[13] Raw Jet Alone and Evangelion telemetry apparently uses the same monitor encoding as the Matrix.

[168] Earlier on, when Truss and Maya started developing their relationship, a few people sent me email to the effect of, "Uh, you know Maya's a lesbian, right?" My response was, "Nope, she's bi, and Truss doesn't know that yet. There's historical precedent for this."

[196] Captain Barraclough is an original character, and I regret that I didn't have a spot for him to reappear in the movie, because I'm rather fond of him.

[314] The old man is the Archangel Yves, Rei's Superior, whose province is Destiny.

[580] Another Half-Life reference - this is the same non-AI computerized PA voice one hears throughout that game with everything going pear-shaped at the Black Mesa.

[864] "Damn it."

[983] Where NERV Security officers are named after Red Sox pitchers of the era, SEELE Security officers got named after ice hockey players...

[1027] ... which enabled us to make this joke, from Animal House by way of SportsCenter.

[1223] The question asked repeatedly by one of the people who jumped CBS anchor Dan Rather in 1986. Also the title of an R.E.M. song.

[1275] A bastardized version of Psalm 23. Pink Floyd, "Sheep", Animals (1977).

[1330] The antenna array atop the AT&T Tower was not destroyed on camera; Shinji and EVA-04 wrecked it in a botched stunt cut out of their entrance back in Exodus 3:7 (which appears in a Bonus Theater!! blooper reel).

[1747] I never got a chance to go into this, but Reilael knows the Eternal Soldier of old - their relationship in those days was a little like the first verse of the Barenaked Ladies song "It's All Been Done". I met you before the fall of Rome...

[1831] It is my considered opinion - and therefore that of the NERV armory office - that the heavier versions of the Desert Eagle are a waste of money and your wrist tendons.

[2054] During World War II, the Queen Mary rammed the British cruiser HMS Curacoa broadside when the cruiser, escorting the liner into port in England, zigged when she should've zagged. The Queen Mary cut Curacoa in half, sinking her almost instantly. The liner suffered minor damage.

[2282] "Don't touch me!"

[2399] Kaori quotes one of the best lines from the old LucasArts game Full Throttle.

[2568] Rei believed that Tabris abandoned his Elohite impartiality because, in his years of watching and waiting, he'd fallen in love with her. While he certainly had both history with and feelings for her, if he did what he did for love - if he committed the sin of the Grigori, as it were - it was for Jon.

[2577] And that's it: the end of the series. We were not originally planning to go beyond this, but as we came down to the wire in the regular series, it became apparent that a "movie" was the way to go - not only because we had too much material to fit into nine season-3 episodes, but also because it was the right thing to do dramatically.

I always intended to take a bit of a break from NXE before doing that, mainly because, after the run up to the end of the regular season, I was a bit burned out. I started playing around with designs for a new UF series - which promptly took over my entire life for a couple of years and became Symphony of the Sword. It wasn't until the really frenetic phase of that project wound down that I could think of anything else.

Unfortunately, at around that time the bottom fell out of the tech business and everything changed. Shamrock House broke up, I moved back to Maine, and things became very confused for a while. Coordinating creative activities remotely is always more of a hassle than doing it in person, too. Completing this project took longer than expected, even by our rather lax timescale standards - and it's still not entirely done, what with the promised "DVD release" of the movie.

The DVD release is still on the boards? I figured these would take it's place.

Nifty!

Thanks again for these. It's been an interesting morning reading through them.

Was this a concious Star Trek IV reference, or is the similarity merely coincidental?

This is pretty much the only part of the series that made me scratch my head - I couldn't quite work out what Rei was getting at with her last line. I guess it never really came across to me that Tabris might have been romantically interested in either Rei or Jon. This may call for a re-reading...