The sound that is heard when a mini nuke is fired is that of the Bethesda lunch bell.
Originally Med-X was called morphine, but to obtain an MA15+ (instead or being refused classification) in Australia they had to make this small change, Bethesda then subsequently decided to use this edit for all worldwide editions, ironically this worked in the games lore as there was never any real world drugs within the series as they always had fictional names.
The cars in the game are based on the nuclear powered concept car the Ford Nucleon. That explains the radiation caused by their destruction
A lot of the quests names are also the names of 50s songs
A picture of the Lone Wanderer's father and mother, James and Catherine, can be found in the game Fallout: New Vegas, inside Vault 21.