Things I know for sure:
Elvis Presley
Chet Baker
The Kennedy family
Keanu Reeves (cyber arm under my sleeve)
Things I know for sure:
Elvis Presley
Chet Baker
The Kennedy family
Keanu Reeves (cyber arm under my sleeve)
44 Comments
wait until you find out about the music
Everything that happened before the mid/late 1980s, which is generally where Cyberpunk’s timeline diverges from ours.
Skippy hums “Disturbia” while installing a patch to himself, so Rihanna for sure does.
Run the jewels
Given that there’s a quest called You Know My Name, I’m guessing the James Bond films continued, with at least Casino Royale resembling its real world counterpart.
Could probably assume all the song titles referenced in the side missions exist, considering that they’re explained as “songs that each mission remind Johnny of”
Star Trek is so big, there’s a whole posergang sculpting themselves into Spock lookalikes.
My head canon for why Keanu Reeves exists in the Cyberpunk universe is that Johnny’s engram is so warped by his inherent narcissistic personality, that it thinks he looked and sounded like the famous actor.
I think I read somewhere he actually looked more like Trent Reznor, and I’m a little disappointed that he didn’t get the role in the game. Would have been amazing to hear “Never Fade Away” in NIN style.
Nine Inch Nails is on the radio so we have Canonical Trent Reznor for sure.
EDIT: I guess ‘makes me feel better’ by OnenO fooled me like it did a lot of people. Still not sure that’s *not* Trent singing…
EDIT AGAIN: the actual vocals are in part Jason Charles Miller, the lead singer of Godhead. NOW I KNOW WHY I was confused.
[Paweł Jumper (very popular meme in Poland from 2006)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dk_lkr4E_Y)
The Witcher: in the Corpo intro mission, at your desk you can find a gaming magazine with The Witcher as its cover article. Arcade machines called Roach Race, roach is the horse from The Witcher series
Presumably, all the music that is named in quest titles.
Also the DK album “Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables” mentioned in the “Dream On” quest.
Also all the music on Royal Blue radio is from Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Chet Baker and other musicians of the era.
Dead Kennedys ‘Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables’ exists. Johnny even mentions it during the Peralez mission. 👍🏼
The Witcher does
I was just thinking of this question earlier as someone had their V in a fit that looked like a Rebel Pilot suit from A New Hope, and I was wondering if V could canonically decide to cosplay as a Star Wars character in-universe.
Anything before the 90s or even some stuff until mid 90 is a good educated guess as according to Mike Pondsmith Cyberpunk world is almost identical until then and 90s slowly start the significant changes.
Blade Runner exists in Cyberpunk folks!
A guy made my dick catch fire.
Star Wars, Rache Bartmoss was so obsessed with it (understandably) that he bugged Johnny to watch it
Also, the mission names from Act 2 onwards are named after songs Johnny would’ve known, so those songs and where they’re from are likely canon as well.
Phillip K. Dick, since you get a quote from him delivered to your apartment.
V makes a Monty Python reference in one sidequest and Johnny understands it.
There is a shard referencing Cyberpunk 2020, the tabletop game.
is that Marlon Brando
Miles Davis on Royal Blue Radio
Grimes
Broadly speaking, anything before 1990 is mostly unchanged, anything after is likely altered heavily. The history branch is earlier than that, but the first thing likely to totally rewrite cultural touchstones is the collapse of the US under the gang of 4 in 1996.
Which means Empire Records (1995) probably never got much audience traction, sadly.
John Wick is referenced a few places, as is The Matrix, Star Wars, the MCU (Iron Man specifically) and a few others.
in one of morgan blackhand quote/advices of cyberpunk (or 2020) he tells that killing is a fashion stuff only james bond movies, he mentioned clint eastwood too. Real life and cyberpunk world followed same timeline up to the 80’s where ussr didn’t invade afghanistan and usa army created first cyberware to enhance soldiers taking part to the first central america war
Rihanna seems to.
The long and short of it is that pretty much anything after the in universe crash of 94’ is where things get different, anything that happened before in the real world, is fair game in its canon.
The Witcher 3. Corpo V has a magazine with it on the cover in their drawer in the intro. And it’s the reason, in my head at least, that Z1RA3L is the top scorer on the arcade machine, it’s someone in universe referencing their favourite BD game, not Ciri coming to the Cyberpunk world and smashing the shit out of Roach Race in between running away from the Wild Hunt.
No one mentioned silence of the lambs from the flamingo del
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
I’m pretty sure Walmart went down in flames during the crash… there’s references of them in Black Dog
According to Skippy, Rihanna
According to Skippy, Rihanna
According to Skippy, Rihanna
If you dial the numbers on the wall ın the phone that you use to call reed, it plays a song from Witcher 3
I pray that Kamen rider exists at the very least
Potentially anything before 2023, when the Datakrash happened.
So it’s entirely possible that Biotechnica could take notes from Resident Evil.
All the songs that quests are named after (and presumably their artists)
The Witcher 3
Wendy O. Williams and The Plasmatics exist. Johnny Silverhand mentions in the Phantom Liberty DLC how she died when he was 8 and he would have given anything to see her live.
Ill make another question
We know that some (most, if not all) media from before the collapse exists
We know that some media from after the collapse exists (for example, rhianna referenced by Skippy)
So, why don’t we hear any “real” music in the radio/city (ik its for copyright reasons, but lorewise)?
Why isn’t any famous artist from the 80’s/90’s still kicking (considering that there are some artist from our time that would 100% get chromed up the 1st second the chance arrived)?
Hell, laser weapons; space stations; evil emperor killed by his 2nd in command (a bit of a strech tbh); big ass killer cyborg and not one Star Wars joke/reference……
Anyway, 4 dollars a pound……
Monopoly, probably
since kojima exist in a way death stranding and metal gear must exist
delamain who does a portal refference
there’s the tabletop rules you can find multiple times
otherwise i don’t have other media refference the rest are implying those character exist in the universe
john wick case plus a gig with a russian guy saying he fucked up really bad about someone car
the reference to bladerunner
the murkmobile and batman
and so on
The Bible