The show's early jokes at the expense of BSP came from frustration encountered by the show's makers by an abundance of script and editing changes that were imposed upon Mainframe before episodes were allowed to air. These changes were all aimed at making the show appropriate for children, and to prevent even the slightest appearance of inappropriate content, imitatable violence or sexuality. For instance, the character Dot was considered too sexualized by exposing too much mammary cleavage, so the animators were forced to make them less curvy and form them into a lumpy "monobreast", as lightly referred to by the staff. However, starting with season three, the monobreasts of all adult female characters were replaced with more anatomically correct versions. In another case, the word "hockey" was banned from all episodes as in some countries it was supposedly used as a vulgar slang term. In the episode "Talent Night", one scene of Dot giving a kiss to her brother Enzo was cut due to BSP's fear of promoting incest, an insinuation which Pearson described as "one of the sickest things I've heard."^[18]

United States president Bill Clinton was reportedly a fan of the series.

In the episode "AndrAIa", Bob yells at a binome after a game, claiming all he said was "Make it so," to which the binome responds "And 'engage', I said 'engage' more times than 'make it so'". This references Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The gateway Megabyte builds in the episode "When Games Collide" and the gateway that Welman Matrix builds in the episode "Daemon Rising", resembles a Stargate.

In episode 5 of season 3, one of the binomes asks Matrix and AndrAIa upon arrival if they are a good User or a bad User, a refence to The Wizard of Oz.

Hexadecimal, Megabyte's twin sister, also a computer virus, whose face is represented by a series of masks, each portraying a different emotion. Hex also came from the virus Gigabyte.

For references to computer terminology in the episodes, see List of ReBoot episodes.

Hexadecimal, the benign virus, is named for the base-sixteen numerical system, otherwise known as the hexadecimal system.

ReBoot at the Internet Movie Database

A Game Cube containing characters from Wacky Races.

In the episode "Bad Bob", a binome, upon seeing Mainframe's core corrupted, explains "Maniacs! They blew it up!" - a reference to Planet of the Apes.

Phong, Mainframe's system administrator, serves as a mentor and advisor to its inhabitants and works with Bob in defense of the system.

"End Prog" - The mainframers perform a musical at the end of this episode and it is to the tune of the classical Gilbert and Sullivan's "Major-General's Song".

Captain Capacitor, Old Man Pearson — Long John Baldry

In the same episode, Bob receives a hologram which is introduced by Mike the TV. The video message begins with Mike saying, “When you care enough to project the very best, send Holomark”. This is a reference to the company slogan of Hallmark Cards: "when you care enough to send the very best, use Hallmark."

Megabyte — Tony Jay

Mouse, Rocky the Raccoon — Louise Vallance

Slash, Turbo, Herr Doktor, Cyrus, Al's Waiter (front counter) — Gary Chalk

Hack (seasons 2 to 4), Specky — Scott McNeil

Bob (season three and four), Glitch-Bob — Ian James Corlett

"The History of ReBoot", "Mainframe City Locations" (2001). The Official ReBoot Website. Mainframe Entertainment.

Matrix (adult Enzo Matrix) — Paul Dobson

Ray Tracer — Donal Gibson

Dot Matrix, Princess Bula — Kathleen Barr

Phong, Mike the TV, Cecil, Al — Michael Donovan

Daecon — Richard Newman

Gigabyte - Blu Mankuma

AndrAIa (adult) — Sharon Alexander

Welman Matrix — Dale Wilson

At the start of the episode "The Tiff", Dot’s business associate tells Dot the download from the first national data-bank is late. This is a reference to the First National Bank.

Bob (seasons one, two, and four) — Michael Benyaer

Hack (seasons 1 to 2) — Phil Hayes

AndrAIa (young) — Andrea Libman

ReBoot is a Canadian CGI-animated action-adventure television series that originally aired from 1994 to 2001. It was produced by Vancouver-based production company, Mainframe Entertainment, and created by Gavin Blair, Ian Pearson, Phil Mitchell and John Grace, with the visuals designed by Brendan McCarthy after an initial attempt by Ian Gibson. It is credited with being the first full-length, completely computer-animated TV series.

The setting is in the inner world of a computer system known by its inhabitants as Mainframe (for which Mainframe Entertainment is named). It was deliberately chosen due to technological constraints at the time, as the fictional computer world allowed for blocky looking models and mechanical animation.^[1] Mainframe is divided into six sectors (moving clockwise): Baudway, Kits, Floating Point Park, Beverly Hills, Wall Street, and Ghetty Prime. The names of Mainframe's sectors are homages to famous neighbourhoods, mostly in New York or Los Angeles. However, the Kits sector is named for Kitsilano, a neighbourhood in Vancouver, British Columbia, Mainframe Entertainment's home city. Also, Ghetty Prime is a reference to Frank Herbert's Dune, as Giedi Prime is the home world of House Harkonnen, both being the home of the villain in each story. Mainframe is populated almost entirely by binomes, little creatures that represent either 1s or 0s, as well as a handful of Sprites who are primarily humanoid creatures of more complex design and are the main characters of the series.

The first season of ReBoot was highly episodic, with each installment being a self-contained two-part episode. Most of the episodes established characters, locations, and story elements, such as the gigantic "Game Cubes". When "The User" loads a game, a Game Cube drops on a random location in Mainframe, sealing it off from the rest of the system and turning it into a "gamescape". Bob frequently enters the games, "Reboots" to become a game character, and fights the User's character to save the sector. If the User wins a game, the sector the Cube fell in is destroyed, and the Sprites and binomes who were caught within are turned into energy-draining, worm-like parasites called Nulls. The second season featured an extended story arc that began with the season's fifth episode, "Painted Windows". The arc revealed that Hexadecimal and Megabyte are siblings, and that Megabyte's pet Null, Nibbles, is their "father." It also introduced an external threat to Mainframe, "the Web". A creature from the Web entered Mainframe from Hexadecimal's looking glass (which was shattered by Mike), bonding with her. Mainframe's nulls covered her to form a monster known as "Nullzilla". The protectors of Mainframe defeated Nullzilla and neutralized Hexadecimal. The Web creature located Megabyte, took him over and forced him to merge with Hexadecimal, forming a destructive super-virus called Gigabyte. Gigabyte was eventually neutralized as well, but the Web creature escaped into the bowels of Mainframe, where it began stealing energy to stay alive. When the Web creature was cornered as Bob and the others investigated, it escaped Mainframe and opened a portal to the Web. The protectors of Mainframe had to team up with Megabyte and Hexadecimal to close the portal, but when they defeated the Web creatures that had entered the system, Megabyte betrayed the alliance, crushing Bob's keytool, Glitch, and sending him into the Web portal before closing it.

For the show's third season, there was a marked improvement in model and animation quality due to the advancement of Mainframe's software capabilities during the time between seasons. Subtle details, such as eyelashes and shadow, as well as generally more lifelike sprite characters, were among several visual improvements compared to previous ReBoot episodes. In addition, the show shifted their target audience to children aged 12 and older, resulting in a darker and more mature storyline.^[1] After severing ties with ABC following the second season, the show actually reached a greater number of households through syndication.^[2] The season started with Enzo, freshly upgraded into a Guardian candidate by Bob during the Web incursion, defending Mainframe from Megabyte and Hexadecimal with Dot and AndrAIa at his side. When Enzo entered a game he could not win, he, AndrAIa and Frisket changed their icons to game sprite mode and rode the game out of Mainframe. The accelerated game time matured Enzo and AndrAIa far faster than the denizens of Mainframe. The following episodes follow adult versions of Enzo and AndrAIa as they travel from system to system in search of Mainframe. The older Enzo adopts the name "Matrix," (previously his and Dot's surname) carrying the aptly named weapon "Gun" and Bob's damaged Glitch. The time spent in games and away from Mainframe has hardened both Matrix and AndrAIa; Matrix has developed a pathological hatred of Megabyte, and has grown into an overly muscled, shoot-first-ask-question-later hero, while AndrAIa has turned into a calm and level-headed warrior. Matrix and AndrAIa are also shown to have developed a romantic relationship by this time. As the season progresses, Matrix and AndrAIa are reunited with Bob and the crew of the Saucy Mare and returned to Mainframe. Upon return, the heroes fought a final battle for control of Mainframe. Hexadecimal and Megabyte were defeated in confrontations with Bob and Matrix, respectively, but not before Megabyte's handiwork caused the system to crash. All final problems in Mainframe were dealt with by The User restarting the system, setting everything right and restoring everything as it was again for our heroes, with one major exception: younger and older Enzo now exist simultaneously, as Matrix's icon was still set to "Game Sprite" mode. Because of this mishap, he wasn't recognized by the system when it rebooted, so it created a replacement of his younger self. After the end of the third season, two TV movies were produced in 2001: Daemon Rising, which addressed the problem the Guardians were facing in season three, and My Two Bobs, which brings back Megabyte in a cliffhanger ending that has yet to be resolved. The two movies, broken up into eight episodes in its US run on Cartoon Network's Toonami, revealed much of Mainframe's history, including the formation of Lost Angles, Bob's arrival in the system, and the origin of Megabyte and Hexadecimal. Initial plans for the fourth season included twelve episodes broken into three films, followed by a thirteenth musical special episode, although the final five were never produced.^[3] Gavin Blair has been quoted as saying at a convention that internal politics at the channel's parent company led to the order being cut to eight episodes; how much of this account is accurate has been debated.^[4]. An alleged former Mainframe employee stated on the ReBoot Corner message board that the cliffhanger in episode eight was "a last ditch effort to pry more cash out of the networks. We thought that they (the networks) wouldn't want to end like that".^[5]

In late July 2007, Rainmaker Animation (Mainframe Entertainment who created the show was acquired and renamed by Rainmaker in 2006) announced plans to create a trilogy of ReBoot films with illustrator/animator Daniel Allen as the lead character designer. Rainmaker Animation executive vice president Paul Gertz stated, "ReBoot's legions of fans have been incredibly loyal and continue to keep the property alive on dozens of fan sites."^[6] In conjunction with the website Zeros 2 Heroes, they announced an intention to allow fans greater access to the development of the movie plans and also in development of a ReBoot webcomic. Fans were given the chance to submit their own art and designs, with the potential to end up as an artist on the project, and their feedback ensured which one of five ReBoot pitches won.^[6][7] The winning pitch was ReBoot: Arrival,^[8]. Rainmaker will monitor feedback for the comic but may not use it as the basis for their movie plans.^[9] Four ReBoot fans have been chosen to work as artists on the Arrival comic. ^[10] According to the pitch at the Zeroes2Heroes website, Megabyte's Hunt has developed into a Net-wide war so pervasive even other Viruses are united against it. The Users have gone, spending their time in an unending MMORPG Game. A sentient System named Gnosis is created as a way to stop Megabyte, but goes rogue and begins enslaving Systems in its attempt to gain User-like powers. Two teams of heroes are assembled to stop Gnosis and bring back the Users, which will include new characters and a one-off character named Lens the Codemaster, from Season 2.

Dot Matrix, the COMMAND.COM of Mainframe, who also owns a local diner.

ReBoot was first broadcast on Saturday mornings in the United States in 1994 by ABC and in Canada on YTV, and proved to be an instant hit with children and their parents, only to be abruptly cancelled on ABC, when the Walt Disney Company purchased the network. Episodes continued to air in Canada. Episodes from the second season could still be seen in the U.S. when Claster Television distributed them for a short period of time during the 1996-97 season. Although there were many demands for a third season, it would be a year before new episodes aired on YTV due to Mainframe's involvement in Transformers: Beast Wars (known as Beasties in Canada) and Shadow Raiders,^[2] and the third season aired only on YTV at the time due to the lack of interest in the U.S. In March 1999 — years after Canadian audiences saw the third season — American audiences saw the episodes on Cartoon Network. Cartoon Network aired season 3, and then looped to seasons 1 and 2. Though they canceled the loop on season 3 after the episode "Firewall" due to poor ratings. Again, production on other series delayed the fourth season of ReBoot, and there are no plans to produce a fifth despite a cliffhanger season finale, as two of the show's creators have since left Mainframe Entertainment. Gavin Blair and Ian Pearson resigned in 2004 to form their own independent studio, The Shop.^[11] The show also aired in the United Kingdom in the mid 1990s, on the ITV children's strand CITV. It was broadcast on CITV's available timeslot of 4:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., every Thursday. In 1997, CITV aired the first 6 episodes of series 3. CITV stated that they had only bought the first 10 (out of 16) episodes of the show, and would buy the rest if the high ratings continued.^[12] On February 12 1998, CITV aired the show again, from the episode "Trust No-one". When "To Mend and Defend" should have aired, the episode "Firewall" aired in its place instead. The run ended with episode 9 of season 3, "Return of the Crimson Binome", and no more episodes have aired since. Reasons for the abrupt end were due to poor ratings and increasingly violent and darker settings shown in season 3, deemed by the broadcasters to be inappropriate for their younger target audience. Since 2001, many of the show's fans have carried out a movement with the hope of convincing Mainframe to produce more ReBoot episodes. These efforts were unsuccessful, possibly due to the lack of support from American distributors. A spinoff called Binomes was also planned towards the end of 2004, featuring a family of Binomes who lived on a "chip farm". The series would have been composed of 52 11-minute episodes and aimed at a pre-school audience, but nothing of this project came to pass after the initial announcement.^[13]

In the US, four VHS tapes were released in 1995 with individual episodes from the first season through Polygram Video. Each release contained a single episode: "The Medusa Bug", "Wizards, Warriors, and a Word from Our Sponsor", "The Great Brain Robbery" and "Talent Night". The UK received two VHS releases, but with two episodes each: Volume 1 contained "The Tearing" and "Racing the Clock", while Volume two had "The Quick and the Fed" and "Medusa Bug".^[14] In Australia there were four VHS releases with each containing two episodes, comprising the first eight episodes of season one. However, all the VHS tapes have long gone out of print. The second season was never released, even though Polygram retained the rights to publish the episodes on home video with their deal for the first season. Despite this, in 2000 Mainframe struck a deal with A.D. Vision to release the third season on DVD^[15] Spanning four volumes, all sixteen episodes were published, separated by each story arc of four episodes: "To Mend and Defend", "The Net", "The Web", and "The Viral Wars". ADV planned to re-release these DVDs at a lower price in 2005, but changed their plans as they decided to cancel several of their titles at the time. Some time afterward, the company lost the publishing rights. Much like the first season VHS tapes, the third season ReBoot DVDs are now out of print and considered rare. Anchor Bay Entertainment released the fourth season in its original form as two films (Daemon Rising and My Two Bobs) on one DVD as "ReBoot v4.0" and went out of print early 2007. It was improperly mastered as the 25fps source material was treated as 24fps film speed material, meaning 3:2 pulldown flags were encoded into the mpeg stream which results in the video playing back 4.096% slower and all the voices sound deeper. Anchor Bay have corrected and remastered the fourth season disc but it is only available by contacting them for a replacement. The Fourth season has also been released in Australia in its original PAL video format, it is still in print. Germany has DVD releases of all of season two, while Russia has DVD releases for the first three seasons (though the first few season three episodes are counted as season two), both also in ReBoot's original PAL format. Universal still owns the rights to publish the first and second seasons on home video and will maintain those rights until 2009. As of July 2007, Universal has not released the first and second seasons on DVD. Season four is available on DVD from Mainframe's web site.

"Fast Forward: The Making of ReBoot" is a 23-minute episode unaired on TV or released on home video, but appearing on YouTube^[16] The title sequence on the sequence says "Date: February 27, 1995", putting its completion date between the first two seasons. The show begins in Megabyte's lair, where Megabyte has hacked into the principal office and has created a portal into a parallel universe (our universe), taking him into the offices of Mainframe Entertainment. There the producer, writers and animators discuss how the show came about, how it is scripted, voiced, and animated, and what the staff does in its spare time. An animation test from 1990 shows an early Bob flying on a surfboard, and an early version of Megabyte, as well as a 1992 test piece from the "Wizards, Warriors and a Word from our Sponsor" episode. It also shows the band Def Leppard's CGI "Let's Get Rocked" music video, which the ReBoot team created. The special was announced and due to be aired on Children's ITV (cITV) during the original broadcast of season one in the UK, but was subsequently pulled from the running order without explanation.

ReBoot has been the recipient of several awards. The show received Gemini Awards for Best Animated Program Series for three straight years between 1995 and 1997, as well as a 1996 Outstanding Technical Achievement Award. Other honors include the 1995 Award of Excellence and Best Animated Program from the Alliance for Children and Television and an Aurora Award in 1996. Other Gemini Award nominations include "Best Children's or Youth Program or Series" in 1998, and "Best Sound - Comedy, Variety, or Performing Arts Program or Series" for My Two Bobs and "Best Sound - Dramatic Program" for Daemon Rising, both in 2002.^[17][1]

The character Phong is an allusion to the game Pong. Phong has a rule that any who seek his advice must first play him in a game of physical Pong. However, phong shading is also an interpolation method used in three dimensional graphics rendering, which was also the shading technique used on the character instead of the simpler Gouraud shading used on other characters.

The villain Megabyte is named after the unit of data measure which represents 1,048,576 bytes (a megabyte). Near the end of the second season Hex and Megabyte are fused, creating the new virus Gigabyte. Furthermore, in Daemon Rising, he is revealed to have evolved from a virus named Killabyte (a play on words, referencing a Kilobyte). The power of the virus reflects the magnitude of the unit used as its name. 1,024 kilobytes make 1 megabyte, and 1,024 megabytes make one gigabyte.

A mostly unseen character known as Al may be a reference to A.I. programming. The name Al and the term A.I. are nearly indistinguishable in sans serif typefaces and A.I.s generally take a long time to develop even the "slowest" intelligences.

ReBoot is full of computer and popular culture in-jokes and parodies:

Near the beginning of the first episode (Season 1), Bob's line "Did I make it?" is intoned and contextualised in such a way as to reference the film Tron, where Jeff Bridges' character asks "Did we make it?" in the same manner.

In the episode "Talent Night", Dot and a binome named Emma Fee are giving auditions for the birthday party show. Emma is a program censor who keeps rejecting nearly every act for trivial reasons, to preserve morality or prevent depictions of violence. She heartily approves, however, of a group of male binome singers and dancers called the "Smalltown Binomes", who are an obvious parody of the Village People and sing a song titled "BSnP" in the style of YMCA. In addition, "BSnP" happens to be the initials of Broadcast Standards and Practices, ABC's censors. BSnP was used in a season one episode to move Bob through a stained-glass window rather than shattering it, a technique BSnP felt children would emulate (also could refer to a Binary Space Partitioning (BSP) symptom)[2]. Further references to the American networks dropping ReBoot were inserted in the "Web World Wars" episode when Megabyte's Armored Binome Carriers ("A.B.C.s") betrayed the Mainframe C.P.U. fighters in mid-battle ("The A.B.C.s have turned on us! Treacherous dogs!") and in the first episode of the third season, a tombstone inside the "Malicious Corpses" Game cube read "Here lies the Mainframe Joint Venture, an unholy alliance."

In this same episode, when Megabyte and Bob guitar duel, Megabyte turns his volume to eleven, a reference to Spinal Tap and/or Marshall amplifiers. Bob also refers to the guitar form of Glitch as "B.F.G.", a reference to the BFG9000 ultimate weapon of the Doom game series.

Sal and Harv, the two worker characters from the 1985 Dire Straits music video "Money For Nothing", make a cameo appearance in "Talent Night", which is fitting since they were designed and animated by the creators of ReBoot. Primitive by today's standards, the "workers" could be considered celebrities of the computer-generated character set.

The series has numerous references to a sector of Mainframe named "Kits" this is most likely a reference to the real neighborhood of Kitsilano in Vancouver.

"Talent Night" also featured a comedian named Johnny O'Binome, whose binary joke translates as "Take my wife, please", a cyclopean robot that served as the YTV logo (although in airings outside of Canada, the YTV logo, but not the robot, is omitted), and Captain Quirk, an obvious Captain Kirk / William Shatner impersonation who did the first verse of "Rocket Man" in the style Shatner himself used at the 1980 Science fiction awards ending with Quirk bowing, causing his toupee to fall off, and disappearing in the style of a Star Trek transporter. When Megabyte makes his appearance, he turns the amps on his guitar up to 11. When he leaves, Mike the TV announces that "Megabyte has left the building!".

Later episodes featured direct parodies of films (the James Bond oeuvre; Toy Story; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Jurassic Park) and TV classics such as Thunderbirds, Star Trek and The Prisoner. Other binomes to have had quick cameos included Kiss, Sailor Moon, Indiana Jones, and an Elvis Impersonator.

A Sonic the Hedgehog/Crash Bandicoot hybrid "Rocky Raccoon", a Beatles reference, no less.

Ash Williams, in the "Malicious Corpses" game, a parody of the Evil Dead film series, which is furthered by constantly muttering "Groovy" and, when the User is killed, hollering out, "I'm dead before dawn! I'm dead before dawn!" (parodying the demons' cries of "Dead by dawn!" in Evil Dead II).

Mike Myers in an Austin Powers-style game.

Brendan Fraser in a game reminiscent of The Mummy. (This same game references the user as 'Raiding the Tomb' and Dot hopes for a pair of .45's when she reboots, both references to the game and later movie Tomb Raider.)

An Asian game sprite resembling Bruce Lee appears in a sports game, wearing the yellow and black jump suit from Game of Death.

Enzo rebooting into Scorpion of Mortal Kombat fame.

A Pokémon/Dragonball Z parody in which Matrix became a gym leader resembling a cross between Ash Ketchum and Goku, Frisket rebooted into a Pikachu lookalike, and Bob was trapped in a little dodecahedron (itself a Star Trek reference) that was supposed to be a Poké Ball of sorts. The User himself looks like Super Saiyan Gohan.

Other Game Cubes included parodies of a variety of action figures from G.I. Joe to Barbie.

One of the brands in the city of Mainframe is "Calvin Spline", a reference to Calvin Klein. An advertisement in the subway reads "Picadilly Circuits", an obvious reference to London's Piccadilly Circus.

The season three episode, "To Mend and Defend" featured a parody of the Michael Jackson music video "Thriller", where Enzo reboots into a zombie that wore the same clothes as Michael Jackson in the "Thriller" video. Also, he performed some of Michael Jackson's signature dance moves (such as the moonwalk) to Michael Jackson-esque music to get the User to waste ammunition on him. In the same episode there is a reference made to the Adobe program Photoshop, when Mouse says, "Uhh, sorry to break up this Photoshop moment..."

In the season two episode, "Nullzilla", Bob, Dot, Enzo, Frisket, and Mike the TV parody series such as Voltron and Power Rangers as they don alike suits and pilot insect-like giant robots to fight the giant monster. "Nullzilla" also pokes fun at the way these shows feature machines which don't really have a plausible way to fit together.

The episode "Trust No One" has a pair of binomes who introduce themselves as C.G.I. special Agents Fax Modem and Data Nully. They are obvious direct satires of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully from the Fox series X-Files. Data Nully is in fact voiced by Gillian Anderson, who plays Dana Scully in the X-Files. The episode title was also one of the X-Files slogans.

There have been two IMAX Ridefilms based on ReBoot. The first, "ReBoot™ — The Ride," opened at Sega City@Playdium (now simply called Playdium) in Mississauga, Ontario on October 17, 1997.^[19] Viewers sit in an 18-passenger vehicle mounted on an orthogonal motion base. The film is projected at forty-eight frames per second onto a fourteen foot 180° spherically curved screen. The ride played at the Circus Circus in the Adventure Dome in Las Vegas and then later was moved down the strip to The Luxor, where it can still be seen today. The second, was named "ReBoot™ — The Ride V. 2: Journey Into Chaos". This was subsequently opened at Playdium in Burnaby, British Columbia and ran for a brief time.

In episode 178 of the sitcom Roseanne, a trick-or-treater was costumed as Bob.

Electronic Arts made a game for the PlayStation of ReBoot, which includes actual original animation from Mainframe Entertainment. The game had a limited print in 1998 and is quite rare.[3]

Press release (January 11 1995). "Alliance Communications and BLT Productions Invite You to Witness the Future of Animation - Reboot - The World's First 100% Computer Generated Weekly Animation Series".