The art for the Trophy/Achievement Hunter/Hunted invokes Deckard being stalked by Vault Boy.
The SAFE test is an allusion to Voight-Kampff test in Blade Runner, meant to discern whether someone is a human or replicant.
The setup alludes to the 'Tears in rain' scene at the end of the film.
On the southwest corner of the Mass Fusion containment shed rooftop is the body of a man in a random outfit lying supine in front of a kneeling, deactivated synth.
there is a robot, Takahashi, who sells noodles, and the only line he speaks is "Nani ni shimasho ka?," which means "What’ll you have?" This is the very same phrase (including imperfect grammar) as said by the noodle seller in the "Noodle Bar" scene of the film Blade Runner. This is a reference to Ahab, king of Israel, and his wife Jezebel.
Ahab, a customized robot found alongside Jezebel in the Headhunting quest of the Automatron add-on.
The Lifegiver perk depicts a Vault-Boy in robes, a beard and a halo, much like common depictions of Jesus.
One of Codsworth's jokes "Comic Sans, Arial and Papyrus walk into a bar." is a reference to commonly misused and overused fonts. Newspapers scattered around the Commonwealth display the headline "Way of the Future!" on them, which is the same line Leonardo DiCaprio's character Howard Hughes repeats over and over at the end of the film The Aviator. When fighting a Gunner Colonel Gutsy he will sometimes say "I love the smell of plasma in the morning" which is a reference to the character Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore from Apocalypse Now who says "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." In the terminal in the Nahant Sherrif's Department building, a Sheriff Taylor is referenced, which is the name of the character Andy Griffith played on The Andy Griffith Show.
The quest The Battle of Bunker Hill is also named after one of the opening battles of the American Revolution.
John Hancock shares his name with one of the first men to sign the Declaration of Independence, and it is implied that his red frock coat once belonged to Hancock.
The standard minuteman weapon is a laser musket, just as the musket was during the revolutionary war.
The position of a male and female mannequin at Wixon's Shovel Museum resembles Grant Wood's painting American Gothic, but with the male holding a shovel instead of a pitchfork.
When first talked to after completing the Freedom Trail, Glory compliments the Sole Survivor by saying their work on the trail was "Not bad, for a human." This is likely a reference to the same compliment the synthetic Bishop gives Ellen Ripley in the movie Aliens.
The inscription on the back of the flux sensor reads "FLUX SENSOR CM-88B 180924609." This is a reference to the ship in Alien, the USCSS Nostromo (reg.
45 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.