The show is apparently canon. It’s not like the All Roads comic, Fallout Tactics, or the Fallout Bible where it’s considered flavor materials and only elements of it are later added to the canon.

“We view what’s happening in the show as canon,” Bethesda director Todd Howard told Vanity Fair. “That’s what’s great, when someone else looks at your work and then translates it in some fashion.”

https://www.gamesradar.com/is-the-fallout-tv-show-canon-bethesda-games-todd-howard/

The show takes place in 2296 making it the furthest along we’ve seen the world of Fallout so it might gives us some leads on canon endings of Fallout 3, NV, and 4.


I’ve only watched through the show once but I am wondering what you felt were significant additions to the canon or lore of Fallout?

Here’s some stuff I thought of:

  • We knew there were Vault-Tec brand vaults in Canada following the annexation because of letters found in mailboxes outside of Vault 101 in Fallout 3 but a lot of people assumed this would be limited to major cities. Some people believed the settlement to the north mentioned in The Pitt DLC was a reference to Toronto and thought there might be a vault there. The map in one of the latter episodes seems to suggest there are a lot more vaults up there than people thought.

  • I feel like there were enough references to the situation the Brotherhood of Steel is currently in with the early episodes to suggest what happened to them in the non-isometric games but I’d need to rewatch it to dig deeper. I don’t know if there are mentions of their command structure or the Mojave chapter. Either would likely be a giveaway. I don’t think the destruction of the Prydwen in Fallout 4 is out of the question. In Fallout 4 Captain Kells talks about the prior construction of airships on the West coast and Scribe Rothchild from Fallout NV mentions a rogue detachment of the Brotherhood of Steel that might be able to fill emerging power vacuums.

  • Even with Shady Sands gone I feel like the NCR might still exist elsewhere. The population of the NCR according to a holotape in Fallout 2 is around 700,000 and with around 30,000 people in Shady Sands I feel like that means there were a lot of people outside this region. Unless this is being retconned. The whiteboard in the show, if I recall correctly, had a note that said the fall of Shady Sands was in 2277 which would have put it during Fallout 3 and before Fallout NV.

  • I think it has finally been confirmed that Vault-Tec kicked off the nuclear war in some way like the cancelled Fallout film from back in the day originally wanted.

  • New Vegas might may have been destroyed. It looks like it isn’t lit up and the buildings have been further damaged.

  • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I haven’t played all of the more recent games. I’m much more familiar with 1, 2, and New Vegas1. Some additions I found interesting that might already be covered in game lore:

    • The day-to-day of the Brotherhood was interesting, if not bleak. The characterization of the members in the Brotherhood of Steel hierarchy would have fit right in to Fallout 2.
    • T60/T61 Power armor, despite being ridiculously overpowered, is full of logistical, tactical, and technical drawbacks, complete with a weak point. At the same time, we get a really good idea of how much a person’s strength is boosted while piloting one.
    • Turns out that a radbear is a decent match for an un-prepared T60 pilot. Also, radroaches are big problem for a T60’s soft-spots.
    • Stimpaks are no longer hand-waved away as miraculously adding HP back. They really do impart some impossibly amazing healing qualities. Somehow.
    • A fully functioning vault is actually a very big place that can somehow manufacture all manner of foods, clothes, and other engineering materials from raw materials, for at least 200 years. But farming is still a thing. And yet, a failed water chip is still a death sentence 2.
    • New Vaults with completely new, screwed up, experiential designs.
    • Terminal hacking really is like that in-universe, and no longer a contrivance for a video game.
    • Mr. Handy and Matt Berry are a match made in heaven and I hope he voices all appearances of that robot from here on out.
    • Apparently, 200+ years of grinding armed combat gives you VATS superpowers.


    This show also kinda/sorta shows that a game with radically different starting points make for interesting storytelling in this setting. BoS squire, Enclave scientist, Vault dweller, and Ghoul wanderer all look like compelling backgrounds now.

    1 - Yup, I skipped Tactics. But I did play Fallout Shelter for a bit, so there’s no accounting for taste.

    2 - I never did beat Fallout 1. I’m pretty sure Vault 33 is never going to logistically recover from this.

  • argh_another_username@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    Since you guys know what’s going on, may I ask what’s with the vials the ghoul has to take? I don’t recall that in the games 3, NV and 4…

    • Electric@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I thought it was Med-X. Not sure if addicted or just in constant pain from being a ghoul. Probably needs a constant supply since ghouls are chem-resistant.

      • argh_another_username@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        I understood they need to take that or they become ferals, that was clear. I thought ferals or non ferals was more of a random thing after a huge exposure to radiation.

        • Electric@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Other ghouls need it? I have only watched to episode 3. I guess it’s Rad-Away then. Explains why it was orange. I cannot recall a specific source but ferals are created from too much exposure to radiation as a ghoul in the games. Sure you might not die from rads anymore, but it screws with your brain. I guess in the show they stave off the feral-ness by being hooked up Rad-Away constantly instead of avoiding rad baths. Pretty neat.

          • SSTF@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            It seems to be a new drug invented for the show. I don’t actually mind it or think it is a retcon. It makes sense that after 200+ years of ghouls existing, somebody figured out a drug to brute force ghouls from turning feral when they otherwise would.

            The show doesn’t say that all ghouls constantly need a daily supply of it, just that Goggins does. He is the oldest Ghoul we’ve ever seen, so with that in combination of other factors he probably would have turned long ago but is forcing it back.

            That other ghoul was begging for it as he was turning, but that also doesn’t indicate all ghouls constantly need it.

            • GONADS125@feddit.de
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              6 months ago

              That ghoul and the one in Super Duper Mart saying their own names trying to retain their last shred of human consciousness was a nice touch.

              It reminded me of Admiral Keyes losing his mind to the Flood in the 2nd Halo book, where he just kept repeating who he was as it stripped his mind away.

  • Electric@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Shit, I thought it wasn’t canon. Actors said so in one of the interviews I watched. Sucks the writers decided to shit on New Vegas, the show had really great writing otherwise. I’ll just pretend it’s not canon anyways like I do Rise of Skywalker and that Discovery show. 🫡

    • Corroded@leminal.spaceOP
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      6 months ago

      Why do you think they shit on New Vegas?

      Do you have a source for the actor interview? I am wondering if they said something more akin to “it’s not based on existing material”. I feel like I recall that being a point of discussion in the past

      • Electric@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        It was one of those “X answer questions from the internet” videos from I think Wired or whatever media outlet. Obviously the actors aren’t the ones making the story so when the question of “is it canon?” came up they just said it wasn’t necessarily game canon but “a story within the world”.

        I’d call nuking Shady Sands before the events of New Vegas shitting on the game but apparently one of the people behind the show clarified NV is still canon… I don’t know what the situation is anymore.

        • Zron@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          If you look back at the blackboard, it never actually shows that the nuke dropped in ‘77 just that shady sands fell, and then an arrow pointing to a nuke going off.

          That can mean a lot of things. Rome fell over the course of decades and centuries. We also see that shady sands is the “original” capital. So fall of shady sands could refer to a political event, such as starting a costly war with Caesars Legion over a damn,that led to a new seat of government, and then sometime later the city was nuked.

          We also don’t know how old Lucy or Maximus are supposed to be in the show. Is lucy a fresh faced 18 year old, or mid 20s? That kind of changes when the bomb would have dropped. Max was clearly very young, maybe 5 when the bomb dropped. So if he’s 20 in the show, then that puts the bomb dropping sometime during 2281, which now lines up with new Vegas. If Lucy and Max are older, in their mid 20s, then yes it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But we also have to remember that they should be pretty young. Max is a fresh recruit out of boot camp that has been with the BOS since he was small enough to fit in a fridge. I think it’s safe to say that he’d be trained up as soon as possible. So he’s very likely only 18 to 20 when we first see him.

          The same applies for Lucy, she has a vague memory as a child of shady sands. If she’s 25, then that means the bomb had to have dropped in ‘77 but if she’s 18, then it could have dropped as late as 2283, assuming she’s a normal human that doesn’t start being able to retain long term memories until she’s 4 or so. I think it’s likely that she’s supposed to be 18 or 20 in the show, as the first time we see her she’s getting married off. A vault with a limited population would want to encourage people to have children as young as is morally feasible for them, to ensure that there is always a new generation that is well trained to take over.

          I was confused and a little upset when I first saw 2277 on the board too. But then I took a nap and really thought about what that means for the story of both the show and new Vegas. The first things I thought of were the above. And now that I’ve sat with it for a while, it also strikes me that the NCR was an entire country with a similar landmass to modern day Germany, and likely well over a million inhabitants. They were not a city state. Losing one city would be a national tragedy and a major blow to any country, but it wouldn’t lead to an entire collapse. Maybe there would be a period of breakdown around the city that could go on for an extended period if surrounding cities weren’t equipped to help. But, the country as a whole wouldn’t just crumble to nothing because one city was destroyed.