386: Fallout TV S2 Ep2 - Easter Eggs, Lore Connections, and Everything You Might Have Missed

0:01 [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, this week we have another episode, episode 2 of Season 2 of the Fallout TV Show to go through.

0:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Now just like last week, I will be pointing out all the different Easter eggs or lore connections or even just some of the little details I noticed and some things I think might be leading in a very specific direction. [SPEAKER_00]: And with this episode coming out like on Christmas Eve, I'm a rush through and watch the episode.

0:50 [SPEAKER_00]: This is a first look at it in order to get through this. [SPEAKER_00]: Get this episode up because I've got family coming in the town and all sorts of other things going on. [SPEAKER_00]: So if you noticed something that I didn't and I wasn't able to get in this video, please belightly comment or join us on the discord.

1:04 [SPEAKER_00]: The robots radio discord. [SPEAKER_00]: There is a channel specifically on that discord for spoilers about the TV show. [SPEAKER_00]: And let us know your thoughts. [SPEAKER_00]: Let me know if there's something I missed and I should [SPEAKER_00]: corporate on the next episode. [SPEAKER_00]: So you all know how this works?

1:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's get into it. [SPEAKER_00]: Episode two, the Golden Rule. [SPEAKER_00]: This episode begins with a look back to the past, a shady sands that was still functional. [SPEAKER_00]: And we see a glimpse of a young Maximus and his family. [SPEAKER_00]: We can see that he has parents who actually care, who are good people.

1:40 [SPEAKER_00]: We can see that society for the people of shady sands and the NCR because this was an NCR territory was actually going very well. [SPEAKER_00]: They were taking care of themselves. [SPEAKER_00]: They were actually cleaning the water of radiation, which was [SPEAKER_00]: a phenomenal achievement, especially in the Fallout universe, many of the different plotlines across Fallout games have to do with cleansing radiation, cleaning water, providing the basic things that humanity needs in order to be healthy and to survive.

2:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And this mixed community of different types of individuals was working together and actually achieving to build a future. [SPEAKER_00]: And I know not everybody's a fan of the NCR if you've played through many of the different games that feature the NCR. [SPEAKER_00]: They are not perfect by any means, but they are a representation of human beings.

2:25 [SPEAKER_00]: And the fact that some people in that kind of society can achieve great things. [SPEAKER_00]: In others, milk the society in order to, well, gain power for themselves. [SPEAKER_00]: And what we're seeing here is an example of the former. [SPEAKER_00]: These are good people, actually making progress, helping the people around them and building [SPEAKER_00]: something that is unique in this world.

2:46 [SPEAKER_00]: The wasteland is a dangerous and terrible place that forces everybody to only care about themselves. [SPEAKER_00]: We see this with how Cooper Howard's character has changed as he's become the ghoul and been forced to survive in a world that's constantly trying to kill him. [SPEAKER_00]: We see this also in maximuses appearance of unhappiness while working for the brotherhood in this [SPEAKER_00]: This flashback shows us that he was raised in a world that was better, or at least in a place that was better with caring parents.

3:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And that is something that is deeply seated in him. [SPEAKER_00]: We're seeing this now. [SPEAKER_00]: This is a genuine character development that he came from a good place. [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's part of why he's looking to find a good place to go to, a place that he can truly call home, a family of his own.

3:35 [SPEAKER_00]: This is defining that as a clear [SPEAKER_00]: Now, in this scene, we have an individual who walks into shady sands, pulling a vehicle with a bomb in it, and we don't discover that right away, at first, he's repeating a line, patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.

3:54 [SPEAKER_00]: This is one of the most famous lines from Fallout New Vegas, because so many of the NPCs will repeat this. [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, different voice actors will save the same line, playing different NPCs who just happen to be characters that you come across in that world. [SPEAKER_00]: Maximus's father tries to deactivate the bomb, but he can't, so he puts his son in a refrigerator, which plays back to season 1, where we see Maximus emerging from a refrigerator to a brotherhood knight who saved him.

4:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And the scene ends with a younger Hank with his smaller children, Lucy and Norm, when they were younger, looking at his pit boy and it says detonation successful. [SPEAKER_00]: And you can see that he seems to be having second thoughts, but then as soon as Lucy calls for him and he thinks about his children, you can see that he justifies all of this death in carnage to protect or at least take care of his own family.

4:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And this isn't a surprise. [SPEAKER_00]: This is something we discovered at the end of season 1. [SPEAKER_00]: And it also confirms that Hank is a family man. [SPEAKER_00]: For as much as he doesn't care about other people's well-being, he still cares for his own children. [SPEAKER_00]: And we'll get another hint of that further on in this episode.

5:00 [SPEAKER_00]: The next scene we have... [SPEAKER_00]: the Knights of the Brotherhood of Steel. [SPEAKER_00]: This is Maximus and another Knight. [SPEAKER_00]: And they are working their way through this facility in order to find like a hard drive. [SPEAKER_00]: They're killing these feral ghouls. [SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, if you're new to the series, these are feral ghouls.

5:15 [SPEAKER_00]: They just attack on site. [SPEAKER_00]: They don't talk. [SPEAKER_00]: They act like zombies in from a zombie movie, right? [SPEAKER_00]: They find what looks like some sort of data storage device, some sort of like hard drive, something like that. [SPEAKER_00]: We've seen this design previously.

5:27 [SPEAKER_00]: He returns to the the big airship and everybody cheers him. [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, Night Maximus, you can see that he's clearly a favorite among the brotherhood here. [SPEAKER_00]: And the other thing that we notice about him is that he's very stern. [SPEAKER_00]: He's just doing his duty. [SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't get any joy out of this work, but he is much more capable now.

5:47 [SPEAKER_00]: And season one, we saw the first time he tried to use power armor and how that didn't go very well. [SPEAKER_00]: But at this point, he's very coordinated. [SPEAKER_00]: He seems like he's been out on many missions and is really coming into his own as somebody who is a warrior, as a real fighter.

6:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And again, we'll see more of that in the future as well. [SPEAKER_00]: They get back and... [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, Maximus asks what this device is and Quintus says, the key to our new home. [SPEAKER_00]: The Brotherhood of Steel is scattered and broken. [SPEAKER_00]: He claims that this will get them the greatest arsenal in history.

6:18 [SPEAKER_00]: The people out in the desert pop in a fusion core and it turns on these fans, these are not windmills, these are fans, and it blows away all the sand that has covered up Area 51, which is of course, [SPEAKER_00]: reference to the real world location where we know that the United States military in the real world has used this facility to do testing on aircraft and especially secret spy planes and things like that.

6:43 [SPEAKER_00]: But of course, there's the bigger mythos about Area 51 and the idea that it might be engineers working on [SPEAKER_00]: Alien aircraft and figuring out how those work and those sorts of things, and we get a reference to that in a little bit. [SPEAKER_00]: But before that, we have to go back to Lucy and the Google.

6:59 [SPEAKER_00]: This is the first time in this episode, we see them walking. [SPEAKER_00]: We see that she's still lecturing him about being a good person, or at least being more polite. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, timely for the release of this episode, there's a reference here for the Christmas Carol and the three ghosts that make Scrooge realize that he needs to change and become a nicer person.

7:17 [SPEAKER_00]: So I wonder if that's going to be something that comes up if this is just foreshadowing or just a fun back reference, like maybe there will be three ghosts that help change the [SPEAKER_00]: not sure about that, but it could be a thing, it could be a check-offs gun, but maybe not. [SPEAKER_00]: We'll see.

7:37 [SPEAKER_00]: But they come across what appears to be a location with somebody screaming. [SPEAKER_00]: Lucy says, aren't we going to go help them? [SPEAKER_00]: And the goal says folks have been screaming like that for 200 years. [SPEAKER_00]: Lucy delivers this great line. [SPEAKER_00]: She says, did it ever occur to you that if you help them, they would stop?

7:52 [SPEAKER_00]: and then of course the goal just looks at her like she's stupid because every time you go to help anybody you put yourself in danger he knows that. [SPEAKER_00]: So there's this balance between those two forces. [SPEAKER_00]: Do you risk something in order to try to make the world better or do you just look out for yourself?

8:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And that is a predominant theme across this entire show as we've mentioned many times now. [SPEAKER_00]: Lucy says, doing the right thing is never a waste of time, and so they go in, or she goes in, and of course the ghoul just follows her in. [SPEAKER_00]: And they come across a woman.

8:21 [SPEAKER_00]: The ghoul notices that she and this other man are wearing tunics, which isn't a good sign. [SPEAKER_00]: This reveals that the ghoul has come across Caesar's Legion before. [SPEAKER_00]: and that this is not a good sign. [SPEAKER_00]: He points out that they shouldn't be this far west that that's not common and this and many other references here to Caesar's Legion are a direct reference to Fallout New Vegas.

8:43 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you haven't played Fallout New Vegas, that is one of the main plotlines of the game. [SPEAKER_00]: Caesar's Legion is a think of it as like a unified tribe. [SPEAKER_00]: built around bringing in radar groups into this idea that the way forward isn't through technology and preserving technology and saving the rest of the wasteland from the dangers of technology, like the Brotherhood beliefs, it's not through a democratic system, like the NCR beliefs.

9:11 [SPEAKER_00]: It is through power and might, the way that the Roman Empire [SPEAKER_00]: ran things 2000 years ago. [SPEAKER_00]: And of course all that information is based on the limited amount of books and things that the original Caesar or Kaiser from the video games was able to use to learn about how this stuff worked and his own very specific interpretation of that.

9:34 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to go into all the details of the way fall that New Vegas plays out. [SPEAKER_00]: So if you want to dig back through the catalog of episodes, there are episodes that talk about the Legion and some of those characters and some of that stuff, but it's also just great to go back and play New Vegas if you can and experience it for yourself.

9:48 [SPEAKER_00]: But basically, what you should know about the Legion moving forward, if you're not familiar with them, is that they are violent and they are brutal. [SPEAKER_00]: They were seeking the power of the Hoover Dam in order to control New Vegas, [SPEAKER_00]: And if you look around and you see people crucified on like telephone poles, that was them.

10:06 [SPEAKER_00]: But in this currency, we have the goal and he slits the man's throat. [SPEAKER_00]: He realizes that these people are bad news and he doesn't think they should be saved. [SPEAKER_00]: Even if they aren't like soldiers or primary individuals from the Legion, being around them in general is probably just a bad idea because the Legion is so vicious and bloodthirsty.

10:26 [SPEAKER_00]: So they get attacked here by RAD Scorpions, which have been in the series for a very long time. [SPEAKER_00]: These are always one of those types of creatures you come across early in one of the games where you realize that you probably need some better weapons or tactics to deal with these kinds of creatures.

10:40 [SPEAKER_00]: They will burrow underground and they will chase you and definitely have moments. [SPEAKER_00]: I remember for us chased by them for very long distances, but yeah, they can be very deadly, especially early in a game playthrough before your character is really leveled up and gotten better gear and all of that.

10:54 [SPEAKER_00]: The scene ends with both the woman and the ghoul having been hurt by these rad scorpions, and Lucy has to decide who to give the last Stimpack to you. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is the kind of moral dilemma that you come across in the games all the time. [SPEAKER_00]: Oftentimes, quest lines will end with something like this.

11:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you use the Stimpack to help somebody? [SPEAKER_00]: Do you try to do something else? [SPEAKER_00]: Or do you leave them to die or whatever? [SPEAKER_00]: She justifies that, well, the ghoul's a jerk, plus he's pretty resilient, he'll survive, but she won't. [SPEAKER_00]: And so, she helps the woman, and then leaves with the woman leaving the ghoul.

11:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And all of us who have played the games and understand what's going on with the Legion are now going, this is the dumbest thing you could possibly do. [SPEAKER_00]: What are you doing? [SPEAKER_00]: And I believe that this is a character growth moment. [SPEAKER_00]: We will see Lucy genuinely over her head in a situation where she has to rely solely on herself.

11:51 [SPEAKER_00]: This has happened a few times in the first season, and this is going to be the main, probably the main time that we see it happen in this season, which will present to us another potential for character growth, but also we might see her become darker because of this. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure exactly where it's going to go.

12:10 [SPEAKER_00]: They've really been pushing how naive she still is and these kinds of conversations with the ghoul. [SPEAKER_00]: So I think bad things are in store for her and I haven't feeling she's going to come out different. [SPEAKER_00]: So now next scene we're back to norm in Vault 31, all the different cryo chambers are opening up.

12:26 [SPEAKER_00]: The people are coming out and we [SPEAKER_00]: are now seeing who these people are. [SPEAKER_00]: They aren't all of these extremely capable individuals, like some of the vault tech overseers or managers that we've met so far. [SPEAKER_00]: For example, Hank seems to really have a sense of what he's doing and seems very confident.

12:47 [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of these people just seem like regular corporate employees, and they're waking up in their very confused. [SPEAKER_00]: And Norm tries to explain to them what's going on. [SPEAKER_00]: They think it's reclamation day, so he leans into it, and he says, yeah, it is. [SPEAKER_00]: You could sell that he stuck bud in a bucket, which is great.

13:03 [SPEAKER_00]: He says that bud's dead, unfortunately, but hey. [SPEAKER_00]: We are here together and we have to find our way out of this, and then there's this line from one of the workers as they're panicking. [SPEAKER_00]: They say, is there someone else we can speak to about this? [SPEAKER_00]: I thought that was hilarious because I mean, typically that's what you do, right?

13:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, okay, well, I can't get my answer from you because I'm talking to you as a representative of your business. [SPEAKER_00]: So can I speak to your manager? [SPEAKER_00]: That's sort of thing. [SPEAKER_00]: And the thing that struck me the most here is that these people, other than just being a reflection of our own society and how kind of lame we all are.

13:37 [SPEAKER_00]: when we work for corporate jobs and me included I've been there, but also they don't seem that much more capable than regular vault dwellers who grew up in a vault. [SPEAKER_00]: These are all pre-war people, but we're seeing that in both situations, whether they come from pre-war corporate America or their vault dwellers, there's still a lot of similar DNA around just doing the corporate thing, towing the party line, all of that kind of stuff.

14:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, the scene switches over to Hank at the Vault Tech facility and we're seeing an interesting parallel here. [SPEAKER_00]: First of all, he seems to be enjoying his work. [SPEAKER_00]: He's going and getting frozen mice out and seems like they have a whole lot of livestock that we're frozen, which seems to imply that this vault is way more set up than many of the other vaults.

14:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe this is the good vault that [SPEAKER_00]: Barb was talking about or one of the good vaults, and we'll see a little bit more evidence for that in a little bit. [SPEAKER_00]: But we see Hank put the little mini mine control device on a little mouse, and it doesn't seem to work. [SPEAKER_00]: And then he does it again, and it doesn't seem to work over it over and over again.

14:43 [SPEAKER_00]: And I love that the mouse cage has a little desk in the computer. [SPEAKER_00]: It looks like a little over-seers office or something. [SPEAKER_00]: So that's fun, but we get the full sense of what he's trying to do here. [SPEAKER_00]: He's miniaturizing these mind-controlled devices and testing them on mice.

14:58 [SPEAKER_00]: But he's missing something. [SPEAKER_00]: He hasn't quite perfected the formula. [SPEAKER_00]: Then we switch things back to Area 51. [SPEAKER_00]: And the Brotherhood is exploring everything at Area 51. [SPEAKER_00]: They've entered this big hanger with all sorts of things that are covered over.

15:11 [SPEAKER_00]: We see glimpses of a few different things that are particularly interesting that I'm going to point out in a second. [SPEAKER_00]: Secrets by the Dale Sisters, because they're uncovering secrets at this location, and we have the joke that's obvious right at the front. [SPEAKER_00]: These two guys open up a freezer and an alien body falls out, and they're more excited about the freezer than the alien body.

15:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Now remember, they've seen all types of different weird mutants and things like that. [SPEAKER_00]: They might not even realize that this is an actual alien, a zetan. [SPEAKER_00]: And Zayton's show up in the Fallout games, again, if you haven't played the Fallout games, there's an entire extra DLC, expanded content for Fallout 3 around being in the Alien Mothership and having to escape.

15:55 [SPEAKER_00]: There are regular events in Fallout 76 where the aliens invade and you have to fight them off. [SPEAKER_00]: This was something that started out in the early Fallout games as kind of a little easterick. [SPEAKER_00]: You could come across a crashed alien flying saucer, maybe some dead bodies, some other tech, an alien blaster, all that kind of stuff.

16:11 [SPEAKER_00]: and that was a reference to those B movies of like the 60s and 50s where you would have these types of aliens show up. [SPEAKER_00]: But over time, the games have expanded on the lore and it turns out that these are absolutely real and they've been watching what's going on on Earth for at least hundreds of years, if not thousands, there's evidence for that as well.

16:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And I've done multiple episodes about aliens and fallets so you should go check those out if you haven't listened to those yet. [SPEAKER_00]: But even more interestingly than the Zaten, are some little things hiding in the scene here. [SPEAKER_00]: Before we see the Zaten fall out of the freezer, we can see what appears to be on the right side of the screen, a big round shape covered in sheets.

16:51 [SPEAKER_00]: I believe that this is a flying saucer. [SPEAKER_00]: This is probably the vehicle that that individual came from. [SPEAKER_00]: And then you can also see the constitution, the arc of the covenant, [SPEAKER_00]: And some other things hidden in the scene. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not going to pull out all of them, but there appear to be statues that seem to be references to very specific places or ancient cultures and that kind of stuff.

17:12 [SPEAKER_00]: So if there's anything else you noticed in the background in this scene, definitely chime in and let me know. [SPEAKER_00]: And the scene reinforces the, I don't know, that I guess the average intelligence of somebody from the Brotherhood of Steel, you have these nights playing with a grenade.

17:25 [SPEAKER_00]: And the little Easter egg here, the beeping sound comes directly from Fallout 4. [SPEAKER_00]: If I recall correctly, there are supermutes in Fallout 4 who charge you, and this is the same sound of the bomb that they are carrying before they explode when they get too close. [SPEAKER_00]: So they're doing some stuff.

17:41 [SPEAKER_00]: They're playing with grenades. [SPEAKER_00]: They find this nice red car, and they blow it up. [SPEAKER_00]: This happens in the games too, because many of these vehicles were actually fusion powered, and if you do damage to them, they will actually explode, and you will die a few times.

17:55 [SPEAKER_00]: accidentally because of this because he might be in a fight out, not realize your near a car, the car takes some hits, and then your dead. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just part of the fun of the games. [SPEAKER_00]: So when we first meet Maximus Andane, who's also in these scenes, they were very unhappy with what was going on in their low status in the brotherhood.

18:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And now they've moved up in the world, Maximus especially as a knight, and yet he seems unhappy. [SPEAKER_00]: When asked why he watches his face, he gives this explanation, he asks, what is our duty? [SPEAKER_00]: It's to make a big problem small. [SPEAKER_00]: How we can do that is by bettering ourselves, and there's many different ways, including not smelling bad.

18:31 [SPEAKER_00]: You can see the influence here from Lucy and his experience with the vault that they were in, but also [SPEAKER_00]: because we got the intro with him as a child in a world where people took better care of themselves and actually cared about their neighbors and making the world a better place that you can see that this is a seed that is growing inside of him and he starts to feel wiser here like he's grown not just in well time and experience fighting in a power armorsuit but also in his understanding of the world and his place in it.

19:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And he's not happy, but he doesn't seem to understand what the best path forward is, and so he keeps doing his duty. [SPEAKER_00]: When he's cleaning off the power armor, Dane comes in and says it'll just get dirty again. [SPEAKER_00]: This feels like it has double meaning, not just the power armor, because that of course will get dirty out in the field.

19:17 [SPEAKER_00]: But the wasteland itself, the world itself, why put so much effort into cleaning things up if everything just gets dirty again. [SPEAKER_00]: This parallels arguments that people have made against the NCR in the idea of having a democratic system, because in their estimation, democratic systems never last forever.

19:39 [SPEAKER_00]: They always devolve into a power struggle among the elite in that democratic system, then take advantage of the common person. [SPEAKER_00]: The argument here is that the pre-world system was this, and the result of [SPEAKER_00]: So how can a democratic system, like the NCR, like shady sands, lead to a better world if it always inevitably falls apart?

20:02 [SPEAKER_00]: And you might be able to see some short-term thinking there, even if a system never lasts forever, it will be good for a certain percentage of people for a certain number of years, or decades, or centuries, as long as it functions and lasts the way it should, and sure maybe no political system is perfect, but...

20:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Some lead to better results, at least temporarily than others, as I think we're probably going to see in the next episode with the Legion. [SPEAKER_00]: Now in this scene, we have this conversation between Dane and Maximus, and we can see that Maximus clearly still misses Lucy, but hasn't been able to really justify going after her.

20:36 [SPEAKER_00]: He's justifying his place here as having duties. [SPEAKER_00]: He has duties here. [SPEAKER_00]: He feels like this is [SPEAKER_00]: Not really the solution to his longing for a home and to safety, but it's the best thing he has so far. [SPEAKER_00]: And he still seems to believe that the brotherhood may actually lead to a better future for everybody.

20:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Even though it seems very clear that many of the other brotherhood members don't actually really believe this. [SPEAKER_00]: We also see some skepticism towards Quintis and the idea that the thing that he's working on with Area 51 is actually going to lead to good ends. [SPEAKER_00]: We're told that the common wealth was not invited, and that this could lead to a civil war.

21:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, we've seen scenes in the trailers of Brotherhood fighting Brotherhood, so that seems obvious that this is where this is going, but we're going to have to wait and see. [SPEAKER_00]: In the next scene, Quintus is welcoming other Brotherhood of Steel chapters. [SPEAKER_00]: He very specifically notes here from the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Coronado.

21:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you've played the mainline follow-up games, none of these will seem particularly familiar to you. [SPEAKER_00]: But, these are all references. [SPEAKER_00]: The first one, Grand Canyon, is a reference to VanBearant. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, VanBearant was the cancelled follow-3 that they were working on before we got the actual follow-3 after Bethesda bought the rights to follow.

21:53 [SPEAKER_00]: The Grand Canyon here was a central location in Van Buren. [SPEAKER_00]: It was a place where Caesar's Legion eventually ends up, and it was also a place where the brotherhood in that game had an interest in some of the resources, especially uranium mining that they could get out of the canyon.

22:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Yosemite is also a reference to a canceled Fallout game, Fallout Extreme. [SPEAKER_00]: This was a tactical game that was canceled. [SPEAKER_00]: And one of the details included the Brotherhood expanding into Sierra Nevada Mountains. [SPEAKER_00]: Now the last one here is Coronado. [SPEAKER_00]: Coronado is near San Diego.

22:24 [SPEAKER_00]: And this is in a reference to a canceled Fallout game that was in the works and already had some of the story being written. [SPEAKER_00]: So that's why we know about these things. [SPEAKER_00]: This is actually a reference to Fallout Sonora. [SPEAKER_00]: This was a fanmod released in 2020, which featured, you guessed it, the Coronado chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel.

22:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, because of the TV show, all of these different groups of the Brotherhood are canonized into this larger group of what we, I guess, could call Western Brotherhood chapters. [SPEAKER_00]: And as we'll see, they unite together here in a few moments. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, there are some initial qualms they have.

23:02 [SPEAKER_00]: They don't all get along, which is part for the course. [SPEAKER_00]: They all have different mentalities. [SPEAKER_00]: Some of them seem to be a little bit more well, difficult to get along with than others. [SPEAKER_00]: And you can see that they have different priorities, but they are all united around this idea that Quintus's chapter has a lot of power.

23:19 [SPEAKER_00]: they have the ability to make more fusion cells than all of history could ever consume. [SPEAKER_00]: Why is that? [SPEAKER_00]: It's because of the cold fusion that they have. [SPEAKER_00]: Combined, maybe with some of the tech from Area 51, we've yet to see all the details about that.

23:30 [SPEAKER_00]: A fun little thing to notice here is that the guy from the Grand Canyon has a piece of metal or something in his head that looks like it has AND CAN written on it. [SPEAKER_00]: grand canyon, like this was a piece of, I don't know, a poster or a sign or something from that location that was used to kind of patch up his broken skull potentially.

23:51 [SPEAKER_00]: But the big thing here is that you can tell that they are debating coming together without the Commonwealth. [SPEAKER_00]: And for many of you who have only watched the TV show, you might be wondering what's the deal with the Commonwealth and why would they be so afraid of going against the Commonwealth?

24:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, sure, a civil war is a bad thing. [SPEAKER_00]: There's lots of bloodshed and all of that. [SPEAKER_00]: But there's more to it. [SPEAKER_00]: The Commonwealth Brotherhood are featured in Fallout 3 and Fallout 4. [SPEAKER_00]: In Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, they succeed and become more powerful, including the acquisition of Liberty Prime, which was a giant robot designed during the pre-war that was no longer functional.

24:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And they're able to make a functional again, and this gigantic robot helps them [SPEAKER_00]: crush their enemies. [SPEAKER_00]: We'll just put it like that. [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, endless amounts of power and fusion cores are great, but if a civil war breaks out and they bring in liberty prime to fight against you, that's going to be a tall order.

24:47 [SPEAKER_00]: So now we get a little scene with Lucy and the woman that she saved, walking to the Legion camp that she came from, I guess. [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know exactly where this camp is, [SPEAKER_00]: they have a short conversation, and the woman very frankly states to her, I wouldn't want to see you get raped by the wrong people, which seems like a double bad thing to say, because who are the right people to rape you?

25:13 [SPEAKER_00]: That sounds terrible, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So this leads a absolutely bad taste in your mouth, but again, this is foreshadowing the terribleness that is the legion. [SPEAKER_00]: And hopefully Lucy [SPEAKER_00]: Now we head back to Norm and Vol 31 and Norm speaks up. [SPEAKER_00]: He's he's being quiet, but he's learning to speak up and it seems like he's digging deep into, I don't know, lessons that he learned from just being around Hank, his father, but he says, listen to me and they ask, who are you?

25:43 [SPEAKER_00]: And then he comes up with a very clever answer. [SPEAKER_00]: He starts using their own beliefs and corporate language and things like that against them. [SPEAKER_00]: He says, I'm the product of 200 years of genetic engineering, a supermanager. [SPEAKER_00]: You've been selected to be my staff, and he convinces them that this is Bud's final test for all of them if they can escape, they can prove worthy for Reclamation Day.

26:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, not only is this motivating in of itself, but he also tells them that they will get merit dots for their efforts, which is hilarious, because it's one of those corporate motivation kinds of things that most people don't even care about, but for some reason companies still believe that these things matter.

26:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: This is leaning into all of that ridiculousness, but what's so genius about this is that norm is wielding this against them or maybe not even against them for them to get them out of this place to break out and actually discover what's out on the surface and [SPEAKER_00]: survive, but because they leave the vault, but also be able to see reality for the first time, all of these individuals, including norm vault dwellers, these corporate vault tech workers, have all been living in this false understanding of what the world is, what they're being manipulated to do, all of that.

27:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And they all are coming to the surface here to discover [SPEAKER_00]: reality. [SPEAKER_00]: And just like last time, with the last norm scene, we go back to Hank right after norm. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a pattern here. [SPEAKER_00]: And norm wakes up a member from the premium elite plus chambers.

27:21 [SPEAKER_00]: This guy... [SPEAKER_00]: is now sitting at a table and he has the little device in the back of his head, the little mind control device. [SPEAKER_00]: He's clearly still part of Hank's test. [SPEAKER_00]: Now notice in both scenes, Norm and Hank are manipulating people they woke up from cryogenic stasis.

27:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And we come to find out that this guy is not a good guy. [SPEAKER_00]: He had enough money to buy a ticket to the elite plus chambers for himself, but not for the rest of his family. [SPEAKER_00]: This is another scene where Hank reinforces the importance of family. [SPEAKER_00]: He leans into that and holds this against this man.

27:54 [SPEAKER_00]: It turns up the device, his head explodes. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is a clear sign that Hank is still struggling to figure out all the technology. [SPEAKER_00]: And that this individual is equally as lame as some of the other people just kind of in a different direction. [SPEAKER_00]: Then we get a quick little scene with Lucy walking into the Legion camp and we see the bull flags on the door and all sorts of other places just like you see in Fallout New Vegas.

28:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And then she's surrounded and we get this line where she says, we all have our cultural differences, but you know, I'm nice. [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody who's played Fallout New Vegas at this point is going, oh dear God. [SPEAKER_00]: she's gonna need some help. [SPEAKER_00]: Then we go back to Norm and they're climbing on top of each other.

28:36 [SPEAKER_00]: These people have figured out that there are air vents and ducks up in the ceiling and if they climb on top of each other, they can reach them and this leads to Norm being the leader and them treating him like the leader and they say lead the way boss and he climbs up and he makes his way out into the surface.

28:55 [SPEAKER_00]: This mirror is the scene where Lucy comes out of the vaults, previously, and we see similar, the same kind of landscape but from a different angle. [SPEAKER_00]: We can tell now that fault 31 is much further to the other side of this pier than fault 33 was. [SPEAKER_00]: This implies both the gigantic structure of the vaults, but individually the vaults are still fairly far away from each other, but are still relatively close.

29:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And my favorite line from this is one of the vault tech workers says, Oh man, the mall's gone. [SPEAKER_00]: Clearly this guy enjoyed hot topic shopping, I guess? [SPEAKER_00]: Then we're back to the brotherhood and they're just, I don't know, showing off or we're having these like scraps between different nights from different chapters and everybody's loving it, everybody's blood thirsty and bored and they're punching each other in power armor.

29:44 [SPEAKER_00]: and Maximus and Quentin both in the scene look like they're just kind of over it, like none of this matters to them. [SPEAKER_00]: Probably for very different reasons. [SPEAKER_00]: Quentin is ready to push forward his agenda, but has to deal with all of these people. [SPEAKER_00]: Maximus is just here because it's his duty, but you can tell that it's hearts in a different place.

30:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Then this huge guy from one of the other chapters approaches him and basically challenges him to a fight because supposedly he's the one who took out Moldover and he replies Moldover because that was her name and yeah, I was the guy which again he's clearly lying, he didn't actually enter but he has to keep up, you know, airs.

30:22 [SPEAKER_00]: He challenges into a fight outside of the armor and this fight goes rough You can tell that Maximus's heart is an in it. [SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't really care But the other guy's not playing fair. [SPEAKER_00]: He punches him before he even has his jacket off and then Maximus starts fighting back.

30:36 [SPEAKER_00]: He pulls out a knife and then this ends up bad for the guy because Maximus in this scene holds his own [SPEAKER_00]: He ends up getting the guy stabbed in the stomach and then eventually on top of him in the knife in his chest. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think this establishes that Maximus is really starting to show that he's capable in these situations even when his heart isn't in it.

30:56 [SPEAKER_00]: He does what he needs to do. [SPEAKER_00]: But it also feels so wasteful, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Why kill in members of different brotherhood groups when you need as many nights as you can in order to fight the real fight that they will be facing? [SPEAKER_00]: which were reminded about when a vertebrate lands directly in the hangar, and Paladin Harkness comes out.

31:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Now we know for sure that Kumeo Nagiani's character is not Roger Maxin, the leader of the Brotherhood from Fallout 4. [SPEAKER_00]: This is a different individual. [SPEAKER_00]: He's there as a Paladin. [SPEAKER_00]: He's a very high-ranking member, but he's there to discuss what's going on and he comes from the Commonwealth.

31:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And this raises some questions. [SPEAKER_00]: How did the Commonwealth know? [SPEAKER_00]: Did somebody [SPEAKER_00]: spill the beans. [SPEAKER_00]: He specifically says that it appears that you were discussing a civil war. [SPEAKER_00]: How does he know that? [SPEAKER_00]: And why send just one guy?

31:45 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there's another pilot or somebody else on the vertebrae, but we only see one person come out of this aircraft and he doesn't seem particularly safe by himself here, but seems to know what's going on. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I have some theories about why this civil war is necessary for the plot line.

32:03 [SPEAKER_00]: So, go with me here for a second. [SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that you do when writing a script for a movie or a TV show is you have to constantly be balancing the different power levels of the groups or individuals. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, let me explain, in a Marvel movie, if you have, for example, the [SPEAKER_00]: Often times in those kinds of movies, you will take the super-powered individual, the one with more power than everyone else, and you will send them off on some side journey or keep them busy in a way where they can't use all of their power to just solve the problems of the film.

32:39 [SPEAKER_00]: In this scenario, we have the remnants of the NCR. [SPEAKER_00]: We have Caesar's Legion, who we know about for sure. [SPEAKER_00]: We have whatever's going on with Mr. House and New Vegas and the factions that were faction, depending on how new Vegas is actually run at this point in history, of New Vegas.

32:58 [SPEAKER_00]: And then we have the Brotherhood. [SPEAKER_00]: And we've clearly seen that this Brotherhood has all the power they need. [SPEAKER_00]: They have a ton of new technology that they're discovering at Area 51, along with their airship, the vertebrates, their power armor, their weapons, [SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you were to have a scenario where in season two, the brother had to go directly up against the Legion, in this capacity, the brother who would absolutely destroy them, there would be no real contest there.

33:28 [SPEAKER_00]: As we saw, the Legionnaires are using torches, and they're wearing football pads to dress up like legionary soldiers and pretend that that's armor. [SPEAKER_00]: And don't get me wrong. [SPEAKER_00]: They might still have other technology guns and some other things, but [SPEAKER_00]: By and large, the brotherhood is more powerful than they are in the scenario.

33:45 [SPEAKER_00]: So you couldn't write a plot line with the brotherhood taking on the legion directly or something like that. [SPEAKER_00]: But you could write a plot line where the west coast brotherhood has to take on the east coast brotherhood because they have similar power levels and I hate the phrase power level.

34:02 [SPEAKER_00]: But I think that makes the point here. [SPEAKER_00]: So it works from a setting up the story kind of way and not just having one group steam roll over everyone else. [SPEAKER_00]: It keeps them busy with their own internal fighting, that sort of thing, but it also does another thing. [SPEAKER_00]: It helps us to understand that the brotherhood is not some organized singular unit that always agrees on what was written in their holy founding documents and their manuscripts and things like that.

34:33 [SPEAKER_00]: And they're always going to go with what their elder said or there's not internal power struggles for individual control over all of this technology and power. [SPEAKER_00]: They're absolutely is. [SPEAKER_00]: And they're always husband. [SPEAKER_00]: The Brotherhood is a cult. [SPEAKER_00]: They are people who believe in worshiping technology and acting like a monastic group of knights.

34:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And that ideology is supposed to raise them to some level of, I don't know, moral superiority or something like that. [SPEAKER_00]: But as we see, over and over again, the individual members of the Brotherhood really aren't that much more sophisticated than anybody else in the wasteland.

35:11 [SPEAKER_00]: So there you go. [SPEAKER_00]: Now this episode ends with another panning through scene and we see more about the Legion. [SPEAKER_00]: We see what appears to be a big coliseum with tents and things like that. [SPEAKER_00]: But before we see that, the camera pans out of a costume shop and we see again the poster of the movie Revenge of Brutus, which we saw [SPEAKER_00]: In Cooper in Barbs home in the previous episode, behind Barb, which I talked about, seems to be implying something, but the fact that this shows back up in a costume shop, which is where some of the Legionnaires probably found costumes to dress up like Roman soldiers.

35:46 [SPEAKER_00]: is interesting because it seems to be implying that we're going to see a scene with somebody who assassinates a leader and will probably see McColle Colkins character in the next episode doing just that, like we see in the trailers where he appears to be stabbing somebody, was that the previous leader was that the previous Caesar, Kaiser, everyone pronounce it because they pronounce it funny in the game.

36:06 [SPEAKER_00]: So maybe, but it also implies that maybe Barb or Cooper will try to take [SPEAKER_00]: I guess we'll have to wait and see. [SPEAKER_00]: But also, the costume shop implies something else as well, costume shops don't just sell legionary costumes for Roman soldiers. [SPEAKER_00]: They sell all sorts of things like Elvis costumes.

36:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And we've seen in the trailers that we still have coming up, the kings, the gang that dresses up like Elvis, and they've all been turned into ghouls. [SPEAKER_00]: So this might be hinting at two different things that show up in the next episode, but I guess we're just gonna have to wait and see.

36:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for tuning in. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to take a quick break and then go think all of the patrons and people who help support this show. [SPEAKER_00]: Don't go anywhere. [SPEAKER_00]: Alright, we got a welcome. [SPEAKER_00]: Our newest patron, Ethan J. [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Patreon Patreon.com slash fall.

36:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Lordcaste, you can get ad free episodes, you can get stickers and t-shirts. [SPEAKER_00]: You can join us for patron chats. [SPEAKER_00]: And next week, we will be getting together. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, at least the patrons will be [SPEAKER_00]: This cited to take over the patron chat to discuss the third episode of the TV series.

37:17 [SPEAKER_00]: This will probably be happening either on the first or the second, the night of the first or the second. [SPEAKER_00]: And things will be coordinated on the discord. [SPEAKER_00]: So if you have signed up and you are of one of the tiers where you can join for the patron chats every month.

37:30 [SPEAKER_00]: then make sure that your Patreon account is connected to the discord and that you are checking out the tier 4 patron chat channel on discord for how that's going to play out. [SPEAKER_00]: Void is going to be leading the recording and Pumpkin King is going to help post the show again like he's done in the past for me and this is this is going to be super fun and I'm so excited to hear everyone's perspectives as you break down the next episode.

37:51 [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, it's kind of risky, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like I hand it over the show to somebody else. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, of course, I'll be able to listen to it and edit it down and stuff before it actually goes live for everyone. [SPEAKER_00]: So it can't get too off the rails. [SPEAKER_00]: But I'm excited to hear all of the patrons' perspectives on the next episode.

38:06 [SPEAKER_00]: While I'm away and I don't have the ability to record like I normally do. [SPEAKER_00]: Because, you know what? [SPEAKER_00]: It was time to go on vacation and take my life on vacation for Christmas, so that's what we're doing. [SPEAKER_00]: So thank you everybody for your support. [SPEAKER_00]: And if you'd like to get in on that, you've got time.

38:20 [SPEAKER_00]: You can sign up in the next week and then say hi in the discord and let everyone know that you're going to be here for that episode. [SPEAKER_00]: It's still yet to be scheduled out because the episode comes out basically on New Year's and then we need to give people at least a day or so to actually watch it and then chances are it'll be Thursday or Friday night for the recording.

38:37 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's the first or the second. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's a great time. [SPEAKER_00]: If you want to sign up and be involved and join the community, everybody's so fun and we have such a great time hanging out every month. [SPEAKER_00]: So don't be afraid to jump in. [SPEAKER_00]: I know people get nervous about being recorded and all that.

38:50 [SPEAKER_00]: But really, it's no pressure. [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone just hangs out and has a great time and talks about the things they love about fallout. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's a lot of fun. [SPEAKER_00]: So [SPEAKER_00]: Go check that out, patreon.com slash fall, or cast. [SPEAKER_00]: Also, if you'd like to help out in other ways, you can leave a five star review on whatever platform you listen to this on, that is extremely helpful.

39:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And if you happen to listen on Apple Podcasts or have an Apple account and wanna leave a review over there, that would be super helpful as well. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't have any new ones to read out this week, but I will do so if you leave a five star rating and review on Apple. [SPEAKER_00]: But also, share it with your friends.

39:19 [SPEAKER_00]: If you have friends or family that are watching the Fallout TV show and they've got questions about what's going on, send them links to these episodes where I break things down and try to make things more clear for everybody. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it will be super helpful to them. [SPEAKER_00]: And who knows, maybe they'll enjoy the show and we'll stick around for the other episodes.

39:35 [SPEAKER_00]: But thank you everybody for being here. [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you're enjoying the TV show as much as I am and having a wonderful holiday. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'll see you again when I get back from vacation. [SPEAKER_00]: All right, have a wonderful rest of your week. [SPEAKER_00]: Stay safe out there and if you come across some Legion members out in the wasteland then just go the other way.

39:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Just go the other way. [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.

40:15 [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.