ability to look and sound like any sprite or binome he is able to steal code from. He returned from the Web in the form of Bob circa Seasons 1-2, deliberately trying to confuse everyone over who the real Bob was in order to attack his enemies emotionally. He had also switched objectives from world conquest to personal revenge. His plan worked so well, he almost ended up married to Dot, until Glitch retook Bob's stolen code and forced him back into his Viral form. Megabyte immediately fought the real Bob, but he was surprised by Bob's increased power and was forced to retreat.
Afterwards, Megabyte began building an army of Neo-Virals, but was swiftly captured by the CPUs along with his whole horde, or so everyone thought. That Megabyte was in fact an alias, a fragile copy of himself, while the real Megabyte had infiltrated the Principal Office in the form of Frisket. He swiftly infected the War Room and had his enemies isolated throughout the building, telling them to prepare for "the Hunt".
At the start of the Code of Honor webcomic, he'd devastated Mainframe with his armies of infected "zombinomes" that the entire System was evacuated. He was seemingly killed when the firmware upgrade Gnosis was unleashed on Mainframe,[5] but the second issue ended with him revealed still alive and working for Gnosis as an avatar created from Gnosis.
Megabyte has an unusual habit of separating his torso from his legs when he is plotting at the Tor, and has a hovering chair to move him around when in this state.
He has been in Games five times, showing the ability to infect the User's in-game avatar. His last two Games were played when he was disguised as Bob; he was able to reboot and handled the Games quite well, though he asked Matrix to cheat in Panzu Heavy X (My Two Bobs) when panicked about the number of opponents. His Game appearance in "Bad Bob", when a corrupted Game merged him with a device stealing the Core energy, was theMegatruck. Bob drove him in this episode, and was alarmed to discover the Megatruck had no brakes.
His name is a reference to a unit of computer memory.
Hexadecimal (voiced by Shirley Millner), the self-proclaimed "Queen of Chaos", is a virus operating out of Lost Angles. She is Megabyte's sister, serving as the chaos to his order. Her origin is revealed in the fourth season. She and Megabyte were once one virus (Kilobyte), who was scheduled for deletion by the Guardians, but upgraded to Gigabyte before it could be carried out. He mortally wounded Bob's partner and moved in toward Bob before being accidentally teleported away by Welman Matrix's gateway device. The results were devastating: the destruction of Mainframe's twin city (creating Lost Angles), everyone present being nullified (including Welman, who became Nibbles), and Gigabyte being split into Megabyte and Hexadecimal. Upon being separated, Hexadecimal observed her surroundings and (with a mask change) exclaimed, "I like it here!"
Hexadecimal is melodramatic and extremely emotional, able to switch emotions by a simple wave of her hand (which changes the mask she wears, and her emotions along with it). The masks change constantly in a slew of different ways, usually while obscured from the home viewer. Episodes 1 and 10 of season 2, and episode 4 of season 3 showed her mask changing on screen in an instant. She has transfinite power reserves, meaning that she has near limitless stores of energy to draw from, and as such, is quite powerful herself. Her powers include energy beams and fireballs, altering gravity (once causing Bob to stop and hover in midair) and being able to fly, shrugging off severe damage and controlling nulls (sprites downgraded to slug-like status for losing to the User in a game). She also has the power to open a portal to the net or web in her "looking glass", and has also been seen taking control of system programs like the system paint program. It is suggested that her powers are near infinite, but because of her madness she is unable to use them for anything constructive.
Her vast collection of masks serve to show her facial expression, thereby giving her a harlequin-like appearance. The expressions shown in these masks can range from happy, sad, scheming, and even homicidal rage. These masks also hold her power in check. When removed (as in the episode "Painted Windows"), her power escapes and continues to do damage to her environment, and she will overload and be destroyed if the mask is not replaced.
She is a benign virus, meaning she does not infect other entities. Instead, her primary motive is to simply cause random chaos for fun (and also to kill Megabyte, who kept trying to kill her, likely due to simple sibling rivalry). Due to her power and insanity, her fun nearly always led to Mainframe crashing. She even once nearly caused it unwittingly, when a Web Creature emerged from her mirror and possessed her. All of the nulls sensed this danger and covered her completely. The giant "Nullzilla" monster went on a rampage, as (according to Dot) the possessed-Hexadecimal was trying to escape.
In Web World Wars, Hexadecimal was charged with powering the Hardware that closed the web portal. Despite her interest in Bob, she knew of Megabyte's impending betrayal and even helped launch him into the Web. After closing the portal, she aimed the Hardware at the Principal Office. Megabyte merely saw this as a threat to force the Mainframers compliance to his whims, but she wanted to destroy the Core – not caring that that would destroy the entire System, including herself. Luckily, a Game Cube landed on top of the Hardware and the energy feedback from the Cube, along with the energy charge that she had already infused in the hardware, seriously damaged her. Megabyte subsequently had her rebuilt and had her enslaved as a weapon he could use against Mainframe (via a collar around her neck that caused her extreme pain when she did not comply with his wishes). This served only to further elevate her rage against Megabyte. Though she appeared to be completely restrained, Herr Doktor theorized she was faking and "liked being tied up," which Megabyte preferred not to think about. When she finally did escape Megabyte's control, her "rattling of her brother's bones" devastated G-Prime and the surrounding sectors. Spending the rest of her days lurking in Lost Angles, she made her presence known again with the return of Bob.
When Bob returned, she abducted him for demented party games and would eventually have killed him. However, he was able to defragment her head with his new powers. His glitch powers were able to replace her masks and her insanity with a real face (which looked exactly like her masks, but was able to move) and more harmless quirkiness. However, she still felt the need to off Herr Doktor and Bunnyfoot vengefully (and comedically) by turning them into biscuits. In the episode End Prog, with the System about to restart, Bob insisted that Phong give Hex an Icon (or PID) to register her with the Principal Office so she would be backed up. Mainframe restarted and a viral scan disinfected all the Virals, but Hexadecimal (with the icon) remained intact, remarking that the scan merely tickled.
Hex being her nickname for short, could also refer to her dark powers, and the Medusa Bug she used as a curse against everyone, in Web World Wars, Mouse comments referring to Hex, "Just tell the witch to be ready!", to which Hex responded, "I heard that! What a sweet thing to say!"
By Daemon Rising, she had begun openly and heavily trying to seduce Bob. In order to make him happy, she used her powers to drive out Daemon's forces; this weakened her powers enough for the viral scan, which had remained in her Icon, to start again, and she covered herself with Nulls to stop it. When the Null-cocoon fled as a Game landed on her, she became a normal, powerless Sprite; wearing a new costume of white lace and gold instead of black leather and red, with normal-looking eyes and black hair.
Strangely enough, Hex retained her control over Nulls, even though the rest of her powers had been stripped away. Upon revealing her origin to Dot, she began referring to her as "Sis." When Daemon conquered Mainframe, Hex was rejected as an abomination by Daemon. At the end of the episode "Sacrifice", with Bob in danger of dying, she had given away her new life as a pure Sprite to become her old reckless and insane viral self just to stop Daemon. To do this, she absorbed Mainframe's core energy with the help of Phong, and became as powerful as Daemon herself to try to stop the infection. She did not succeed unfortunately, as Daemon's "cron virus" (a virus defined to attack at a specific time) took hold of the Net. "Ill" again, Hex did not realize the severity of the situation until Bob told her that their love would not survive the crash, and she made the decision to fragment herself into the Net as a "benign virus" to undo everything that Daemon had done. She took the cure from Matrix's icon and then gave the young Enzo a special code on his icon that would later give his null-father the ability to talk once more. Before she went in, she told Bob that she had always loved him and told Dot to take care of him.
Her sacrifice symbolizes two themes previously stated in the show. "Love conquers all boundaries" (AndrAIa, S4 episode 3): Hexadecimal decides to fight Daemon's countdown due to her love for Bob and desire for him to survive. "Chaos will always triumph over Order; it is the way of things" ("Game Over"): Daemon's purpose is stated by Turbo to bring order to the Net, and the self-styled Queen of Chaos fights her to a standstill and cures the Net of the infection.
Her name is a reference to hexadecimal notation.
A super-virus bent on infecting the entire Net, she succeeded in infecting the entire Guardian Collective, with the exception of only Bob and Matrix, and turned the Super Computer into her base of operations. She is religiously worshiped by those she infects, and known to them as "The Word" and addressed as "My Lady".
Daemon claims to strive for peace and unity in the Net and is different from other viruses in that she does not seem to believe that what she is doing is wrong, seeing herself as a messiah trying to "save" the Net. She speaks in a French accent and calls Mike the TV "Michel", and is depicted in the style of Joan of Arc, a petite female holy warrior. She is a disconcerting villain because while what she is doing is insanely evil, her personality is actually quite gentle and benign (like referring to Mike the TV as "little one" and giggling). Despite her seeming benevolence, her infection turns people peaceful at the cost of their free will - to the point where they do not care if they die doing Daemon's will. Her possessed Guardians use lethal force countering any and all resistance. A Guardian hit squad was sent to retrieve Matrix (whom they mistook for Bob) while in presumably the early stages of her infection, and they were far more hard-edged than the infected Guardians in Season 4. Daemon is complicated in her feelings. She has an interest in the concept of love taking time to observe it and stating that sprites are lucky because they can feel love and as virus she never would. However she also has pride as a virus because when she found out that Hexidecimal was helping the sprites and had become sprite like, she was enraged. In fact Hexidecimal is the only character in the entire series Daemon shows true animosity towards, calling her an abomination and a disgrace to her kind. This animosity disappeared when Hex returned to her true form: Daemon wondering why they were still fighting and stating that, as viruses, they should be friends.
In "The Episode With No Name", Turbo revealed Daemon to be the one who sent the Web creature to attack Mainframe in the first place (during Season 2's "Nullzilla"). The reason for this is unknown, but as Season 2 also had a reference to the Web "getting out of control and invading Systems", it may have been a diversionary tactic to keep the Guardians looking elsewhere.
Daemon's plot involves keeping Net travel available, forcing Systems to remain open by destroying their Port Control Towers so inhabitants cannot take their system off the Net. As infected Guardians lack Keytools, she needs to keep Systems on the Net to be able to infect them as her army cannot create Portals; this also keeps the Systems isolated from each other, as no one System can stand against the Super-Computer. Instead of infecting the Systems outright, she puts her infection in egg-shaped viral bombs which are then placed in System Cores. At a specific point in time, they detonate and the whole System is infected - 92% of the Net was infected as a result. Her plan was to infect the whole Net and then, at a specific point in time, she would die and release the Cron code that would cause everything on the Net to count down; when they reached zero, they would spontaneously delete. The Net would be unified in the peace of total oblivion.
Her name is a reference to services running on Unix systems in the background as well as the Greek word "daemon". "The Word" may be a reference to a unit of memory called a word. In her final scene she reveals that The Word is "Cron" ("I am not an entity, I am a time. My time is now. The Word is Cron."), and Bob realizes that she is a "cron virus"-an "end to all things" virus (possibly just an entry in a Unix system's "crontab" file, which is used by the "cron" process to run jobs at preselected times, chronologically). It may also be a reference to Cronos, the personification of time in Greek mythology. The chant that Daemon makes her followers say is a binary countdown. The first to do this is Daecon who counts down his deletion at 5 (101 in binary). The full binary countdown is 1010011010 which is the binary representation of the number 666.
The human operator of Mainframe is perceived by its denizens as a distant, impersonal, Deity-like figure. Often destructive, it subjects the city to Game Cubes and assumes various avatars to do deadly battle with the unfortunates trapped within them. In layman's terms, the User is a computer owner that enjoys playing PC games, blissfully unaware of the havoc he/she is causing. Nonetheless, Mainframers dutifully petition the User to bestow upon them gifts such as increased memory and software upgrades, prayers which are sometimes answered despite the User's sadly limited means. Of all the characters depicted, only Fax Modem openly professed to deny the existence of the User, a position roundly regarded as wildly unorthodox and borderline insane. The User never appears on screen, although in the third season finale its keystrokes could be heard as it entered the command to reboot the system.
In Season 4, Hexadecimal's powers over nulls allowed him to regain his sentient mind and mold with other nulls to form a body. While catching up with his family, the young Enzo was found to have adapted to his dad's transformation quite well ("Dad's a null monster now, it's so cool!."), though Phong informed Welman of Matrix also being his son, there was no apparent interaction between the two during the series except for Matrix being glad his father had returned.
Since Welman's ability to assert his personality is directly connected to Hexadecimal's well-being, she imbued young Enzo's icon with the same function before sacrificing herself to undo Daemon's Net-wide infection. When Enzo came in contact with him, Welman regained his sentient mind once more, and became able to move around by controlling a "Null-Bot", which he used to walk his daughter Dot down the aisle at her wedding. His robotic body is later infected by Megabyte at the end of season 4 and used to capture the young Enzo as everyone is forced to flee to the catacombs after Megabyte infiltrates the Principal Office. In Code Of Honor, he is initially enslaved to Megabyte and goes missing after the villain is destroyed.
A flashback in Daemon Rising shows him rehearsing a lecture about his theories, in an homage to Daniel Jackson from the Stargate movie/series. In fact, his gateway command even looks like a Stargate.
|
|||||||||||