I think an issue with having pop-culture related religions is that (besides Ofaloaf mentioning somewhere that there won't/shouldn't be many references of things that are post-WWII) pop-culture is rather ephemeral. People or things that were popular even fifty years ago are barely remembered now, let alone what six-hundred fifty two years would do. The only way we'd remember someone or something famous is if they produced or did something world-changing. It's why the only popular actor from the 1860s most Americans can name would be John Wilkes Booth, and it wasn't his acting that most people remember him for.
The only pop-culture things that would, theoretically, stand the test of time would be stories in the written word or by oral tradition. It's why an H.P. Lovecraft inspired religion works in this setting: through the lens of over six-hundred years, a dark age that lasts about three hundred of that with no real ability to fact-check, and a healthy dose of ignorance, the stories of Hastur, Cthulu, Shub-Niggurath, and the lot would seem just as reasonable a thing to follow as the Bible would. I mean, have you heard the descriptions of angels from the Old Testament?! Rings made out of eyes that are on fire, faces with seven wings attached to them, etc. Even Americanism makes sense, in a light, as we already have tall tales about Washington (chopping down the cherry tree) and Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter anyone?), which, 600 years later, could mirror the foundation myth of Rome with Romulus and Remus.
Assuming that any are even left standing during the 2660s (which the mod assumes there aren't), people might just assume that any chain restaurant store building might have just been a sort of communal meeting place, which those symbols denoted, or simply don't care because they're just trying to survive and farm potatoes. Though, through some events already in-game, basic knowledge of the old "American" language is at least something the nobility possess (much like Latin would have been in Middle Ages Europe), so such places would be fairly understood by them.
Sorry for the wall of text! I just had a lot to say, I guess, haha.
I agree. If we limit ourselves to pre-WWII pop culture of American origins, the stuff that would be remembered is stuff from that period we remember
now - the American tall tales, Wizard of Oz, Superman, Mickey Mouse, Batman, Captain America, Moby Dick, Wonder Woman, the Cthulhu Mythos, the works of Washington Irving, the works of Mark Twain, and the works of James Fennimore Cooper.
Even if we extend the pop culture references to yesterday, the ones that would survive 600 years without mass media would still be limited to the above plus Spider-Man, the X-Men (although the individual members would have blurred), the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Simpsons, Looney Tunes, Star Wars, Star Trek, the cast of Peanuts, Ronald McDonald, Elvis, Bigfoot, Michael Jackson, and maybe the Hasbro properties from the Eighties (specifically Transformers, GI Joe, and My Little Pony). Possibly the Dukes of Hazard would survive as well, but only in the South.
And with the exception of Cthulhu and possibly Superman, none of them would have been deified. In fact, based on what actually happened in the real Middle Ages, the
opposite would occur, and educated people would assume Davy Crockett, Elvis, and Michael Jackson were as fictional as Batman (people assuming ALL ancient ruins were built as temples and that the figures depicted therein were figures of worship was ironically more common in the 19th Century than the 12th). If any of these figures are deified, it would be by the Americanists, whose whole shtick is mythologizing Americana (which is probably why the Tribe of the Mouse was shifted to Americanism from Atomicism).
