PaxVenire
Vault Dweller
This discussion has been talked about time and time again in multiple threads and in multiple forums, but we don't have a dedicated master thread going into detail of everything this show breaks in term of lore, not just from Interplay/Obsidian but even Bethesda themselves. Here's everything major I can remember off the top of my head with more to be added as Season 2 is around the corner. Enjoy!
1. Shady Sand's Timeline
- Games: Founded 2161, becomes NCR capital 2189, thriving by Fallout 2 (2241) and still functioning in New Vegas (2281).
- Show: Classroom chalkboard dates “The Fall of Shady Sands” to 2277, with a mushroom cloud drawn directly after.
- Contradiction: If nuked in 2277, NCR couldn’t be the powerhouse seen in New Vegas. Bethesda later claimed the nuke happened after 2281, but the visual prop says otherwise.
2. Shady Sand's Geography
- Games: Inland, east of Vault 13, near Death Valley.
- Show: Relocated to the ruins of Los Angeles/Santa Monica.
- Contradiction: Overwrites Fallout 1’s Boneyard (Followers, Gun Runners, Adytum) with Shady Sands.
3. The Status of the NCR
- Games: By 2281, a superpower that's bureaucratic, corrupt, overstretched but dominant.
- Show (2296): Treated as a shadow of itself, barely referenced, effectively irrelevant.
- Contradiction: NCR shouldn’t collapse so quickly after Hoover Dam unless nuked far earlier than Bethesda claims.
4. Mr. House and His Role in the Great War
- Games: House foresaw nuclear war, built Vegas’ defense, intercepted 68 of 77 warheads, but was 20 hours short of perfection. He’s a tragic near-savior.
- Show: House is seated in a Vault-Tec boardroom, implied complicit in the conspiracy to start the Great War.
- Contradiction: If he already knew the bombs were coming, why run projections or miss the “20-hour” deadline? Why save Vegas if he was in on the destruction?
5. Mr. House's Future Plans
- Games: Promises Vegas will restart industry in 20 years, reach orbit in 50, launch colony ships in 100. His project is progress, not Vault-Tec’s social experiments.
- Show: By linking him to Vault-Tec, it suggests his vision aligned with theirs.
- Contradiction: If he planned to end the world why would he care about saving it or seeding humanity in new solar systems?
6. Vault 21's Contradiction
- Games: House evicted Vault 21 dwellers, filled it with concrete, and built a hotel.
- Show: House is part of Vault-Tec’s cabal.
- Contradiction: Why destroy a Vault if you were one of the company’s masterminds in the grand experiment and post-war domination plan?
7. Fredrick Sinclair and His Role in the Great War
- Games: Sierra Madre’s tragic industrialist, client of Big MT but not part of them, obsessed with protecting Vera. Dies in 2077 trying to secure the Sierra Madre.
- Show: Appears at Vault-Tec’s boardroom as if he were one of their conspirators.
- Contradiction: Flips him from a paranoid but protective industrialist into a generic corporate ghoul.
8. Timing of the Great War
- Games: Bombs fell Oct 23, 2077, at 09:42 a.m. EST/~6:42 a.m. PST. House even says the Platinum Chip was supposed to arrive “that afternoon,” meaning the bombs had to hit before noon local time.
- Show: LA prologue depicts a sunny, broad daylight backyard party when the bombs fall that looks more like midday than dawn.
- Contradiction: Breaks both Fallout 4’s timestamp and House’s dialogue.
9. The Brotherhood of Steel (go figure...)
- Interplay/Obsidian Games: Isolationist technocrats, scribes are central to the faction, avoid governing civilians.
- Bethesda Games: FO3 turns them into wasteland protectors, FO4 makes them authoritarian crusaders with the Prydwen, FO76 makes them wasteland protectors who shouldn't even exist this early into the apocalypse.
- Show (2296): Brutal, cult-like knight military order with constant hazing rituals, no scribes in sight (only mentioned), a squire can steal Power Armor with zero oversight.
- Contradiction: The show makes them less disciplined and less technocratic in 2296 than they were in 2287 (FO4). It’s regression, not evolution.
10. The Enclave
- Games: West Coast Enclave destroyed by 2248 (Navarro falls). By NV (2281), they’re extinct in the region. They die a second time in F3 with the Battle of Adam's Air Force Base (2277) and aren't even in F4 aside from Creation Club slop that wasn't even part of the main game that treated them as nonexistent (2287).
- Show (2296): Introduces Siggi Wilzig, an Enclave scientist defecting from an active West Coast Enclave superlab.
- Contradiction: Places a thriving Enclave cell in California decades after they were canonically destroyed.
11. Vault 4 and FEV
- Games: FEV confined to West Tek and Mariposa, then Enclave. That’s why Harold and the Master are unique.
- Show: Vault 4 experiments with FEV, creating Gulpers.
- Contradiction: Cheapens the Master’s uniqueness and implies FEV was widely available, which erases the stakes of Fallout 1.
12. Exposed Vaults
- Games: Vaults are hidden: 13 in a mountain, 15 under a shack, 12 under Bakersfield, LA Vault under the Cathedral.
- Show: Vaults 4, 31, 32, 33 all have their doors openly exposed.
- Contradiction: If the Master’s Unity scoured California for Vaults, they could not possibly have missed giant exposed doors near their Cathedral HQ.
13. Ghouls Needing Resources (it never ends)
- Games: Ghouls in Necropolis die without water (they need sustenance). “Kid in a Fridge” says ghouls don’t need food/water.
- Show: The Ghoul survives buried alive for long stretches (implies no sustenance needed). Later, he kills and cannibalizes Roger, saying “sometimes a fella needs to eat a fella” (implies they do need to eat).
- Contradiction: The show manages to contradict Fallout 1, Fallout 4, and itself in a single season.
