Mercury Rising Fanon Wiki

Mercury Rising Fanon Wiki
The Mercury Rising Fanon Wiki is a wiki devoted to the 1998 movie Mercury Rising and a fanfiction series based off the movie. Anyone is allowed to constructively edit (See Guidelines), but contributions by other fans of the movie and anyone who knows and likes it are greatly encouraged and welcome here.

Disclaimer
What is displayed on this wiki is merely a fanon extrapolation/continuation of 1998's Mercury Rising and does not represent the movie or original book (Simple Simon) in any official capacity. As well, the characters, objects, events, and locations are merely the product of imagination and do not represent their real-world counterparts or any persons, living or dead. Any resemblance to such things is entirely coincidental.

About
This wiki will serve as a comprehensive database of all information and events relating to the 1998 movie Mercury Rising and its fanon universe.

Mercury Rising
Released to theaters on April 3, 1998, Mercury Rising is one of the most underrated films of all time. Directed by Harold Becker, the movie was based off Ryne Douglas Pearson's 1996 action-thriller novel Simple Simon and features a nine year-old autistic savant named Simon Lynch (Miko Hughes) who accidentally deciphers a top-secret government code in June 1998. As a result, he is targeted by assassins of an equally top-secret department of the NSA - later known as Division - when he is deemed a potential threat to national security by Lt. Colonel Nicholas Kudrow (Alec Baldwin), a top agency official and commander of Division, who believes the boy could potentially be utilized by an enemy of the United States if he fell into the wrong hands. After Simon's parents, Martin and Jenny Lynch, are killed by an assassin, ex-Special Forces soldier Peter Burrell (L.L. Ginter), Simon is discovered hiding in a crawl space in his closet by FBI Special Agent Art Jeffries (Bruce Willis). Soon after, Simon is taken to a nearby hospital, and put under police guard. But, as a result of his autism, Simon's move to the hospital's non-secure pediatrics wing proved a mistake, because of his perceived lack of security. As such, he silently left the room he was placed in and hid in another room, just outside pediatrics. Fortunately, even though Burrell checked the room Simon was hiding in, he didn't discover the boy, and Jeffries found him instead, not a minute after Burrell had passed by. A chase with Burrell in pursuit of Jeffries and Simon ended on the Kennedy Expressway near O'Hare after their getaway vehicle (an ambulance from the hospital) was hit after a brief and one-sided gunfight that narrowly missed Simon and left him an emotional wreck. The pair soon sought refuge from the gunfire on the O'Hare Blue Line tracks of the "L" after crashing the vehicle into the highway barrier. This proved to be more or less a mistake when Jeffries' attention was diverted from Simon for a split second and the boy was nearly run over by an oncoming train before being tackled by Jeffries out of the train's path. After this narrow escape, the two again take refuge, this time on one of the two passing trains, where after a brief, scheduled stop, another assassin of Kudrow's, Shayes (Peter Stormare), embarked on the very same train and managed to set his sights on Simon before Jeffries killed him after a brief fistfight by throwing him in the path of another oncoming train. Within hours, they had sought refuge at Jeffries' friend and Chicago FBI A-SAC Tommy Jordan (Chi McBride)'s home, where Jordan let Jeffries borrow his car and his son TJ's clothing (for Simon's use). Events of the next twenty-four hours yielded little significance to the history of this incident and are of little value, but of note was the brief return of Jeffries and Simon to the boy's home where they arranged a meeting with NSA cryptographer Dean Crandell (Robert Stanton). The next day, events began to take a new and twisting turn when Jeffries asked a stranger, Stacey Siebring (Kim Dickens) to watch over Simon while he met with Crandell, who was soon killed by Burrell on Michigan Avenue; with a Sun-Times reporter, Roy McOwen, phoning the city's FBI office at the Kluczynski Federal Building later that day, curious as to Jeffries' whereabouts. The next day, Jeffries and Simon took their final refuge at Siebring's apartment, at which time Jeffries discovered that this conspiracy ran deep, and that Burrell was ex-US Special Forces, falsely listed as killed in Beirut in 1982. Testimony by Emily Lang (Carrie Preston), girlfriend of Crandell's friend and co-worker Leo Pedranski (Bodhi Pine Elfman) - who was also killed by Burrell, in the former's apartment in Washington DC - confirmed Jeffries and Tommy's suspicions about Kudrow and set the stage for their final confrontation on June 12, 1998. Late that evening, Stacey Siebring escorted Simon to the IBM Building on the Chicago River, where Jeffries was supposed to meet them for a Witness Protection pickup for Simon, but interference from Kudrow had thrown off these plans after Jeffries had visited Kudrow in Alexandria, VA, where Kudrow lived and Jeffries gave him an ultimatum: that either Kudrow or one of his superiors reveal the code's existance to the American public by national television - as well as the events surrounding it - or Jeffries would give the Senate Oversight Committee a carbon-copy letter written by Pedranski that clearly revealed Kudrow's crimes. He chose not to follow Jeffries' ultimatum and instead chose to personally kill Simon. His plan backfired tremendously when Burrell was killed by imploding, bullet-riddled glass in the IBM Building's GEX Skydeck and after a handfight with Jeffries, Kudrow himself attempted to drag Simon over the building's edge, but was shot and killed by Jeffries, who freed the struggling and screaming Simon from the dying Kudrow's grasp. With both Kudrow and Burrell's deaths, the threat against young Simon had finally ended, and about two weeks later, he had been accepted by foster parents who'd been told the non-classified reasons for Jeffries' protection of the boy. And last but not least, Jeffries, after many tries and failed attempts, was accepted by Simon as a trusted friend, having finally earned the timid young boy's lasting but silent trust and gratitude.


 * Note: McOwen's part in the events of the movie weren't revealed until The Series: Season 1, Episode 15, "The Fall ". The name of Kudrow's department, the non-classified reasons for Jeffries' protection of Simon, and the time of Simon's acceptance by foster parents wasn't revealed until later on in The Series as well.

The Series
Beginning seven months after the events of the movie, The Series follows Simon as he is again being targeted by a department of the NSA, now their highly secretive and secure Zero Section, led by the ambitious Colonel Robert Donaldson (Sam Neill) - essentially Kudrow's replacement - and his second-in-command, Major James Striker (Gary Oldman), along with a motley assortment of former military personnel, guns for hire, and blindly-devoted patriots. Simon is also forced to contend with and confront someone from the past, his own brother, Peter Lynch (Benji Gregory). With the help of Jeffries, Tommy Jordan, Stacey Siebring, and a group of hard-working FBI agents Simon must avoid death again at every turn from their many new enemies as the first season begins. Explosive revelations and a typical cliffhanger mark the end of the first season as some of Simon's darkest secrets are revealed and he is kidnapped by Zero Section for a second time, led by Donaldson himself.

Mercury Rising Main Cast - (1998)

 * Bruce Willis - Art Jeffries
 * Miko Hughes - Simon Lynch
 * Alec Baldwin - Nicholas Kudrow
 * Chi McBride - Tommy Jordan
 * Kim Dickens - Stacey Siebring
 * Robert Stanton - Dean Crandell
 * Bodhi Pine Elfman - Leo Pedranski
 * Kevin Conway - Joe Lomax

Legends: Season 1 Main Cast - (2005)

 * Joshua Jackson - Andrew Ridd
 * Dominic Scott Kay - Charlie Daniels
 * Alicia Coppola - Kaitlyn Flannigan
 * Alimi Ballard - Josh Russell
 * Liev Schreiber - Warren Iverson
 * Dale Godboldo - T.M. Fisher