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Lost Records: Bloom And Rage is a coming-of-age drama that looks and plays much like Life is Strange. That’s because the same studio made both games, of course, but one detail the team didn’t necessarily have to carry over–but they did anyway–is seen on the vehicles around the game’s small town. Look at any car or truck you find in the world, and you’ll see that it has a vanity plate based on something that influenced the game. I noticed this early on in the game and quickly became obsessed with spotting and figuring out each of these, as some of them are more obvious than others.
Given Lost Records is a teen drama set in the ’90s about an all-girl punk band in a town with a creepy history, the inspirations come from a broad spectrum. Some are shows that were on in the ’90s, while others are much newer but make sense, given their supernatural leanings. Some are books, others are video games, and so on.
Some bands mentioned aren’t exactly labeled as punk bands, but they suit the game’s vibe or have strong frontwomen in their DNA. Each Easter egg of a vanity license plate makes sense once you beat the game–or Tape 1, as it’s considered, since the second half of the game launches on April 15.
Below, I’ve rounded up all the vanity plates and explained how they tie into the game’s setting, story, themes, or some other aspect of Lost Records. This will be as spoiler-free as I can make it, which is to say pretty much entirely spoiler-free, but given these Easter eggs reveal the game’s influences, you can maybe infer some of the story beats just by seeing these plates, so if you want to go into the game without any hints at all, it may be best to play the game, then come back and see if you caught all of these yourself.