Shout Out / Civilization: Beyond Earth

• To Star Trek
  • In Suzanne Fielding's introduction interview, she makes reference to "Musk, Branson and Cochrane".
  • Along those lines, one of the available structures is called the Holosuite.
  • The achievement for purchasing 1000 tiles is "Rules of Acquisition".
  • The achievement for winning a Domination Victory? "Resistance is Futile".
  • The achievement for buying every Virtue in the Prosperity Tree is "Live Long and Prosper".
  • The achievement for buying every Virtue in the Knowledge Tree is "Logic is the beginning of wisdom".
  • The achievement for winning one game on every map size and type is "United Federation of Planets".
• The article on Kavita Thakur is written by a Straw Atheist dedicated to taking down religious leaders who is converted to Thakur's ways after seeing the good it did to India. The author's name? Diogenes Hitchens.
• If you find the remains of a failed expedition you can perform a psychohistorical analysis of their records to learn from their mistakes. The ADVISR also performs one at the very beginning of the game to tell you about Affinities if you choose to activate Full Guidance.
• The Contact victory is stated by developers to be inspired by a Carl Sagan novel of the same name.
• Purity's philosophy is stated to be heavily inspired by A Canticle for Leibowitz, with a dash of G.K. Chesterton in for good measure.
  • Fittingly, one of the Purity quotes is attributed to Chersterbelloch K. Brown.
  • Another is a quote from "Penniless Ben's Almanac", a play on Poor Richard's Almanack, which was published by Benjamin Franklin.
  • One quote comes from a work "Satres" from "Juvenile the Latest"', "Satres", a play on Juvenal's Satires. With a title like "the Latest" and a quotation that goes "Why waste your breath articulating a morality that was disproven with eloquence and foresight centuries ago on Old Earth?", this Juvenile individual might have even actually emulated Juvenal in-universe.
  • On the visual front, many Purity units seem to be channelling Warhammer 40,000; for a prime example take a look at the Lev-Destroyer◊.
• Conversely, Supremacy appears to be channelling Neon Genesis Evangelion. Compare the CARVR mech◊ with EVA 01◊. Oh, and their strongest unit, which is bio-mechanical, is called the Angel.
  • The ANGEL's quadrupedal, insectoid design◊ also somewhat resembles a Reaper destroyer, in case you feel like being the vanguard of the other guy's destruction, for a change.
• The Hybrid Affinities
  • Harmony-Purity quite resembles the Tau faction from Warhammer 40,000.
  • Purity-Supremacy can be best described as Aperture Science as a N.G.O. Superpower.
    • And in what's almost certainly a coincidence, their aesthetic and philosophy seems to have been co-opted by The Institute.
• Arid worlds are said by the developers to have more Siege Worms than other planets, a reference to Dune.
  • Further developing this, the achievement for killing one is "Walk Without Rhythm".
  • An in-game quest for defeating a Siege Worm makes it seem like Shai-Hulud in all but name. The flavour text is very Moby-Dick, though.
    • And in Rising Tide, a Harmony unit that leashes a siege worm specifically earns the "Shai-Hulud" achievement.
• One of the worlds included in the Exoplanets Map Pack is Eta Vulpeculae b, described solely as "A mysterious new discovery with unknown terrain". In Star Control II, this exact planet is the Androsynth homeworld.
• The developers have stated that the alien planet- possessing toxic forests of miasma and giant insectoid beings - was heavily inspired by Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
• To Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri:
  • When debating the merits of the Seeding with other PAC leaders, Daoming interjects with "Gentlemen, I must dissent."
  • Harmony's unique victory condition, Transcendence, shares the same name and operational goal as the main victory condition in Alpha Centauri. Its text introduction also states that the planet's lifeforms appear to be interconnected into a hive mind, similarly to the xenofungus.
  • One of the worlds included in the Exoplanets Map Pack is Rigil Khantoris Bb, which is described as "Orbiting the closest star to our solar system". Rigil Khantoris is an alternate spelling of another name (Rigil/Rigel Kent/Kentaurus) for Alpha Centauri, the closest star to our own.
  • The second tier of air fighters is named the Needlejet.
  • You can build a Wonder called the Human Hive.
  • The American Reclamation Corporation Space Program's motto is Beyond Chiron.
  • The Crawler Wonder is a direct reference to the Supply Crawler unit, in appearance, description, and function.
  • Brasilia is a slightly milder version of the Spartan Federation, a survivalist faction driven by a militarist ethos. Even the faction leaders are both Latin-Americans, as Rejinaldo Bolivar is Brazilian (Portuguese-speaking) while Corazon Santiago is Puertorican (Spanish-speaking).
• The achievement for buying all Might Virtues is "C'mon you apes, you wanna live forever?"
  • Also, kill 500 aliens? The Only Good Bug is a Dead Bug.
  • The Battlesuit contains a subtle one its Civilopedia entry. It states that Battlesuit regiments are often given a nickname based on the regimental commander, the most legendary ones persisting past the commander's death or retirement. The most famous being Juanito's Jaguars, led by Colonel Richard Juanito. Richard Juanito is a pretty obvious flip on "Johnny Rico," who served with Rasczak's Roughnecks, who had a rename to "Jelly's Jaguars" shot down by Jelly out of respect for their former commander.
• Get beaten to building a Wonder ten times? There is an achievement for that: "There is no try".
  • Downloading a mod? "I've made a lot of special modifications myself".
  • The description for the Crawler wonder references a battle of Toshe Station.
• Getting a One-Hit Kill awards you with the "Game over, man!" achievement.
• Killing an enemy spy earns you the Enemy Within achievement.
  • Winning a game with only aquatic cities gives the "Terror From the Deep" achievement.
• The achievement for maximum Supremacy affinity is "The Sound of Inevitability".
• The achievement for achieving maximum level in Purity is "So Say We All".
  • Even more, there's "Cylon Computer Virus" for winning a multiplayer game.
• The achievement for razing 100 alien nests is "Making Way for a Hyperspace Bypass".
  • In this vein, the achievement for researching every single tech in the game is simply "42".
• The achievement for playing a mod? "I'm in the middle of some calibrations".
• The achievement for winning a game on an "equatorial" planet (one flattened by rapid spinning) is "Cruel and Unusual Geography".
• The achievements for unlocking all Tier 1 and Tier 2 Virtue synergy bonuses are "A Fistful of Dollars" and "For a Few Dollars More", respectively. Meanwhile, the achievement for Tier 3 Virtue synergy bonuses is "Once Upon A Time In Space".
• The quest you get for building a Command Center is called Spymaster And Commander.
• The achievement for building all wonders across multiple playthroughs is "Valley of the Time Tombs".
• The achievement for making a city that generates more than one-hundred culture per turn is "A Mighty Fine Shindig".
  • And the achievement for being a game on a Duel-sized map is "I Aim To Misbehave".
• The most prominent research department looking into the possibilities of the Many Worlds theory is the Miskatonic Reading Group, whose publications are described as "simultaneously deeply interesting and incredibly disturbing".
  • In the description of the Abyssal Mirror wonder, it mentions this giant and innovative underwater signal magnifier got its name when a test was performed that aimed it toward deep space, instead of planet orbit. After filtering out the background noise from distant spacecraft, satellites, and cosmic static, an unknown (yet steady) flute-like "monotonous piping" was received.
• The quest for upgrading the chemical factory is called "Better Living Through Chemistry"
• The achievement for winning on a Tiny map is "Tiny Big Planet".
• An Old Earth artifact that can be found in ruins of human origin is a video game named Isotopic Decay 3. Apparently it was once played by as much as a tenth of Earth's population, which caused a substantial economic downturn.
• The official teaser text for Arshia Kishk of the Al Falah faction is full of Future Imperfect and mentions"... the vulpix, which was a small predator whose hide was made of fire...".
• The Pan-Asian Cooperative's name bears noticeable similarity to the Pan-Asiatic People's Cooperative from Next War, a Civilization IV mod by Firaxis Games developer Paul Murphy.
• One of the third-tier Industry virtues is called Magnasanti, and it increases health based on how many buildings you have in a city.
• The Geliopod looks heavily inspired by the Hunters from Half-Life 2: Episode 2.