Shout Out / The Outer Worlds

• Almost every quest in the game is named after some classic work of sci-fi.
  • Some of the more direct examples include Stranger in a Strange Land, The Stainless Steel Rat, The Secret People, Brave New World, and many more.
  • Others are puns referencing in-universe people, places, and things, like Slaughterhouse Clive or Canid's Cradle,^note Slaughterhouse Five and Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Makes Spacesuits, Won't Travel, The Illustrated Manual,^note "The Illustrated Man", A Clockwork Mock-Apple, or The Doom That Came to Roseway^note "The Doom That Came to Sarnath".
  • There's even the occasional Western thrown in, such as Fistful of Digits.
• The colony ship was found October 23, 2320 — the Great War in Fallout began October 23, 2077. Also, the Earth Directorate was formed after a conflict that's literally just called "the Great War".
• Firefly references:
  • A corpse in the wilderness on Monarch is surrounded by dead raptidons and it's clear that whoever they were, they went down swinging. What's that make them? A big damn hero, of course, and this is the description you get examining the corpse.
  • A group of Woolly Cows randomly appears in the Unreliable's cargo hold, while ADA complains about the fertilizer shipments someone keeps ordering.
  • The origin of Marauders as revealed in the Peril on Gorgon DLC is from a failed drug experiment - exactly like how Reavers were created.
• A letter in Phineas' lab mentions an obscure body in the SK system.
• The Plasma Cutter is blatantly the Plasma Sword from Halo with a lightsaber-style hilt.
• One of the loading screens shows an ad for "Spectrum Vodka, a taste for every class!" with impoverished workers drinking the red variety, guards limited to green, and purple seemingly reserved for executives and above. This could be a reference to Red Rising, Paranoia, Logan's Run, or any or all of the above.
• The anti-Philosophism "Dissidents in Our Midst" poster is parody of the notorious "Destroy This Mad Brute -- Enlist!" WWI-era anti-German propaganda poster, with a primal instead of a gorilla with a blonde mustache, a fainting man instead of a woman (possibly Lady Liberty) in the ape's arms, a stun baton instead of a broken club, and "Philosophism" instead of "Militarism" emblazoned on its helmet. The headline is also a pun on the Dian Fossey biopic Gorillas in the Mist.
• In one radiant conversation Parvati mentions to Vicar Max that she knows some French, such as omelette and fromage.
• The achievement 'Anything for a Friend' is represented by two muscular, bulging arms, one black and one white, locking hands in a very masculine handshake.
• The description for the unique weapon Thunder references the opening line of the Imagine Dragons song of the same name:
  Description: Perfect for a young gun with a quick fuse.
• One of Nyoka's quips after killing an enemy is "To shreds, you say?", a la Professor Farnworth tutting over the death of a colleague in the Futurama episode "I, Roommate".
  • Her battle cry, "I AM A STORM!", whenever combat begins. Is she just the storm or the storm that is approaching? Might also count as Hilarious in Hindsight since The Outer Worlds precedes Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition by a year.
• The assassin Sherman Bradshaw quotes Rick and Morty if you start a fight with him: "Here I go killing again."
• Pester Martin Callahan long enough about his Spacer's Choice headgear, and he will eventually tell you that "If there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them. Mine can be no worse than someone else's."
• There are a ton of incidental Vampire: The Masquerade references strewn throughout Monarch, for whatever reason. The password to get into the Cascadia lab turns out to be "Antediluvian," where you're there to steal a stockpile of "Alta-Vitae" (Gratuitous Latin for high life; vitae is the vampire euphemism for blood) gas. When you reach Devil's Peak, one of the first people you encounter is Joy Voivode, which is an obscure in-game term for a leader in the Tzimisce clan (from the word for "war leader/warlord" in several Slavic languages, referencing the clan's Eastern European origins).
• The location that you visit on Eridanos during its DLC is effectively one big city floating in the sky. Almost brings to mind another floating metropolis or perhaps the Sierra Madre because of the similar color filter.
• While exploring the staff quarters in the Grand Colonial Hotel on Eridanos, you may stumble across a pile of ID cartridges belonging to Halcyon Helen's past associates, including one Bolt Vanderhuge. Looks like Dave Ryder has been to Halcyon.
• The posthumous note you find aboard the crashed gunship Cantankerous Canid is a Mooninites reference. The captain ignored vital maintenance until said gunship blew a coil and started hurtling towards Monarch at high velocity... just like Chief Engineer Jen said it would. In her final message, Jen expresses regret that her soon-to-be-dead-with-her boss cannot see her flipping him off, because she's doing it as hard as she can.
• The general store in Edgewater sells a unique hammer called Maxwell, the text for which says "you think this hammer should be silver."
• One sidequest on Gorgon involves having to discover a passcode comprised of four words. The four people who came up with the passcode are shown to have been big geeks, so quite appropriately the code is "SPEAK FRIEND AND ENTER".
• Dune: If you're in the Unreliable's kitchen, ADA might say "I've adjusted the spice containers to optimise the flow." Because, of course, the spice must flow.
• If caught by a guard in the Ministry of Accuracy and Morale, one of the persuasion options that can appear has the player do a Jedi Mind Trick on the guard...and it works.

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