390: Fallout TV S2 Ep6 - Easter Eggs, Lore Connections, and Everything You Might Have Missed

[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Fallout lorecast. [SPEAKER_01]: The podcast that explores the boundaries of our knowledge about the world of Fallout. [SPEAKER_01]: Wastelanders and Valtweller's welcome back to the Fallout lorecast. [SPEAKER_01]: This week we are diving into episode six of season two, the other player.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I've got thoughts about this other player and a number of the other things that were revealed in this episode. [SPEAKER_01]: This is the closest look so far that we've had directly focusing on the on-claves influence over these companies like Valtek. [SPEAKER_01]: Plus, we've got huge reveals when it comes to what is actually going on in Barb's mind, and I don't know if you noticed it, but Ron Perlman was in this episode covered by a bunch of green makeup.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to go over all the lore connections to the games, and also some of the other little details I've noticed in this episode, and of course, I've got some speculation about where things are going, so let's get into it. [SPEAKER_01]: This episode opens up with Barb at a meeting. [SPEAKER_01]: She is the executive of Valtek hearing all of the different plans for everything from how to market the explosions and the sizes of the nukes to some other little details we'll get to in a minute.

[SPEAKER_01]: One of the things to note about immediately is that she is looking at these explosions on the screen, and you can see it in her eyes, and oftentimes when you show a character's eyes with an image overlaid on top of that, it shows something that they're thinking about. [SPEAKER_01]: This is juxtaposed later on with the picture of her family, and you can see that she's weighing her choices, and what choices she might actually have, [SPEAKER_01]: in such a difficult and dire situation.

[SPEAKER_01]: Also notice that throughout this meeting, she doesn't eat. [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody else is eating or smoking, but she is not. [SPEAKER_01]: This is a common thing used in TV shows and movies to show that the characters who are doing the mundane task of eating are not emotionally dealing with the issues.

[SPEAKER_01]: For them, this is just another day at the office and they're working through their lunch. [SPEAKER_01]: But for Barb, she's actually taking this very seriously. [SPEAKER_01]: And this is the beginning of her episode long reveal that happens in this episode. [SPEAKER_01]: And we don't fully get to it because in the end, we see that she does help remove the cold fusion chip.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'll call it a chip. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know exactly what to call it. [SPEAKER_01]: I think we'll just call it a chip from Hank's head. [SPEAKER_01]: in order to what seemingly says to give it to Cooper to show that she's not evil, that she's actually on board with his plans, but that her hands are often tied.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is going to put her in a difficult situation. [SPEAKER_01]: How does she explain this to Hank? [SPEAKER_01]: And this addresses the dilemma that I've talked about numerous times here. [SPEAKER_01]: Is this question of, is Barb actually evil or is she not really able to pull the levers and somebody else is controlling her and she's just doing the best she can in a terrible situation to protect her family?

[SPEAKER_01]: And the evidence from this episode seems to support the second one. [SPEAKER_01]: I think that this is the turn we're going to see. [SPEAKER_01]: Cooper is wrong. [SPEAKER_01]: She's not a monster. [SPEAKER_01]: She's just doing the best she can. [SPEAKER_01]: And she ultimately is not in control.

[SPEAKER_01]: As we see with the scene in the elevator with Willzig, who threatens her, unless she says exactly the right thing at the flashback to the meeting we saw in the previous season. [SPEAKER_01]: Those are not her words. [SPEAKER_01]: Those are his. [SPEAKER_01]: And he works for the on-clave.

[SPEAKER_01]: or at least it seems like he does because that's what we know about him in the future after the war when he shows back up and he tries to leave the on-clave with the cold fusion chip. [SPEAKER_01]: So is he actually part of the on-clave or is he another component of Moldavers plan because wasn't he trying to get the chip to Moldaver?

[SPEAKER_01]: It's an interesting question. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not 100% sure about Willzig's motivations here, but all of this points to some greater complexity. [SPEAKER_01]: Why would Willzig be working for the on-clave and then going against their wishes later unless something changed over those 200 years?

[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm getting ahead of myself. [SPEAKER_01]: Let's get back to Barb's meeting. [SPEAKER_01]: And the first two pair of marketing, I guess they're the marketing team, are talking about the sizes of the mushroom clouds because they're going to be five megaton bombs. [SPEAKER_01]: Instead of 10 megaton bombs, or maybe they should go with the 10 megaton bombs because it makes it more of an impressive image, but it's not actually as accurate.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's evidence here that this is actually very lower accurate. [SPEAKER_01]: In the games, we learn that the bombs that were dropped [SPEAKER_01]: were many smaller explosions instead of fewer larger explosions. [SPEAKER_01]: And then that coincides with what the Chinese were capable of and their tactics.

[SPEAKER_01]: In our world, the size of atomic bombs have continued to increase and have gotten to very large sizes, very large proportions, much bigger than the two that were dropped on Japan and World War II. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, how do they know this? [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe because they have some information from the government, and some, I don't know, spy information released to them because many of these companies work alongside the government, and they might have an understanding of what China is capable of, but maybe they also have an understanding of what their capable of.

[SPEAKER_01]: it could go both ways, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Then the second meeting is about the water chips and how some 30% of them will fail and they can't stop them from failing. [SPEAKER_01]: So she's just going to have to choose which vaults get the failing water chips. [SPEAKER_01]: Now notice this is another recurring theme and fall out.

[SPEAKER_01]: We've seen multiple times where water chips have broken or need to be repaired or need to get taken from another vault or one vault had too many of them because there was a mischipment. [SPEAKER_01]: This is the thing that comes up regularly. [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, Vault 13, the Vault you start in Fallout 1, has a malfunctioning watershed, and you need to go find a replacement.

[SPEAKER_01]: The same thing seems to be happening in Vault 33, but was it damaged during the Raider attack? [SPEAKER_01]: It seems like it might have been, although, [SPEAKER_01]: It's not specifically stated in that episode that they did it, just that the watershed is broken. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, this implies that Barb got to make that choice, that the ones that were more likely to malfunction, she chose which vaults those went to.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because, if you recall, we were told that Barb approved all of the plans for all of the vaults. [SPEAKER_01]: So this raises a lot of questions. [SPEAKER_01]: Did she specifically put the malfunctioning chips in certain vaults and knowing that they would have problems with this in the future?

[SPEAKER_01]: Did she choose certain vaults for a certain reason? [SPEAKER_01]: Was there a reason why the one in 33 did break? [SPEAKER_01]: Was that one that she knew would break and she specifically put it in a vault tech run vault? [SPEAKER_01]: That does seem a little bit odd. [SPEAKER_01]: We know that many of these other corporations have their own vaults to decide what's going to happen in each one.

[SPEAKER_01]: So if she was taking care of vault tech people, wouldn't she allocate the messed up water chips to other vaults that she has less control over in order to just get them out of her way and not bother the people that she knows, especially knowing that many of these individuals are going to be buddves and end up in the vaults.

[SPEAKER_01]: trilogy. [SPEAKER_01]: That's all right. [SPEAKER_01]: We're at a 31, 32 and 33. [SPEAKER_01]: Why make them go through these difficulties? [SPEAKER_01]: Unless she's no longer actually with them and no longer believes in what Valtek is doing. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, this is all speculation.

[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know for sure if she even chose for this chip to go in this in Valt 33, this specific vaults because she knew it would break or if it just happened to break or if it was damaged by the Raiders, we don't really know. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, Bud shows up and talks about how their early ignition gives them 30 minutes had start and so they should set up car lanes where they can make more money from their customers that will get them directly to these vaults.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, maybe that is something that happens and a reason why [SPEAKER_01]: Who knows, Cooper and Janey are able to get Janey to a vault is because there are these lanes and maybe nobody else is driving on them because everybody's too panicked or dying or there's only so many people who are actually paying for access to those lanes.

[SPEAKER_01]: And therefore, the horse can get more quickly to a vault where he drops Janey off, not really sure. [SPEAKER_01]: But this also shows that bud is a freaking psychopath. [SPEAKER_01]: He's trying to make money off of the end of the world, like so many of the other people here at vault tech.

[SPEAKER_01]: Also, notice that Betty is sitting behind Barbe. [SPEAKER_01]: This is the younger version of Betty, just like we're seeing the younger version of Hank back before the bombs dropped. [SPEAKER_01]: And she is an important person to be sitting in on these meetings and helping take notes and answer questions and run errands for Barbe or whatever, as it goes on.

[SPEAKER_01]: And also notice that she is the one that Barbe talks to at the end of the meeting when she says that they need to get information about the cold fusion. [SPEAKER_01]: But that comes up in a little bit. [SPEAKER_01]: First, we have Mr. House's body double, presenting her the Mind Control chip, which he calls the automated man, which is terrifying, if you think about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And Hank is there taking notes and asked to be part of this meeting, and he sees him super interested in this technology, which confirms that his obsession with using this Mind Control chip in order to save the wasteland and promote peace [SPEAKER_01]: And it's in this conversation that we learn that Mr. House's body double is aware of things that are happening that Barb isn't.

[SPEAKER_01]: But how is that possible? [SPEAKER_01]: Barb should be the one who's ultimately in control of all of this. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, it implies that there are other people pulling the strings. [SPEAKER_01]: and that Mr. House and Robco have been in direct contact with them. [SPEAKER_01]: And all of this is too much.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is the moment where after this meeting, she looks at the picture of her family and she starts really starting to figure out what she's going to do next and how she's going to handle things. [SPEAKER_01]: I think this whole meeting was a big wake-up call for her. [SPEAKER_01]: And the scene ends with us zooming into her eye and seeing her family and she's crying.

[SPEAKER_01]: Further confirming that maybe the action she takes from this point forward are not just in vault text best interests, but in the interest of her family, which plays into the argument she gets in with Cooper later. [SPEAKER_01]: But let's move along. [SPEAKER_01]: We've got the Fallout logo which has one of those mine control devices stuck on the side and even makes the sounds that it makes when it activates.

[SPEAKER_01]: And these are always cool. [SPEAKER_01]: I love the different Fallout logo designs each episode. [SPEAKER_01]: And then we're back to the ghoul, who's stuck on the pole, he's stabbed through the abdomen. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how you survived that, but ghoul seems to function a little bit differently than everybody else.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he can't quite reach his vials. [SPEAKER_01]: He's starting to go feral. [SPEAKER_01]: This is a problem. [SPEAKER_01]: And we get the NPC's just walking around ignoring him. [SPEAKER_01]: And that plays on two different levels. [SPEAKER_01]: First of all, that's what the ghoul would do.

[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't go out of his way to help anybody. [SPEAKER_01]: That's what happens in the games. [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes you're in the middle of a big problem, and the NPCs just look at you. [SPEAKER_01]: They don't even respond because they're only programmed to do so much. [SPEAKER_01]: Then the dog meat comes over to help and picks up the hat and we think, okay, great, good job, dog meat.

[SPEAKER_01]: But no, dog meat actually seems to have a plan because he uses that hat to go find people later on in this episode, but he doesn't actually help the goal in this moment. [SPEAKER_01]: We also see during his transformation that he is struggling to maintain his sense of identity. [SPEAKER_01]: And in order to do so, this is the first time that we've heard him refer to himself by his name and not as the Google.

[SPEAKER_01]: As he reminds himself also that he has to find Janey, that that's his motivation. [SPEAKER_01]: He is sticking around for a reason he can't go feral yet. [SPEAKER_01]: And then he tries to pull himself up the pole, which has got to be the most excruciating a difficult thing you could possibly do.

[SPEAKER_01]: And of course he fails at it, he's not able to do it. [SPEAKER_01]: And then we transition to scene where he's in the bedroom and remember he got drunk and [SPEAKER_01]: he's being completely open with Barb, and probably the most offensive way possible. [SPEAKER_01]: This plays into the fact that Cooper is just not that good at communicating.

[SPEAKER_01]: Instead of saying, hey, I learned some stuff what's going on, he accuses her of being a monster. [SPEAKER_01]: That conversation continues on later, but then we get to Lucy, waking up in a vault. [SPEAKER_01]: And this is clearly that management vault that Hank is in and as the camera pans out you can see that it's decorated much like the vault that she came from and it even includes a dress for her to wear so she can get out of her well dirty old vault suit.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this begins Hank's manipulation of her, and you have to remember that Hank loves his daughter, but he's not beyond manipulating even his loved ones. [SPEAKER_01]: How do you know this? [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's because there's plausible deniability. [SPEAKER_01]: If Hank was trying to welcome her back in and be friendly and not manipulate, then he would also have probably set her up in a place where she could rest and relax and feel comfortable when she wakes up and make it feel a little bit like home because he's taking care of her and her needs.

[SPEAKER_01]: but there's also a reason why he would do this in order to manipulate her to make it seem that way. [SPEAKER_01]: She looks at the dress and then she doesn't put it on, probably a smart move. [SPEAKER_01]: There's something that happens psychologically when we take actions and even change our clothing or change the way that we walk or our posture, [SPEAKER_01]: All of these things have psychological effects on us, and had she put on the dress then psychologically she would be allowing him to make decisions because she didn't choose to seek out a changing of clothes or pick out this dress specifically, she would be playing into his control of the situation by going along with it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So she decides not to do that, and she kicks open the door. [SPEAKER_01]: This is symbolic that she has actually changed. [SPEAKER_01]: And Hank later on says, I'm glad to see that the wasteland hasn't changed you. [SPEAKER_01]: He's again manipulating her, trying to make her think that she's still the same person who was back in Vault 33, but clearly the wasteland has changed her.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just in this one moment, we see how much more weary and careful she is of what's going on. [SPEAKER_01]: She sees the Legion members marching down the hallway and expects to have to fight them. [SPEAKER_01]: But it turns out that their mind controlled. [SPEAKER_01]: And then this makes us realize that Hank is mind controlling people across the wasteland.

[SPEAKER_01]: Enough time has gone by now that he's been able to use this device on lots of different people. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, we later on see that a lot of these people are brought to his vault and are working for him, but does that also mean that he has insight into these other groups and other locations?

[SPEAKER_01]: Are they working like spies for him? [SPEAKER_01]: Possibly. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, when she gets to the room with all the people working, they're all wearing white shirts and ties, and clearly they cast it a bunch of individuals for this scene who looked like they've been on the surface for a long time.

[SPEAKER_01]: Their skin is tanned, in some cases it looks like their faces are aged from sun exposure potentially. [SPEAKER_01]: They have scars and marks on them. [SPEAKER_01]: They're all clearly from somewhere else. [SPEAKER_01]: They did not wake up from cryostasis. [SPEAKER_01]: was able to be mind-controlled, maybe because he really wanted it, but also because he was from the wasteland and the idea of forgetting the terrible things that happened there was appealing and so the mind-controlled device worked.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe that's what we're seeing with all of these people, is that they have suffered so much trauma on the surface that there's fundamentally no resistance, this idea of [SPEAKER_01]: A peaceful existence, even though they lose control of themselves, is appealing enough to allow the device to actually work.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there's an uncanny feeling about this group. [SPEAKER_01]: They're all moving rhythmically like they are coordinates together, like they are machines and no longer people, and that's intentional. [SPEAKER_01]: When you remove somebody's freedom, they have no autonomy, no ability to make their own decisions.

[SPEAKER_01]: are they even people anymore? [SPEAKER_01]: And this is a common moral dilemma, this idea of freedom and the dangers that come with freedom and a lack of freedom and the safety that comes with control. [SPEAKER_01]: The problem is that in the second scenario, somebody is always going to be at the top of that list who gets to decide what that control looks like.

[SPEAKER_01]: Ultimately, how is this any different than [SPEAKER_01]: the Legion and having one person at the top who gets to decide everything, make every law, decide the fate of everybody underneath them and control them with an iron hand, or putting these devices on the back of necks and doing it technologically.

[SPEAKER_01]: These are both forms of authoritarianism. [SPEAKER_01]: They just function in slightly different ways. [SPEAKER_01]: And that becomes the main dilemma with this situation with Lucy and Hank in the vault, is it's really setting us up to understand that Hank's position has some justification, all of these people would murder each other.

[SPEAKER_01]: They would all very quickly kill each other in order to get their resources or just to protect themselves or whatever, and he has brought about peace, but at what cost. [SPEAKER_01]: And you can very quickly find out if something genuinely is authoritarianism, when you realize that when you take the person on top, and if you were to tell them that they could no longer be in charge, would they be happy with that decision?

[SPEAKER_01]: And always the answer is no. [SPEAKER_01]: Then Lucy walks into a room where Pank is actually getting dinner ready for her and it looks like a actual vaults dinner area kitchen. [SPEAKER_01]: I guess that's the word kitchen, right? [SPEAKER_01]: But it clearly says simulation, which again implies that this is all fake.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is all manipulative, this is not real. [SPEAKER_01]: And from that moment on, Hank tries to disarm her, not physically, but mentally and emotionally. [SPEAKER_01]: Also, there's a song that plays here as she enters the room. [SPEAKER_01]: It's called Song of India by Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra.

[SPEAKER_01]: And as a fan of Old Timey Swing Music, and I know this stuff sounds really old, that's a great song. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure that it has any other greater implication other than making it feel old timey and homey and like the vault she came from. [SPEAKER_01]: But there are some of those old swing tunes that are not sung, they don't have lyrics, they don't have vocals, but the songs themselves, the construction of the patterns are so intricate and interesting.

[SPEAKER_01]: Tommy Dorsey's orchestra was one of those groups, so I don't know. [SPEAKER_01]: If you want to get into that music, dig into it. [SPEAKER_01]: It's some really good stuff. [SPEAKER_01]: Once you get past the old time you record in quality. [SPEAKER_01]: So Hank asks her if she wanted to discuss [SPEAKER_01]: because they were reading this together back in the vaults and it's clearly a book that Hank has been familiar with for a long time.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the story goes that it's from the perspective of a German soldier who is understanding how trivial and ridiculous war is, because he has more in common with the soldiers on the other side, the French soldiers that he's fighting, than with the people higher up who are [SPEAKER_01]: demanding that they give their lives for inches of land.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lucy says that she didn't finish it, but it was disturbing. [SPEAKER_01]: And Hank's interpretation is also that is disturbing. [SPEAKER_01]: He agrees with her. [SPEAKER_01]: He also notes that the ending was one humdinger, and Lucy says that she never got to the ending. [SPEAKER_01]: The ending of the story, I guess, spoilers for a very old book at this point, is that Paul, the protagonist of the story, dies just weeks before the war is over by a sniper bullet.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe this signifies that even though he realized how ridiculous war was, he never actually was able to do something about it. [SPEAKER_01]: And we're learning that Hank also realizes how ridiculous war is. [SPEAKER_01]: He talks about it with Lucy and how senseless it is and how this is just how humans are in his solution.

[SPEAKER_01]: is to control everybody so that they can't fight even if they wanted to. [SPEAKER_01]: Effectively creating a slave class of robotic humans and an overclass that makes decisions for them. [SPEAKER_01]: Lucy then confronts him [SPEAKER_01]: about murdering everybody in shady sands and says that she's going to take him in for justice and Hank doesn't push back.

[SPEAKER_01]: He continues to try to manipulate her and even pulls the handcuffs out of the drawer in order to put them on his own wrists. [SPEAKER_01]: He believes so strongly in what he's doing that she will realize it by the time they leave and that seems to be the plan here is that she he's not giving resistance.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's just kind of leaning into what she wants so that she can [SPEAKER_01]: or at least that seems to be his tactic here. [SPEAKER_01]: He even says, for a second there, I thought the wasteland had changed you, which is both him trying to manipulate her and make her think about who she used to be when she was in the vault.

[SPEAKER_01]: But also I think genuinely him kind of pointing out that like, he half expected to get stabbed because that's what people in the wasteland would do and who knows if she's still the same person deep down. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, why were their handcuffs in the drawer? [SPEAKER_01]: Why is there a welding book in the drawer?

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure we're gonna get an answer on that. [SPEAKER_01]: But my sense of it is that he had a feeling what this conversation might play out like and had prepared for it. [SPEAKER_01]: And then the scene shifts back over to Maximus and Thadius and we could see them for the first time in like two episodes.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this season people have talked about how Maximus seems like he's more of a side character, but they have so many plot lines going on in only eight episodes. [SPEAKER_01]: I think it kind of makes sense. [SPEAKER_01]: I have a feeling he will become more prominence as we get to the end of the season and then probably next season as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: But we get this argument between him and Thaddeus and I love the chemistry between these characters. [SPEAKER_01]: They decide they have to leave the power armor there because the brotherhood can track it. [SPEAKER_01]: That is 100% lower accurate to the games and fall at four if you drop off your power armor somewhere on the map.

[SPEAKER_01]: It leaves a little icons so you know where to go to get it again. [SPEAKER_01]: Also Thaddeus thinks they should sell the called fusion. [SPEAKER_01]: And Maximus is like no way, and they end up arguing about this for a long time. [SPEAKER_01]: This leads to a conversation at the campfire that night about what they're going to do and who they really are and how they could give this to a good person, but who is a good person and Maximus is of course like, well, Lucy's a good person.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we learned some things in this conversation. [SPEAKER_01]: First of all, Maximus knows what good people are like because he grew up with [SPEAKER_01]: them. [SPEAKER_01]: He has memories of his parents who we saw in the previous episode as being very good people. [SPEAKER_01]: There were also others in shady sands who were good people who would go above and beyond to help the people around them, or even to sacrifice when needed.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was not a community full of selfish people like we've seen so far on the show. [SPEAKER_01]: people out in the wasteland have to be selfish in order to survive. [SPEAKER_01]: People in the vault, as we'll see later, are selfish. [SPEAKER_01]: They don't care that the water chip is malfunctioning, they just want their snacks.

[SPEAKER_01]: And everything in this episode shows that Thadius is assumption that if you grow up in a place where you're safe and you have plenty of things in food and water and all of that, that means that you are a good person, and he's off a little bit there. [SPEAKER_01]: He's not completely wrong.

[SPEAKER_01]: He understands that growing up without anything makes you more likely to attack your neighbors and do terrible things in order to survive. [SPEAKER_01]: He's not wrong about that. [SPEAKER_01]: But there are good people out there who grow up with very little and they just are good people.

[SPEAKER_01]: That does happen. [SPEAKER_01]: Also, if you grow up with a lot of things, let me look at all the people who work at Vault Tech, they're all petty. [SPEAKER_01]: They all really only care about themselves. [SPEAKER_01]: They're all striving to climb the corporate ladder. [SPEAKER_01]: And that means backstabbing and lying in all sorts of terrible things.

[SPEAKER_01]: So even in the pre-war environment where people had way more than they have before the wasteland existed, they're also not good people. [SPEAKER_01]: Many people are just not good. [SPEAKER_01]: but they do exist and they can't exist in different scenarios. [SPEAKER_01]: It all just comes down to that person.

[SPEAKER_01]: And probably like Maximus having a support system regardless of the wealth or the security around you of people who actually care about you and love you that allows you to become a good person. [SPEAKER_01]: That seems to be what the show is saying here. [SPEAKER_01]: Is that Thaddeus is not 100% correct.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just that they're poor and that's why they're bad. [SPEAKER_01]: bad people were everywhere and that's part of why the bombs fell to begin with. [SPEAKER_01]: And I love that they're struggling with this issue. [SPEAKER_01]: Every episode they're dealing with these moral dilemmas trying to figure out how humanity actually works and is it worthwhile to be a good person or not.

[SPEAKER_01]: or what being a good person even means. [SPEAKER_01]: And that is 100% a fallout thing, every decision you make on a quest, every game that you've played, that's a fallout game has these moral dilemmas that are just baked into it. [SPEAKER_01]: We also learn here that Thaddeus grew up in the Boneyard.

[SPEAKER_01]: This was the remains of Los Angeles. [SPEAKER_01]: And in contrast to Shady Sands was a place that was a lot worse off than where Maximus grew up. [SPEAKER_01]: Then we come back to the Google, who this is the moment where he tries to pull himself up the pole and he can't [SPEAKER_01]: And then a super mutant comes out of nowhere.

[SPEAKER_01]: He breaks the Paul, he pulls him off, he carries him back to what looks like a church, which is a callback, absolutely, to fall out one. [SPEAKER_01]: And the cathedral where the master was controlling all of the super mutants. [SPEAKER_01]: But this isn't the cathedral because that's too far away from Las Vegas.

[SPEAKER_01]: It just happens to be [SPEAKER_01]: a church near the new Vegas strip I would assume because how far is he gonna drag I'm probably been out hundreds of miles and we can see the gore bags we can see all of these hints before we see this super mutants face that this is a super mutant location.

[SPEAKER_01]: And before we get back to this scene to find out what happens with the goal we're back in Vault 33 and we have this wonderful song and dance routine. [SPEAKER_01]: That is clearly in Regis imagination and there's a line lining up to get in and you have to be on the list. [SPEAKER_01]: This is clearly a power play.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is not about hey we just want to have our club and I want to help other people. [SPEAKER_01]: This is Regis selfishly pushing back against Betty's control of the vault. [SPEAKER_01]: Confirming again that human beings are human beings that everybody is striving for power and control over things and what he's doing is endangering the vault There is not enough water to go around and a bunch of salty snacks are going to make people want to just drink more water So Betty has a point she shows up she marches in with some of the security staff and the people have said things like well, where were they when they had the raiders in the vault well [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure they were just normal vault members who just didn't have to have their gear on and that's kind of a secondary post for them.

[SPEAKER_01]: I would assume this song that plays during the dancing is Uranium fever which does show up in the follow games, but it also is a hint at what's about to happen with the ghoul. [SPEAKER_01]: which we'll get to in a minute. [SPEAKER_01]: Now in this scene, Betty comes in and basically tries to put Reg in his place and Reg stands up against her.

[SPEAKER_01]: And now that we know that Betty was trusted by Barb in the pre-war time to do some research and get some info for her about the cold fusion, it puts Betty in a different light. [SPEAKER_01]: Is she exactly on the same page as Hank or Stephanie? [SPEAKER_01]: Is this just power plays between each of them?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because they're all corporate types, or are certain ones more connected to the on-clave, or the plans for the FV and what's going on with that? [SPEAKER_01]: It seems like there's more nuance here than we might suspect. [SPEAKER_01]: Another thing that occurred to me as I've been thinking through this is, Willzig knew about Vault 33 when he meets Lucy, and he knows about Hank.

[SPEAKER_01]: Clearly, because he was there looking over Valtek during the pre-war times. [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, I think it might be Willzig, who is the shadowy character at the meeting that looks down on all the different corporate reps and Barb and Bud at that meeting. [SPEAKER_01]: So is he connected to Betty?

[SPEAKER_01]: or is Betty legitimately just trying to fix what's going on with the vault and make sure that they don't mess it up for themselves with no awareness that things could potentially get worse if they all get turned into super mutants or something like that. [SPEAKER_01]: There's some questions that are still in the air there.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then we get a quick little scene with Davy and Chet, and Davy is looking for Woody, and Chet doesn't know where he is, and remember Woody's the one who went to Stephanie and told on the overseer to the overseer. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's not a surprise that Woody might be disappeared now.

[SPEAKER_01]: Also, Chat finds out that he's engaged, and he didn't approve of it. [SPEAKER_01]: He didn't make any of the plans and tomorrow. [SPEAKER_01]: He is getting married. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think we're seeing a kind of a stacking up of things that he will not stand for, that he's actually growing a backbone in real time.

[SPEAKER_01]: We could probably call that, and that he will be standing up for himself at some point. [SPEAKER_01]: The question is, [SPEAKER_01]: will it actually make a difference? [SPEAKER_01]: Will he be the new norm for Vault 32? [SPEAKER_01]: I'm hoping so, but this could completely backfire on him and confirm how much of a stronghold Stephanie has over the situation and how she's willing to take down anybody in her way including her fiance.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then we're back to the goal and the situation with the Super Mutant. [SPEAKER_01]: The Super Mutant has this piece of uranium or uranium fever, remember the connection to that song, and this Super Mutant is intelligent. [SPEAKER_01]: Which leaves a certain number of possibilities for if we've seen this Super Mutant before.

[SPEAKER_01]: We don't get a name. [SPEAKER_01]: So is this Marcus, the companion that shows up in New Vegas and also shows up in Fallout 2? [SPEAKER_01]: That's who I expected it to be, but we don't know for sure yet. [SPEAKER_01]: Or is this Virgil? [SPEAKER_01]: Brian Virgil from Fallout 4 was an Institute member, a scientist, who turned into a super mutant and lived in the glowing sea.

[SPEAKER_01]: did he travel all the way across America to come to New Vegas for some reason? [SPEAKER_01]: Doesn't seem likely. [SPEAKER_01]: Another deep poll could be a super mutant from Fallout 2 named Ziya's, who was the foreman at the Broken Hills Uranium Mine, and there's a sidequest where [SPEAKER_01]: you aid him in the minors with this little side quest to fix an air purifier.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in the mine, there's a locker with a piece of uranium or a little rock of it, which looks very similar to what we see gets implanted in the ghoul's abdomen. [SPEAKER_01]: So why does he do this? [SPEAKER_01]: Well, we've seen earlier that radiation seems to heal ghouls and the ghoul in particular has done this to himself using the fusion core previously, but this also plays into the idea of the glowing ones.

[SPEAKER_01]: Ghouls that have become so irradiated that they start to glow and become even more powerful because of it. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, in the games we don't ever see somebody put a piece of ore inside someone's chest or something like this in order to make sure that this happens, but we do come across many glowing ghouls depending on the game that you play, most of them are feral, but there are some glowing ones that aren't.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like Jason Bright, who shows up in Fallout New Vegas, he calls himself the prophet and he's trying to use the repcon site to launch himself and his [SPEAKER_01]: It's a hilarious side quest where you come across that one guy who's a part of them who isn't actually a Google but thinks he is.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's wonderful. [SPEAKER_01]: You should go play it. [SPEAKER_01]: So that shows that you don't have to be feral to be glowing and we might see a well kind of super say and powered up version of the Google on future episodes. [SPEAKER_01]: So we'll have to see what happens with that. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, there's a lot implied in this conversation, the Super Mutant here is trying to convince the Google that they're on the same side, they're both mutants, different kinds of mutants, but they are both mutants, which means that they have the same enemies, that there are forces out there working to exterminate them, and that might be one of the reasons why we haven't seen very many Super Mutants yet in the show.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe they're struggling against multiple different enemies. [SPEAKER_01]: Nobody seems to like super mutants. [SPEAKER_01]: The brotherhood has a mandate to remove all mutants from the wasteland, but he does mention specifically the on-clave. [SPEAKER_01]: Firstly, we know that the on-clave does not believe that anyone in the wasteland who has been subject to any amount of genetic manipulation through [SPEAKER_01]: human being, and only pure blooded human beings should remain.

[SPEAKER_01]: So most of the people on the wasteland, they don't even see as people. [SPEAKER_01]: Secondly, we know that the enclave was behind some of the experiments with FEV and supermutes. [SPEAKER_01]: We even see this in the first season when Will Zig is trying to leave the enclave research facility and we see the hand of a supermute on a gurney being wheeled out.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, is there a plan to continue refining, and this is one of the things that they've been working on, FEV in order to make super soldiers who are also super mutants, and this new group of super mutants are going to be smarter, better controlled, maybe mind-controlled, and the super mutants that are out in the wasteland need to be exterminated and removed because they were failed experiments.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe this is what this conversation is alluding to. [SPEAKER_01]: Let me know your thoughts on this one, because this is definitely implying more things going on in the background than we're currently aware of, or at least not fully aware of all the details and specifics. [SPEAKER_01]: So the super mutant turns, and we see its face.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is Ron Perlman. [SPEAKER_01]: Run Perlain has been a part of the series since Fallout 1 where he was paid, I guess, 40 bucks in a sandwich or whatever he said on a recent interview, to do the intro voice lines. [SPEAKER_01]: He's also played some minor characters and come back into the series over the years, and here he is playing...

[SPEAKER_01]: a super mutant. [SPEAKER_01]: Which is awesome. [SPEAKER_01]: Ron Perlman's great actor. [SPEAKER_01]: He's a wonderful guy to watch and shows, right? [SPEAKER_01]: But it doesn't help us understand exactly which super mutant this is. [SPEAKER_01]: It could still be any of the people I listed or somebody else completely altogether.

[SPEAKER_01]: But he does say that if you're not going to be one of us, you can't know where we live and playing that there is an entire group of super mutants who are coordinated around whatever this individual's plans are. [SPEAKER_01]: And a group of smart super mutants could be very dangerous. [SPEAKER_01]: So let's see where this goes.

[SPEAKER_01]: So then we cut back to Cooper and Barb having an argument and the main moral dilemma that's post here is this idea that in order to save your loved ones what would you do? [SPEAKER_01]: What would you actually do? [SPEAKER_01]: How many people would you hurt? [SPEAKER_01]: It's the trolley problem, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's say your daughter is on one side of the tracks and on the other side are other people. [SPEAKER_01]: Do you pull the lever? [SPEAKER_01]: Well, at what point are there so many people on the other side of the tracks that you're going to murder millions, billions of people potentially in order to save one?

[SPEAKER_01]: Where for you, or for Cooper, or for Barb, does this equation balance out? [SPEAKER_01]: And the best part of all of this is that Cooper is in this scene. [SPEAKER_01]: saying that Barb is willing to drop the bombs on millions of hundreds of millions of people who knows the total sum in order to save one person she cares about and how he cannot get behind that.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's not right. [SPEAKER_01]: And yet, [SPEAKER_01]: The version of Cooper that lives in the wasteland is doing exactly this. [SPEAKER_01]: How many people has he murdered, as he heard, has he injured in order to try to find his daughter. [SPEAKER_01]: We know that Cooper is no better than what he's accusing Barb of being, at least at some level.

[SPEAKER_01]: So again, the morality is gray here. [SPEAKER_01]: But is Barb doing this because she's protecting her family? [SPEAKER_01]: And what decisions has she actually made? [SPEAKER_01]: She hasn't really filled us in on that yet. [SPEAKER_01]: What she does fill us in on is this idea that there are worse people out there than her.

[SPEAKER_01]: And she is very specifically implying that the on-clave is the bad guy. [SPEAKER_01]: They are the ones pulling the strings and kind of leading everything to this one conclusion that the bombs will definitely drop. [SPEAKER_01]: And then we see the scene with Willzig in the elevator, and he threatens her.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, he might be doing this in a friendly way, not that he's the one she should be worried about, but the greater organization of the Enclave is, and if she doesn't play her part, then she will be removed. [SPEAKER_01]: And like I said earlier, this creates some really interesting questions about Willzig and his motivations.

[SPEAKER_01]: Did he always seem to have the same plan from this moment forward, 200 years into the future? [SPEAKER_01]: How did he survive? [SPEAKER_01]: Was he in a cryo chamber for himself? [SPEAKER_01]: And also, why do his actions in the wasteland seem to be against the on-clave when he seemed to be for them before the war?

[SPEAKER_01]: Does he change? [SPEAKER_01]: Does he go through a character arc? [SPEAKER_01]: Is there information he comes across in the wasteland or in his research? [SPEAKER_01]: Not just about confusion and how to make that work, but other information that makes him decide that the on-clave needs to be fought back against?

[SPEAKER_01]: they clearly didn't want him leaving with the cold fusion and they tried to kill him remember with a machine gun that just kind of shot and he just ran past it yeah well that that scene did happen so then we're back to Cooper and Barb having their conversation things have kind of cooled off a little bit they're talking a little bit more than Cooper asks who controls vault tech [SPEAKER_01]: And Barb looks extremely distraught when she says, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: More confirmation that she is not okay with what's going on here. [SPEAKER_01]: She then says, there is nothing that we can do if there was, I would have done it, I tried to do it. [SPEAKER_01]: Which again, I don't think is her manipulating Cooper here. [SPEAKER_01]: This is not Hank manipulating Lucy.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is her being honest. [SPEAKER_01]: She is doing the best she can, and she can either be in this position at Valtek [SPEAKER_01]: or if she leaves, it will go to someone else who will make even worse decisions. [SPEAKER_01]: And Cooper just doesn't quite understand this yet. [SPEAKER_01]: Then we get the heart wrenching line where she says, you know me, and he says, I don't.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then we're back in the manager vault with Hank and Lucy and Lucy's trying to [SPEAKER_01]: the whole scene plays out where they have these two guys who are brought in, they haven't been turned on for their little mine control machine things, and it's the NCR guy that we saw before and a Legion member and they are at each other's throats, and the whole scene plays out in a very comedic fight, but it seems...

[SPEAKER_01]: Scared hit the same time. [SPEAKER_01]: The poor NCR guy ends up with a bunch of staples in his head, which makes me remember the movie VHF with weird owl. [SPEAKER_01]: There's a scene where he's being chased by the other corporate bad guys and he shoots a staple gun behind him and they land in the guy's face.

[SPEAKER_01]: I thought that was a pretty funny scene back in the day. [SPEAKER_01]: and in the scene Hank uses malicious compliance. [SPEAKER_01]: Let's call it that. [SPEAKER_01]: In order to manipulate Lucy into having to push the button in order to stop these guys from hurting each other, which is part of his manipulation, he finally got her to do a thing that he wanted her to do to start to buy into his perspective.

[SPEAKER_01]: The idea being that you either control these monsters, or they will continue to fight in kill each other, and there is no other option. [SPEAKER_01]: And since we have mine control, why not use it? [SPEAKER_01]: Look how peaceful it is when everyone just gets along, and they no longer have any freedom or autonomy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Isn't that nice? [SPEAKER_01]: But we know that just because this is a small version of a larger scenario, that doesn't mean that those are the only options. [SPEAKER_01]: This is manipulative, and Hank is trying to get her to buy into this. [SPEAKER_01]: These people clearly do not want to go back to the wasteland, and I totally understand why.

[SPEAKER_01]: But also, is that actually their genuine perspective, or is that still just part of the mind control? [SPEAKER_01]: Even leaving the doors unlocked seems like a scary idea to all of them because they know what's going to happen. [SPEAKER_01]: Somebody else who finds this location will kill everyone inside in order to take everything there.

[SPEAKER_01]: All of this confirms that desperate situations require desperate measures, but again, how far is too far? [SPEAKER_01]: Then the show wraps up with two major situations. [SPEAKER_01]: First, Cooper has gotten Hank all drunk, and knocks him out, puts something in his drink. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know why he had that in his hotel room, why he was planning to have these other drugs available.

[SPEAKER_01]: or if this was something he got previously, when he went out and had a plan of something to do, and so maybe went out on the strip, bought some drugs from somebody, put him back in his hotel room, then went and got Hank. [SPEAKER_01]: We don't see all the details there, but we do know that Hank passes out.

[SPEAKER_01]: Barb shows up. [SPEAKER_01]: Cooper has the box open and there's no cold fusion in the box, but instead there's that device that we've seen before that Will Zigg used to get the device out of his neck. [SPEAKER_01]: It is in Hank's neck. [SPEAKER_01]: Barb comes in and removes it. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think this is the final sign here that she is on Cooper's side, she's giving him what he wants.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think there are some safe assumptions that we can make from this moment on. [SPEAKER_01]: She pulls out the cold fusion, gives it to Cooper, something happens with it, and she has to distance herself from him. [SPEAKER_01]: She needs to save face at Valtek, and so she divorces him, [SPEAKER_01]: Claims that he's a communist and this might even be part of his idea as well is put the blame on me so that this technology does not end up in the wrong hands.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then Cooper leaves with the cold fusion and Barb is left to clean up the mess, and so she does so in a very strategic corporate sort of way. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I couldn't have controlled my husband. [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't tell him anything about this, but he went off and did this on his own and by the way we're getting a divorce.

[SPEAKER_01]: even though they still love each other. [SPEAKER_01]: This explains the very first episode where we see him at the birthday party with Jeannie, why he can't work in Hollywood anymore, why everyone thinks he's a communist or a pinko, and why he has time with Jeannie and Barb's okay with it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then the episode wraps up because Dogmeat goes and finds Maximus and Thadius and tells them where the Google is. [SPEAKER_01]: and they meet up for the first time this season. [SPEAKER_01]: And we know from trailer footage that they will all get together in order to try to bust in to new Vegas and deal with the death clause.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I have a feeling we're going to see that either in the next episode or in the final episode as part of the big climax. [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm looking forward to that. [SPEAKER_01]: But to kind of wrap this up, the other player is this title of this episode. [SPEAKER_01]: And the other player is implying the on-clave, the secret group that's behind everything, of course, but we, like so many other times in the show, it can have a double meaning.

[SPEAKER_01]: We get this understanding from this super mutant that there is another player in the wasteland a group of super mutants that we didn't even know was a part of this equation at all until this moment. [SPEAKER_01]: So as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts if I missed anything. [SPEAKER_01]: If you've got a different theory about things and how they work, come join us on the Robots Radio Discord.

[SPEAKER_01]: There is a spoiler channel specifically for this conversation. [SPEAKER_01]: And every day, people are dropping new ideas and new thoughts about what's going on in there. [SPEAKER_01]: So I'd love to hear your thoughts about that. [SPEAKER_01]: Also, you can rate and review or comments on this episode.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if you leave a review, a five star review on Apple Podcasts, [SPEAKER_01]: I'll read it out on a future episode. [SPEAKER_01]: Like these three that came in recently, this one's from V Carducci, I think is how you pronounce that phenomenal. [SPEAKER_01]: Amazing, gets me through my days, find that it stays on topic and very informational if you're a fan of the world of Fallout.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is a must. [SPEAKER_01]: And this one from ArcadeFire87 who writes Comprehensive and well-structured, as someone who has been a fringe fan of Fallout for a number of years, I finally decided to take on the daunting task of learning the lore. [SPEAKER_01]: It's often times hard between work and gaming for myself to dedicate long stretches of time to watch convoluted YouTube videos.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank Adam for Tom and his bite-sized, easy to digest and easy to retain lorecast. [SPEAKER_01]: I already feel more informed just 10 episodes in and from the time of this review there's well over 300 episodes. [SPEAKER_01]: I look forward to work now thanks to this show because it gives me something to enjoy while grinding through these 10 hour days.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you Tom for making a comprehensive fun and enjoyable. [SPEAKER_01]: And then we've got one more from Jimple Pug. [SPEAKER_01]: It's a bunch of letters mushed together. [SPEAKER_01]: That's as very informative. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm a longtime fallout fan. [SPEAKER_01]: Played all the games, et cetera.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm constantly learning while listening to every episode. [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for your work involved. [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, everybody, for taking the time to do that. [SPEAKER_01]: And huge shout out to our newest Patron Micah. [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Patreon. [SPEAKER_01]: I hope you're enjoying your ad free episodes.

[SPEAKER_01]: And remember, you can join us for our Patreon chat. [SPEAKER_01]: That is coming up next week on... [SPEAKER_01]: Wednesday the 28th that night at 9 p.m. Eastern it seems to be the best time for multiple time zones and we might be discussing the next episode next week all together with the patrons.

[SPEAKER_01]: So come join us be a part of that there's time to sign up patreon.com slash fallout lorecast also got to shout out our centri bots these are our high almost highest tier there's a ridiculously high tier if you want to be liberty prime but the second highest tier is centri [SPEAKER_01]: I can't wait to see where this show goes in the next two episodes, and thank you for being along for the ride.

[SPEAKER_01]: Until I see you next time, and if you happen to be walking around with a big hole in your chest, and you need something to fill it, go find a super mood, and maybe they'll stick some uranium in there. [SPEAKER_01]: Alright, have a wonderful week. [SPEAKER_01]: 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_01]: 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_01]: Come join us. [SPEAKER_01]: We'd love to chat with you. [SPEAKER_01]: See you guys next time. [SPEAKER_00]: Robots radio, games, lore, stories, community, just press play.

390: Fallout TV S2 Ep6 - Easter Eggs, Lore Connections, and Everything You Might Have Missed

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