Prime Video’s Fallout TV sequence takes a sensible strategy to the online game franchise canon. Fairly than making an attempt to adapt a selected recreation or storyline, it makes use of the Fallout video games as a fictional and aesthetic baseline. However the sequence vegetation a number of narrative flags, making choices about who began the franchise’s nuclear conflict and giving certainly one of its most iconic photos, the character often known as Vault Boy, a correct origin story.
Vault Boy is the smiling cartoon character featured on Vault-Tec posters, the Pip Boy laptop interface, and different fictional merchandise within the Fallout world. Within the Fallout video games, he’s a mascot used for instance gamers’ perks and talents, and to strengthen the cheery, can-do angle of Vault Dwellers. Vault Boy was initially impressed by Milburn Pennybags (aka Mr. Monopoly), the mascot of the board recreation Monopoly, and cartoon characters from the Nineteen Fifties. Vault Boy has been in Fallout from the start.
[Ed. note: The rest of this post contains spoilers for Fallout season 1.]
The Fallout TV sequence reveals that the Vault Boy icon relies on one of many present’s protagonists, Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins), who later transforms into The Ghoul. Earlier than that tragic flip, Howard is a Hollywood actor who stars in Westerns, and he takes a gig selling Vault-Tec’s vaults. In episode 3 of the Fallout present, Howard is proven suiting up in Vault Boy’s acquainted blue-and-yellow jumpsuit, then posing for a Vault-Tec commercial. He flashes a giant smile and a thumbs-up, establishing the character’s look and go-to pose.
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25385140/Screenshot_2024_04_10_at_18.12.37.png)
Picture: Prime Video
Howard’s star energy in Hollywood begins to lose its luster shortly thereafter. His friends shun him for working as a “pitchman for the top of the world,” and studios begin slicing him from tasks. Within the credit of episode 3, we see what finally turns into of the actor’s function as Vault-Tec spokesman: A billboard selling vaults that after featured a photograph of Howard from that shoot has been partially stickered over, with the cartoon Vault Boy changing Howard’s likeness. It stays a well-recognized picture, however it’s now distinctive, with blond hair and a youthful look.
Flash again to the primary episode of Fallout, and we notice why Howard is lowered to working at children’ birthday events, and why he declines to ship his signature thumbs-up when posing for images at an occasion. “Given the state of every part,” Howard says to the birthday boy’s dad, amid rising fears of a nuclear conflict and private strife, “I’d favor to not.”
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25385142/Screenshot_2024_04_10_at_18.16.02.png)
Picture: Prime Video
Moments later in that episode, Fallout’s writers nod to a different piece of (unofficial) Vault Boy backstory. Simply earlier than the bombs drop, Howard explains to his daughter Janey that when he was within the Marines, he was advised, “In the event that they ever drop a extremely huge bomb, they advised us to carry up your thumb identical to this. And if the cloud is smaller than your thumb, you run for the hills.” This can be a reference to a permanent Fallout fan concept that Vault Boy is performing the same examine along with his pose — thumbs up, one eye closed, smiling from a secure distance.
Brian Fargo, former govt producer of the Fallout video games, debunked this specific fan concept about Vault Boy in a tweet from 2013, saying Vault Boy “merely has a constructive angle.” However the TV present’s producers seem to lean into the “rule of thumb” speculation, certainly one of many neatly crafted Easter eggs aimed instantly on the hardcore Fallout viewers. It’s an instance of letting longtime followers craft a part of the canon themselves.
All eight episodes of Fallout season 1 at the moment are streaming on Prime Video.