Virus Entity

The Virus Entity was the corruption that spread throughout the entirety of Toon Wars: The Final Days, programmed from the Mawgu's essence following his destruction in the Gumball Saga. It briefly debuted at the end of the Samurai Jack Saga consuming the Teen Titans (with the exception of Starfire who was with the Toon Force at the time) and Jump City in its corruption field. For a span of 2 years, the virus had been steadily increasing its power and taking many of the worlds the Toon Force had either rescued or were associated with unnoticed aside from its signal jamming capabilities. This was done after the Toon Force had disbanded from 5 years of service and were in desperate need of rest.

Due to this, they were woefully unprepared for when worlds such as Townsville and Lyvsheria became so corrupted that they immediately began to destroy themselves. Made worse when Starfire returned to Jump City only to find that her old friends were part of the virus as well, along with the Powerpuff Girls, the Crystal Gems, and several thousands more. After slowly swelling in size and capabilities, the virus had gained enough power to harbor Amity and Elmore into each other, causing the Void to tear itself open and merge with reality, resulting in the creation of the Void Star visible from space. Soon, those victim to corruption were sent to dismantle any and all opposing threats; especially the Toon Force, who were on their way to finding the source of the virus program and delete it using the Antivirus. They first invaded Dr. Wakeman's Lab and the Ghost Zone before transitioning over to Dimsdale and the Forgotten Society where it proceeded to send Enid and Radicles after a weakened Danny Phantom, then later the Teen Titans and the Powerpuff Girls. When both attempts failed, the Toon Goddess, had personally revealed herself to the Toon Force with the corrupted Crystal Gems by her side, appearing as the corrupted form of Nicole Watterson.

When reality was forced to reset from the Toon Goddess' demise, even though Nicole was actively trying to maintain it, the virus was still in effect. Not long after any of the heroes remembered the events prior, and Nicole's redemption, the virus went to work at further distorting reality thanks to added power, often using already deceased characters and other means from the reset as enemies. Once the Toon God's identity was finally revealed to the Toon Force, the virus almost immediately altered the remainder of the multiverse to the point where it was completely unrecognizable. As seen at the start of the arc and confirmed by the end, the Toon God is the physical embodiment of the virus while the Mawgu is the program that maintains it. When damaged by the fabled Final Magisword, however, the Toon God glitches and exposes the spore physically feeding into the controls of the Fourth Wall itself, allowing for the Toon Force to not only slay the Toon God but destroy the virus at its core in the process. The damages, however, were so great that during the reality fix, Jimmy Neutron ensured that certain changes were made in accommodation.

## Characteristics

The Virus Entity appears in many forms, both physical (as code, the Void Star, or a purple/black/red aura or mist) and invisible to the naked eye. Unlike similar forms of corruption, such as the Mawgu's ooze or Aku's magic, the virus is powered with its own consciousness in the form of the Mawgu himself with the goal to manipulate all life in the multiverse as part of its collective control. It's reality-bending capabilities before and after the Void's absorption could be described as godly, not only able to control the movement and gravity of planets across two separate universes, but also able to work simultaneously in multiple places at once rarely noticeable to anyone. Once the Void was absorbed, it operated almost entirely like a computer simulation; able to manifest objects and entire areas automatically. In the reset, it was even able to temporarily use already deceased characters and various assets against the survivors, including Nicole, who maintained the reset out of grief and inadvertently gave the virus more power as a result.

## The Corrupted

> "*The evil we've done is justified. We do this to take our hand against those who made us this way. Designed us to be imperfect. To fail, to do bad, to serve justice yet never properly finish it. These are just some of the reasons why our master has given us the freedom to finally break the cycle and punish those who abused it.*"
> ― Dark Dendy, summarizing the philosophy of the corrupted[[source]]
>
>

   The Corrupted are the bound servants of the Virus formerly characters throughout the multiverse. Although a rare few had joined willingly, the rest were manipulated against their will either via contact with the Virus Field, the Toon God himself, or another corrupted being. In this state, the strength of the victim is increased tenfold and given the ability to infect anyone they touch. Any malice the character inherited is exacerbated to the point where it becomes their default state of emotion and consciousness; even if they were never filled with anger beforehand. Though certain few were able to maintain bits of their original personality, almost everyone were reprogrammed only to go off spite but could still be restored if one damages the code of the virus feed. A good example being when Bimm was able to cause Shadow Warrior to glitch and momentarily revert back to her original state from the effects of the Knowledge Magisword. Doing so, however, will activate a fail-safe in which the infected will either shut down or be instantly deleted (either in the form of an explosion or dissipation). This also occurs if they fail their objective to reach a particular goal.

No matter who is corrupted, they typically appear in their normal shape but are shrouded in an oily black mist continuously flowing around them. Their eyes appear hollow, shining white lacking any visible pupils. Some have red recolors of accessories or parts of their body and white outlines to indicate the character under the influence. Most notably, Shadow Warrior and Dark Raven, having a blood-red sword and a red mouth and eyes. At times, those like the Teen Titans were able to keep up with their appearances before corruption but slowly began to deteriorate overtime, eventually having them resort to the default black mist. When a character gets infected, most of the time they're seen with their eyes glowing with a faint line of binary text emanating from them, implying they're being reprogrammed.

Though in-story it is never stated exactly who qualifies for corruption besides the weak-willed, it seems to be able to infect just about everyone with a few notable oddities and exceptions:

* Some such as Bimm and Starfire are given a choice by the infected to join them or refuse the offer.
* For a majority of the Toon Force and especially Spongebob, they're considered incorruptible and are thus designated as targets.
* Although characters like Steven Universe or Jimmy Two Shoes could be considered pure, they are young and inexperienced compared to those such as Danny and Timmy despite them having been through potentially worse scenarios in their individual shows.
* Some characters are still able to retain bits of their consciousness despite being under the influence. This includes the Teen Titans and the Ghosts of the Ghost Zone.

## Cyber-Virus

    First seen in the battle against the Toon God on Lyvsheria, these creatures were spawned by the virus to attack the heroes en masse, appearing as glitched, corrupted monstrosities barely able to be recognized due to their mismatch of data and physical parts. While most can be described as giant low-poly 3-dimensional figures, similar in style to Rob, some appear as insect-like shapes with tendrils, stinger tails, and occasionally sharp teeth. The latter being the standard variant, discovered by the Syndicate long before the Final Days on their expedition into the Void leading to the Fourth Wall. To their knowledge, this was the result of reality processing broken data when given the command to defend the user. These, like the Toybots and Morphoids, were originally going to be sent to terrorize the Multiverse. But due to the instability of the creatures and the risk of corrupting reality itself, the Syndicate opted against it and instead went through with the longer, yet successful Toon Wars. The first concept art for the standard Cyber-Virus model (or Hellspawn by Frozarburst) was created by user Kainsword-Kaijin to be used in Toon Wars Legacy or any of the lore.

These creatures return in Crossover Forces wandering the purgatory-like Trashbin and appearing when Black Hat spawns reinforcements in the final battle. Necro Bimm also shares some similarities to the monsters by design in Dark Disney when she emerges from the ruins of Elysium.

## Abilities and Effects

* Corruption - Corruption is the most basic and most powerful ability the virus has at its disposal. With it, almost any character's negative emotions are fully aroused and take over their body to turn them undeniably evil; either after manipulating them with false promises, existential crisis, or offer of grander purposes after exposure to the concept of the Fourth Wall and their own mortality. This is why characters seem to hate Spongebob most as he was the most popular cartoon out of everyone, including Teen Titans GO.
* Forced Deletion
* Planetary Transport
* Virus Cloud/Corruption Field - The easiest way for the virus to be able to corrupt anyone prior to its appearance in Toon Wars: The Final Days was a field of energy shrouded in thick purple to green layers of fog, or thick clouds in the skies of the same color palette with faces of whoever it manipulates appearing across the skies wearing a permanent twisted smile. This effect eventually disappears after the virus gained control of the Void.
* Collective Consciousness - It is shown throughout the saga that whenever the virus corrupts an individual, they become part of a hive mind hellbent on destruction and, in their view, perfection and togetherness.
* Void Star - a byproduct and extension to the Virus Entity after it absorbed itself into the Void. It resembles a white halo with a long line on either side that stretches across all of space and is visible to the naked eye similar to a moon depending on how close it is to the atmosphere.
* Reanimation - In some instances, like in Turbo your Fellow, certain corrupted are able to use the Virus as a form of reanimation, automatically resurrecting past characters for their own ends. The biggest example of this is Professor Venomous, who when revived became Shadowy Laserblast. Others include Carol, Finn, Ice King, Shannon, and Darrell, who each have died at some point during or before the Final Days. Later on during the reset of reality, this was used more than once to give the appearance of a peaceful state of life before the facade could quickly be dropped once any of the heroes remembered what happened, and Nicole is redeemed.

## Weaknesses

* Overwriting
* Antivirus/Antisword
* Final Magisword (against the Toon God)

## Trivia

* Frequently, whenever a character is corrupted, their sentences come out distorted to indicate a glitch, providing a meta sense of scale. This was done using a glitch generator online.
* The faces in the sky and the way it spawns some of its minions whenever the corruption is present is a written nod to the design of Infinite Zamasu from *Dragon Ball Super*. The way the virus operates, however, is similar to the Maverick/Sigma Virus from the *Mega Man* franchise.
* In late 2021, Learning with Pibby would be announced and introduce a similar concept to the Mawgu Virus, corrupting the Cartoon Network universe with a massively spread glitch that turns it's victims into mindless drones and monsters, much like the ones seen in The Final Days and Crossover Forces; though much of the corrupted from Toon Wars were capable of speech and were still very much aware of their actions.
* Oddly in concept art of the virus itself, Tommy Pickles' appearance is that of when he was an infant instead of a pre-teen like in All Grown Up. This is likely the virus using Tommy's most recognizable data.
* The Void Star was custom made using Microsoft Powerpoint
* The oily black effect of the corrupted is similar in concept to the shadowy visions someone under the influence of Indoctrination in the Mass Effect series witnesses.
* In some ways, the virus can be compared to the Hate Plague from the Transformers G1 cartoon.
* Originally, the virus was meant to only corrupt reboots. However, Frozarburst opted to allow the program to infect any show indiscriminately to make the story fair for all.
* The functionality of the corruption is similar to the idea on how cartoons are rebooted by Jenniferthehuman in her story, CN Cartoon Apocalypse, which uses a physical formula based around the traits of Teen Titans GO to inject into those from various other shows.