Trivia / Fallout 4

• Ascended Fanfic: The game introduces dozens of features from fan-made mods for Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.
  • Creating and defending communities in the wasteland from Wasteland Defense (construction/raid mechanics) and Real Time Settler (resource/settler mechanics).
  • The sprint meter, helmet visor, dynamic crosshairs, and being able to equip grenades as a secondary weapon from Project Nevada.
  • The ability to use action points to go into Bullet Time instead of V.A.T.S. from DK_BulletTime.
  • Music tracks from the CONELRAD mod — such as "Atom Bomb Baby", "Crawl Out Through The Fallout", and "Uranium Fever".
  • Holding your breath to steady your aim while using a scope from the FWE mod.
  • The lighting system of the game looks astonishingly similar to the extremely popular ENBSeries mod, most often used to make Skyrim and Fallout 3/New Vegas look prettier.
  • The rain and radiation storms from the Nevada Skies mod.
  • The ability to make your own robots (from the Automatron DLC) sounds somewhat similar to the Robco Certified mod.
  • The updated survival mode takes several cues from various mods such as Project Nevada that disable the use of fast traveling and try to make the game more immersive such as being able to get diseases.
  • An unusual case is the titular Pip-Boy of the Pip-Boy edition. As smartphones rose to prominence, a lot of people got the idea to modify the Pip-Boy that came with Fallout 3's legendary edition into a phone case.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Preston Garvey never actually says "Another settlement needs our help." He gives the Minutemen radiant quests with various lines: "I got word of a settlement that needs our help," "I've heard of another settlement that's in trouble," and "Another settlement has sent word that they need our help."
• Content Leak: Some gameplay footage from Gamescom was leaked online. Specifically, it was leaked onto Pornhub. Yes, really. On the day of Fallout 4's release, Pornhub reported a whopping 10% drop in traffic.
• Creator Backlash: While Bethesda Game Studios is still proud of their work on the game, Todd Howard has gone on record admitting that he and the other developers regret implementing the cut-down dialogue system.
• Colbert Bump:
  • Videos for The Five Stars have seen a huge increase in views thanks to "Atom Bomb Baby" being featured in the E3 2015 gameplay trailer.
  • Similarly, videos of Dion's "The Wanderer" increase in views thanks to the Live Action Wanderer trailer.
  • "The End of the World", sung by Skeeter Davis, has seen a huge increase in views once the game was released.
• Corpsing: Brendan is audibly struggling to hold back his laughter whenever he announces that the next song is "Rocket 69".
• Crosscast Role: Dogmeat, who was modeled and voiced after a female German Shepherd named River. But of course, the differences between a female dog and a male dog are generally rather impenetrable for human beings to note anyway.
• Defictionalization: The special edition of Fallout 4 comes with an actual Pip-Boy shell that you can put your smartphone in. There's also a "Pip-Boy OS" app that interfaces with the game (via a local network) and can completely take over all functionality of your in-game Pip-Boy, including equipment changes, item usage, fast travel, etc. They've even releasing a special edition with a built-in screen and a new version of the Pip-Boy OS that lets it double as a secondary smart device via a Bluetooth connection, although it's only a 5,000 unit run and it doesn't integrate with the game in any way.
• Development Hell: Bethesda announced in October 2022 that Fallout 4 was to receive a next-gen patch in 2023 to take advantage of the advanced capabilities of the Xbox Series X|S and the PlayStation 5, which would've added 4K resolution, a higher frame rate, performance and graphic improvements. As 2023 came close to an end, this next-gen update was pushed back to 2024 before finally getting release on April 25, as Bethesda had shifted most of its focus on the (at the time) ongoing development of the sixth entry in the The Elder Scrolls series and Starfield.
• Dueling Games: With Wasteland 2, which released its Director's Cut Edition making the game available to consoles 5 months prior. Both games are sequels to Western RPGs set in a Post-Apocalyptic United States. Ironically, Wasteland 2 is made by many of the people (Director/Producer included) who worked on Fallout 1 and 2 ^note and much later, Fallout: New Vegas who created Fallout as a Spiritual Successor to Wasteland because they couldn't get the rights from Electronic Arts at the time. Many Fallout veterans see Wasteland 2 as a Spiritual Successor to the first two Fallout games because it's an isometric CRPG with a turn-based combat system.
• Fake Brit: American Stephen Russell provides Codsworth and the other Mr Handies' posh English accents.
• Fake Irish: Native born Scotswoman Katy Townsend voices the Irish Cait.
• Fake Russian: Vadim Bobrov was voiced by the late Dimitri Diatchenko, who was born in America and has partial Ukrainian lineage.
• Feelies: Boxed copies come with a poster and a reversible cover. The poster shows the perk chart. The flip side of the cover is a panorama of the female Sole Survivor and Dogmeat near a Red Rocket Truck Stop.
• Hey, It's That Sound!: The roars of the Deathclaws in this game are reused werewolf snarls from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which in turn are modified tiger roars.
• Incestuous Casting: Sheng Kowalski has a unreciprocated crush on Nat Wright. Both kids are voiced by lead designer Emil Pagliarulo's children.
• Newbie Boom: This is easily the best-selling Fallout by quite a lot, and produced as big a newbie boom as its predecessor did, or bigger.
• Playing Against Type: Matthew Mercer typically voices characters with a baritone. His performance as MacCready uses a higher-pitched voice that could be easily mistaken for Yuri Lowenthal.
• Production Posse:
  • A lot of Mass Effect actors voice characters in this game.
  • Similarly, a good portion of the Life Is Strange cast also voice some characters.
• Real Song Theme Tune: It's All Over But The Crying by The Ink Spots.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Cut dialogue files from Paladin Danse indicate that the Brotherhood campaign could have unfolded quite differently. Even after Danse is revealed as a synth, the Sole Survivor could support Danse in challenging Maxson's legitimacy and settling the claim through combat which could allow Danse to remain in the Brotherhood. Subsequently, the player character could potentially take the helm as Elder, and implicitly set the Brotherhood of Steel on a course to once again shed their Fantastic Racism and aggression.
  • Much like Fallout 3 and New Vegas, players would have been able to have Dogmeat accompany them along with a standard companion, rather than Dogmeat occupying the "companion" slot. It's not fully clear why this option was cut, but it appears to have been done late in development — all followers have dialogue where they comment on Dogmeat being injured in combat, NPCs that refer to your companions will comment on you having both Dogmeat and another companion with you, and in both instances their dialogue was recorded and remains in the game. Note: if you take Preston as a permanent non-companion (if you only half-complete the Castle quest he will trail you forever), you can hear some of his Dogmeat-specific dialogue.
  • There was at one point an underwater combat system in place for the game, and a weaponized harpoon gun was made to compliment it. There was also a cut quest called "Twenty Leagues Under The Sea" that likely would have showcased this mechanic. The quest would have also included Vault 120, an underwater Vault near the Nahant Oceanological Society. Aside from assets in the game engine, players can find purported evidence of this in-game by swimming into the water around Nahant, where a complex series of pipes and tanks wind down deep to the ocean floor, but apparently have no purpose. Presumably, they would have been part of the quest or were just meant to connect to Vault 120.
    • It is also possible, given one of Deacon's voicelines when you first run into him in the Railroad HQ, this quest would have involved the Yangtze in some fashion, and would also have involved rescuing something or someone.
    • The Harpoon Gun itself, on the other hand, has been reused in the Far Harbor DLC.
    • A rudimentary version of the quest has been uncovered, rather bizarrely, from the files of Fallout 76. The quest would have involved the Yangtze crashing into the hidden Vault, and a survivor named James being found inside the vault. The player, Zao, and James would then have to explore the vault before coming across the Overseer, whom would be revealed to be a mutated sentient giant squid, with the player having the decision to free him or leave him trapped in the Vault.
  • Early concept art reveals that Mama Murphy was at some point intended to sit in a modified Mr. Handy wheelchair,◊ but this was cut for being too distracting.
  • Piper originally had shorter hair and a different face in concept art.
  • Visiting the Combat Zone reveals a rather underwhelming raider dungeon filled with mooks and a recruitable companion. Many fans speculated that this was originally going to be an arena that the player could participate in but similarly to the arena in Skyrim, it was scrapped in the end. Digging through the voice files confirms this, as Tommy Lonegan, the owner of the Combat Zone, has voice files talking to the player about cage matches and "rising through the ranks", and even taking an elevator in the stage floor to rise to the arena. The absence of said elevator suggests the idea may have been cut rather early, but ultimately the voice files proves that it was originally intended as an arena.
    • The Wasteland Workshop DLC allows you to create your own arenas, where you can pit your settlers against raiders, Gunners, various mutant creatures, or each other. However, there is no in-game benefit to doing so, nor are there quests attached.
    • Cait also originally had to be fought in the Combat Zone before being recruited.
  • Sony ultimately canning the PS4 mods for Fallout 4, or rather the original version Bethesda planned (there are mods for the PS4 version, but they're all restricted to using in-game assets only). As of now, there's no official reason by Sony themselves on why. Some rumors circulated at the time that it was because the PS 4 uses proprietary file formats for its game assets and Sony was unwilling to allow a program that was available to the public (the Creation Kit used to mod the game) to generate these proprietary formats.
  • It's speculated that the Lone Wanderer was a some point slated to make a cameo in the game. There is a complete Vault 101 jumpsuit in the game files a well a references to a cut clothing item called "FO3 Pipboy". Not only was the cameo cut, but all references to the Lone Wanderer were removed at some point.
  • There were early plans for a multiplayer mode, but Bethesda didn't think they could do the amount of work required and finish the main game, so it was cut. However, it would serve as the inspiration for the next Fallout, Fallout 76.
  • Ray Chase stated that he recorded voice lines for an important character for the game, but the character was removed at some point. He still is credited in game despite this.
  • Tinker Tom was originally Caucasian and significantly older◊.
  • There is a cut interior cell for the Atlantic Offices, a normally mundane location in the Glowing Sea located north-north-west of the Crater of Atom. This cell indicates that the Atlantic Offices would instead have been a dungeon filled with raiders instead of ghouls like in the final game, and the Atlantic Offices would be instead located in a green skyscraper Downtown Boston near the Shamrock Taphouse. In the final game, all that remains of the original plan at the current location is a small raider post at the top of the skyscraper.
• Writer Conflicts with Canon: After the premiere of the TV series, lead writer and designer Emil Pagliarulo stated in a tweet that Nate was one of the soldiers seen in the original Fallout intro; specifically, the witness to the soldier that killed the Canadian rebel on camera. Following this, and some negative feedback (namely that this would make Nate willingly complicit in war crimes since the witness can be seen laughing and waving at the camera, plus people pointing out that 4's intro indicates Nate fought in Anchorage during the Sino-American War), he would clarify this was an internal detail, not every detail he shares is automatically canon, and that its canonicity is up to the player.

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