Amazon’s Fallout TV show might include even more classic Fallout references than its creators intended, thanks to some improv

Some of the folks who’ve been dedicating a good chunk of the week to watching some – or a lot – of Amazon’s Fallout TV show, just as fans like you and me have, are people who’ve actually worked on the games. In fact, one of them, original Fallout co-creator Tim Cain, might have spotted a reference to that first game in the series that seemingly wasn’t even explicity planned by the showrunners.

Yep, amid the array of really interesting sets and dialogue exchanges you really should be paying attention to, the show might well have ended up with some little homages to the games that inspired it which weren’t in the script. How? Well, thanks to some actors with a keen eye for improvising – the only question is what actually influenced that improv.

In a new video on his very good YouTube channel that sees him discuss the show, Cain talks about attending the big Hollywood premiere for it – his invite came via a casual email from Todd Howard, you know, like we all get on the regular. As he describes around the ten minute mark, while watching the first two episodes as part of that, the developer spotted something and was immediately pretty sure he knew where it’d come from.

“There was a scene where Lucy’s looking for directions, there was this guy and he’s walking like this (Cain hunches his shoulders forwards), and I swear he was walking just like the ‘loser’ villagers did in the first game.” Cain says. He goes on to explain that the NPCs in question were simply called villagers in the game, but their unique walking animation was given the rather funny internal name “the loser” among the game’s developers.

“I got to talk to one of the showrunners, Graham Wagner, [later on] and I asked him if that’s where [that] came from, and he said he didn’t know,” Cain continues. “The reason [for that] was a lot of [the] people you see in the show were Fallout fans and there was some improv, and [Wagner] said if he remembered correctly that actor wanted to stand like that.” So, Cain reasons: “[the actor] might have been pulling that from Fallout one, in other words, that might have been an homage to Fallout one, and we don’t even know [it].”

“In my head, I’ve decided it was,” the developer concludes, and to be honest, I’m gonna agree with him – even if he admits the premiere’s big screen meant he’s going to have to watch those two episodes again to really absorb everything properly – since this potential reference doesn’t mess with my own Fallout headcanon. Yet.

Oh, and Cain also tells an unrelated story about a cleaning robot called Oscar, that was creepily motoring around his hotel for the premiere that I think’s well worth you giving a listen, just because it’s funny.

If you’re interested in more fun fallout things, make sure to check out the Fallout 5 pitch we recently got from ex-Bethesda developer Jonah Lobe.