Hello and welcome to season two of Prime Video’s bombastic Fallout TV series! Last year’s finale left us with Knight Maximus, Lucy, and Cooper/The Ghoul tailing after Lucy’s father to Las Vegas, and Norm locked inside of Vault 31 with the rest of Bud’s Buds. Now, we are back in the Wasteland and, of course, Fallout season two is packed with New Vegas locations, game references, and a bunch of Easter eggs. Let’s get into everyone that we spotted this season.
New Vegas Locations, Game References, and Easter Eggs in Fallout Season 2, Episode 1 – “The Innovator”
Mr. House Is in the House
We pick up this season with a new face. Those who have watched the promotional materials for this season will recognize Justin Theroux, playing the actual Mr. House, while Rafi Silver continues in his role as House’s body double. This checks out considering what a canonically paranoid bastard House is. René Auberjonois’ performance as House in Fallout: New Vegas is unforgettable, but Justin takes up the mantle with ease, bringing an intensity to the portrayal that I quite enjoy thus far.
In the game, we never saw a pre-war Mr. House. So getting to see the man himself, rather than the near-corpse with a brain wired to a supercomputer, is a treat. He is every bit as unsettling and amoral as I’d hoped!
Novac & Dinky The Dinosaur
After House uses the Union boss as a guinea pig, we cut to Cooper and Lucy. Here we see Novac, one of the more memorable locations in Fallout: New Vegas. And with Novac, of course, comes Dinky the Dinosaur. Dinky looks much like his game model here, but minus the large thermometer he has in the game. We can probably survive the loss.
Novac is Route 66 kitsch top to bottom, as is Dinky himself. Dinky is based off of two giant dinosaur statues in Cabazon, California— Mr. Rex and Dinny the Dinosaur. Cooper mentions twenty-five years back when a woman named Darla was running the general store. In Fallout: New Vegas, the Dinobite Gift Shop, run by Cliff Briscoe, is more or less the general store. It’s inside of Dinky. You can even pick up a mini-Dinky for yourself to take home and put up on the shelf. Or you could steal the hundreds in the storage room, though that begs the question, “Why the hell do you need 200 plastic dinosaurs?”
Novac’s name comes from the ‘No Vacancy’ sign outside of the motel next to Dinky. The only letters lit up are “NOVAC.” The Courier (Fallout: New Vegas’ player character) can even get a permanent room at the motel, which is run by a woman named Jeannie May Crawford. In the game, she was responsible for selling potential companion Boone’s wife to the Legion as a slave. In the season premiere, we see Lucy hunkered down with her sniper rifle inside of Dinky’s mouth, where Boone can be found in the game watching over Novac.
So, no Jeannie May, no Boone, no Cliff. The Khans seem to have run out everybody who isn’t them. Hey, speaking of the Khans…
The Great Khans
The Great Khans, the most significant raider group in Fallout: New Vegas, look somewhat different compared to their video game counterparts. In the game, the player can either recruit the Great Khans to work with the Legion, the NCR, or you can convince them to leave the Mojave entirely.
The Khans relied heavily on a mixture of Native American and biker gang aesthetics. They were one of the more unique factions in New Vegas, inspired by a mixture of the real life “Mongols MC” and several Great Plains cultures, like the Kansa, Osage, and Cheyenne tribes. They are stylized primarily as a motorcycle gang in the show, though their flag is one-to-one to the Fallout game flag, an Easter egg which I appreciated.
The Khans were best known for their drug-making and subsequent drug-running throughout the American southwest. They’re an insular community for many reasons. One is the fact that the NCR has maybe, possibly committed a war crime or two against them. In 2281, they occupied Red Rock Canyon.
While they are not initially welcoming to the Courier, if you help them out and show kindness, they’ll warm up to you. Maybe they will even give you a discount on all those drugs!
One of the Khans in the show says, re: Cooper— “This asshole has been terrorizing us Khans since before your grandaddies were born.” Interesting… I can’t wait to learn more about Cooper’s dealings with the Khans in the past. He’s obviously left an imprint of himself in the minds of the people of the Mojave.
Big Iron
No season premiere set in the Mojave is complete without Marty Robbins crooning “Big Iron” while ultraviolence occurs. This song is emblematic to Fallout: New Vegas fans, to the point of giving the song a vibrant second life in the 21st century. I loved hearing it so soon off the bat, and what better to soundtrack Cooper’s fight scene?
The Water Chip
Vault 33 continues to struggle with their malfunctioning water chip. Backup systems have been put in place, but they’re already failing. In Fallout 1, this is what drives the player character out into the Wasteland. The player is searching for the water chip to save their vault. Unfortunately, Vault 33 seems short on heroes and high on inbreeding and time-wasting.
Starlight Drive-In
At one point, Lucy and Cooper find themselves poking around a desolate Starlight Drive-In, a chain of drive-in theatres that existed throughout America in the 2070s. In Fallout 4, the player character can acquire one of these drive-ins and use it for settlement building. It also smacks of “Midnight Science Fiction Feature!” — the quest that opens up the long-beloved Old World Blues DLC in Fallout: New Vegas. Though technically, that location is referred to as “The Mojave Drive-In.”
Cooper catches sight of what’s left of the marquis, and sees that one of the last films played here was one of his— “A Man And His Dog 3.”
Vault 24
A very deepcut Easter Egg here! Savvy gamers found a Vault 24 jumpsuit in the Fallout: New Vegas game code that wasn’t accessible in the game proper. Vault 24 was intended to be in the game, but was ultimately cut due to time restraints placed on developer Obsidian. Cooper and Lucy investigate the Vault and hey, it’s another Vault-Tec brainwashing experiment gone wrong. You can cross that off your Season 2 Bingo Card.
Whac-A-Commie
This is a small but delightful thing. In the pre-war timeline, Cooper is meeting with Moldaver at a diner in Bakersfield to discuss next steps, after he learns his wife is personally going to ensure a nuclear holocaust. While they’re having their very hush-hush discussion, Janey is on the other side of the diner, whacking squirrels wearing little Chinese Red Army hats.
Whac-a-Commie was introduced to the game world via Fallout 4’s Nuka-World. Players can even build it themselves in settlements, if they so desire. It looks a bit different in the games, but they got the spirit!
We Cannot WAIT to See More Fallout Season 2 Easter Eggs, New Vegas Locations, and Game References
As someone who is perpetually hunting for game connections and references, Fallout season two is set to please. The Googie architecture of the pre-war world, drenched in 1950s nostalgia and retro-futurism, comes across just as immersive and authentic to the games as ever. I paused watching Cooper in his kitchen, because it’s just like the pre-war kitchens in Fallout 4. But it is yellow, which makes it pop even more. I want to kiss all the set designers on the forehead.
Galaxy News plays on the radio (Galaxy News Radio is the primary radio station in Fallout 3) and mentions WestTek (defense contractor also in the games) and, of course, RobCo, Mr. House’s primary company. There really isn’t a minute of the show where the spirit and themes of Fallout aren’t present in a very felt way.