 | ReBoot: Encyclopedia II - ReBoot - Humour
ReBoot - Humour
ReBoot is full of computer and popular culture in-jokes that few people get the first time around. Among the most notable references are found on the episode Talent Night, the finale to the first season.
In that episode, Dot and a cubistic binome called Emma Fee are giving auditions for the birthday party show. Emma Fee is a prog sensor (presumably to be heard as "program censor") who keeps rejecting nearly every act for trivial reasons or to preserve morality or prevent depictions of violence. She heartily approves, however, of a group of male binome singers and dancers called the Small Town Binomes, who sing, in the style of YMCA, "It's fun to play in a non-violent way, with the B, S and P." The "Small Town Binomes" are also dressed in the same "macho" costumes the Village People wore on stage. In addition, "BS & P" happens to be the initials of the Broadcast Standards and Practices, ABC's censors. "BS & P" was used in a first-season episode to move Bob through a stained-glass window rather than shattering it, a technique the BS & P felt children would emulate. Further references to the American networks dropping ReBoot were inserted in the "Web World Wars" episode when Megabytes's Armored Binome Carriers ("ABCs") betrayed the Mainframe CPU fighters in mid-battle ("The ABCs have turned on us! Treacherous dogs!") and in the first episode of the third season, on a tombstone inside the "Evil Dead" game cube that read "Here lies the Mainframe joint venture, an unholy alliance."
"Talent Night" also featured "Johnny O. Binome," whose binary joke translates as "Take my wife, please,", a cyclops-like robot that served as the YTV logo (although in airings outside of Canada, the YTV logo, but not the robot, is omitted), and "Captain Quirk" an obvious William Shatner impersonation who did the first verse of Rocketman in the style Shatner himself used at the 1980 Science fiction awards ending with Quirk bowing, his tupee falling off, and dissapearing in the style of a Star Trek transporter.
The show occasionally featured a penguin that resembled Feathers McGraw from the Wallace and Gromit feature The Wrong Trousers. This may be a reference to Linux mascot Tux.
Later episodes featured direct parodies of films (the 'James Bond' oeuvre; Toy Story; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and TV classics such as Thunderbirds, Star Trek and The Prisoner. Other binomes to have had quick cameos included KISS, Sailor Moon, Indiana Jones, an Elvis Impersonator, and most famously, Fax Modem and Data Nully (the latter of which was voiced by The X-Files actress Gillian Anderson). In fact, in one episode when Mainframe is under going a system crash, Modem is looking at two signs, one saying "B.C." and the other "L.A." This lampoons the fact that David Duchovny moved the X-Files from Vancouver (where ReBoot was produced) to Los Angeles.
Although the "User" opponents featured in early episodes were usually invisible or designed with a minimalist appearance, increased computer generation power allowed the third and fourth season game cubes to feature users who were parodies of known game characters and actors. These included a Sonic the Hedgehog/Crash Bandicoot hybrid ("Rocky Raccoon," a Beatles reference, no less), Elmer Fudd (whose form Enzo reboots into), Bruce Campbell (in the "Evil Dead" game), Mike Myers (in an "Austin Powers"-style game), Brendan Fraser (in a game reminiscent of "The Mummy"), Scorpion (of Mortal Kombat fame) and a variety of action figures from G.I. Joe to Barbie.
A running gag on the show is the crushing of Herr Doktor's hands in odd ways, causing him to yell out "Mein digits!" in a German accent and adopt bandaged fingers for the remainder of the episode.
In the episode Crouching Binome, Hidden Virus, Mike the TV asks the rhetorical question "Is that really your pussy, Mrs. Slocombe?!". This is in reference to the British television series Are You Being Served?, in which the character Mrs. Slocombe owns a cat that she always refers to as her pussy.
Other related archives1990s, 1994, 2001, ABC, Are You Being Served?, Armored Binome Carriers, Artificial Intelligence, Beasties, Beatles, Brendan Fraser, Bruce Campbell, Burnaby, British Columbia, CBC, Canada, Canadian, Cartoon Network, CiTV, Circus Circus, Claster Television, Confucius, Crash Bandicoot, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Daemon, Dana Scully, Data Nully, David Duchovny, Disney, Dolph Lundgren, Elmer Fudd, Elvis, Fax Modem, Fletcher Christian, Fox Mulder, French, Gillian Anderson, HMAS Bounty, IMAX, ITV, Indiana Jones, James Bond, Joan of Arc, KISS, Las Vegas, Linux, List of ReBoot Episodes, Los Angeles, Luxor, Mac OS, Mainframe Entertainment, Marathon, March 1999, Mike Myers, Mike Teavee, Mississauga, Ontario, Mortal Kombat, Pong, README, Rocketman, SCSI, Sailor Moon, Shadow Raiders, Small Town Binomes, Sonic the Hedgehog, Sprites, Star Trek, System administrator, TV series, The Last Starfighter, The Prisoner, The Wrong Trousers, The X-Files, Thunderbirds, Toonami, Toy Story, Trojan Horse virus, Tron, Tux, UK, United States, Vancouver, Wallace and Gromit, Walt Disney Company, William Gibson, William Shatner, X-Files, X-ray vision, YMCA, YTV, animated series, benign, binary, byte, cartoons, cliffhanger, command.com, computer animated, computer mouse, data, decahertz, dot matrix printers, evil scientists, fax, hack and slash, hacker, hexadecimal, homosexual, insane, katana, malignant, mercenary, modem, movie, nibble, null, phong shading, ray tracing, read-only memory, remote control, science fiction, television, the strip, trident, unit of computer memory, virus, word
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Humour", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
