Anno / Gendo

[Felipe]

I've always thought Gendo was quite representative of Anno himself. Sure, he probably put all his feelings of depression and separation from others onto Shinji, but I'm tempted to read Gendo manipulating Nerv, his son, his love affairs, etc. as Anno weaving the story of Eva, sort of using this characters for his own purpose (of releiving his depression) with no feelings for them.

Also, the fucking beard.

[Sachi]

Well, I would go even further to say that each and every character holds some reflection of the author. Artistic expression of this nature (particularly in creating characters such as this) is just that: putting yourself and your experiences into the work.

Likewise, considering that Gendo is essentially the projected image of what an older Shinji might be like, its not surprising that Gendo could also be compared to Anno by proxy.

[Dream]

To be honest Shinji and Gendo gave me more the impression of a certainly duality/ambivalence within Anno. Shinji being the deeper/inner aspect of him, how his heart really is deep down, and Gendo "being" what he has to do to keep living in the world or to keep existing as an adult.

Also, like Sachi said pretty much all the characters are a reflection of Anno to some degree, of course the one who is the most reflection of Anno is Shinji, but Gendo is pretty close too.

[Felipe]

It also ocurred to me that Shinji's hatred for Gendo might show some self-hatred by Anno.

[Kendrix]

It's worth noting that Anno has previously discribed himself as a manipulative workaholic in something out of that huge collection of sources sorted by date that someone here has.
The similarity is, of course, hard to overlook - Gendo's basically a slightly less chubby Anno with straight hair and cooler clothes.
It's not uncommon for authors to mold (dynamic, detailed) villains after shadow-versions of themselves, see Faust(Both Mephisto and Dr. Faust could be seen as manifestations of Goethe, in some way. His protagonists all have certain similarities. Faust is basically a very grumpy Götz, Götz a more free-spirited Faust, and Werther is the immature emo brat version of both.), or Angel's egg. (Both the soldier and the little girl are probably Oshii with pretty white hair tacked on, with the girl being the innocence/way to believe, and the warrior with the cross-shaped riffle the cynism of adulthood)

It's more that Shinji and him are two sides of the same medal in some respect, Shinji is more the "inner" perception and Gendo the "outer" one, we get hints that a perspective flip would reveal a lot of similarities.
(Ritsuko: He looks all gloomy, just like his old man! Yui: He's actually quite cute once you get to know him. Touji: You know, I first though you were a total jerk. Rei: *DO NOT INSULT IN MY PRESENCE*)

If you think as the cast as the various components of a person's psyche, both Gendo and Shinji would be the "self", Shinji being that fundamental source where thoughts and decisions pour from, and Gendo being the "self that observes the self", the part of you that looks at and judges your actions, and eventually might decide their BS and reject the rest of it.
Gendo doesn't actually hate Shinji, but the percieved rejection there was definitely the initial root for Shinji's self-hatred

But of course, both character also have a lot of other, unrelated aspects to them, both positive and negative, abstract and personal, one shouldn't oversimplify the matter, or think that everything about them related to one one many aspecs/layers of meaning.

[Xard]

Anno has confirmed all Eva characters are based on him one way or another sans Mari (and presumably new Q characters). Gendo's basically a grown up Shinji and Anno's looks so yeah, you can call him Anno proxy too.

[Mr. Tines]

Because nobody has posted this yet...

[Kendrix]

^This would certainly explain Q.

[Darkwing]

Let us hope for the sake of the world that nothing ever happens to Anno's wife.

Last I knew, no kids right? Maybe a good thing.

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

Things have happened to all of Anno's wives. It's what made End of Evangelion so good.

[Guy Nacks]

Last I knew, no kids right? Maybe a good thing.

Back in 1998 when Anno did his whole "teaching kids about anime" thing on TV, it's pretty apparent that the guy is really uncomfortable around children. Sure, he mellowed out by the end of the program, but I think that the fact that they point blank stated how he had to really be talked into appearing on the program because of how nervous he was really tells you a lot. I couldn't help but imagine how freaked out he would be with one of his own.

Now, flash forward to the present: Sure, Anno's changed some in the past 14 years, but the guy's been married for what, a decade? I think if he were gonna start a family with his wife, he'd have done it by now. I honestly don't think that Anno plans on having children, maybe out of a fear that he'd end up being a bad father or something, or would screw them up, or wouldn't want his kids to have to endure what he endured as a child. We'll proably never know the real answer, cause nobody's gonna ask him that question directly as it's too personal. We can speculate all we want, but it's really nobody's business other than Anno's and Moyoko's (or as I like to call them Anno^2). Makes you wonder if part of his characterization of Gendo was an allusion to his own fears how he would act as a father.

Things have happened to all of Anno's wives

Anno's only been married once, and it wasn't until 5 years after he made EOE.

[Darkwing]

While marriage has apparently been good for Anno from what I understand, we can see that when it comes to Eva at least, it wasn't an automatic happy switch for his works.