Franz Hopper

File:Franz hopper image.jpg

Franz Hopper in the lab.

Franz Hopper is a character in the French animated television series Code Lyoko. In the English version of Code Lyoko, Paul Bandey provides the voice for Franz Hopper.

Description

Template:Spoiler Franz Hopper was a science teacher at Kadic Junior High School about ten years before the series starts. He is the one responsible for creating the supercomputer that controls the virtual world of Lyoko, as well as Xana.

Franz Hopper is a genius beyond his time, as implied by Jeremie when referring to the information in his diary. The supercomputer and Xana are clearly more advanced than anything else on Earth, and Franz Hopper developed and built the two on his own. He also created the time-travelling aspect of the supercomputer, though he admits this to be an interesting side-effect of the supercomputer and not intentional.

Near the end of the second season, Franz Hopper is revealed to be trapped within Lyoko. He can reach out to the real world through the use of the towers, which glow white when he activates them. He doesn't have abilities equivalent to Xana, but can overcome Xana's control of a tower. In the last two episodes of the season, he is revealed to be Aelita's father, simultaniously revealing her to be human and not an AI within Lyoko. At the climax of the last episode of the second season, he seemingly gives his life to save Aelita, who was left for dead by Xana after he had stolen her remaining memories. However, he manages to survive that to some extent, as Aelita and Jeremie discover in the following season.

History

The group first learns of Franz Hopper in the episode "Unchartered Territory". Jeremie discovered his name when digging into the history of the Hermitage (by hacking into a website which held the deed to the house). Further exploration of the house revealed an out-of-place book on the Punic Wars. It was this book that allowed Jeremie to discover the password to Carthage, after much thought into the meaning of the message given by the sector. The sewer passage behind the house was discovered in the previous episode.

In the episode "Mister Pück", after Aelita's visions become too disruptive to ignore, the group went to the Hermitage to discover their source. The visions eventually led Aelita to a picture on the wall. Behind the picture was a small space that contained a doll, which Aelita inexplicably knew to be named Mister Pück. A key to a train station locker was hidden on this doll. The locker contained Franz Hopper's diary, which was heavily encoded on a set of CDs.

In the episode "Franz Hopper", Xana impersonates Franz Hopper with a polymorphic clone in order to get rid of Jeremie and his friends. Though Xana was able to turn Jeremie's friends against him by making him look inexperienced and incompetent, mainly through diagnosing Yumi with a fatal neural condition. Jeremie was able to oust the fake when it mentioned Franz Hopper's diary being destroyed, something they had never mentioned to the clone and the real Franz couldn't possibly have known. At the end of the episode, he revealed that the real Franz Hopper was actually trapped somewhere on Lyoko. Where in Lyoko was not specifically stated.

In the episode "Contact", Sissi was possessed by a ghost, but did not act as normal Xana-possessed people do. Instead, she began speaking in gibberish (backwards speech, to be specific). After multiple attempts to tell Jeremie something, Jeremie finally realizes that she is being possessed by someone other than Xana. Upon investigating Lyoko, they find a white tower, which Xana immediately begins attacks. Xana also attempts to kill Sissi. Despite Xana's efforts, Sissi manages to get the entire message through, revealing the source of the message to be Franz Hopper.

In the episode "Revelation", Franz Hopper's diary was finally decoded, with a little help from Franz himself. His diary revealed the true origin of the supercomputer, as well as his relation to Aelita. After discovering that Aelita had her memories stolen by Xana, the group goes on a mission to retrieve it in "The Key". Franz Hopper helps them through their mission, but it ultimately ends up a failure. The memories Aelita finds are in fact fake, placed there by Xana to isolate her so it could steal her remaining memories. After Xana succeeds, Franz comes to his daughter's aid, restoring all of her memories. This seemingly costs him his own life, however, a scan of information in Carthage revelaed that a fragment of Hopper's DNA was on Lyoko, indicating that he is alive and that there is a chance for him to be materialized.

Through flashbacks during the restoration, it is revealed that Franz Hopper used to live in the mountains with both Aelita and his wife. After her apparent death, they moved to the Hermitage and Hopper began working on the supercomputer, which he had built to counter a military project known as Project Carthage, which was designed to disrupt enemy communications. Images in the credits show that Franz Hopper was working on this project in the early seventies. After inadvertently discovering the time travel capacity of the supercomputer, he used it 2546 times (about eleven days less than seven years) to repeat the same date (June 6, 1994), hoping to gain enough time to complete his work. His diary shows that he became mentally unbalanced during this time and developed paranoia. After being discovered by the government, he took Aelita with him to Lyoko.

In the episode "Aelita", more details on Franz and Aelita's initial trip to Lyoko are revealed in several flashbacks. When they first arrived in the Forest sector, Franz, having taken the form of a cluster of energy spheres, told Aelita to take shelter in a nearby tower while Franz arranged to speak with Xana about letting them stay on Lyoko. Xana, however, did not accept, and had a swarm of Hornets attack Franz. When Aelita came out to see what was happening, Franz told her to return to the tower while he prepared to shut down the supercomputer, thus resulting in Lyoko's ten years of inactivity. Before the shutdown, Franz Hopper's final words to his daughter was that she never forget him. Near the end of the episode, Aelita, having gone into Carthage in the hopes of finding her father's whereabouts, takes some data from the interface. During the search, Jeremie manages to find a fragment of Hopper's DNA, thus confirming that he could still be alive somewhere. Although they still have no clue where he may be, the knowledge that her father is still alive gives Aelita a sense of hope.

In the third season finale "Final Round", Xana succeeded in deleting Lyoko by possessing William Dunbar and having him destroy Lyoko's core. Jeremie had attemtped to recover Franz before that happened, but failed. Fortunately, at the end of the episode, Jeremie receives a message directly from the Internet, signed by Franz Hopper himself. Template:Endspoiler