[7][8][9] Thomas A. Anderson was born in Lower Downtown, Capital City, USA on March 11, 1962, according to his criminal record, or September 13, 1971 according to his passport (both seen in the film).

Although he had disciplinary troubles when he was thirteen to fourteen years old, Anderson went on to become a respected member of the school community through his involvement in football and hockey.

At the start of the series, Neo is one of billions of humans neurally connected to the Matrix, unaware that the world he lives in is a simulated reality.

After refusing to cooperate with the agents, Neo has an electronic bug implanted within his Matrix-simulated body so that his actions can be tracked, and those seeking to make contact from the free world can be traced and destroyed.

He wakes up disoriented and alarmed to find himself naked, weak, and hairless in a pod full of what can be assumed to be an artificial amniotic fluid.

Upon his "birthing" into the real world, he is discovered by a machine that grabs him by the neck and removes all of his plugs and cables before flushing him out of his fluid tank down into the cold sewers below the Earth's surface.

He is also informed of the existence of its agents, programs designed by the machines to maintain order and dominance over the human race, created with abilities such as dodging bullets, running at high speeds, jumping great distances, and physically possessing people in the Matrix.

Returning from the Oracle to a landline phone, which serves as the exit for "red pills" to leave the Matrix, the crew of Morpheus's ship is betrayed by Cypher, a "red pill" who is willing to give the agents Morpheus in exchange for the promise of being mentally erased and reconnected permanently to the Matrix as an escape from the real world's bleakness.

Neo learns that the Agents seek to hack into Morpheus's brain in order to force him to tell them the access codes to the mainframe computer within humanity's last refuge, the city of Zion.

Trinity, seeing Neo die in the real world while his mind is still in the Matrix, tells his evidently lifeless body that the Oracle had foretold that she would fall in love with the One.

Approximately six months have passed since the events of the first film, and Neo, now Trinity's lover and fully confident in his powers as the One, is able to tremendously manipulate the artificial world within the Matrix.

Smith is no longer an agent of the Matrix, but has become more virus-like; he is able to insert his code into other systems, and infect other programs and human minds to make copies of himself.

This task is accomplished, but the Keymaker is killed, a hovercraft is destroyed and Trinity is jeopardized by the agents of the Matrix, illustrating a vision that Neo has seen earlier in his dreams.

Entering the door, Neo finds himself confronted by the Architect, a program which created and designed the Matrix and also ensures its constant stability.

The Matrix Revolutions begins immediately after the events of the second movie; as a result of his struggle with the sentinels, Neo returns to consciousness finding himself caught in an isolated train station-like limbo only accessible by order of the Merovingian, from which his mind is unable to free itself.

Having told Neo that he now has the power to choose to end the war and defeat Smith, the Oracle then states "everything that has a beginning has an end, Neo" and informs him that in order for true peace to happen, he must travel to the heavily guarded Machine City in the real world and make a truce with the machines in order to save both races from extinction because of Smith's activities.

Meanwhile, Captain Roland and the Nebuchadnezzar's surviving crew of Link and Morpheus in the hovercraft Hammer/Mjolnir return to Zion, which is now besieged and losing to the Machines.

The fate of Neo was never truly revealed in the MMORPG sequel, The Matrix Online, however, despite this, his influence had a strong impact on several key events throughout the game.

In the beginning, scattered code fragments of Neo's "RSI" (Residual Self Image) were found on the bodies of the impostor agents; who appeared across the Mega City during Chapter 1.1 (later revealed to be sentinels under the command of the general program) when held, these fragments echoed some of the final thoughts of Neo inside the redpill's mind.

The Oracle reveals a secret society of exiles known only as the Shapers, who are the only ones able to bring the Fragments together in any significant way and that they must be protected from the impostor agents' corruption.

The redpills' distrust and organizational differences prove too much for any strong unity, so that a shaper fell into the captivity of the false agents.

The original intruder, Halborn, was notably intrigued by the life of the One and was personally shocked about the implications of Neo's ability to affect Machines outside of the simulation had on his search for what he called the "Biological Interface Program".

The team then "unplugs" Neo and with the help of a friendly machine, who was hacked, he is revived in the real world inside Bugs' ship, the Mnemosyne.

In the real world, after Morpheus helps Neo regain his memories and fighting style, the Mnemosyne goes to Io, the last human city led by Niobe.

He found that suppressing their memories but keeping them close to one another made the Matrix more power-efficient and more resistant to the anomalies that caused the previous iterations to fail.

In a final attempt to get rid of Neo and Trinity, the Analyst activates the Swarm, which forces many people to try to kill Bugs' team.

However, his speed of flight is further exemplified by his ability to escape explosions, and the sonic boom left in his wake has the power to overturn rows of heavy vehicles and reap massive destruction, indicating he can probably fly much faster than Mach 4 when pressed.

Neo is now able to create powerful telekinetic shockwaves, particularly when touching Trinity, and while he can still stop bullets, it appears to take him more effort.

As part of the preparation for the movie, Yuen Woo-ping had Keanu Reeves undertake four months of martial arts training in a variety of different styles.

[19] Ju-Jitsu, Taekwondo, Drunken Boxing, Kenpo Karate and Kung fu are some of what Neo learns as part of his computerised combat training.