Easter eggs
The game has many Easter eggs, references, and homages to various video games, movies, anime and other media content. Warning: spoilers below.
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Cataclysm - Reference to a real book named The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Description of the ingame book mentions the "DON'T PANIC" phrase, which is a phrase located on the cover of fictional book with the same name The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There is also the profession Hitchhiker. The character starts with a house coat, slippers, towel, and this book, which is a reference to the book's protagonist Arthur Dent.
- Permanent marker - Description states that "writing "Elbereth" probably won't help you." This is a reference to the NetHack roguelike, in which you can engrave this word on a tile, and this will prevent monsters from attacking characters while they are standing on that tile.
- Porkpie hat - The description mentions that it is ...still common among [...] people named Heisenberg.. This is a reference to the TV series Breaking Bad, in which Heisenberg is a name the protagonist Walter White has taken for himself to mask his identity. Also, there is a Mobile Meth Lab vehicle in which you can find this hat. The vehicle itself is a reference to Walter cooking meth out of a similar vehicle in the show.
- Resident Evil - laboratories have a half-flooded room with a fire axe in it.
- Human snail - Reference to the Uzumaki manga by Junji Ito.
- Spoon - The description says "Do not try to bend the spoon. That is impossible.", which is a phrase from movie Matrix.
- RM451 Flamethrower - Reference to the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
- Island prison The location has a graffiti hidden on the east side of the isle. The text of the graffiti is "Dufresne was here" which is a reference to The Shawshank Redemption movie's protagonist Andy Dufresne who was sentenced to life in prison.
- Two-tile motel location - Reference to the The Walking Dead video game. Its layout, RV, and a graffiti with text "Big half-erased pink X" copies one of the locations from the game.
- One of the pawn shop locations - Reference to the Pulp Fiction movie. Its layout, loot (in particular, katana, chainsaw, baseball, and hammer), motorcycle near the entry, corpses of Gimp and Maynard, zombified cop Zed, and many other things copy one of locations from the movie.
- One of the survivor notes mentions "...these Global Athletics Games in Harran..." - Reference to the Dying Light video game. Harran is a fictional city in which the game's events take place. Global Athletics Game is a fictional sports event which took place in Harran.
- One of the lab notes mentions "...our competitors - he couldn't exactly remember their names, something like "Hole Science" and something related to black mountains..." - Reference to fictional companies Aperture Science and Black Mesa respectively, from the Half-Life and Portal video game series' universe.
- The Thing, and how it spawns from a Friendly Dog, is a reference to both the John Carpenter movie "the thing", which was based on a movie called "The Thing From Another World.", which was based on the novella written by John W. Campbell, Jr. called "Who Goes There?". There even was a mediocre 'pre-sequel' made in 2011, which confusingly is also called 'The Thing'.