As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
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Season 1
E 1 - "The End"
- The first ten minutes is the day of the Great War. We are at a little boy's birthday party, all seems well... and then the bombs start going off.
- When the first bomb goes off, Janey — like her father suggested — holds up her thumb to measure the distance of the growing mushroom cloud. Her face turns from one of confusion to mortal terror when she realizes what's coming, and Cooper's not far behind when he realizes his assurance that it's just a fire is horribly incorrect.
- Moments before the detonations, Cooper told her daughter that if the nuclear cloud is narrower than her thumb, then they need to "run for the hills", but if it's wider (i.e., closer to them), then there's no point to run. And yet, upon being faced with that expanding mushroom of death, Cooper can't help but obey his parental and survival instincts and ride hard in an attempt to keep himself and his daughter alive.
- Even before the bombs fell, you could tell there was a grim atmosphere hanging over society. With the mothers at the party anxiously watching the television as the newscaster morosely talks about heightened tensions and how the threat of nuclear war seems imminent, before one of them promptly shuts the TV off and tries to convince the others to focus on the party instead. And when they bring the kids back inside to watch cartoons, they turn the TV back on to the weather forecaster trying to give the forecast, only to begin suffering a breakdown as he breaks script, the mother hurriedly switching the channel.Forecaster: (Looks off-camera) Hal, I can't- I-I'm sorry, I can't do this. I can't do the weather when I don't even know if there's gonna be a next week. I'm not-!
- The wedding night from Hell is one when you think about how much trauma and horror has been inflicted upon everyone. Things like Lucy's wedding dress, local traditions, families, and more that have been largely violence-free for the entirety of the Vault Dwellers' lives are now permanently scarred with violence.
- The fact that her "husband", Monty, also sincerely said it was the best day of his life, just pretending to be a normal person getting married. It's clear that despite being a raider, he genuinely enjoyed the lie until the ruse was discovered.
E 2 - "The Target"
- Lucy desperately Trying Not to Cry when Ma June gives her (and the Vaults) a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, saying Vault Dwellers are naive at best, but descended from "rich fucks" at worst who left the world and lesser people to burn. Lucy was raised in an environment believing the history she taught was accurate, but getting a firsthand encounter from someone else saying otherwise leaves the poor girl almost in tears. Even when she tries to bring up arguments to defend her points, it, they're weak at best because she genuinely thought the Vaults would value everyone and not just the privileged.
- Maximus' Broken Pedestal moment when he saves Knight Titus by killing the monster that's mortally wounded him with a lucky shot... only for Titus to curse Maximus as fucking worthless and tell him he's going to be executed for not helping sooner, then continuing to berate him for being too slow in whipping out a stimpack. This, after Maximus has idolized the Brotherhood of Steel since he was a little kid, and has ever since endured harsh training, bullying, beatings, and Titus' own jerkassness on their current assignment. Forget how awful Maximus must feel in this moment — if Titus, a 100% ordained power armor-wearing Knight, can be such an abusive Dirty Coward, what kind of rot must be infesting the rest of the Brotherhood of Steel?
E 3 - "The Head"
- We finally find out why everybody beat up Maximus all the time: Thaddeus used to get beat up, but when new recruits came in, he convinced them to beat up Maximus instead. That's it. He never had a damn thing against Maximus (in fact, when "Titus" orders him to say something negative, Thaddeus only talks about his own bullying ways, without mentioning one thing Maximus ever did to bring it on himself). So much for the glory of the Brotherhood of Steel; this wasn't just one bad batch, it's practically organizational policy.Thaddeus: I just wish he'd lived long enough to find someone else to beat up, you know? Only seems fair.
E 4 - "The Ghouls"'
- On top of losing an eye in the attack, Steph really isn't taking the death of her husband Bert very well. She brings his belongings to Chet's room and desperately tries to find anything great to say about Bert beyond how he really loved shoes. Then (while still heavily pregnant) she dresses Chet up in her late husband's clothes and attempts to have sex with him. The poor girl has been through the wringer, and without anyone there to truly support her, she's clearly not handling her grief well. And then, to make matters more insane for her... her water breaks.
- Roger. Oh, poor Roger. The last ghoul of an abandoned settlement, and somebody The Ghoul was friends with Post-War. But Roger isn't going as good as The Ghoul is. He's introduced snarling much like a Feral Ghoul does, while desperately repeating his own name to himself, to try and keep a hold of his own slipping humanity. He only becomes lucid when The Ghoul makes himself known, but even then, he has moments of slipping. He's out of the medication The Ghoul uses, and while The Ghoul can't spare any, having run out himself, the look on his face shows that even if he did have some to spare it's much too late for Roger now. Roger tells The Ghoul and his friend to leave before things get ugly, he laments how he did good, 28 years since he started turning, and how The Ghoul "outlasted us all", implying there were more the two of them knew once. The Ghoul suddenly changes the topic, talking about how good food tasted before the war, really getting him going by bringing up apple pie. He starts laughing, smiling wide as he looks at Lucy and starts lapsing into a story about something his mom did before The Ghoul headshots him mid-sentence, looking grim and pitying. Letting Roger die before he turned feral, and with a happy memory in his mind.
- In the organ harvesting facility, Lucy spots another Ghoul named Martha who's on the verge of going feral, constantly repeating her name to try and stave off the encroaching madness. Lucy does end up freeing Martha, only for the Ghoul to immediately attack her, forcing Lucy to shoot her dead and thus make her first kill out in the Wasteland. Lucy is clearly shaken up and saddened by this and can only stare at Martha's corpse in quiet shock.
E 5 - "The Past"
- After the shootout with the Fiends, Lucy gives an exasperated and pained "WHY?!" as her frustrations with the dog-eat-dog world of the Wasteland finally boil over. Fortunately, Maximus is there to help calm her down and get her back on mission.
- While searching for the head, Lucy and Maximus come across a welcome sign for Shady Sands, capitol city of the New California Republic:
- Lucy is stunned to see that not only were there cities built after the bombs fell, but they were prosperous enough to have populations close to 35,000 people (far more than the one thousand members of her Vault). She explains to Maximus that this means everything she knew, everything she was taught about the Vault Dwellers returning to the surface to bring prosperity and civilization back to the Wasteland, all of it was a lie and people were not only rebuilding, but thriving just fine without them.
- Maximus glumly "reassures" Lucy that this didn't work out either and shows her what remains of Shady Sands— a massive blast crater surrounded by rubble. When she asks what happened, he tells her the same thing that always happens: some people want to save the world, but they ended up disagreeing on how exactly to do that.
E 7 - "The Radio"
- The Ghoul is having a flashback to his Pre-War life as Cooper Howard and remembers his family's old Border Collie, Roosevelt. Back in the present, he pets CX404/Dogmeat and tells her in a sad tone, "I'm sorry, Dogmeat. But you ain't him." Even after 200 years, Cooper still misses his old dog.
E 8 - "The Beginning"
- Both Lucy and the Ghoul have similar breakdowns to revelations in "The Beginning":
- For Lucy, she learns from Moldaver that her father was complicit in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocents in Shady Sands for no other reason than petty jealousy that his wife escaped to a prosperous civilization and took Lucy with her. Hank doesn't even deny it after the jig is up, even saying that her mother deserved to die for taking Lucy away from him. Lucy spends most of the finale looking as if she's about to burst into tears and can barely explain herself to Maximus when he comes rushing in. In addition, she finally finds out what happened to her mother. What's left of her, anyway.
- For the Ghoul, back when he was Cooper Howard, he listens in on a meeting between Vault-Tec and numerous other business conglomerates as they start divvying up the post-war world for their own gain. He expects his beloved wife to be a voice of reason at the meeting, only for her to advocate for Vault-Tec's proposed nuclear genocide against the world so that they can take over. He's left barely functioning when Betty introduces Cooper to Hank. All of this makes Cooper's Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job at the start of the season even harsher in hindsight, as learning the truth not only cost him his marriage and his career, but he has to entertain at those parties while knowing his world is going to die and there's nothing he can do about it.
- Lucy's memory is finally clarified, and she realizes she was in Shady Sands with her mother and brother - the town had food, power, even mass transit, and while the scars of the Great War still remained, Shady Sands was a place where she, Norman, Rose, and Moldaver could have lived happily in peace... and Hank destroyed that all out of petty jealousy.
- The last shot of the episode showcases Hank staring over the ruins of New Vegas. Just what happened to cause the downfall of such an iconic location within the Fallout universe?
