Trivia / Code Lyoko: Evolution

• Ascended Fanon: There's no clear cause for Sissi's hair color change, but during a livechat Quentin and Mélanie said they had heard that in Code Lyoko Sissi had once expressed the desire to become a blonde ^note Not quite true, Odd just told her she'd look good as one, so their explanation is that Sissi dyed her hair.
• Blooper: Mélanie Tran (Yumi) has a butterfly tattoo on the back of her neck and another on her left forearm that are usually erased digitally◊... but they've forgotten to several◊ times◊.
• Contractual Purity: Not present; Quentin Merabet (Ulrich) regularly posts pictures of himself smoking and drinking on his Twitter, and both he and Mélanie smoked cigarettes on their Twitcam and no-one batted an eye. Definitely an example of Values Dissonance.
• Creator Killer: MoonScoop was pretty much on its last legs when producing the show, and poured a relatively large budget into it in the hopes it would save them. While the show gained decent ratings, this budget ultimately proved to be the last straw for the company, and collapsed in 2014. The series' IP would then proceed to drift around, before ultimately ending up with Ellipsanime, which has not shown interest in producing new episodes (though they clearly see merit in subtitling it for English speakers and releasing it onto Youtube, for free no less!).
• Dawson Casting: Both played straight and averted, as the Lyoko Warriors' actors occupy a wide age range. The Lyoko Warriors are in their mid-teens in this series, but Quentin Merabet, Mélanie Tran, and Diego Mestanza (William) were 21, 20, and 19, respectively. Gulliver Bevernage-Benhadj (Odd), was 14 during filming, a seven-year age difference between himself and Ulrich, his best friend and roommate. The youngest, Marin Lafitte (Jérémie), was 13.
• Late Export for You: After 6 years, subbed versions of the episodes were finally being uploaded to the Code Lyoko YouTube channels outside of France.
• Recycled Script: Debatable, but episode 2, "Cortex", has some similarities with the episode where the Lyoko Warriors explored the 5th territory, down to them being unable to rematerialize.
• Romance on the Set: Quentin Merabet and Mélanie Tran. They would even have a baby together by 2020.
• Schedule Slip: The show airing in France went on hiatus after the airing of episode 18 on April 27, 2013. Episode 19 ended up on iTunes a week later (a typical slip-up from abrupt or unannounced schedule changes), and the series is unlikely to come back until September. The television network in Hungary however, ended up wrapping up the season before France could return to air the remaining episodes; the final episode airing August 2, 2013.
• Technology Marches On: The level of technology in the world has changed, and has a more modern feel now, Jérémie is using an early-era smartphone app on his Blackberry for XANA alerts, instead of his Laptop, Laura uses an iPad tablet for work. The super computer now looks like an actual computer tower, instead of a futuristic interpretation of one.
• What Could Have Been: Similar to how Garage Kids morphed into the original series, there were several other proposals before the final product of Evolution was created:
  • The project originally started under the Code Lyoko Reloaded banner, which was designed to create additional supplementary materials for the series, along with three prompts for a genuine Sequel Series, one of which was originally planned to be an animated series much like it's predecessor (though it's hard to tell if it was meant to be a 2D series or a 3D one) instead of a live-action/3D merge. Ultimately, the latter won out.
  • Sophie Decroisette was originally more involved, having even written a new series bible to use. The new show-runners disregarded this, keeping only the basic concepts of XANA returning and a human antagonist. As a result of this, Decroisette would only do a few episodes of the new series before leaving altogether.
  • Professor Tyron was originally named Alan Meyer, but when a concept file of the series was leaked, his name was changed to Ikonov, only for that name to be changed when another property was said to be using the name. It can also be speculated in light of this interview that his original concept during the initial planning stages as Alan Meyer was supposed to be the name of the scientist who caused Franz Hopper's downfall, but as development progressed and the character morphed into Tyron, Sophie no longer considers Tyron to be that character.
  • William's outfit was originally closer to his XANA-possessed form, retaining the original red-black color scheme, while his sword was smaller and retractable. There was also concept of a XANA-eye adorning the sword, alluding to a potential Jekyll & Hyde theme that was ultimately scrapped in favor of the final version.
  • An interesting image in the leaked Evolution presentation file was something that was never seen in the final product: A black-colored face surrounded by red-and-yellow code, which may have hinted at the idea of XANA having a physical form in the series, especially since the image was situated in the prompt slide for XANA's return. It's worth noting that such an idea was present in Reloaded, albeit with XANA having been Demoted to Dragon to the forces behind Project Carthage.

---