Code Lyoko (partially found production material of French animated TV series; 2003-2007)

Scan of the cover of the found 1st season bible from codelyoko.fr.

Status: Partially Found

Code Lyoko was a French animated cartoon television series (dubbed into various other languages) that ran on Cartoon Network between 2004 and 2007. It concerned a group of boarding school students who discover a fully-functioning supercomputer in a nearby abandoned factory. It is host to a virtual world known as Lyoko, a mysterious amnesiac pink-haired elf girl (Aelita), and a malevolent artificial intelligence known as XANA who is bent on destroying humanity. The series details their attempts to rescue Aelita from the virtual world and stop XANA from destroying theirs. Three bibles for the show are confirmed to exist: one created for the 1st season, one made for the 2nd, and one from after the 4th. The 1st season bible has already been found and can be viewed here.

The Season 2 Bible

Prior to its second season, Code Lyoko was very formulaic and episodic. Plots were, save for the two-part finale, not carried between episodes and they were meant to be able to be viewed in any order. There wasn't really a backstory set in stone and the lore surrounding the series was rather sparse. In fact, this formulaic nature contrasted harshly with the original vision for the show, causing original series producer Thomas Romain to leave the project in 2003. However, when season 2 came, production agreed to allow writing director Sophie Decroisette and director Jérôme Mouscadet expand upon the background of the story in order to create more opportunities for stortytelling and craft a slightly more serialized narrative, as was the original vision of the series as Garage Kids. In this quote, writing director Sophie Decroisette talks about the circumstances surrounding the creation of the season 2 bible:

"In the literary bible for season 1, Aelita was supposed to be an artificial intelligence created by Franz Hopper, and not a human being. Why did you decide to change this when you rewrote the backstory after season 1?"

"Well when I arrived on the series, there wasn't really a backstory. Nobody had written in detail what had happened to FH and the Supercomputer before Jeremy and the group reactivated it. The concept was very minimal. So Jérôme Mouscadet and I, in agreeance with production, decided to flesh out the backstory to generate more possible stories."

The Season 4 Bible

Three confirmed Code Lyoko bibles are known to have been created during the course of the show's run, as evidenced by this quote:

"Code Lyoko was no longer just a cartoon, but a franchise with potential success. Rather than a repetitive season (like season 1 was), season 2 revolved around a scenario. Sophie Decroisette and Jérôme Mouscadet then changed the Literary Bible we talked about before. They created the entire series background. To put it simply: they invented the origin of Lyoko... ... Everything was created at that time. The Literary Bible wouldn't change again until the end of season 4."

But why change the bible after the end of the series? There were many future plans for the franchise. After its conclusion, an official marketing PDF was found by fans which went into a fair bit of detail about its potential future. There were three different projects in the pipeline. The first was an extended epilogue to send-off the series. The second was a television series/film (it's unclear which) set after a two-year timeskip, with the protagonists now seniors in high school and battling the shady secret organization that hunted the supercomputer's original creator which was only hinted at in the original series. The third was merely a prototypical stage of what would eventually become the live-action Code Lyoko Evolution.

This quote implies quite a bit of content was created for the season 4 bible:

First project: "Code Lyoko The Legacy"

"This sketch of project would take place immediately after the end of the season 4. XANA was destroyed, the Supercomputer was destroyed and our heroes are getting ready to return to their life in the Virtual World... But are they really capable of it? ..."

Second project: "Code Lyoko Reloaded: New Era"

"This time, it's two years after the shutting down of the Supercomputer that we would have found our heroes. They are from now in high school and almost found a normal life... But an organisation shows up and restarts the notorious “Project Carthage”! This organisation wakes a new version of XANA, controllable and capable of speaking! In these conditions, is Aelita still the Virtual Guardian of the Virtual World? While Jeremy is alerted by the threat, men in black roam around Kadic and try to kidnap Aelita. The Heroes are going to have to gather together again to face this threat!"

As of October 2022 no copies of the two confirmed lost bibles have surfaced, and it is unknown how codelyoko.fr came into posession of the season 1 bible.