YMMV / ReBoot

• Animation Age Ghetto: This was intended as an "all ages" show and its run on ABC was greatly hampered by Executive Meddling to make the show more friendly for young children. Despite this, its clever writing and wide range of pop culture references made the show beloved by many parents and teenagers. Once it moved off of ABC and entered its third season, the show became much darker and story driven and ended up being attacked in both the UK and Brazil for being too violent and dark for children. The show was flat out removed from ITV for this reason, despite fan protest.
• Awesome Music:
  • The guitar duel between Bob and Megabyte in season 1.
  • Not to mention the ridiculously epic main theme, composed by Bob Buckley.
  • "When Bob went face to face to face to face to face with hexadecimal"
• Badass Decay: Matrix in season 4 thanks to his reduced screen time.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The second Bob who appeared in "My Two Bobs" is the imposter. Not surprising given that he lacked Bob's knowledge of the games.
• Cliché Storm: Certain episodes have their plot built on a long string of cliches, but it is either done as an Affectionate Parody or otherwise knows what it is doing.
• Complete Monster: Megabyte abandons his occasional moments of genuine affability to fulfill his role as The Virus in Season 3. Trapping the Guardian Bob in the Web, Megabyte uses the chance to attempt to take over the Mainframe, intent on infecting the Supercomputer and eventually the entire Net. Reviving his insane sister Hexadecimal after she had been seemingly killed in a freak accident, Megabyte has her fitted with a Shock Collar, using her immense power to force her to power his weapon. Breaking into the Central Office, Megabyte decapitates the Mainframe's head Phong, torturing the still-living sprite to amuse himself; all the while tormenting the young sprite seeking to save the Mainframe, deleting countless other sprites and casually mistreating his own minions. Even once defeated, Megabyte leaves the Mainframe so damaged it is unable to recover, forcing the heroes to risk crashing the system for the chance of rebirth.
• Crazy Is Cool: Hexadecimal changes her expression and voice level at an alarming quickness and is beloved for her chaotic nature.
• Epic Riff: The episode dealing with Enzo's birthday sees Megabyte roll up with an electric guitar and play an absolutely face-melting solo. It then turns into a Power of Rock showdown between him and Bob for even more epicness. Megabyte even lampshades how awesome the whole thing is.
  Megabyte: I've always wanted to do that!
• Epileptic Trees: Quite a few fans like to believe that Megabyte and Hexadecimal merging is what caused Megabyte to become more vile, crazy, and dangerous later in the series. It would certainly explain the stark contrast between "give Enzo a guitar" Megabyte of season 1 and "try to commit genocide" Megabyte of season 3 but that's about the extent to which it makes sense.
• Evil Is Cool: Megabyte. Everything about the character just exudes frightening badassery, from his voice to his look.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Some fans leave out season 4, due to the somewhat disappointing conclusion to the Daemon arc and the fact that it, and thus the show, ends on a massive cliffhanger (contrasted with season 3, which gives a pretty satisfactory ending due to the fact that it was originally intended as such).
• Friendly Fandoms: With TRON, naturally, due to its similar premise and computer-based humor.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The show was pretty popular in the UK and was even partly funded by ITV, who aired in their CITV block, during the first two seasons. However, its content meant a number of episodes had to be skipped over before it was axed completely after the 9th episode of Season 3. This led to a huge outcry from British fans who wrote in demanding that ITV air the remaining episodes, but this failed when they refused.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The more you know about computer hardware, computer software, computer programming and CGI, the more entertaining the show becomes. Several character's names are rooted in technical terminology. In particular the character designs for Phong (phong shading) and Ray Tracer (Ray Tracing) actually demonstrate the CG principles they are referencing.
  • There are a few, mostly relating to binomial sequences. For example, when Daemon orders Deacon to recite "cron 101", he proceeds to recite a series of binomial numbers; the code translates to five, four, three, two, one, zero.
  • Daemon's name itself is its own genius bonus. A daemon is a background process which is why Daemon had such a passive process during her infection of the net, simply sitting back and monitoring all of her guardians is her function.
    • For that matter, when she initiates her final command, Bob is horrified to realize she's a cron virus, and implies that she can crash the entire Net and all systems connected to it. "cron" is a command-line utility in Unix-like systems that schedule and run commands and scripts, including updates from the internet. In other words, Daemon can corrupt and delete the software that handles system updates. If such a virus really existed and could spread through the internet, it really would be an apocalyptic event for all networked computers.
  • In "The Tiff", Dot refers to Bob as Game Boy. Seems like an innocent reference to the handheld gaming device, right? Take a look at what's written above the screen of an original model Game Boy^*Dot Matrix with Stereo Sound. While this may or may not have been intentional, it's clever nonetheless.
• Growing the Beard:
  • The first two seasons were fun and entertaining, but excessively hampered by Moral Guardians that hindered the growth of a more mature show, they weren't allowed to cut to a commercial with someone in immediate peril (like falling off a cliff) for fear of upsetting the children. The final four episodes of the second season started up some more thematically interesting stories with a continuing storyline that fed through the rest of the series, which really hit its stride in the first few episodes of the virtually censor-free third season.
  • Over the course of the series, Megabyte became progressively more dangerous and went from concocting subversive schemes to eventually taking over Mainframe and preparing an invasion of the Supercomputer. Even when the heroes seemed to have defeated him at last, Megabyte comes back in season four; stronger than ever and completely psychotic, to boot. He's still as vicious and cunning as he was in the past, but now has the ability to impersonate binomes and sprites. Oh, and any sense of restraint or morality he may have had before is now totally gone.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Megabyte and Matrix's brutal fight at the end of season 3 makes the earlier moment where Megabyte gives Enzo a guitar for his birthday seem a lot less funny than it originally was. Really, all of Megabyte's antics in the first season become a hell of a lot darker in tone after the later seasons.
  • "Talent Night" in general. It's kind of depressing watching Dot plan so much for Enzo's birthday knowing that thanks to unfortunate circumstance, she'd miss getting to see him grow up completely.
  • The nightmare sequence in "Identity Crisis, Part 2" depicts an older Enzo as a one-eyed, jaded renegade and shows that Mainframe was conquered by Megabyte once Bob was no longer around to protect it. This was supposed to just be Phong's way of shaking Dot of her Heroic BSoD, but it ends up inadvertently foreshadowing a great deal of Season 3 instead.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • Bob sending Glitch away rather than let Gigabyte have it. At the time, it was just a way to prevent Gigabyte from absorbing some more energy, but Season 3 confirmed that keytools are sentient, so Bob was actually protecting a friend even if it meant leaving himself completely defenseless.
  • AndrAIa at the end of season 2 swearing that Mainframe does still have a Guardian with Enzo. Season 4 would reveal she knew he was lying about him being a Guardian the entire time, but she believed in him anyways.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Nintendo announced that their next console would be called the "Nintendo GameCube". The fact that the console's default color was purple did not hurt.
    Mouse: "Wow! Now THAT'S what I call a bug zapper!"
    Dot: "I don't believe it! We've been saved by a game cube!
  • Another episode featured a brief gag (aired in 1997) that had a battleship called the SS Cameron catching fire and sinking. This was in reference to the obscenely overbudget fiasco of Titanic (1997) and what people were predicting of James Cameron's career...
    • The number of VA's Reboot has in common with Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. In particular, for the first two seasons, Hack and Slash were played by the same actors who played Scratch and Grounder, also inept villainous robot mooks.
  • "I am become Gigabyte - destroyer of systems!" - terrifying until you find out there's a computer parts manufacturer with the same name- a creator of systems if you will. Go figure.
    • Then crosses over into Harsher in Hindsight in 2022 when a number of Gigabyte (the manufacturer) components were failing, potentially damaging systems.
  • The episode Bad Bob, while an Affectionate Parody of The Road Warrior actually somehow bears more resemblance to Mad Max: Fury Road despite being made two decades earlier. The "Mega Truck"'s elaborate design, which, being a CGI cartoon was not constrained by a prop department's budget, looks much closer to Furiosa's War Rig than the hastily modified tanker truck from the earlier film, the episode's guitar-heavy soundtrack bears an uncanny resemblance to the music of the Doof Warrior rather than the orchestral score used for the classic trilogy and both this episode and Fury Road feature turning the rig around and returning to their starting location as a major plot point. Also notable is the fact that there's finally a real Mad Max computer game.
    • As it turns out, Bad Bob is actually the reason Fury Road exists in the first place.
  • Several times in the show, "BASIC" is used as an insult, essentially being ReBoot's equivalent of "stupid" or "idiot", but y'know, using computer terms, like everything else in the show. In the 2010s, "basic" became an actual insult used in real-life.
  • In gaming slang "Dot" has become an abbreviation for "damage over time", usually in the context of Poisoned Weapons. Probably the last thing you'd want to associate with someone who runs a restaurant.
• Iron Woobie: When Enzo becomes Matrix, he nose-dives into this trope. He survives untold amounts of games, and as he spends more and more time searching for Mainframe, it hardens his heart and makes a mess of his psyche. Hell, he might've gone straight-up crazy without AndrAIa and Frisket there for support. Also leans toward Jerkass Woobie in his more aggressive moments.
• Les Yay: Dot and Mouse have some moments in the series. In Gigabyte Dot gives Mouse a flirtatious wink while saving her with the plane. In Trust No One, Mouse saves Dot from one of the Web Creature's cocoons. She then intimately holds Dot while she wakes up. And in Re Boot S 4 E 7 Null Bot Of The Bride, Mouse gives Dot a Flirtatious Smack on the Ass.
• Magnificent Bastard: Megabyte, the Big Bad of the series, is a ruthless, yet charming Virus who intends to seize control of the entire system. Frequently coming up with genius schemes that come within a hairsbreadth of taking over Mainframe itself, Megabyte later allies with the hero Bob to prevent a Web invasion before betraying Bob and ejecting him into the Web, taking over Mainframe to remake it in his image. Eventually, Megabyte plots to simply abandon it to infect other systems before being overthrown. Later returning disguised as a second Bob, Megabyte organizes the complete takeover of Mainframe yet again. The most brilliant foe that Bob and his friends ever face, Megabyte is equal parts sophisticated and vicious, rarely at a loss and quick to recover, intending on bringing all he can dream of under his control.
• Memetic Molester: Hexadecimal to Bob, especially in the Daemon Arc where she is constantly making unwanted advances on him.
• Misaimed Merchandising: One of the many reasons why the game falls under The Problem with Licensed Games. No, Bob (in the actual show) doesn't use a gun to solve his problems or defeat his enemies. He only uses one should the game he's in requires him to have one. On top of that, he lives by his Honor Before Reason motto, "to mend and defend", meaning the Guardian never kills or does harm without a good reason. Many things that the game gets so wrong.
• Moral Event Horizon: Megabyte betraying Bob and banishing him from the Mainframe so he could take over. Especially cruel when one realizes that the only reason Megabyte wasn't turned to dust years ago was because Bob was certain that he could be redeemed.
• Obvious Judas:
  • "Identity Crisis" treats the reveal that Cyrus turned on Dot as a big twist, even though it's really obvious since we saw he had just taken her organizer before handing it back to her.
  • "Where No Sprite Has Gone Before" we see both the Spectrals and Hero Selective are suspicious of each other, but both sides deny doing damage to the system. Unsurprisingly the abrasive members on both sides turn out to be the real culprits, bonus points for Powerlock, the member of the Hero Selective turned out to be evil, having a '90s Anti-Hero attitude and design.
• Once Original, Now Common: The CGI itself. It came out when the only All-CGI Cartoon at the time were a few episodes of the VHS-only VeggieTales - and was many peoples' first introduction to the All-CGI Cartoon. The CGI was mind blowingly cool when the show first premiered but was still very stilted and awkward because of the technical limitations. It didn't help that Toy Story premiered the following year with a film budget and time table that made some people believe that ReBoot was a cheap, inferior CGI product. This is in addition to the rampant Executive Meddling that hampered the show. The truth is that this show and Beast Wars laid the groundwork for CGI television and regardless of the technical limitations the story and scripting was of excellent quality.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: The show is a beloved classic with strong writing both for characters and plots, and while the CGI hasn't aged gracefully, it's still fondly remembered. The PlayStation game, on the other hand... is the exact opposite. As covered by Rerez here, it has a lot of problems, ranging from the very awkward controls of Bob's movement, time limits both visible and not (even if you fix the tears, you still have to rush to get the good endings to levels), enemies loving to overwhelm you while you fight against the aforementioned controls, the tears being very difficult to close, the auto aim being god awful... the list goes on. Perhaps it was a sign of things to come when the box art was shown, displaying Bob, an All-Loving Hero, wielding a large gun (which comes from an episode where he uses one... to capture enemies in bubbles, instead of just shooting them with bullets). That said however, the CGI is straight from the original cartoon while the voice cast came back too.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • The little kid in "Icons" sounds exactly like Spike the dragon.
  • Tigerhawk and Flutterguy turns up as the Gigabyte, destroyer of systems.
• Seasonal Rot: Season 4 is not as well-liked as the previous seasons, particularly the "My Two Bobs" arc (originally broadcast as a single TV movie). The fact that it ends on a cliffhanger makes it worse. The "Daemon Rising" arc is liked by some though.
• Special Effect Failure: Regrettably, animation goofs weren't only isolated to the first season where you'd expect it to be perfectly normal for the team and editing staff to get their bearings. Some silly things in plain sight seem to manage to slip past quality control, like virals having normal uninfected eyes, or character's anatomy interactions going a little bit haywire.
  • On occasion, Glitch is missing from Bob's arm, all the way to season four, after Glitch's triumphant return.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Of TRON. Both works take place Inside a Computer System where programs manifest as virtual people and where human users are regarded as gods, both feature large amounts of computer-related humour, and both feature pioneering usage of CGI.
• Squick: The nulls are slimy, multi-colored crosses between maggots and slugs that can make little noise beside a squeaky screech. Aside from Nullzilla which is Fridge Horror unto itself, there's a notable incident where an army of nulls devour one of Megabyte's Armoured Binome Carriers, with two henchmen still inside, and it's gone in seconds. Cringeworthy stuff.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The fourth season showed binomes who used to work for Megabyte wanting to return to his service. The idea that sprites and binomes might willing decide to be infected by a virus, because they crave power and respect, would have been interesting idea to explore. Bob's idea of reprogramming malicious viruses, but thanks to the idea being introduced so late in the show and the season ending in a cliffhanger, it doesn't go anywhere beyond an excuse to provide Megabyte with more troops after his return.
  • Benign Viruses. Their existence was confirmed in Season 2 that they are all-powerful but with a twist - they only want to grief the User and cannot hurt anyone or anything. The series never expanded upon it beyond making Hexadecimal a depowered virus (a sprite for all intents and purposes).
  • Restoring nulls. Again another storyline that ended up an Aborted Arc was the Mainframers trying to recompile sprites and binomes who got nullified in games. It would've been amazing to see various peoples come back in User avatar forms from games past-won, now trying to adjust to their new life and bodies.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Mike the TV. In principle, Mike could easily fall into a number of scrappy tropes, but he is considered obnoxious by pretty much everyone else in the show. This made his antics skew on the side of endearing to the fans rather than smug goofiness. It helped too that the one episode to give him any serious focus ("Wizards, Warriors, And A Word From Our Sponsor") had him rebooting in a game where everyone had to work together to win, and Mike did his part admirably.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: At the time, at least, pretty much every part of Reboot was this. Now, not so much. Several of the models still hold up well though, at least when they aren't moving, and the crazy camera movements proved what an All-CGI Cartoon could do. The Art Evolution of the show is also fun to watch.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The show suffers heavily from this, starting from the second season and only gets worse from there. It featured a forcible fusion scene with parallels to rape (Brother–Sister Incest rape, to boot), many, many deaths, two children being mistaken for dead and forced to wander the universe for years while time flowed differently for them, The Corruption of surrounding systems, and finally the end of the world, not to mention several very fanservice-y designs. In Daemon Rising, there is also a Brainwashed and Crazy cult of Guardians that have been mind raped into suicide bombers (a fact the show does not shy away from, even showing on-screen deaths).

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