With the exception of a few characters, such as Bob, most ReBoot characters are named after technical computer terms or pieces of computer hardware.
Main characters
Bob
Bob
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. 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, 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.
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.
Bob's name is completely unrelated to any sort of technical hardware. Apparently, ReBoot's creators simply liked how the name was pronounced by Rowan Atkinson on the TV series, Black Adder. However there exists a Bob user interface by Microsoft released in 1995 called Microsoft Bob. Bob may be inspired by Green Lantern; the Keytool is very similar to a power ring with apparently infinite uses, and the new energy-based powers showed in My Two Bobs work even more similar to Green Lantern's ring.
Bob is also a contraction of Blitter object.
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.
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's voice was done 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.
Enzo Matrix
Enzo Matrix
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: sometime 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 and Hack & Slash, getting Matrix to snap out of Daemon's infection and help disinfect others so they could fight the virus.
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.
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 behaviour and a "built-like-a-tank" physique (so physically built, in fact, that he was able to outmatch 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 & violent way) and his quest to return to Mainframe has let him bring many systems back from the brink of annihilation. He harbours 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 & 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 a game, but was replaced with a cybernetic eye. This eye grants him extended visual powers, such as magnified long-range vision and X-ray vision. Matrix has also acquired a gun, 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 been implied that the gun has extremely high calibre and possible explosive capabilites when he is seen shooting pursuing ships from the Saucy Mare, a ship he recovered for the Crimson Binome to travel to Mainframe.
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 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.
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. Despite his appearance, his actual age is only "11" (in binary), due to accelerated game time.
(Pronounced "and-RAY-uh") 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), and utilizes such armaments as paralysis-inducing fingernails and a trident in combat. In her younger form, she was new to the ways of Systems and highly naive, not used to anything but fighting Users; over time, she began adapting and learning how to operate, and knew to try and keep Enzo's confidence up during his early days as Guardian. During the period of her and Enzo's exile into the games, 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. It is also during this time when AndrAIa improved as a warrior and gained engineering skills.
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 strange obsession with motorcycles.
System administrator and keeper of the core for Mainframe who lives and studies in the Principal Office. 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 (what nearly proved to be) the last.
Phong always has the right equipment or knowledge, often handy in whatever sort of situation; in one episode, Bob was shocked to find he has prepared a countermeasure to handle a giant monster made entirely of Nulls stomping around the city.
His name is a reference to phong shading and possibly to a the videogame called Pong. His appearance matches that of the output of a Phong rendering engine.
Mouse
Mouse
Mouse knew Bob from back when he arrested her from trying to hack in to the SuperComputer. A hacker extraordinaire, 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. Originally 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. Mouse became a main character over the course of Season 3. She speaks with a sugary Southern accent. She is currently dating Ray Tracer. Mouse's voice was done by Louise Vallance.
Hack & 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).
In Season 3, they reconsidered their loyalties after being instructed to kill Cyrus and realising that, because Bob was no longer around, nobody was going to stop them before they did anything "really" bad. In response, Megabyte had them take point when battling Hexadecimal, and they were blown to bits. Phong found and repaired them, and they switched sides to Mainframe, working as bodyguards and gofers for Dot.
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. They spent the season worried that Megabyte would come back and when he did, they spent the time in extreme fear; at one point they flew away screaming at the idea someone might be Megabyte.
They 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, but despite that they are physically quite strong - one punch from Slash sent Gigabyte flying. 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. Their voices were done by Scott McNeil and Gary Chalk.
Their names are a reference to the hack and slash genre of computer games, and the keyboard characters \ (hack) and / (slash). [1]
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 right hand and a peg leg in place of his left 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 honour & 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 & 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. Capacitor may have been named for ReBoot co-creator Gavin Blair. He was voiced by the late Long John Baldry.
Mr. Christopher
File:Mr Christopher.jpgMr. Christopher Captain Capacitor's bookkeeper is a nerdy and timid zero-binome who's never seen without his laptop. His name is likely a tribute to Fletcher Christian, the Master's Mate from the HMAS Bounty. He may have also been named after Christopher Brough, president of Mainframe Entertainment
Princess Bula
A giant one-binome on Captain Capacitor's crew. Not actually a princess but no one dares say otherwise. Mr. Christopher has a crush on her.
Miss Sally
A female zero-binome pirate who serves as raider & look-out for the Mare. She once stole Glitch.
Mr. Andrew
The one-binome pirate in charge of the steering wheel of Mare. He was present during the search of Bob in the Web and at the Restart of Mainframe.
Mr. Jimmy
A zero-binome who is in charge of the ship's prison.
Lens
While Lens only appearing in one episode ("High Code") of the original series, he is set to be one of the main characters in the upcoming ReBoot: Arrival webcomic [1].
An insectoid figure (reminiscent of the Predator), Lens is a Net-born member of the Codemasters, one of the most feared and dangerous sects in cyberspace. He came to Mainframe to challenge the Codemaster Talon, who had taken refuge in Mainframe and is known to the other characters 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 weapon, he was able to teleport, knock over buildings, wield energy bludgeons and imprison Bob's Keytool behind a shield. He refers to himself as belonging to "the 60-Second Brotherhood".
The Arrival pitch shows him redesigned as a stockier armoured figure, and has him turning to Bob to stop the evil Gnosis. The pitch also promises to show the Codemasters.
Megabyte (voiced by the late 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 great physical strength (along with vicious Wolverine-like extendable claws) and an exceedingly cunning intellect. Megabyte has no scruples and constantly takes advantage of other characters in order to achieve his own ends.
Megabyte also has a sense of humour and musical talents, as shown in the episode "Talent Night". In the episode, he crashed into Enzo's birthday party to play a rock song which turned into him and Bob both playing and show some great musical skills. Megabyte left remarking "I've always wanted to do that", but not before giving Enzo his guitar as a birthday gift.
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.
In the final episode of Season 2, Megabyte worked with Mainframe to defeat the Web; unfortunately, at the moment of victory he betrayed them, shot Bob into the Web, and had his ABCs obliterate the crippled CPU air force. 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 Principle Office. He also left Enzo alive so he could launch a propaganda campaign focusing on how the Guardian was an inexperienced boy, thus demoralising the population. 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 about it.
He was finally trapped behind an inverted Firewall that covered all of G-Prime. Unfortunately, shortly afterwards a rampaging Hexadecimal took out the Firewall; the resulting war between the viruses devastated G-Prime (including the Tor) and neighbouring Sectors. Megabyte now needed a new base, and as the Principal Office shields were still not online (having been deactivated to provide energy for the Firewall) he was able to conquer it by force. Mainframe became Megaframe, a decaying and devastated System that was 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 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 Season 4, deliberately trying to confuse everyone over who the real Bob was in order to attack his enemies emotionally - he had switched objectives from world conquest to personal revenge. His plan worked so well he almost ended up married to Dot, until Glitch forced him back into his Viral form. Megabyte immediately fought the real Bob, but he was surprised by Bob's 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". The Arrival webcomic pitch will start with the Hunt having gone on for a while and encompassing the whole Net. [2]
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 and he was turned into the Megatruck. Bob drove him in this episode, and was concerned to discover the Megatruck had no brakes.
Megabyte's pair of one-binome evil scientists whose practices are disturbingly unethical. The Herr's hands are unlike any other binomes'; instead of mitten-like hands, he has actual fingers. This distinction is continually featured as comic relief in the series. The Doktor's fingers will be run over or somehow damaged, he will shout, "Mein digits!", and his hands will appear in bandages for the rest of the episode. The Herr's assistant Bunnyfoot is, in relation to other binomes, anatomically dishevelled, with his eye portion in the middle (he is a one binome rather than a zero binome) and has a brick as a foot, referencing Igor, the assistant of Doctor Frankenstein.
Cyrus
A one-binome that worked for Megabyte on his own free will without having been infected. In Season 1, he was helping Dot rescue and reformat an entire Sector in order to free it from Megabyte, but defected for mercenary reasons and helped Megabyte try to steal all of the PIDs in the Sectors they could be infected. The plan went bottom-up, and Cyrus was infected and turned into Megabyte's boot-shiner. In Season 3 he was put in charge of a propaganda campaign against Enzo’s ability to act as guardian, designed to demoralise Enzo and the general population. However, when both he and Enzo ended up in a game, Cyrus was forced to help defeat the User; when he discovered Enzo wanted his help and trusted him despite all he had done, he not only helped but also saved Enzo's life. His redemption did not last long, as Megabyte recaptured him and tried to execute him, and Cyrus escaped only to go mad in the bowels of G-Prime. However, a very happy and disinfected Cyrus is seen leading the chorus line's dance in the musical number at the end of Season 3.
Hexadecimal is an insanevirus operating out of Lost Angles and who has a not-so-secret crush on Bob. She is Megabyte's sister, serving as chaos to his order. She is melodramatic and apparently bipolar, symbolized by the masks that she wears, which change constantly in a slew of different ways in which the viewer never really sees the change (However, episode 10 of season 2 showed her mask changing on screen in an instant). She has transfinite power reserves, meaning that she is both extremely powerful and that her power continues to replenish itself even as she exhausts her power. Hex can be weakened and it will take her time to restore herself to full power, but she will return to full power. 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).
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 homicidally insane. Hex is known to play a little game with herself whereby she looks in the mirror and changes her expression back and forth, similar to an acting exercise. These masks also hold her power in check, though when removed (as in the episode "Painted Windows"), her power escapes and continues to do damage to her environment although 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, possibly due to 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 possessed her and the nulls formed a giant "Nullzilla" monster around her as a result.
Her power charged the Hardware that closed the portal to the Web in Web World Wars, but immediately afterwards, she decided to fire the Hardware at the Principal Office on a whim. She did not care this would destroy the Core, the System and 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 had her rebuilt (which, thanks to Bunnyfoot, was in bondage gear) and enslaved her into being a weapon he could use against Mainframe. This only made her more insane and very angry, and when she broke free of Megabyte's control her resulting rampage devastated G-Prime and the surrounding sectors. She spent the rest of her days lurking in Lost Angles.
When Bob returned, she abducted him for demented party games and would eventually have killed him. However, he was able to defragment her with his new powers - her masks were replaced by a real face (it looked exactly like her masks, except it was able to move). Her insanity was replaced with a more harmless quirkiness, with the exception of bumping off Herr Doktor and Bunnyfoot in revenge. With the System about to restart, Bob insisted that Phong give her an Icon (or PID) to register her with the Principle Office so she would be backed up. Mainframe restarted and a viral scan disinfected all the Virals, but Hexadecimal was so powerful that she was not affected.
By Daemon Rising, she had began 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 Nulls fled due to a Game, she emerged transformed into a normal, unpowered Sprite, wearing a new costume of white and gold instead of red and black, with normal-looking eyes and black hair. When Daemon conquered Mainframe, Hex was rejected as an abomination by Daemon.
With Bob was in danger of dying, Hex absorbed some of Mainframe's core energy in order to become her old viral self once more, now with power levels rivaling even Daemon's, and defeated her in combat -- though not before Daemon had successfully infected the entire Net. She finally chose to sacrifice herself by spreading her benign infection (which contained the cure to Daemon's infection) throughout the Net.
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, which programmers sometimes use rather than binary notation.
Hexadecimal's familiar. A cat-sized animal with a video screen on its head. Named after SCSI, which stands for Small Computer System Interface.
Mike the TV
He temporarily lived in her lair when Bob left him with her in order to "Cheer her up" after the events of Painted Windows. Mike apparently joined Scuzzy as her helper. He stayed there until he, Scuzzy, Hack, and Slash were scared away by Nullzilla and met up with Bob.
A super-virus, far more powerful than Gigabyte. 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 worshipped 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. 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 (who 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.
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 can not 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 supernatural monster "daemon" also spelt "demon". "The Word" may be a reference to a unit of memory called a word, which is equal to 4 bytes in most modern computers. It is also probably a religious reference to the Word of God in the Christian Bible. 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).
Daemon's main advisor and assistant, and under the influence of The Word. Not much else is known about him. His name and character follow Daemon's religious motif. He was deleted (and gave the viewer an early look into Daemon's eventual "attack") when he killed himself, due to failing Daemon's order to penetrate Mainframe.
The User
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.
Secondary characters
Frisket
File:Frisket.jpgFrisketA feral dog who likes Enzo, who acts in a threatening manner toward just about everyone other than Enzo and AndrAIa, with a particular dislike of Bob. Frisket has uncanny physical strength, comparable to that of Megabyte, being known to catch cannon balls (and ABCs) in his teeth. Frisket is extremely loyal to Enzo and would not hesitate to sacrifice his life to protect Enzo's. Frisket followed Enzo and AndrAIa into the games during season three.
His name probably derives from the masking technique that is used by artists.
Ray Tracer (The Surfer)
File:Ray Tracer.jpgRay TracerA Web search engine introduced in Season 3, he became a main character upon the return to Mainframe. During Season 4 and beyond, he is romantically involved with Mouse. His icon resembles a Motorola logo, which is appropriate because Motorola helped to name his character (they also made a line of SURFR modems). He also speaks with a strong Australian accent.
An adrenaline junkie, Ray longs for adventure and loves the danger of exploring the trecherous realm known as the Web. Captured by the Guardians for unauthorized Net travel, he is reluctantly rescued by Martix. After saving AndrAIa from a fleet of CPUs, he joins the crew of the Saucy Mare in searching for Bob in the Web, acting as their guide. Matrix is, at first, angered by the Surfer's presence, due to his seeming affection for AndrAIa, but grows to respect him after he risks his life to repair AndrAIa's damaged code.
Turbo claimed to Mouse that Ray had been infected by Daemon.
His name is a reference to a computer graphics technique, ray tracing, and his nickname a reference to web surfing.
Mike the TV
File:MIKE TV.jpgMike the TVAn annoying, ambulatory television set from Bob's apartment who is constantly pitching bizarre products (like the famous Bucket-O-Nothing, free for only $99.99.99) or simply rambling on until somebody shouts at him to shut up. He is a seemingly obvious reference to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory´s Mike Teavee. Speaking into a mic, he appears at random moments to irritate the rest of the cast. His remote control ran away, so he cannot be turned off. Mike also keeps the secret that it is his fault the web creature was released into Mainframe—and thus he is (indirectly) responsible for everything that happens next. In later seasons, he stars as a war correspondent for Mainframe, and during his brief infection by Daemon becomes a televangelist.
Enzo also notes in one episode where the "clock cycles" of all the sprites are slowed down, that Mike the TV was not affected because he could not get any dumber.
Turbo
File:TURBO.jpgTurboPrime Guardian and leader of the Guardian Collective. He is equipped with a Guardian Keytool, Copland, which can transform into any device with a voice command. He speaks with a Texan accent.
Turbo was forced to order the destruction of Mainframe after a Web Creature arrived in the system. Although Bob got rid of the bomb that Turbo had hidden with Mouse, he was considered by many to be an enemy after that. When Matrix encounters Turbo in a distant system he is searching for Bob, the last Guardian uninfected by Daemon. Turbo informs Matrix of the Daemon threat, as well as the necessity of finding Bob, promising to work against Daemon from inside the Guardian Collective. However, when next the two met Turbo had succumbed completely to Daemon's infection. After being partially cured by Bob's incomplete Guardian code, Turbo provided valuable information which helped Mainframe fight back against the super-virus.
After Daemon's defeat, Turbo returned to his position as Prime Guardian.
His name is possibly a reference to turbo mode which allowed the doubling of clock speed of some early Intel processors (ex. 8088 and 80286) for faster performance.
Copland is possibly a reference to the unreleased Copland operating system created by Apple.
Mr. Pearson
Owns a waste disposal system (analogous to a Windows Recycle Bin) and data dump in Sector 1001. Pearson is a cranky old binome with a Irish accent and is the former Codemaster known as Talon. As a Codemaster, Pearson possesses a Gibson Coil Pike weapon, a reference to science fiction writer William Gibson.[citation needed]
He may have been named for one of ReBoot's co-creators, Ian Pearson.
He may have been named for one of ReBoot's co-creators, Phil Mitchell.
Al
Almost never seen. The only time he is explicitly shown on screen is when he is tied up in the episode 'The Great Brain Robbery', and appears to be an one binome. One running gag throughout the series is that whenever his name is said, whether someone is directly talking to him, or his name is just mentioned in conversation, he responds with "What?"
Al owns Al's Diner (a.k.a. Al's Wait & Eat) on Level 31, and also serves as cook. According to his waiter, Al runs at 3 decahertz (30 Hz).
Al's Waiter (Front Counter)
File:Al's Waiter -Front Counter-.jpgAl's Waiter (Front Counter)Never named in the series, he is a binome that stands behind the counter at Al's Diner. He speaks and acts very slowly.
Al's Waiter (Roller Skater)
Also never addressed by name, he is flamboyant one-binome who acts stereotypically homosexual. Has made Bob a bit uncomfortable on a few occasions.
Nibbles
Megabyte's pet null, whom he refers to as "Father" several times throughout the series. Nibbles' identity as a Sprite does not become clear until the fourth season.
His name may be a reference to an old DOS game called 'Nibbles', as well as a nibble or nybble, 1/2 of a byte.
Welman Matrix
File:Welman Matrix.jpgWelman Matrix before (left) and after nullification (right) Scientific genius and father of Dot and Enzo Matrix. He designed a gateway device that would have allowed Mainframers to connect to outside Systems, sending a series of pings into the Net to locate & contact Systems and then link to them. Unfortunately, Welman's experiment backfired due to his gateway pinging Killabyte and warping him into Mainframe as Gigabyte, and he was nullified in the explosion that destroyed Mainframe's sister city, the ruins of which were later to be known as Lost Angles. He was adopted as the null Nibbles by Megabyte, and thanks to Hexadecimal's power his null regained Welman's sentience in Season 4. He is now trying to catch up with his family. Enzo has adapted to his dad's transformation quite well ("Dad's a null monster now, it's so cool!."). Since his ability to assert his personality is directly connected to Hexadecimal's well-being, she imbued Enzo's icon with the same function, allowing Welman to move around by controlling a "Null-Bot." The robotic body he was using was infected by Megabyte at the end of season 4.
Fax Modem and Data Nully
CGI special agents. They are one-binomes modelled on Fox Mulder and Dana Scully from the X-Files, and their names are references to the faxmodem and nulldata. Gillian Anderson, the actress who portrayed Dana Scully, also provided the voice for the character Data Nully. Modem believes there is no User and the Guardians drop Games on Systems to promote the User myth. They were called in to Mainframe to investigate the rash of disappearances and helped battle the Web Creature behind them.
Cecil
CecilA video screen with a pair of arms, waiter at Dot's Diner before it was destroyed. Stereotypical French waiter complete with small moustache. He greatly resembles the original Apple Macintosh, even his icon has rainbow stripes resembling the Macintosh logo. Although nearly the entire cast pronounces his name Cee-Cil, he has repeatedly asserted that it is actually pronounced Ceh-cil. (Unlike the rest of the cast, Dot pronounces it correctly.)
Dixon Green
File:Dixon.jpgDixon Green Bob's partner when he was in the Guardian Academy as a cadet. She was Glitch's original owner, and had a very flippant and single-minded personality. Her name is taken from the British TV show Dixon of Dock Green. Deleted due to damage inflicted by Killabyte as Killabyte was being upgraded to Gigabyte.
Algernon Cholmondley-Worthington III ("Sir") and Binky Ffarquarson
Aka the British Binomes, they appear in several episodes, acting as pilots and very stereotypically British. In times of mortal peril they utter such lines as "steady on", "jolly good", "fancy a biscuit" and "I'll put a brew on". The plane they are piloting almost always gets shot down in some way. These characters are possibly modelled on Biggles and friends.
Other Viruses
Gigabyte
GigabyteA Class-5 (energy absorbing), malignant, extremely powerful super-virus, he is the upgraded form of Killabyte. A signal from Welman Matrix's experimental gateway accidentally locked onto Gigabyte and brought him to Mainframe. The gateway overloaded and Mainframe's twin city was destroyed in the explosion, becoming the small ruin called Lost Angles. Gigabyte was separated into Megabyte and Hexadecimal, making the siblings effectively opposite parts of the same whole; Megabyte representing order and Hexadecimal representing chaos.
Gigabyte was briefly reformed in Season 2 - his first appearance on the show - when Megabyte, possessed by a Web Creature, merged with Hexadecimal. Upon formation, he announced "I am become Gigabyte, Destroyer Of Systems!". Luckily for Mainframe, Hexadecimal's power had been drained at the time and Gigabyte was not at full strength, forced to feed off the energy of individual Sprites. Mainframe was powered down to keep him from gaining power and the System's defenders, helped by the newly returned Mouse, attempted to keep him contained. He was finally beaten when Bob trapped him inside a Tear and used its energy to split Gigabyte once again.
His name comes from the unit of computer memory, measuring approximately one billion bytes (1,024 megabytes).
Killabyte
File:Killabyte.jpgKillabyteKillabyte was a virus that had been captured and was waiting for deletion at the hands of Guardian Dixon Green. Moments before his demise, Killabyte received an upgrade and escaped his bonds. Bob (then a cadet) attempted to subdue the upgraded Killabyte, but was unsuccessful and he lay unconscious as the virus drained Guardian Dixon Green. Killabyte would have killed Bob but was transformed into Gigabyte & then pulled from the Super Computer to Mainframe. Killabyte’s escape seems to have been Bob’s fault, because he engages Dixon Green in conversation during the deletion process, unwittingly stalling it until the upgrade.
His name comes from another unit of computer memory, measuring approximately one thousand bytes. However his name is officially spelled "Killabyte", even though the spelling for KB is "Kilobyte".
Unnamed virus
A large creature resembling a praying mantis, it was dispatched by Matrix in season 3 upon their arrival to a dying system. Doing so also saved Backup's process, as he was being attacked by the virus.
Powerlock
A large, overly-muscled, gun-toting virus, modeled on action heroes and the gun-toting comic book anti-heroes of the early 90s (Most directly the Punisher, as indicated by the skull-like logo he wore on his chest). He was downloaded into an isolated System populated by energy beings called Spectrals. He was openly a member of the Hero Selective, the System's Sprite defenders against Games, and kept his viral nature hidden while he tried to cause System crashes. His true nature was discovered by Matrix and he was deleted. He had an unnamed partner, a Viral Spectral.
Class-M Webcreature
Not technically a virus, but attracted to them and later revealed to have been sent by Daemon. Its first act upon reaching Mainframe was to attack and bond with Hexadecimal (turning her into a creature resembling Spider-Man's enemy Venom), causing the System's nulls to swarm over her in an attempt to keep the Webcreature from the rest of Mainframe. After Hexadecimal's powers were drained by the nulls, the creature escaped and bonded with Megabyte. In both cases, the resulting symbiote was highly animalistic and under the control of the Webcreature. It turned out the Webcreature, slowly growing from a spider-like blob into an immense fanged alien horror, needed to drain energy from others to remain stable outside of the Web - first it went for Hex & her transfinite energy reserves, then it had Megabyte merge with Hex to form the energy-absorbing Gigabyte, and finally it abducted scores of Sprites on Level 31 and slowly drained their energy in a larder. Its victims rescued and the CPUs keeping it cornered by direct torchlight (as it could not stand strong, bright lights), it finally escaped towards a Tear - as a Class M, it could turn Tears into Portals to the Web, and using that it escaped back to its home.
A Class-M in a System with Net access is a dangerous threat, as it could lead to the Web being able to invade the entire Net. As a result, Guardian protocol is to completely destroy such a System in order to be sure of terminating the Webcreature and any others that might also be there.
Web Spores
An alien army that invaded Mainframe through the Class M's Web-Portal. They show a hive mentality and a sense of co-operative strategy, able to form traps for CPU attack craft. Their strategy is to send in Probes first, mostly unaggressive beings that inspect a System for potential threats, and then sending in the aggressive warrior Spores once they have worked out the layout. Their numbers are vast, capable of overrunning and crashing entire Systems, and only a CPU/ABC alliance was able to defeat them.
Unspecified-class Webcreatures
These resemble Hammerhead sharks with a vertical head and no eyes. They have the ability to drain energy from sprites. They are born from ball-shaped eggs connected by vein-like tubes. Newborns have no armour and sleek skin. Older Webcreatures develop a carapace-like hide that can withstand a lot of punishment. Their teeth can also chew through many substances, including sprites and metal. Although one is never seen, they can grow to a gargantuan size, roughly the size of a ship. Its bones are used to cover the Captain's ship as an armature for the other carapace pieces.
Deformed Sprites
These are sprites that have survived the web, but at a cost. They no longer require sustanence from energy foods but are deformed. Newer sprites keep their original appearance while older ones start resembling webcreatures; in the case of Bob after his exile by Megabyte, his hair changed into a wave-pattern, silver scales began to grow on his face, and his uniform began melting into his skin. One of the elder sprites only has one hand, a vaguely peg leg, and a face resembling the M-class Webcreature. While not technically viruses, they have proven to be quite hostile in nature.
