Summary
Fallout 76appears to contain a miniature recreation of Hill Valley fromBack to the Future, as recently discovered by one fan. The location doesn’t seem to be used inFallout 76in any capacity, making the reasons for its inclusion a mystery.
Falloutgameshave been rife with Easter eggs since the very first entry in the series, long before Bethesda took over the franchise.Fallout 76is no exception, with the live-service RPG featuring references to a wide variety of popular media, ranging fromIndiana JonesandHarry PottertoFuturamaandDevil May Cry.
Another such Easter egg was recently discovered by Reddit user TitanicMackeyH, who stumbled upon what appears to be an authentic recreation of Hill Valley from theBack to the Futuretrilogywhile rummaging through theFallout 76codebase. The in-game location includes several hallmarks of the fictional town from the famous movies, including the Courthouse Square and Clock Tower. It’s currently unclear when exactly this apparent Hill Valley recreation was added to the game’s files.
Fallout 76 Hill Valley Location Rendered with Fo76utils
At first glance, the screenshots that TitanicMackeyH shared could be mistaken for one of the 2DFalloutgames, mainly on account of their isometric perspective. That’s because the location was rendered using Fo76utils, an open-source tool for visualizing dataextracted fromFallout 76files.
The Hill Valley recreation is reportedly stored as an interior cell, meaning it could theoretically be connected to a doorway somewhere in the overworld. However, there’s no indication that this location is actually used in the game in any capacity. Given thatFallout 76has been played by over 20 million people as of May 2024, it’s likely that an elaborateBack to the Futurehomage like this would have been discovered by now if it were present in any public build of the open-world RPG.
Fallout 76 Has Another ‘Back to the Future’ Easter Egg
While this high-effort rendition of Hill Valley may not be in the game, the list of encounterableFallout 76Easter eggsdoes include aBack to the Futurereference—found in the Isolated Cabin in the Forest region of Appalachia, just southeast of Vault 76. Close to this abode is a doghouse with a periodic table and a mathematical formula written in chalk on its floor. The formula itself is one of the Einstein field equations, which fans have widely interpreted as a reference to Dr. Emmett Brown’s pet sheepdog Einstein (Einie) fromBack to the Future.
