Fallout: the hit game turned TV show explained

The Last of Us, Twisted Metal, and now Fallout – live action adaptations of post-apocalyptic video games are a hot commodity on streaming services. Fallout, the most recent, is based on Bethesda’s long-running role playing video game series of the same name. 

Debuting to critical acclaim, the series provides a startlingly forensic level of faithfulness in its recreation of the game’s dense world and mechanics. But with 27 years of video game lore packed into a tight eight episodes, where do newcomers to the series start?

Fallout unfolds in a timeline that diverges from our own sometime in the 1950s. After the events of World War II, humanity leans into nuclear power for a rapid technological evolution, resulting in a retro-futuristic analogue based world and a 1950s aesthetic which continues well into the 21st century. The world of Fallout is an alternative ‘Leave it to Beaver’, populated with Matt Berry-voiced robots, kitsch home appliances, and terrifying nuclear-powered military weapons. 

During this period, the United States also reformed into Thirteen Commonwealths. This structure remained strong until Saturday, 23 October 2077: the day the bombs fell. Up until this point, the cold war continued apace and devolved into a desperate struggle for resources, a struggle that proved to be almost fatal for humanity.

Prior to The Great War, the powerful mega-corporation Vault-Tec leveraged its vast power and wealth against a near bankrupt American government to win the contract to build a series of underground vaults. These would act as a shelter from the looming conflict. The deeply buried, individually numbered hidey holes were populated by a ‘lucky’ few, who hunkered down for generations to ensure the survival of the wholesome, American as apple pie society that had flourished pre-war. 

However – and as always with projected perfection – things on the surface are not always as they appear. Vault Dwellers make up the bulk of the protagonists in the game series, which often chart their journey to the surface and across the dangerous Wasteland. This is exactly what happens to the TV show’s protagonist, Lucy (Ella Purnell) who leaves Vault 33 to explore the remains of California. The game series goes further afield, with entries set in Boston, Appalachia, Washington DC, and ‘New Vegas’.

Deep below the Earth a world of rules, apparent democracy and TV dinners continues, while the Surface Dwellers of the Wasteland have a very different post-war experience. The risk of radiation poisoning is an everyday occurrence, and the irradiated world is crawling with deadly mutated creatures. Other factions of humans (and those who are not so human anymore) also don’t have the most favourable view of Vault Dwellers, whom they see as the privileged 1%, insulating themselves from the reality of what remains of the ruined world. One of the most dangerous factions that appears in the games and the TV show are the Raiders, ragtag groups of bandits who resort to aggressive raids on settlements for survival.

Its not just cockroaches, bears and mosquitoes that have been affected by generations of exposure to nuclear fallout in the Wasteland. Both the TV show and the Fallout games introduce us to the unfortunate Ghouls. Feared and oppressed by humans, their flesh is scorched and scar-like, and often their body parts have completely disintegrated. Despite resembling zombies, they are not undead, but they do have hugely extended life spans and extraordinary healing properties. 

Although Ghouls can maintain their normal human cognitive functions, they are also in constant danger of losing control and becoming dangerously feral. Cooper Howard AKA The Ghoul (played by Walton Goggins) in the Fallout series is one such unfortunate, albeit one with deep historical connections to Vault-Tec. He’s perhaps even the inspiration for Vault Boy – the forever smiling mascot of the corporation who is a ubiquitous presence across the series. Whether it’s tracking missions on the Pip-Boy wrist computer or giving the thumbs up in a Nuka Cola advert, Vault Boy is the ever-peppy silent narrator of this fallen world.

Also active on the surface are The Brotherhood of Steel, a powerful militarised faction with religious leanings, who search the Wasteland in a relentless hunt for pre-war technology. Believing (perhaps correctly) that humans can’t be trusted with advanced technology, it’s in this strict hierarchical army that the TV series introduces Maximus (Aaron Moten) – a lowly squire sent out on a recovery mission in service of his power armour-clad knight. 

Whether you’re watching the series or playing the games, Fallout offers a retro-future sci-fi world of corporations, consumerism and capitalism, played out in a dense and rich post-apocalyptic world. “The end of the world is a product”, Matt Berry’s character Sebastian explains, and it’s a product that’s worth exploring whatever the medium.