
To save all that we love
If we give all we've got
We will make it through
Here we are, like a star
Shining bright on your world today...
Make evil go away!
Code Lyoko, we'll reset it all
Code Lyoko, be there when you call
Code Lyoko, we will stand real tall
Code Lyoko, stronger after all!
There is a short (5 minutes long) film made in 2001 by the creators of the show, Garage Kids
, that is considered a test pilot for the series. It introduces the main characters and some future elements of Code Lyoko, though there are differences both visually and plot-wise. Code Lyoko began broadcast in France in 2003 on France 3 and Canal J, and in the United States in 2004 on Cartoon Network. The TV series ended in 2007 after four seasons and 97 episodes (including a two-parter prequel).
It follows the adventures of a group of teenage students at a Boarding School who discover a supercomputer in the basement of a nearby abandoned factory. The computer has modules that allow people from the real world to "virtualize" into the Cyberspace of Lyoko, where an evil A.I. named XANA is apparently hunting down a pink-haired girl named Aelita. The computer also has the ability to effect a temporal recursion (in Layman's Terms, rewind time) up to 24 hours in the real world. The show's primary aesthetic hook was that scenes in the real world are depicted in 2D animation, while scenes on Lyoko are animated in CGI.
XANA manifests in Lyoko indirectly through a variety of monsters with various attacks and tactics, trying to capture Aelita and repulse her protectors from the real world. XANA also attacks the real world, which at first resembles the results of The Cracker, doing damage through various interfaces, but these attacks slowly gain a supernatural edge, including summoning monsters in the real world, and possession of students and teachers.
The students often use the Return to the Past function to repair damage and effect a kind of Masquerade to protect Aelita, however with the knowledge that death is permanent — not even time travel will bring them back.
The five main characters (Aelita and her protectors) are occasionally referred to as "The Lyoko Warriors" or Team Lyoko. See the character sheet for individual descriptions.
The episode recaps of all the episodes can be found here.
The entire show is officially available on YouTube in both English
and French.![]()
"Transfer: Tropes. Scanner: Tropes. Virtualization!"
- 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: Some CG are mixed with the real-world animation, notably computer displays or water effects. In a strange inversion of the trope, the real-world CG effects become more obvious with each passing season (a couple of CG door swings in Season 3, for example).
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Though it should be noted that this particular series is set in France, so it's not quite as unusual. Also, the tunnel regularly used by the heroes is more of a storm drain than a sewer, since the water flows directly into the river.
- Achilles' Heel: Megatanks are potentially the most powerful of all of XANA's monsters. However, because they're so big and bulky, they have trouble controlling their momentum, and this sometimes leads to them plunging straight into the Digital Sea. In fact, if you get enough running momentum going, you can literally push them to their doom. Consequently, they're the one kind of monster most frequently taking a dive in the show. Yet they are also seen repeatedly stopping instantly to aim at one of the heroes.
- Action Girl: Yumi kicks just as much ass as Odd or Ulrich. Aelita starts out fairly weak, but she later gains an energy field ability that can be used both offensively and defensively, as well as the ability to fly.
- Adults Are Useless:
- On most occasions that adults become aware of XANA's actions, they attempt to barricade the heroes for their own safety, often at times in a single room at the school. On the odd occasion they actually do help the kids, the Reset Button abuse results in them forgetting everything after they find out just what the kids were really doing. In fact, adults are often XANA's targets when he decides to possess someone, and one of the side effects of Specter possession is total memory loss for its duration. He generally does this for pragmatic reasons as adults tend to be stronger than your average 12-year-old.
- In the 9th episode, "Satellite", one teacher's class is interrupted by every single student's phone ringing at the exact same instant, and it's implied that this has happened to the entire boarding school campus. Her reaction (and the reaction of every seen faculty member) is not to investigate what on earth caused such a thing, but to confiscate the cell phones of every single student in school (because they had them on in class), and then try to deactivate the signal tower so that nobody can use their phones even if they steal them back. Even in a universe where XANA isn't trying constantly to get people killed, this is an astronomically unsafe thing to do, and could quite plausibly result in one or more students dying because of an emergency in which they find themselves unable to get help.
- In the episode "Attack of the Zombies", the entire episode is spent mostly with the students in the cafeteria. When the aptly titled zombies attack the campus, the only adult with the kids (Rosa the lunch lady) spends the entire episode completely unconscious out of pure shock and contributes nothing to helping save the kids who aren't affected. A police officer visits the Groundskeeper after they investigate a call saying there are "zombies". The police don't believe it but have come to make sure that nothing is wrong. When the groundskeeper says everything is fine and he hasn't seen anything, they leave. Moments later, he's attacked by a zombie.
- Aerith and Bob: While names like Jérémie, Elisabeth, and William are all rather common, other characters have names that look incredibly out of place:
- Justified in Yumi Ishiyama's case, as her name appropriately references her Japanese heritage.
- Odd is a Norwegian name, but Della Robia implies he is of Italian descent.
- Franz and Ulrich's names are of German origin.
- Aelita's is the most egregious, as her name is a direct reference to a fictional Soviet character.
- Affectionate Nickname: Odd, Ulrich, and Yumi often call Aelita "Princess" and Jérémie "Einstein".
- Alice Allusion: A rather odd example, but do you think Odd's Lyoko form is a "giant purple cat" just because? Do note the one episode where teleportation in Lyoko causes cloning... Maybe Mr. Cheshire can do that.
- Aliens in Cardiff: A.I. Is a Crapshoot and going all SKYNET... and it's based out of an abandoned factory in the Parisian suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt (or at least a No Communities Were Harmed version of it).
- All Deaths Final: The Return to the Past cannot bring people back from the dead. It's not explained why, but it does help maintain drama.
- All There in the Manual: A lot of the "game" mechanics in Lyoko are rarely if ever explained in the show itself (and are often contradictory there); we only know about them because of supplementary material. And even then, despite figures given about every combatant's weapons and Life Points, everything defaults to the Rule of Drama. Any shot fired will either miss wildly, bring its target to a ridiculously low amount of Life Points, or inflict a one-hit kill. The monsters' laser beam can be stopped by the Lyoko Warriors' defenses, though. In addition, it's stated elsewhere that Aelita loses half her life points every time she uses her Creativity, despite the fact that in-universe there's no evidence to suggest this is true.
- All Your Powers Combined: William's Super Smoke is Ulrich's Super Sprint combined with Aelita's flight with the added bonus of making him invulnerable. He can also deflect attacks (like Odd), use telekinesis (like Yumi), fire energy (like Aelita), and use at least one form of Aelita's Creativity (i.e. manipulating electronic locks). Finally, he can enter the Code: XANA in the towers. On top of that, he can No-Sell the Digital Sea thanks to that ability.
- Almost Kiss: Between Ulrich and Yumi in "Routine". Real badly-timed Return to the Past, there.
- Alpha Bitch:
- Sissi has shades of this. She's the daughter of the school principal with a posse of friends who do whatever she says, and she's not afraid to abuse her connections and popularity to get what she wants. She's ultimately a downplayed example, though. Far from being the queen of the school, most of the other students and faculty don't take her seriously at all. She's also shown in a more sympathetic light, with multiple episodes showing that she can be a genuinely kind person if she's treated respectfully.
- A more straight example is Brynja Heringsdötir from "Kadic Bombshell", who is so bad even Sissi can't stand her, primarily because of how she worms her way into Sissi's circle of friends and takes over, pushing Sissi (who is supposedly also her friend) to the side and treating her like nothing. She also starts dating Odd in the episode only to immediately start trying to push him away from his friends. She strongarms him into taking her to the factory where she screws with the supercomputer and ruins Jérémie's latest program. This gets Odd temporarily banished from the Lyoko Warriors, and Brynja refuses to take responsibility for any of it. She then breaks up with Odd anyway when he prioritizes saving his friends' lives over hanging out with her.
- Always Save the Girl: Particularly in Season 1, when Jérémie would rather risk XANA destroying the world than turning off the supercomputer and losing Aelita. The Lyoko Warriors' strategy to deal with every attack also is a rare justified example of this trope: protecting Aelita first is the wisest decision because as long as they can get her to the Tower before anyone gets killed, the attack will be stopped and any damage fixed by the Return to the past.
- Ambiguous Gender: XANA. Though it makes sense that XANA is an A.I. and thus neither male nor female. Still, characters tend to refer to XANA as "he" or "it".
- Animals Lack Attributes: Averted. Odd's dog Kiwi is most definitely not neutered, as evidenced by the two lumps between his hind legs.
- Animesque: Not especially in style, though some of the episodes' plots could have come from a Shounen manga.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: William, in Episode 40 "Attack of the Zombies", having just accepted that the cafeteria is being attacked by zombies, refuses to believe Jérémie's explanation that an evil supercomputer is causing it and that they have to get to the factory right away.
- Art Evolution:
- Lyoko looks a lot different in Season 1 than from Season 2 onwards. In Season 2 they removed the lighting effects, made the colors a lot brighter, and removed various background details.
- The 2D animation changed too, in the earlier episodes the colors were darker and the movement and the design of the characters were different. In Season 2, the colors became lighter and the designs straightened, and in Season 3 the movement of the characters became sharper.
- Art Shift: Some flashbacks (mostly of Aelita's previous life) are rendered with still frames in a graphic style more pronouncedly Animesque than the rest of the show.
- Artificial Human: Played straight with Polymorphic Clones, who are extensions of XANA's consciousness that take on a human shape. Subverted with Aelita, who turns out to have been a Human All Along.
- Artistic License – Chemistry: One episode has XANA weaponize laughing gas, which is portrayed much like the Joker's venom, making the victim laugh uncontrollably to the point they cannot breathe. In reality, Nitrous Oxide is merely an analgesic that can also induce euphoria. Characters that were overdosed wouldn't start laughing, but experience symptoms like nausea and fatigue instead. And no, drinking water wouldn't make the analgesia go away either.
- Artistic License – Nuclear Physics: Most of the episode "Seeing Is Believing", and any episode thereafter that mentions the nearby nuclear power plant.
- Artistic License – Physics:
- In "Zero Gravity Zone", Jérémie proposes that XANA's anti-gravity power-of-the-week works by offsetting "the magnetic attraction of the Earth".
- In "The Trap", Odd grabs a metal bar to defend Jérémie and himself against a possessed robotic arm in the factory. The arm then grabs the bar and twists it all to heck, while Odd is still holding it.
- Any time someone throws a skateboard ahead of them so that it starts rolling, while in the same motion jumping onto it (legs offscreen).
- If Aelita disables a tower the instant before something hits something else in the real world, both somethings will come to an instant stop and the collision will be avoided by about half a centimeter, which includes two automated trains barreling towards each other at full speed and a laser beam.
- As You Know: Rather frequent, especially in Season 1, since the series starts In Medias Res. Jérémie is usually the one stuck with frequently reminding his friends about information that they would already know — like the basic properties of the world of Lyoko, the monsters' stats, the fact that they couldn't let anyone die before a Return to the Past or that their main goal is to materialize Aelita.
- Attack Its Weak Point: XANA's logo on all his monsters is the best place to hit if one wishes to kill them.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: XANA gets an A for creativity with this one, turning a teddy bear into a giant, murderous monster.
- Attack Reflector:
- The Slow Lasers of the monsters can sometimes be reflected by Ulrich's swords, Yumi's fans, or Odd's shield (and even by the landscape in the Ice Sector). Though not the most common tactic, it is occasionally used by the heroes (most often Ulrich) to destroy monsters, especially when they're out of immediate striking range.
- In the episode "Music Soothes the Savage Beast", a mirror is used to send back the lightning attacks of XANA's specters.
- Author Avatar: As noted on the fan forum Lyoko Freak, the SubDigital's members bear a striking resemblance to the executive producers of the show.
- The Bad Guy Wins: This show is an extreme example. Every season except the last ended with either a stalemate or a victory for XANA, and the heroes spent most of the next season trying to undo their loss, only to be handed another crushing defeat at the end of that season. In fact, in the end, it's Franz Hopper, not the protagonists, who took most of the credit for truly defeating XANA. And even with that in mind, XANA still achieves some form of victory by killing Franz Hopper as it planned to during the season.
- It's not just the finales, every major victory is accompanied by a defeat. An example is that in the third last episode they free William from XANA's posession, but immediately afterward, XANA destroys their virtual ship, preventing them from accessing the network again.
- In season 3, several episodes before the finale have XANA destroy one of the sectors, making it harder for them to access Sector 5 and thus, the network.
- Heck, it's revealed in season 2 that using the Return to the Past function makes the supercomputer, and thus, in the first two seasons, XANA, more powerful, making every victory in those two seasons where one was used (which is most of them) arguably one of these.
- Badass Family: The Hopper/Schaeffer family is full of people brilliant in brains and brawn:
- The mother is barely seen in the original show, implied to simply live an ordinary life as the mother of Aelita, but in its sequel Evolution, she is retconned into being a scientist good enough to work on Project Carthage. If looking at the Code Lyoko Chronicles novels instead, she also helped the Lyoko Warriors and XANA defeat Hannibal Mago.
- The father, Franz Hopper/Waldo Schaeffer, not only worked on Project Carthage, but also successfully evaded the Men in Black with his daughter Aelita, created an entire virtual world known as Lyoko, created XANA, provided vital information, and help his daughter and her friends to ensure the rebellious XANA's defeat, and did it while stuck in the Digital Sea for most of the time.
- The first child, Aelita Schaeffer, is, even prior to her graduation to Action Girl status in Season 3, a Teen Genius and Action Survivor, as well as the 2nd most powerful Lyoko Warrior and 2nd smartest Lyoko Warrior, with only William and Jérémie surpassing her power and brains respectively.
- The second "child", XANA, an AI who gained sentience, is an insanely brilliant mastermind who pulled a two-season-long Xanatos Gambit on the Lyoko Warriors, stalemated or defeated them at the end of every season barring the 4th one, nearly killed them lots of times and even at the cost of its life, succeeded in killing Franz Hopper.
- Batman Gambit: A few of XANA's plans fit in later seasons.
- The first example is in "Missing Link", where the Scyphozoa attacks Yumi and steals her DNA code, making her unable to rematerialize. Aelita volunteers to give Yumi her DNA code, unwilling to let Yumi become the same prisoner of Lyoko that she was... But this was exactly what XANA wanted her to do because if she had done so, Aelita's memories would have become exposed and easier to take. Fortunately, the team stops her in time, and gains Yumi's code back another way. This may have elements of a Xanatos Gambit too. Taking Yumi's DNA gave her the same vulnerability as Aelita (meaning she would vanish forever if her life points ran out) so XANA likely targeted her specifically as part of a back-up plan to eliminate Yumi if the first plan didn't work. After all, he had given a lot of attention to her before. (See Designated Victim below.)
- In "Franz Hopper", a Polymorphic Specter convinces Yumi that she is suffering from cell degeneration due to repeated exposure to the scanners. This immediately causes everyone in the group except Aelita to resent Jérémie, who feels isolated and is eventually dispelled from the group. Without the boy's interference, XANA traps the three warriors on Lyoko and prepares to do the same to Aelita. The program would have won, except for an even bigger gambit on Jérémie's part: Upon realizing "Franz's" treachery, he has Aelita send a copy of herself into Lyoko, whose memories debilitate the Scyphozoa upon being drained. This leads to the Specter breaking down in a rage that disarranges its physical body, letting Jérémie access the Supercomputer and launch a counterattack.
- A large part of his plan in Season 4 is a Batman Gambit. William seems determined to subdue Aelita and throw her into the Virtual Sea; the other heroes assume that this is simply XANA's way of eliminating her for good until he actually succeeds in "Distant Memory". Franz Hopper appears to rescue her, at which point a mob of XANA's monsters springs out and attacks him. It is all part of a plot to lure him into an ambush, as XANA knows he will rescue his daughter. Fortunately, the heroes learn from this, and Aelita is even able to use her Decoy Getaway trick when William tries it a second time.
- Beat the Curse Out of Him: In the episode "Valentine's Day", XANA slips Aelita a Hypno Trinket. To force him to relinquish his grip on her, Odd shoots her repeatedly, until she is within an inch of her life. XANA surrenders, as he needs her alive as much as the children do.
- Berserk Button:
- Never question Milly when having an interview.
- Don't insult Odd with food.
- Yumi has two, both related to her Japanese roots: do not mistake her nationality (especially mistaking her as Chinese, as Sissi got a nasty earful from it), and do not trash-talk Japan or its culture (Jim got a Death Glare from her when he called manga "Japanese mahn-goes").
- Don't tell Aelita to forget her past (Jérémie got an earful by advising her to "think like [he does].")
- Do not mess with Jérémie's programs on his computer when he isn't around. (Odd accidentally pressed this by doing nothing with it and still got yelled at.)
- Insulting Ulrich's friends appears to be his, as he takes his father's insults passively until his friends are accused of being a bad influence.
- Do not refer to Lyoko as a video game. Every time a character learns about Lyoko and refers to it as a video game, expect one of the warriors to snap at them.
- Beta Couple: Jérémie×Aelita as a more stable parallel of the Sissi/Ulrich/Yumi/William Love Tetrahedron.
- Between My Legs: Happens twice with Aelita, first with Sissi in "Uncharted Territory" and then with William in "Wreck Room".
- Bickering Couple, Peaceful Couple: Yumi and Ulrich as the bickering couple, and Jérémie and Aelita as the peaceful one. Once lampshaded by Aelita, who wonders why Yumi and Ulrich are at odds while liking each other. Jérémie answers her that people who love each other sometimes fight. But Aelita then points out that Jérémie and herself never argue.
- Big Eater: Odd. And he seems to have a metabolism like a blast furnace because he never gains any weight.
- Bilingual Bonus:
- Yumi's teacher speaks Italian in "Tidal Wave".
- Odd sometimes uses Chinese when greeting Yumi (which ticks her off because she's Japanese). To make matters worse, he even does this in "A Fine Mess" while in Yumi's body to her own family.
- Odd appears to be quite proficient in Italian as evidenced in "Attack of the Zombies".
- Odd also uses Russian in one episode.
- Yumi likewise is capable of speaking French, in addition to her native Japanese.
- The names of the days in the time-skip episode appear in French on-screen (Lundi, Mardi, Mercredi...).
- Bittersweet Ending: Although XANA is eventually destroyed, Franz Hopper goes down with him. William also gets his own, as he never got a chance to take his revenge on XANA.
- Blade Brake:
- Ulrich does this in "Bad Connection" to prevent both himself and Yumi from falling in the Mountain Sector.
- Odd in "Teddygozilla" with Aelita, only with his claws in the Desert sector.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: The fourth season got hit with this when it was dubbed in Brazilian Portuguese. Sometimes the errors are rather tame like Ulrich saying "Super Hop" or "Super Propulsion" instead of Super Sprint, but then there are the episodes where characters talk as if XANA was a female human, or even worse, call Aelita a "he".
- Bloodless Carnage: Seeing as most of the fighting takes place in a virtual world, this can be expected. When characters are injured in the real world, we typically see nothing more than minor Clothing Damage where a wound should be.
- Boarding School: Interestingly, the school the children go to is heavily visually based on real locations in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. It isn't a boarding school in real life though; the writers consciously changed that to keep the characters together (even though one does live off-campus).
- Body-Count Competition: Ulrich and Odd have the friendly competition kind ongoing about who kill the most of XANA's monsters. In the episode "The Pretender", backed up by statistics, Jérémie declares the winner of the month to be... Aelita, to Odd and Ulrich's dismay.
- Body Horror: Don't put two living beings inside one scanner at the same time. Their DNA will merge, The Fly-style.
- Body Uploading:
- The "Virtualization" process lets the characters go into a supercomputer, and grants superpowers while in that world.
- In the Alternate Continuity of the novelizations, it only works on children, as adults, other than Franz Hopper, the creator of the system, using it Go Mad from the Revelation, due to the Lyoko form reflecting their inner, true self, with a child's innocence, a.k.a, a lesser amount of regrets, mistakes, and horrors, keeping them from turning into a monster and undergoing a Heroic BSoD.
- Bond Villain Stupidity:
- In "Revelation", a Polymorphic Specter ambushes Odd in the hermitage. Rather than off him then and there, the Specter abandons the boy in a well that slowly fills with water, intending to have him drown. When its cover is exposed, Yumi has more than enough time to find and save her friend.
- An even worse one is in the episode "Franz Hopper". XANA's Specter has disabled the materialization program, destroyed the Lyoko Warriors' weapons, and apparently left Aelita stranded in the Desert Sector to have her memories drained. Jérémie confronts it and exposes its true identity, causing the creature to push him aside. Rather than finish the boy off, XANA calmly sits down and starts taunting him about how he has lost... cue Aelita revealing her Batman Gambit and sending the Scyphozoa into a seizure. This in turn causes the Specter to suffer a Villainous Breakdown, the anger and disbelief at being tricked causing its body to destabilize just long enough for Jérémie to take control of the Supercomputer and assist his friends in stopping XANA's attack.
- Boot Camp Episode: In the episode "I'd Rather Not Talk About It", the Lyoko Warriors go to boot camp under Jim to get in shape.
- Bottomless Magazines:
- Subverted with Odd. He clearly does not have an unlimited supply of Laser Arrows and ends up running out after only firing ten arrows. In the second season, however, Jérémie upgrades his Lyoko form so that he has a far greater supply of about ten thousand at once.
- The trope is played straight in "False Start" where Jim uses a nail gun to fight XANA's monsters, and never has to reload it.
- Boxing Lessons for Superman: The Lyoko Warriors go to boot camp under Jim in one episode to get in shape. It doesn't help much on Lyoko, but learning to run faster and farther in the real world is quite helpful when faced with physical threats from XANA.
- Brick Joke:
- In "Image Problem", Jérémie makes a passing, non-serious remark about the scanners becoming a health problem (in reference to Yumi/XANA being unable to tell the rest of the group what happened before getting devirtualized unconscious). In "Franz Hopper", XANA masquerading as Franz "confirms" that the scanners are having a negative effect... on Yumi.
- In "A Fine Mess" (which, as mentioned below, is Code Lyoko's "Freaky Friday" Flip), Jérémie points out that if Odd and Yumi go back into Lyoko and are devirtualized, the program might mess up again and they'd end up with no bodies at all. In season 3, "Nobody in Particular" sees exactly this happen to Ulrich (complete with XANA taking over his Lyoko-bound body...).
- In "Frontier," Yumi spies a plane up in the sky, worried about XANA attacking while Jérémie is on Lyoko apologizing to Aelita. Cue "Guided Missile" in which XANA possesses control of a fighter jet with the boy in it.
- Brown Note: The song XANA made in "Killer Music" causes slowed heart rate, coma (though eyes remain wide open), and a Joker Gas-like creepy smile.
- Butt-Monkey:
- Sissi. She's supposed to be the Alpha Bitch, but you would be hard-pressed to find a character outside her cronies and father who doesn't enjoy constantly insulting her to her face. This gets awkward when the prequel comes around and it's revealed that she's basically involved in a kind of Vicious Cycle, acting like the Alpha Bitch in response to the bad treatment she gets from everyone else, which is essentially a response to her Alpha Bitch behavior. The Lyoko kids do manage to break this cycle in the finale, and Sissi does prove that she's been a Jerk with a Heart of Gold all along.
- Odd gets little respect and is constantly failing at various goals he pursues, such as holding on to a girlfriend (though to be fair, it doesn't help that he dates multiple girls at the same time). He also is notoriously bad at school and even the teachers mock him for it publicly. Let's not forget the constant dissing he gets from his friends, most infamously them stealing his own virtual pet toy and giving it to Yumi's little brother, who soon afterward breaks it. And also, as he himself lampshades, he's the sole character whose Lyoko form "looks like a nitwit".
- Call-Back: Jérémie builds a Kiwi-shaped robot in the Season 1 episode "The Robots", which shows back up again in a XANA-fied version in Season 4's "Canine Conundrum".
- Calling Your Attacks:
- Odd: "Laser Arrow!"
- Ulrich: "Impact!"
- Aelita: "Energy Field!"
- William: "Super Smoke!"
- Can't Count Bullets: A Running Gag is Odd running out of ammo at the worst possible time. In season 4, he is left defenseless against William twice because his arrow count suddenly drops to zero. In both cases, it ends badly for him.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: In Season 2, while XANA wants to wipe out the rest of the Lyoko Warriors, he needs Aelita alive until her memory can be taken. This condition has actually caused XANA and the Lyoko Warriors to work together to protect Aelita on a few occasions. It also happens in Season 4, as he needed her alive to lure Franz Hopper, to the point of stopping a perfect attack because it was going to off Aelita as well.
- Can't Live Without You: Aelita with the Supercomputer in Season 2. XANA ensures the kids can't Cut the Juice on him by linking Aelita to it. She lapses into unconsciousness whenever the machine is turned off — and a too-long interruption can make her heart stop.
- Card-Carrying Villain: XANA, over the course of the series is revealed to be one of these. Given he has no true physical form, we only learn this via his actions the rare times he speaks through a Polymorphic Specter or XANA-William. He is well aware he is by human definition: evil; and he savors every sadistic second of his attacks.
- Casanova Wannabe: Odd. He claims to be a ladies' man, but every girl that he's dated (which includes most girls in his age group at the school) says otherwise.
- Cast from Hit Points: The bulk of Aelita's powers cost half her life points per use until she gains the Energy Field attack and wings (both free).
- Cat Girl: Both Odd Della Robbia's virtual Cat Boy avatar, and Odd-as-Yumi Cat Girl cosplay (see "Freaky Friday" Flip).
- Catchphrase:
- Aelita: "Tower deactivated."
- Jim: "I'd rather not talk about it." This is even lampshaded at the beginning of the third season.
- Odd: "I'm not scrawny, I'm svelte."
- Jérémie: "Virtualization!"
- They have further catchphrases in French that didn't necessarily cross over the English version:
- Yumi: "Banane !" and "Sympa, l'accueil. Très sympa."
- Odd: "T'y crois pas !"
- Sissi: "Crétins !"
- Character Development: Many characters on the show.
- Aelita goes through the most out of all of the characters, becoming increasingly less naïve, less impulsively selfless, more worldly wise, and much more of an Action Girl as time goes on.
- The never-seen XANA. Initially, all he tries to do is wreak havoc with little to no forethought. From Season 2 onwards, he has clear objectives which he puts a lot of thought into fulfilling. In addition, he becomes more powerful with each season.
- Sissi gets a lot as well. In "Frontier", she can't stand the thought of helping Yumi and insists that Ulrich date her for several weeks. Later, in "Missing Link", she's prepared to help Yumi for no reward whatsoever. Her role in the two-part prequel further helps develop her character, her relationship with the heroes improves throughout the series, and by the end, her becoming an "official" friend just feels RIGHT.
- William, even though it's more subtle. He starts out as Ulrich's rival for Yumi's heart, almost turns into a Stalker with a Crush to Yumi in Season 3 (even though he doesn't actually stalk her) who has trouble taking no for an answer, and matures in his few appearances in Season 4 as himself, actually able to take a no for an answer, and ready to seriously helps the Lyoko Warriors despite them rejecting him.
- More subtly, the group as a whole becomes a lot closer throughout the four seasons. In earlier episodes (especially before Aelita was materialized), the group are often very disjointed to the point where it's questionable if they even like each other. By Season 4, they've managed to evolve into True Companions (partly out of necessity), and while there are still frequent Teeth-Clenched Teamwork scenarios (Rule of Drama at play), they always forgive each other in the end.
- Characterization Marches On:
- In the first episode, Milly was insecure to the point of coming across as psychotic, getting emotional at the drop of a hat, and talking to her teddy bear when she was alone. For most of the series afterward, she's a perfectly normal girl.
- Jim was portrayed as slightly rougher around the edges in Season 1 compared to the rest of the series plus his "I'd rather not talk about it" catchphrase didn't exist.
- Sissi was never especially book smart early on, but most of her manipulation tactics in the first season highly implied she, at least, had a fair amount of street smarts and was admittedly pretty crafty albeit underhanded. Most of this vanished when Season 2 came along, which turned her into more of a bumbling ditz whose strategies barely got off the ground before Ulrich or somebody else shot them down. Her vindictiveness was also toned down as she became a kinder person.
- Odd, while always portrayed as a jokester and bad at school, was, similar to Sissi, shown to have some basic street smarts and had a future-flash ability that implied he was a bit more complex than what the audience was meant to believe. Come Season 2, he was dumbed down considerably and the future flash was never seen again until a throwaway exchange in Season 3 explained it away as Jérémie accidentally deleted the ability and never restored it due to its inherent uselessness.note
- Yumi and Ulrich's feelings for each other was presented somewhat healthier in Season 1 on the count of Sissi being more unlikable and the absence of William Dunbar. They had their tense moments such as the tail-end of "Frontier" and most of "Routine", but more-often-than-not they seemed more understanding of each other and not so quick to assume the worst whenever Sissi was blackmailing Ulrich.
- Aelita was initially characterized as a borderline saint and barely emoted beyond what was expected of an (at the time) A.I. unfamiliar with complex emotions, occasionally functioning as something of a Warrior Therapist to Jérémie. Season 2 onward, while not sacrificing these traits entirely, gives her more nuances such as playfully snarking/taunting others such as Sissi or the enemies on Lyoko, and not above getting frustrated/annoyed with her teammates on occasion, including Jérémie. These subtle shifts become understandable when you learn that Aelita wasn't originally planned to be human during Season 1's production.
- William, in Season 2, is shown to be an adequate swimmer during trips to the pool, but come Season 3 when he's hanging off a bridge with Yumi over a canal, he confesses that he can't swim period despite the prior outings.
- Childish Villain, Mature Hero: While Sissi isn't the Big Bad (that would be XANA, an evil AI with little to no personality), and does have redeeming qualities, she is still a recurring antagonist who is known for being a very bratty, obnoxious, loud, rude, and self-centered Spoiled Brat. Meanwhile, the Lyoko warriors, while certainly flawed, are all fairly calm, well-mannered, mature, and humble kids with the exception of Odd and arguably the Sixth Ranger William, and even they still usually have better manners than Sissi does (before Odd's season 4 Flanderization kicked in, anyway).
- Cliff Stack: Happens once with a trio of Kankrelats, cementing their status of comic relief among the monsters. Pursuing Aelita in the ice sector, they slide along a frozen tunnel. At the exit, the first two manage to stop before falling down a cliff, but the third one comes too fast and sends them all tumbling.
- Color-Coded Characters:
- Ulrich — Green (Orange/Yellow in Lyoko)
- Odd — Purple
- Aelita — Pink
- Jérémie — Blue
- Yumi — Black (Red in Lyoko)
- William — Red (Black/Grey in Lyoko)
- Continuity Creep: Starting with the Season 1 finale, the series slowly begins to develop a more serialized story and long-running Myth Arc, as well as having the characters begin relying less on Return to the Past due to them learning that each use doubles XANA's power.
- Continuity Nod: Odd's Tamaguchi Jean-Pierre has a brief life in an episode before being unceremoniously thrown away by Hiroki Ishiyama. This event is referenced by Odd in the Season 4 episode "A Space Oddity" when he questions Hiroki's fitness to dogsit Kiwi.
- Contrived Coincidence: In "The Girl of the Dreams" a girl named Taelia, who looks identical to Aelita, enrolls in Kadic shortly after Jérémie tries out a method to materialize Aelita. They try to contact Aelita in Lyoko just to make sure it's really her, but Aelita happens to have been captured by XANA.
- Convenient Color Change: Ulrich's katana usually glows blue when striking or parrying but in the hand of a XANA-controlled warrior (like a Polymorphic Clone, XANA-Aelita, or XANA-William), it glows red instead.
- Cool Bike: Ulrich's Overbike is a one-wheeled motorcycle he uses on Lyoko and does many fancy stunts with.
- Cool Boat: The Skidbladnir in Season 4 is a Cool Submarine, that can travel through the Digital Sea.
- Cool Code of Source: The supercomputer screens apparently display a PHP image gallery script.
- Cosmic Keystone: The Lyoko Core in Sector 5 — Destroying it will destroy Lyoko and leave the Warriors with no way to stop XANA.
- Cover-Up Clone: In season 4, while William is captured under Xana's control, Jérémie sets up a Polymorphic Clone of him to avoid suspicion about his absence. This isn't devoid of problems due to the clone's low intelligence, but lasts long enough for the situation to be resolved.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Jim Morales, big time. He might seem like a bumbling gym teacher, but anyone who threatens his students is going to have a bad day.
- Cultural Translation:
- Despite Euro coins floating about, hacked military databases emblazoned with derivatives of the French flag, and even a frigging zoom-in from a satellite showing exactly which country they are in, the English dub is adamant about the show taking place somewhere other than a French suburb. The euros are called dollars. Hilariously, in "Attack of the Zombies", Milly mentions a foreign exchange program with France.
- The Cantonese dub for "A Fine Mess" specifies the type of Chinese into Mandarin that Odd speaks to Yumi's parents and Yumi's reaction to Odd's Cat Girl outfit.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- The first Tarantula to show up beats the whole team at once.
- When the group fights XANA-fied William the first time, he devirtualizes them easily. At the start of Season 4, he still curb-stomps them, and even after his first defeats, he can still put up a fight and even win.
- The first time Ulrich and Aelita encounter the Kolossus, they are devirtualized within seconds. And all it does to take them out is swing its arm.
- Cut the Juice: During Seasons 1-2, XANA's schemes aim at preventing the heroes from doing this.
- Darker and Edgier: If compared to the more idealistic song, "Un Monde Sans Danger", the closing credits for the later seasons
come off as this. - A Day in the Limelight: Jim gets this in two episodes, "False Start", and even more so later in "I'd Rather Not Talk About It", two rare times when the Adults Are Useless Trope does not apply.
- Deadly Dodging:
- Before Season 3 Aelita has no proper attack power, and the only real way she can damage the monsters (when not counting on the Lyoko Warriors) is by Deadly Dodging. In Episode 39, "A Bad Turn", alone on Lyoko, Aelita manages to get rid of a whole swarm of Frelions/Hornets by flying on the Overboard and having them ram the mountain or each other.
- This is the main tactic used against the Megatanks. They're invulnerable to the Lyoko Warriors' attacks as long as their two half-shells are closed, but a fall in the Digital Sea will readily dispatch one. Thus, pushing them past a cliff or letting them fall victim to their own momentum whenever possible is the favored option.
- Decoy Getaway: Aelita has used this trick more than once, creating an illusory clone of herself (or Yumi, in one case) to fool an enemy. It has proven effective on Mooks, the Scyphozoa, and even XANA-William.
- Decoy Protagonist: Sissi in the two-part prequel. While not as extreme as most examples (she is still a major supporting character), it should be noted that she is introduced before Yumi and has more plot importance and scenes than her in the first episode.
- Deflector Shields:
- Odd gains a personal shield in Season 2.
- In Season 4, the Skidbladnir and Nav Skids are protected by deflector shields.
- Aelita also creates a Beehive Barrier in "Replika".
- Demonic Possession: XANA does this frequently to people, animals, and even teddy bears, through the Specters.
- Demonic Spiders:
- From the group's perspective, Megatanks.
- Tarantulas started this way, but as the Lyoko Warriors gained experience with them, they stopped being so threatening.
- Depending on the Writer:
- The level of sympathy Sissi is treated with changes from episode to episode. She was mostly sympathetic throughout Seasons 2 and 4, while mostly unsympathetic in Seasons 1 and 3 (though she still had noteworthy moments in Season 1).
- Whether or not the gang find Odd's jokes funny.
- When the scanners are offline, losing all your life points either: a) does nothing, and you remain virtual OR b) leads to your death.
- Descending Ceiling: This kind of Death Trap is all too common in Sector 5, with a few The Walls Are Closing In in for good measure. All of the heroes except Aelita fall victim to it at least once, and it happens to poor Odd twice. (The first time, he compares it to being run over by a steamroller.)
- Designated Victim:
- Aelita is XANA's primary target, although for a different reason each season:
- Season 1: Stopping her from deactivating the towers.
- Season 2: Cracking her Neuro-Vault for the Lyoko Keys.
- Season 3: Possessing her so that she'd enter the Code: XANA and delete the Lyoko Sectors.
- Season 4: Throwing her in the Digital Sea to lure out Franz Hopper.
- Yumi too, for no plot-related reason. It runs throughout the entire series, but it's most obvious in the first half of season 1 (a batch of five consecutive episodes of her being targeted was dubbed "Pick on Yumi Week") and season 3. Of course, maybe XANA does have a logical reason for wanting to "pick on Yumi": she is the Cool Big Sis figure of the team, the most mature of the group, Ulrich's crush (and nearly as good at fighting as him), the least enthusiastic about fighting XANA (she was reluctant to do it in the pilot, and was the most willing to shut down the computer in season 4 finale) and an isolated target due to her living with her parents whereas the others are all boarders at Kadic. This not only makes her a much easier target than the others but also means something happening to her will easily crush the morale of her teammates. Given the
manipulator XANA is, it makes sense.
- Aelita is XANA's primary target, although for a different reason each season:
- Deus ex Machina: In "Cruel Dilemma", Odd drops some candy on Jérémie's keyboard, which
somehow types out the exact line of code he needs to finish his materialization program. This is, however, portrayed as not entirely positive: the code seems to work, but Jérémie can't check, edit, or duplicate it because the dropped candy also caused it to compile, and some angst is had in the course of the episode as a result. - Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: The end credits song beginning season 2 is an in-universe song by the Subdigitals.
- Digital Avatar: The characters become this when they enter Lyoko, complete with Medium Blending to 3D.
- Disney Death:
- Yumi — once ("Cruel Dilemma");
- Franz Hopper — twice ("The Key", "Final Round");
- Subverted in the penultimate episode, "Fight to the Finish", where Hopper sacrifices himself to help the Lyoko Warriors defeat XANA, with no way to undo his death this time.
- Aelita — thrice straight ("Just in Time", "The Key", "Distant Memory") and a few cases of Can't Live Without You (in Season 2) or Decoy Getaways with her clones.
- Subverted with William in "Final Round". As far as the Lyoko Warriors know, he kicked the bucket in the Digital Sea. Fortunately (or unfortunately), XANA saved him in order to turn him into his Dragon.
- Doppelgänger Attack:
- Ulrich's Triplicate power. Mainly used as a minor distraction in season 1, but a power-up from the second season makes the clones just as powerful as him.
- In "Final Mix", XANA-Jim temporarily duplicated himself.
- Aelita can also create clones of herself, but they're used as a diversion.
- Doppelgänger Spin: Ulrich's Triangulate power. He runs in a triangle super fast, creating afterimage clones.
- The Dragon:
- The Scyphozoa, being a unique monster central to XANA's schemes, fits the role in Seasons 2 and 3.
- XANA-Aelita becomes a Co-Dragon in Season 3, being a large reason for XANA's victory in that season.
- Both (while still making minor appearances) are replaced by William in Season 4, though he's Not Himself.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: Aelita in the penultimate episode. She has a vision of her father being killed by a group of Mantas.
- "Driver's Ed" Episode: Downplayed in "A Bad Turn", as the episode doesn't fully focus on it, but it serves a major role regardless. During the beginning of the episode, various students at Kadic Academy are instructed on the rules of the road and how to drive safely, as well as being given the chance to drive in a car alongside an officer. Success varies wildly among the students (though we only see/hear how well Ulrich, Yumi, Jérémie, Aelita, Odd, William, and Sissi perform). This class turns into an example of Chekhov's Skill when William later uses the car from the class to run over a materialized Krab during a XANA attack.
- *Drool* Hello: Happens to Sissi in "End of Take", from the Xenomorph-lookalike animated by XANA.
- Dumb Muscle: Nicolas, albeit with more emphasis on the "dumb" part of the description.
- Dungeonmaster's Girlfriend: Jérémie writes a program to calculate "points" scored by defeating monsters. Guess who wins...
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- Not only is Season 1 almost completely different from the rest of the series, complete with a Strictly Formula format for all but the two-parter at the end of the seasonnote , but the very earliest episodes also feature some strange nuances. The voice acting is very different, for a start (Odd and Sissi had different voice actors, and Jérémie's voice actor hadn't found the right pitch for the boy yet), and certain aspects of Lyoko act differently, such as Ulrich's clones being able to fight (rather than just being decoys), Megatank lasers not being one-hit kills, and Hornets having an acid attack for a couple of episodes.
- The Italian Dub of Season 1 exclusively referred to the Supercomputer as "Supercalcolatore" (supercalculator), later seasons dropped this entirely and simply referred to it as Supercomputer.
- They also seem to have had some early trouble figuring out Odd's moveset. The first episode has him use the move Impact to damage an enemy at point-blank range without expending ammo, but this move was later given to Ulrich. In addition, his laser arrow attack looked like actual arrows in the first episode rather than just being the arrowheads from then on. Another early episode has Odd repeatedly call out the phrase "Laser Flash" when using his Laser Arrow move. And then there's his "Future Flash" ability which gave him glimpses of future events, which sounds useful until you realize he couldn't control it, and it immobilized him for several seconds while he had his vision making it useless in combat. It wasn't even particularly interesting from a narrative standpoint, which is why it was worked out in later seasons, with the season three episode "Triple trouble" mentioning that Jérémie deleted it by accident when upgrading their Lyoko avatars and then never bothered reprogramming it because he thought it was useless.
- Season 1 overall is extremely inconsistent with where the Return to the Past bubble even comes from, as if the animators are just thinking, "It comes outta nowhere; don't think too much about it." It's not until Season 2 and onward that the bubble has an established starting point.
- Several episodes of season 1 have XANA and his monsters making multiple attempts on Aelita's life; season 2 would establish that Aelita has the Keys to Lyoko locked in her avatar, which XANA needs in order to escape the super computer. The team would exploit this in season 2 several times by putting Aelita in lethal danger to get him to back down. This is possibly justified by the explanation that the return to the past function makes XANA stronger (at last while he's stuck in the supercomputer), so it's possible that with them constantly using it, that by Season 2 he finally gained enough sentience to think about escaping the computer, and before was only interested in destroying those who knew of his existence.
- Elevator Action Sequence: The elevator leading to the Lab and Scanners usually gives the heroes reaching it and closing the door in time some reprieve from XANA's latest attack — but sometimes the enemy slips in too for a good scuffle. And the elevator doors offer little protection against some of the most advanced of XANA's specters, that can actually make their host phase through walls.
- Elite Mooks:
- The Tarantulas are considered to be XANA's most versatile minions, and they have a 1-to-1 track record when fighting the Lyoko Warriors.
- Megatanks: after Season 1, all of them get upgraded to having one-shot-kill lasers. Though they're tougher, they're still easy to fool, especially because they're half-blind while moving.
- Embarrassing Old Photo: Yumi's (dressed as a pink fairy for Halloween) in "Cold Sweat".
- Enemy-Detecting Radar: Jérémie can track both enemies and allies in Lyoko from his screen.
- Enemy Mine:
- The gang cooperates with XANA's monsters to destroy the runaway "Marabounta". XANA even manages to end the encounter without starting another fight.
- The situation is much different when XANA must recruit Jérémie's help in "Common Interest"; with the supercomputer's batteries dying from extended use, XANA possesses a hardened fugitive to kidnap Jérémie and directs him to replace it. (This time, however, XANA regards it as temporary, and fully intends to order the fugitive to kill Jérémie afterwards.)
- Enemy Scan: Jérémie, with the press of a button, can pull up the info of a monster that is on screen.
- Enforced Cold War: In Season 1 and Season 2, destroying the Supercomputer would both destroy XANA and kill Aelita, so actually destroying the Supercomputer or Lyoko is out for both sides. Afterward, XANA can attack it.
- Ensemble Cast: The series doesn't have a single main protagonist, all members of Team Lyoko share the spotlight.
- Epic Fail: Without exception, Jérémie causes a disaster whenever he tries to do something outlined in Franz Hopper's journal — like when he tried to do so in "Marabounta" and a few other episodes. He eventually attributes this to Hopper being such a genius that his notes are just too complicated for him to comprehend properly.
- Epic Tracking Shot: Used numerous times in Lyoko where the animators make liberal use of the 3D free-cam to have it quickly rush across a sector, occasionally even through a tower and into another.
- Everybody Knew Already: Pretty much every student knows that Odd is hiding Kiwi in his room in defiance of school rules, even though the faculty are clueless. Sissi threatens to tell on him in one episode, but she apparently decides against it.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The principal's last name ("Delmas") was not revealed until the second season; his first name (Jean-Pierre) was a mystery until the third.
- Everything's Deader with Zombies: XANA's attack in "Attack of the Zombies". Thanks to Loophole Abuse, this is one of the few ways for a Lyoko Warrior to be XANA-fied in the real world.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: XANA shows this in "Ghost Channel" when he tries to trick Odd, Urlich, and Yumi by posing as Jérémie. When Jérémie shows up and it turns into a case of Spot the Imposter, XANA insists that Jérémie wouldn't come to Lyoko because he'd be too afraid to; however, this is actually what gives him away, because the rest of the team is certain that Jérémie would do so, despite being afraid, if their lives were in danger. Note that XANA does eventually prove capable of Comprehending Good in later episodes, and even trying to take advantage of it. However, it's mostly averted in Season 4, where he often succeeds in luring both Aelita and Franz Hopper.
- Evil Evolves: XANA gets progressively more powerful throughout the series. He also gets smarter, and more importantly, he also starts learning from his mistakes. Justified, as the Return to the Past function is revealed to make him stronger, and they use it in most episodes of the first two seasons.
- Evil Only Has to Win Once: Played straight in Season 1, subverted in Season 2. Afterwards, there are multiple victory conditions for XANA, and not all of them lead to a final Game Over.
- Executive Meddling:
- In-universe example: In "Opening Act", Chris of the Subdigitals points out that this is why they're looking for an opening DJ and why they changed their name from the Subsonics.
- In "Teddygozilla", the school newspaper wanted to take a picture of the area for the school dance, but they weren't allowed to.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: In "The Girl of the Dreams", Jérémie rambles to himself about how he gave the Lyoko secret to Taelia, who turned out to be a complete stranger, and in the process realized that the possessed samurai armor was after them and not her; namely Yumi who was still in the school.
- Fake-Out Make-Out: In "Replika", Odd and Aelita do this to protect the secret of the Factory from Herb and Nicolas.
Since the two are pretending to be cousins, this would give them an excuse for doing so off campus. (It works too. When Herb and Nicolas tell Sissi later, she thinks that they're crazy, more so when Aelita and Odd continue the charade by pretending to be angry with each other.) - Fan Disservice:
- Any "fanservice" provided by Jim Moralès.
- The infamous scene in "Sabotage" where Yumi is restrained by mutated plant roots. One of them even briefly goes under her shirt and strokes her face.
- Fanservice: Oh God, the fanservice. Nearly every main character has had a shirtless/underwear scene of some sort. And yes, it's all in the dub. Which was run on Cartoon Network. In the afterschool slot. With a TV-Y7FV rating. Remember, though, this is a French television series. The United States (viewing area of Cartoon Network) views nudity and partial nudity as much more risqué as opposed to the French culture.
- Despite this, Aelita's first two civilian outfits include Magic Skirts; for reasons known only to MoonScoop, she has never had an underwear scene (except that time her heart was restarted and she appeared to be wearing a slip). Instead, she is seen stepping into a shower and standing under the water in Season 4.
- There is even Sissi in her cheerleader outfit, with several frames of animation in which you can clearly see up her skirt (she's sitting down and crossing her legs). She is also seen walking around her room in her underwear in early episodes
- In the first episode, she is walking around her room in her pink underwear at about 6 minutes in, for nearly a full minute and a half. A few other things happen during that scene, but it keeps cutting back to shots of Sissi's bra and panties. Quite a way to hook a young male audience in the first episode. Even more interesting, not a single detail was ever edited for the American broadcast and this episode aired during after-school hours.
- To recap, we have Censor Steam, Furo Scene, Lingerie Scene, Modesty Towel, Panty Shots, Pool Scene, Sensual Spandex, Shirtless Scene, Shower Scene, Zettai Ryouiki (Yumi in "Teddygozilla")...
- Fate Worse than Death: Falling into the Digital Sea. Yumi and Aelita have fallen in but subsequently been saved, but if there's nothing to save you, you remain virtualized forever, lost in the vast realms of the Internet. However, XANA-William no-sells it, is stated to live in it and actually uses it as an escape route if he has to.
- Feathered Fiend: XANA possesses a group of Creepy Ravens in "The Pretender".
- Female Gaze: Played for Laughs. Tamiya zooms in on Ulrich's butt while filming his soccer game. Milly is not too pleased about the quality of her coverage.
- Fetal Position Rebirth:
- Aelita on her first materialization in "Code: Earth".
- William after his Evil Costume Switch in "Final Round".
- Feud Episode: Happens several times to several characters.
- Yumi's parents in the episode "Laughing Fit", which fuels the conflict for Yumi who dislikes hearing her parents argue.
- In "Routine", Ulrich begins hanging out with Emily which results in a huge argument between him and Yumi when Yumi believes a lie by Sissi that "Emily and Ulrich have been going out for two months."
- "Saint Valentine's Day" has a similar conflict where Ulrich sees William give Yumi flowers and gets jealous, and spurns Yumi for a fling-date with Sissi, putting the two at odds.
- The plan XANA employs in "XANA's Kiss" is having a Specter go about taking the form of the various Lyoko Warriors while they kiss random people with the intention of upsetting everyone. Ultimately Jérémie catches onto the ruse when he begins seriously thinking about the situation without being emotionally reactive.
- In "Aelita", both Odd and Aelita go to Lyoko against Jérémie's wishes due to an argument between Jérémie and Aelita. This ends up being a good thing.
- In "Replika", Aelita is told by Odd to give a lie about him not being in class. When her lie (Odd being in the infirmary) is proven false, Odd is in trouble for playing hooky, and Aelita is in trouble for lying. Both blame the other for their situation, with Odd mad at Aelita for lying poorly and Aelita mad at Odd for having her lie in the first place because he's lazy.
- Yumi becomes enraged with her brother Hiroki in "Lost at Sea" when he takes her diary. He tries to make things right, but loses the contents of the diary. Much of the rest of the episode is spent with Yumi trapped on Lyoko thinking about the good times with her brother, and is much softer towards him when she returns. It also helps that Ulrich drops her diary off in her room, leaving her to believe Hiroki returned it.
- Find the Cure!: Season 2's main plot is curing Aelita of the virus XANA infected her with. Subverted when the last episode of the season reveals she didn't have a virus at all, she was missing a piece of her memories that was hidden deep into Sector 5.
- Fire-Forged Friends: The team didn't exactly got along and only worked together for a common goal, it's only until later in the series where they looked out for each other.
- Five-Man Band Concert: Several members of the cast form a band in an early Season 1 episode — Odd on the guitar, Ulrich on the keyboard, Jim on the slide trombone, Nicolas on the drums, and Yumi the singing. Only Odd and Nicolas had any real skill at their instruments, and after that episode, the band was never mentioned again.
- Forehead of Doom: Nearly every character is drawn with a massive forehead. Two of the most notable offenders, Sissi and Yumi, have foreheads that take up more than half of the room on their face.
- Foreshadowing: The show is very clever about its foreshadowing, repeatedly putting in hints that will only be glimpsed in hindsight. For example, one episode has Yumi's parents fighting... the next, Yumi's dad lost his job and they might be going back to Japan. The prequel has a couple of references to the first episode as well, which would be counted as foreshadowing if the prequels had aired before season 1.
- The end credits from Season 2 and on show a folder titled "Waldo Schaeffer", yet the images the folder contains are all about Franz Hopper, it's not until way later that it's revealed that's his real name.
- Forgot About His Powers:
- Many, many episodes would be over much sooner if Aelita just used her Creativity power to drop XANA's monsters into the Digital Sea while they are distracted. However, considering that this power required half her health to utilize, especially in the earlier seasons where Aelita would have died if all her health points were depleted, this would have made such a move risky.
- Yumi could probably do the same with her Telekinesis, though she was never shown using it directly on an enemy.
- Fourth Wall Farewell: In "Echoes", the grand finale of the series, all of the main characters say goodbye in the final few minutes of the episode, before ending with the camera panning out over the Lyoko Warriors (sans Jérémie) on Lyoko staring at the camera, despite the fact that the supercomputer was turned off in this episode and they never went to Lyoko at all during it.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: Odd and Yumi swap bodies in "A Fine Mess".
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: In "Fight to the Finish", the Lyoko Warriors (and more accurately, Yumi, Odd, and Ulrich) treat William coldly and kick him out of the team because he underestimated XANA, and ended up XANA-fied for a long time as a result, fighting the ones he was supposed to help out. Odd goes as far as to call him an enemy. The implications that they were traumatized and grew used to fight William doesn't help. However, Aelita calls them out on their thinking, pointing out that she was XANA-fied as well, but they never treated her like they treated William. Sadly, she's mostly ignored, and the results are catastrophic.
- Friend-or-Idol Decision:
- Conducted in Season 1's "Cruel Dilemma" when Jérémie (with assistance from Odd's candy) creates a one-shot program to materialize Aelita, but must use it to extract Yumi from the Digital Sea.
- And then the tables turn in Season 4's "Hot Shower", in which Aelita gets herself devirtualized to make XANA choose between letting an incoming asteroid destroy the Supercomputer (and her with it) or destroy it with the good old Kill Sat to give both of them another day (as XANA needs Aelita to lure out Franz Hopper).
- Future Spandex: In Season 4, the new Digital Avatars of the heroes have a serious Future Spandex look. They were apparently designed by Jérémie, a 13-year-old Teen Genius (except for William, who got his custom-made by XANA). You have to wonder what was going through their minds... though on the other hand, maybe that makes it a Justified Trope.
- Giant Enemy Crab: Krabs. It should be noted that their Weak Point is on the top of their shells, not under them. Under them is where their pile-driver laser is. Still, they have been stabbed there, even if it didn't do the job.
- Giant Mook: The Kolossus, introduced during the climax of season 4, is taller than a tower.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Kind of. If an avatar is stabbed, the show usually censors the blade piercing the body. As a result, all we see are the polygons that make up the Lyoko Warrior scattering around like blood drops, followed by a limb or two disintegrating as the character is devirtualized. While it was rare in previous seasons, it became quite frequent in seasons 3 and 4, due to William's extremely brutal devirtualizations.
- Gratuitous Disco Sequence: In episode "Straight to the Heart", it is revealed that Jim is a former Disco dancer. Though he considers this an Old Shame at first, in "William Returns" he gains some fans and makes a return as "Paco, King of Disco".
- Gratuitous Japanese: "Lyoko" is "travel" in Japanese. Due to the pronunciation of the word and the Japanese lack of usage from the letter "L" they would however pronounce it "ryoko".
- Gray Is Useless: In "Sabotage", Ulrich's virtual avatar is affected by a glitch that turns him black and white. While in this state, he is unable to fight, as all his attacks pass through enemies harmlessly.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Project Carthage and the Men in Black. Also overlaps with Villain of Another Story, because (at least in the animated series — Evolution is another story) Team Lyoko never encounters them.
- The Greatest Story Never Told: This was lampshadeHanging}}d a couple of times throughout the series. The group has been risking their lives fighting XANA and saving the world for years, and no one will remember it but themselves. A minor example occurs in "Maiden Voyage", where the incredibly nonathletic Jérémie scales the dorm roof of Kadic to get to his room due to a fire safety drill prohibiting access to the building. Odd (jokingly) correctly guesses that Jérémie did that, but nobody actually believes him.
- Grey Goo: Jérémie inadvertently nearly creates this kind of disaster in "Marabounta", when he tries to use Franz Hopper's journal to use a weapon to destroy XANA's army. Naturally, the thing goes out of control (leading to a chilling scene where Yumi is Eaten Alive by the thing and devirtualized trying to protect Aelita), forcing XANA to enter an Enemy Mine situation with the heroes to save Lyoko and Aelita (as he still needs her alive at this point). This was one of several times that Jérémie made a mistake using Hopper's notes, which were clearly too complicated for him to understand. (It wouldn't be the last time.)
- "Groundhog Day" Loop:
- "A Great Day". XANA takes over the Return to the Past, forcing the Lyoko warriors to re-live the same day over and over.
- And Franz Hopper, voluntarily, on June 6th, 1994 in the backstory.
- Hacker Cave: The Lyoko Supercomputer is a huge device that allows people to enter a virtual world and even time travel. To a lesser extent, Jérémie's room has his laptop, which can do advanced coding for Lyoko. Jérémie and Aelita both spend long amounts of time doing programming in both locations.
- Half-Arc Season: After the largely episodic season 1, Season 2 follows this route, with some filler episodes and some episodes devoted to exploring the mysteries of Sector 5, Franz Hopper, and Aelita's own origins. Season 3 does as well to some extent, but it's more like "Three-Quarters Arc Season" because of the abbreviated episode count — most of the episodes are devoted to the XANA's slow destruction of Lyoko and the debate about recruiting William. Season 4 returns to the half-arc, splitting time between filler episodes and episodes devoted to the Warriors' ongoing campaign of destroying XANA's Replikas.
- Hard Light:
- Polymorphic Clones are XANA's minions in the real world. They're images of humans that have actual substance and can do physical damage. However, they're vulnerable to blunt force, which causes them to flicker, as well as EMP devices.
- The translated heroes in Season 4 are essentially specters as well. This allows them to use their powers in the real world but also leaves them vulnerable to the polymorphs' weaknesses.
- He Who Must Not Be Seen: XANA might qualify, being a bodiless computer program who never physically appears to the heroes except on two occasions (once taking the form of Jérémie, and the other time as Franz Hopper). He could also be considered The Speechless as he did not communicate with the heroes at all, except for those two times plus once leaving a text message on Jérémie's phone.
- Hell Is That Noise: The Scyphozoa's creepy noise is something that Aelita quickly learns to dread.
- Hero Secret Service: Yumi, Odd and Ulrich, especially in Season 1, are primarily devoted to helping the defenseless Aelita reach the activated tower so she can stop XANA's attack. As Aelita becomes more independently powerful, there's less of a need for this.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Franz Hopper sacrificed himself in the second-to-last episode in order to provide the necessary energy to run the XANA-destroying multi-agent program.
- Heroic Suicide: Attempted but thankfully averted. Fed up with XANA and the threat he poses to humanity, Aelita shuts down the supercomputer. Due to XANA's "virus," doing this causes Aelita to either die or become comatose. Fortunately, Jérémie revives her by reactivating the supercomputer before she's gone for good.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: XANA creating the Kolossus and revealing that he had hundreds of Replikas around the world defeated Team Lyoko for one mission, but it also made it clear to Jérémie and the other Warriors that they couldn't stop XANA just by knocking out his Replikas, forcing Jérémie to develop the Multi-Agent Program. In the same episode, XANA pretty much hands a backdoor recovery module to the Lyoko Warriors on a silver platter when he teleported William as a specter, allowing them to save William once and for all.
- Holographic Terminal: All over the place within towers and the Celestial Dome in Sector 5 (itself neither an actual dome or really all that celestial). The Supercomputer proper also has a Holosphere in the middle of the room, but it's just there for fluff.
- Homage:
- Speed in episode "Log Book";
- Alien in episode "End of Take";
- The Terminator in episode "The Robots";
- The Matrix in episode "Ghost Channel";
- Groundhog Day in episode "A Great Day";
- Dawn of the Dead (1978) in episode "Attack of the Zombies";
- The Birds in episode "The Pretender".
- Hopeless Suitor: And how!
- Milly and Emily for Ulrich (in Season 1);
- Sissi for Ulrich;
- William for Yumi, but really starting with season 3;
- Herb for Sissi;
- Johnny for Yumi;
- Jim in the early stages, for Dorothy/Yolande till he (and we) learn she is engaged. In later episodes, he seems to develop a thing for Ms. Hertz.
- Hostage for MacGuffin: Inverted twice, first in "Saint Valentine's Day" and again in "Hot Shower". Aelita tends to be both the Hostage and the MacGuffin.
- Hover Board: Introduced in the second season. They consist of Odd's Overboard, Yumi's Overwing and Ulrich's Overbike (can hover, but doesn't normally).
- Hulk Speak: William and other XANA-possessed humans are quite monosyllabic (Polymorphic Clones even more so). At least, once the influence has become obvious. (And sometimes, even using words is beyond their means. "YAAAAAAAAAR!") As season 4 goes on, William gets more talkative in XANA mode, eventually being able to speak in complete sentences.
- Human Popsicle: Well, sort of... Aelita was trapped inside the Supercomputer for around ten years, during which time she didn't age at all.
- Hypnotize the Captive: Aelita falls victim to this several times, especially in Season 3. Across the whole series, it's happened in exactly six episodes: "Saint Valentine's Day", "Lyoko Minus One", "The Pretender", "The Secret", "Double Trouble" and "Wrong Exposure".
- Hypocrite: Both Ulrich and Jérémie, in season 2, went behind the group's back and abused the "Return to the past" function of the computer for the sake of the girl they loved (Ulrich used time travel to cheat at the lottery in the hope that it would keep Yumi in France, and three episodes later, Jérémie abused the time loop multiple times in an attempt to enhance his own intelligence to fix the virus that ties Aelita's life to XANA). In response to Ulrich's time travel, Jérémie (along with the rest of the group save for Aelita) angrily kicks Ulrich off the team (though they later change their mind when Ulrich saves them). Then Jérémie goes on to do pretty much the exact same thing (for more important reasons, but with far more uses of time travel) and not only thinks nothing of it, but never gets called out on it.
- I Am Who?: Aelita is really the daughter of Lyoko's creator, Franz Hopper.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Yumi does this to William in "The Lake"; it only works for a few seconds.
- Identical Stranger: Taelia, a one-shot character from the first season, is identical to Aelita (her name is even an anagram). Her personality is a complete antithesis of the main character, though.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: XANA's monsters rarely hit the heroes... even sometimes at close range or when they are stationary targets. Odd and Yumi also appear to be graduates in the early seasons, though that may just be Frelions/Hornets acting as
Goddamned Bats. Although it depends on Rule of Drama. When the Tarantula is first introduced, it is very accurate and brings down the whole team. Then in "Revelation", it can't land a single hit on Ulrich while he is busy deflecting a XANA-fied Odd's arrows. - Impostor-Exposing Test: By Season 4, the kids sometimes check out the eyes of those they suspect to be Polymorphic Clones to see if XANA's symbol doesn't briefly flash.
- In Medias Res:
- The show starts without a Pilot or Premiere episode, almost a year after the fight against XANA began. There was no explanation of how Team Lyoko discovered the Supercomputer, programmed their virtual avatar appearances and abilities, or came to meet Aelita, until a two-part prequel in Season 3.
- Many episodes also begin in the middle of the action on Lyoko. This strongly implies that not all of XANA's attacks are shown, several happening off-screen. There is even a How We Got Here in "Bragging Rights".
- Inane Blabbering: Some victims of XANA's latest attack, occasionally, especially Sissi or Jim.
- Inconsistent Spelling: Xana, XANA or X.A.N.A.? Jeremy or Jeremie? Herb or Hervé? Anthea or Antea? And should you use the accented letters? This one put fans up in arms faster than tying Ulrich or Yumi down to a permanent love interest.
- Indy Escape: The Megatanks sometimes force the heroes into running away from the rolling boulder of doom. Ulrich gets pancaked (and thus devirtualized) once.
- Innocent Innuendo: In the prequel episode, when Ulrich tries remembering Yumi's name, he mistakes it for Yuri. This is more apparent to her due to her being Japanese.
- Insult Backfire:
- From the Season 4 episode "Double Take":Suzanne Hertz: Jim! You're worse than the barbarians who burned down the Alexandrian Library!
Jim Moralés: Why, thank you, Suzanne! - Also, in "XANA's Kiss". Odd is having his ass handed to him by a Polymorphic Clone that keeps changing shape, currently assuming Jim's appearance. Odd tells it, "Hey, XANA, if you're going to keep changing appearances like that, do me a favor and turn into a wimp next time." XANA's response? He has it turn into a duplicate of Odd. Of course, being the Deadpan Snarker he is, Odd quickly comes up with a witty comeback to that: "Oh, no. Not him. I know his kind. Small, but tough as nails." (Unfortunately, he's right. It starts to pummel him even worse.)
- From the Season 4 episode "Double Take":
- The Internet Is an Ocean: The Digital Sea, which is how the Lyoko program portrays the Internet. The heroes use a submarine-like vehicle to travel through it. It cannot be swam in, though, since anything that falls into the water has its data scattered and it's nearly impossible to get it back.
- Intrepid Reporter: Attempted by Milly and Tamiya. They're always going after a "scoop," but nobody seems to take their journalism very seriously.
- Invocation:
- Jérémie: "Transfer... Scanner... Virtualization!" and "Return to the Past now!"
- Odd: "Laser Arrow!" - "Shield!"
- Ulrich: "Super Sprint!" - "Triplicate!" - "Triangulate!"
- Aelita: "Tower deactivated." - "Energy Field!"
- William: "Super Smoke!"
- Even Yumi said "Telekinesis" once to activate her power, but it was spoken rather than shouted.
- Involuntary Cheating: In "The Chips Are Down", Yumi's family considers moving back to Japan after her father loses his job. Desperate not to lose his friend, Ulrich writes down the winning numbers of the lottery, uses the gang's Super Computer to Time Travel back to the previous day, and gives a winning ticket to Yumi's parents. However, Yumi is able to quickly figure out what he did, so she convinces the other heroes to temporarily kick Ulrich out of the group as punishment for using the Super Computer for selfish purposes.
- Ironic Echo: "Friends, that's all."
- It Tastes Like Feet: Said by Odd twice:Odd: Hey, what's the matter with the hot chocolate today? It tastes like dirty sweat socks and an old pair of sneakers.
Odd: ... no, the soup tastes like dishwater. - It's Always Spring: And it never rains, nor is any other climatic phenomenon seen except when relevant to the plot (ex: "Cold War").
- The Jailer: When XANA has a reason to take an enemy alive, he uses a Guardian, a monster Aelita describes as a "digital jail". Exactly how it captures a victim isn't known, as both times, it happens offscreen (although Aelita's reaction suggests it isn't pleasant) and once that happens, the prisoner is kept in an unconscious state inside the Guardian, which seems almost indestructible from outside force. However, it seems even dumber than XANA's other mooks and can be fooled easily if presented with a clone or illusion of the intended target.
- Just Friends: Yumi actually thought this would help end all the confusion in her relationship with Ulrich.
- Just in Time:
- Ridiculously overused in the first season, in which virtually every time XANA is defeated with approximately 0.001 seconds to spare; at one point, a laser beam is halted inches from Yumi's face when the "Code: LYOKO" activated. Later seasons toned this down a bit. Actually, a Season 1 episode title, although not the Trope Namer.
- A role reversal ends up occurring in "Lab Rat" when XANA uses William to enter and steal control of the tower the gang is using to translate to the site of the Replika supercomputer with the XANA code. Odd is shown to be a mere one syllable away from firing the shot that would destroy that supercomputer when he and Aelita vanish from the site.
- Kid Hero: The heroes are in their early teens. The show can be considered a very dark deconstruction of this trope. The lives of these kids are very bleak due to XANA. They face very real dangers and start to become desensitized to the horrible things that XANA causes. This take on the trope also comes up as part of the plot later with the kids showing their frustration at balancing their teenage lives and stopping XANA. The consequences of having to fight while still being teens who have to attend school begin having adverse effects on their grades and stresses their families (especially Yumi who has a few episodes dedicated to her parents demanding explanations for various weird behaviors of hers which are linked to going to Lyoko). Despite this, it gets to a point that most of them are reluctant to actually shut down the computer at the end of the series because they are just so used to having to fight and each has an attachment to this life for their own reasons. In the episode "Routine", Ulrich becomes fed up with the constant XANA attacks and decides to do something different to feel a bit better. The next day, he's seen talking to another student (Emily LeDuc), and Jérémie points out to Yumi that it isn't a big deal given his mood. You'd almost forget for a second they're teens and don't get much socializing outside their circle of friends.
- Killer Robot:
- Most notably a Terminator homage in the Season 1 episode "The Robots".
- An army of them shows up in Season 4, which XANA intends to use to enslave humanity.
- XANA's materialized monsters in "False Start" and "A Bad Turn" count too.
- Kiss Me, I'm Virtual: Yumi acts very romantic towards the William clone, though it's an act to keep Sissi and the newshounds from picking up a trail that might lead to Lyoko.
- Larynx Dissonance: In-universe example in "A Fine Mess", when Odd and Yumi are each rematerialized in the other's body by mistake. Yumi barely even tries to sound like Odd from what we see, but Odd attempts a bad falsetto to sound like Yumi... and despite being the only male lead voiced by a man, he already has a higher voice than Yumi to start with.
- Laughing Gas: In "Laughing Fit", Mrs. Hertz introduces nitrous oxide to the class, also calling it by this trope's name, which forces anyone who inhales it to laugh uncontrollably unless they neutralize it with water quickly. XANA takes control of the gas in an attempt to kill the heroes by making them Die Laughing, which becomes problematic when Ulrich and Yumi are at school without water to help them. Jérémie is forced to run in the sewers on foot because he can't risk staying in the freezing sewer water for too long, and Odd gets a whiff of the gas just before he's virtualized into Lyoko, which severely weakens him and leaves him disoriented throughout the crisis.
- Layman's Terms: A Running Gag involves Jérémie explaining what's happening using technical computer jargon, prompting his friends to annoyedly ask for "Translation, Einstein!" In "Hard Luck", he gives a ridiculously convoluted (yet perfectly accurate) description of what a mandelbug is, which Aelita simplifies as an "unusual problem that we don't know how to fix".
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
- In episode 29, "Exploration", Ulrich voices his desire to just shut down the Supercomputer and be done with it. This leads to the following comment from Odd:note Odd: Uh, you missed an episode, Ulrich. Remember Aelita's carrying...
- And again, in the Season 4 episode "Kadic Bombshell":Odd: Did I miss an episode?
- In episode 29, "Exploration", Ulrich voices his desire to just shut down the Supercomputer and be done with it. This leads to the following comment from Odd:note
- Limited Animation: In "Echoes", the scene where Sissi is dragged away by her father is represented by a static image of the girl sliding across the screen, making it appear as if she is floating through the air.
- Love Dodecahedron: Ulrich and Yumi are mutually attracted, with Sissi fruitlessly pursuing Ulrich and William pursuing Yumi. Herb in turn wants Sissi. Additionally, in season 1, Emily and Milly both pursue Ulrich.
- Malaproper: Played for Laughs, since Aelita has trouble learning common idioms after losing her memory and spending so much time in Lyoko.Aelita: You're as stubborn as a fool!
Jérémie: It's stubborn as a mule... - Meaningful Name:
- Odd Della Robbia's first name and Ulrich Stern's surname certainly fit well with their characters.
- The gym teacher is Jim Moralès and the science teacher is Suzanne Hertz.
- Yumi Ishiyama: "Yumi" is the Japanese word for bow, as in a bow-and-arrow. As a name, however, Yumi's full name translates to "Beauty of the Stone Mountain."
- "Sissi" is a nickname, but still very fitting for Élisabeth Delmas, the self-proclaimed "princess" of the school.
- Kadic Academy owes its name to science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick.
- Taelia's name is an anagram of the name Aelita. Fitting, considering that Taelia being mistaken for Aelita is one of the central points of an episode.
- Mecha-Mooks:
- XANA's various monsters on Lyoko resemble real-life animals with robotic modifications. Except for the Megatanks and the Kolossus.
- Actual robots are deployed by XANA on Earth in Seasons 1 and 4.
- Medium Blending: The two worlds of the show are depicted in completely different mediums, to make very clear the transition from the "real" world to Lyoko. Ironically, the "virtual" world rendered in CG has naturally a more "realistic" look than the standard animation of the "real world". But you get used to it.
- The Men in Black:
- The Men in Black chasing Franz Hopper in the flashbacks.
- And the two unrelated (?) secret agents in "False Lead".
- Mental Time Travel: While never explicitly confirmed, this appears to be how Return to the Past works, sending everyone's minds backwards in time and only keeping the memories of those scanned by the Supercomputer. This would also explain why it can't be used to bring the dead back to life, as they would have no consciousness to send back.
- Mercy Killing: The Lyoko Warriors use a non-lethal variant of this many times when one or more of them needs to devirtualize themselves in a hurry and Jérémie can't do it for some reason. Basically, it involves a teammate turning his weapon on the other in order to reduce his or her life points to zero (or two doing it to each other simultaneously, in extreme cases). More than once, Odd and Aelita have saved someone from falling into the Digital Sea this way.
- Mind-Control Eyes: All of XANA's creatures have his eye-like symbol. Those he mind-controls have their irises and pupils replaced with this symbol. Doesn't happen all the time, but they've been caught by flashing the eyes unnecessarily.
- Mirror Match: In episode "Revelation", Ulrich has to fight a Polymorphic Clone on Lyoko, at first looking like Odd, but then taking his appearance, leading to a fierce katana duel.
- Missed the Call: In the aforementioned prequel episode, it was Sissi, not Yumi, who found the factory with the others. She even planned on entering the "game" later, but before she did XANA got loose for the first time, and Sissi tattled because this was getting too real. As a result, the whole group was nearly arrested, and the others unsurprisingly agreed to keep her in the dark after returning to the past. Sadly, Ulrich decides to be a jerk to Sissi about it even though she doesn't remember what her mistake was, resulting in her becoming the group's Alpha Bitch nemesis for a good long while.
- Missing Mom: Anthéa Hopper, whose role in this mess has yet to be explained. (She may have been abducted by The Men in Black, but no one knows why.) The fact that Sissi doesn't have a mother is completely ignored.
- Mission Control: Jérémie's main role is assisting the virtualized warriors at the Supercomputer console.
- Mistaken Nationality: Yumi is repeatedly called Chinese in "XANA Awakens", much to her frustration.
- Monster of the Week: The first season is especially this, with most episodes being the kids fending off XANA attacks, without much plot development.
- Multiple Demographic Appeal: For an action series aimed at 6 to 12-year-old boys, the show has a surprising amount of teenage and older fans of both genders. This can be explained due to the amount of Fanservice from both genders, the dark theme, the semi-complex plot, and the well-rounded female characters balanced out with the male ones.
- Mundane Utility:
- Addressed in "The Chips Are Down", when Ulrich uses the Reset Button to rig a lottery ticket and win several million euros. It's completely possible to do this, but not a good idea since each Return to the Past makes XANA stronger. At the end of the episode, Ulrich donates the proceeds to an African development project, preserving the series status quo.
- Played completely straight when Ulrich, being a Virtual Ghost at the time because of Jérémie's latest bit of mad science, possesses Jim to use him as a pawn to keep himself from being knocked down to a remedial class.
- Mutual Kill: One of Yumi's victories over William is this, nailing him with her fans in a Boomerang Comeback just as he's devirtualizing her.William: It's game over, Yumi.
Yumi: For you too, handsome. - My Skull Runneth Over: Jérémie tries to use the Reset Button's quantum components to enhance his own brainpower in Season 2. Bad idea to start with, worse because XANA slipped him bad code.
- Near-Villain Victory: This is seriously the case in "Hot Shower". XANA's plan is so perfect, that Jérémie actually gives up. Really! The heroes only triumph because Aelita hedges all her bets on a hunch that XANA will abort his plan if it will result in her death (meaning he'll lose access to Franz Hopper); fortunately, her hunch pays off.
- Neck Lift: Poor Yumi is on the receiving hand of this in "The Robots" by a robot, one of XANA's creations.
- Nerves of Steel: The entire main cast has them, with a little Heroic Willpower built in. These kids are 13-14 years old (except Yumi, who's slightly older) and are constantly targeted by an insane computer trying to murder them. (See the
Nightmare Fuel page for the most extreme examples of why this Trope applies.) - Neuro-Vault: Lyoko's Keys were hidden inside Aelita's memory.
- Never Bring a Gun to a Knife Fight: At least not one with Ulrich. You'd think a Jedi Master taught him how to use a sword the way he can deflect laser beams with it. He even does so in the real world once!
- Never Recycle a Building:
- The kids go to an abandoned factory every episode. There's never any presence of demolition crews, and the plot only revolves around saving the factory from destruction when it's some attack from XANA — at least in the animated series. The non-canon spin-off comics have one story with a demolition crew about to raze the Factory, before being thwarted by the kids. Ironically, the actual factory that the series was based on
was demolished in 2004. - There is also the Hermitage, a posh house in the woods that has been left abandoned for 10 years. However, there are some hints of squatting (vandalism, tags on the walls...) and since the first time Team Lyoko visited it XANA was playing poltergeist, this might have chased any squatter earlier and given it a Haunted House reputation.
- The kids go to an abandoned factory every episode. There's never any presence of demolition crews, and the plot only revolves around saving the factory from destruction when it's some attack from XANA — at least in the animated series. The non-canon spin-off comics have one story with a demolition crew about to raze the Factory, before being thwarted by the kids. Ironically, the actual factory that the series was based on
- Never Recycle Your Schemes: XANA rarely tries the same attack twice. Sometimes, especially in the first season, the group takes action to prevent him from repeating a scheme, but other times you have to wonder why he doesn't just repeat an attack with a few modifications, considering the kids are so often only Just in Time to defeat him, sometimes within a few seconds. The biggest aversion is polymorphic clones, which get quite a few uses. XANA even recycles the specific scheme of using them for a Honey Trap in both "Image Problem" and "XANA's Kiss." The latter usage is more successful because XANA develops a better understanding of human emotions between the two episodes, allowing a much more convincing double.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!:
- Sissi's entire Alpha Bitch personality is a result of Ulrich, who was more of a Jerkass back then, mistreating her at the end of the pilot for something she had no memory of doing and shunning her away from him and his friends. To his credit, in the series finale he's the one to mend bridges and let Sissi join the group.
- The entirety of the first season becomes this once it's revealed that, whenever the Reset Button is pressed, XANA gets stronger. While XANA originally was only able to interact with the real world via taking control of objects, electronics, and occasionally causing some kind of fantastical disease to breakout, a few episodes into the second season showed the program had developed the ability to possess people and grant them supernatural abilities.
- Jérémie might be a Teen Genius, but that doesn't mean he's perfect. If he comes up with some brilliant new plan to fight XANA, there's a good chance that it won't work without him having to fix some potentially fatal problems first.
- In "Ultimatum", XANA takes Odd and Yumi as hostages and decides to lock them in a freezer, prompting the boy to protest that human beings are vulnerable to cold temperatures. A few episodes later, in one of the most impressive displays of its powers, XANA uses this knowledge to summon a blizzard above Kadic, nearly killing everyone in the facility and ultimately forcing Jérémie to trigger a Return to the Past.
- Jérémie almost causes them to lose Lyoko and get arrested during the events of "The Girl of the Dreams" when he mistakes a girl named "Taelia" for Aelita. In fairness, several clues help Jérémie's case, but he does the bare minimum research to make sure Taelia is indeed Aelita before introducing her to the supercomputer. She promptly slips away when Jérémie isn't paying attention and informs the principal and the authorities, and had the return trip not fired off, Jérémie would have been busy explaining everything to the police. Taelia, as it turns out, isn't Aelita like Jérémie hoped. She just coincidentally looks similar, so Jérémie, in his eagerness, just reveals everything to a total stranger under the assumption she's Aelita with memory loss when she's actually an orphan unrelated to their situation.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!:
- XANA occasionally ends up helping the group by accident. For instance, in "Is Anybody Out There?", Odd gets devirtualized after he finds the activated tower. This proves to be extremely fortunate, because if it hadn't happened, no one would have been around to type in the code "Scipio", and XANA would have stolen Aelita's memories!
- A Krab actually saves Odd's life in an early episode. He is about to fall into the digital sea (which entails permanent death); fortunately, the Krab devirtualizes him before that can happen.
- In "A Great Day", Sissi gets proof that Aelita isn't really Odd's cousin, and is going to expose them, with consequences that would certainly be terrible for the heroes and good for XANA. But then XANA possesses her, and in the process of trying to kill Ulrich, she accidentally destroys the evidence.
- Nice, Mean, and In-Between: The three most prominent female characters are polite, optimistic Nice Girl Aelita (Nice), vain, bratty Alpha Bitch Sissi (Mean), and caring and well-mannered but assertive and sometimes moody Cool Big Sis Yumi (In-Between).
- No Ontological Inertia: Almost nothing that XANA controls has any ontological inertia. Once the code "Lyoko" has been input into a tower, anything XANA is controlling (and only what XANA is controlling) will suddenly stop, and then time will reset. At one time, this even applied to a laser that was being fired at Yumi and suddenly halted inches from her face. A rare aversion is the zombie virus in "Attack of the Zombies" — the zombies do not turn back to normal when the tower is deactivated, and Jérémie actually turns into one after the tower is deactivated. This means a Return to the Past is required.
- No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup:
- Jérémie's one-shot materialization program in the first season. Saving a copy to a disk is apparently out of the question.
- Lyoko's temporary destruction is a subversion. While the Lyoko Warriors don't possess a backup, Franz Hopper does, which he happily provides (it isn't all of Lyoko, just the core, but it gives them a base to restore the rest on). In this instance, at least, one could reasonably assume that storing a backup copy of Lyoko would take an obscene amount of storage space, given the revolutionary hardware hosting it.
- Also subverted with Franz Hopper's diary videos. When a possessed Jérémie destroys them, his friends assume they're gone for good, but Jérémie had the foresight to back them up beforehand.
- Nom de Mom: Aelita eventually reveals offhand that she previously used this. After her father left Project Carthage and wanted to start over, he started going by his middle name and the family started using his wife's maiden name. His first name wasn't revealed on the show itself, but the closing credits sequence suggests it was Waldo, and we know his (and Aelita's) original last name was Schaeffer. Hopper came from her mother. This never becomes a plot point, and when she selects a new last name for herself, she picks Stones.
- Non-Action Guy: Downplayed. Jérémie is never shown fighting on Lyoko and is a pacifist most of the time, but he has pulled some pretty impressive feats in the real world, including knocking out a possessed criminal in "Common Interest". Out of all heroes, he's with Franz Hopper the one taking most of the credit for having defeated XANA.
- Noodle Incident:
- Given the number of times Jim would "rather not talk about it", the man seems to be made entirely of this trope. It is slightly subverted in the episode "I'd Rather Not Talk About It" (of course), in which Jim does talk about it, although it's only with Jérémie and we don't get to hear it. Nevertheless, it causes Jérémie to gain a healthy respect for Jim. Even better, at a skate demo, when Jim shows he is knowledgeable about skateboarding, it is a time when he does want to talk about it; rather, he is a little busy and doesn't have time to talk about it right then.
- Two minor ones are also referred to in the episode "Crash Course". (What exactly DID happen in the gym and at the swimming pool?) Three if you count whatever led to the protocol moniker "Big Fat Cheese-Head".
- Nothing Is Scarier: XANA is a Third Variation Example; somewhat subverted because the heroes know that he's there and he's trying to kill them. Still, he's an enemy that they can't see or hear, but one that is still more terrifying than any that they can.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- This happens a couple of times, and repeatedly to Aelita during Season 3, as XANA can have her enter a code to outright delete a sector.
- Typically, once someone is possessed by a Specter, they become completely unresponsive to questions and conversations. They will take the quickest route to the main group or the objective of the time, do whatever they have to ensure that no threats can interfere, and are not above attacking innocents in the way. They also become superhuman and incredibly aggressive.
- The main point of the episode "Image Problem" revolves around Yumi behaving incredibly strangely. She becomes aggressive with teachers, only talks about being sent to Lyoko, doesn't seem to respond to normal conversation, and outright flirts with Jérémie in an attempt to convince him. The group is definitely suspicious, but most of them aren't positive about what's wrong, with Jérémie believing it is a PTSD response to their last mission. Eventually they find out it isn't Yumi, but a Specter, and Yumi is still on Lyoko and trapped in a Guardian. This eventually leads to a showdown between the two.
- During the episode "Temptation", Jérémie is seen routinely acting like a jerk to the rest of the crew, refusing to answer questions and generally being defensive and rude. Unlike other instances where Jérémie usually became so out of response to something someone said or stressed, here he just acts extremely dismissive and rude to everyone with no obvious provocation, taking even the most innocent question as a direct personal attack. Eventually the group finds out he's boosting his intelligence with a machine from Franz Hopper's notes, and it's having a negative effect on his behavior, at one point knocking him unconscious. By the end of the episode, he returns back to normal, trashing the device as he realizes he never actually learned a single thing that could help him.
- During the episode "Wreck Room", the group realizes that the William Clone is acting a bit aggressive and competitive, something he was never programmed to do. They have the right suspicions, as he becomes violent and attacks the other students.
- During the episode "Ultimatum", Jean-Pierre simply wanders up and kidnaps Odd and Yumi. Obviously, the school is absolutely horrified at his actions, however, it doesn't take long for Jérémie and the group to realize that XANA is clearly behind this, and with a little help from the EMP, the principal is stopped, the threat is defeated on Lyoko, and the group launches a return trip to fix this.
- During "Contact", it takes the group a short bit to realize that Sissi's condition isn't normal, and she is under the influence of some kind of effect from Lyoko. Once they do figure it out, it turns out Franz Hopper possessed her so he could leave them a message.
- On Three: In "Sabotage", Ulrich, Aelita, and Odd are in Lyoko and need to get out. Ulrich comes up with a plan: they'll stand in a circle and each will simultaneously hit one of the others with an attack so that they'll all devirtualize. But first, Odd asks if they're going on three or after three.
- Once per Episode: Season 1 is defined by this: Virtualization on Lyoko... Tower deactivation... Return to the Past, regular as clockwork. Later seasons toned the last part down.
- One-Wheeled Wonder: Starting in Season 2, Ulrich has the Overbike, which also flies.
- Only Six Faces: Eyebrow shapes and hairstyles vary, but all the faces are pretty much the same. Except for the adults like Jim and Delmas.
- Other Me Annoys Me:
- In "Triple Trouble", when Odd is split into three, they fight over who gets to go to lunch, and who has to go to P.E. class. They also ruin a joke by inadvertently repeating it.
- Another example is in "XANA's Kiss". Odd complains to the clone he's fighting, telling it that if it's going to keep changing form, it should turn into a wimp next time. Its next form: Odd.
- In "Revelation", another Polymorphic Clone pulls a similar move on Ulrich, this time for strategy rather than mockery.
- In "A Lack of Goodwill", XANA-William is visibly annoyed with Jérémie after seeing his clone for the first time. The good William's reaction in "Fight to the Finish" isn't any better.
- Override Command:
- Code: LYOKO allows Aelita to control the towers, mostly used to deactivate towers controlled by XANA.
- Code: XANA is used by XANA-possessed Aelita in season 3 to destroy the sectors of Lyoko.
- Code: EARTH is used at the end of season 1 to materialize Aelita in the real world.
- Pair the Smart Ones: Jérémie and Aelita are the smartest characters on the show, being a Teen Genius and a Benevolent A.I. who it turns out was actually also a Teen Genius human girl before she got permanently virtualized by her father. They're also shown to be a steady couple from the first episode all the way through to the last.
- Pajama-Clad Hero: Some of XANA's attack happens at night, and the heroes don't always have the time to get dressed before dealing with the emergency. Notably in the episode "Is Anybody Out There?", where they have to trek to the factory in their nighties. It doesn't matter so much once they reach the scanners, though, since their Lyoko avatars are always fully equipped.
- Parody Sue: Brynja Heringsdötir, Sissi's Icelandic pen pal from the season 4 episode "Kadic Bombshell". She's beautiful, popular, and perfect in every way. All the boys want her, all the girls want to be her. She's also shallow and vapid, treats people like crap, and ruins everything she touches to the point that it comes as a bit of a surprise that she's not one of XANA's specters sent to disrupt the kids' activities. In the end, Sissi sends her off to stay with her cousin in the country in order to not have to deal with her anymore.
- Parrying Bullets:
- Ulrich is practically the equal to any Jedi Master at doing this, able to use his katana to deflect the energy weapons of XANA's mooks with relative ease.
- Yumi can also do it with her fans, but she's not as good at it as Ulrich is and has a tendency to let shots slip through from time to time.
- The Password Is Always "Swordfish": The password to deactivate the towers is the name of the virtual world. However, only Aelita can enter it properly, because she holds the keys to Lyoko.
- Phlebotinum Breakdown: Statistically rare considering how often the scanners are used; nonetheless, sometimes the problems faced by the heroes aren't due to XANA's sabotages but to some bug of the Supercomputer or wrong manipulation. Notably:
- A botched virtualization that stuck Jérémie in the limbo between Earth and Lyoko in "Frontier".
- Switching Odd and Yumi's minds in "A Fine Mess".
- Toying with a teleportation power that results in three Odds in "Triple Trouble".
- Melding Kiwi with Odd in "Dog Day Afternoon".
- A random bug causing spontaneous devirtualizations in "Hard Luck".
- Really, just about any time Jérémie tries out a new program he's hacked together, it will screw up somehow.
- Pillar of Light:
- One appears on Lyoko whenever a monster or hero falls in the Digital Sea (save for William).
- Also occurs at the beginning of a Return to the Past sequence, when an expanding pillar of light bursts from the holographic display in the lab.
- Plagiarism in Fiction: In "End of Take", it's implied that fictional director James Finson is a rampant plagiarizer, considering his next movie (which was being filmed in the Factory) stars an animatronic that looks like a cross between a Xenomorph and a Yautja. Ulrich even lampshades this plagiarism (Though he can't remember the original film's name) and James immediately tells Ulrich otherwise.James Finson: My creature is unique, young man, and my movie will be like no other ever made!
- Playing Sick: A standard excuse to get out of class and go save the world. Oddly enough, the teachers almost always fall for this, except on one occasion. Of course, they don't remember most previous incidents thanks to the Return to the Past.
- Plot Armor:
- The Lyoko Warriors are sometimes shown surviving an otherwise deadly attack if the plot calls for it. One of the biggest examples is Odd not being devirtualized after being slashed in the face by William in the episodes "Replika" and "Bragging Rights".
- XANA-William is often devirtualized or defeated due to this for example in episodes such as "Bad Luck", where he could've easily dodged the falling pillar with his Super Smoke, "Replika" and "Bragging Rights", where he should've instantly devirtualized Odd the second the latter was hit by William's Zweïhander (it's not explained how Odd tanked the attack), "Distant Memory" where he could've killed Franz Hopper with one simple Sword Beam and much, much more episodes. As codelyoko.fr puts it
:In the same way he was on Earth, William is tossed around by the writing... and the writers. He was changed into the most powerful Lyoko Warrior because a super-powerful humanoid enemy to oppose the Lyoko Warriors would be great for the final season of Code Lyoko... And he often lost to his adversaries in illogical ways because he "had to lose" at that given moment. Some defeats were humiliating and clearly justified by a need laid out by the episode's story. - In the episode "Franz Hopper", there is absolutely no way XANA should have lost. He's successfully manipulated the group to kick out Jérémie, has Ulrich, Yumi, and Odd trapped on Lyoko without weapons, has hacked the virtualization process so their devirtualization would have actually killed them, has Aelita isolated, and has complete control of the supercomputer. Jérémie's chances of defeating XANA's Specter were pretty much nil, so the writers suddenly have him program a clone Aelita on the fly to take Aelita's place and taunt the Specter, causing it to leave the computer unguarded. This lets Jérémie sit down just long enough to help Ulrich, Yumi, and Odd before the Specter comes back and starts strangling Jérémie, raising the question of why he just didn't do that the moment Jérémie showed up.
- Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure:
- In "Laughing Fit" Yumi's parents have a falling out for reasons that are never explained.
- Aelita and Odd have an argument in the episode "Replika", in which Odd is angry at Aelita for not finding an excuse for him to sleep out of a test, while Aelita is angry that Odd expected her to lie due to his laziness. While they do make up by the end of the episode, they keep up appearances of the argument at school to assuage any possible suspicions.
- Porn Stash: Subverted. During a room inspection, Jim notices some magazines under Jérémie's mattress. Turns out they're just computer magazines.
- Possession Levitation: After XANA possesses William, he gains several powers, including levitation.
- Post-Kiss Catatonia: At the end of "XANA's Kiss", Aelita kisses Jérémie, causing him to seize up and go motionless for a long while as the show goes to credits.
- Poster-Gallery Bedroom: Includes the obligatory Einstein pic in Jérémie's room.
- The Power of Friendship: Despite frequent Teeth-Clenched Teamwork scenarios, the only reason the gang doesn't simply shut down the supercomputer in the first two seasons is because they don't want to lose Aelita.
- Powers as Programs: The protagonists' powers really are programmed. Unfortunately for them, the show treats programming realistically, so any addition (even by the team's two Teen Geniuses) is a difficult and time-consuming task — and may as well induce "bugs" that need first to be worked out (as in the episode "Triple Trouble"). On the other hand, XANA, being a superior Artificial Intelligence, can easily boost the heroes' powers — but since he's the Big Bad he reserves this for his mind-controlled puppets. Fortunately for them, what XANA can do from his end is limited by his own processing power. Things get kind of bad when he escapes to the Internet, and they make him mad enough to create a nearly invincible monster that easily one-shots them.
- Powers That Be: Until the very end of the show, we do not see XANA, just his influence.
- Powers via Possession: People possessed by XANA's specters gain super strength, lightning, and toughness. Jérémie also manages to create his own artificial specter in one episode which gives a person similar abilities, albeit a bit weaker.
- Precision-Guided Boomerang: Yumi's tessen fans work like this. Less commonly, Ulrich's sword when thrown behaves similarly.
- Princesses Prefer Pink:
- Aelita is often said to be the "princess" of Lyoko (hence Ulrich and Odd's nickname for her), and she sure seems to like pink. Even her hair and Energy Balls are pink.
- Sissi is a self-proclaimed princess with pink clothes and underwear.
- Promotion to Opening Titles: William in Season 4.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: During the first season, before the show completely found its groove, the heroes could suffer from this. Potentially justified as the characters are young teenagers.
- In one episode, Sissi tricks Ulrich by writing a note pretending to be Yumi, and that's considered terrible. In a different episode, Ulrich and the gang trick Herb by writing a note pretending to be Sissi, and that's considered perfectly OK!
- Another episode put it even further by centering morality around Yumi alone: in this episode, Odd inadvertently publishes an embarrassing photo of Yumi in Kadic's newspaper, understandably making her pissed off. Scared of Yumi's wrath, Odd convinces Ulrich to take the blame for him without telling him what the blame is. After Ulrich learns it and ends up with Yumi angry at him, he attempts to convince Odd to tell the truth to her, until Yumi assumes he did it because of their Unresolved Sexual Tension and forgives him, causing him to keep the silence after all. In the end, Odd finally tells the truth to Yumi, and how does she react? By being pissed off again for them "tricking her" and taking her revenge on both Ulrich and Odd by publishing a compromising photo of them in the newspaper. Yeah, because Ulrich was so nasty by taking wrongly all the blame for the sole sake of helping his best friend...
- Psychic Powers:
- Aelita's second sight grants her omniscience on Lyoko.
- Odd's future flash stuns him momentarily as he sees a vision. It's lost after the first season, as Jérémie accidentally erased it and didn't bother programming it, as he felt it was useless.
- Yumi's telekinesis allows her to move objects and allies with her mind.
- Publicly Discussing the Secret: The heroes regularly discuss XANA's activities. This has gotten them into trouble a couple of times, but because their super-computer has Return to the Past functionality, they're able to undo anyone finding out too much. They also pretend to be discussing some video game or movie when someone happens to inquire about it.
- Rapid-Fire Typing: Jérémie in every single episode.
- Real-Place Background:
- In the episode "Guided Missile", Jérémie gives his GPS co-ordinates as N47.4313 E01.3445, which is just south of the city of Blois, in central France
. - The Factory is based on an old Renault plant and headquarters located in Boulogne-Billancourt
that was demolished in 2004. - Kadic Academy is remarkably similar to a school a few kilometers away
.
- In the episode "Guided Missile", Jérémie gives his GPS co-ordinates as N47.4313 E01.3445, which is just south of the city of Blois, in central France
- Red Herring: In Season 4, the fourth Navskid (obviously prepared for William) ends up never being used.
- Reset Button: In nearly every episode, the effects of XANA's attack are undone via Mental Time Travel. The main kids aren't affected by it, but students and faculty who discover them (and become allies or enemies) go back to being ignorant. It's used more sparingly in the second season after they discover that using it empowers XANA. Even after the link to XANA is severed at the end of Season 2, the Return to the Past is still employed conservatively, if mostly to prevent mucking with the narrative.
- Rivals Team Up: In "The Robots", the team enlists Herb's help to create a device to fight XANA's androids, and he actually does a pretty good job. Unfortunately, the Return to the Past trip erases Herb's memory of the event and ruins any chance of them becoming friends permanently.
- Robot War: XANA has created an army of robots to enslave mankind late in season 4, but is killed just as they are activated.
- Running Gag:
- "Are you OK? Say something!" "Something." This gag was started by Odd early in season 2, but then everyone started copying it.
- Someone from Kadic Academy (Jim, Sissi, Milly/Tamiya, etc.) discovering everything, only for Jérémie to nonchalantly wipe their memories with a Return to the Past.
- The similarities between any given one of XANA's plans, and the episode plots of the fictional TV program Hospital of Horrors.
- Sadistic Choice: In the very aptly named episode "Cruel Dilemma", the gang has to choose between materializing Aelita or Yumi who had fallen into the Digital Sea.
- Sarcasm-Blind: In "Final Mix", Sissi is banned by her father from going to the dance party because she didn't study for her exam. Naturally, she ignores this and goes to the dance anyway. Cue the following exchange with Nicolas:Nicolas: You snuck out?
Sissi: No, no. My father said, "You're gonna repeat the year, but it's no big deal sweetie. It doesn't mean you can't have a good time."
Nicolas: Is that what he said?
Sissi: [agitated] Oh you're such an idiot! Of course, I snuck out, what do you think?! - Saying Too Much: The fake Franz Hopper criticizes Jérémie about letting his diary be ruined, something the real Franz Hopper would have had no way of actually knowing, thus revealing himself to be XANA in disguise. This, however, takes a bit to register in Jérémie's mind because his whole group effectively turned against him.
- Scenery Porn: Frédéric Perrin's work on the backgrounds used almost endlessly in the animated sequences fits this to a capital "T".
- School Play:
- The classical Romeo and Juliet in "Laughing Fit".
- Cyrano de Bergerac in "Temporary Insanity".
- Scientist Video Journal: In episode 52, "The Key", Jérémie shows to his crew the video journal of Franz Hopper. He documents in his journal how he initially created the A.I. "XANA" to counter the military program Carthage. Later on, Franz Hopper hides himself in the world of Lyoko as they are after him, Hopper loses control of XANA, leading to it becoming a threat, as chronicled in Hopper's video log. Hidden in Lyoko, Franz Hopper is not able to return to the real world, thus making the journal a vestige of his existence, waiting for someone in the future to find it.
- Sdrawkcab Speech: In "Contact", it's possible to notice that the Franz-possessed Sissi is speaking backwards. Using software to play it backwards reveals the message "I can help you! I want to enter into contact with you now. I'm Franz Hopper. I can help you!".
- Secret Diary: Ulrich and Sissi have diaries that appear in "Log Book". Yumi's diary appears in "Lost at Sea". Jérémie's diary is occasionally shown making video logs of the group's adventures in Lyoko, featuring most prominently in the last episode, "Echoes".
- Secret Identity Blunder: A variation since the main component in this example is their secret life fighting XANA. During "Temporary Insanity", Odd and Ulrich are in the middle of a School Play when they suddenly start blurting out callouts they would usually only make on Lyoko. They quickly realize what they are doing and stop... but then it happens again and again and gets worse and worse until all they are doing in the real world is blunders.
- Self-Duplication: On Lyoko, Ulrich has the ability to create two clones of himself, called Triplicate. Alternatively, he can use this power in congruence with his Supersprint to perform a move called Triangulate.
- Series Continuity Error: The first part of the "XANA Awakens" two-parter has a moment where Odd deflects a Blok's laser with a Deflector Shield that he creates from his arms. "XANA Awakens" is a prequel that occurs before Season 1, so Odd shouldn't have the shield ability as he doesn't get it as a new skill until Season 2.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: If an episode features a Return to the Past, the Lyoko Warriors will usually do this afterwards, taking steps to prevent a mistake or conflict that occurred the first time around, or making it more difficult for XANA to repeat an attack.
- Shipper on Deck:
- The whole gang for Jérémie and Aelita. They spend Season 1 risking not only their own lives but the entire world so that Jérémie can come face-to-face with his virtual girlfriend.
- Yumi's little brother Hiroki for Yumi and Ulrich. Odd also shows hints (he buys Yumi a present in Ulrich's name to smooth out a misunderstanding and gives Yumi a very flattering and heartfelt explanation for why Ulrich might have embarrassed hernote ).
- The end credits for the first season include a shot of Jérémie and Odd pushing an embarrassed Yumi and Ulrich toward one another, implying that they're this. For the most part, though, in the actual show, they're not.
- Shock and Awe: Lightning is a common weapon of Specter-possessed people and Polymorphic Clones.
- Shoot the Dog:
- The first time that the party dematerialized one of their number with their weapons, it looked like this, with Yumi sounding grimly resolute when she suggested it. Later on, as the gang becomes more experienced, it becomes more of an accepted way of salvaging the mission when Jérémie is unable to act.
- Aelita intentionally invokes Code: XANA and nukes the Ice Sector in "Sabotage", saving the rest of the Supercomputer.
- Shout-Out:
- MoonScoop has confirmed that Kadic Academy was named after Philip K. Dick.
- A Totoro plush toy can be seen in Yumi's bedroom.
- The icons on Jérémie's computer are Aurebesh
, the writing system from Star Wars. - In the episode "End of Take", a film is being shot with an alien that is a blatant rip-off of the Xenomorph. Ulrich lampshades the similarities and nearly name-drops the franchise's name before being interrupted.
- In the episode "Attack of the Zombies", Bruce Willis himself gets name-dropped. In an earlier episode "Holiday in the Fog," Sissi describes Jérémie as "The closest thing to Bruce Willis."
- At the end of the episode "Vertigo", Odd comments that he would love to turn invisible, like Susan of the Fantastic Four. Note that MoonScoop also produced Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes, although this comment predates it.
- In the episode "The Secret", the demolition worker controlled by XANA distinctly looks like Mario. William even calls him a "super-plumber".
- Taking note of Jérémie's attempts to follow in Hopper's footsteps, XANA accuses Jérémie of being "the sorcerer's apprentice", referencing the classic tale in which a novice sorcerer's lack of skills nearly destroys his master's work.
- In one episode, Odd comments on being great with women; immediately, a girl walks up to Odd and smacks him; he has just finished commenting on "not knowing what this is about" when another girl, seeing the first, walks up and smacks him for being seen with the other girl. Odd then admits he might have deserved that one.
- In "The Pretender", when the main characters notice the XANA-possessed crows staring ominously at them, Odd remarks that the scene is eerily similar to "a dumb flick where birds attack the heroes" and adds that it wasn't even scary.
- Ulrich's katanas glow blue when he fights with them. In the season 4 episode where Aelita is controlled by XANA and she steals one of Ulrich's swords, the katana glows red in her hand. This gives the ensuing duel a very strong "Jedi vs. Sith" look.
- Show Within a Show: Hospital of Horrors. Though never shown on-screen, from the comments made about it the show sounds like a mix of Medical Drama and cheesy horror B-movies.
- Sick Captive Scam: Performed by a specter in "Common Interest" after possessing the criminal Peter Duncan. He feigns passing out in order to get the police driving the armored transport to stop and open the door to check on him, before taking the police out with his superpowers.
- Skirts and Ladders: In "Is Anybody Out There?", Odd and Aelita have to rush to the Factory in their nightwear. And when they're climbing down the ladder to the sewer, Odd's gaze is firmly set toward Aelita's pantless nightgown.
- Smart People Play Chess: Aelita and Jérémie are often seen playing chess. Jérémie in particular is shown to wipe the floor with Ulrich in this game.
- So What Do We Do Now?: In the final episode, Odd and Ulrich show reluctance when Yumi proposes shutting down the Supercomputer, as they will miss their adventures on Lyoko and are unsure whether they will be able to readjust to their normal lives.
- Sorcerer's Apprentice Plot: Invoked at one point, when Franz Hopper accuses Jérémie of being "the sorcerer's apprentice" and screwing everything up by using the Supercomputer. Actually, it's XANA trying to get Jérémie out of the way for his latest plot.
- Spike Balls of Doom: Three of these defend the International Space Station taken over by XANA in Season 4.
- Spinning Out of Here: The teens rotate in the scanners before being transported to Lyoko.
- Spoiler Opening: Inverted. The end credits from season 2 onward involve images of a folder full of information on the character who everyone at the time is referring to as Franz Hopper, but the tag on the front of the folder clearly says "Waldo Schaeffer".
- Spot the Imposter: Happens frequently with the Polymorphic Clones.
- The first occurrence was with XANA himself impersonating Jérémie in "Ghost Channel".
- Aelita could tell Jérémie apart from his double in "XANA's Kiss". It happens a second time in the same episode: Odd has to decide between the Polymorphic Clone and Yumi, and figures it out because the real Yumi called him "pea-brain".
- Jim isn't so lucky with his nephew Chris in "Opening Act".
- Stealth Pun: Source material dictates that Aelita was born in the United States. That both means that she was "Born in the USA" and "An American in Paris".
- Stepping-Stone Sword:
- Happens a few times with Ulrich's katanas; sometimes for himself, sometimes for other characters.
- Everyone also seems to use William's BFS for this whenever he gets it stuck in a wall.
- Stock Footage:
- The first episode reuses some scenes from Garage Kids.
- In Season 2, footage from Season 1 is used as Aelita deactivates Towers, despite the Art Evolution making the difference between the old and new models very clear. It's not until Season 3 that new scenes of Aelita in the Towers are used, such as when she starts deleting the sectors of Lyoko. Even then, some Season 3 episodes still use the Season 1 footage when she deactivates towers.
- Battle sequences on Lyoko are very frequently recycled between episodes. One instance is Yumi's battle against William in "The Lake", which consists entirely of scenes from their previous scuffle in "Wreck Room", only played in a different order.
- Stop, or I Shoot Myself!:
- A variation is used where Aelita's friends threaten to kill her before the Scyphozoa can Mind Probe her (which would kill her too), forcing XANA to order the monster to release her.
- In "Hot Shower", Aelita sets up a situation where the Supercomputer can't be destroyed without killing her, and XANA aborts his Colony Drop attempt (as he needs her alive, so he can lure out Franz Hopper from the Digital Sea).
- Story-Breaker Power: Triplicate. It's the only Lyoko power to not leave the user vulnerable while being performed, provides a solid defense, and the clones are capable enough to curb-stomp XANA's forces on their own (watch "Tip-top Shape" for the best example of this). It got so bad that season 4 worfed it by having William effortlessly counter the ability when it's used against him, thus intimidating Ulrich from using it again for the rest of the series.
- Strictly Formula: For the first season, the plot of just about every episode is: Something strange happens around the school. Jérémie correctly thinks it's XANA, but Odd doesn't. Jérémie and one or two of the Lyoko Warriors go to the factory. The remaining one or two of the three must stay behind in danger to heighten the drama. The virtualized Warriors fight 3-5 monsters while escorting Aelita to the tower. The in-danger team members are saved Just in Time by the tower de-activation plus a Return to the Past. The team returns to a scene from the beginning of the episode, usually Played for Laughs.
- Super Drowning Skills: Falling into the Digital Sea is immediately lethal for the Lyoko Warriors or the monsters. The backstroke in ordinary bodies of water, however, is perfectly fine for the heroes (but terrestrial monsters can't swim). Although it is confirmed in Season 4 that the Digital Sea is not a literal sea, but rather the edge of Lyoko. Also, it's implied in "Cruel Dilemma" that the person wouldn't actually die, but simply be trapped, unable to return.
- Superstition Episode: In the episode "Hard Luck", Odd accidentally breaks a mirror. Ulrich tells him he'll get seven years of bad luck. Odd doesn't believe it and rants about how various superstitions are ridiculous. However, a series of unfortunate events plague him and eventually, the rest of the team starts to consider him bad luck. At the end of the episode Odd finally admits he is jinxed, only for Aelita to tell him jinxes don't exist and he has to wait for his luck to change. It does.
- Tagline: "Can you keep a secret?"
- Taken for Granite: XANA tries something like this in "Triple Trouble", unleashing a fog on the whole city that can turn people into stone. (Which is sort of strange, seeing as it more resembled his MO from the first season, rather than anything related to his goal in the third.)
- Taking the Bullet: It's frequent in Season 1, especially for Odd, to protect Aelita. Considering who this series is aimed at, of course, the bullets in question this time around are laser beams, and they only cause devirtualization, not permanent death.
- Team Pet: Kiwi is Odd's loyal dog. Sometimes he helps fight, but because dogs aren't allowed at Kadic, he's often a liability. The other Warriors have some affection for him but often lose their patience.
- Techno Babble: Second nature to Jérémie and Aelita.
- Teen Genius: Two, Jérémie and Aelita. Two and three-quarters counting Herb.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Every other episode due to some sort of betrayal, XANA-mitigated or otherwise.
- Teleporter Accident: The scanners technically don't "teleport" the team, but similar accidents have happened:
- In "Frontier", Jérémie tries to go to Lyoko to apologize to Aelita after an argument, but Yumi makes a mistake trying to send him there, resulting in him being trapped in limbo between Lyoko and the real world, and in danger of disappearing completely. (Rescuing him ultimately requires Ulrich to kiss Sissi and go out with her for a month.)
- In "Dog Day Afternoon", Odd tries to take Kiwi with him to Lyoko, only for the scanner to merge them into one body, giving him no end of trouble until Jérémie can reverse the problem.
- In "Triple Trouble", Jérémie programs a new ability for Odd's Lyoko form to replace the precognitive visions he had lost; unfortunately, this causes the scanners to malfunction when he returns to Earth, causing three of him to emerge. (and they can't get along or cooperate with each other at all.)
- In "A Fine Mess", a bug in the scanners causes Odd and Yumi to experience a "Freaky Friday" Flip; but then it gets much worse. Going to Lyoko like this makes them unstable and at risk of being deleted permanently. Fixing it requires going to Sector V so Aelita can access XANA's private files in the Celestial Dome access computer, which she does at the last minute.
- Tentacle Rope:
- In "XANA Awakens" and "Ghost Channel", XANA possesses electrical cables which then restrain Jérémie.
- Also, with the Season 3 episode "Sabotage" and the creeping vines, particularly for Yumi.
- The Scyphozoa's tentacles, however, don't quite touch Aelita when they wrap around her, which happens several times (plus once to Yumi and William each).
- Terminator Impersonator: In the episode creatively titled "The Robots", XANA creates a robot that superficially resembles the exoskeleton of the T-800 to hunt down the heroes.
- Thanks for the Mammary: Jérémie accidentally "touches" Aelita while she's invisible in "Vertigo".
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: The heroes regularly have to interrupt a meal because of a XANA emergency, despite Odd just hating this to happen.
- Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Ulrich and William are very guilty of this. Ulrich's katana even wanders into Precision-Guided Boomerang territory at times.
- Title Theme Tune: Both in French and English.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Yumi and Aelita — or Yumi and Sissi as rivals (sort of) go.
- Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Aelita uses her Decoy Getaway trick to escape the Scyphozoa. The monster is fooled and tries to use its memory-draining powers on the clone... which results in it becoming sick.
- Took a Level in Badass:
- William initially appeared to be a secondary character to build tension for Yumi and Ulrich's relationship, merely getting in the way and even stalking Yumi. Then he enters Lyoko, where he gets a giant sword, although he gets an evil makeover as well after being possessed by XANA. He even has
Awesome music
accompanying his fights throughout Season 4. - Also in season 4, after being corrupted by the Scyphozoa, Aelita takes a katana right out of Ulrich's hand mid-attack and proceeds to wipe the floor with him
.
- William initially appeared to be a secondary character to build tension for Yumi and Ulrich's relationship, merely getting in the way and even stalking Yumi. Then he enters Lyoko, where he gets a giant sword, although he gets an evil makeover as well after being possessed by XANA. He even has
- Traveling at the Speed of Plot: The amount of time, until XANA's current plot completes, is always just long enough that the Lyoko Warriors will beat it with a couple of seconds to spare, if that. Same with the Sector 5 countdown or the second layer of the Core shield. They rarely run out of time, either; if XANA wins, it's nearly always by defeating the heroes, not just running out the clock. Most Egregiously, whenever a countdown clock is seen on the supercomputer, it'll usually be only a few milliseconds away from reaching zero, despite the fact that the Lyoko Warriors apparently have enough time to stop it.
- Turned Against Their Masters:
- XANA rebelled against his creator, Franz Hopper.
- And Jérémie walked in Franz's footsteps with the "Marabounta".
- Unfinished, Untested, Used Anyway: A lot of Jérémie's gadgets and inventions are created on the fly and immediately put into play on the field. Sometimes this works out, and other times, it doesn't:
- In "Swarming Attack", he uses a specialized robot to distract and repel the hornet swarm XANA has possessed. The batteries give out at the worst possible moment, leading to Ulrich nearly getting stung to death.
- In "Marabounta", he creates the eponymous program as a means of fighting XANA's monsters and achieving victory much faster. It works well at first... until it detects Aelita's link to XANA, mistaking her for a threat and trying to kill her before becoming autonomous and spreading out of control throughout Lyoko; only through an Enemy Mine between the Lyoko Warriors and XANA himself is the creature stopped.
- In "Nobody in Particular", he creates a program to virtualize the Lyoko Warriors directly into Sector Five rather than having to access it through one of the other four Sectors. The first test separates Ulrich's mind from his body, allowing XANA to possess him and attack Lyoko's core.
- Unknown Rival:
- Sissi. She considers Yumi her rival, but Yumi for the most part barely acknowledges a rivalry, most likely knowing Sissi is a Hopeless Suitor anyway.
- Also, Herb seems to consider Jérémie a rival in school achievements. Jérémie doesn't notice.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension: Ulrich and Yumi, to the greatest excesses possible in Western Animation. Sissi and Odd to a far lesser extent.
- The Un-Reveal: Jérémie's appearance on Lyoko is never revealed to the viewer. The one time he actually virtualizes with no hiccups, he refuses to speak of it afterward, with Ulrich commenting that he looked ridiculous.
- Viewer-Friendly Interface: In the very frequent event of something going wrong on Lyoko, Jérémie's computer typically displays a massive flashing "!" accompanied by frantic beeping. If something works, we see "+".
- Villain of Another Story: Project Carthage was essential for the back story on Franz Hopper, but the Lyoko Warriors don't seem to care about them.
- Virtual Materialization:
- The heroes' goal throughout the first season was to bring Aelita out of Lyoko, which succeeds in the season finale. The next season reveals that this was an inversion as she originated on Earth in the first place.
- On the villain side, some of XANA's plan-of-the-week involve materializing its virtual monsters in the real world, such as the Kankrelats in "False Start" and the Krabs in "A Bad Turn".
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Odd and Ulrich often fight but are friends in the end. Emphasized most in "Killer Music" - Ulrich is furious with Odd for constantly listening to an annoying song but is devastated and regretful when XANA puts him in a coma.
- Vocal Dissonance: One of the menacing government agents in "False Lead" has a weirdly high, squeaky voice.
- Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World: The premise of the series. This is one time where the heroes sometimes benefited from this trope — Time Travel is a good way to make up a missed class.
- Wham Episode:
- "The Key": We find out Aelita is actually Franz Hopper's human daughter, not an AI. After a Disney Death, Aelita is whole once again and no longer dependent on the supercomputer...but XANA is also free.
- "Final Round": Lyoko is outright destroyed, leaving the Warriors no way to fight XANA. William is now under XANA's control. But Franz Hopper is alive and is offering his help once again.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Mister Puck is demoted from the mysterious subject of Aelita's nightmares to a doll in her flashbacks. Perhaps the latter was his intended role all along, but the scenes in which Aelita sees related visions while awake in the episodes "New Order" and "Mister Puck" would suggest otherwise. Likewise, Mister Puck held the key to Franz Hopper's diary, and the last time Mister Puck is mentioned is by Franz in a flashback asking Aelita to be sure to bring the doll with her, which suggests what was hidden in the doll played some part in Project Carthage, but the show never follows up on this.
- What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Subverted; when Aelita is first materialized she often gets confused by emotions such as embarrassment, and by physical feelings such as being cold. In "Cruel Dilemma", though, Aelita is confused when Jérémie starts blushing when she says, "We can finally be face to face in the same room, touch each other, and even kiss."
- What the Hell, Hero?: In one episode, Ulrich uses the Return to the Past sequence to help Yumi's parents with finances, buying a lottery ticket after learning the results. When the other members of the team find out, they really let him have it. (This was after it has been established that XANA is gaining power as a result of the frequent time hops.) Jérémie suspends him from the team and to add insult to injury, Yumi's folks give the ticket back, claiming it's too expensive a gift for them to accept. (Ulrich manages to redeem himself, and then decides to give the ticket to a charity.)
- What You Are in the Dark: Yumi and Ulrich, the Queen and King of UST, each wind up with unrestricted access to the other's diary at one point. Neither one ever considers reading it in order to gain insight into building a desired relationship. Ulrich only opens Yumi's long enough to find out what it is when it got dropped next to him (and even when he sees a photo of himself taped inside, he doesn't in any way use that knowledge against her or so much as theorize as to the implications). Even when Odd suggests it as being a golden opportunity to see what Yumi truly thinks of him, Ulrich instantly shuts it down as morally wrong. Yumi doesn't so much as open Ulrich's since she already knew who it belonged to and simply gave it back to him.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Done on a national level in the English dub. Kadic is ostensibly located in France, given the show's national origin, satellite imagery, and the presence of FA-MAS rifles. But we learn in season 2 that it is certainly NOT located in France from an offhand remark about Kadic Academy participating in a foreign exchange program with France.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
- Ulrich suffers from vertigo
every now and then, and some spots involving him and high places are particularly rocky. It's not that he's afraid of heights, it's that high places are more likely to agitate his condition. He tries his best to suppress this, though. - Aelita has a bad thing for wolves. They frequently show up in her dreams or hallucinations.
- Ulrich suffers from vertigo
- Won't Get Fooled Again: In "Opening Act", Yumi briefly gets the upper hand against William by using her telekinesis to alter her fans' trajectory and strike him In the Back. When she attempts the same strategy again in "Lab Rat", William takes notice and counters by destroying the fans as they approach him from behind.
- The Worf Effect: Once at the start of every season:
- Season 2 begins with Yumi, Odd, and Ulrich being soundly defeated by a Tarantula.
- The first episode of season 3 hints Aelita is on the road to becoming the strongest Lyoko warrior, only for the following one to put her right back into the Damsel in Distress role by having the Scyphozoa No-Sell her newfound abilities.
- Finally, season 4 shows Jérémie has upgraded the Lyoko Warriors' arsenal. XANA-fied William still wipes the floor with everyone until the Replikas plot line actually begins.
- World in the Sky: The four main sectors of Lyoko are composed of floating islands above the Digital Sea. The Mountain Sector, in particular, evokes the most this trope.
- Worthy Opponent: At the end of "Marabounta", XANA's monsters bow to the Lyoko Warriors after they have to work together to survive.
- Xenomorph Xerox: The episode "End of Take" has as Monster of the Week an animatronic suit possessed by XANA that is a virtual rip-off of the Xenomorph with Yautja-like head "dreadlock" tentacles (which it uses as actual Combat Tentacles). This look-alikeness is actually lampshaded (although Ulrich can't recall the original film's name) before being told by the director of the In-Universe film (that is using the factory as a film set) to shut up because it is a totally original alien design, honest!
- Xtreme Kool Letterz: The names used for XANA's monsters — Kankrelat, Blok, Krabe, Kongre, Rekin, Kalamar, Kolossus… justified in-show by Odd coming up with most of these.
- You Wouldn't Hit a Guy with Glasses: Played with in "Mister Puck"; Odd tells Herb to take off his glasses as he's about to punch him.
- Your Mind Makes It Real:
- Justifies the phantom pains felt by Yumi, Ulrich, and Odd upon taking damage, since they're non-natives to Lyoko. In one episode, a virus uploaded into the computer by XANA makes it TOO real, with one shot hitting causing immense and dramatic pain.
- Jérémie has theorized that a person's Lyoko form is reflective of his personality, subconscious desires, and dreams. For example, Yumi's pride in her heritage gave her the appearance of a Geisha, while Ulrich's lionhearted nature gave him the form of a Samurai.
- Zombie Apocalypse: "Attack of the Zombies" has XANA unleash a zombie plague on the school. Those who are bitten by the possessed Kiwi are transformed into green creatures that wander around aimlessly and infect those they come into contact with.
- Promoted to Playable: After appearing as an NPC or a boss in the previous games, William becomes playable in the Social Game.
Tower deactivated... Return to the Past now!
