And I wanna make a list of all the Nier Automata machines’ namesakes, because I love trivia, I love philosophy, and I love this game.
As you probably guessed, they’re named after Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, best known for their collaborative work, the Communist Manifesto. I don’t really have any solid theories on why a bucket buzzsaw and an oil rig transformer got names like that, maybe because industry/industrial things are important to communism according to the book? I dunno, it’s been a while.
Most seem to call her “the opera boss.” She seems to be named after Simone de Beauvoir, a French philosopher who delved into existentialism as well as gender and feminism.
Interestingly, the machine who Beauvoir is infatuated with, Jean-Paul, is named after Jean-Paul Sartre, a fellow existentialist and lifelong lover of the real-life Beauvoir. Machine Jean-Paul even quotes his namesake when you first speak to him: “Existence precedes essence.”
Most likely named after Blaise Pascal, French mathematician and theological writer. Dude didn’t even live to 40 but he still managed to leave his mark with a couple theorems, early functioning calculators, and the famous Wager about how believing in God is logically less risky and more potentially rewarding than doing otherwise. As a Christian, it’s pretty likely the human Pascal would have dismissed Nietzsche as a guy “skipping profound and jumping straight to crazy” as well.
Interestingly, Pascal’s Wager comes from the Pensées, a book left unfinished due to Pascal’s death. You’re given this very book to take to machine Pascal, but never end up delivering it since his village is slaughtered soon after.
In addition to all that, Pascal is also a form of programming language as well as a unit for the measurement of internal stress or pressure. Could be references to how Pascal the machine is exceptionally eloquent and intelligent, and suffice to say, he’s under quite a lot of stress by route C.
The Forest King is probably named after Ernst Bloch, another Marxist philosopher. He was best known for writing “The Principle of Hope,” which explores the idea of utopia, a concept that this machine tried to create by forming a kingdom as a “utopia for machines.”
The baby Forest King, probably named after Immanuel Kant, the guy responsible for Kantian ethics. Given how frustrating that set of ethics can be, and how convoluted Kant is when it comes to explaining himself, I’d wanna skewer his machine representation too.
On a side note, the image of a swaddled baby in a crib sort of reminds me of the typical depiction of baby Jesus, another king of sorts who was also called Immanuel.
After going nuts and attacking everything, including ally machines, this dark colossus was exiled deep into the ocean. In similar fashion, radical socialist philosopher/activist Karl Grün was exiled for his shenanigans. Twice actually.
The robo cult leader is probably named after Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard, one of the first to delve into existentialism. Human Kierkegaard, to sum it up, wrote a metric fuckton about everything Christian. Interestingly, he became disgusted with the Church as a government institution, believing that mixing in politics caused the religion to deteriorate into nothing more than a casual trend full of hypocrites.
Kierkegaard apparently emphasized use of one’s consciousness, and the term “leap of faith” is commonly attributed to him. Though I doubt he’d approve of leaping into vats of molten metal…
(Boku-Shi looks identical except he’s got cannons instead of blade arms lol)
Named after the Japanese pronunciations of Chinese philosophers Zhuangzi and Mozi.
Zhuangzi is credited for writing the manuscript that bears his name. It’s mostly a collection of fables and poetry that dismiss human perception of things like good and evil or life and death, emphasizing a sort of carefree wandering approach to existence.
Mozi is known for opposing the philosophy of Confucianism, advocating self-restraint and reflection over obedience to established order.
Honestly I have no clue why they would have these names because all they did was attack me in a factory and electrify a pond in the most not-carefree and unrestrained fashion possible.
Fun fact: while researching, this guy’s name kept coming up either as influence or inspiration for a bunch of different people. He had a firm-held belief in the freedom of mankind and their self-determination and influenced the likes of Nietzsche, Marx, and made way for psychoanalysis and existentialism. … this guy seems important but it’s 3am and I’m trying to do a brief analysis here…
Big brother and a buncha little brothers, the former named after Auguste Comte, a guy who was seriously put off by the French Revolution and tried to introduce positivism to help. He’s credited with coining the term “altruism.”
The latter is probably named after Friedrich Nietzsche. Nihilism, God is dead, etc, tbh I’m still not sure what the heck was going on with this whole sequence in the game to say anything about this, other than that I’m sort of amused that Nietzsche makes his cameo with a bucket on his head.
Named after the Japanese pronunciations for Confucius and the Taoist Laozi respectively.
tl;dr: you get to beat up Confucianism and Taoism at the same time!
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