- Alternative Character Interpretation: Did Phaeton ever truly care about helping his fellow Neosapiens, and was he ever truly The Atoner for what he did at the end of the first rebellion, or was he just an evil, power mad tyrant manipulating everyone to further his own ambitions? Was he one of these things all along or did he start as the former and gradually transform into the latter as a result of repeated failures of his regime and his own deteriorating health?
- Complete Monster:
- Governor General Phaeton is the falsely-noble despotic ruler of the Neosapien Empire who manipulates his people into throwing their lives away to increase his personal power. Once a Neosapien rebel, Phaeton cowardly sold out his cohorts to save his own skin, then rose to power while ordering the genocide of humanity while consolidating his grip on the Neosapiens. Running brutal death camps, Phaeton has any who resist his orders taken there to be killed and proves a horrific war criminal, with tactics including forced starvation and labor. With cloning technology, Phaeton takes advantage of an unending supply of troops and cruelly executes his commanders for even minor failures only to replace and replenish his army. A completely disgusting madman, Phaeton eventually sends so many of his loyal followers to pointless deaths that even his most loyal aide abandons him when he discovers Phaeton's endgame involved wiping out his own race to guarantee victory.
- General Draconis is the Neosapien Governor in charge of Venus. Cruel even by the brutal standards Phaeton has set for the Neosapien Order, Draconis doesn't even have Phaeton's pretense of trying to help the Neosapien people. Everything Draconis does is for his own advancement. Draconis enacts a scorched earth campaign on Venus, creating a planet-wide famine that wipes out the majority of the civilian population, with the few survivors sent to toil in forced labor camps. Draconis's treatment of his own race is little better, even murdering two Neo Megas assigned to him as advisors because he felt their "suggestions" undermined his absolute authority. As a contingency if Venus fell out of his control, Draconis rigged a hydrogen bomb to the city of Vesta, intending to spite his enemies by murdering thousands of human civilians. Draconis assigned a noble soldier named Thrax to detonate the bomb in order to "redeem" himself for showing mercy to an Able Squad member... except Draconis lied about there being a timer for the bomb, and once Thrax activated it, he and Draconis's remaining Neosapien soldiers would've died in the resulting blast. Draconis's lust for power was so great, he plotted to betray Phaeton and usurp control of the Neosapien Empire for himself. He eventually seized his chance by leaving what he thought was Phaeton to die in an exploding ship.
- Dr. Albrecht Ketzer proves that Terrans can be just as evil as the Neosapien Order. It is revealed that he turned an entire village of natives in the Amazon—as well as himself—into half-plant monstrosities, a rather horrific process. Later injecting Nara Burns with the same DNA formula he used on himself, he withholds the antidote unless the Exotroopers attack a nearby Neosapien command station; while this may seem like a good cause, in reality this was for his own purposes. When the heroes point out that there were still Terrans in that area, and an attack would lead to Neosapien retaliation, Ketzer dismisses these concerns. Even worse, when the squad relents and attacks, Ketzer reveals that there is no antidote. Injecting Medusa with the same formula, Ketzer later reappears to kidnap Nara again and finish his "work" on her.
- Funny Moments:
- Not much from this show, but "Target: Earth" has the whole "Amanda Live" bit which parodies talk shows- in this case it's a vehicle for the Neosapien rule- and a random Neo, Stentor, is the announcer, wearing a tuxedo. It's fairly surreal to see in this show, which already has a fairly high tolerance for the absurd.
- Also, from "Scorched Venus", J.T., Alec and Marsala trying to fix a busted Neosapien E-Frame. Right after getting out of the water, one of its' little arms falls off the frame with a "CLUNK"! And a few moments after, Alec succeeds in starting it like a car- as in, it makes "engine trying to turn over" noises. Since when did E-Frames run on car engines?
- Genius Bonus:
- Some of the things the characters say don't make a lot of sense if you aren't familiar with, say, World War II or even the Vietnam War. For example, when Able squad realizes they're about to be buried by a landslide caused by Marsala shooting the cliff above them , Maggie screams FRAGGED!
- Additionally, the way the Second Neosapien Rebellion is structured is similar to that of World War II, as staff commentary puts emphasis on.
- Heartwarming Moments:
- When Bronski and Burns are captured and forced into a death march, Burns starts showing signs of extreme fatigue. Bronski wastes no time in coming to her and trying to help her, physically and emotionally, even though he's equally as exhausted.
- Seeing Admiral Winfield finally retire to the farm he's always wanted to run during the Grand Finale, after long years of a hellish war of attrition.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: The Executive Producer of the show, Will Meuginot, once compared Exo Squad to Gundam, noting that both invoked World War II campaigns. Several of the voice actors in Exo Squad would go on to dub various Gundam series.
- Nightmare Fuel: Exosquad is a lot darker than the usual saturday-morning fare, even ignoring several events being based off of real horrors from World War II. Aside from the normal carnage of war (shooting and explosions and what not), we see characters get exposed to hard vacuum, starved half to death, put in cargo containers and launched towards the sun, and the effects of the GRAF Shield, which crushes starships (and their occupants) like soda cans. That's just the first season, by the way. The second season gets much worse. They outright call what Draconis is doing to the humans a genocide.
- The two early episodes of season 2, "The Greatest Fear" and its subsequent episode "Flesh Crawls". Both of these dive into automutation syndrome and the horrific experiments the Neosapiens perform on their own kind to study it. The latter episode in particular turns into a homage to The Thing (1982).
- Phaeton's automutation syndrome, which manifests as his body constantly melting into a bizarre goo, necessitating 24-Hour Armor just to keep his body together. At one point, his head visibly disintegrates into goop. The facial expression alone isn't pretty.
- Retroactive Recognition: Many voice actors, with Lisa Ann Beley standing out the most because of her distinct voice.
- Tear Jerker:
- The first season's climax sees J.T. fighting through Phaeton's secret Neosapien lab alone to rescue his team, a gauntlet that includes going against the Neos' Super Prototype and then Phaeton (who is wearing his own Ace Custom E-Frame). The gauntlet gets Marsh's E-Frame increasingly damaged, and it finally (and fatally) malfunctions as Marsh escapes, forcing him to eject and see it fall into lava. The thing that puts this scene firmly into this territory is the fact the E-Frame's computer says "goodbye, J.T. Marsh" as it melts, which J.T. claims should be impossible because the Frame wasn't active. Cue Marsala saying:
Humans are great creators, Lieutenant, though often unaware of the consequences of their gift.- Shiva's first (and only, as his clone survives to the end of the series) death. Unlike the other of Phaeton's generals, Shiva was a simple but loyal soldier not interested in backstabbing or treachery, and his death is treated with dignity. The Exoscouts even give him a makeshift grave.
- The Problem with Licensed Games: A game was created for the Sega Genesis (with a Super NES port planned, but never realized). It was touted as featuring three different gameplay modes (arcade shooter, sidescroller, and fighting game), but none of them were individually fleshed out enough to make it worth playing. Impressive graphics, though.
- Unintentional Period Piece: Despite being set in the future, there's no escaping how screamingly 90s the E-frame designs and the color schemes are, not to mention the bizarre haircuts. (For the producers' part, they actually did prefer the E-frame designs seen in the show, which were done by the toy designers, as opposed to the unused sketches created by the in-house artists at Universal, which they felt were rather generic.)
- When New York is visited in season 2, one shot briefly depicts the Twin Towers as still standing.
- The Woobie: Marsala definitely qualifies. One of the original leaders of the first Neosapien rebellion, Marsala was genuinely trying to secure rights for his fellow Neos, only to be betrayed to the human military by his own broodmate - who was none other than Phaeton. Before the rebellion, he suffered many injustices as a member of the Neo Slave Race, and even after the rebellion has to deal with prejudice and an attempt on his life from humans. This trope is even discussed by some of his allies in Able Squad, who wonder about the toll fighting against his brothers takes on Marsala.
