Bethany Base

Bethany Base is a NERV facility in the Rebuild of Evangelion continuity devoted to holding and studying the Third Angel. Europe and Russia administer it together, so every internal announcement sounds in both English and Russian. Water surrounds the entire site, most of which sits inside a submerged structure shaped like a colossal egg with its narrow end pointing down. Command staff work not in the egg itself but aboard the monitoring ship Ural II on the outskirts. No official source fixes the location, though the joint administration and oceanic setting point toward Arctic waters north of European Russia. The name comes from a biblical village in the New Testament, once home to a Mary of Bethany, a quiet echo of the Mari the audience first meets here.

The base doubles as the station of Evangelion Provisional Unit-05, its resident "seal-guarding" unit, and the architecture is built around the Eva's movements. In place of an umbilical cable, power reaches Unit-05 through ceiling tracks linked to extensions on its shoulder pylons.

Internal zones borrow their names from the Greek underworld and Dante's Inferno, so the Third Angel's breakout attempt in Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance plays as a literal escape from Hell. Cocytus, the containment block at the bottom of the egg, shares its name with the frozen ninth circle where Satan is detained, a fitting label for an Angel dug out of permafrost and probably stored in deep freeze; its serpentine, skeletal design may itself nod to Satan. The Malebolge system, activated in numbered pairs called Bolgia, throws obstacles between Cocytus and the Styx shafts, which run the height of the base and are outfitted for Unit-05. The Limbo Area encompasses the great egg structure, and Acheron, the pillar-lined rooftop section, forms the final safeguard before open water. A line of tanks waits outside Cocytus, apparently on the assumption that the stripped-down Angel carries no Absolute Terror Field to shield it. Mysterious glyphs appear on the floor during the battle.

Mari Makinami Illustrious and Ryoji Kaji are both posted to the base as Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance opens. Its resident defender is Evangelion Provisional Unit-05, whose loss prompts Europe and Russia to press their claims involving Asia.