At long last, Dat Boi here come for more than like 30 seconds. But, but that's all the time he needs to make Mary and Ben feel ashamed of themselves for having had crushes on him as children. (Meanwhile, David points and laughs and hugs his Vriska daikamura.) Why? Because he's a scrub, which, as TLC taught us, is a guy who thinks he's fly and is also known as a buster. So today we're here to kick ass and dismantle his toxic notions of romantic gestures, AND WE'RE ALL OUT OF ASS. We also discover...
Aug 25, 2018•1 hr 40 min
After weeks of teasing, we're finally showing you the goods. How well does The Pretender hold up, actually? Does it fly high like a crow possessed, or buckle under the weight of its awkwardness and casual racism? Will David be validated, or stomp away in an impotent rage like a Waluigi fan after E3? The answer may shock you! And speaking of Smash Bros, which characters would the Lyoko Warriors main? Are we childish enough to stop the show dead in its tracks to laugh at a fake used car ad and tro...
Aug 18, 2018•1 hr 45 min
Cards on the table: this episode is roughly 50% plot and 50% stinky feet jokes. Which, fun fact, none of us actually remembered until we were about five minutes into the episode! And the weirdest thing about that is, it's still just as poignant as we thought it was back then. It gives us a ton to think about as far as Aelita's relationship with her father and her memories of her past, a big moment of tension with her and Jeremie, and one of the greatest moments of emotional maturity Odd has ever...
Aug 04, 2018•1 hr 36 min
We have a lot of fun here at Return to the Past, but every one in a while, an episode comes along that leaves us scratching our heads. Is it Code Lyoko's attempt at being topical and political (it features both anthrax and Tamagotchi), recycled from a script for a mid-90s Jim Carrey movie that would never be, or simply an adaptation of a NyQuil fever dream the writers had one night? We'll probably never know. Were Tamagotchi still a thing in 2006? Why does one of the government agents sound like...
Jul 28, 2018•1 hr 30 min
Just a heads up - both David and Ben had some audio issues in this episode, so apologies for any static! Would you eat an apple that had fallen on the floor? What if that happle had been part of a giant killer food golem? That and other questions will be explored in today's episode of Return to the Past. Our goofy cartoon villain conjures a food monster, our plucky kid heroes learn a moral about healthy eating, and the Russians are screwing with us again. It's like we're back in the eighties! An...
Jul 13, 2018•1 hr 26 min
Season three introduces its big new gimmick: Waelita (that's our name for Evil Aelita - we're trying to make it happen) and her penchant for deleting Lyoko one sector at a time. If only it hadn't done it in one of the lamest episodes since season one! The puns fly as fast as the ancient memes and Homestuck references as Mary, Ben, and David once again attempt to grapple with their feelings towards the latter half of the show. Only one thing is certain: at least one of us is getting fired. A lot....
Jul 07, 2018•1 hr 32 min
This may not come as a surprise to any of you, but watching the start of Season 3 for the first time in a decade has confirmed for Mary and Ben that yes, they were in fact remembering it through the eyes of bitter angry teens. (David has well and proper gotten his revenge for "firmly grasp it.") So we've come at Straight to Heart again with fresh new eyes, and in the process we've discovered more to love about it! We spent ten minutes trying to figure out French summer vacation system, sang the ...
Jun 30, 2018•1 hr 26 min
Jess joins us yet again to discuss the second half of the much-debated prequel. Who will change their mind? Who will change their ground? Who will embarrassingly fail to remember where "firmly grasp it in your hand" comes from? (It's David. The third one is David.) This is probably our fastest time from starting the episode to getting into the meats, but don't you think for a second that we are not back on our usual bullsh*t. From UFOs and mosquitos to the "gamer" episode of The X-Files and Ben'...
Jun 23, 2018•2 hr 6 min
Friend of the show and Bigfoot enthusiast Jess - co-host of the Lupin Lottery and The Spooky Spot podcasts - joins us for the first time to geek about cryptids and Rod Serling with David. Meanwhile, the adults in the room, Mary and Ben, talk about the infamous Code Lyoko prequel (as adults are wont to do). No one seems to agree on this thing - we're not even sure if it's the first episode of the series, the last episode of season two, the first of season three, or the last of season four! Is it ...
Jun 16, 2018•2 hr 3 min
Our season break continues with a return to Fanfiction Theater, featuring the show's first unofficial official unofficial Halloween special. William cosplays as Michael Jackson in this one - the sort of thing the show was always missing, if you ask us. We also go over some spreadsheets, content that we are told is popular with today's savvy teens (don't ask us, we're just sad adults) and take an extra deep dive into our mailbag. Give us a click and join the fun! ===== Click here to read Cat Man ...
Jun 09, 2018•1 hr 13 min
This episode of Code Lyoko carries a content warning for attempted suicide from 5:38-5:57 and from 6:50 to 7:20 in the Youtube edition. This episode of Return to the Past carries a content warning for discussion of attempted suicide throughout, primarily between 44:00 and 1:00:00. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (USA): 1-800-273-8255 Trans Lifeline: US: (877) 565-8860 CANADA: (877) 330-6366 The Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386 Global lifelines: http://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/ =...
Jun 02, 2018•1 hr 59 min
We return to our regularly scheduled programming this week with part one of the non-two-parter two-part finale. Here, you'll finally learn the Big Secret we've been spoiling relentlessly since we started this whole ridiculous enterprise, so please act surprised! As our first post-McElboy episode, we have an extra hefty mailbag to sift through, as well as ridiculously cool fight scenes, awful looking mashed potatoes, and one of the more harrowing near-deaths in CL history. ===== Click here to vie...
May 25, 2018•1 hr 38 min
Note before we start: We are experimenting with making the Rec Rooms explicit-rated which in this case just means we don't bleep out the swears. Be on the lookout for some HECKIN ROUGH LANGUAGE. It's time to take a break from high-octane (for a certain value of "high-octane") Lyoko action and just shoot the breeze for a little while. Call it the calm before the storm that the two-part season finale represents. We tell stories about our experiences with Code Lyoko fandom, argue about our favorite...
May 19, 2018•1 hr 12 min
!si tahw sseug reven ll'ouY .sretcarahc dna ecneidua eht morf noitamrofni edih ot rehpyc revelc a esu sretirw eht ,edosipe siht nI Nah, but we kid, this episode is good. The plot keeps thickening and the characters keep making the same kind of nonsensical, boneheaded decisions we've come to love them for. We poke a lot of fun at them, but there was a point in our lives when this was as serious as it got for us. Ah, to be slightly younger again! ===== Questions? Comments? Email us at rttppodcast@...
May 05, 2018•1 hr 30 min
Note: You may notice some audio echo in this episode. I did my best to get rid of it, but if any remains, let me know! ===== A weird old guy shows up in the factory, and despite the fact that he doesn't appear to eat, sleep, or get out of his cahir, he's totally not a XANA attack, you guys. He's here to fix absolutely everything that's ever gone wrong for the Lyoko Warriors, convince Yumi that she has brain cancer, and maliciously ostracize Jeremie from the group (and on his BIRTHDAY, too!). Tha...
Apr 29, 2018•1 hr 22 min
Who's ready to get heckin' spoopy? Our second kind-of-but-not-really quasi-Halloween special reveals that ghosts exist in the Code Lyoko universe! I mean, it doesn't make much of a difference, if any at all, but it's there. They canon'd it; they can't un-canon it. Oh and also Sissi's into witchcraft apparently. This episode is special because it's the only one penned by guest writers Neil Gaiman and Tim Burton! Nah, just kidding, it's just Bruno Merle and Jean-Remi Francois again. But we totally...
Apr 20, 2018•1 hr 8 min
Note: No new episode next week! Ben is on vacation and we decided we wanted to be too. :P Tune in the week after that for Is Anybody Out There! === Good news for rubbernecks: this episode is a slow-motion train wreck, a veritable cavalcade of characters making baffling decisions and generally acting like total dicks. Do we like it anyway? Of course we do, because we're absolute sheep for Code Lyoko. I'm just saying, this time we came awfully close to only liking it ironically. ===== Questions? C...
Apr 07, 2018•1 hr 22 min
Note: At a few point during this episode, David's audio will cut out for a split second for some reason, and it's left a few jokes without punchlines. x.x My apologies! Can you believe that absolutely NO ONE saw the twist about the meaning of Aelita's visions coming at the time? Or maybe we did, and we didn't want to see it? Either way, new mysteries are afoot, new tensions are a-brewin', and after about the 13th minute of the episode we drop almost all of it to spend ten minutes flipping around...
Mar 31, 2018•2 hr 1 min
Sporky and Shin Garrett of Going Digital join us once again to talk about Code Lyoko, but this time, we'll be discussing an actually good episode! (We're not saying we ate Davide for talking too much crap about Rock Bottom?, but we're not NOT saying it, either.) This episode is about as dark as Code Lyoko gets, putting its teenage characters in the sort of peril you don't normally see in cartoons. But don't worry - we're rolling out some of our finest jokes about rectal thermometers and unwashed...
Mar 21, 2018•2 hr 3 min
If you're the kind of viewer who feels that Code Lyoko circles around its problems but never actually address them, we have some good news: this episode invents a brand-new lifelong phobia for one of the main characters and sees him overcome it in the span of twenty-two minutes. Executives at Cartoon Network tried to put a stop to that madness, alleging that it would be unappealing to boys ages six to twelve, but MoonScoop went ahead with their bold vision for the show. Which is why France is at...
Mar 17, 2018•1 hr 58 min
Things are getting hot and heavy in the Super Nuclear group's hypothetical recording studio, and not just because Mary and David are being shmoopy again (though there is also that). Thrill as Xana attempts to divide and conquer the Lyoko Warriors through the power of cuckoldry. You into that? We bet you are. Go ahead and give us a click already! Do you like jokes about croissants wherein the croissant is a stand-in for dick? How about that urban legend about Marilyn Manson (you know the one we m...
Mar 10, 2018•1 hr 41 min
Who's ready to cringe? Today's episode is one of those nameless treasures: the mid-2000s cartoon about a boy and a girl swapping bodies and somehow managing to (almost) never address the fact that they now have different bits. Can Ben, Mary, and David milk that premise for jokes? Will Ben and Mary literally collapse under the weight of their secondhand embarrassment? If you're asking that question, it's like you don't even know us. Prepare for dick jokes, sailor fuku discussion, and questions ab...
Mar 02, 2018•1 hr 42 min
WARNING: Mary was recording on the wrong mic for the first five minutes, and the end result is just about the worst and most grating audio this podcast has ever experienced. I have tried to fix it as best I can, but feel free to skip ahead to where I turn my real mic on and everything is fine. We are ALL over the place on this episode, folks. Is it because this episode is ridiculously buck wild? Is it because we're tired and it's the end of a long weekend? Is it because we are incorrigible, meme...
Feb 24, 2018•1 hr 27 min
It's the episode you've been waiting for, maybe! Mary, Ben, and David finally answer their email and give a six-Pokémon team to every Lyoko Warrior. If a trio of bumbling dorks awkwardly mispronouncing Pokémon names is your idea of fun, give us a click and let the good times roll! If you still get flashbacks to that one commercial where Zack and Cody overemphasize the é in Pokémon (you know the one we mean), maybe steer clear of this one. When we're done upsetting the weebs in our audience, it's...
Feb 17, 2018•1 hr 26 min
Folklorists speculate that zombies are popular because they let us indulge in guilt-free fantasies about inflicting violence on the people around us. Code Lyoko decided that that's as good an excuse as any to finally show us cartoon children beating the snot out of each other. The Super Nuclear group concludes that that is actually kind of hilarious. But that's not all! In addition to the violence, there's ridiculously inappropriate nudity as well. Unless you're in France, I guess. Silly Europea...
Feb 09, 2018•1 hr 31 min
At the end of most episodes of Return to the Past, your humble hosts ask themselves this question: are we going to give this episode a perfect ten, or merely a nine point five? This time, however, there's a radical difference of opinion! Are you on #TeamDavidAndMary, or are you on #TeamBen? As is so often the case, your answer probably depends on your feelings toward Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. Are Aelita's sick grinds pointless, or radical? Is Yumi's dad running around in full samurai regalia bad...
Feb 02, 2018•1 hr 39 min
Okay, so remember how I said all that stuff about Common Interest and how it took the show's subject matter to a new level but ultimately didn't follow through in the way it should have? Imagine another Common Interest, but with a plot that DOES follow through from start to finish. Mostly. Meet Temptation, the most thought-provoking episode of Code Lyoko yet. At least for Mary, aka me, for whom the entire reason she still loves Code Lyoko clicks in this episode. Join us as we dissect childhood p...
Jan 28, 2018•1 hr 53 min
More than any other episode, Common Interest really hammers home how BOLD Code Lyoko was willing to be. Even after 13 years we're still stunned that we saw Aelita almost succumb to heart failure three times in one day, or Jeremie handling raw uranium as he struggled to keep the supercomputer alive, or XANA facing off against a military transport armed with very present and realistic guns. Still not sure how that one got on Cartoon Network in the days when cops shot laser beams and heroes never s...
Jan 21, 2018•2 hr 17 min
For the first time in possibly ever, the Super Nuclear group disagrees about the content of an episode! Is it the greatest thing ever, or just pretty darn great? Do the surprisingly off-model designs undercut the shipping possibilities? Come listen to your favorite trio of childish dingbats argue about cartoons for an hour and a half! The Homestuck references have never come at you faster. Plus, an important public service announcement in the first few minutes of the episode! NOTE: David's compu...
Jan 12, 2018•1 hr 48 min
Hey-yo! It's the Super Nuclear group, making up for our absence last week with an extra-long episode aimed directly at your eager faces. And what an episode it is! We're finally at the 'Going back in time to win the lottery' storyline, which gives us a surprising amount of insight into several characters' personalities, including Ulrich, Yumi, and your personal favorite,* Yumi's dad. We also dive into an interpretation of Yumi's family dynamic that may or may not freak Mary's bean. And also one ...
Jan 05, 2018•2 hr 11 min
