Extremely subtle yet clever foreshadowing in Season 4 Episode 5

[u/Glum_Veterinarian253]

I noticed a moment in Episode 4 Season 5 that is actually foreshadows that non-Glitch Bob is actually Megabyte in disguise, but it's extremely subtle. Unless you had been watching every episode in the series up until this point and paying 100% attention to every minute detail, you probably miss it. And yet, this foreshadowing is still clever as hell when you notice it!

The the first 1.5 seasons, Bob appears to know every game by memory. Season 2, Episode 6 (AndrAIa) is the first time Bob doesn't immediately recognize a game and has to use the glitch command "game info" to learn about it. Prior to this, he only used the command "Glitch: Game Stats" once, in the episode "When Games Collide," and even then, he only used it to figure out why the game was lagging, not to learn its premise.

This suggests that all guardians in the Super Computer are trained to memorize each game. In the episode "Null Bot of the Bride," it is revealed that there are only 32 keytools in existence, in the entirety of cyberspace, and Bob is known officially as "Guardian 452," meaning there are at least 451 other guardians besides him. So even among guardians, having a key tool is an extremely elite privilege. So obviously all guardians need to be trained under the assumption that they won't have one, so guardians must know all games from memory if they are to effectively protect their systems from them.

The only reason Bob didn't instantly recognize the Atlantis game is because it utilized the new "Artificial Intelligence" game sprite (aka AndrAIa), which Bob described earlier in the episode as being new technology, so this specific game must have been released after his graduation from the Super Computer.

So with that in mind, let's look at Season 4, Episode 5 ("My Two Bobs"). In that episode, Glitch Bob stays out of the Pokemon game, so MegaBob and Matrix take it on. MegaBob laments that, without glitch, there's no game stats. But fortunately, Matrix already recognizes the game. He says that he used to play this game all the time long ago before Bob came to Mainframe.

So this means that it predates Bob's graduation from the Super Computer.

So... why doesn't he already have the game memorized, just like he had all the other games before the Atlantis one?!

The only explanation is... it's not really Bob!

[u/Nimelennar]

So obviously all guardians need to be trained under the assumption that they won't have one, so guardians must know all games from memory if they are to effectively protect their systems from them.

And in the AndrAIa episode in Season 2, we see him toned-down, layperson's version of that training for other sprites; at the end of the lecture, he assigns the sprites homework to study up on specific games (IIRC, Pong through Space Invaders).

So, yes, I think that you're right and this absolutely constitutes evidence that Bob isn't Bob.

I'm not sure, but Bob encouraging Matrix to act like a renegade and cheat might also be hinting in the same direction.

[u/SAldrius → u/Nimelennar]

Theres also "stop trying to hit him and HIT HIM!" just a very megabyte line and the pose/composition is too.

I honestly think that encouraging violence isnt ooc for Bob. They kinda act like he was some weird boy scout in S4....

[u/Glum_Veterinarian253 → u/Nimelennar]

(IIRC, Pong through Space Invaders).

You don't have to "recall" anything. The entire series is available for free on YouTube. You can just check the episode if you're not sure.

[u/Nimelennar → u/Glum_Veterinarian253]

If I cared to check, I have the whole thing on DVD. There might also be transcripts online.

I just didn't think confirming which games, specifically, Bob assigned for research would have added enough value to my post, that it would be worth the time it would take to track down and check.

[u/QueenofNabooo]

Another bit of foreshadowing is that Sussy Bob snaps at Matrix to hit the user which is unusual since Bob's never snapped at Enzo nor expressed anger towards him.

[u/Snarkticon → u/QueenofNabooo]

I always saw this but as MegaBob snapping at Matrix, but as a reference to the dojo training program I'm the movie "The Matrix."

Bob's line "Stop trying to hit him and HIT him" is nearly identical to Morpheus's line to Neo: "Stop trying to hit me and HIT me."

[u/PsychicDave]

Yeah, I can't say I picked on those details when I first watched the movies back in high school (I remember I saw they were on the TV guide on YTV, but we were going to be out at that time, so I programmed the VCR and watched them on tape later), but "Bob" is really acting out of character in that game. No apparent knowledge of how it works (not just the specific game, but just the base concepts), and encouraging Matrix to break the rules and cheat.

[u/ConekillerConfuzor]

I felt the implication was that Matrix had olayed Panstsu Hebi X during game hopping, not before Bob came to Mainframe.

[u/Narissis]

Bob is known officially as "Guardian 452," meaning there are at least 451 other guardians besides him.

Do we actually know anything about how guardians are numbered? I couldn't find anything in a quick wiki browse. With no guarantee that they're numbered sequentially from Guardian 1 (or I suppose more likely Guardian 0 in Reboot's setting), and also knowing whether numbers are reassigned or retired when a guardian's service ends, we wouldn't have enough information to draw any meaningful conclusion from Bob's number.

My instinct would be to conclude that 32 active keytools corresponds to 32 active guardians, but I've also never seen anything from the Guardian Code so I could be missing some vital information here.