The name Half-Life is as close to perfect as game titles get. It not only evokes the scientific angle of the original game but also allowed Valve to used that nifty symbol as the logo for the whole franchise, to the point that now it's better known to gamers even divorced from any text than guys in lab coats. And yet originally the game had the much different title of Quiver, apparently derived both from the Quake engine it was being built on (eventually they changed something like 70% of said code), and after the Stephen King short story The Mist. The Mist - later adapted into devastating movie form by director Frank Darabont - was a big influence on Half-Life in general, dealing as it does with a military experiment gone wrong, which sees the release of otherworldly monsters from another dimension into our world. The military base in question was called Arrowhead so: Quiver, Arrowhead. Pretty cute. The original Half-Life retains a Stephen King reference in the secret room you access by entering "map c3a2f" in a console, where you find a dead scientist with the numbers "247" written in his blood - Room 247 playing a pretty key part in The Shining...
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
