Neon Exodus Evangelion

"But what the hell d'you need -me- for?" [DJ Croft] asked, running a hand over his thick black thatch of hair. "I mean, granted, I -am- the world's most handsome and sophisticated fourteen-year-old boy, but what good is that to NERV?"

Neon Exodus Evangelion is a Neon Genesis Evangelion Fanfic by the good people at Eyrie Productions Unlimited. It is an Alternate Continuity fic where Shinji, the Third Child, ran away after watching Eva-00's disastrous synchronization test, so they bring in the Fifth Child, the son of Lara Croft and Fox Mulder, Derek Joshua "DJ" Croft.

It is often the target of mockery for its Mega Crossover nature and for DJ Croft being a Marty Stu; however, it Grows The Beard later, oddly becoming better the more it diverges from the original source. However, it is very different in tone — and content — from canon Evangelion.

While not a Script Fic, NXE is structured to simulate the episodic format of a TV series; it is broken down into three "seasons" of nine "episodes" each: The Gathering Storm, Balance of Terror, and Revelations in Real Time. The third season ends on a cliffhanging Crowning Sequence of Awesome, which left the story unresolved for several years of real time until EPU released a final installment called Neon Exodus Evangelion The Motion Picture: Apotheosis Now. This novel-length story caps the entire series with a suitably epic-level conclusion that fulfills all the potential exhibited by the previous 27 chapters. Starting in the third season it also includes the infamous Bonus Theater segments, which showcase short humorous pieces, bizarre Spin-Off ideas and lighter, often Fourth Wall-breaking, views "behind the scenes" of the production.

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As a Mega Crossover series, NXE contains elements from or references to — at the minimum — the following works:

• Neon Genesis Evangelion
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion: Iron Maiden
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
  • 2010: The Year We Make Contact
• Ah! My Goddess
• The works of Dutch mystery writer A.C. Baantjer
• Babylon 5
• The Blues Brothers
• Doctor Who
• Emergency!
• Firefox
• Full Throttle
• Ghostbusters
• Half Life
• In Nomine
• Iron Man
• The Judge
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
• Marathon 2: Durandal
• Men in Black
• Paradise Lost
• Pink Floyd
• Real Genius
• Sailor Moon
• Sports Center
• Star Wars
• System Shock and System Shock 2
• Tech Romancer
• Tempest
• Terminator
• Thunderbirds
• Titanic
• Tomb Raider
• Tron
• Uncle Buck
• Wipeout
• X-COM
• X Files

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Tropes used in Neon Exodus Evangelion include:

• Action Mom: Lara Croft
• Adaptation Distillation
• AI Is a Crapshoot: SHODAN, Durandal
• All There in the Manual: The Terminals, basically blog posts about the progress of Apotheosis Now, contain plot points that might be missed by just reading the fic itself. Also, a number of revelations are made on the Eyrie forum.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: SEELE's invasion forces NERV to move from Worcester-3 to Halifax.
• Animated Actors: Several of the "Bonus Theatre" segments purport to show the reader what goes on "backstage" at the EPU studios; plus there's at least one "interview" with a "performer".
• And I Must Scream: Gendo was fully aware of all the dickish things his demon handlers made him do while he was under their control.
• Arc Words: "I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh." Later expands into an I Have Many Names Badass Boast.
• Area 51: Given a throwaway mention as an X-COM base they are forced to abandon
• Arm Cannon: on the upgraded Jet Alone
• Artificial Human: Jon Ellison; Rei Ayanami is thought to be one but is really something quite different; their clones.
• Ascended Fanboy: Ken, who does not pilot an Evangelion, but instead pilots Jet Alone.
• Author Appeal: Large amounts of it.
• Author Avatar: Inverted with John Trussell, whose avatar shows up in the series before he became a co-author.
  • Despite accusations that DJ Croft and Jon Ellison are "disguised avatars", Word of God says no. But that never stopped anyone. According to An Encounter at Shamrock House, in the earliest plans for DJ he was Gryphon's son.
• Badass Boast: DJ's speech in his last moments on screen in the last episode of season three
• BFG: The Positron Cannon; Zashchitnik's antimatter beams; and on a more personal scale, the Blaster Launcher from X-COM
• Book Dumb: DJ is not very good at algebra or computer programming.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Jon Ellison
• Butt Monkey: Poor Jon Ellison.
• Chandler's Law: Invoked in 3:4, and mentioned by name in Gryphon's annotations for that chapter.
• Character Development: Croft getting a dose of this around the Leliel fight boots him out of Marty Stu status and kicks off the series growing its beard.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: The Positron Cannon gets used again in The Motion Picture.
• Cloning Blues
• Council of Angels: Straight from In Nomine.
• Defector From Decadence: San Ayanami
• Deus Ex Nukina
• Dissonant Serenity: "Shinji. You were actually listening. I'm... I'm proud of you."
• Doing in the Wizard: Followed by Doing in the Scientist, regarding the origins of the Angels, and later the X-Com aliens.
• Domed Hometown: San Francisco is described as having a dome over it.
• Doomed Hometown: Worcester-3
• Driven to Suicide: Ritsuko, though DJ manages to stop her.
• Electronic Speech Impediment: SHODAN and Tycho both during their final confrontation at the end of Apotheosis Now.
• The End of the World as We Know It: Subverted; believed to be the goal of the Angels, but is actually the goal of NERV/SEELE.
• Fun with Acronyms: The Military Intelligence Bureau
• Green Rocks: Elerium.
• The Greys: They are revealed to actually be minor demons.
• Half-Human Hybrid: The Artificial Humans are revealed to be these; also, Shinji.
• Hatedom: With a rather large member count, much to the exasperation of the fic's legitimate fans.
• Hate Fic: Created in response to Gryphon's disgust with the "pointless nihilism" of Neon Genesis Evangelion
• Heel Face Turn: GENDO friggin' GENDO, after he was revealed to have spent the entire series up to that point, and over a decade before, under Ethereal demonic mind control.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Kaori Yamashita, near the end of Apotheosis Now.
• Hilarious Outtakes: Seen in the Bonus Theater.
• Human Popsicle: The Jon and Rei clones, the real Ryoji Kaji, and apparently Fox Mulder's remains are stored this way.
• Humongous Mecha: The Evangelions, Jet Alone, Zashchitnik, the Archangelions
• I Have Many Names: "I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh. I have been called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the world goes dim and cold."
• I Know Mortal Kombat: Ken Alda
• Kill Sat: Sahaquiel, and later, Babylon-2.
• The Legions of Hell: They make their appearance at the end of the Motion Picture.
• Lock and Load: Before raiding a SEELE installation, DJ tosses Shinji a pistol and is a little surprised to see Shinji do the full badass guncheck routine.
• Mega Crossover
• The Men in Black: Both X-COM and SEELE have them
• Meta Fic: Some of the Bonus Theatre segments
• Mindlink Mates: Rei and Jon have this.
• Missing Mom: Subverted: Lara Croft was only trapped off-screen for the first few episodes.
• The Mole: Agent Wasdin and Tycho; on the other side, Derek Bacon.
• Mythology Gag
  • The Men in Black agent Jim Edwards wields "a deceptively tiny concussion blaster", which is a reference to the Noisy Cricket from Men in Black.
• No One Gets Left Behind: Why the Angels are really attacking Worcester-3 — to rescue the comatose Lucifer from the (unwitting) agents of Hell and complete his Redemption.
• Not Quite Dead: Lucifer. And Yui Ikari.
• Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Averted. According to Word of God, N2 mines are "next-generation nuclear" weapons, not "non-nuclear" ones. Also, Zashchitnik carries a nuclear cruise missile.
• Omake: Bonus Theatre segments. All Those Stars. Plus, arguably, the NXE "apologia", An Encounter at Shamrock House
• Our Angels Are Different: The Angels NERV fights are fairly standard for NGE; however, later ones are more like angels from In Nomine.
• Over Nine Thousand: Averted; the highest synch ratio is 100%.
• Parody Sue: Claimed for DJ
  • Parody Retcon: What most people suspect the above is
• Phobia: DJ Croft is claustrophobic, This comes back to bite him in his battle against Leliel.
• Psychic Nosebleed: Gendo Ikari gets one of these while trying to shake off alien mind control.
• Real Person Fic: Jeff "YaK" Minter plays an unexpectedly large role. Also, the late Derek Bacon, a college friend of the authors, appears in the last episode of season three and plays a large role in Apotheosis Now.
• Recap Episode: Episode 3:0, The Big Show. The narration by the Sports Center hosts turns this into a Crowning Moment of Funny.
• Reincarnation: DJ turns out to be the reincarnation of Longinus.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Mentioned in 1:9 that Great Britain decided to go this route after Second Impact, after the example of "poor old Elizabeth". (Even Ireland signed on to the idea, God alone knows why!)
  • Nothing like half the human race dying to make one reasses one's living arrangments. Besides maybe they figured that this time around the British would be nice(r) about things or at the very least, that that was a risk worth taking when the alternative is anarchy and starvation.
• Running Gag: The EPU "Taco Night" gag makes a mandatory appearance; also, a repeated riff on NGE's "unfamiliar ceiling" line.
• Satan Is Good: Lucifer's and Moloch's attempt to repent is what starts everything off.
• Sequel Series: Neon Generation: Exodus 2035, a teaser for which was posted in the EPU forums in late 2005. Gryphon didn't promise it would be soon, but did promise it would appear someday.
• Series Continuity Error: Although early in the third "season" Misato was completely briefed on what's actually going on, complete with demons running NERV and Rei being a genuine angel right out of Heaven, she seems to have forgotten this entirely in a later episode where Rei and Moloch go to town on a SEELE base and reacts with disbelef when she is told again. Acknowledged by Word of God.
• Shown Their Work: In the space episode, the Apollo 13 book is referenced. Space Does Not Work That Way is thus massively averted.
• Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter!

Asuka: Do You hear me, God, in Your ivory tower? Do my words offend You? Well, TOO BAD! I'M NOT AFRAID OF YOU! I'm already IN Hell - SO WHAT CAN YOU DO TO ME?! YOU made this world of conflict and suffering and hate! YOU let this happen to Your children who Your Scriptures claim You love so much! You must be DEAD! Or CRUEL! Or You just DON'T CARE! Either way I - DON'T - FUCKING - NEED YOU!

• Spin-Off: According to An Encounter at Shamrock House, NXE was initially intended as the future of EPU's Warrior's Legacy setting, but that idea was discarded during the first week of planning as the series took off on its own.
• Taking You with Me: Natlateth tries this twice. And fails epically both times.
• Theme Naming: Rei's clones are named in numerical order: Ichi, Ni, San... ("rei"="zero", "ichi"="one" and so on); NERV Security personnel are often named for Red Sox pitchers; similarly, SEELE security personnel are named after ice hockey players.
• They Might Be Giants: In addition to Gryphon and Truss's out-of-story observation that Shigeru and Aoba look like the guys in the band, there is a moment in 2:2 when Rei quotes a line from "Birdhouse in Your Soul".
• The Undead: The first two EVAs are the corpses of Moloch and Lucifer. Except it turns out Lucifer is Not Quite Dead...
• Villainous Breakdown and Villain Decay: These go hand-in-hand for Natlateth at the end of the motion picture.
• Villain with Good Publicity: SEELE has this for about half the civilized world.
• You Shall Not Pass: DJ does this at the end of the regular series.