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  • Wolverine: The Adamantium Skeleton perk appears yet again.
  • Similarly to the above, the Iron Fist perk also reappears.
  • Concept art shown at E3 2015 depicted one mutant creature with an appearance and pose heavily resembling a famous picture of The Rake.
  • One of the most blatant (if the player sides with the Minutemen) is finding a skeleton chained behind a broken-down section of wall in The Castle, with a crate of Amontillado nearby.
  • Captain Ironsides' vendetta against the Boston-based Weatherby accounting firms that the U.S.S. Constitution repeatedly crashes into is a reference to the Monty Python short film The Crimson Permanent Assurance, which also features a gang of unlikely pirates (elderly accountants in the film rather than robots) in a flying ship who attack American accounting firms.
  • There's a random encounter where you will find a dead postman surrounded by mongrels (along with it being an obvious "Mailman vs. Dog" joke).
  • Nearly every partially-submerged boat you come across has a dead mutated shark/dolphin on deck and a machete-wielding skeleton lying right next to its... Jaws, in reference to Quint's famous death scene in the film.
  • If it is a mere coincidence that the two remaining Minutemen loyalists you meet are named Preston and Sturges, then it's quite a remarkable one.
  • The sheer number of voiced player names have some hidden shout-outs, including: Aaliyah, KalEl, Vash, Battousai, Kenshin, Deckard, Chappy, Deschain, Flagg, Capable, Dag, Erectus, Fifi, Fragile, Furiosa, Goose, Humungus, Imperator, Mudguts, Rictus, Rockatansky, Sarse, Slit, Splendid, Toadie, Toast, Toecutter, Wez, Kirk, McCoy, Picard, Akira, Kaneda, Tetsuo, Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, Ripley, Weyland, Yutani, Hicks, Hudson, Dallas, Shinji, Mikami, Finn, Jake, Sweetpea, Katniss, Everdeen, Riddick, Sanjuro, Yojimbo, Snake, Plissken, Sterling, Archer, Atticus, Indiana, Jones, Leo, Don, Mike, Raphael, Roland, Brick, Maya, Zed, Psycho, Gordon, Freeman, Marty, McFly, Tony, Stark, Spider, Jerusalem, Steve, Rogers, Peter, Venkman, Rick Sanchez, Bob, Ross, John, Connor, Hawke, Gabriel, Logan, Lian, Buffy, Spike, Angel, Starbuck, Bruce, Banner, Springsteen, León, Harry, Mason, Cheryl, Luke, Leia, Han, Solo, Malak, Jet, Li, Wayne, Campbell, Michael, Myers, Jeff, Corwinnote , Daryl, Hannah, Heisenberg, Dutch, Schaefer, Prince, Tesla, Denton, Corvo, Sam, Fisher, Isaac, Clarke, Ellie, Carver, Selena, Gomez,Madeleine, Leeloo, Korben, Django, Jack, Dawson, Rose, Muhammad, Ali, James, Bond, Harley, Quinn, Sherlock, Holmes, Gomez, Morticia, Bort, Church, Washington, Texas, Jennifer, Lopez, Markipoo, Cena, Yorick, etc.
    • From the Fallout franchise itself, there's Harold, Marcus, Cheng, Moira, Butch, Autumn, and Grognak. A handful of both former and current designers, writers, and voice actors, such as (J.E.) Sawyer, Istvan (Pely), (Jim) Cummings, (Jangjoon) Cha, (Ahn) Hopgood, (Paris) Nourmohammadi, (Nathan) Purkeypile, (Justin) Schram, (Dave) Schreiber, (John) DiMaggio, (Grant and Clara) Struthers, (Rick) Vicens, and (Christopher) Zdana, also have their names listed.
  • The console logs in Wilson Atomatoys HQ by Arlen Glass, a worker designing toy robot ponies is nothing but references to My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Guess they're returning the favor.
    • Another terminal in the same dungeon proposes the idea of a collectible toyline that would add multicolored coats/manes and identifying marks to the toys, as well as introduce pegasus and unicorn toys.
    • The Wilson Atomatoys factory at the south of the map has exactly six fully-assembled Giddyup Buttercups, and a unique Super Mutant enemy named Big Mack. Eeyup.
    • The Four Leaf Fishpacking security password that you get from Trish is "Applejack".
    • Arlen Glass himself is a Shout-Out to Marvin Glass, real world inventor of numerous 1950-70s mechanical toys.
  • One of the face paint options you can choose from in the Diamond City plastic surgeon is the "Head Smudge" grease paint that Furiosa wears in Fury Road.
    • The "Canned Dog Food" that is a edible item, is likely a reference to the scene in The Road Warrior, where Max eats a can of dog food. You can see a bunch of cans of it in his Pursuit Special, too.
    • Speaking of Mad Max, this game is the first one to not have the iconic Mad Max 2 outfit in it. However, the male version of the "Road Leathers" clothing set resembles a weathered version of the MFP uniforms from the first Mad Max movie.
    • Due to the weapon modding system, you can recreate Max's famous sawed-off shotgun with ease... or even Ash's stocked sawed-off from the Evil Dead films.
    • invoked Valentine's rubbery skin and seemingly rotting flesh can be seen as a reference to the Terminator series, where it's been mentioned that Skynet's earliest Terminators had poorly-made skin formed from rubber that made them stand out very easily from humans.
    • Gen 1 Synths strongly resemble the T-600 robots from Terminator, while the Gen 2 ones appear similar to some of those in Terminator Salvation. Sometimes they also say "You must be terminated!" when in combat.
  • There's almost an uncountable number of references to both Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Blade Runner littered throughout the game.
    • The Memory Den in Goodneighbor calls to mind Blade Runner, Inception, and even The Big O with a Retro Universe flair.
    • Both Nick Valentine and X6-88 (a Courser companion) have a lot of similarities to Rick Deckard from Blade Runner, specifically in what they are, their jobs, and how they act and do said jobs. Magnolia is also very similar to Luba Luft from Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, with both characters being singers who're actually androids.
      • Deacon's initial dialogue about Coursers is also quite similar to Cypher's warning about Agents in The Matrix.
      • The Courser uniform is a dead ringer for Roy Batty's own Badass Longcoat. Furthermore, the Synth Retention Bureau are presented as filling the same role (more or less) for the Institute as the Replicant Detection Division did for the Tyrell Corporation.
    • The S.A.F.E. Test you have to take prior to entering Covenant is strongly reminiscent of the Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner, and is similarly designed to detect Artificial Humans.
      • It also doubles as a Mythology Gag since the test is actually the G.O.A.T. Test from Fallout 3's character generation, minus the last question (which did nothing anyways).
    • Both Takahashi's single line "Nani ni shimasho ka?" and occupation as a noodle seller are a reference to the noodle bar scene from the film.
    • On the southwest corner of the Mass Fusion containment shed rooftop, there's the corpse of a Raider lying supine in front of a kneeling and deactivated Synth. This can be seen as an allusion to the famous "Tears in rain" scene at the end of the film.
    • During "Hunter/Hunted," the Pip-Boy's quest icon shows a caricature of Deckard being stalked by Vault Boy.
    • Frankly, the whole setup of the game's story is practically a direct lift of Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? - It's a future where humanity has been devastated by a nuclear apocalypse, a group of people simply decided to leave the radioactive wasteland (though these guys live underground), and those scientifically-inclined survivors make android slaves that are almost perfect "replicants" of humans to where you can't even tell their identity unless you kill them. Furthermore, many of the aforementioned androids attempt to escape and gain freedom (often having their memories replaced to do so), only to be hunted down by other androids and hired bounty hunters.
  • Many of the fighting taunts and Raider monologues are highly reminiscent of the bandits in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
    • The Norwegian Ghoul Raiders that you encounter at the FMS Northern Star may as well be Draugr with guns.
    • Aboard the Prydwen, you can find samples of a suspiciously familar plant that's been dubbed "Glowleaf" by the scientists. Sadly, it doesn't make any noise whatsoever.
    • The scene in Diamond City when someone suspected that his brother was replaced with a Synth looks very similar to what happens in Skyrim the first time the Dragonborn enters Markarth — the guards even still say "There are no Synths in Diamond City" (just replace "Synth" with "Forsworn").
    • invoked The Brotherhood of Steel mess officer aboard the Prydwen mentions that he used to be a field scribe, until a Deathclaw crushed his femur.
    • In Hubris Comics, you can find a unique melee weapon called Grognak's Axe, based off of the in-universe Grognak the Barbarian comics. It looks identical to the Iron Battle axe from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and Grognak's design is the image for the Barbarian class from Oblivion.
  • And as always, it wouldn't be a Bethesda game without numerous references to the Cthulhu Mythos:
    • One side mission has you looking for a Mad Artist Serial Killer named Pickman, who makes macabre and disturbing paintings and has creepy tunnels under his Boston studio.
    • In the Dunwich Borers Quarry (itself already a Shout-Out to Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror), there's for some reason four Feral Ghouls all named after famous rock musicians.
    • A third reference to Lovecraft is the Kingsport Lighthouse. Kingsport was the earliest fictional town in what became known as Lovecraft Country, and in The Festival, a group of cloaked cultists perform pre-human rites.
    • The whole Cabot House questline has numerous references to Lovecraft. For one, the city in the Rub' al-Khali is a reference to The Nameless City. Furthermore, the SS Wakeful in Lorenzo Cabot's journal is a reference to the SS Alert from The Call of Cthulhu. Also, Lorenzo's journal entries generally mirror several different Lovecraft stories - most notably The Rats in the Walls, The Moon Bog, and the aforementioned Call of Cthulhu.
      • A very obscure one involving Cabot House: The House may be named after the Cabot Museum from the H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald story Out of the Aeons. The museum is located in Beacon Hill and used to be a mansion before its conversion, which is quite appropriate considering what the Cabot House quest line entails.
    • The Mirelurk Kings strongly resemble the Deep Ones with their human-fish-frog look. Another lesser example would be the Lurkers in how they "carry on" the resemblance to Innsmouth's inhabitants.
  • Considering the clear influence of the Mass Effect games, it's possible that Cait's resemblance to the default female Commander Shepard is intentional.
    • The female Sole Survivor pretty much is Jack if you take the time in the character creator to make them resemble one another, albeit minus the extensive tattoos and foul mouth, and a helluva lot more mentally stable. You can even get her Mass Effect 3 haircut from any of the barbers. And the Atom Cats even call her "Jack".
  • invoked The general design of the Institute, once the Sole Survivor finally arrives there, is heavily based after dystopian sci-fi of the 1970s and 1980s, with The Art of Fallout 4 even describing Logan's Run as Bethesda's main inspiration for the Institute's art design.
    • The Institute also borrows heavily from both Star Trek and Mass Effect, with the clothing that most Institute residents wear resembling Starfleet uniforms, and the Institute generally looking like it wouldn't be out of place aboard the Citadel.
  • The story begins with our hero, a young, handsome veteran of America's most recent war being lured into an underground complex where he's forcibly put into cryonic suspension. Unfamiliar as he is with the technology, he awakens believing that he's only been asleep a matter of hours, but quickly discovers that is has in fact been a matter of centuries as he staggers outside and finds the once-familiar landscape transformed into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, America having been long since devastated by a series of wholly unforeseen tactical strikes by Communist armies from the Far East, and American society reduced to little more than a loosely connected group of militaristic rival gangs living out of scavenger shantytowns in various states of disrepair. After rescuing the leader of one of the more heroic gangs from attackers, he agrees to join their cause and sets out to find and destroy the nefarious, technologically superior enemy that all in the wasteland live in fear of, and having plenty of other adventures along the way. Savvy players may recognize this as the core plot of classic pulp-era science fiction franchise Buck Rogers.
  • When you're victorious in a fight with Deacon as a companion, he will occasionally comment this with "Winning!"
  • Professor Goodfeels was named in a reference to "Dr. Feelgood". And if you hack the terminal and set it into guard mode? He says "Exterminate!"
  • Early on in the Brotherhood of Steel quest line, you fight a squad of synths in a rocket testing chamber, and you can ignite the test rocket to kill all of them.
  • The nuclear command room briefly seen in the intro sequence is a direct allusion to the same room featured in Dr. Strangelove.
  • When wandering through Parsons State Insane Asylum, the Sole Survivor can find themselves walking down a long corridor furnished with a red carpet that has a red tricycle at the center of the room.
  • When the Sole Survivor first turns on the Pip-Boy 3000 Mark IV in Vault 111 at the beginning of the game, note how at the top of the Pip-Boy's screen it's stated that the Pip-Boy has 64kb of RAM and 38911 bytes free.
  • Hubris Comics is located on Newbury Street — same as the flagship location of real-world Boston comic book store Newbury Comics.
  • Good Will Hunting: In the C.I.T. Ruins, you can find an old mop and bucket along with the clothes of a janitor next to a chalkboard with a complicated math equation.
  • There's an entire bar that's a reference to Cheers, complete with skeletons taking the positions of the cast members, and the name of the bar, "Prost," being German for "Cheers".
    • It also doubles as an Adventure Time reference as well, to the scene in which Simon Petrikov, the man who would become the Ice King, sings the Cheers opening song in a ruined city to a young Marceline.
  • The Laser Musket is a crank-powered energy weapon in the game, and seems to have been at least partially inspired by a similar weapon featured in Treasure Planet.
  • A corpse can be found beside a tractor, a broken fence and two Feral Ghouls, referencing a scene from Episode 1 of Telltale's The Walking Dead.
  • There's a Raider leader in Malden Center named Helter Skelter. The fact that he ends up getting killed off by the Railroad to help protect Synths that need to travel through their location can also be seen as a dark allusion to Charles Manson and his desires to have sparked an apocalyptic race war.
  • There's a scripted event where you'll walk out into Goodneighbor and find a Synth shot dead in the street with long brown hair and wearing flannel and jeans called "Sammy".
  • The Super Mutants have become even more reminiscent of The Incredible Hulk than before, often complaining about "puny humans".
    Strong: Strong smash!
  • One of Hancock's random conversations with unnamed Goodneighbor residents involves a traveler attempting to sell the town a monorail.
  • When getting out of the elevator from Vault 111 at the end of the tutorial, there is what seems to be a Shout-Out to BioShock 1, with "Kindly" now prefacing its safety rules.
  • invoked There's a secret cache (which can give the player "The Gainer") at the unmarked Vitale pumphouse near Hub City Auto Wreckers. It is locked with a peculiar mechanism, and the code to open it is 0451. This location was actually implemented by lead level designer Joel Burgess, who called it an "easter egg within an easter egg, within an easter egg." The bloodied, beheaded skeleton on the ground is a reference to Snatcher, which was also referenced in Fallout 3. The name of the unique weapon there, "The Gainer," is also a reference to video game developer Steve Gaynor, a friend of Burgess, and Gaynor's appreciation for "a nasty-ass video game magnum."
  • The design of the 10mm Pistol is very similar to the Colonial handgun from the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica (2003). The paranoia over who is and isn't a Synth in the Commonwealth also seems to draw from the similar paranoia felt by the Colonial Fleet concerning Cylon infiltrators.
    • Should you engage Institute Gen 1 and Gen 2 Synths with MacCready as your companion, he may call out the enemy type by yelling "Institute toasters!"
  • The Thing (1982) R. J. Mac Cready: reappears from a previous installment.
  • The Blair Witch Project: When exploring the Commonwealth's wilderness, you can run across vaguely humanoid bundles of sticks and twigs hidden up in the trees, some of which might look disturbingly familiar.
  • The Deliverer, a legendary firearm given to you by the faction that most resembles a covert group of secret agents, is a small, but very lethal handgun and comes with a suppressor. In fact, overall it has a close resemblance to the Walther PPK that is the signature weapon of James Bond.
  • A terminal in Listening Post Bravo describes a sergeant receiving messages containing phrases like "internal void," "dreams are getting darker" and "blood runs so still" from a callsign by the name of D.E.K. D.E.K. stands for Dead End Kings, a studio album by Doom Metal/Alternative Metal group Katatonia and the phrases are lyrics to their song "Dead Letters" off that same album.
    • Additionally, the terminal entries are credited to a Sergeant J.P. Renkse, that being a militarized version of the name of Katatonia's vocalist, Jonas Renkse.
  • The Silver Shroud is a direct homage to The Shadow. The gloriously hammy dialogue, the fear he strikes into his enemies and best of all, the costumes are virtually identical.
  • Ghostbusters (1984): When venturing into the Boston Public Library with MacCready, he may warn you to be careful because "...no human being would pile books this way."
  • The caricature of Father that appears in the Pip-Boy quest pictures looks exactly like Dr. Light of Mega Man]].
  • All Dogs Go to Heaven: If you have Hancock around and you heal Dogmeat, Hancock will sometimes remark, "Can't keep a good dog down!"
  • DaChief's Retirony entry in the BADTFL terminal mentions the destructive Willison and fearless Gibbs as fellow police officers.
  • The creation of the Synths that you see in the Institute's Robotics Division is very similar to both Leeloo's re-creation in The Fifth Element and the famous construction sequence from Ghost in the Shell. It also looks very familiar to fans of Westworld, right down to the Vitruvian Man pose.
    • Additionally, the mechanized arm that checks over Synths to make sure they don't have any visible errors during the creation process bears a heavy resemblance to Max's camera arm from Flight of the Navigator.
  • One of the greetings by Proctor Cade (the medical chief aboard the Prydwen) happens to be "Please state the nature of the medical emergency." It may also be an Actor Allusion: Robert Picardo did some voice work for the game as Institute scientist Alan Binet, and Cade's voice actor Dwight Schultz would be best known to fans of Star Trek: Voyager and/or Star Trek: The Next Generation as Reginald Barclay.
  • One issue of the U.S. Covert Operations Manual skill magazine is titled "Not The Soldiers You're Looking For".
  • Railroad agent Tommy Whispers is likely a reference to Livin' on a Prayer with the lyrics "When she cries in the night, Tommy whispers: 'Baby, it's okay, someday'".
  • X6-88’s name is an allusion to the US Navy’s 688 or Los Angeles class hunter/killer attack submarines.
  • When you visit Diamond City for the first time, you'll meet Piper At The Gates (Of Dawn). Additionally, one of Ada's lines is "You can't have any pudding if you don't eat your meat!" from The Wall
    • Robobrains always had elements of this, but the Automatron expansion adds a few more: You have robots with organic brains taken from murderous psychopaths as their central processor with a single cold calculating eye mounted up front. They move around on a tracked chassis and look rather like giant salt shakers. They interpret all orders as a license to kill anything and everything. They also have an electronically synthesized voice. All it would take is for them to scream "EXTERMINATE!" to be exactly like the Daleks of Doctor Who.
      • One could go even further and argue that the various "subjects" reactions to being in a robot body being suicidal, with only the most depraved examples of humanity being able to withstand the installation process and then becoming murderous without routine control measures, could be a shout out to RoboCop 2.
    • The sequence of doors at the entrance to the Mechanist's stronghold is straight out of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Or possibly Get Smart. Or both.
  • One Loading Screen for the Rust Devils features a heavily modified Assaultron with a strong resemblance to Sarris in Galaxy Quest, especially in the face and back.
  • In Far Harbor, the player can run into the ransacked base of a group of survivors that had been overran by Mirelurks and other aquatic beasts. The names of the survivors as found in the Apocalyptic Logs are Bray Husky, Rowan, Luke, and Braun, all of whom match the members of the Wyatt Family. It’s a double reference for Bray because his first wrestling gimmick was known as "Husky Harris".
    • Tremors: The final Husky holotape, simply titled "Holotape", found next to Bray's corpse, laments that "Jeez, this place was impenetrable. We could see anyone coming for miles. Underwater goddamn fish monsters.". Which is very similar to Burt Gummer's lament of a otherwise great shelter being destroyed by unforeseen creatures: "Food for five years, a thousand gallons of gas, air filtration, water filtration, Geiger counter. Bomb shelter! Underground goddamn monsters."
  • At Beaver Creek Lanes in Far Harbor, the team in third place for the 2078 Bar Harbor Bowling League standings was "the Holy Rollers" from the Simpsons episode "Team Homer".
  • Vault 118's amenities include an artificial beach, with a large painting of a sailboat sailing on the ocean above it. This can be seen as an allusion to the end of The Truman Show, in which Truman crashes a similar looking sailboat into the wall of the artificial world in which he lives.
  • The Bloodworms from the Nuka-World DLC bear a strong resemblance to the Graboids from the Tremors franchise. Encountering them in the Wild West themed Dry Gulch park just makes it stronger. One of the notes on a corpse even says "I keep hearing things. Tremors or something."
  • The three scientists in the Secure Beverageer lab in Nuka-World are all named from characters (the first name from the actor and last from their character) in classic Sci-Fi or horror films. First is Rex Meacham, whose name is derived from Rex Reason and Cal Meacham in This Island Earth. Next, Kate Leavitt gets her name from Kate Reid and Ruth Leavitt in The Andromeda Strain. Finally, there's Kevin Bennell, whose name comes from Kevin McCarthy and Miles Bennell in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).
  • The Hidden Cappies of the Nuka-World DLC is a reference to the "Hidden Mickeys" collection event scattered throughout Disneyland.
    • In addition, the fate of the park's owner is a reference to one of the urban legends surrounding Disneyland.
    • The fate of John-Caleb Bradburton also echoes that of Mr. Freeze of [1]. The cryo chamber containing Bradburton's head even resembles Freeze's helmet.
  • In Nuka-World, the leader of the Disciples is Nisha, an Ax-Crazy One-Woman Army of Indian descent who loves torturing, killing and violence. Sound familiar?
  • If you're fighting Raiders alongside Porter Gage from Nuka World, Gage will sometimes say that they can steal what the Raiders stole and, "the great Circle Of Life goes on."
  • The Parlor at Nuka-World is a Pre-War theater that showcased cola-themed knockoffs of The Phantom of the Opera, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Sweeney Todd.
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The Nuka-Cola Bottling Plant has a huge river made up of a delicious edible liquid flowing through a factory and which was used to conduct tours for visitors to the factory.
  • Now you can "Praise the Sun" in another desolate (albeit considerably more technologically advanced) wasteland populated by feral beings and backstabbers, since some players have found a bonfire in the Nuka World DLC.
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000: Also in Nuka-World, you can find a terminal in the Vault-Tec: Among the Stars exhibit with logs written by one J. Hodgson, who was an unknowing test subject as an employee of the exhibit.
  • Fist of the North Star: One of the lyrics in the Raider Radio song "Baby, Quit Raiding My Heart" is "Bring back the love you stole". Knowing what a huge weeaboo Andrew W.K. is, this was probably intentional.
    • Speaking of Fist of the North Star references, one of X6-88's combat lines is "You Are Already Dead."
  • Psycho:One of the rooms accessible from the spinning room of the Fun House in Kiddie Kingdom contains a mannequin wielding a combat knife and a skeleton standing in the shower "screaming" while shielding itself.
  • Galaxy Quest: In Nuka-World's Safari Adventure, you can find out that the company tried to clone polar bears, but they always came out inside out, and then subsequently exploded.
  • The Bizarrchitecture-filled and supposedly-haunted Grandchester Mystery Mansion outside Nuka-World is a clear counterpart of San Jose's Winchester Mystery House.
  • Ambient dialogue the player can overhear between two Triggermen in Vault 114 has one of them question why anyone would build a vault in a subway tunnel. Metro 2033 and the novel it's based on has the last remnants of Russian society surviving in the Moscow metro system after a nuclear holocaust.
  • The Vault-Tec saleman tells you he wasn't told anything about the plans for the Vaults, we was just trying to hit his sales quota. The reward for that was, like Glengarry Glen Ross, a set of steak knives.


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