History WesternAnimation / TheZetaProject

* AnAesop: The pilot is all about how you have free will and the ability to choose your own path in life regardless of the circumstances of your birth.

* OpportunisticBastard: Dr. Boyle, who made Zeta’s weather resistant armor, comes to suspect Zera will come looking for him and sets things up to trap him., both to avoid danger and to force Zeta to steal sports for his space probe.

* ShownTheirWork: The National Security Agency does in fact have task forces like that Bennett, West and Lee are a part of. They do in fact have field agents, guns and badges, and the ability to pull rank on police officers as shown in the ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'' episode where Zeta returns to Gotham. Essentially, despite the TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture setting, all procedures shown are standard, right up to Agent West getting benched for using his sidearm in a heavily crowded area full of civilians.

* CIAEvilFBIGood: Averted entirely, as the Zeta threat is given over instead to a NSA taskforce and seems to be handled entirely handled by them. Given how often the NSA is ignored in fiction, this seems odd [[TruthInTelevision until you learn that the NSA does in fact have these taskforces in real life]]. Counts also as ShownTheirWork.

The story's main character, Infiltration Unit Zeta, is a shape-shifting synthoid: a humanoid robot designed to carry out covert assassinations on the behalf of the NSA. However, when Zeta discovers that one of his targets is innocent, he experiences a kind of existential crisis about goodness and the value of life; following this epiphany, Zeta finds he can [[ThouShaltNotKill no longer kill]]. The newly enlightened Zeta [[IAmNotAGun refuses to continue on as an infiltration unit]] and abandons his mission, going rogue. Zeta is pursued by a team of NSA agents, led by the obsessed Agent Bennett, and aided by a Ro Rowen, a 15-year-old runaway whose life Zeta saves in the pilot. The general plot of the show, then, is the SternChase between Zeta and Ro (as they attempt to prove that Zeta is genuinely non-violent), and the NSA agents pursuing him (who believe that the terrorists he was investigating before going rogue have reprogrammed him for some unknown purpose). To prove his innocence, Zeta and Ro search for his creator, the elusive Dr. Selig.

* LighterAndSofter: As the [=DVDs=] reveal, the show was supposed to be as dark or darker than ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'', but ExecutiveMeddling kept it from getting too serious.

* [[LoopholeAbuse/WesternAnimation Loophole Abuse]]: When Zeta and Ro took refuge within a "No-Tech" village, the Agents couldn't go there without a court order. As Bennett went to the nearest town to get one, he told the other Agents to keep watching and not to set foot inside the village. Agent West then took a flying module to enter the village without setting foot inside it. To his misfortune, the villagers had catapults and rocks to defend themselves.

* BerserkButton: Threatening Ro, civilians, or even his enemies is a bad idea. Zeta does not react well to physical violence.

** Someone tries this with Agent Bennett's son later on. [[PapaWolf It doesn't]] [[BerserkButton end well for them.]]