Philosophical Namedrops
A number of characters in the game, from bosses to peaceful machines, are named after famous European and Chinese philosophers:- Auguste
— Auguste Comte or August Schlegel. The French spelling (with an "e") is used in both English and Japanese versions of the game, seemingly supporting the Comte hypothesis (he is also much more famous than Schlegel), but the Schlegel hypothesis makes much more sense in light of the in-game Auguste's strong brotherly relationship with a machine named Friedrich (see below). - Boku-Shi — Mozi
- Engels — Friedrich Engels. Alongside Karl Marx, Engels is considered one of the founding fathers of socialism and communism, characterized by the transfer of the means of production (such as factories and farms) to those who work them. Fittingly, both Marx and Engels machines in the game guard the Abandoned Factory area and, according to some indications function as part of its production lines.
- Ernst — Ernst Bloch or Ernst Cassirer
- Friedrich — Friedrich Schlegel or, maybe, Nietzsche himself. Given how Friedrich's only role in the game is "August[e]'s little brother", the Schlegel hypothesis is a clear favorite, and given the prominence of the Nietzschean themes in the plot, one would expect a possible Nietzsche namesake to be much more prominent.
- Grün — Karl Grün
- Hegel — Georg Hegel
- Immanuel — Immanuel Kant
- Jean-Paul — Jean-Paul Sartre
- Kierkegaard — Søren Kierkegaard
- Ko-Shi — Confucius
- Marx — Karl Marx. See Engels above.
- Pascal — Blaise Pascal
- Ro-Shi — Laozi
- Simone — Simone de Beauvoir
- So-Shi — Zhuang Zhou
Friedrich Nietzsche gets another honorable mention, seeing how he is actually the only human philosopher referred to directly in the game, when Pascal reads his book during the brief segment you play as him.
