Fridge / Fallout (2024)

As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

Fridge Brilliance

• Lucy is noted to have trained in fencing, martial arts, and firearms in Vault 33. In the pre-Fallout 4 games she'd have Melee, Unarmed, and Guns/Small Guns as Tag Skills. Additionally, her attempts to talk down The Ghoul in Filly go very badly, as she stutters and rambles, meaning her Speech skill is pretty low at that point.
• Lucy's very first scene involves her listing out her skills and talents. It's her character creation!
• The "raiders" who attacked Vault 33, although barbaric and foul in their behavior toward the Dwellers, have a lot more justification in their lack of restraint once it's revealed that Hank, the previous Overseer, nuked the New California Republic that they called home.
• Why was Hank initially suspicious of Lee claiming to be the new Overseer of Vault 32? Because every past Overseer has been a cryogenically frozen Vault-Tec employee like himself, and it being someone he didn't know personally would've immediately raised a red flag.
• Each of the main protagonists is a direct correlation to the protagonists of each Bethesda-produced Fallout game.
  • Lucy MacLean, the Vault Dweller attempting to find their father, represents the Lone Wanderer of the Capital Wasteland.
  • The Ghoul, a cowboy-coded Wastelander with a penchant for revolvers, lever-action guns, and drive to secure and deliver an item that could change the Wasteland, represents New Vegas' Courier Six.
  • Maximus, utilizing a set of liberated power armor to give himself an edge in battle, represents the Sole Survivor of Vault 111.
• Why does the Power Armor seem so ineffective in practice? Because it was originally created to combat humans during the Sino-American War, not go toe-to-toe with Yao Guai and seemingly immortal ghouls. The Power Armor was much more effective in the games because, well, it's a game. The creators wanted players to feel powerful and indestructible while fighting Wasteland beasts and mutants. But in a TV show, it makes more sense for the Power Armor to have weaknesses.
  • We also get to see exactly how well it fares against human combatants when the Brotherhood attacks Moldaver's compound — the only one who seems to stand any real chance against the knights is The Ghoul, and even then, it's mostly because he has intimate knowledge of how the armor functions.
    • For an added bonus, all of Brotherhood knights in the series are wearing T-60c power armor, which is essentially upgraded T-45d power armor in contrast to more protective but costly T-51b armor as reflected in Fallout 76.
  • Also, it helps that the armour that players wore in Fallout 4 was often heavily modified with all sorts of useful upgrades and amenities. By contrast, the Brotherhood haven't tried to do much more than keep the power armour in good repair, so the most spectacular thing the suits have on hand is the jet pack; they don't even have headlamps or night vision, hence why Cooper is able to mop the floor with them in the darkness. And in turn, this makes sense based on the Brotherhood's portrayal as stagnant, corrupt, and in desperate need of a shake-up.
• In a lot of ways, the Vault 33 subplot can be seen as an adaptation of Fallout: Shelter, the mobile game. The plot revolves around population control, setting up couples to make babies, assigning people to jobs based on their skillset, and warding off a raider attack, which are all things that you do in the game.
• Among the corporate representatives invited by Vault-Tec as they plotted to instigate the Great War, House was notably the only one present who not only questioned the logistical and humane aspects of the plan, but sarcastically jabbed at how insane the scheme was from a financial perspective. This paints his calculated preparations being off by one day in New Vegas in a new light, as this suggests that he was both excluded from the conspiracy and forced to brace for the apocalypse independently. His relative restraint while questioning the plan, meanwhile, could be seen as an attempt to buy time and learn as much as he could in order to make his preparations.
  • Said preparations may also explain why Vault-Tec, which saw no problem nuking Shady Sands, seemed far more hesitant with New Vegas. With all those counter-measures, and House's Securitron army for good measure, chances are Vault-Tec didn't want to tempt fate and get themselves involved in a protracted slogging match with someone who knows how they operate.
  • This also puts the existence of Vault 21 in a new light too, as it was one of the Vaults clearly assigned to RobCo (and Mr. House as a result). Even if he was showing hesitancy on the logistics and ethics of The Conspiracy, he clearly chose to conduct a more benign experiment instead by just filling the Vault with compulsive gamblers instead of something more morally questionable to see how it would shake and even rejected the idea of trying to influence it indirectly as other Vault-Tec heads or his competitors tried to do with the installing of an Overseer. Just like New Vegas was made into a fortress to defend against the Great War, it is possible that he used the opportunity offered by Vault-Tec to actually save people he was interested in doing business with, because he prefers the options presented by having reasonable competitors instead of just having an unchanging monopoly all to himself.
  • Vault 3, also, gets put in a new light, since it's also in what was Las Vegas, and was one of the very rare control vaults. The vault's destruction at the hands of the Fiends was in no way caused by Vault-Tec, just a gross failure to be prepared for conditions topside. Similarly, Vault 22's experiment was agriculture, and not intended to get as wildly out of control as it did. Only Vault 11, Vault 19, and Vault 34 seemed to have the typical Vault-Tec mind games.
  • It likewise explains why House's long-term plans for New Vegas had financial and monetary considerations, as well as the NCR's survival, factored in at all. He evidently realized that Vault-Tec's scheme was not only insane, but also ran contrary to his own visions for space colonization, which would need a thriving (and more importantly, functional) economic foundation to fund it, along with people rich enough to willingly pitch in. Things he knew Vault-Tec, with its obsession with lording over "pure" stock with a total corporate monopoly, would not allow.
• Thaddeus fixes his broken foot with a dose of "magic potion," to the upset of certain anti-fan reviewers. The in-game drug Hydra (so-named because it induces a temporary Healing Factor that regrows severed limbs, like a Hydra regrowing its severed head) cures all limb damage, but at the cost of a high Addiction chance.
  • Alternatively, since he's been granted a Healing Factor and has been told he no longer needs to worry about radiation, he's probably been given FEV. Since he wasn't dipped like the classic Super Mutants, he doesn't appear to be changing immediately, but there's a chance this could happen over time as the series progresses.
• The Ghoul's bitterness toward the world and scoffing at Lucy's talk of "Golden Rules" may be just his experiences wandering this wasteland for 200 years. Until the finale reveals his discovery that his wife was the one suggesting the entire nuclear war just to make money. When the woman you thought was so wonderful, pleasant, and your Morality Chain is such a monster, how could you not expect the entire world to be filled with them?
  • His cynicism towards the Golden Rule could be due to it's most obvious loophole: people have different ideas about what treatment they deserve. If you don't care about yourself, the Golden Rule doesn't work. To the Ghoul, the Golden Rule is pointless because everyone wants different things.
  • Additionally, his particularly brutal behaviour toward Lucy and his insistence on making her become like him may be due to his hatred of anything related to Vault-Tec.
• Vault-Tec being responsible for the Great War may not be a Retcon or revelation at all, as they are at a meeting of billionaires from WestTek, RobCo, RepConn, and other important defense contractors. All of which were heavily involved in the Enclave's schemes. This may actually be the birth of that organization versus a Vault-Tec plot.
  • This can also explain why House is shown to be disdainful of democracy and the "bygone generation" that ruined the world by the time New Vegas takes place. After all, not only was he in the same room as Vault-Tec and the sort of people who would go on to lead the Enclave, he also caught a glimpse of the kind of world they're trying to build. No wonder he ultimately went off to pursue his own plans, realizing that the world he knew was beyond saving. As he admits to the Courier over two centuries later:
  I knew I couldn't "save the world," nor did I care to. But I could save Vegas, and in the process, perhaps, save mankind.
  • The meeting itself may also explain why House became so certain about a nuclear apocalypse happening within 15 years. What he learned over the course of Vault-Tec's scheming turned what had merely been "hypothetical" calculations (which he'd otherwise be confident on) into a near-inevitability, regardless of the sanity of said plans. Besides, if his own countrymen were thinking like this, what more the Chinese?
• Titus' distaste for Maximus may not just be a sign of him being a Dirty Coward. It becomes easy to understand why he despises his squire if you take into account that Maximus is a war orphan from the NCR (traditional enemies of the Brotherhood), accused of sabotaging a fellow squire, and fostered on him without his choice. The Brotherhood also tends to favor its own bloodlines over adopted war orphans even if they bring those in to replenish their bloodlines (as Veronica notes in Fallout: New Vegas).
• In a way, you could see each character's motivations as representative of the Karma system:
  • Lucy has Good Karma, though she's understandably naïve having grown up being force-fed Vault-Tec propaganda. But throughout her journey, she strives to do good despite Dr. Wilzig and The Ghoul's insistence that she has to adapt to survive, meaning doing things that aren't moral. She still abides by the Golden Rule, giving The Ghoul the medicine he needs despite his cruel treatment of her.
  • Maximus has Neutral Karma. He longs to climb the ranks of the Brotherhood of Steel and have power. He's not exactly good or evil, similar to how the Brotherhood has flip-flopped between moralities depending on which side of the country you're on. He sees the brutal truth during his time with Knight Titus, how having tough Power Armor and a minigun doesn't exactly make you brave. He lets Titus die but he tries to use the armor to do the right thing. He's a conflicted character wondering what his purpose is in life and he becomes disenchanted with the Brotherhood toward the end, even after he's finally given Knight status.
  • The Ghoul obviously has Evil Karma. He's a bounty hunter and doesn't care who the target is, as long as he gets paid. He has pangs of consciousness about his past and the knowledge that his wife helped genocide the whole world, but he's lived too long in the cruel realities of the Wasteland to give a fuck about anyone but himself. He wants to know where his family ended up, yes, but will stomp on necks if it gets him what he wants. Lucy going with him at the end shows he might have gained some respect for her, but their teaming up is more opportunistic than friendly.
• One could also see each of the three main characters as being along a certain developmental period, following the growth of your average Player Character.
  • Lucy is fresh out of the vault, akin to a level 1 character. She has combat experience because of her "stat allocation" but fumbles around confused and uncertain, trying to get her bearings and not knowing how to really live out in the Wasteland, making rookie mistakes that could get a player in the games killed easily. She also has the most steady arc of developing her skills, since a low-level character levels faster than a high level one.
  • Maximus is a mid-level character. He knows what's out in the Wasteland, has received formal training, knows how to handle a variety of weapons, and is decently well equipped and supplied. He's been around the block long enough to know to be cautious of others - like how a player around the middle of one of the games would be preparing for betrayal or ambush at any time. However, he's not familiar enough with the Wasteland to know to probe a situation more than he does, which results in his well-intentioned acts of heroism backfiring horribly, something the games are happy to spring on a player who thinks they've figured things out.
  • The Ghoul is a high level or even max-level character. He's been in the Wasteland longer than almost anyone and has developed into a One-Man Army with specialized weaponry that can punch a basketball-sized hole in a person's torso and knows the world like the back of his hand. He prefers to fight first and be diplomatic second because he's so used to being an unstoppable torrent of death he can basically get away with any retaliation people try to throw at him for being merciless - like a fully geared and developed player who decides to say "fuck it" to Social checks to make encounters easier because they know they can handle the ensuing fight without breaking a sweat.
• New Vegas appears to be in a more rundown state compared to its in game counterpart. This actually isn't all that surprising as more than a decade has passed in universe since the end of that game and the show's time period. Not to mention the collapse of NCR authority following the destruction of Shady Sands would've dried up much of the city's tourist revenue. Without that revenue it's likely that the city experienced an economic downturn and its appearance probably suffered as a result.
• A line of dialogue in the first episode reveals that the West Coast Branch of the Brotherhood of Steel now seems to be taking orders from the East Coast Branch despite their long history of ideological divisions. This is likely because the West Coast Brotherhood was almost completely wiped out by the NCR, while the East Coast Brotherhood canonically won their conflicts with the Enclave and Institute. So when the Brotherhood reestablished itself on the West Coast, the much stronger Eastern Brotherhood was in a position to call the shots. It's also likely that many West Coast members were outright transplants from the East, due to the former's lack of numbers following the NCR War.
  • This also paints the Lost Hills chapter's decision to name and recognize Arthur Maxson as Elder by the time Fallout 4 takes place in a new light. Rather than a case of a prodigal son coming back to the fold or the West Coast Brotherhood designating a pliable Puppet King to assert their authority, it instead suggests a sign of weakness on the part of the old guard elders, if not an act of desperation to maintain some modicum of authority. It could also be interpreted as an implicit cry for help to their more successful East Coast brethren, and Maxson specifically, for aid rather than leave them to die out.
  • The mere fact that the Prydwen was sent, complete with a full complement of Vertibirds, also suggests that they're not just there to replenish the West Coast's ranks or track down scattered Enclave outposts. Such a major undertaking, even for the now-emboldened East Coast Brotherhood, would be seen as a bit excessive. Unless the NCR is not only still around, but likely retains control over Navarro (itself a valuable military asset) and its own Vertibird squadrons. Chances are, they weren't going to take any chances this time around, especially after their own experience in dealing with the Institute learning of what happened during the NCR War.
• Brotherhood Squires lug around massive packs full of gear for their Knights. Aside from being something a medieval knight would expect a squire to do, this is also how most Fallout players tend to use their companion NPCs as pack mules.
• Cooper talks about retiring to a ranch in Bakersfield, an idea which Barb shoots down. Bakersfield is the site of Vault 12, which was set up to not close properly, resulting in Necropolis, a city populated entirely by ghoul survivors from Vault 12.
• When Lucy waved her arms at Maximus and shouted at him as he stormed her "execution", Maximus likely took her muffled shouts and distress as her shouting for his help. If she ran up to him earlier and told him that she was being let go, she and Maximus probably would have be let go with her supplies.
• Frederick Sinclair's appearance at the meeting seems significantly less attractive than the images of him seen around the Sierra Madre. Assuming these images aren't just depictions of him in his younger days, his obesity might actually be the result of Post-Stress Overeating, as he's not only been seemingly betrayed by the love of his life but been forced into a morally compromising partnership with the Big MT's Think Tank just to make ends meet.
• The Ghoul's One-Man Army status can be attributed a lot to his quick draw and dead-on accuracy. Even without his absurdly overkill explosive rounds, every round he fires kills or cripples, even on Brotherhood Power Armor because he intimately knows weak spots and vulnerabilities. It's almost akin to him using V.A.T.S to get in quick killshots instead of letting engagements get drawn out.
• Lucy's casual attitude towards sex is likely explained by the environment she grew up in. The population of Vault 33 is likely on strict birth control most of the time to avoid overpopulation. It's also likely that Vault Tec made sure the original population of the Vault was STD free, since the main purpose of the Vault was to supply the company with future Vault Tec employees. So in an environment where there's little risk of unwanted pregnancies or ST Ds it's natural to assume that a culture of casual sex emerged. After all, there's not much else to do down there. Even sleeping with cousins seems to be acceptable as long as it's not for reproductive purposes.

Fridge Horror

• Given the reveal that everyone from Vault 31 was a Vault-Tec zealot put into cryo, the fact that Stephanie encourages the murder of the former New California Republic survivors-turned-raiders takes on a much darker tone - there can't be any survivors left aside from Vault-Tec, after all. It also brings some scary implications for what might happen to Chet if she ever cottons on to the fact that he and Norm were spying on the dark underbelly of Vaults 31 and 32.
• Now that it's known that Vault-Tec is responsible for the Great War and taking out at least the NCR and potentially New Vegas, that brings a scary realization to light: all of the large and relatively peaceful settlements we've seen in the franchise (Diamond City, Acadia, The Hub, Rivet City, so on) are absolutely not safe from the company's madness. It also puts the safety of friends and companions who live there into question if Vault-Tec ever decides that these places are becoming too big and stable.
• Hank MacLean's last words to his daughter before he's kidnapped take on a whole new meaning after we learn he's one of the Big Bads responsible for destroying the world. "You are my world" takes on a new connotation because, yes, Lucy is his world and the news of his past villainy destroys their relationship.
• The reveal of the sinister Vault experiment in Vault 4 and the cryogenic tubes containing pregnant women. Lucy only sees one of the experiments where a woman gives birth to fish who then eat her. It makes you think of the extent of the awful, inhumane experiments that must have gone on, one which led to the creation of the Gulper. 
  • It's actually much worse than that. At first glance, they do appear to be fish and move like them. But then you see that they're quadrupeds. In that light, it's indicated that this woman gave birth to multiple baby Gulpers. And as we saw earlier in the season, some have managed to escape the Vault. They are out there, and the one that Maximus killed is likely not the only one in the Wasteland.
• Hank MacLean at the end of "The Beginning" comes across the skull of what is undeniably the remains of a Deathclaw. This could be Foreshadowing what he's bound to face in Season 2.
• The Platonic Life-Partners (or possibly more) element of Moldaver and Rose puts another angle on Hank's destruction of Shady Sands. It's entirely possible that he did it purely out of being a Crazy Jealous Guy.
• The reason why Barbara got so tense and secretive about Coop's "no dogs in the vaults" question may be because this was a rule she created. If it was Bud, she would have probably said so instead of saying "it's the policy". As we find out, Barbara has a lot of power at Vault-Tec, and very well may have made this a rule, which would explain why she doesn't want to say who made the rule. Coop also loves his Border Collie, even missing the dog after 200 years. So it could be that the "no dogs" rule was done by Barbara as a way to keep Coop focused on her and their daughter, rather than it being for pragmatism.
• Moldaver's plan takes on a new and horrifying dimension when you not that she let a bunch of Raiders on the loose of the home of her close friend's children. She may have also known that Rose's daughter was the one getting married.
• In hindsight, Cooper Howard's horrified reaction to the first bomb dropping isn't just because of the bomb itself. With him knowing about Vault-Tec's discussion on ending the world for profit, and his wife's involvement, his horror is the realization that his once beloved wife actually went through with dropping the bombs. Not only that, but she even had the bomb dropped not far from where he and their own daughter were, showing no concern for their lives.
• New Vegas seems to have suffered considerable damage from a massive Deathclaw attack by 2296. This has some disturbing implications. For one thing, a truly massive number of Deathclaws would be needed to breach the formidable defenses of New Vegas and it is unlikely such a horde could form naturally. However, there is one faction that has heavily researched ways to control Deathclaws for military use. The Enclave has already been shown to have controlled Deathclaws on a number of occasions, making them a likely suspect for the attack on New Vegas. As for the motivation, they were likely trying to tie up a loose end. It's revealed that Mr. House was aware of the pre war conspiracy involving major corporations to kick off the Great War and the rebuild the post war world in their image. Although technically involved in said conspiracy, Mr. House was not entirely onboard with it and secretly made his own contingency plans to ensure Vegas survived the war. However, Mr. House knew far too much about the pre war conspiracy for them to just let him do his own thing. Although they probably assumed he died in the Great War, House's reemergence shortly before the events of New Vegas would've caused a great deal of panic amongst those who didn't want the conspiracy exposed. They couldn't simply nuke New Vegas, as unlike Shady Sands, the city was protected by House's formidable pre war missile defense system. So instead they opted to use their connections with the Enclave to take out House via a ground assault, with the added bonus of destroying yet another center of post war civilization that could act as an alternative to their rule.
• While a Reasonable Authority Figure with a desire to shake the Brotherhood out of what he perceives as being set in its way, Elder Cleric Quintus is revealed at the end to harbor seething resentments towards his erstwhile peers. He also has a desire to take over, if not start anew, seeking the artifact as his ace in the hole. One other Brotherhood elder had expressed similar notions before, and not only drove his chapter to near-oblivion but became a threat to the wider wasteland: Father Elijah. Whatever Quintus' goals are, it's hard to shake off the sense that they're just as deluded.
• The fact that Maximus is extremely naive and even oblivious of basic facts of life like what sex is may be interpreted to mean that a) these kinds of things just don't matter to the Brotherhood, or b) that squires are not expected to survive anyway, so the Brotherhood rather trains them in the skills that are useful for the Brotherhood's purposes rather than what they need to know as people, to make the most of what little time they expect the squires will have. This seems corroborated when Maximus pretending to be Titus is simply given a new squire right away, with the Brotherhood not even bothering with any induction rites, when he claims the old squire has been killed.
• Frederick Sinclair's appearance at the meeting sheds new light as to how nasty he must have gotten in his final days; we already know from Dead Money that the discovery of Vera's "betrayal" destroyed his happiness and optimism, even drove him to set up a death trap to leave Vera and Dean Buried Alive. At the conference, he comes across as sour and cold-hearted, with no sign of the generous man reported in the Sierra Madre's logs; assuming that his kindness wasn't just his way of disguising Sinclair's true nature, Dean Domino actually did even worse than break the man's spirit - he turned him into a monster.

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