 Many names and terms were taken from Thomas Pynchon (qv)s book  "The Crying of Lot 49", most notably the company name Yoyodyne. To  this day, there is a yoyodyne.com, which serves as a fan site for  the film. "Yoyodyne" itself was Pynchons thinly veiled reference to  Rocketdyne, a major defense industry contractor and manufacturer of  rocket engines, founded just after WW II to reverse