In a post-nuclear future, the descendant of the hero from Fallout must leave his tribe in search of the Garden of Eden Creation Kit, the last chance of survival for his people. Once you get the G.E.C.K., however, the game is not over. Someone is kidnapping (or killing) people. It will be up to you to find out the truth and stop the evil.
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A character in the game simply named Mom offers you rat pie, rat loaf, and spaghetti with rat sauce, and you can ask if there's anything without so much rat in it. That's a direct lift from Monty Python's Dead Bishop sketch, where Michael Palin's character asks for strawberry tart without so much rat in it. The joke even gets a callback later when a sheriff mentions it being tattooed on the back of your neck.
Walk up to a certain local in Klamath and they'll grumble that you won't find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than the town you're standing in, lifting Obi-Wan's famous line about Mos Eisley word for word. The Fallout writers were clearly bigger Star Trek people, but they couldn't resist sneaking in at least one solid Star Wars gag.
Look closely at the corner of the overworld map while travelling on foot and you'll spot a string of letters and numbers reading L5 AA 23 TK 421. That's not random flavour text, it's a mash-up of Leia's cell number on the Death Star and the stormtrooper ID Luke swipes when he goes undercover in Star Wars. Blink and you'll genuinely miss it.
One of the game's special encounters is called Guardian of Forever, named for the time-travel portal from the classic Star Trek episode 'The City on the Edge of Forever.' If you talk to it, the Chosen One even mutters a line acknowledging that resistance is futile, borrowing the Borg's catchphrase from a completely different corner of Star Trek lore.
Poke around the terminal at Sierra Army Depot and you'll find a request for a spare part on behalf of someone named Klinger from the '8063rd,' a direct nod to the M*A*S*H episode 'Out of Gas,' where the same unit trades spare parts for wine. It's the kind of reference that only lands if you know your 70s sitcoms.
The game invents a fictional pre-war tech company called Macrosoft, whose operating systems get named things like Winblows 57, Fenestra '98, and Wyndoze 99. It's a not-at-all-subtle jab at Microsoft Windows, and the kind of joke that ages perfectly for anyone who's ever had a computer crash on them.
During combat, your companion Cassidy occasionally mutters that he wishes he had a limit break, a term straight out of the Final Fantasy series for a character's big desperation move. A weirdly specific bit of JRPG-nerd humour to sneak into a wasteland shootout.
Challenge Francis to an arm wrestling match in Broken Hills and he'll warn you that if you lose, you'll be his gimp for the night, a line pulled almost verbatim from Pulp Fiction's infamous pawn shop scene. It's played for a laugh rather than actually going anywhere, thankfully.
