Prime Video’sFalloutis yet anothersuccessful and acclaimed video game TV show adaptationthat easily outdoes what Twisted Metal and The Last of Us have already achieved. The show creates its own story within the canon timeline, featuring many elements from the games adapted exceptionally well along with others that are tweaked a bit for the purpose of the show.
While lots of aspects are one-to-one with the games in terms of creature design, lore, and accurate Vault set design, there are also quite a few surprises in store. Whether you’re a fan of the games or just now getting to know Fallout because of the show, here are some of the most major differences.
There will be some major spoilers for the Fallout TV series below.
10No Opening Monologue From Ron Perlman
“War. War Never Changes.”
Actor Ron Perlman is not only an icon known for his films with director Guillermo del Toro and for starring as Clay Morrow in Sons of Anarchy, but he’s also an iconic character in the Fallout games. Ever since the series' inception in 1997,he’s voiced the Narratorwho delivers the opening cinematic monologue that always starts with “War. War never changes.”
Perlman’s absence from the show feels like a missed opportunity, since now there’s an actual Hollywood production of the Fallout series he could’ve taken part in. However, his narrated intro makes more sense to only be used in a video game setting than in a live-action show.
As a nod to Perlman’s signature line, it still shows up in the finale as an Easter egg, said by both Barb Howard and Cooper Howard.
9Greater Focus On Pre-War Backstory Flashbacks
The Games Aim To Keep You Immersed In The Open-World Wasteland
Much like whatThe Last of Usdid in its episodes, the Fallout TV series also takes you back to before the bombs were dropped and builds a vital backstory to provide better context for the show and the games. You have lots of moments where you’re in the shoes of Cooper Howard before he became a Ghoul and you get some answers as to how some things came to be.
The most interesting things you can learn from the flashback sequences are the purpose of the Vault Boy mascotand how he got his thumbs-up, as well as how the Mr. Handy robot units got their voice. What led up to the Great War generally isn’t explored in playable flashbacks such as these in the games. They like to keep things moving in the wasteland environment.
8Jello Cake Is A New Delicacy In The Fallout Series
A Vault 33 Exclusive Food Item
The jello cake has become a much-talked-about phenomenon from the TV show. The Vault Dwellers of 33 are obsessed with it, and it seems to be the only dessert they know how to make or just what they always prefer to have. Even the Raider prisoners get some helpings of leftover jello cake.
The show didn’t leave out returning food brands from the Fallout games, like Nuka-Cola, Cram, or Sugar Bombs cereal, and even an iguana on a stick made it in, but this gem of a food item (undoubtedly made from a Vault-Tec brand of jello) is very peculiar and new. It’s so intriguing you’ll probably want it added tothe official Fallout cookbook, as many are already trying to recreate the recipe in real life.
7New Weapons And Weapon Designs That Are Familiar But Different
The Games May Have A Lot More, But The Show Has Its Own Weapons That Stand Out
If you’ve played the games and were trying to remember whether your character ever had a tranquilizer dart gun similar to Lucy’s in the TV show, you would sadly be mistaken. Lucy’s weaponnowappears inFallout 4,thanks to modder neeher, but it wasn’t there before. The closest to that would’ve beenFallout 3’s Dart Gun, which anyway had a very makeshift design of toy cars and rubber tubes, and used Radscorpion-laced poison darts.
The harpoon gun comes up at the end of Episode Six when Lucy gets caught in Level 12 of Vault 4, with a more traditional harpoon design than how you see it in the games. The Ghoul’s special weapon used in the show is also an original one not yet seen in the games, although it’s available now in Fallout Shelter as the ‘Ghoul revolver’ following the release. He has a special revolver-shotgun hybrid hand cannon that fires explosive bullets.
6The Pip-Boy And SPECIAL System
Pip-Boys And Stats Are Just As Essential, But Still Slightly Different
Normally, your character’s stats in the game are defined under the categories of the SPECIAL acronym from your Pip-Boy menu. The show took this concept and applied it to a scenario where a live-action Vault Dweller can verbally list off their stats rather than read them on a Pip-Boy screen, as it’s more natural. This applies to Lucy, who summarizes her key qualities in front of the Governing Council when making a case for her marriage candidacy.
Although Pip-Boys are still being used for tracking quests, measuring radiation, and playing games (precisely the ones you can also play on your Pip-Boy in the Fallout games), they also handle marriage applications and pair with listening devices to spy on people who wear them, as Cooper did to his wife. And you get to see that Pip-Boys were worn even before the war.
If you want to see the actual SPECIAL stats for TV show characters Lucy, Maximus, The Ghoul, and Ma June,they’ve been revealed in Fallout Shelter with the new update.
5The Show’s Gulpers Were Created In A Vault
A Different Yet Appropriately Creepy Origin For The Gulpers
Adding a new twist to the lore of the Gulper creatures that populate the wasteland, the show makes it seem like they were the product of a vault experiment rather than the effects of the radiation as is more standard canon in video games. This all comes to light when Lucy gets the truth about what actually happened in Vault 4.
You see a video of a Gulper, precisely like the one who earlier attacked Lucy, Maximus, and the Ghoul, and stole Wilzig’s head, eating a Vault-Tec scientist. This was the product of an old experiment in Vault 4 where human DNA was spliced with that of animals to build better resistance to radiation. Even the very design of this Gulper is different in the show, with human fingers lining the entire inside of its mouth.
4Fewer Enemy Variety And New Rules About Ghouls
The Show Is Not As Packed With Creatures As You Might Expect
Speaking of enemies and creatures, the wasteland doesn’t really capture the same feeling as in the games, where you’ll findall sorts of unique radiation-transformed monstrositiesthat have yet to make an appearance on the show. Even the Super Mutants appeared only as Easter egg teases and the Raiders never posed much of a threat in the wild, just in the Vault 32 attack.
Ghouls are something the Fallout TV series was not short on. One of the main characters is a gunslinging Ghoul bounty hunter and then there areother Ghouls you meet throughout the episodes, some either turning feral or those who are already feral and attack Lucy. The show reveals that yellow vials of a drug called RadAway areessential in delaying the process of becoming a feral form of Ghoul.
Furthermore, there’s also a new way of becoming a Ghoul introduced in the TV series, with what happens to Thaddeus.
He receives a strange serum from a snake oil salesman to regenerate his crushed foot, and, while it fixes his foot issue, it starts to give him the regenerative properties of a Ghoul and will most likely turn him into one soon.
3The Interconnected Vault Society
Vaults 31, 32, And 33 Are A Brand New Experiment
What will stick out to you most about Vault society in the Fallout show is how different this experiment works compared toall the other vaults that exist in the games. It’s not just reliant on one vault but three – Vault 31, 32, and 33. They form what’s called a tripartite society and this is an entirely new concept not seen before in previous games.
Members of Vault 32 and 33 have a tradition where they trade goods and arrange marriages to keep populating the vault with new generations of children that would one day grow up to reclaim the land when radiation levels stabilize, according to their Overseers. But you find out extremely malicious and sinister agendas are taking root, all leading back to Vault 31.
2The Answer Behind Who Dropped The Bombs And Started The Great War
An Explanation That Only Makes Sense For Vault-Tec’s Reputation
The Fallout TV show quite literally dropped a big bomb on the viewers and fans of the game. There’s finally a clear-cut answer as to how the events all started after the bombs were dropped and who was ultimately behind the decision, a detail that the games liked to keep you guessing on.
There were many different theories on the issue of how the Great War began and Fallout’s original creator, Tim Cain,even himself said it was China that was responsible for the bombs. The official verdict is Vault-Tec, and in the context of the show and the games, this makes so much sense because of the way Vault-Tec is driven and just how an overall evil organization it is, that it would nuke its own to ensure its plan works.
1The Changes To Shady Sands In The Timeline
One Of The Biggest And Most Consequential Departures From The Games
The Fallout show made quite a big change to a specific location in the game, which also throws a wrinkle into the video game’s canon. That would, of course, be the Shady Sands community. It’s the original capital of the New California Republic, and it still exists in the games up until the point of the show. BothFallout: New Vegasand Fallout 4 reference Shady Sands within their timeline.
What you learn in the show is that Shady Sands was bombed in 2277 by Hank MacLean when Lucy was just a little girl after her mom ran off with her and her brother to live there. Maximus also lost his family to the bombing and many of the survivors in Vault 4 came from Shady Sands, memorializing the settlement there. While the decision to destroy Shady Sands fuels the plot of the show,it already sparks new discourse about the canon.
