Dogmeat returned in 1998's Fallout 2 as an Easter egg for players who invest heavily in the Luck stat and explore the well-hidden "Café of Broken Dreams." There are other dogs in the game - K-9 and Pariah Dog to name a couple - but none compares to Dogmeat, who boasts a new feature in the sequel: "Accidentally" shoot him and a man named Mel will try to kill you. Yes, that Mel.

"Dogmeat was definitely inspired by The Road Warrior," says Cain. "Leonard Boyarsky, the art director ... had that movie running continuously in his office, and I think he remarked on several occasions that having a dog in the game would be really cool. [It's] why we wanted a dog in the first place."

Many pieces of the Fallout games were inspired by The Road Warrior, from the opening "newsreel" monologues (narrated by Ron Perlman of The City of Lost Children, another inspiration according to Cain) to the games' stylized leather armor and medical braces. One of the most vivid images from Bethesda Game Studios' Fallout 3, the latest installment in the series, is that of the Lone Wanderer with Dogmeat by his side, a mirror image of a scene from Mad Max. Even the breed is the same: Both are Blue Heelers, known for their loyalty, trainability and heterochromia (one blue eye, one brown eye).

What isn't derived from The Road Warrior is Dogmeat's name; that likely comes from a scene in the 1975 film A Boy and His Dog where Vic (Don Johnson) refers to his mutt as "Dogmeat."