The Midnightverse is a series of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers Fan Fiction written by Midnight Man. Most of them take place around the time when they were written, starting in 2006, so a lot of time has passed since the time when the TV show ended, but there isn't that much that has happened—that is, before the events of these stories. Within about a year, the Rangers' lives are turned upside-down.
The stories in chronological publishing order:
- Too Huge To Be True – The author's first novella-sized story was also the first Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers/TaleSpin crossover. The reason this works out is because it's All Just a Dream that Gadget has after a TaleSpin marathon on TV. The Rangers take a vacation and travel to Cape Suzette where they are about as tall as the other animal citizens instead of tiny rodents. They help Higher for Hire on a cargo job and embark on a treasure hunt later on. (RangerWiki entry
, story on FanFiction.net) - First Date – This story takes the reader back to the year 1990, a few weeks after the events of "Good Times, Bat Times". Dale and Foxglove are a loving couple, and Chip doesn't have any competition for Gadget anymore, but he just can't get himself to take this chance and try to win her heart. It takes him some encouragement from his best friend. (RangerWiki entry, story on FanFiction.net)
- Lost And Found – It has been almost 18 years since Gadget lost her father in a plane crash. While she still mourns him, Zipper finds out that Geegaw is well alive and back at his and Gadget's old home. When the Rangers go and meet him, the real adventure is just about to start, for Geegaw needs their help to get his wife, Gadget's mother, back. (RangerWiki entry, story on FanFiction.net)
- Last Date – Four old acquaintances have joined the Rangers and increased their number to nine. Meanwhile, Chip and Gadget have been dating for 16 years, but nothing has come out of it. Chip decides that if he still fails to win Gadget over on their 500th date, he'll quit dating her altogether. (RangerWiki entry, story on FanFiction.net)
- Diamonds In The Desert – A heist fic about twice the size of Lost And Found. The theft of a set of fourteen different gems from an exhibition leads the Rangers to Las Vegas where they have to steal them back. However, they're not the only ones after these glittering items, and someone whom the two chipmunks haven't met in a long time, while being a great help for them, is going to cause some trouble for them. (RangerWiki entry, story on FanFiction.net)
- A Matter Of Time – While the original five Rangers are on a series of cases and thus unavailable, the new Rangers rescue an unconscious mouse from the cold waters of the nearby river. He isn't as unfamiliar as they think, though, and his sudden presence will help the Rangers more than they can know as of then. (RangerWiki entry, story on FanFiction.net)
- Little Bright Star – A Ranger Tale Of New York – A short seasonal fic written for Christmas 2008. 20 years earlier, only a few months after the Rangers became a team, they're celebrating their very first Christmas together. For Gadget, this is the first Christmas in company in three years. At the same time, Nimnul is busy ruining the holidays. (RangerWiki entry, story on FanFiction.net)
The stories in the Midnightverse contain examples of:
- Accidental Misnaming: Lawhiney, that is, LaWahini in Too Huge To Be True. These two names are actually pronounced slightly differently.
- Ace Pilot: Too Huge To Be True has at least two. Geegaw and Baloo even dispute who of them is the greater ace.
- Adventurer Archaeologist: Dawn van Zant from Too Huge To Be True.
- Air-Vent Passageway: Diamonds In The Desert is practically about this. Also, Zipper gets into and out of the National Institute for Mental Health via air vents in Lost And Found, and the Rangers use the air-conditioning vents to get into Mr. Jacob's penthouse in Last Date.
- Alliterative Name: Melissa Mayfield.
- All Just a Dream: Subverted in that Gadget knows all along that Too Huge To Be True is a dream.
- All There in the Manual: You'll be hard-pressed to find any background information about the Midnightverse stories outside this page which is mostly maintained by
the author himself. - Almost Kiss: Twice between Chip and Gadget in Lost And Found.
- Angry Guard Dog: Lucifer in Lost And Found.
- Animal Testing: Lost And Found involves NIMH and even takes the Rangers to the institute to liberate Gadget's mother.
- Applied Phlebotinum: Nimnul's inventions in Diamonds In The Desert and Little Bright Star. Also used to make a seaplane the size of the Marabou fly.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The Marabou is a typical Howard Huge construction. It is a seaplane large enough to hold entire seaplanes inside its cargo space, but due to its sheer size, it is practically unable to enter Cape Suzette Bay.
- Backstory/Flashback
- First Date is a Backstory in itself, Little Bright Star might count, too.
- Lost And Found has the members of the Hackwrench family tell what happened while they were separated, and not only them. Some of the Backstories span more than one chapter.
- Diamonds In The Desert contains its share of Backstories, too.
- Badly Battered Babysitter: Subverted in Too Huge To Be True when Dale explains what the Rangers' real problems with babysitting were.
- Big Applesauce: Yes, the Rangers are from New York City.
- Bilingual Bonus
- Readers of Lost and Found who watched (and understood) the German dub of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers might discover that the name of Geegaw's aircraft and Gadget's second name Beatrice is derived from Gadget's German name Trixi.
- If you know Dutch or German and pronounce Van Thomas (Lost and Found) in one of these languages, it might strike you how close the name sounds to Fantômas.
- Busman's Holiday: Too Huge To Be True.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Chip has tried to tell Gadget how he feels for her for 18 years.
- The Caper: There are two of them in Diamonds In The Desert, both of which go wrong.
- Christmas Episode: Little Bright Star.
- Completed Fic: All of them. Although it took the author a while to release Diamonds In The Desert and even the short A Matter Of Time, he has never left a partially posted fic permanently incomplete.
- Cool Plane
- The Marabou which is clearly too huge to be true. Aside from the usual TaleSpin aircraft, that is.
- Diamonds In The Desert has the "Nimnul Laser Cannon 14" which can both fly and hover.
- The coolness of the Ranger Wing is increased in A Matter Of Time by a touch screen and a Nimnul-made time machine on the future version.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Funny how common this is in the Hackwrench family.
- Dreifachgänger: Gadget, Lawhiney/LaWahini, and Dawn in Too Huge To Be True.
- Also Rat Capone (who is only mentioned, though), Francis, and Allan in Diamonds In The Desert.
- Driver Faces Passenger: Lampshaded in Diamonds In The Desert.LaWahini: "Now would you please look where you're flying and steer around that trunk there before we hit it?"
- In fact, Diamonds In The Desert contains two instances of this.
- Elvis Impersonator: Norton Nimnul a.k.a. Elton Nimley in Diamonds In The Desert. Before you ask, it's of course the rhinestone jumpsuit variant.
- Energy Weapon:
- The Nimnul Laser Cannon 14 in Diamonds In The Desert, the same story that declares that Nimnul is banned from using lasers in most U.S. Federal states.
- The Microwave Adaptive-Range Christmas Obliterator in Little Bright Star. Needless to say that Nimnul is behind this one, too.
- Epic Rocking: A Chipmunk Divine audience has to be patient, for the overture of the show is Maurice Ravel's "Boléro"—which is some fifteen minutes long.
- Everyone Can See It: Chip and Gadget's crush on each other. All the Rangers can see it, including the four new Rangers introduced in Last Date. Needless to say that Chip and Gadget both can't, otherwise they wouldn't have gone on 499 unsuccessful dates. In fact, it gets so blatantly, painfully obvious for the other seven Rangers that they eventually decide to set the two up.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: First Date. Whether or not this applies to Last Date as well is left unclear.
- Fake Band: The Destiny Unlimited Orchestra in Diamonds In The Desert.
- Fan Fiction/Oh, Crap, There Are Fanfics of Us!: First Date provides an in-universe example. A squirrel in Britain, fan of both Sureluck Jones and the Rescue Rangers, sent Chip a copy of a story he wrote, a story about a Rescue Rangers adventure. Within this universe, it counts as a Real-Person Fic.
- Femme Fatale: Clarice in Diamonds In The Desert.
- Fun with Acronyms:
- S.E.U.S.S. in Little Bright Star. Seeing as Nimnul invented it and what Nimnul intends to do in this story, it doesn't really matter what S.E.U.S.S. means; it is explained nevertheless: Super Extremely Unadhesive Soft Soap.
- The same story gives us the M.A.R.C.O. (Microwave Adaptive-Range Christmas Obliterator).
- Gender-Blender Name: "Mandy" for Armando in Diamonds In The Desert; also a Shout-Out to Dick Tracy.
- Genre Shift: If the story is more than 20,000 words long, you can expect it to shift genres. The longer the story, the more genres are shifted through.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Todd and Armando from Diamonds In The Desert are never mentioned to wear pants.
- Heroic BSoD: Diamonds In The Desert. Chip has one after The Chipmunk Divine when Allan continues to hit on Gadget.
- I Call It "Vera": Geegaw named his most recent aircraft Beatrice after Gadget's second name as revealed in Lost And Found.
- Impossible Mission: Diamonds In The Desert.
- Improbable Piloting Skills: Required to steer the Marabou into Cape Suzette's harbor in Too Huge To Be True. Also required to fly any aircraft through that sandstorm.
- Intercontinuity Crossover:
- Too Huge To Be True is a full-blown Crossover of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers and TaleSpin.
- Lost And Found slightly mixes in The Rescuers and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (better known to the target audience as the animated feature The Secret of NIMH). None of the characters from these works appear in the story, though.
- In a sense, Diamonds In The Desert crosses the Rangers over with the classic Chip 'n Dale.
- Kid from the Future: Edison is the son of Sparky and LaWahini who aren't even dating yet in A Matter Of Time's present time.
- Lamarck Was Right: Gadget and LaWahini inherited a great deal of the "NIMH factor" from their mother, as is revealed in Lost And Found.
- Long-Lost Relative: Several members of Gadget's family return in Lost And Found, all of whom haven't seen one another in decades.
- Love Hurts: Last Date. Poor Chip.
- Mad Love: What Todd thinks he feels for Clarice in Diamonds In The Desert.
- The Matchmaker: Last Date has LaWahini and Tammy. And Foxy is dragged into that game, too.
- Novel: Lost And Found and Diamonds In The Desert.
- Novelette: First Date and the shortest story in the Midnightverse so far, Little Bright Star.
- Novella: Too Huge To Be True, Last Date and A Matter Of Time.
- Older Than They Look: Gadget, LaWahini (see Lamarck Was Right), and Stephanie. And let's not forget the other Mice of NIMH.
- Parental Abandonment: Lost And Found takes Gadget's canonical Parental Abandonment up to eleven.
- Plot Bunny: According to Word of God, this was the main reason why he sometimes worked on up to four fanfics at the same time. He simple couldn't not write them.
- Polly Wants a Microphone: Raoul from Last Date counts as a talking parrot. His owner's safe is programmed to recognize his speaking voice. Sort of parodied in that Fat Cat calls him Polly.
- Punny Name: Almost every restaurant or bar called by name in Diamonds In The Desert.
- Road Block: Diamonds In The Desert. The police install one in front of the Versailles Palace so that Nimnul can't escape.
- Recursive Fanfiction: Knight Rangers by RR-Crusader is based on the Midnightverse.
- Reverse Polarity: Lampshaded in Little Bright Star.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Edison. Or maybe the time he spends in the present isn't long enough.
- Rule of Cool: What half of Too Huge To Be True is made of.
- Scenery Porn: The small animal theater inside the Versailles Palace in Diamonds In The Desert.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: In A Matter Of Time, Edison finds out he has the chance to prevent a tragic accident in which Chip will be killed and Gadget will be knocked out into a coma.
- Shared Universe: Knight Rangers by RR-Crusader takes place in the Midnightverse and crosses it over with Knight Rider.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: Gadget, wearing Rebecca Cunningham's trademark evening gown in Too Huge To Be True and Last Date.
- Shout-Out
- Last Date:
- Dale and Foxglove are obviously going to see something that looks like inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean 3 at the Drive-In Theater. It's not the real deal, though, because the story takes place half a year before POTC3 was launched."Dale has asked me out to the drive-in tonight," Foxglove replied. "They're showing some pirate movie. A sequel of a sequel, and still it's said to be pretty good."
- Dale and Foxglove are obviously going to see something that looks like inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean 3 at the Drive-In Theater. It's not the real deal, though, because the story takes place half a year before POTC3 was launched.
- Diamonds In The Desert:
- The Destiny Unlimited Orchestra is named after Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra and one of the earliest songs the lead singer had performed in her younger years.
- Its musical director and occasional piano player, Armando, called Mandy by said singer, is a nod to Mandy Patinkin, starring as the piano player 88 Keys in Dick Tracy...
- ...just like the solo violinist (and overall main character) Melissa Mayfield is one to Vanessa-Mae.
- The finale of the overture was inspired by a piece of fan art featuring that self-same singer—pretty obviously to those who know the drawing.
- Two musical-composing and songwriting spiders from New York City named Andrew & Lloyd Cobwebber are mentioned for having sent suggestions for a new stage show.
- Two of the restaurant names mentioned in the story are Shout-Outs to songs, namely "Cadillac Walk" by Mink de Ville and "Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf.
- The chapter "Casino Roy-Dale" not only borrows its title from Casino Royale but also begins with Dale dreaming himself into the role of a super-spy investigating inside the Versailles Palace. According to Word of God (who maintains this page), the same scene is on the verge of shouting out to another Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers fanfic, Wolfsbane.
- Little Bright Star:
- The idea of Nimnul trying to ruin Christmas, in combination with S.E.U.S.S., is a Shout-Out to How the Grinch Stole Christmas!.
- Nimnul got the M.A.R.C.O.'s main coil from Arkham, Massachusetts.
- Last Date:
- Show Within a Show:
- TaleSpin in Too Huge To Be True.
- The stage show The Chipmunk Divine in Diamonds In The Desert.
- Slo-Mo Big Air: If Diamonds In The Desert were a movie, this would clearly have been used in the scene when Nimnul jumps the Road Block.
- Stalker with a Crush: Allan Capone.
- Stuff Blowing Up: The pine trees in Little Bright Star.
- Time Travel: Edison, unvoluntarily.
- Vacation Crossover: In Too Huge to Be True, the crossover with TaleSpin, the Rangers vacation to Cape Suzette—where they get involved in a cargo job, and later, a treasure hunt with Higher for Hire.
- Viva Las Vegas!: Diamonds In The Desert. 'Nuff said. Just about all that's missing are weddings.
- LaWahini even sings this song in one scene.
- What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Gadget may be highly intelligent and quite well-educated, but in the first stories, it turns out that she doesn't know what love is—despite having been in love with Chip ever since he started dating her in First Date.
- Wronski Feint: Diamonds In The Desert. Foxglove tries to pull one with Erica chasing her, Erica doesn't fall for it and even lampshades it, and Foxglove finally succeeds with the canyon by flying through a cactus.
- The X of Y: A Matter Of Time.
- Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Ye Olde Omelette Outlette in Too Huge To Be True.
