Fallout creator reveals lore that the original team believed to be true but never explained – “Bethesda was free to invent different reasons for things in the game to exist”
Blog Andrew Joseph 15 Oct , 2025 0
Fallout creator Tim Cain continues His insightful video series About development The original fallout gamethis time the focus is on the lore, which has some interesting content that has fans talking.
Cain was the creator, producer, lead programmer, and primary designer of Interplay's 1997 post-apocalyptic role-playing game Fallout, which he released video In it, he talks about lore from the original Fallout, which the team believed to be true but never directly stated.
Kane calls it “non-illustrative Fallout lore,” simply lore from the first game that the original team discussed with each other and determined to be true, and then built the game off of it. Kane said that “none of the 15 core people working on Fallout wrote any of this.”
Therefore, it is “not canon.”
“This is something that actually existed in the first game, but because it wasn't in the design documents anywhere, Bethesda was free to invent different reasons why it was in the game,” he prefaces. “I'm not canon anymore, not anymore. You're not canon just because you played the game or liked it so much. Bethesda's canon. You don't have to like that. You don't have to like that water is wet. I don't like that white chocolate exists, but it does exist. So here we go.”
Why China launched nuclear weapons first
The most important thing is to explain why China launched nuclear weapons in the first place. This is a reference to the Fallout event that took place on October 23, 2077 (Bethesda now holds a showcase event on October 23rd each year (aka Fallout Day)). Kane has already said in previous videos that China used nuclear weapons first, quelling decades of fan speculation. But in the latest video, he explains why China used nuclear weapons in the first place.
“This is not canon, but let me explain what I mean and why we think that,” he began. “In the original game, we built FEV (Forced Evolution Viruses), and the United States was doing bioweapons research. We weren't supposed to do that. In fact, we signed a U.N. treaty that said we weren't going to do that, and I think you can find that in the game. China found out we were doing it. How did they find out? Espionage. But they found out we were doing it, and we said, 'Gee, we're not going to do that. Not anymore.' But we kept doing it anyway and just moved the research to another base. This is The Glow's hidden base, where you'll eventually discover the supercomputer ZAX.
“When China found out that we were still doing this and we had just relocated, they had tried diplomacy and espionage and that didn't work, so they just nuked us. They nuked us. We nuked us back. Other countries nuked because all we saw were missiles flying.
“Technically, China started by launching its first nuclear weapon. But you could argue that technically, the United States started by conducting illegal bioweapons research and then lying about it multiple times.”
And what about Russia’s involvement? Kane went on to explain that the development team assumed that Russia had broken apart into “a bunch of squabbling little nations” in the '90s (and therefore the projected 50s in the future in Fallout's alternate history timeline). The EU has unified and the United States has annexed Canada (a prediction not lost on Cain given current events). “But regardless, we have friendly relations with Russia in the Fallout universe,” he added.
That's why one of Fallout's pre-made characters is Natalia, the granddaughter of a Russian diplomat. “Apparently we have a very friendly relationship with the Russian embassy and they let some diplomats into one of the vaults, which is the vault you're in,” Kane explained. “So, obviously, this is not a country we are at odds with.”
Shelter 13 Lottery
So this explains the unspoken legend behind why China launched nuclear weapons in the first place. But Cain had more knowledge to reveal. It turns out that the three pre-made characters players can choose from were actually chosen by the residents of Vault 13 through a lottery – a rigged lottery.
“We had three pre-made characters in Fallout,” he continued. “There's Max, who's a big, dumb, idiot fighter. There's Natalya, who's a dexterous thief character. And then there's Albert, who's a smooth-talking manipulator walkie-talkie.
“If you look at these three characters, you might think, this is the best the Vault has to offer? No, the Vault did the draw. They basically drew lots. They knew they had to send people out. So they had people draw lots, and whoever drew the short lot had to go into what was considered a radioactive wilderness, which would kill them. But hopefully they could come back before the radiation killed them, with water chip replacements.
“That's just hypothetical. The prefabricated characters support it. I believe there's some dialogue here and there that no one chose, especially if you're playing as Max, that no one chose to let that character go. That wasn't their first choice. That wasn't even their best choice. That wasn't even a choice.
“Except one thing that we also talk about and laugh about that might also be true is that the whole lottery for leaving the vault is rigged. That would explain the three characters. You have this idiot guy. Why would you send him out? Well, get him out of the gene pool. And then you just With Natalya, she stole everything. It probably pissed people off that she was gone. Albert was always trying to manipulate everyone because he was gone, so getting rid of those characters was probably a priority for some people.”
Cain says that this was all hinted at by the corpse in the Vault suit he saw when exiting Vault 13 at the beginning of the game.
“They've sent people out,” he said. “That also explains why they didn't give you much. They probably had supplies for outside exploration, maybe radiation suits, maybe better weapons or whatever. But you weren't the first person they sent out. As soon as you stepped out, there was evidence Whoever that person was, I think we said his name was Ed, which means you knew him, or you knew his name. Ed was attacked by rats. All that was left was Ed's bones and a ragged old man. Vault suit. So, there is evidence that, yes, there was a draw and you were not the first one sent out.”
The vaulting suit is 3D printed by a machine
Here's an interesting bit of “non-illustrative Fallout lore”: the series' iconic Vault suit is not made of cloth, nor is it sewn together. There isn't a warehouse full of them somewhere in the vault. In contrast, the vault suit is extruded. Yes, that’s right…the vaulting ring has a machine that 3D prints vault suits.
“I knew it was our thing because one of our ideas for the vault was that the vault suit extruder broke, so everyone on the vault was naked,” Kane revealed.
“The reason we wanted to do an extruder, though, in the first place, is that the vault suit is tight. It's obviously highly customizable, but if this vault suit was to be closed for hundreds of years, there's no way you could have enough vault suits for everyone because there would be multiple generations. The clothes would wear out. People come in all shapes and sizes, especially if you throw kids in the mix. So, they couldn't stock vault suits for everyone, or even the fabric to make all these suits for everyone.
“So, we just said, 'Oh, there's some kind of extruder.' You know, you put in the measurements, you stand in front of a scanner or something, and a vault suit designed just for you is extruded. That's why they're all skin tight. That's why they have numbers on the back. That way they don't have to make a vault suit, a different vault suit for each vault. When it extrudes, it adds your vault number on the back.
“So, we always used to assume that this would be true, but then it never came up again. But if you did look in the vault, you would never find, at least in the base game, you would never find box after box of the vault set.”
Who is Harold?
Next up is fan-favorite Fallout character Harold, who is believed to be a unique FEV mutant that was once a ghoul but has now transformed into a tree-like creature. Harold appears in Fallout, Fallout 2, and even Bethesda's Fallout 3, and he's worshiped as a god in the Oasis, but we're never sure what he is or why he's in this state.
According to Kane, what the developers were trying to do with Harold was create a distinctly abnormal character who hinted at what could happen outside of Fallout's Southern California setting, and all the horrible things people encountered outside the scope of the first game.
“People call him Harold the ghoul at the center, but we don't necessarily agree that he's a ghoul,” Kane said. “I kind of thought he was a ghoul. Others on the team thought he was FEV. Others thought he was a mix of ghoul and FEV, even though FEV isn't supposed to work on people who are irradiated.
“Harold is weird. That's what we all agree on. Harold is our example of something weird here. You want to see an example? Look at Harold. We don't know what Harold is. Harold doesn't know what he is.”
Why sugar bombs?
Finally, sugar bombs. For the uninitiated, Sugar Bombs are sugary cereals in the Fallout series aimed at children, despite being completely unhealthy for anyone. Sugar Bombs didn't actually appear in Interplay's Fallout game, but were picked up by Bethesda for use in Fallout 3 and beyond (we even saw them in the Amazon Fallout TV show). But Kane remembers how he came up with the idea, noting his obsession with the American daily comic strip Calvin and Hobbes.
“We designed sugar bombs,” Cain said. “I noticed that Sugar Bomb was mentioned in the notes. I'm a big fan of Calvin and Hobbes. I have a set. It was designed but never added. We discussed it. We never added it. I just love Calvin and Hobbes, so of course Sugar Bomb was in one of my games.”
Now you understand: Why did China launch nuclear weapons in the first place? The lottery that determines who leaves Vault 13; the vault suit being squeezed; Harold not being a typical…anyone; and the origins of the sugar bomb. This is Cain's Vault, a collection of things that were part of the original Fallout but were never directly depicted.
But remember, these are not canon. As Cain said: “It's just for fun.”
Wesley is IGN News Director. Find him on Twitter: @wyp100. You can contact Wesley at [email protected] or privately at [email protected].