[[WMG:Bob is a viral]]
He was infected as a child by a [[ThePrankster Benign virus]] - a powerful cat-like being that pranks everyone she ever came across, but was forbidden by her User to [[ThouShaltNotKill ever harm anyone]]. Bob was a nerdy unfunny boy in the Supercomputer, who utterly ''hated'' viruses. The virus (whom we shall call Pixel from this point onward) unwittingly swept him up into her latest joke on the User. As the Guardians attacked, Pixel escaping, didn't realize Bob was along for the ride [[PrankGoneTooFar until it was too late]]. She tried to save him from a delete command, both end up severely injured and land in a garbage dump. Pixel laments how unfunny it is to go from mocking the gods (users) to [[HowTheMightyHaveFallen dying with a child in the trash]]. Bob says she's a virus, therefore ''is trash'' and one day he'll be a Guardian that cleans up all the trash. He weakly tries to leave. Pixel begs him not to let her die alone, as death is never a funny thing. Bob reluctantly stays. The virus thanks him by downloading her code into him, as "one last prank on the Net". It not only saves his life, but makes him a pseudo-Guardian Cadet. Bob is alarmed, but Pixel tells him not to bother telling anyone. It'll ''take weeks'' for the Guardians to figure out her code. [[note]]a mere second in the User world is [[YearInsideHourOutside well over 31 years]] in cyberspace![[/note]]. Bob protests the Net needs a Guardian. Pixel refutes him - the Net has plenty of executioners and murderers, in the form of Guardians and Codemasters. ''The Net needs laughter'', and Bob will always have a dorky fun-loving nature, even during hard times from now on. Pixel remarks his life will never be boring again as she disappears. Bob is deeply moved by this experience, and becomes the pacifist we know towards viruses.
** It would explain why Glitch was very reluctant to join with him after Dixon's death - the Keytool sensed Pixel's code in Bob. Bob has shown several times through the series he resists the Guardian code (because he's not really a proper Guardian). This is why Frisket (a dog) hates him (Pixel's a cat!) for no reason.
** Also Hexadecimal, for taking an instant liking to him, as she was somewhat a CrazyCatLady with Scuzzy in the beginning.
** If another Benign virus accidentally referred to Bob as 'Pixel', it would mortify Dot, and probably sadly scupper any plans to be married - she detests viruses, and the idea of being the wife to anyone who's viral.

[[WMG:Phong knew all along that Enzo, [=AndrAIa=] and Frisket survived.]]
In "Number 7", Matrix's dream/nightmare was created by Phong through some psychic connection, similar to with Dot in "Identity Crisis, Part 2". The dream Phong is the REAL Phong.

This may have happened inadvertently while Phong is being tortured by Megabyte.
** Or, maybe it was the result of what Phong did to Dot? The device was supposed to send waves into the past and future. The past effects we saw, Dot hallucinating, but maybe this was the future waves? Maybe this is when the flash forward Dot was having would have actually taken place?

[[WMG: Mainframe's User is a little kid.]]
Plays games all the time, never erased the RAM which spawns the game characters in ''System Crash'', only updated the system files once, never ran a virus scan before the system crashed, didn't even try to fix the system when Megabyte destroyed it, and after the system crashed he only types YES when the computer asked for a system restore. The user was simply too young to know how to do anything on a computer other than play games.
* You do realize that the user only experienced 2-3 days over the course of the show's entire run, right? And updates tend to be done automatically when the system is online.
** In that case, the User has been playing a metric ass-ton of games in that little a time. Maybe the game cubes represent flash games?
*** Neither the updates nor flash games were popular when the series was made.
** As was mentioned above, ''[=ReBoot=]'' was made in the 90's--1994, to be exact. The series far and away predates the concept of automatic updates for mainstream operating systems. [[https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/224420 Windows 98]] was the first Microsoft operating system to have a program that ''scanned'' for updates and ''notified'' the user if any were available. It wouldn't be until Windows Me, however, that this feature included the ability to ''automatically'' download updates and install them. It's only been since Windows 10 that these automatic updates have been taken completely out of the user's hands.
* That explains why he couldn't move that tank in the beginning of "Identity Crisis, part 1". And the fact that it's an old game like Enzo said.
* Also, his parents probably upgrade for him. But the Mainframers don't know that, which is why they think he only upgrades occasionally.

[[WMG: Games are only harmful to systems that already have a viral infection]]
That is, games only compound the system errors caused by Viruses, the most common and prominent of which is Nullification. Systems that are clean don't have anything to fear from losing games but viruses are so prevalent and the effects of their infestation are so ingrained into public consciousness that no system dares running the risk of losing a game.

[[WMG: Mainframe does not have one User]]
But several, it's a family computer that everyone is taking turns using and playing with. This is why the User seems so inconsistent, there is actually one one tech-savvy person in the family and everyone else is screwing around, playing games, downloading viruses from the net and generally causing problems for everyone else.
* It's also possible that Mainframe is a public computer in a school or library that the patrons are using improperly.
** If the trailer for ''The Guardian Code'' is any indication, Mainframe is at least accessible from a high school computer lab.
* The name is very likely literal; the system may just be a mainframe computer. Such devices tend to use timesharing operating systems and all use of the system would be through terminal machines. Such systems are designed to remain operational constantly, and only require occasional maintenance from an administrator.
* I can't get over how many games the User seems to play that seem to star {{Villain Protagonist}}s. Maybe that's just one -- in my humble reading -- troubled User among several.
* If the Twin City is another computer on a home LAN, and not a partitioned hard drive, then yes, there's probably a parent and child. One user doing work, and the other playing games on both those computers. Since Games keep downloading to Mainframe, it's likely the mother/father is extremely pissed their computer (Twin City) had a meltdown, and is purchasing a replacement.

[[WMG: ABC was afraid that CGI would take over WesternAnimation.]]
All the ExecutiveMeddling ABC did to [=ReBoot=] was an attempt to force the show to fail and kill the medium before FollowTheLeader took effect and spawned a wave of CGI shows that would replace traditional Western Animation. While [=ReBoot=] survived the meddling, ABC succeeded in preventing FollowTheLeader and delayed the wave of CGI shows for about a decade. ABC's motive for this was to maintain the AnimationAgeGhetto by preserving the Status Quo of Western Animation.
* Mainframe also ended up making ''WesternAnimation/BeastWars'' only a few years later in syndication, which helped popularize the idea of an all CGI animated series and led to the boom in CGI animation that persists to this day. With Beast Wars they still had ExecutiveMeddling to deal with, but it seems almost ''kind'' and good-natured compared to some of the hoops Reboot had to go through, and most of that was because there was franchise history and continuity to deal with rather than outright censorship.

[[WMG: The User is a genuine EldritchAbomination.]]
And I don't mean on a HumansAreCthulhu scale. ''Nothing'' the User does and nothing about the Net and the Web make any sense when applied to our computers. It's easier to believe that sprites and binomes are human-scale entities in a universe run by creatures that would drive real-world humans mad on sight.
* Alternatively, The User '''IS''' Cthulhu, and Mainframe exists in an Eldritch Computer that follows a completely different set of rules that don't make sense to us, but make perfect sense for Cthulhu.
* Now there's a twist! But the games resembling our reality though do throw a spanner in the works with that theory. Unless we're dealing with ''[[{{Transhuman}} highly evolved]]'' humans in the far future. Or maybe even aliens [[AliensStealCable hijacking our Internet]] on their quantum computers for their own pleasure.

[[WMG:Hexadecimal isn't a true virus]]
She's a living viral upgrade. When Kilobyte upgraded to Gigabyte it was stated to have skipped a generation. However, as it was upgrading it was teleported away by Welman Matrix and separated into two viruses. Megabyte is the real virus, the skipped generation, strong, persistent and infectious. Hexadecimal is the interrupted upgrade, she's raw power given form, her chaotic behaviour is due to a lack of purpose. Notice how, throughout the entire series, Hexadecimal lacks a function, no other character has this problem. Every single virus we see is on a mission to infect or destroy but Hexadecimal just sits around until she gets bored and then stirs up some trouble, not even seeming particularly bothered when she is ultimately thwarted and even switches sides without much thought or effort. Further notice that Gigabyte really is little more than Megabyte with Hexadecimal's powers.
* Unless spreading chaos IS her function. It would explain why Gigabyte doesn't have the exact same function as Megabyte. Function: infect and conquer + spread chaos = destroy systems.

[[WMG: Mainframe's User rents all of his/her games.]]
Assuming all of those games run off a disk and are not installed into the computer this explains why the User rarely plays the same game twice. He/She rents a game, plays once and loses, says WTF this game sucks, and returns the game immediately.
* There is another possibility not considered: most of the games are demos. In the time that the show was produced, computer game magazines like PC Gamer included [=CDs=], which often included demos for various games. Since the show's run takes place within a two-day period, it's likely that the User purchased a PC gaming magazine and all the games featured are demos of actual games. This would account as to how quickly the User can play them (where multiple levels can be played in a short timeframe) and the overabundance of them in the show's run.
* Jossed. It's said explicitly in the show, the User is downloading the games from the Net (i.e. the Internet).

[[WMG: ''Number 7'' '''Wasn't''' [[AllJustADream a dream.]]]]
That system was really a Playstation and The User had loaded the [=ReBoot=] video game for the console. But since Matrix was in the game RecursiveCanon kicked in and destabilized the game code. As Matrix derailed the game looking for the Number 1, the game code continued to deteriorate and all sense of logic was lost, resulting in a MindScrew. Matrix's "chat" with young Enzo finally crashed the game and rendered Matrix unconscious while the User went back to playing a golf game. Being a game sprite [=AndrAIa=]'s memory was reset when the [=ReBoot=] game crashed and had no idea why Matrix was unconscious, and decided to tease Matrix by saying he was knocked out by a golf ball.
* [=AndrAIa=] wasn't teasing him, he actually had a lump on his forehead from where the ball hit him.

[[WMG: Daemon was the [[MillenniumBug [=Y2K=]]] bug.]]
Think about it; a virus threatens the entire net and is going to cause the entire thing to crash, at a specific time. At the end of the day the virus disappears and no systems crash at all.

[[WMG: The User is WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd]]
I can just picture the user being AVGN reviewing awful games. He could be complaining about TheComputerIsACheatingBastard and {{Game Breaking Bug}}s. That also explains why he never plays the same game twice: he destroys the ones he thinks are bad

[[WMG: Hex isn't exactly dead]]

I mean, how can she make the closing narration if she's dead? In memory of Hexadecimal. Format - Virus: Savior of the Net.
* That's right. [[HesJustHiding She's just stuck at TVTropes.]]

[[WMG: Matrix's Eye can read sprite code]]
That's why he took an instant dislike to Ray Tracer. He was hope to stop him from meeting [=AndrAIa=], since what he would do then was written all over his code.

[[WMG: There was no retcon of Bob's backstory]]
Just because he originally went to Mainframe earlier than we thought doesn't mean he stayed there. We saw the other Guardians show up shortly after he followed Kilobyte's signal. They likely cleaned up the damage caused by the explosion and took Bob back to the supercomputer to finish his training. Bob finished his training and went on to be a great Guardian, catching Mouse and earning himself a great reputation which in turn caused Turbo to grant him the opportunity to test his theory in Mainframe.
* His deleted partner kept on refering to him as ''Cadet'', so it's pretty obvious that he didn't stay in Mainframe.

[[WMG: Matrix spared Megabyte in ''Showdown'' because of the episode ''Talent Night''.]]
Because in that episode, Megabyte gave Enzo a guitar for a birthday present. After rocking out with it for absolutely no reason other than "I've always wanted to do that". It was just barely redeeming enough to justify sparing Megabyte one time.

[[WMG: Mouse is the avatar of a User]]

If I recall correctly, Mouse was stated to be a hacker. And if we assume that Reboot terminology is consistent with real life terminology, that would make Mouse a true hacker. (leap of logic goes to Trinity from The Matrix before she woke up?) As a result, she IS a user and her appearance is merely an avatar to prevent the denizens of Mainframe from effectively looking at an Eldrich Abomination.
* The disguise is nowhere near perfect. She has fangs, and her "hair" is red static.
* This interpretation would make her an avatar in the traditional Hindu sense of the word. Whoa.
* Alternatively, she could be a program created by a user for the purposes of hacking. Said user could then have moved on to other programs or methods, leaving her to her own devices and allowing her to become autonomous.
* Mouse originally helped Megabyte because she's only even inhabiting their dimension for the lolz and didn't think it would be a big deal. Then she started to care about the people in the computer.
* If the Guardian Code shows this to be true, she was created by the Sourcerer and originally did his bidding, until she rebelled against him.

[[WMG: Mouse is [[Film/TheMatrix Mouse]] ]]
Stemming from the above, Mouse in reboot could be an avatar of Mouse from The Matrix. It's already shown that he likes to program female characters.

[[WMG: The User in "Game Over" was using a cheat code]]

Take a look at that fighting game, and tell me that Zaytan wasn't the final boss. Which would make Enzo managing to go all three rounds against him at that time all the more impressive.
** The Game is a reference to Mortal Kombat, and several of the games from that series have their final bosses as freely playable. Zaytan seems to be a reference to Satan, in Mortal Kombat Shinnok plays that role, he was playable as a regular character in his debut game and started things off by killing off a few heavenly characters. Perhaps unintentional but it fits pretty well.

[[WMG: Mouse is a Game Sprite]]
Let's look at the signs:
* Very capable in physical combat, far beyond any other character except perhaps [=AndrAIa=]
* Possesses extreme skills in specific areas far beyond any other character
* Has physical traits not shared by any other character (her static hair and fangs)
* Similar icon form to [=AndrAIa=] until she changes it
* She was performing her skills with no clear motivation (hacking, etc.) or goal in mind and latched onto people she found as friends.
* Never mentions actually being from anywhere and shows no surprise or distrust of [=AndrAIa=]

[[WMG: There were no backups of Mainframe or its sister city prior to the sister city's destruction]]
How do we know?
* During the system restore at the end of season 3, the sister city was not restored, nor were its inhabitants. Further, the last remaining part of the sister city, Lost Angles, was also not restored.
* It [[IronicEcho echoes]] RealLife: A surprisingly large number of computer users do not start using a backup system until they've already lost something important.

[[WMG: Bob wanted to reform Megabyte because viral infections last beyond the death of the virus.]]
There's a lot of callous behavior toward the [[WhatMeasureIsAMook viral binomes]] while Bob wanted to spare Megabyte. However, there might be a good reason: when virals lose their commander, they still try to live up to their standing orders. Megabyte's army would likely be in open revolt and try to exterminate their infector's killers. However, if Megabyte could be reformed, then they could cleanse Megabyte's army in short order.

[[WMG: Hex's gift hasn't completed its function]]

Null creature body and voice just isn't glorious enough to be all it did. When the time is right, little Enzo will go viral and save the day as a virus.

[[WMG: The Spectral System is a Mac]]

Note that the inhabitants are different from ordinary people often seen in the series (Spectrals instead of Sprite and Binomes) so the way that system operates isn't like the others. Then note that it isn't used games, so some of the inhabitants needed to go further than normal to adapt.

[[WMG: The thing about [=AndrAIa=] and bikes is:]]

She's an amphibious game sprite. There was probably a level in the game she came from where the User encounters her on land, and she's a biker babe there. Either that, or Mouse did it.

[[WMG: The Matrixes are from the Twin City]]

This is actually supported by the show, and a basic knowledge of binary. In ''Talent Night'' it's said to be Enzo's 1st birthday, but his shirt already reads "01" (1). Flashbacks in ''My Two Bobs'' show Enzo wearing a shirt with with "00" on it. He compiles to "10" (2) in the episode mentioned, and in season 3 Turbo mentions he should only be "11" (3). So it was Enzo's first birthday in Mainframe.

[[WMG: Hexadecimal will be resurrected at the next system restore]]

Because she was registered as a virus, she will return as a virus.

[[WMG: Gigabyte is more powerful than Daemon]]

Hexadecimal was an equal match for Daemon, and he has many useful powers that she lacks, such as generating portals. Gigabyte was only ever shown in a severely weakened state and with an energy parasite (the web creature) strapped to his back. At full power he was likely more dangerous than Daemon, at least 1 on 1, and if he ever got to full strength it might be impossible to stop him.
* Hexadecimal was empowered empowered by the Core of Mainframe at the time. Granted, Gigabyte + Mainframe Core would probably wipe the floor with Daemon, though Daemon's powers seem more well purposed for massive widespread destruction than Gigabyte would be.

[[WMG: Megabyte had Little Enzo seized at the end of Reboot so that he could get at his icon]]
It was infected by Hexadecimal remember and if Trojan Horse Megabyte gets Hexadecimal's code he'll become Gigabyte giving him the power to perform ''The Hunt''....
* Does he even know about Hexadecimal's gift? Considering with his ability to infect multiple people at once (yes, the tentacles can be blocked), that just seems like overkill if he does. Not that he's beneath that or anything.

[[WMG: Megabyte created Daemon]]
He created a copy of Medusa and Bob had to go to the Super Computer to stop it. Megabyte could have created another Viral Bug and sent it into the Super Computer while Bob was entering it and programed it to infect Guardians and draw enough power to take a humanoid shape. Daemon did say she wasn't an entity...
* Conversely the copy of Medusa ''is'' Daemon. Megabyte said Hexadecimal's Medusa is quite inferior to his so it's likely he designed it to infect Guardians and by the time its infection followed Bob into the Super Computer it mutated into Daemon and skipped the stone part and went straight to waiting until time runs out to delete everything(which Medusa does after turning things to stone: it waits for a time before it deletes the object).

[[WMG:Portals as magical plot devices...]]
Sometimes they just work like an Internet connection between two computers. Sometimes they can bypass any and all defenses and firewalls. There is a simple, logical explanation for this discrepancy: port numbers. Firewalls can be configured to leave certain ports open, generally for online games or other types of networking program. Similarly, some defenses may only cover the commonly used ports, leaving less exploitable ones open. It's possible that a portal can be configured to go through an open port, instead of being limited to the standard TCP/IP ports.

[[WMG:People from the Net will be able to enter the world of the Users when they are put into the minds of robots.]]
This will result in either a peaceful coexistence between the two races or a RobotWar.
* Or, they could go the ''Anime/MegaManNTWarrior'' route. The world of users could build giant [[AmazingTechnicolorBattlefield Dimensional Areas]] [[note]]A dimensional convergence between the cyberworld and the real world that turns a set area into its own phantom zone. Where sprites can travel in and out of mainframe into the real world within a limited field shielded with generators without using surrogate suits.[[/note]] And [[HenshinHero Cross Fusion]] along the way. Which is the global form of the Dimensional Area Generator that are installed and utilizes satellite dishes and orbital reflectors turning the entire globe into a giant Dimensional Area where Sprites and Humans can co-exist.

[[WMG: Mainframe is a computer in a video game company.]]
The real purpose of Mainframe is to test out new computer games made by the company.

[[WMG:Megabyte/Hexadecimal is a creation of Command and Conquer's Kane.]]
Something about their effectiveness and power levels. Also his own tagline "To Corrupt and Conquer". Mainframe is a test before unleashing it or them on GDI's systems/the world's systems. Doesn't help that cyberspace is visualised in a similar way several times in Tiberium Dawn, and Kane's history is apparently tied up with the Scrin. One could almost extend this to Daemon.

[[WMG: The Web is the Deep Web.]]
It's the part of the internet that contains all the messed up stuff, hence why it has its reputation.

[[WMG: Hack and Slash are part-Keytool]]
It would certainly explain how they can generate a seemingly endless array of tools, weapons, and jetpacks from their bodies. If you consider ''VideoGame/ReBootCountdownToChaos'' canon, then ''Clash'' was part-Keytool and Hack and Slash inherited those abilities when Clash split.

[[WMG: At some point, we'll see Mouse punch Turbo.]]
She's likely still ticked off at him for using her and nearly had her blown up with the rest of Mainframe in "Trust No One".

[[WMG: Megabyte is the real hero.]]
He's trying to take over the internet not to dominate it, but to save mankind. He had a vision of the future, showing what the internet will become in the next few decades: a cesspit where opinions are scorned, memes run rampant, corporations overcharge on everything, and politicians spread lies to further their agendas. All he wants to do is destroy the internet before this happens.

[[WMG: The User is Samantha Carter.]]
And Mainframe is the SGC's Net analog, made possible by the excitement of particles within a subspace compression plane, and is responsible for the relativistic effects in time dilation between the world of Users and Net systems. The Supercomputer is based in the Pentagon's computer networks. When Captain Carter was brought aboard to study the Stargate in 1993, she had an IBM System/390 ES/9000 mainframe computer requisitioned to help with the heavy number-crunching that was necessary in generating new Stargate coordinates.

Shortly after the mission to Chulak, Carter hooked up her mainframe computer to the Internet, figuring that it would prove to be useful in their line of work, which while prophetic, nevertheless had the unintended side effect of downloading a virus into the system from German hackers who had uploaded a VIRDEM variant into the computers of the Pentagon in an effort to thwart US and NATO-allied installations and facilities. While the plan failed, VIRDEM split into the variants 792 and 824, or Megabyte and Hexadecimal. The process of downloading the virus crashed the system and was responsible for purging the second hard drive of Mainframe, resulting in the Twin City Disaster.

Acting quickly, Captain Carter downloaded most essential OS to the secondary hard drive, though most of the program and system files were deleted, so as added precaution, she downloaded the Angry Bob program, which was an antivirus program on loan and routed through the Pentagon supercomputer. When the Angry Bob was uploaded into the SGC's main computer database, she repartitioned important drivers off the Dot Matrix printer to write new programming language for the SGC's mainframe, and given the importance of the Stargate Program and the information which she had stored, Carter was unable to requisition a replacement, and so she merely allowed the Angry Bob to fulfill its function and keep the viral infection at bay, though never completely erased.

Occasionally, other members of SG-1 would take turns playing games on the SGC mainframe. Which explains why the Game Cubes appear so frequently. The User who beat Enzo in Immortal Konflict? Teal'c chose the role of Zaytan and landed the finishing blow that took out a young Enzo's eye, leaving him scarred and making for delicious karmic irony due to his history as Apophis's First Prime.

The system from "Icons" is a personal PC that downloaded Matrix and [=AndrAIa=] off a floppy disk delivered to it.

The system from "Where No Sprite Has Gone Before" is the computer to a foreign center of government, similar to the Pentagon. The Hero Selective is antivirus software routed through that country's military HQ, same as the Pentagon is for the Guardian Collective of the SGC.

The system from "Number 7" is the UN, more specifically for a seat of power to a foreign ambassador, also routed through an antivirus company, which is how Matrix and [=AndrAIa=] were able to enter the system in the first place.

The Desert Port System is an Ethernet hub, which explains how Matrix and [=AndrAIa=] were finally able to find ports to the Net. That said, the Y2K infection, Daemon, was already ensuring that system errors meant the two could not find a way back to Mainframe.

[[WMG: Megabyte's increasing malice in Season 3 was due to becoming Gigabyte and becoming separated from Hex again.]]
When he got merged, they became one entity temporarily, but when they separated, what little honor or restraint he had went into Hexadecimal.

[[WMG: Game hopping is possible due to services such as [=GameFly=]]]
When the rental games are installed on new hardware, it enables inhabitants of one system to travel to others.
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