Set 80 years after a massive nuclear war, the player/character sets out from 'The Vault' - a large, underground shelter, where survivors have lived since the war - to obtain parts of a water purification system. Wandering the ruins, the character stumbles across an even greater threat...
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Brian Fargo the co-creator of the Fallout series, went on record to confirm that the Vault Boy Thumbs-up depiction wasn't to see how close you are to atomic bomb blast (if it's bigger than your thumb you're in the radiation zone). Vault Boy simply has a 'Positive Attitude'
Deep in Oasis, at the northern edge of the map, you'll find Harold, a ghoul who has literally become one with a tree, now known as Bob. Harold first appeared as a mutated ghoul in the original two Fallout games, and his transformation into a sentient tree is one of the series' longest-running character arcs.
The ruined settlement of Shady Sands that keeps popping up in flashbacks isn't just set dressing, it was once the capital of the New California Republic and the largest post-war settlement in the original two Fallout games. Seeing it wiped off the map in the show is a genuinely heavy moment for anyone who's followed the series that long.
At one point during development, the team experimented with a targeting system similar to Fallout's V.A.T.S, letting players pause combat and aim at specific body parts. It never made it into the final release, and honestly it's hard to picture the fast, fluid swordplay working any other way.
Work on Fallout 2 actually started before the first game hit shelves. Not long into it, three of the original creative leads, Tim Cain, Jason Anderson, and Leonard Boyarsky, walked away from the project. Cain in particular never felt Fallout needed a sequel at all and wasn't thrilled about decisions like making the Temple of Trials impossible to skip.
Harold the mutated ghoul is the only character to show up across all three of the original mainline Fallout games, skipping only the spin-off Fallout Tactics. Watching how his character and even his appearance shift between games has become its own little tradition for long-time fans tracking the lore.
Stumble into the special encounter called the Café of Broken Dreams and you'll find a little diner, modelled on a bar from the first Fallout, populated by every Vault Dweller character model that didn't make it into the original game, including ones you were never actually allowed to play as. Characters from the first Fallout turn up too, and you can even recruit the original game's dog, Dogmeat, right there at the counter.
