Fallout 76 Fan Finds Back to the Future’s Hill Valley in Game Files

Fallout 76 appears to contain a miniature recreation of Hill Valley from Back to the Future, as recently discovered by one fan. The location doesn’t seem to be used in Fallout 76 in any capacity, making the reasons for its inclusion a mystery.

Fallout games have been rife with Easter eggs since the very first entry in the series, long before Bethesda took over the franchise. Fallout 76 is no exception, with the live-service RPG featuring references to a wide variety of popular media, ranging from Indiana Jones and Harry Potter to Futurama and Devil May Cry.

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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 the Back to the Future trilogy while rummaging through the Fallout 76 codebase. 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 2D Fallout games, mainly on account of their isometric perspective. That’s because the location was rendered using Fo76utils, an open-source tool for visualizing data extracted from Fallout 76 files.

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 that Fallout 76 has been played by over 20 million people as of May 2024, it’s likely that an elaborate Back to the Future homage 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 encounterable Fallout 76 Easter eggs does include a Back to the Future reference—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) from Back to the Future.

Fallout 76

5/10

Released

November 14, 2018

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol

Engine

Creation