The Meaning Behind Armored Core 6 Names

Since a lot of people mentioned it in the comments, I highly recommend watching Garrulous Goldmask's video about Alchemy and AC6: https://youtu.be/oOpAblrq4Q0?si=JhAoy6NpJVbqV_Fz Outstanding research work, and, while I find some of the connections somewhat tenous, the inspiration for the meaning of Coral and Ayre is definitely there!

So Chartreuse is a type of liqueur made by Carthusian monks of La Grande Chartreuse. The secret formula is known by only 3 monks at a time. It comes in two versions, green and yellow Chartreuse. In AC6 Chartreuse's AC is green and yellow, and there only 3 pilots active at a time in Branch. Somebody at FromSoft likes their alcohol 🤣

Personally I think that Snail's callsign is him intentionally braking the naming convention because he thinks he's better than everyone else

621's official Redgun callsign from the pre order bonus AC data set is "G13 Tenderfoot", which is a real Lake too ;)

I'm confident that the HAL- designation is a direct reference to the HAL-9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Walter tries to kill you in the HAL frame, and HAL tries to kill Dave. Both are following their ambiguous directives to a fault, and because you, like Dave, interfere with Walter/HAL's end goal, the only reasonable action is to put you down like HAL decided to attempt with Dave.

For the planet's name "Rubicon 3", 3 in Roman numeral was "III", looks similar to 川 which means "river" in chinese. So "Rubicon 3" maybe also the other reference of rubicon river.

12:58 The NGI parts are named after Nagai, the main professor of the Rubicon Research Institute, in the same way that WLT = Walter.

wanna add my 2 cents, they give 'cinder' nicknames to those who survived fire of ibis. if you spell it in japanese, it becomes 'shinda', which is also a word in japanese (死んだ) meaning "has died". so cinder is probably a fitting name to those people who has died once in the fire of ibis

I think Melinite's explosive weapon names are more a play on words with how the weapons look and what they do. Songbirds-Twin nade launcher Earshot-biggest explosion(cover your ears) Dizzy-second biggest explosion(might make you dizzy from the shockwave) Little Gem- smallest bazooka Majestic- extremely simple and streamlined. Looks the least like a bazooka and more of an over sized pistol Iridium- its a compound used in high explosives. So a small package that has a big blast

I think the name "Ayre" is a reference to a type of shingle beach. This type of beach only forms from rough tide and big waves, which interesting since she often talks about coral as an ocean or tide. Also I think Red's name is a reference to the red sea, since it famously gets split in the bible and red has a mental breakdown

One more very important thing about Rubicon : the origin of the name most likely comes from "ruber", the latin word for Red (you also have this in the English word rubicund that comes from the latin rubicundus) due to the alleged red color of the river. Considering the planet is literally drowning in Coral it's no coincidence

It's more of overall AC trivia but KRSV or Karasawa is a reference to original Armored Core producer, late Yasuyoshi Karasawa.

Rusty's name may be a reference to the wolf painting made by Leon Kelly, titled "Rusty, Number 617". 617 also happens to be the number of the hound that took down the laser in the story trailer, make of that what you will

I have a few things I want to add about the Vespers and their names and emblems and what they mean on top of their names. First, an added little detail I noticed about Snail is that he fights like a cone snail. He tries to get close and stab you with really stupidly deadly piercing weapons like the lance or stun needle. Also Snail's Balteus (The Snalteus) has the vague look of a snail if you look at the side of it, with the oversized back body. Second: I want to bring up the Vesper emblems because they are all really really cool and include a lot of references to both the characters and the original person they reference. V1 Freud's symbol is a hand reaching out from a metal surface and grasping something. Zooming in you can see that he's holding a very tiny green chemical symbol. I can't see it well enough to tell but I believe it's either Dopamine or Adrenaline to symbolize how the only reason he fights is to ride the high from combat. V2 Snail's I'm not confident about but I think there's a couple possibilities. First: It could symbolize how he's the real power instead of Freud, the man behind the man. Second: It could be a cone snail but I'll confess that is stretching a ton on my part. Third: I think I've seen a similar symbol show up a couple of times in Pop Culture bastardizations of Dark Triad psychology. It's either the symbol for machiavelianism or narcissism and like, I convict Snail on both charges. V3 O'keefe, This one is pretty easy. Georgia O'Keefe is most famous for her drawings of flowers. O'keefe's symbol is a sunflower & eye? hybrid with a disturbing looking colouration. V4 Rusty you already talk about, maybe also a Fenrir reference in there somewhere but I don't see it. V5 Hawkins: Like with the reference in Hawkins's name this is an enigma, but I do think it's the key to figure out which specific person named hawkins V5 is named after. V6 Maeterlinckt: Her symbol is a bunch of marionettes on strings with a mosquito on top. Maurice Maeterlinckt was kind of an eccentric nutjob who had so much OCD about his plays that he spent a few years composing plays that were done entirely with marionettes because he didn't trust his actors to be perfect enough for his taste. The mosquito symbolizes how she's an annoying piece of shit to fight. V7 Swinburne: He threatens everyone with re-education and his portrait is a diagram of a lobotomy. V8 Pater: Pater's symbol has two fetuses mirrored from eachother, his AC is named "Two Sided" or something like that, and although I've not heard it, apparently there are a couple of times where he has two polar opposite dialogue lines for certain things like Hawkin's death. One final thing. There is a Raven river in Canada, so even G13 Raven contributes to the consistency of the redgun naming scheme.

The "Vascular Plant" bit is so hilariously on the nose, I love it. This is an excellent breakdown, there's so much cool stuff packed into this game.

There's a video that came out fairly recently by Garrulous Goldmask that touches on how Armored Core 6 has heavy Alchemy themes, Coral being believed to be similar to the Philosopher's Stone, and Ayre being referenced to as the soul, it'll definitely help with some of the names

Based on the presence of a fish in Ziyi’s emblem, I’m reasonably confident in suggesting that Yue Yu is meant to translate into 跃鱼, or ‘leaping fish’. Good video.

Presuming that Dolmayan's flag emblem is borderline prophetic, the six stars in the blue field might represent the six pilots of the RLF (five fingers plus Rokumonsen), the three stars in the red field represent the three Coral entities we encounter/hear of in the game (Ayre, Allmind and Dolmayan's Coral entity Seria), while the black field with tipped scales represents the danger Dolmayan sees in the balance being lost leading to Coral Release. There are a few other ways it could be seen, including as a look at the endings of the game - Liberator of Rubicon sees quite a bit of the cast survive the ending. Fires of Raven wipes out the population of Rubicon, but leaves the rest of humanity alive. Alea Iacta Est sees the end of the human race, in exchange for the possibility of humanity being absorbed into Coral-based consciousness. For an alternative interpretation of Snail there is the Buddhist parable of 108 snails sacrificing themselves to protect the Buddha's brain while he meditates in the sun, which would be a mirror of Snail sacrificing augmented humans to protect himself as he tries to perfect his augmentation, and his logo resembles the Arhat Robot statue of a buddhist monk (the art angle). Though I personally subscribe to the 'Freud's brain' theory. Finally, regarding Carla, based on her dialogue in the Fires of Raven route she's a lot older than she looks, and the sketch portrait for RaD mentions that the artist finds Carla familiar - which he should, since there's another sketch referencing Nagai's research team which shows Carla wearing the same outfit and having the same hairstyle. We can be pretty confident that Carla is Assistant 2 and Walter is Assistant 1's son from the sketch and Walter's story about the boy and his father's carnival of horrors. Carla's nickname is ironic because she was not burned by the Fires of Rubicon - unlike the rest of the Rubiconians she had already escaped the planet with Walter when Nagai burned the Coral. Unclear how she's still spry - and seemingly unaged - despite being over 70 during the events of the game. Might be whatever augmentation she went through at the RRI made her age slower than most. Lots of interesting imagery in the portraits. RLF portrait shows effectively three groups - Dolmayan and Freddie (who both try to assassinate the player in certain routes on Dolmayan's authority), Ziyi and Rokumonsen (both very optional encounters the player is encouraged not to engage), and Flatwell, Dunham and Rusty as a third group (the 'reasonable' RLF members we can work with if we want to). The RaD portrait shows Rummy passed out while Carla and a laptop presumably containing Chatty confront a wrench-wielding Brute. The Redguns have Michigan and Nile collaborating while Volta, Wuhua and Red hang out drinking and Iguazu tries to sneak away. Vespers have Freud standing alone, Swinburn, Maeterlinck, Hawkins and Pater following Snail, and O'keeffe and Rusty hugging each other (both being spies and all). Branch doesn't depict Raven - who the artist never got to meet - and gives only the vaguest hint about what the Operator looks like aside from long hair. Finally, there's a picture of two assassins and a hiding man - Coldcall and Sulla being the assassins, and Nosaac being the hiding man. Every AC pilot in the game except the protagonist, the real Raven and Allmind's sock-puppet Kate are in those portraits. Too bad the artist hates faces so much.

This info is from an old reddit thread I couldnt find anymore but Rusty being rank 9 - Class B in the Arena is the cheeky little reference to 9 Ball (Rank 9/B). 9 always had a significance in Armored Core games due to the original boss of AC. Rusty is shown to be one of the best pilots in-game that could handle more than he shows but chooses to hold back to not blow his cover so he stays at rank 9 in the Arena. White Glint in AC4 was also considered the best pilot of his time but was also Ranked 9 in AC4

A bit far stretched, but Handler Walter = Walter White = Brian Cranston = Hal 826 (Hal from Malcolm in the middle) Hal's 826th line in the series is "They've all flown the nest. We're done.", which is like, idk, related to Raven's nest? And how Raven has flown out of his and found his own path? lol