Bloodlines Trivia
Thank you to Wikipedia.org for these! I have to warn you though, there are a lot of spoilers up ahead. Don't read unless you have finished the game.
_________________________* Valve did not want another game to display the new source engine prior to Half-Life 2, so when Bloodlines went gold on October 4, 2004, Troika worked on a patch that was integrated into the duplication master prior to shipping on November 16th. Therefore, Version 1.1 was the version that first shipped.
* Multiplayer was halted for some time during development, with the intention of picking it up later, which is what happened. However, the multiplayer game play never really came together and it was dropped a couple of months before shipping.
* In the house on the beach there is a game paused on the TV that shows one of the large monsters from in the sewers later on in the game along with a vampire who is re-loading an Anaconda.
* There is a reference to the vampire film The Lost Boys when you talk to the food critic in Hollywood. If you are Malkavian, you can convince him that he is eating maggots. When you speak to the food critic and convince him, there is even a line of dialogue saying how that "happened in a movie once".
* The book "The Art of The Quickdraw by Ned Nederlander" can be found. Ned Nederlander is the character played by Martin Short in the movie The Three Amigos, who is said to be the fastest draw in the world.
* There is a penny arcade in Santa Monica, which includes a non-working Pitfall, a "BloodQuest" coin-op and a Call of Duty pinball machine.
* The character of Mitnick, the Nosferatu hacker, is named for famed real-life hacker Kevin Mitnick.
* Bloodlines is the official prequel to White Wolf, Inc.'s "Time of Judgment" expansion/storyline for its "Vampire: The Masquerade" pen and paper role-playing game and therefore is considered canon.
* In the game all the shotguns and most of the other guns are referred to as Boom-Sticks by the Malkavian player characters, a reference to Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness, in which the character Ash, played by Bruce Campbell, famously calls his shotgun his "boomstick."
* Troika Games' Leonard Boyarsky posted news about the game's development on several "Vampire" fan Web sites under the name "Leonx". Later, Activision's David Mullich posted news under the name "Primogen".
* While taking part in the experiment at the Fu Syndicate, you are put up against a group of the mercenaries called the Belmont Team. This refers to the video game Akumajô Dracula (aka Castlevania), in which the family of vampire hunters all have the surname Belmont and must fight Dracula.
* In the European version, the Sheriff in the opening execution cut-scene keeps his sword suspended above the head of the player's sire rather than bringing it down to behead him/her. This is because the camera usually doesn't cut away quick enough before the sword beheads the sire, and it was thought that an actual decapitation scene would not pass the German ratings board.
* The game hints towards the end that Jack's friend who drives the Taxi is Caine, the father of all vampires. This is made more credible by the fact the characters speech files are kept in a directory titled "Caine" and that a Malkavian character will recognize the Taxi driver as the father of all vampires in the prelude to the final battle, leading to a fair amount of hilarity. Additionally, if the player activates the Auspex discipline (which allows him to sense the auras of other beings), he will discover that the driver's aura is purple, indicating that he is a vampire (or, at the very least, not human). It must be noted though that the Vampire: The Masquerade supplements mention a Malkavian pretending to be Caine who travels around with Jack.
* In the Hollywood graveyard, there is a man named Romero who is hired to put down zombies that rise from the grave and attempt to escape the graveyard. This is a reference to George Romero famed director of zombie films such as Night of the Living Dead. The situation in the whole bears resemblance to the Dellamorte Dellamore, an Italian zombie film, as its main character does the same job.
* Sebastian LaCroix, the Camarilla Prince of Los Angeles, is named after Lucien LaCroix, the powerful vampire antagonist of the vampire detective television series Forever Knight.
* The story of the haunted Ocean House Hotel, involving a man going mad and killing his wife and children, notably resembles that of the Overlook hotel, written by Stephen King in his novel The Shining.
* The Malkavian character addresses both Therese and Jeanette as daughters of Janus, way before she/he knows that they have a split personality. However, this might be according to the Malkavian '6th sense'. Their lunacy allows them to know more than they can even consciously comprehend. For instance, the Malkavian character has a line "...tell this to whoever is playing me!", hinting toward the fact that he/she is unconsciously aware of his/her game character position.
* Even though the game wasn't released in Spanish officially, a fan group, Clan Dlan, made its first release of a complete translation, including not only dialogs, but graphics as well. The translation can be found here.
* There was supposed to be one more character creation mode in the final version of the game: the histories mode. This mode allows player to give his character a specific history rather than just set various attributes by hand. The choice of history has a large impact on the game, as it basically gives players a bonus effect in certain areas and a negative effect in others. For instance, if players choose "Eldritch Prodigy" (Tremere specific history), he gets a 40% bonus thaumaturgy duration, but loses one XP point every time he gains three as a penalty. Histories are disabled by default in the final version due to instabillity issues. They can be re-enabled manually, and have also been re-enabled by the unofficial patch.
* In the protagonists haven in Santa Monica, there is a Lacuna Coil poster hanging above the bed. Lacuna Coil are an Italian gothic metal band who's hit single Swamped is featured in one of the game's clubs, ending credits, and soundtrack.
* The Elizabeth Dane is also the name of the ghost ship featured in the movie "The Fog".
* On the laptop in the same appartment building as Mercurcio, the header reads "Grumble grumble It's a secret to everyone." an obvious reference to the Legend of Zelda series, specifically in the first game where the player could find moblins that said this quote and gave out free rupees.
* In level 2 of the LA parking garage, "Troika Boyz" is spray painted as graffiti on a wall.
* At one point in the game when talking with Prince LaCroix, there is a reference to the Bush Administration when playing clan Brujah.
* When playing Nosferatu, an attempt to conversate with a certain Russian gangster results in him shouting 'Baba Yaga!' and going hostile. Baba Yaga is a real term in Slavic (and Russian) mythology, though it refers only to a female being. Baba Yaga is believed to be ugly, as well as any Nosferatu.
* When Romero tells you not to get bitten by zombies, as a Malkavian you answer, "Why? Does it cause zombie status? Because I'm out of holy water." This is a reference to the Final Fantasy series in which "zombie" is a status effect your characters can be inflicted with and the cure for it is the item "holy water".
