Arthur Miller's KRZ
Kentucky Route Zero is filled to the brim with references to literature, American history and folklore, theatre, photography, and the like; a lot of it is nicely detailed in this article
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Specific references include:
Names
- The Márquez family is named after Gabriel García Márquez, and Shannon's aunt Remedios is named after a character from One Hundred Years of Solitude. Likewise, the address of the old Marquez family homestead is located on 100 Macondo Lane, sharing the name of the fictional town and focal point of One Hundred Years of Solitude.
- Lula Chamberlain is named after William Chamberlain (author of the poetry-generating computer program Racter).
- Conway is named after mathermatician John Conway, known as the creator of Conway's Game of Life and for his contributions to the field of game theory.
- Repeat appearances of the number 8192 are also a reference to Conway's works.
- Junebug and Johnny are named after June Carter and Johnny Cash.
- Clara, a theremin player, is named after Clara Rockmore, also a theremin player.
- One of Donald's assistants, a woman named Roberta who enjoys fairy tales, is a tribute to Roberta Williams, creator of the highly influential "King's Quest" series of adventure games.
Other
- The Elkhorn mine is visually based on the photographs of Russel Lee.
- Carringon plans to perform Robert Frost 's “The Death of the Hired Man“ as a theatre piece.
- A portion of the game reinterprets the seminal text adventure Colossal Cave. Fittingly, KRZ is set around Kentucky's Mammoth Cave, which is also the setting of Colossal Cave. Both games also feature a location called "The Hall of the Mountain King".
- The Márquez Farmhouse is based on the two most well known production designs of the Arthur Miller play Death of a Salesman (see image).
- The parallax scrolling in the forest in Act 2 is an homage to René Magritte 's "Le blanc-seing" ("The Blank Signature").
- Certain discussions from Waiting for Godot are repeated nearly word for word in the game.
- The place where Conway's truck breaks down in Act 3 - "A country road. A tree. Evening." - is taken verbatim from the play's stage directions.
- Junebug's dress is based on one of Loretta Lynn's most iconic outfits, and in fact her early character design looked a lot like Lynn herself.
- In Act IV, if you choose not to stay on the Mucky Mammoth during its stops instead of going ashore, you watch a movie that's heavily reminiscent of the landmark 1967 experimental film Wavelength.
- Some of the exhibits at the museum are references to other adventure games/creators, ones the devs considered touchstones in the genre:
- Portal (not the Valve game, but an earlier, unrelated adventure game/visual novel with the same title)
- Mondo Medicals
- Digital: A Love Story
- Anna Anthropy
- Cart Life
- The Walking Dead (of course)
