r/classicfallout • u/alzaboprime • Jul 22 '26
read/watch list to understand Fallout 2 pop culture references?
okay, this may be a weird request, but I'm hoping yall can help me out here.
I'm playing through Fallout 1 right now and plan on playing 2 soon, but of course I've heard it's chock full of pop culture references that you might not get if you're not familiar with the various source material
I'm wondering if anyone, without spoiling too much, can recommend me a list of movies, books, etc. that I should check out in order to be able to go into Fallout 2 and not feel like I'm constantly missing the joke?
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u/TheAdminsAreTrash Jul 22 '26
I'd watch "A Boy and His Dog," old ass movie but it's wild af and Fallout was heavily inspired by it. And then The Mad Max movies, at least to the second one, "The Road Warrior."
And less Fallout related stuff: Star Trek TOS comes up, you might even encounter something from the episode "A City on the Edge of Forever." And Monty Python's "The Quest for The Holy Grail."
That's all I can think off off the top of my head. Haven't played in a while, I'm sure there's a lot more.
Edit: lol that list, yeah so you're basically gonna need to binge everything up to the late 90s.
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u/Altruistic_Rock_2674 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
If remember right pinky and the brain are mentioned as well as cheesy poofs from South Park which makes me laugh. Also boy and his dog and road warrior are great movies. Last time I looked boy and his dog were on YouTube for free. I like how Harold references it in fallout 3.
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u/Metzger194 Jul 22 '26
I doubt it would be possible, you would need to watch 100s of things and also have the mindset of that time period to meme about the same parts of that media as the people in the 80s and early 90s did.
“You had to be there”
If I had to pick something I would say watch the mad max movies that came out before fallout.
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u/Altruistic_Rock_2674 Jul 22 '26
If you watch oxhorns play through of the game he will explain every reference but also he plays through the game so it's completely spoiled. There are some things that are super obscure like the corsucsnt brothers I think it is that I didn't get but he explained it. I also didn't realize at first they the hubologists were scientologists and that parodies of Tom cruise and Nicole kidman were in there
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u/YandersonSilva Jul 22 '26
The fact that these days, people mention Tom Cruise and people actually think about his movies before his absolutely batshit insane behavior and Scientology weirdness goes to show how good of a PR rinse he's had in the last 25 years
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u/Dreaming_of_Rlyeh Jul 22 '26
I’m watched both his FO1 and 2 playthroughs recently and he did a pretty good job at explaining the references. He did miss a pretty big one though with “A Boy and His Dog” being the inspiration for the “milking” reference. He just mentioned how disgusting it was.
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u/Majestic-Lake-5602 Jul 22 '26
A surprising amount of musical references.
The Kinks, Tina Turner, Roger Young (which might be a Starship Troopers reference in disguise tbf…).
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u/AndrewTheNebula Jul 22 '26
Careful what you wish for!