Fallout: 6 Inconsistencies In The TV Series

The Fallout series has been lauded for its attention to detail. Fans both old and new alike have pointed out how faithful the show is when it comes to costumes and props, but it has also garnered praise for its commitment to Fallout’s core themes and tone. In more ways than one, Amazon’s Fallout series is a triumph for ‘video game to live-action’ adaptations in a similar vein to HBO’s The Last of Us series.

All of that said, adapting a video game to live action almost always comes with some hiccups in the translation process. In the case of Fallout, the series has a few minor and major inconsistencies with the games in some key areas. It is known that the showrunners worked alongside Bethesda Game Studios while making the show, so it’s not exactly clear which ones are intentional, as Bethesda themselves are known for lore contradictions between games. Here are some of the ones discovered in the show by fans of the franchise.

WARNING! Full spoilers follow for the Fallout TV show.

6 Brotherhood Squires

Are Squires No Longer Only Children?

While the Fallout show designates fully grown adults as squires for their power-armored knight superiors, this conflicts with prior established lore that indicates this rank was reserved for children only.

While the rank was originally applied to adult recruits, Fallout 76 seems to indicate that Roger Maxon himself, the founder of the Brotherhood of Steel, dispensed with this, as he felt that making adults squires was disrespectful. Instead, they were to be initiates, which is seen in every other Fallout title that features the BOS, including the West Coast chapters.

5 Anti-Feral Ghoul Drug

A New Preventative Measure Against Going Feral

Throughout the course of the show, Cooper Howard is seen taking hits from some sort of inhalant. It is eventually revealed that this is a drug that seems to slow or outright prevent the progression of mental instability in ghouls. Feral ghouls are ghouls who have long since lost their ability to reason, and have been reduced to nothing more than simple-minded aggression.

Prior to the show, a ghoul going feral was a result of several factors ranging from excessive radiation to bad social habits. The Amazon series seems to indicate that going feral is a matter of time for all ghouls and can only be slowed or stopped by a specific drug of unknown make or origin. No such drug has ever been mentioned in the Fallout games before, despite the show also applying this in a retroactive capacity.

4 Fusion Cores

No Longer A Limited Power Source

One of the main limitations of Power Armor in Fallout 4 is that it needs to constantly be topped off with fresh fusion cores to remain functional. Without extra cores, any suit of Power Armor only has roughly 20 real-world minutes (roughly equivalent to 10 hours in-game time) of usage before shutting down. In the Amazon Fallout series, fusion cores seem to last indefinitely.

This might simply be a classic case of a “bottomless magazine” trope, but for Power Armor, or the time limit on fusion cores in the game was simply a balancing mechanic to begin with and not meant to be taken literally. Either way, this is a small discrepancy between the show and the recent Fallout games.

3 Shady Sands Bombing Date

Sequence Of Events Or Timeline Mistake?

One thing in the show that has been setting the internet on fire has been the revelation that Shady Sands had been nuked in the year 2277; or rather, whether this is really the case at all. In episode 6, Lucy inspects a chalkboard with important dates in the NCR’s history written down, with the final date being ‘Fall of Shady Sands’ followed by a drawing of a mushroom cloud.

One argument says this is the beginning of the postwar city’s economic decline with the nuke coming later, while another states that this was a singular event. The controversy stems from Fallout: New Vegas’ setting of 2281, meaning this would be a massive retcon—or would it? Bethesda has stated the games are still canon, and New Vegas establishes that Shady Sands is alive and well by 2281. This then begs the question: was this intended to be a sequence of events or was it mistaken chronology?

2 New Vegas And Its Surrounding Area

An Important Location Seems To Be Missing

In a move that caught everyone by surprise, the Fallout show ends on an absolutely breathtaking vista of the city of New Vegas. In addition to just being a gorgeous shot, the city and surrounding area have been appropriately scaled to their real-life proportions.

One thing that is missing here, however, is McCarren Airport, or Camp McCarren as it is known in-game. This commercial airport turned military base for the NCR seems to be completely absent from this vista. This may very well just be an artistic error, or perhaps it’s simply not visible from this angle.

1 Shady Sands Is In The Wrong Place

The Most Significant Inconsistency In The Series Thus Far

By far the biggest inconsistency in the Fallout TV show is the location of Shady Sands. In both Fallout 1 and 2, Shady Sands is generally over 100 miles north of the Los Angeles Boneyard in the desert between Vaults 13 and 15. In the Amazon series, however, it is erroneously portrayed as being within Los Angeles itself, effectively combining the two locations.

Since this location cannot be in two different places simultaneously, squaring the show’s canonicity with the games necessitates clearing up this glaring inconsistency in some fashion, or treating the show as secondary canon to the games altogether. This is because of how severely this may affect the stories of the original two Fallout games, as well as New Vegas to a smaller degree.