Not content with offering a compelling story that legitimately has its place in the Fallout universe, the series has even canonized a very widespread theory among fans.
This theory focuses on Fallout’s iconic mascot, the Vault Boy. His thumbs up has indeed caused a lot of ink to flow within the community. While originally this gesture was perfectly innocent, the Fallout series sent a wink of connivance to fans.
A thumbs up for the Fallout series
In 1997, Black Isle Studios and Interplay unknowingly launched a true video game monument with Fallout, the first of its name on PC. To represent this new offbeat post-apocalyptic license, a mascot was imagined in the person of the Vault Boy. This little character is as much the face of the franchise as of Vault-Tec, the American company to which we owe the famous fallout shelters scattered all over the United States.
In most drawings of the Vault Boy, we can see him with his thumbs up, a wink, and a big Colgate smile on his face. Since Fallout deals with a world ravaged by a nuclear holocaust, this move was the subject of a theory that went viral among fans. They say the mascot holds his thumb up to make sure he’s bigger than a mushroom cloud off-camera. This means that the smiling character is far enough away from the explosion to not suffer too much from radiation. But all this time it was just a simple theory, refuted by the game developers. This was until the release of the Fallout series on April 11 on Prime Video.
A theory canonized by the Prime Video canon series
In the very first episode of the first season, we see Cooper Howard (otherwise known as the Ghoul in the series) just before the holocaust that would ravage the entire world. He served in the army against the communists a few years ago. He explains to his daughter that, when an atomic bomb exploded, the soldiers had to raise their thumb in front of the mushroom cloud to ensure they were sufficiently far away from it… or not. The series even implies that Cooper Howard is credited with the Vault Boy’s thumbs up. The chemistry between the show and the games is therefore clearly assumed.
We knew it, the Fallout series had to be part of the canon of the post-apocalyptic universe. She thus allowed herself to formalize this thumbs-up story which until now was only a simple fan theory. Notwithstanding this, the show even allows initiates to discover for the first time several elements previously almost never explored in games. The adaptation thus achieves the double feat of paying a superb homage to the games from which it is inspired, while legitimately fleshing out an already extremely complex and rich lore. Such a performance deserves a thumbs up from Jonathan Nolan and the entire team behind the show, right?