Full Name: Megabyte
Nationality: Do viruses have nationalities?
Age: Unknown
Height: Tall, let's put it that way.
Weight: Heavy
Hair: None
Eyes: Green with red pupils
Source: ReBoot (1991-2001)
Distinguishing Features: Detachable legs, retractable claws,
red head-crest, large hinged jaw... everything, really.
Creator: --
A Terminal Virus with more than attitude, Megabyte is a super-villain who possesses a suave and polite demeanor, the body and power of a God, and the kind of intelligence that would rival the head-honchos of MENSA. He is the ultimate in bad guys and my current Char' of the Mo'.
We're introduced to Megabyte pretty much straight-off in the first episode of ReBoot. Clearly a force to be reckoned with, his gentlemenly manner hides a ferocious animal and a guiltless ability to do whatever he pleases if it achieves his ends. He can coerce, he can manipulate, and, when all else fails, he can put up his fists, unleash his claws, and fight like an animal.
Unlike his insane sister, Hexadecimal, Megabyte is order personified. He commands vast fleets of armed troops and is also the head of his own spy network. Everything he does is thoroughly planned, thought-through, and, unlike most other children's villains, Megabyte also does a lot of his own dirty work; he's a fighting and thinking machine, and that, if one thinks about it, is the worst kind of enemy to have. In fact, one might say that Megabyte's only flaw is his insatiable lust for more, something which drives him on in his quest to one day escape the tiny system of Mainframe and reach the wider expanse of the Super Computer, where he'd have multitudes of other networks and systems to corrupt.
Megabyte's beginnings aren't easy to comprehend, be you Bootnik or not. Originally he and Hex were the same virus, Kilobyte, who, thanks to a rather fortunate twist of fate, was saved from deletion at the hands of the Guardians (defenders of the net). Picked up by some kind of inter-system gateway device, Kilobyte unpgraded to a large, energy-absorbing virus called Gigabyte just as he was transferred to the system of Mainframe - but once he landed in the city, his coding was split, and he became two viruses: Megabyte and Hexadecimal. This split, some might say, resulted in two facets of the same soul, two opposites of the same person who, when they merge, make a whole. Where Megabyte is Order, Hexadeciaml is Chaos; where Megabyte is extremely masculine, Hex is very feminine; where Megabyte is sane, Hex is insane. The two were split in such a way as to make them both a little less harmful than if they were together, though - if Megabyte had Hex's power, then he would be able to escape Mainframe and pursue his power-hungry ambitions, just as if Hex had Megabyte's intellect and emotional stability, she might too be an awesome threat.
Megabyte is a dictator, plain and simple, and is often referred to, a little disturbingly, as the führer by his German-accented doctor. His entire army's get-up seems to be based on the imagery of the Nazis, though, with his soldier-binomes unifromly dressed, and his viral-skull crest worn by all as an emblem of his tyrannical power and influence. The extreme state of order that Megabyte commands, with fanatical soldiers at his every beck and call, can only be reminiscent of the apparent order that the Third Reich represented; the evil of Mainframe is an infection, a cyber-disease, one which will only lift when the virus at its heart is destroyed, and if one wants to read too much into it, could be a metaphor for the evil that clearly exists, and has existed, in our own world.
Megabyte's life has had as many ups and downs as any other villain's, but he did get a remarkably long stint at the top once, when he used an invasion by the Web into Mainframe to his advantage. He managed to banish the system's Guardian, Bob, at the same time as he helped save the system from the Web creatures, and thus left its consequent defence in the hands of a small sprite named Enzo. It wasn't long before young Enzo was defeated in a Game, leaving Megabyte all but free to conquer the vulnerable system, but since Mainframe had been closed to the Web, he was left without an escape hatch, and was forced to rule a system he would much rather have abandoned. The tiger was trapped in his own cage.
When Mainframe finally got back on the Net, Enzo Matrix returned, fully grown from a life of Game-Hopping, and with the help of his allies, banished Megabyte to the Web. This should have destroyed the virus... but it wasn't to be.
Megabyte returned not long afterwards, complete with Trojan Horse viral capacity, and through a convincing charade, where he hid himself under the guise of Bob, he almost managed to get Dot Matrix to marry him! But his party was once again crashed when he was unmasked at the last moment by the real Bob, and was then forced to flee. This gave him the opportunity to initiate the next and final stage of his plan, though - and that was to get pure and simple revenge on all who had wronged him! The hunt was on...
Megabyte in my opinion is one of the few villains out there who can be called 'ultimate'. He carries all the characteristics of a perfect bad guy - intelligence, power, authority, wit, physical strength, you name it! - and is a true force to be reckoned with. He never makes pathetic mistakes or whines to his underlings for failings which are first and foremost his own; he never loses control of his violent side unless really necessary; he's an absolute icon of villainous perfection. Smooth-talking, virile and, despite his many crimes, incredibly likable, Megabyte is one of ReBoot's crowning glories and a well deserving Char' of the Mo'. Let's pray Bob never achieves his aims of reprogramming this virus...
The voice behind the monster was a man called Tony Jay, who you probably have never heard of before - I certainly hadn't until recently. Like most voice-over artists, Jay's contribution to the character, and the ReBoot show in general, have gone largely unnoticed, except by the inner-circle of fans, but he is no less appreciated for his work. His deep, masculine tone gave Megabyte the edge that the character so desperately needed and deserved, and one cannot imagine anyone else being able to successfully fill Megabyte's theoretical shoes.
Tony Jay's voicing credits are wide-reaching and include Lord Dregg in the original Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, Dr. Lipschitz in the Rugrats, Shere Khan in the second Disney Jungle Book film, and Claude Frollo of Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He unfortunately lost his life following complications during his cancer surgery in August 2006. May he rest in peace.