"Fallout 4" is a game built on references.
The bigger plot is referential of the many, many nuclear apocalypse stories that came before it. The style of the game is built on post-World War II American Imperialism rhetoric. For example, the game's ubiquitous "Nuka Cola" is basically just Coca-Cola.
But if you look deeper, there are even deeper cuts. For instance, this one spotted by Imgur user jatznic:
Do you see it?
Next to the awkwardly posed, nearly naked dead body, there are two wine bottles. But not just any wine bottles: these are bottles from "The Cask of Amontillado." You know, the Edgar Allen Poe story from the mid 1800s?
In Poe's story, one man wronged by his friend lures him to his wine cellar with the promise of a rare tasting: an amontillado (a variety of sherry). Things are slightly less nefarious in the case of "Fallout 4":
It seems that a General McGann ran out of supplies in this bunker. Rather than simply accept his fate, McGann chose to meet it "with a toast" of wine that he found. That wine? The cask of amontillado.
In Poe's story, however, there was no cask: It was a ruse to lure the taster to a wine cellar where he could be chained up to a wall and left to die. Even worse? The murderer encloses his victim in a sealed off chamber, literally adding bricks and mortar to seal the tomb.
Something like this:
Pretty grim! But then we're talking about a reference in a game full of grim realities (and grim fantasies to boot).
Notably, Poe is from Boston — the setting of "Fallout 4" — so we'd be pretty surprised if this was the only Poe reference found in The Commonwealth. Or, as the Imgur user who spotted this reference put it: "Could this be a tell-tale sign of things to come?"
