384: Fallout TV S2 Ep1 - Easter Eggs, Lore Connections, and Everything You Might Have Missed

[SPEAKER_00]: Robots radio, games, lore, stories, community, just press play. [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Fallout lore cast. [SPEAKER_00]: The podcast that explores the boundaries of our knowledge about the world of Fallout. [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the Fallout lorecast. [SPEAKER_00]: We have episode 2 season 1 to talk about because the new season is upon us and there are a lot of fun little details throughout the season that I will be breaking down.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everything that you might have missed answers to questions that you might have or at least my theories about what's going on because we don't have the full season yet and I'll be breaking it down seen by scene as we go through this episode. [SPEAKER_00]: So if you haven't watched episode 1 of season 2 yet, [SPEAKER_00]: Don't listen to the rest of this episode.

[SPEAKER_00]: Go watch it first and come back because this will be full of spoilers. [SPEAKER_00]: All right, let's get started. [SPEAKER_00]: So this episode begins with the title, the man who knew. [SPEAKER_00]: And I believe this is a double on Tondra. [SPEAKER_00]: And they seem to do this a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't gone back and listened to the rewatch of season one that we just did, the six or so episodes before this one, then go check that out if you're interested in a perspective on that season. [SPEAKER_00]: But there are a lot of times throughout the show where they have something that has kind of a double meaning.

[SPEAKER_00]: The man who knew could be and probably is a reference to Robert House, because this episode starts with Robert House, but it is also probably a reference to Cooper Howard the Google. [SPEAKER_00]: He knew things about vault tech that nobody outside of vault tech was supposed to know as we'll get to you in a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: But this opening scene starts off, showing workers beating up a Mr. [SPEAKER_00]: Handy, the workers are being replaced by automation, [SPEAKER_00]: This feels very, I don't know, modern and part of what we're dealing with with AI today and you can see the signs they're holding up these are anti Robco Robco didn't initially develop the Mr. handy but did work with general topics the people who did in order to create a domesticated version of the machine and on top of that Robert House was in charge of Robco.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then we see a bar with working class people talking about the events that are going on and a moustache-yode man sitting in the corner and on the TV, a picture of Robert House, or at least the Robert House actor that we saw in season one who sat at the meeting with Voltech. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, there has been some debate here, which of these characters is Robert House?

[SPEAKER_00]: And there seem to be two predominant takes that I've seen online so far, and it's only been so many hours since I've actually watched this. [SPEAKER_00]: And so maybe there are more theories, but the theories that seem to be right now that the one at the meeting was a body double because Robert House didn't want to have to go to those meetings, or was busy with other things, or didn't want to be officially in the public spotlight because of dangers or whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: And remember, [SPEAKER_00]: Mr. House is a very forward-thinking individual. [SPEAKER_00]: He has contingency plans for his own safety on multiple levels. [SPEAKER_00]: So this would make sense. [SPEAKER_00]: The other theory here is that the man on the TV, the man at the vault tech meeting is Robert House, and the man that we are sitting at the booth at the bar, is his brother Anthony.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now we're not given a name for this character, but he does look a lot like [SPEAKER_00]: Robert House, and we've also seen in the trailers and the previews that this is the same man who's sitting in front of Robert House's console in Las Vegas when he's talking with Cooper, and it's also his face that's on the screen in what's probably a leader scene where his face is on the monitor just like it is in Fallout New Vegas.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the other theory is that this is Robert House's brother Anthony. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I won't go into all the details here. [SPEAKER_00]: You can go back and look up the episode about Mr. House. [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, there's a few episodes about Mr. House. [SPEAKER_00]: One in particular that came out just a few months ago, where I explained that as a large percentage of the internet seems to think that Mr. House is not a villain.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that the show is supporting my theory that no Robert House absolutely is a villain. [SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe this other individual is Robert House's brother, Robert House and his brother Anthony, where the sons of the man who owned H&H tools company, who this character brings up when talking to the people at the bar.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now he asked the people if they've used the H&H nail gun, which is a weapon you can find in Fallout New Vegas. [SPEAKER_00]: And so some people think because Anthony ended up running H&H and [SPEAKER_00]: Robert ended up running Rob co that this individual is Anthony. [SPEAKER_00]: Now Anthony kind of goes insane.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a whole storyline there between Robert and Anthony, but that would imply that Anthony actually takes over and becomes the individual who is running the lucky 38 in Las Vegas. [SPEAKER_00]: and new Vegas later on, which would be weird because like I stated before, we noticed this actor's face in events in previews and trailers.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that would kind of make sense if this is maybe Anthony being a little crazy earlier on in the story before the bombs drop, but it doesn't seem to hold up with the other evidence that we have. [SPEAKER_00]: So I think what's actually going on here is we are seeing the real Mr. House at the bar and the person on the television is a body double.

[SPEAKER_00]: but I'm sure we're in for a lot of surprises and I could be wrong about that. [SPEAKER_00]: So we'll see how that plays out. [SPEAKER_00]: He ends up out back in the alley with these men who want to beat him up and then he says, Hit me in the mouth. [SPEAKER_03]: I think I didn't enjoy.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm really wrong. [SPEAKER_03]: But let's move on. [SPEAKER_00]: Now this scene is a little bit odd. [SPEAKER_00]: Why would he think he enjoys being hit in the face? [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there's some sort of massacistic thing going on or maybe he is Anthony and he's already starting to lose his mind.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not exactly sure about that. [SPEAKER_00]: What I think is actually happening here is that this scene [SPEAKER_00]: is setting the scene and this is something that will happen in first episodes of any show. [SPEAKER_00]: They're establishing a baseline and creating things that will repeat or be important to know later.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think this shows that Robert House is not always right. [SPEAKER_00]: He does get things wrong occasionally. [SPEAKER_00]: Also, to point out, before they go out in the back alley, the tough guy, the bigger guy asks him if he's Mr. House's biggest fan, and he says something like that in the response, which, again, could point either to the fact that he is Mr. House, or he is his brother Anthony.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, I think this is supposed to be a little vague, and we aren't supposed to be sure about this yet, and this scene of him getting punched kind of leads a little bit more into that vagueness, but I'm still going to go with the body double thing here. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, probably most importantly, he shows this device, in fact, he uses the device on the man on the back of his neck in order to control his mind, which works for a little bit, and then he turns it up and then the head explodes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it would make sense that Mr. House has tech that does these sorts of things and that he would be developing these things for himself, but also selling these products and ideas to other companies, including Valtek. [SPEAKER_00]: Now this device has a very similar effect as the Mesmetron in Fallout 3, which was a ranged weapon you could find that would help you mind control your enemies, but could have similar results when people didn't take well to it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there is precedent for this kind of technology in Fallout. [SPEAKER_00]: So we move on to the next scene and we have Lucy and the Google and they are in a dire situation at Novak, a popular location in Fallout New Vegas. [SPEAKER_00]: It's one of those places even if you've played a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to avoid it. [SPEAKER_00]: It's along the path to New Vegas proper. [SPEAKER_00]: And the Dino is there. [SPEAKER_00]: The setting is very similar to in the game with a few small changes. [SPEAKER_00]: First of which is the fact that the Google is hanging or at least will be hanging above a pool.

[SPEAKER_00]: Also, the dinosaur is facing the wrong direction. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is probably due to the fact that they needed the dyno to be in eyesight of the middle of this area for the scene to play out correctly for Lucy. [SPEAKER_00]: But typically this dyno in the game is backwards. [SPEAKER_00]: It's facing the outside of the property because much like Lucy is doing here with a sniper rifle.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's where the sniper's would guard no back from. [SPEAKER_00]: now the radar group here is the great cons in fact the leader of this group says that this a whole hanging here has been tormenting us since before your granddaddies were born the great cons go all the way back to the original games and then also new Vegas and there's a whole evolution of them i did an episode on that previously so you can go look that up if you want [SPEAKER_00]: But basically, by the events of the TV show, they are much less than they were previously.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were kind of a more organized, radar gang, and they basically are still a radar gang. [SPEAKER_00]: They just go under the name The Great Cons. [SPEAKER_00]: The flag in the background that says The Great Cons is basically the same design that you find in the games. [SPEAKER_00]: When asked how he feels about all of this, the goal responds.

[SPEAKER_03]: So he was here 25 years ago, which is before the events of Fallout New Vegas by about 10 years. [SPEAKER_00]: And in Fallout New Vegas, there's nobody named Darla at Novak. [SPEAKER_00]: There's somebody named Karla who was Boon's wife, but they didn't move in until after 25 years ago. [SPEAKER_00]: So, either he's misremembering somebody he met later on because he came back to Novak after Boon and Carla were there, which coincides with characters from the video game, and he's just misremembering the time and the name a little bit, or this Darla is somebody else who we haven't met.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, there is a Darla in Fallout 4, but that doesn't make any sense. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think this is that person. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, as the scene plays out, you can tell that the Google and Lucy had a plan, Lucy stalls after the Google's hanging there. [SPEAKER_00]: He's like shoot the rope, shoot the rope, and she decides to try a peaceful option, which of course doesn't work out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then she starts targeting their arms and their legs and their butts in order to try not to kill anybody. [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, the [SPEAKER_00]: And one of the things we talked about in the rewatch of season one was Lucy's journey to understanding that sometimes she has to bend her morals in the wasteland in order to simply survive.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she's still struggling with that. [SPEAKER_00]: This is another one of those establishing scenes. [SPEAKER_00]: This is here for a reason. [SPEAKER_00]: It's to set up. [SPEAKER_00]: who Lucy is now and who the Google is now and the new setup is she has learned that she has to do some things that are violence but she still doesn't want to take a life and they both are getting along a little bit better together they've realized they need each other and although there's some bickering and arguing there is not the same kind of antagonistic behavior between the two that we saw [SPEAKER_00]: They are starting to get along, and there seems to be a little bit more humanity with the ghoul, especially with him talking about having been to these locations and remembering somebody who was a reasonable woman.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the scene plays out in very video gamey fashion with the ghoul taking everybody down and blowing up their heads and all of that kind of stuff, which is of course wonderful. [SPEAKER_00]: The song that plays here is Big Iron, which is, of course, one of the most popular songs from Fallout New Vegas, and totally coincides with him being this badass cowboy taken down this gang who's trying to kill him and his friend.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then we see as they are leaving, the goal uses what appears to be an irradiated object, a cylinder, maybe has some sort of something in it. [SPEAKER_00]: It's green. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think this is FVV. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's probably something with radiation. [SPEAKER_00]: And the idea that radiation not only is something that ghouls don't have to worry about and they don't really fear, but also can be beneficial to them, seems to be a concept that is push further and further with the TV show and with Fallout 76 more so than in a lot of the older games, which further sets ghouls apart from regular humans, not just in the fact that they don't have to worry about radiation, they can be in places that are highly irradiated, but also in the fact that it is beneficial for them.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they travel a little bit more, they get up on this high rise, and they can see all of Las Vegas ahead of them, which is now new Vegas. [SPEAKER_00]: And Lucy notices that this looks a lot like the old pictures, it looks like nothing has really happened, it's still intact. [SPEAKER_00]: And the Google responds that there's a reason for that, because this was where Mr. House was, and he made sure to have enough missiles to take down most of the bombs that were dropped.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it's also implied in this episode that Vault Tech, with working with Mr. House and Rob Co, may also have gotten their nukes from Mr. House directly. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, there's the scene where, at the end of season one, Barb is at the meeting with all these different businesses. [SPEAKER_00]: And she mentions that they have a contingency plan to end the world and drop the bombs.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that scene has made a lot of the fan base decide that that is confirmation that Baltic are the ones who drop the bomb, but we don't have direct confirmation, we just have intent. [SPEAKER_00]: We know that they were willing to do so and were probably planning to do so. [SPEAKER_00]: And how would they do that through the help of Mr. House?

[SPEAKER_00]: How would Mr. House know to defend himself from the bombs? [SPEAKER_00]: What if they were his own bombs? [SPEAKER_00]: Which expands on some theories that come all the way from Fallout New Vegas? [SPEAKER_00]: And I have a feeling we'll get more confirmation about what actually is going on behind the scenes as the season plays out.

[SPEAKER_00]: I find this conversation particularly interesting. [SPEAKER_00]: The Google explains that they shot down the bombs. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, if they could do that for Las Vegas, why could they just do that for America? [SPEAKER_03]: Because there was no day, there was a hell, man by the name of Robert House.

[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe that's where your family went, they're safe there. [SPEAKER_03]: No one in Robert House is safe. [SPEAKER_00]: So this establishes two things. [SPEAKER_00]: First of all, if Mr. House was working with Valtec in order to supply them with Nukes, he was only worried about protecting himself, not everyone else, which we already knew.

[SPEAKER_00]: His intense in purposes were for himself, first and foremost, not for the country. [SPEAKER_00]: Voltax also were for Voltax first, not for the country. [SPEAKER_00]: They have cooperation together but competing agendas, which is another theme that we will see play out in this episode. [SPEAKER_00]: Also, the final line there about no one near Mr. House is safe confirms the fact that he is motivated only for his own benefit, not for the benefit of other people, and he is firmly in the camp of villains.

[SPEAKER_00]: So then we go back in time to Cooper coming home to his daughter after hearing the terrible things that Barb says in the meeting, which I'm still on the fence about. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm still not sure if she is in the camp of 100% four vault tech and willing to do terrible stuff or [SPEAKER_00]: working for a terrible company and having to tow the line while secretly working against them behind the scenes.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure which of those is true yet, but Cooper is totally disturbed by all of this. [SPEAKER_00]: Come on, come on. [SPEAKER_00]: Takes his daughter and says, hey, we're going to go somewhere and tell her to pack up her stuff and then they leave. [SPEAKER_00]: On the way out, there is a bomb test announcement that goes out and everyone starts freaking out, and this is very similar to the actual event that we experienced at the beginning of Fallout 4, including the vault tech agent getting out of his van and going to talk to individuals about signing up for vaults.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's in exactly the same sort of like coat and hat and all of that. [SPEAKER_00]: Then we see a vertebraid flying across the scene, which is the military doing some sort of [SPEAKER_00]: maneuver or something. [SPEAKER_00]: But these are the same types of machines that we see that the brotherhood has access to because they've taken over a lot of that old military technology.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then it pans over to a big sign that says keep your loved ones safe with Cooper Howard's face as the guy representing Valtek as the popular celebrity. [SPEAKER_00]: and his name is on their Cooper Howard, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And you can tell in this scene that he's starting to regret his role of working with vault tech because he realizes how terrible they are.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he's going to have to live this down. [SPEAKER_00]: This is going to be a reminder to him. [SPEAKER_00]: Every time he sees his face on a billboard or in a TV advertisement, he's starting to regret that that is who he has become. [SPEAKER_00]: Or at least that's who he's known to be.

[SPEAKER_00]: This also feels like foreshadowing for future events in the series and the things that he still hasn't dealt with as the Google that has led his life to the moment where we are in the current timeline. [SPEAKER_00]: Then we transition back to the vaults and redge is being totally useless.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're trying to solve the water chip problem, which is again a reference to Fallout 1 with the issues with the water chip in Vault 13, which caused you the character to leave the vault and deal with all the issues and basically sets up the entire story of Fallout 1. [SPEAKER_00]: Now we talked about this in the season one episodes, but this scene and other scenes in this episode are really driving home the fact that the people who grew up in the vaults unaware of what was going on are absolutely useless.

[SPEAKER_00]: They really have no actual beneficial qualities, they're all cowards, they are all coddled and they've never had to deal with any hardships in their lives at all. [SPEAKER_00]: But the people who are overseers, the people from Vault 31 who came from the surface originally, who are part of Buds, are extremely capable.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now that Betty and Stephanie are both running their own vaults, they are becoming more and more frustrated with the individuals in the vaults because it's like managing a bunch of babies. [SPEAKER_00]: In the scene with Stephanie and Chat, she has the knife, and she's acting very aggressive in order to get him to keep taking care of the baby.

[SPEAKER_00]: She doesn't even give the baby a name, and this shows that some of these individuals are morally bankrupt. [SPEAKER_00]: They are disconnected even from, in this case, her own child. [SPEAKER_00]: She's willing to say, okay, let's just name and chat juniors so that you can keep taking care of them because people will think he's your child because I don't want to have to take care of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we're being set up here to see chat actually grow a pair. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's probably a polite way of saying it, maybe. [SPEAKER_00]: I think he's eventually going to stand up for himself and that'll be an interesting situation. [SPEAKER_00]: We're also seeing that she's having a hard time contacting anybody through the computer system.

[SPEAKER_00]: Which is revealed to be because norm has made his way into Vault 31 and has messed up some of the computers and is now starving, talking to Bud, the Robo brain. [SPEAKER_00]: And much like the other scenes that we've seen so far, this is another way to re-establish what is going on with this character and set a baseline, what at least this character and Bud together.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Bud again, [SPEAKER_00]: Even though he's a little robo brain and he can't really move, he's taunting norm and trying to convince him that he either needs to go in cryostasis or he just needs to die. [SPEAKER_00]: And we saw an arc in the first season of norm becoming braver to check out what was actually going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this scene... [SPEAKER_00]: Takes us back a step a little bit to re-establish the fact that Norm naturally isn't a brave individual. [SPEAKER_00]: But throughout this episode, we see that he rediscoveres his bravery again, which now sets us up for a new arc for the character. [SPEAKER_00]: And there were plenty of instances in one about him being like his father or more capable than he believed by Betty, even.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think what we are going to see with Norm is a character arc where he becomes as capable as Hank, but less morally bankrupt, and he will [SPEAKER_00]: be very important as a character against his own father, eventually working with Lucy his sister in order to take down who I think will become the primary villain and is generally being established as the primary villain of the show.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just putting a prediction out there right now. [SPEAKER_00]: I think the Mr. House stuff will be settled by the end of season two, but Hank will continue to become more and more of a problem throughout multiple seasons. [SPEAKER_00]: And this creates a wonderful theme of these two vault dwellers who would, or should be as incapable as everyone else in the vault.

[SPEAKER_00]: Learn to trust themselves. [SPEAKER_00]: They learn to be brave. [SPEAKER_00]: They learn to do what they need to do in order to combat the evils of their father. [SPEAKER_00]: And they will stand up together and show that the lessons of the wasteland are what made them capable of beating somebody who looks down.

[SPEAKER_00]: on all of the wastelanders and vault dwellers. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm predicting it here. [SPEAKER_00]: That's that is the pathway that is the way the story will play out and we will see both Norm and Lucy come into their own in order to defeat their father. [SPEAKER_00]: But it may not play out fully until the end of the entire show, not just this season.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we're back to the school in Lucy and they are meeting this woman, this wonderful woman, selling the fleece soup. [SPEAKER_00]: And we learn not only is the fleece soup disgusting, because the fleece came of her own head, but she had a son. [SPEAKER_00]: He had problems with drugs and Hank came by and took the son with him.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a similar situation to what you experienced early in Fallout 4 with this little diner scene. [SPEAKER_00]: You come across a mother and a son who have a very similar kind of relationship, similar kind of shop, and they are being held at gunpoint by people who, if I remember correctly, the son owed money to, and you can decide to talk them down, you can shoot them in the head, you can do that sort of thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's another call back to a similar kind of situation in one of the [SPEAKER_00]: We also see that there is a dead man who has been chopped in half and it seems that it is Hank's power armor foot that did it, which again establishes Hank cares nothing for people of the wasteland. [SPEAKER_00]: He is just killing people as he goes.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then they get to vault 24. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, the numbers of each of the vaults and what they mean, I've gone over, I have whole episodes about every vault that we know about, and oftentimes, because I've done this for so long, I get the numbers mixed up, and I'm like, okay, what does this one mean again?

[SPEAKER_00]: I forget with the experiment was in this vault, but this vault doesn't appear. [SPEAKER_00]: Officially, in any of the games, because it was cut content for Fallout New Vegas. [SPEAKER_00]: There is, if you dig in the files, a vault 24 jumpsuit and we know that this vault was planned to be a vault that you could actually visit in the game, it just was never finished.

[SPEAKER_00]: The idea here was that this vault had something to do with brainwashing. [SPEAKER_00]: And when they get inside the vaults, that's exactly what they discover. [SPEAKER_00]: So they've incorporated cut content from Du Vegas into the TV show, which is very cool. [SPEAKER_00]: But we'll get back to this vault in a minute because the timeline now goes back to the past.

[SPEAKER_00]: Cooper is talking with Moldaver from the first season back in the past. [SPEAKER_00]: And they're having a conversation about Mr. House and his connection to everything that's going on. [SPEAKER_00]: The scene shows, also, Cooper's daughter, Janie, playing whack-a-comi, a little whack-a-mo game where you're hitting Communists over then, which not only re-establishes the idea that pre-war America was very Communist crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was a lot of messaging that was labeling anybody who didn't align themselves with the current. [SPEAKER_00]: government as being communists, but it also might be hinting at something. [SPEAKER_00]: In the scene in the vaults, Cooper establishes or the Google establishes that he is looking not just for his family, which he kept saying in season one, but for his wife and his daughter.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now we don't know if he's looking for each of them for different reasons, if he still loves both of them and Barb turned out actually okay and he wants to make sure that she's safe or if he's seeking revenge against her because she's actually a terrible monster, we don't really know. [SPEAKER_00]: But the assumption is that Janey is still innocent because we're seeing her as a child in the pre-war.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's somebody that Cooper loves. [SPEAKER_00]: She's his daughter, and he's looking to be reunited with her and somehow they get separated after the bombs drop after the party that we see in the first episode of season one But a really crazy twist would be what if this is foreshadowing that she as she gets older and maybe it grows up in a vault or is cryo frozen and And and let out every so often and eventually becomes an older person and we've seen this before different ages due to cryo [SPEAKER_00]: you and your son, what if the twist will be when Cooper finally finds Janie again, she's grown up or a lot older in her own lifespan, and on top of that is 100% on board with all of the propaganda, all the vault tech or on-clave beliefs that Cooper himself is now against.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the scene, she's actively whacking commies with a big mallet. [SPEAKER_00]: Are we going to see something like that in the future? [SPEAKER_00]: So in season one, we see that when Cooper meets Moldever, he's very, very skeptical about her perspective on things. [SPEAKER_00]: He has been like most of the population convinced that people who stand against capitalism and America are communists.

[SPEAKER_00]: They don't have good intentions for everybody. [SPEAKER_00]: But this scene seems to establish that he now has come full circle. [SPEAKER_00]: He has seen what is going on or at least heard what is going on involtaic and believes that they are absolutely terrible. [SPEAKER_00]: and that the world will eventually end, the bombs will drop and that something needs to be done.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the scene concludes with the unspoken understanding that Mr. House is behind a lot of this and needs to be taken care of. [SPEAKER_00]: which means that he might be on a trip coming up in future episodes to kill Mr. House, which is hinted at in some of the look ahead footage where Mr. House appears to look at Cooper and say, I know why you're here, you want to kill me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And here's another prediction. [SPEAKER_00]: Cooper doesn't, doesn't kill Mr. House in the pre-war. [SPEAKER_00]: We know that he, of course, doesn't because Mr. House continues to survive into the game-fall at New Vegas, and probably some of the scenes that we've seen foreshadowed here.

[SPEAKER_00]: But he regrets the decision. [SPEAKER_00]: He had the opportunity to take down Mr. House and he regrets it. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's part of why he leaned so hard into the role of this bounty hunter, Google, [SPEAKER_00]: it made the world a worse place. [SPEAKER_00]: So he gets kind of the lesson that he should have killed somebody, that killing somebody, could have saved a lot of pain and suffering, had he just had the willpower to do it back when he talks with Mr. House, but this is just a prediction, I could be wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now the next scene, they're back at his home and the, if just look around, pause the scenes and look at the tech, the machine that's used to spin to, what is beat the eggs or whatever he's got in the bowl there. [SPEAKER_00]: and then the color scheme, all of it is so wonderful and you can clearly tell that he's having a difficult time digesting exactly what to do as he prepares dinner before his wife gets home.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's also drinking what appears to be a martini in a glass with these little gold flakes on the glass, which seems strangely to mirror the little fleas in the bowl that Lucy was [SPEAKER_00]: plants like stocks of wheat or something like that. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not sure that there's any real symbolism here.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just thought it was interesting that there was kind of a similarity. [SPEAKER_00]: But then, Barb gets home and he pretends everything's fine while she stands in front of a very interesting poster. [SPEAKER_00]: It appears to be a movie, something that Cooper probably started. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a little bit blurry in the background, so it's hard to tell if it's exactly his face on the poster.

[SPEAKER_00]: but the poster says revenge of Brutus. [SPEAKER_00]: Now we know from history that Brutus assassinated Caesar in ancient Rome, and I think we're getting another double untandra here. [SPEAKER_00]: This is implying two things. [SPEAKER_00]: First of all, that the thing that Cooper is actually thinking about right now is becoming the Brutus to house his Caesar.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, how does that play out? [SPEAKER_00]: We won't see it. [SPEAKER_00]: It may also imply, and this is just a subpoint on the first one, that maybe Barb becomes the Buddhist character. [SPEAKER_00]: Not really sure, but that would be a fun twist. [SPEAKER_00]: But the other thing I think this is pointing to is something that we've seen in the trailers.

[SPEAKER_00]: We see Caesar's Legion, or Kaiser's Legion, as they say in the game. [SPEAKER_00]: And McColle Colkens' character seems to be the leader of the group. [SPEAKER_00]: Did he get there through assassination, like Brutus, or in the scene where we see that he really does appear to be killing someone else?

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that the moment where he took power, or was he defending himself? [SPEAKER_00]: this Roman imagery is not accidental. [SPEAKER_00]: It works in both cases. [SPEAKER_00]: So we're back to the entrance of Vault 24 and the Google and Lucie are discussing things and this is where the Google says that he finally wants to find out what or it will find out maybe every time he sees one of these vaults what happened to his wife and his daughter which implies two things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well first of all it states that he doesn't know what happened to them at some lost them and is trying to find them again. [SPEAKER_00]: It also implies that both his wife and his daughter might be in a vault, or at least he has a very good reason to suspect that they are. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe this is due to ties with vault tech through Barb's employment, but maybe these are just good places to look because he can't find them anywhere in the wasteland, and so maybe they're in a vault, just like we saw in season one where Lucy and Maximus end up in a vault, totally by accident, and maybe things like this happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's also some inference here that Cooper has been to a number of vaults and that he understands the dangers of them and all the different kinds of experiments that you might find when journeying across the wasteland like we do in the video games when we come across a vault and we're like, okay, we don't know what's in here, what's it going to be like and we're often surprised.

[SPEAKER_00]: After this, we're back in Vault 33, and Reg is hosting a therapy session where we learn that a number of the Vault dwellers are actually in bread. [SPEAKER_00]: And so maybe this leads to some of their difficulties with, I don't know, being useful. [SPEAKER_00]: It seems to apply that, but also they're dealing with some other issues.

[SPEAKER_00]: They all tend to have these. [SPEAKER_00]: Problems that have been unaddressed as we see the more we spend time with these individuals, but it also seems to establish that there's going to be something that happens in this vault, around the people gathering together, maybe with Reg as a leader, seems to imply that there might be an uprising.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in some of the footage from the trailers and previews, we see that there's like a party that happens, or something, things are going to get wacky in the vaults, and this is just setting us up for that. [SPEAKER_00]: And then we're back to norm and bud, and norm is absolutely starving, and bud is like, hey, I could stick you with my syringe, and it will kill you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then Norm decides, you know what, I'm going to do something, you're right, there is no logical decision that I wanted to make, so I'm going to make an illogical decision, which absolutely works against bud, because he doesn't expect people to be illogical. [SPEAKER_00]: So he opens up all of the cryo chambers.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is a very different kind of situation from the cryo chamber vault, one eleven that we see and fall out for, because you're the only person who survives and comes out. [SPEAKER_00]: In this case, it's the complete opposite. [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody in here that is still in here, the cryo chambers roll up and up and let them out, and chances are all of them have survived this.

[SPEAKER_00]: It also plays into some of the scenes we've seen in the trailers, where it appears that Norm is leading all of these vault 31 people out into the wasteland, and we also see in the preview that Hank ends up in the vault that he's in that we see in this episode, [SPEAKER_00]: And when he gets there in the episode, it's empty, but there are scenes of lots of people working in that location while Lucy walks through, which means that those are not flashbacks to the past, something happens and this location gets employees who want to work there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Are they coming from these cryo chambers? [SPEAKER_00]: We're now back to Lucy in the Google going through Vault 24 and they discover that this in fact is a vault that has to do with brainwashing and the experiment was to see if they could take individuals and brainwash them into becoming communists.

[SPEAKER_00]: which I don't think they're doing because Valtec wants people to be communists. [SPEAKER_00]: I think they're doing this or at least this vault is experimenting on this to find out how far they can push people, people who absolutely do not believe in any communist ideals and to see if the tech that they have can completely get them to an opposite perspective.

[SPEAKER_00]: We also see some wonderful decoration in the setting, the scene. [SPEAKER_00]: It looks absolutely like one of the vaults from the games. [SPEAKER_00]: Also, the imagery up on the screen that was being used to brainwash these poor people who are just now corpses looks very similar to other imagery we've seen in the games with the list spiral design and some of the black and white imagery that shows up.

[SPEAKER_00]: Also, they discover why Hank was going here. [SPEAKER_00]: He takes a hard drive off of this computer. [SPEAKER_00]: Most likely because he knows what is on that hard drive, information about the brain-washing or brain-controlling technology is most likely my guess of why he comes here.

[SPEAKER_00]: He wants that technology which we find out a little bit more about later in the episode. [SPEAKER_00]: We also discover that the son of the flea lady is here. [SPEAKER_00]: This is where Hank dragged him, implanted the back of his neck with one of those devices, and then [SPEAKER_00]: He's being mind-controlled here to tell Lucy to go home.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hank is now aware that Lucy is following him or at least suspects that that's the case, and uses this individual as a message to her that you should turn around and go home, stop following me, and then the guy's head blows up. [SPEAKER_00]: And this further subments both the idea that Hank doesn't care about these wastelanders or anybody else's lives except for his own, and maybe his daughter, maybe he's trying to save her from the terrors of the wasteland just go home.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it also parallels Mr. House's actions at the beginning of the episode. [SPEAKER_00]: He did exactly the same thing that House does here, and there's more parallels that will get to at the end of the episode. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, another thing to note here, Sugar Bomb, that's what he called her, a hand called his daughter Lucy in season one, and that is being repeated by the individual here with the snacks on the table.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then we finally get insight into what Hank is doing. [SPEAKER_00]: He has returned to what appears to be an underground location for vault tech. [SPEAKER_00]: Like this was maybe a corporate [SPEAKER_00]: office vault in order for vault tech members to have a place to work when the bombs dropped and maybe this was their central hub for everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's situated in or near New Vegas. [SPEAKER_00]: We know that he's headed back there. [SPEAKER_00]: He puts on a suit. [SPEAKER_00]: He pours himself some coffee that he puts on a suit. [SPEAKER_00]: He's clearly still in the mindset of the organization before the bombs dropped. [SPEAKER_00]: But what's even more interesting about this is that he's bringing together these technologies.

[SPEAKER_00]: He has the mind-controlled device and he also has something that they were working on at this location, or at least it seems to be implied that this location was working on miniaturization, which I discussed early on in the show. [SPEAKER_00]: One of the reasons why the Fallout universe is different from our own is that they went further into nuclear technology and tube technology, but they didn't innovate as much in miniaturization.

[SPEAKER_00]: But, if this vault location, or at least the vault tech in Robco, whoever else was working on miniaturization, that that opens up all sorts of other technologies, like what he seems to be implying here, is that he wants to miniaturize in perfect the mind control device. [SPEAKER_00]: Which raises the question, why does he want to be able to use mind control?

[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's a hint in the message he leaves to Robert House. [SPEAKER_00]: He tries to reach out to him using what appears to be radio technology that may also be recording his message in order to try to deliver it to him through the computer network, which appears to be connected through a lot of these vault locations, which would also include the Lucky 38.

[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what he says. [SPEAKER_02]: This is Hank McLean, boarding for duty sir. [SPEAKER_00]: This implies that he worked for Robert House or Robert House as a board member of Valtec acted as a sort of a boss, and that he sees him in that light, or is just being respectful potentially?

[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody involved tech knows I'm here, and nobody involved tech knows much of it. [SPEAKER_00]: So this tells us that he has totally gone rogue, and is now doing his own thing. [SPEAKER_00]: He's not doing the Valtec agenda. [SPEAKER_02]: He has his own plan. [SPEAKER_00]: Now this confirms that they knew each other.

[SPEAKER_02]: I hope you are too. [SPEAKER_02]: And I don't doubt that you are. [SPEAKER_02]: You spend so much time calculating how to survive all possible contingencies. [SPEAKER_00]: Now that statement 100% lines up with what we know about him from New Vegas, Robert House. [SPEAKER_00]: He was always planning contingencies and how to maintain his own safety and survival in a few different ways.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've been keeping busy and the biggest these days back in your old stomping ground, actually. [SPEAKER_00]: Again, confirming he's talking to Robert House, but also this feels very corporate speak for not filling in all the details because well, personal stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: Trying to pick up where you all left off.

[SPEAKER_00]: That statement seems to confirm that Robert House was behind a lot of the experiments or at least the technology used in the vaults. [SPEAKER_02]: Looks like a couple of the vault experiments ran into some speedboats. [SPEAKER_00]: We see some more exploded heads with the Mind Control devices from Vault 24.

[SPEAKER_00]: 24. [SPEAKER_02]: Made progress on the brain computer interface. [SPEAKER_00]: Notice that this is built as brain computer interface, which seems cool, but the use was Mind Control, which is totally part of the course for Vault Tech or the on-clave. [SPEAKER_00]: This one. [SPEAKER_02]: Miniaturization.

[SPEAKER_00]: Notice he says this one, he doesn't give the vault a number, the location a number, whatever this office-like space was working on was miniaturization, and we see examples of that brain device getting smaller over time. [SPEAKER_02]: What it all needs is indigreeting. [SPEAKER_02]: But I'm confident that if I just rolled up my sleeves, I can bring it all home.

[SPEAKER_00]: This again is implying two very different things. [SPEAKER_00]: One, that this is Hank's initiative. [SPEAKER_00]: This is his idea, this is his plan to do something that would, at least it seems to imply here, bring it all home to you. [SPEAKER_00]: Implying that he's doing it for Mr. House, that this is something that maybe Robert House had wanted to achieve, but never quite was able to achieve, and so that it would put Hank in good, [SPEAKER_00]: graces with him in a good light.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so why would he want to do that? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, maybe he understands that Mr. House probably is the most important person in the wasteland still and that he would want to work for him and he would find safety and employment there and that sort of thing. [SPEAKER_00]: But I think it actually means something else.

[SPEAKER_02]: Then we can finally talk about my promotion. [SPEAKER_00]: Again, confirming that he worked for Mr. House and that he was angling for a promotion and probably didn't achieve one, and so he's driven even more to this point to achieve such a thing. [SPEAKER_00]: And then we see him notice a yo-yo.

[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't here by accident. [SPEAKER_00]: A yo-yo is a children's toy traditionally. [SPEAKER_00]: Who would be a child in an important corporate vault? [SPEAKER_00]: Janey? [SPEAKER_00]: Was Janey here? [SPEAKER_00]: Was this the location where most of the executives who were not budds buds were also supposed to go?

[SPEAKER_00]: But for some reason, they're no longer there? [SPEAKER_00]: Also, he blows dust off it, which implies that it's been there for a long time. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to complete the work you started. [SPEAKER_02]: When this is all over, you will be begging me to help you. [SPEAKER_00]: His last sentence takes a sinister turn.

[SPEAKER_00]: What is the work that House was working on that was unfinished? [SPEAKER_00]: Was it the miniaturization, was it the combining of technologies? [SPEAKER_00]: But also, why would House be begging him to work for him? [SPEAKER_00]: My theory here is that he's not just angling for a promotion in order to continue being a worker underneath somebody else's leadership.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is going to take on house directly and the method for doing so will be mind control. [SPEAKER_00]: His plan is to take over Robert House's mind through force by using a miniaturized mind-controlled device, which allows him to control Robert House without having to eliminate him, which would put him in control of House, and everything House has power over still.

[SPEAKER_00]: and depending on the way the events of New Vegas played out, that could be a whole lot of stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: Another way to say this is Hank is planning to become the most powerful man in the world by using Valtek and Robert House's technology against him. [SPEAKER_00]: So, there you go.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the show ends with some scenes of another location in New Vegas. [SPEAKER_00]: And they've done this before on previous episodes where they will use the end scene kind of credit scroll, scroll, scroll, whatever that's called. [SPEAKER_00]: To hint at where things are going in the future, they did this with New Vegas at the very end of season one.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what they're showing here is a roller coaster [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely a reference to Prim. [SPEAKER_00]: The Prim Casino that shows up and fall at New Vegas the game. [SPEAKER_00]: And I have a sense that we will be visiting this location for sure. [SPEAKER_00]: And then we get a billboard with the Lucky 38 implying that we will eventually get to House's actual headquarters and find out what's going on with House in the wasteland 200 plus years after the events of the bombs dropping.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you aren't familiar with the game Fallout New Vegas in Fallout New Vegas, and again, this is spoilers, we find out that House has the technology to sustain his own life and is basically existing in a machine that's kind of like a stasis chamber that keeps his body alive while his mind is plugged into the machinery and the computers.

[SPEAKER_00]: and is still controlling things in New Vegas. [SPEAKER_00]: His body is just withered away and it's kind of just laying in this machine. [SPEAKER_00]: So he's effectively like a Robo brain with a body still attached, sort of. [SPEAKER_00]: But he does survive till the events of Fallout New Vegas.

[SPEAKER_00]: And my assumption is that he continues to survive into the TV show. [SPEAKER_00]: But we are not 100% sure about that because the only thing we've seen that implies that they are seen from the post-bombs dropping of house is basically his face on a machine, on a screen. [SPEAKER_00]: And that happens in Fallout New Vegas the game.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that doesn't mean that it is still connected to his body. [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't mean that that individual in that computer is him. [SPEAKER_00]: is it a representation of him by the software? [SPEAKER_00]: Is it him directly still connected to his machinery? [SPEAKER_00]: Or is it one of house's secure trons?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, yes, man, actually controlling things, but still pretending to be house. [SPEAKER_00]: And that concept wouldn't be too different from somebody like Hank, mind controlling house, and in both situations, [SPEAKER_00]: The individual who's actually running things is behind the scenes, but the image of house still exists or the individual of house still exists in order for people underneath him to not even realize that there has been a regime change and somebody else is actually pulling the strings and the levers.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I guess we're just going to have to wait and see, and the showrunners have said that they're trying to not actually confirm any specific ending for New Vegas, which leads me to believe that we will see the images of Robert House on the computer systems, but we will not get full confirmation what's actually going on behind the scenes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Does he still survive? [SPEAKER_00]: Is somebody pretending to be him? [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think we will actually get confirmation of that because that would then define which of the endings are possibly canon and which ones aren't for Fallout New Vegas the game. [SPEAKER_00]: So I guess we're just going to have to see right now, I'm not really sure which direction this will go in.

[SPEAKER_00]: But thank you for tuning in. [SPEAKER_00]: I will be doing these episodes as quickly as I can after the episodes come out, so they might be on a slightly different release schedule to the way I normally do episodes of the show. [SPEAKER_00]: Also, it's the holidays and some things are going to be a little bit wacky and a little bit crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you are one of our patrons that show up for the patron chats and all of that, you know that things are going to be a little bit different for episode three when that comes out. [SPEAKER_00]: I'll just hint at it now, but it should be a lot of fun. [SPEAKER_00]: I will catch up with welcoming new patrons on the next episode and doing all of that stuff, but you're welcome to come join us patreon.com slash fall, Lorcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for all your support. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for those of you leaving reviews and sharing the show with your friends. [SPEAKER_00]: And again, I would love to hear your theories come join us on the robots radio discord. [SPEAKER_00]: Scroll down to the Fallout section, there's a spoilers channel, and I would love to hear your thoughts and maybe even counter arguments to some of my theories.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's see who can figure out what's going to happen before it happens. [SPEAKER_00]: Stay safe in the wasteland and try not to eat too much fleece soup. [SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you next time. [SPEAKER_00]: To plug into everything else we're doing, check out robotsradio.net, reach out to me on Twitter at robots underscore radio, check out the robots radio rocket club where you can join me and a bunch of our other creators creating your podcast starting a new podcast or helping your current podcast grow.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's more information about that on RobotsReady.net as well, and you can always talk with us and the entire community over 2,000 people on the RobotsReady Discord. [SPEAKER_00]: Come join us. [SPEAKER_00]: We'd love to chat with you. [SPEAKER_00]: See you guys next time.

384: Fallout TV S2 Ep1 - Easter Eggs, Lore Connections, and Everything You Might Have Missed

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