About

"Fly Me to the Moon" is a jazz vocal standard written by Bart Howard and popularized by Frank Sinatra. In online culture, the song is best known as the closing credits song of Neon Genesis Evangelion and for its heavy use in the Bayonetta series of video games, and has been parodied in video remixes.

Origin

The song was written by composer Bart Howard in 1954.^[1] After the song was performed by popular singers of the time including Kaye Ballard and Johnny Mathis, before Frank Sinatra recorded an arrangement with Count Basie in 1964 (shown below, left).

Spread

The song was inducted into the songwriter's hall of fame in 1999.^[2] A recording by vocalist Claire Littley was used in the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion as the series' closing credits, becoming an iconic part of the series (shown below, left). It also featured heavily in Bayonetta, making several appearances in the game (shown below, right). When Neon Genesis Evangelion was licensed to Netflix in 2019, "Fly Me to the Moon" was cut from the song's end credits.^[3]

Parodies

The song has featured heavily in parodies of Neon Genesis Evangelion's end credits. On April 27th, 2018, YouTuber numero6ei posted a parody of the credits featuring a traffic cone spinning between two elevators, gaining over 205,000 views (shown below, left). This started a format where various existentially-tinged GIFs would be humorously added to Evangelion's end credits. For example, on October 2nd, 2018, Facebook user set a video of a stuffed Kermit the Frog toy to the song, gaining over 1.2 million views (YouTube embed shown below, right).^[4]

The meme continued to be popular over the following year, thanks in part to two videos by YouTuber SystemFormat, which featured Patrick Star in the format. The first, posted January 28th, 2019, gained over 715,000 views (shown below, left), and the second, posted July 6th, gained over 84,000 views (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References