CQD: -.-. --.- -..
SOS: ...---...

(SOS as a distress call is actually a special symbol, not three letters, so it's keyed without spaces.)

It took a while for the 1908 international convention (first made official in Germany a few years before) to catch on, especially among British operators, who tended to distrust things invented in Germany. It wasn't until 1912, when RMS Titanic was sinking, that SOS was used in an actual distress call (along with CQD).

[35] DJ's semi-obsession with the Titanic disaster (and my own, come to that) pre-dates the James Cameron movie in a meta-sense, and this piece has little to do with it other than in gathering certain of the same conclusions about the sinking from the most modern research available at the time, but what the hell, the score was good.

[181] Like most of the supporting cast members who aren't drawn from DJ's subconscious memories of Project Evangelion, Sir Cosmo was a real person - and by all accounts, quite a bore.

[184] Gendou Ikari stands in for White Star Line director J. Bruce Ismay, whose severe case of get-there-itis had a lot to do with the sinking.

[194] John Jacob "JJ" Astor IV was a very wealthy man, the great-grandson of the original John Jacob Astor, who made his fortune in real estate and fur trading in the mid-1800s. His name adorns half of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel today (the Waldorf part was built by his cousin, William Waldorf Astor). Legend has it that when the Titanic hit the iceberg, Astor remarked, "I asked for ice, but this is ridiculous."

[210] Misato takes the place of Captain E.J. Smith, commodore of the White Star Line.

[218] Truss replaces Harland & Wolff chief designer Thomas Andrews, builder of the Titanic.

[222] In the event, the third Olympic-class liner was launched in 1914 as HMHS Britannic. She was taken by the British government for use as a hospital ship and was sunk by a German mine in 1916. Because she's similar to Titanic and in much shallower water, she's a popular dive destination.

[243] Benjamin Guggenheim was one of the several sons of mining magnate Meyer Guggenheim, the most famous of whom today is probably Solomon, after whom the Guggenheim Museum in New York is named.

[244] DJ has no idea who Asuka's parents actually were; the people portraying them in his dream sequence here are entirely fanciful inventions. In actual fact, Asuka's mother was Japanese-German and her father was an unknown sperm-bank donor.

[405] Isidor Straus, former Congressman and owner of Macy's department store, and his wife Ida.

[425] The Carpathia was the first vessel to come to Titanic's rescue, albeit too late to save the ship and many of the passengers.

[498] One of the characters in 2010: The Year We Make Contact does this with the same sample - astronaut Dave Bowman's last recorded words in 2001: A Space Odyssey - in a futile attempt to figure out what the hell Bowman was talking about.

[588] For obscure reasons, this line pleases me inordinately.

[687] Son of the legendary Field Marshal Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, of course.

[779] What indeed? This part of the dream can't be a subconscious memory fragment, since DJ hasn't encountered anything like those containers yet. How, then, is he aware of them? Hmm...

[910] Maya takes the place of Mr. Joseph Bell, Titanic's chief engineer. (By a weird, and unrelated to the story, coincidence, every member of the ship's engine crew had a last name that started with A, B, or C.)

[933] Ritsuko stands in for Lieutenant William Murdoch, RNR, Titanic's first officer and the person most directly responsible for the sinking.

[1069] Titanic's Second Officer, Sublieutenant Charles Lightoller, RNR, survived the disaster and had a very colorful career few people have ever heard any other part of. He was a sailor, a gold prospector in the Yukon, a hobo; he commanded a destroyer during World War I; he survived more than the one famous shipwreck; and he participated as a civilian in the 1940 evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk.

[1129] Kaji takes the place of Sublieutenant Harold Lowe, RNR. Lowe was the only commander of a lifeboat to return to the scene of the sinking and pick up swimming passengers after the ship went down.

[1322] Sublieutenant Joseph Boxhall, RNR, was Titanic's Fourth Officer. He was the one who guided the Carpathia to the lifeboats when she arrived on the scene after Titanic sank.

[1328] Jack Phillips and Harold Bride were the Marconi Company wireless operators assigned to Titanic. Bride survived the disaster; Phillips, who was on duty at the time and remained at his post until the end, did not.

[1515] If there's an officer named Lethbridge-Stewart, there has to be a Sgt. Benton. Presumably this chap is the original's son or grandson.

[1530] X-COM Groom Lake, also known as Area 51 - the ancestral home of MJ-12 and X-COM.

[1798] It is unknown whether First Officer Murdoch actually committed suicide - some accounts claim he did, others that he simply went down with the ship.

[1888] The Bonus Theater!! segments were introduced to make up for the fact that the release schedule for Exodus 3 was much less reliable than previous seasons'.

[1892] This is a riff on the "ESPN/NASCAR Ride-Along" TV ads that were running at the time.

[1910] The Eiffel Tower appeared as a scale reference in an image of Gunbuster that was featured in the source series.

[1936] The meta-idea of the NXE cast as actors and EPU as a TV studio was one we returned to several times over the course of the Exodus 3 bonus materials. As things unfolded, the "actors" developed personae of their own. DJ, for instance, was "played" by Scottish actor Dennis MacCrofton, who had to conceal his real accent for the whole series (rather anticipating current Doctor Who star David Tennant), while Rei Ayanami was really a professional extreme athlete who was breaking into acting with the role.

[2066] An actual (now retired, I believe) NASCAR driver, perennially associated with one of those teams that don't really have a chance. I used to be a member of his fan club.

[2101] Roy "Buckshot" Jones was the Driver of the Future in NASCAR at the time. He did not live up to his perceived potential.

[2113] The United States Lawn Mower Racing Association, a real organization.

[2129] Better known to many as the theme song from Monty Python's Flying Circus.