The pills originally come from Lewis Carroll, where Alice could change size by taking them. Jefferson Airplane used that metaphor to sing about psychedelics. The Matrix adapted Carroll's pill motif to represent an alteration in one's perceptions of reality. In the broad sense, yes, in the narrower sense, no.

The Wachowskis themselves pulled from gnosticism, eastern religions etc.

Pahlaniuk used the term "snowflake" to refer to people who were brittle and "not beautiful and unique" (his words from memory). He is/was a left wing anarchist.

Media literacy is dead. At least among conservatives.