YMMV / Code Lyoko

• Adorkable: Watch any romantic scene between Aelita and Jérémie and try not thinking she is absolutely precious. That being said, come Season 3 and she's much more confident in herself, which adds its own flavor of cuteness when she initiates romantic gestures with Jérémie.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: XANA, because little is actually established about him/her/it, can be translated anywhere from misunderstood, going for some vague goal in its programming, bugged, to a monster. XANA might have gone insane from the horrors of humanity. This blog explains it further around 12 paragraphs in.
• Angst? What Angst?: Fighting a megalomaniacal computer virus for so long may have desensitized the Lyoko Warriors. No matter how horrific XANA's latest attack is or how close the program comes to successfully offing a member of the team, the main characters will never lose their cheerful disposition, even cracking jokes once the problem has been dealt with.
• Awesome Music:
  • The theme song, despite having rather cheesy lyrics, is extremely catchy. Both the English and French versions are total ear worms.
  • The credits song has some rock vibes and is just as catchy.
  • Everyone loves the awesome virtualization theme.
  • "XANA Attacks!" is the ominous and oppressive-sounding leitmotif of the Big Bad in the series that signifies when things are getting dangerous, and the melody appears in other fast paced battle themes like "XANA's Monsters" and "Facebook Battle 2".
  • William's battle theme. Very much the Theme Music Power-Up.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Jérémie. He's either seen as an Adorkable, well-meaning guy with the social skills of a baked potato or a selfish Designated Hero who pressures his friends to do as he says and is obsessed over his goal to the point of being unlikeable.
  • William is either a cool badass worthy of being a Lyoko Warrior or a pointless piece of ship interference. This decreased as the show went on and developed him more, with him joining the group and getting possessed by XANA into becoming The Dragon. He remains, however, a very divisive character.
  • Samantha "Sam" Knight, Odd's girlfriend in one episode of Season 1, and one of Season 3, is also a very divisive character. Either she's the perfect girlfriend for Odd, or a shallow, selfish character using him for her own gain.
  • In the novels, Eva Skinner is either a badass American girl who deserved to be with Odd, or XANA and later Odd's pointless Satellite Character, only here to give Odd a girl after breaking up with Samantha. Her detractors often go as far as to say that her role could've been easily filled by William, who was Demoted to Extra instead.
• Camera Screw: The first DS game has camera issues, especially since you can fall off nearly any platform and have a quarter of the health of that character lost for the effort.
• Complete Monster:
  • XANA is a rogue multi-agent program living on the virtual world Lyoko that evolved to the point of achieving sapience. Gaining a desire to rule over and/or destroy humanity, XANA tries to kill its creator, Franz Hopper, as well as his daughter Aelita. Trapped inside the supercomputer for a decade, once revived, XANA regularly launches many vicious schemes upon the real world, not caring about the sheer amounts of potential casualties that would result from the attacks. XANA shifts strategies to absorbing Aelita's memory to gain the power to leave the supercomputer and into the network, the success of which nearly killing Aelita in the process. Using the internet to access supercomputers across the world, XANA gradually builds a robot army to rule over humanity. In the mean time, XANA tries and almost succeeds in destroying Lyoko, taking William as a slave. When Lyoko is revived, XANA decides to lure out and kill Franz Hopper by using Aelita as bait and plans on keeping the latter as its eternal prisoner. In the one episode where it appears before the heroes, XANA shows sadistic enjoyment in trying to kill them.
  • Chronicles (Alternate Continuity novels): Hannibal "The Magician" Mago, born Mark James Hollenback, was a soldier from a poor background who became the founder of a terrorist organization, Green Phoenix. He kidnapped Anthéa Hopper to force her husband Waldo Schaeffer to restart working on Project Carthage. When this failed, he brainwashed Anthéa for 20 years, abusing her in the meantime. Introduced shooting a horse on a racetrack so that he can win a bet, Mago has his henchman kidnap Jérémie to force him to work for him, or he will kill Anthéa. He has no empathy for his men, merely lamenting that they lost their usefulness when they became insane upon virtualization. When XANA offers to help Mago in exchange for helping XANA become human, Mago accepts, while having no intention of keeping his promise, planning to keep XANA as his weapon to Take Over the World, uncaring about the innocent lives lost in the process, and even planning to send France into chaos should it refuse to submit. He has XANA attack Kadic Academy, so that he could retrieve taken a file containing part of Waldo's Code Down. Despite his friendly demeanor, Mago stood out as a perfect foil to XANA, who obtained the humanity Mago had long lost.
• Cult Classic: The show has gone down in some circles as one of the best shows in the history of Cartoon Network, even though it never became very well-known to the general public and it's easy to find longtime CN fans who have never watched it (and newer fans who have never heard about it at all). It maintains a solid fanbase today, especially in Europe and Latin America.
• Damsel Scrappy: Aelita was this for the first two seasons due to the fact that she was completely useless in battle and was mostly escorted safely to deactivate towers while the others fended off attacking monsters. In fact, it's very easy to make a drinking game out of how many times she gets endangered in the series as a whole. While she does Take a Level in Badass in the third season via Energy Fields, she still manages to get in a lot of trouble due to either: A) The Scyphozoa, or B) XANA-William (though it is justifiable in both cases, given that the Scyphozoa is Nigh-Invulnerable and XANA-William is basically a tank) and requires rescuing from the other warriors.
• Designated Villain:
  • Sissi Delmas often during the first season. While she was the Alpha Bitch, several of the heroes were as guilty of just as reprehensible behavior, including against her and her cronies, yet we are supposed to root for them and against Sissi for no really defined reason. The prequel makes this worse, as it reveals that the heroes' feud against Sissi was their fault to begin with and she became the Alpha Bitch in response. Thankfully, Character Development for both parties in the progressing seasons fixed things.
  • In "Attack of the Zombies", William is presented as a Jerkass because he doesn't believe the secret when the Lyoko-warriors tells him and he tries to keep them inside the cafeteria against their will. However, he does so to keep them safe from the zombie apocalypse, and the only adult in the cafeteria, Rosa, has passed out. That, and he's forced to deal with panicking students plus people trying, in his eyes, to expose themselves to danger the second they get out of the cafeteria.
• Die for Our Ship:
  • William was despised by some fans for getting in the way of Ulrich and Yumi's relationship (not that they needed the help). A few defected after Season 4, but he is still largely a disliked character. Even many people who don't like shipping weren't high on William for this reason, as they felt Ulrich and Yumi's relationship was already a convoluted Romantic Plot Tumor that William's inclusion only made even more complicated.
  • Also Sissi for some in the fandom, even though she was barely ever a threat to said Ship. To be fair to these fans, the writers DID give Ulrich and Sissi some pretty big damn kisses in "Frontier" and "Ultimatum", all the while cutting Yumi and Ulrich's kiss short in "Routine" and "Echoes".
  • Theo Gauthier, a one-shot character who displayed interest toward Sissi then toward Yumi, is either used to get Sissi out of the way while averting this trope, or portrayed as a Jerkass and abusive boyfriend toward Yumi so she can run into Ulrich's arms (despite the fact he is even less of a threat than Sissi is).
  • The treatment that Jérémie gets from a lot of Odd×Aelita supporters in fanfiction. It can border on excessively painting him in a starkly negative light compared to canon.
  • Samantha "Sam" Knight, Odd's canon girlfriend (in a couple of episodes) isn't treated any better by Odd×Sissi and Odd×Aelita shippers, that being said.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Patrick Belpois's one-shot appearance in Season 4 was enough to cause tons of fanfiction featuring him as a regular character, often even upgrading him to a full-fledged Lyoko Warrior. There was a time during the show's peak in which you would actually struggle to find a reimagining/Season 5 fanfic in which he would not be included.
  • Taelia is also suprisingly popular for her one shot appearance, mainly for bearing a strong spooky resemblance to Aelita (except for having red hair) and her name being an rearrangement of Aelita's. Many were disappointed she didn't return to act as a Foil to Aelita. Much like Patrick, Taelia tends to get used a lot in most fanfics.
  • Brynja Heringsdötir, the title girl of the episode "Kadic Bombshell", is this for very obvious reasons, mainly for being a Ms. Fanservice having by far the biggest breasts of the girls to the point of putting Sissi to shame. Many had hoped she'd return, but ultimately got Put on a Bus due to Sissi's jealousy in order to maintain the Status Quo Is God.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • XANA is fondly remembered as one of the coolest villains in a kid show, helped by the fact that he remained an utterly nightmarish threat throughout the entire show that actually won when it counted.
  • William after he's Brainwashed and Crazy while acting as XANA's second in command.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • One common fanfic people tend to write about surrounds potential recruits to join the Lyoko Warriors. Jim, Sissi and Patrick (Jérémie's cousin) being the three standout candidates, Jim (who was briefly a member of the group in the two-part finale of Season 1) and Sissi (who was one of group's founders before being kicked out).
  • Another is people showing off Jérémie's Lyoko form since viewers know it exists, but they never actually got to see it.
• Fan Nickname: One particular week in North America, every episode of Code Lyoko featured XANA targeting Yumi. This became known as the "Pick on Yumi Week". Notable in that this term became so expressive, it was even noted on The Other Wiki for awhile!
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • Some fans prefer to put Sissi with Odd due to the occasional Ship Tease and to get her away from Ulrich.
  • William×Sissi also has its fair share of fans. Generally, it's also a couple preferred by William and/or Sissi's detractors, in order to get them away from Yumi and Ulrich. That is, when William isn't paired with a random OC, which is also quite common.
  • Odd×Aelita also has its share of fans, for those who enjoy their lighthearted banter and good teamwork. It's so popular it's even been addressed by the writers (saying Odd won't get a girlfriend on the show).
  • On the Ho Yay side, Ulrich×William, Odd×William and Odd×Ulrich are fairly popular.
• Fanon: The name "Team Lyoko" was never used in canon in the actual show; the fans came up with it. Same was true for the name "Lyoko Warriors" initially, but it became Ascended Fanon.
• Foe Yay Shipping:
  • Odd and Sissi, increasingly moreso as the show goes on. Their banter toes the line of flirting way too often to be anything else.
  • Also, XANA and Aelita. At one point in the second season, he sends a polymorphic spectre into the real world to separate the team by... kissing people. But the only Lyoko Warrior he actually kisses, on the lips no less, is Aelita, in order to convince her to leave with him. At another point in Season 2, one of his plots involves giving her a Valentine's Day gift, which she likes (even before she thinks it's from Jérémie). Oh, and it's also worth noting that XANA's main objective for Season 2 involves downloading a special code from Aelita's memories using, effectively, a jellyfish. Even after he succeeds in getting her memories, Seasons 3 and 4 show that she is still critical to XANA's plans. In Season 3, he brainwashes her four times with the Scyphozoa so that she'll delete the surface sectors for him; in Season 4, he uses William to throw her into the digital sea, and some of his dialogue (particularly during Episode 85, where the XANA-possessed William says that it's just the two of them at last and that XANA will have her company for good) indicates that after Franz Hopper is dead, XANA intends to keep Aelita at his side.
  • Not to mention XANA and Jérémie. Two of his schemes involve using Yumi and Aelita, both who try to seduce Jérémie by either kissing him on the cheek or on the lips.
• Friendly Fandoms: Fans of Code Lyoko and Miraculous Ladybug tend to get along (with several people belonging to both fandoms). This is due to the similarities between both shows (Animesque French shows dealing with Parisian unsung heroes) and the fact that Miraculous's creator Thomas Astruc also worked on a few Code Lyoko episodes.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The show used to be huge in Spain. It was a perennial ratings mainstay not only for Cartoon Network, but also for every channel that broadcasted it, including RTVE and several regional TV stations, and over time it became a well remembered classic. Tellingly, Spain is one of the few countries on the globe where all the four Lyoko novels have been released.
• Growing the Beard: The first season was, for the most part, a Strictly Formula Monster of the Week-type show, with the exception of the two-part finale. Come season 2, the show became much more plot-focused (whilst still having some filler episodes), there were various changes to the status quo, and there was a lot more Character Development.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Most episodes in season one are Strictly Formula — hit the Reset Button right before things get bad. Unfortunately, in season 2 we learn that this makes XANA stronger, making every previous victory a pyrrhic one in hindsight.
  • Similarly, the heroes' treatment of Sissi in the first couple seasons becomes this once the viewer learns that this was because of Sissi's actions in an averted past (See Unintentionally Sympathetic) and she thus has no memories of ever doing it.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Sissi's kiss towards Ulrich is much much sweeter when you learn that it was her who discovered the factory — and because the gang had things under control, didn't betray them. So it feels almost like her apologizing for what she did before the Reset Button erased it.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In "Code:Earth", Yumi is trying to get her parents to agree to letting Aelita stay at their house. When they ask what her parents do, Yumi makes up on the spot that they "work with computers". And who should have created the supercomputer other than Aelita's father, Franz Hopper!
  • When William finds out about Lyoko in "The Secret", Jérémie calms down Ulrich by saying they just make him forget with a Return to the Past. William, not understanding what they are talking about, answers he never forgets anything. We later find out he indeed remembered this episode's events even after the Return to the Past, though only as a dream.
  • "End of Take" has as the Monster of the Week being a rip-off of the Xenomorph, but the funny is that the snippet of James Finson's film that appears at the very beginning has a false-Xeno that resembles the "Deacon".
  • In the Japanese dub, Aelita's nickname of "Princess" came as this since her dub voice actress Yu Shimamura went to voice many of them years later (in The Wings of Rean, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Gundam: Reconguista in G, Go! Princess Pretty Cure...).
  • One episode has Patrick Belpois shout out "Geronimo!" while attacking XANA-Sissi. He would be unaware that it would eventually be the signature catchphrase of a time-traveling Time Lord who wears bow ties.
  • One episode has Ulrich mention that the music XANA made was rather unoriginal. Fast forward to The New '20s when A.I. that was able to "Create" content like music, art, and prose was basically "Taught" it by feeding prompts.
• Hollywood Pudgy: In "Tip-Top Shape", Sissi is told by the nurse that she's 5 pounds overweight, but she's just as skinny as always. (The scale read 110.7 lb [50 kg]. If she was 5 pounds overweight she'd have to be 4'7" [137 cm], but she is a bit taller than Ulrich who is 5'1 [156 cm].) Lampshaded by Aelita.
• Ho Yay: A wide variety of moments between Ulrich and Odd, and surprisingly Yumi and Sissi during many XANA attacks. Some of the more notable examples include:
  • "A Fine Mess" — Odd, while in Yumi's body, suggests to Ulrich to practice how he is going to ask Yumi out with him. A few moments later, Sissi appears and asks when will Ulrich understand that she's the right girl for him, which prompts Odd to hug Ulrich in a flirty way, and this moment is captured by Tamiya's camera. While still hugging Ulrich, Odd tells him he knows now why Sissi is so crazy about him. By the end of the same episode, Ulrich asks Odd if he told Yumi "what happened between us", referring to the event described above, which sounds like an Accidental Innuendo.
  • "Triple Trouble" — After Jérémie tells Odd that he's developed a new power for him on Lyoko, Odd says, "You're the best, Einstein! If you were a girl, I'd propose to you immediately!"
  • "Replika" — Nicolas initially asks Aelita if she'd like to go on a "fantastic and breathtaking experience in the moonlight". She ends up pulling out, so instead Nicolas ends up spending the night with... Hervé.
  • "Music to Soothe the Savage Beast" — Yumi tells Aelita she looks beautiful and winks at her, prompting Aelita to smile and blush.
• Iron Woobie: Ulrich when it comes to his relationship with his father.
• Jerkass Woobie: Sissi on several occasions, particularly during XANA attacks and especially after the prequel reveals that a stupid misunderstanding and Ulrich's hurt feelings contributed to Sissi being a Jerkass to begin with; otherwise, she's quite nice. It's made even worse when the prequel reveals that Sissi was the one who found the factory, was too afraid to go into Lyoko, and called the adults because she was concerned about the gang's safety. And as a result? The heroes have been treating her for something that never actually happened, making her Alpha Bitch behaviour somewhat of a Then Let Me Be Evil.
• Lost in Medias Res: This was easily the show's biggest flaw of season 1 next to the Filler. Very little is established in the first few episodes of season 1. While it did add to the mystique of the show, it made just as many viewers confused and think there was no real Myth Arc due to the constant use of the Reset Button.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Aelita Schaeffer's xanafied self combines her good self's intelligence with XANA's ruthlessness. Pretending to be her good self in her first appearance, she manipulates Jérémie Belpois into sending her to Lyoko, talking Yumi Ishiyama into going with them when Jérémie expresses reluctance in Aelita going on Lyoko alone. On Lyoko, XANA-Aelita stays ahead of her fellow Lyoko Warriors through clever uses of her Creativity powers, leading to her all but completing her mission. Returning as a recurring villain, XANA-Aelita works well in tandem with XANA and its monsters, successfully destroying three of the four main sectors and setting up XANA's victory in that season. In her final appearance, XANA-Aelita cleverly reacts to Ulrich Stern's attack, stealing one of his swords and defeating him with only a limited use of her powers, nearly completing her mission. Always thinking on the fly and showing how truly dangerous Aelita's powers could be, her xanafied self proved to be one of the Lyoko Warriors' most dangerous threats.
  • Chronicles: XANA is the Big Bad of the original series and Aelita's childhood friend. Having mysteriously survived Season 4's events, XANA possess a young American named Eva Skinner. Going to France, XANA-Eva joins the Lyoko-warriors with the intent of destroying them from the inside before killing all humanity. Successfully seducing and brainwashing Odd, XANA has both Odd and Eva act like their usual selves to remain under the radar, while planning to virtualize itself in the First City to reach Lyoko and regain its power. Revealing its presence once Odd and Eva are virtualized in the Mirror and the First City respectively, XANA takes advantage of Jérémie unlocking the wall separating the First City and Lyoko to regain its power. Dissatisfied with Aelita, XANA joins Green Phoenix, hoping that they would help it become human. Even when its attack on Kadic is thwarted, XANA manages to steal half of the Code : DOWN, thus preventing the heroes from killing it. Reconciling with its childhood friend, XANA pulls a Heel–Face Turn and helps the heroes against the Green Phoenix. Sacrificing itself to destroy the First City, XANA is later revived and finally becomes a human.
• Memetic Badass: Franz Hopper. According to the Lyoko Freak forums, any time Franz Hopper removes his glasses, the world is split in half.
• Memetic Loser: Aelita can be this in the eyes of the fandom and newcomers for mostly being remembered as the useless Faux Action Girl who required rescue from her friends in every episode during Seasons 1 and 2. While she did Take a Level in Badass in the second half of the show, many viewers still remember her as the Damsel in Distress she was for the first half of the series.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The characters' enormous foreheads are subject to many, many jokes, the most noticeable one is playing Tic-Tac-Toe using said foreheads with Yumi's forehead being the most common.
  • Aelita's slow walk into an activated tower in the early seasons has been subjected to a ton of funny jokes throughout the series run, with many in the fandom yelling at her to hurry up when XANA's plan was on the verge of succeeding.
  • Jim saying "I'd rather not talk about it" anytime he mentions an old career of his.
  • People blaming various inconveniences on XANA, usually technical difficulties or in today's era of Wi-Fi, blaming Wi-Fi connection loss on XANA is also commonplace.
  • Back in the heyday of both Winx Club and Code Lyoko in Europe, there was a popular joke that the two series were secretly connected and the Specialists were actually older versions of the male Lyoko Warriors, as the two teams happen to physically resemble each other a lot (Ulrich – Brandon, Jérémie – Timmy, William – Helia, and Odd – Sky, with additional jokes that Odd had decomposed himself in Sky and Riven because he combines the hair colors of both and the hairdo of the latter).
  • "'Pick on Yumi' time", thanks to Yumi being a frequent target of XANA during an entire week where she was the main victim. (See Fan Nickname)
• Moe: All of the Lyoko warriors are considered Badass Adorable by fans, with Aelita being The Cutie of the group.
• Narm:
  • Almost every time Yumi yells in the English dub is hard to take seriously, either because of the emotionless delivery or because it sounds more like she is moaning. In "Bragging Rights", she is ambushed by cybernetic spiders and lets out three bored screams in the span of a single scene, turning what should be a tense and suspenseful moment into an unintentionally comical one.
  • In "Cold War", Yumi does a spinning jump to deflect the Hornets' lasers in the Mountain Sector. Though the scene is meant to display her impressive fighting skills, many viewers commented that the scene made them laugh, due to her strange Kiai.
• Narm Charm:
  • The Tarantulas needing to kneel in order to fire their lasers could be seen as a design error by XANA, but it does make them look surprisingly professional when they fire.
  • Jérémie and Aelita, but especially Jérémie, can often flirt with each other in the most dorky, geeky way possible. Being that Jérémie is a socially awkward geek and Aelita's own development it can come off as sweet and cute where it might otherwise feel silly, and can be a particularly pleasant experience compared to the love mess that is the other major shipping in the series.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Some fans won't ever forget Aelita's role as a Damsel in Distress who got endangered every episode. Even after she Took a Level in Badass, it's still brought up a lot.
  • Similarly, her slow walk into the Tower to deactivate it when XANA's attack on Earth is on the verge of succeeding, courtesy of early show's frequent use of Stock Footage, still leads to frequent jokes in the fandom about yelling at Aelita to hurry up with it becoming a meme. This is even after later episodes began using new footage that shows her running into the Tower and showing an overall greater sense of urgency.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: The games based off this series either range from decent at best to a lesson in masochism at worse. The first game on the DS verges on Fake Difficulty thanks to nearly all the monsters operating under "Instant Death" Radius; The following DS game Fall of X.A.N.A. was decent, albeit slow and uneventful in gameplay; The console game Quest for Infinity was alright as well, albeit extremely biased towards ranged characters over melee characters since melee characters deal pitiful damage by comparison. ^note Which is ironic when you consider Ulrich is actually the strongest of the group in the series lore, where as in the game he's a Low-Tier Letdown and range characters such as Odd, Yumi and Aelita all becoming Game-Breaker characters when mastered.
• Realism-Induced Horror: While XANA is often mocked for its overcomplicated and silly attacks, it can also do more simple attacks which hit really close to home.
  • In "Revelation", it simply sends a text message to Odd, pretending to be a secret admirer to lure him into the woods, and traps him into a well with a hose spraying water down to drown him. This is a simple yet effective strategy adopted by kidnappers and predators who want to lure naive children and teens in an isolated place to further their goals.
  • An example of Technology Marches On: some attacks which were based on hacking a vehicle seemed silly in the 2000s, but not so much today because of the amount of electronics in vehicles and the advent of automatic versions.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Starting around mid-season 1, Sissi and Jim got much more noble moments and even some awesome ones, and they became mostly very well-liked. Jim also started to become a bit more humorous as time went on, as seen in Season 2 when he started using his "I'd rather not talk about it" catchphrase.
  • Aelita was rescued from the scrappy heap in two different ways:
    • Her good self was considered a major Damsel Scrappy for most viewers for half the series, but after she Took a Level in Badass and got a hefty amount of character development fans finally started rooting for her when she defended herself.
    • Her Xanafied self often ends up being rooted for as well due to far more impressive feats and using Aelita's potential as a fighter to its maximum in most of her appearances.
  • William was hated by the fandom in Season 2, for Die for Our Ship reasons. His Stalker with a Crush tendencies in Season 3 didn't help either, but things started to change once he started to help the heroes several times in the same season, eventually being deemed worthy of joining the team as a Lyoko Warrior. But he only truly became popular in Season 4, as a result of returning as XANA's unwilling Dragon.
• Retroactive Recognition: In the Japanese dub, Aelita was one of the earlier roles Yu Shimamura did before her Star-Making Role as Annie Leonhart.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: Ulrich and Yumi's Unresolved Sexual Tension got ridiculous by Season 2, and was soon toned down because MoonScoop had received many complaints about it.
• Rooting for the Empire: Several fans ended up rooting for XANA due to its sheer Evil Is Cool factor and its winning streak when it actually mattered. This applies, at a lesser extent, to XANAelita and XANA-William (the latter in particular, helped by his defined personality and charm) as well, due to their impressive feats in combat.
• The Scrappy: Whenever Ulrich's father, known as Walter in the novels, is on-screen, a bit of happiness vanishes from the Code Lyoko universe. It's not hard to see why, due to his nature as an Abusive Parent who holds elitist views, especially in comparison to the parents of the other Lyoko Warriors, who are flawed at their worst.
• Seasonal Rot: After Season 2, the following ones didn't get quite the best reputation...
  • Season 3 was only half as long as other seasons, Yumi's Designated Victim status became exaggerated, and the tone was Darker and Edgier than even season 2 due to XANA slowly succeeding in his plan to destroy Lyoko, yet by contrast, the comic relief became less funny, especially when it involved the usually-reliable Jim. In essence, though the stakes were technically higher, the scenarios were not written as such, creating a bit of tone dissonance. This dissonance also started affecting the characters; situations treated more seriously and in-depth in the first two seasons were brushed aside more in this season.
  • Season 4, while generally considered a step up from Season 3 and a good season overall, gets flak for being too long, not capitalizing on the huge potential of the season 3 finale, having too many boring Filler episodes with weak plot direction ^note The season starts off somewhat focused as the first eight episodes are dedicated to the main and subplots overall, but then falls into the filler afterwards, with massive gaps in-between Replika episodes, and generally not reaching the heights Season 2 did in events, with massive Flanderization taking place, particularly on Jérémie and Odd. It also didn't fix the tone dissonance from Season 3; though the stakes were technically higher, the comedic elements remained as a poor sore thumb against the plot itself.
• Ship Mates: Most shippers that support Ulrich×Yumi also support Jérémie×Aelita, and vice versa. Those same shippers will generally ship Odd with either Sam (a one-shot girlfriend of his) or Sissi (a frequent subject of Ship Tease with him).
• Signature Scene: XANA appearing personally in "Ghost Channel", which is often remembered as one of, if not THE most terrifying moment in the series.
• Spiritual Successor: Has anyone else gotten vibes of VR Troopers from this show? It's got teenagers who travel into a virtual realm and transform into warriors to battle a digitally-based overlord who desires world domination. Unlike VRT, however, it's not a Toku show that features Dub Induced Plotline Changes. (Ironically, Noam Kaniel, who wrote and sang the theme song, did a lot of work for Saban Entertainment, producers of VRT, in the '80s and '90s.)
• Squick:
  • In the novel continuity, Odd falls for a girl named Eva... who is possessed by XANA. He's pretty horrified when he finds out.
  • Also in the novels, at one point the heroes need to get through the flooded sewers to the factory. The solution? Swimming through the sewage water. Sure, they're wearing "liberated" scuba-diving equipment, but ewww.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • News of the new project, Code Lyoko: Evolution, being live-action and with little involvement of the original creators, were met with fervent hatred in some places. Even fans who were willing to give the show a chance were harsh about its quality, as it was a Tough Act to Follow and generally seen as inferior to the original series.
  • The novels have also been criticized for the liberties they take with the source material; the details of how the group found Lyoko, the fight against XANA, and the Hermitage's location are all markedly different. Because of these changes, for instance, William never joined the Lyoko Warriors and plays an almost non-existent role in the story, and the cast are a year younger. Also, Aelita and Anthea's hair is red instead of pink.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The series had the tendency to introduce One Shot Characters who had a lot of potential only for them to either vanish or become background fodder after their first episode, particularly in Season 1. Some noteworthy examples include Theo (Ulrich's first look at having a rival long before being given a permanent one in William), Taelia (a Doppelgänger of Aelita, which could have made for some interesting interactions between two characters that looked like one another) and Patrick (Jérémie's more socially successful cousin, whom he had an one-sided estranged relationship with).
  • Franz Hopper. That he never actually communicates with the heroes offscreen, not even a single line given that his ball of light avatar is silent and traitless, is considered the first wasted chance about his character. The other wasted aspect comes from how he very rarely appears throughout the series after Season 2, which had spent a great deal of time building him up. Season 3 barely follows up on him, and while he has a more overarching presence in Season 4, he's still akin to a Living MacGuffin XANA wants to kill and he is not explored further before being Killed Off for Real.
  • William being demoted to a mere cameo in the novels was disliked even by some of his detractors. It is agreed by several fans that William could've easily replaced Eva Skinner.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The plot point of Jerémie going to Lyoko and having his own Lyoko Warrior avatar, something the fans have been wondering about since the very first season of the show, was swiftly killed offscreen with the other characters deriding it. Even whenever he did go to Lyoko, either it was not shown or his avatar was his own human form. All in all, one can almost see the producers flipping the bird to the fans about this. The novels at least do show it off, revealing that his form is akin to Peter Pan, but is still a Joke Character not capable of fighting, so the concept, while at least more solid, is still never developed more.
  • The Season 2 episode "Tip-Top Shape" plays around with the idea of giving Jérémie the Super-Empowering ability to provide his fellow Lyoko Warriors with real world superpowers by activating Lyoko Towers of his own (colored green). Despite the potential of the Lyoko Warriors finally having a better means of combat when it came to holding off XANA's attacks in the real world rather than just dealing with the problem as normal human beings, this idea is never delved into any further. Jérémie activating Lyoko Towers does eventually come into play again by Season 4, but it was only for making clones of himself and William.
  • "Triple Trouble", has Jérémie invent a "Teleportation" ability for Odd due to the latter feeling depressed that he hasn't been keeping up with the rest of the team based on their last battle. In the end, Odd decides that he likes the way he is, and doesn't want the ability. However, no-one else chooses to try out the "Teleportation" ability (or suggest any other power-ups for themselves), which just leaves it to go completely unused despite the obvious potential having such an ability could be.
  • Season 4 is seen as mostly a missed opportunity amongst the fanbase due to the plot getting shafted for Filler throughout a majority of the season when it could have been used to further the exploration into the digital sea or digging deeper into XANA's Lyoko replicas, with only a total of four being visited. The sudden, out-of-nowhere, series ending didn't help matters either.
  • Perhaps the largest case of this would be Project Carthage, an enigmatic military project that Franz Hopper desired to destroy, due to its ability to affect world-wide communication networks. Basically put, this project is the very reason the show's plot exists at all, and yet very little attention was ever given to it after Season 2, when any chances for it to be mentioned throughout the story are dropped for the most part. Not even the sequel series, Code Lyoko: Evolution directly mentions it; only the novels have ever dealt with the subject.
  • William joining the Lyoko Warriors left a lot to be desired. His first virtualization into Lyoko resulted in absolute disaster for him by forcibly becoming a minion to XANA, which on its own was actually a neat direction to take the character, but even after the team finally manages to free William from XANA's control, the series was pretty much over at that point. As a result, William never gets any opportunity to actually show off how he can contribute to the team to possibly make up for his past failure, or at the very least, get some well-deserved Revenge on XANA. Even weirder is the obvious Foreshadowing in the form of a 4^th Nav Skid vehicle for the Skidbladnir that went completely unused; the most educated guess is that it was supposed to be for William if it ever got to a point where he would take on missions with the rest of Team Lyoko, but since the series came to an end, such a case never came to fruition. At the very least, you finally get to see William fighting as a true member of the team in Code Lyoko: Evolution.
  • One thing the show never made clear, and which fans have discussed countless times, were XANA's motivations for turning evil in the first place. In the first three seasons, this was forgivable, as he almost never interacted directly with the heroes or even appeared. In the fourth, however, he has William acting as his right hand; that would have been the perfect chance for XANA to use him as a proxy to engage in conversations with the Lyoko Warriors, and from there delve into his side of things. Instead, all we get are a few lines in Episode 85 indicating XANA wants to keep Aelita around if he wins. Like Project Carthage, it's expanded on in the novels, so there's that at least.
  • The destruction of Lyoko by the end of Season 3 doesn't leave much of a lasting impact as one might expect going into Season 4. Any potential story elements dealing with the loss of Lyoko was resolved almost immediately. Sector Five is quickly rebuilt without any issue in just the first episode, and the desert sector already reappearing in the following episode provides heavy implication that the four original sectors had already been rebuilt by that point without any issue as well. This means that after the high stakes of XANA spending a whole season destroying Lyoko sector by sector, Season 4 ends up jamming Lyoko's entire reconstruction in just its first two episodes with very little of its reconstruction actually shown. About the only real development is that the Lyoko Warriors now have Lyoko primarily under their control, with XANA's influence now restricted to using the Towers for attacks.
  • XANA-William's usage of Code: XANA is quite underutilized. He only ever puts the code into a Lyoko Tower one time (Season 4's episode, "Lab Rat"), and that one time wasn't even all that noteworthy as it was just to undock the Skidbladnir from being connected to one of XANA's Lyoko Replikas. It does confirm that this is how XANA can immediately stop the Lyoko Warriors' incursions on his Replikas, but XANA-William never gets a chance to do it again.
  • A small bit of missed potential related to Season 4 is that when it came to the gang exploring XANA's Lyoko Replikas, they never came across one based on the Mountain Sector. This is especially notable because a Mountain Sector Replika is in the Quest for Infinity video game, and there is concept art for its real world location — a mountain dam somewhere in Canada.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Sissi herself, especially once it's revealed why the gang seems to distrust her. Sure, she is portrayed as a nosy Alpha Bitch, but when the origin episode(s) reveal that it was her who found Lyoko, she was afraid to go into the computer, and she betrayed the groups' secret by calling her adults necessitating a use of the Reset Button. Essentially, she's distrusted because of something that, thanks to the Reset Button, never actually happened. On top of this, she didn't betray the group out of pettiness or selfishness, she did so because Lyoko is Not a Game and XANA does put the heroes in genuine danger.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The Lyoko crew in their treatment towards Sissi — sure, she does many things that are unlikable, but given that their main reason for distrusting Sissi is because of an event that she made out of genuine concern for peoples' safety and, thanks to the Reset Button, never actually happened, it makes their treatment of her come off as disproportionate.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The Animesque art style (Franime) as well as the fashions, computers, CD players, soundtrack, and old-fashioned cell phones pretty much cement this show as a product of the 2000s. It was also somewhat ahead of the curve with how many of the students (12-14 years old) were depicted as having cell phones.
• Values Resonance:
  • The episode "The Satellite", despite featuring some pretty outdated phones, does cover issues that a lot of school faculty had with the growing popularity of students owning mobile phones later in the decade and The New '10s. At the time it aired, it was uncommon for students to have phones, especially to the degree shown. (A little less so in Europe, especially Italy or France.) The pushback against having phones confiscated definitely rings true for a lot of kids who grew up in the later half of the 2000s and The New '10s.
  • The idea of XANA being able to remotely affect things via the virtual world of Lyoko also rings a lot more true in The New '10s and The New '20s. This is especially true in "The Satellite" when it turns out that XANA hijacked comms systems to track down Yumi.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Odd has often been mistaken for a female. Even more so in the French dub, due to his voice.
• Vindicated by History: The novels, since the release of Code Lyoko: Evolution. While there are still those who disagree with the liberties it takes with the source material, people have become more appreciative of its good points, like the deeper exploration into Project Carthage, reuniting Aelita with Anthea, Character Development for the main cast and side characters like Professor Hertz, and providing proper closure instead of maintaining the status quo. It helps that many prefer the novels to Evolution, and they're typically preferred as the ending for the franchise.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The CGI for the Lyoko sequences holds up astonishingly well for an animated TV series produced in the 2000s, in particular any time the Warriors fight XANA's monsters.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: All of the times Aelita died, nearly died, attempted suicide, or had a clone die. All of the Fanservice. Aelita seeing her mother kidnapped and her father murdered, on screen. Aelita suffers from flashbacks and hallucinations. Then there was the time Jérémie started acting suicidal and reckless to further his work. XANA made so many murder attempts onscreen that it can be turned into a drinking game. Franz Hopper went completely insane, as shown through a video diary. And a ton of other horrors.
• The Woobie:
  • Aelita. Big time. To recount everything that's gone wrong in her life: she lost her mother at a young age, spent her life on the run with her father, and when they were virtualized on Lyoko to hide from their pursuers, watched him be attacked by XANA. The supercomputer was then shut down for ten years, during which she slept and lost her memory, so when it was reactivated she thought she was just a computer program. And that's before the show even starts. The events of the show drive her to attempt suicide.
  • William at the end of the show. Poor guy spent entire months as a Brainwashed and Crazy minion for a malevolent AI, fighting the very people he wanted to help (including the girl he's in love with), and when he attempts to redeem himself, the Lyoko Warriors, feeling still uncomfortable about the time they were fighting him, reject him. And then he gets possessed again and used to fight them in the finale.

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