Fallout Season 2’s Vault 24 Explained
This article contains SPOILERS for Fallout Season 2, Episode 1.
A macabre highlight of every Fallout game and a major story revelation in Season 1 of Amazon’s Fallout show is that the Vault-Tec Corporation used the guise of safety to conduct a vast range of social and scientific experiments. These experiments often led to horrific and gruesome results for those living inside Fallout‘s Vaults.
After a 20-month-long wait, Amazon’s live-action Fallout adaptation is back, and it’s returned with a lore-heavy premiere. The first episode of Fallout Season 2 teases the importance of a fan-favorite Fallout: New Vegas character, sees Lucy and The Ghoul killing members of The Great Khans, and sets up the MacGuffin of this new season: a high-tech chip that seems to have brainwashing powers. The trail for this chip takes Fallout‘s protagonists to Vault 24, a reference to Fallout: New Vegas‘ cut content and a location with a disturbing mystery at its center.
The Mystery of Fallout Season 2’s Vault 24 Explained
A Brief Overview of Fallout’s Sino-American War
To fully understand the mystery of Vault 24, fans need to have a general understanding of Fallout‘s Sino-American War. This event is arguably the most important in Fallout‘s in-universe history, and as can be expected, the lore surrounding the event is extremely dense. But these are the bare essentials fans need to know:
- Following Fallout‘s alternate history version of World War 2, the United States and China emerge as the world’s two leading superpowers
- As natural resources grow increasingly scarce in the following century, the tensions between the US and China also grow more heated
- This eventually leads to a brief but vicious war breaking out between the two nations, known as the Sino-American War
- As the Sino-American War progressed, the US government relied more heavily on corporations like Vault-Tec, eventually leading to corporations becoming the de facto leaders of the nation
- To keep civilians in line, the corporations stoked the flames of paranoia, honing in on the People’s Republic of China’s communist beliefs as the primary fear factor
- The corporations’ anti-communist propaganda worked, capitalism was embraced harder than ever, and the Sino-American War continued until the bombs were dropped and the Old World was destroyed
What Lucy and The Ghoul Find in Fallout’s Vault 24
In Fallout Season 2, Episode 1, Lucy and The Ghoul are hot on the trail of Hank MacLean, Lucy’s father and a former Vault-Tec employee before the Great War. This trail takes them to Vault 24, which is hidden behind the screen of a Starlight Drive-In movie theater. The unlikely duo spot a hat adorned with communist symbols on the floor of Vault 24’s entrance and make their way inside.
Inside Vault 24, Lucy and The Ghoul stumble upon a room full of long-dead bodies all wearing communist outfits. Lucy asks why Vault-Tec would grant their enemies safety, to which The Ghoul says he doesn’t think they would, pulling some kind of computer chip out one of the communist’s remains. The duo then walk into a laboratory where a projector is playing communist propaganda on a loop. Bodies also fill this room, and Lucy determines that these were Americans who somehow were turned into communists while in the Vault.
A Vault 24 jumpsuit can technically be found in Fallout: New Vegas‘ game files, with New Vegas director Josh Sawyer explaining in 2019 that the Vault itself probably wasn’t planned to appear in the game, but that the suit could have been created for Sarah Weintraub’s quest and cut from the game before launch.
Fallout’s Brain-Computer Chip Explained
The very first scene of Fallout Season 2, Episode 1 takes place before the Great War and shows a mustachioed man forcibly inserting a high-tech chip into the neck of a bar patron he goaded into a fist fight. Once inserted, the man uses a remote control to activate the chip and uses it to force the patron to physically assault his friends. The chip-controlled man tries to resist, resulting in his head exploding.
This mustachioed man with the remote is Robert House, the founder and CEO of RobCo Industries, who is seemingly using a body double to conduct any public-facing business. Fallout: New Vegas fans will remember him as the New Vegas Strip’s president, presented as a face on a computer screen.
Robert House appeared briefly in Fallout Season 1, where he was played by Rafi Silver. In Fallout Season 2, House has been recast, with Justin Theroux now taking on the role.
Based on the context given in Fallout Season 2, Episode 1, it seems as though Mr. House and RobCo have created a Brain-Computer Interface chip that’s capable of hijacking a person’s mind. Vault 24 seems to be where this chip was refined, with American citizens being given the chip and shown communist propaganda until they believed it, which is quite a feat given their indoctrinated hatred of those beliefs.
- Released
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October 19, 2010
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Drugs
- Engine
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Gamebryo