The Biggest Influences On Fallout

Specific Design Element Influences

Companies

Vault-Tec was a stereotype of every greedy, poorly managed defense contractor that flourished in the United States during the Cold War. Tim notes the US still has one of the biggest defense budgets in the world, so "we all see a little Vault-Tec in all these defense companies."

General Atomics came specifically from Robert Heinlein's short stories, which frequently referenced a company by that name that "just sort of did a little bit of everything."

RobCo was a parody of Ronco — the real company that made the Pocket Fisherman and the spray-on hair product that hid bald spots. Tim notes that in Futurama, Ronco's founder was the guy who invented heads in jars. RobCo later evolved into the backstory of Mr. House in New Vegas, but it started as pure Ronco parody.

Products and Items

Sugar Bombs came from Calvin and Hobbes — Calvin's favorite cereal was "Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs," and the name was too perfect not to use in a post-nuclear war game.

Nuka-Cola is obviously from Coca-Cola, specifically referencing the era when it actually contained cocaine. Tim doesn't remember whether it was a Scott Campbell or Chris Taylor invention.

Robots and Technology

The robots were primarily inspired by Forbidden Planet and its robot Robbie, which appeared in many other films. Tim specifically told designers that anything resembling modern designs like Terminator or RoboCop would be rejected. One designer tried anyway — it got rejected.

For advertisements, the artists looked at Cold War-era posters and comic book front covers, studying how people posed and how monsters appeared in the background.

Weapons and Armor

Regular guns were modeled after real-world firearms. For lasers and plasma weapons, the team drew from everything from old Flash Gordon serials to Blade Runner.

Power Armor has a layered origin. Leonard Boyarsky initially made a high-end armor, but when he needed something more detailed for cinematics, he created the iconic power armor seen on the box cover. The helmet eyepiece came from the French film City of Lost Children, and the tubing and overall tech aesthetic were heavily inspired by that film's visual style.

Radiation and Mutations

Chris Taylor wrote the nuclear blast effects section of the manual using an outside source that Tim believes programmer Kurt Decker found (possibly in the trash). The team referenced the 1954 film Them! — with its giant ants — as the template for what radiation should do in the game: create giant versions of regular creatures. This gave rise to creatures like the Rad Scorpion.

There were many 1950s movies featuring giant creatures caused by radiation as punishment for mankind's hubris — "that was stuff we wanted to do."

Ghouls

The team always disagreed about ghouls. Tim thought they should be purely from radiation, while other designers wanted them to be a combination of radiation and FEV. Tim's position was: "Let the mutants be FEV and the ghouls are just radiation." This distinction actually drove story logic — it's why the Master wanted Vault Dwellers, since they had no radiation damage, making FEV transformation more likely to produce intelligent Super Mutants rather than dumb ones.

Feral ghouls were inspired by George Romero's zombie films — they were essentially his "Walkers." Radiation suits were based on imagery from the Three Mile Island disaster coverage.

The FEV

Multiple team members have claimed credit for creating FEV. Tim thought the idea was his. He wrote the biology reports describing the quadruple helix DNA concept, researching real virology. A German microbiologist emailed the team saying the science was "spot on." The quadruple DNA concept came from a novel called Elyse, about a woman who was immortal because she was born with quadruple DNA.

The Master

The Master was "a completely original idea." Tim recalls the team discussing the FEV vats and someone falling in accidentally. When asked "was it a man, a woman, or a robot?" someone jokingly said "what about all three?" — and the Master was born. Tim considers him a scary, original villain and was glad to see him top several "best RPG villains" lists.

Vehicles

For wrecked vehicles, Road Warrior (Mad Max 2) was on continuous loop in Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson's office. They loved the vehicle designs, and the Chryslus and other Fallout vehicles surely came from that influence.

Vertibirds

The name (not the look) came from a popular 1970s toy Tim owned — a helicopter on a rod that you could fly in circles to pick up other toys.

Dogmeat

Two people can claim origin. Jason Anderson really wanted companions (the team had initially discounted the idea). He convinced scripter Jess Heinig to make Dogmeat as the first companion in the game. The name came from Scott Benny, who thought it was perfect — likely referencing the dog in Road Warrior, though it may also have been influenced by his own dog.

Factions

The Brotherhood of Steel came from the novel A Canticle for Leibowitz — a post-apocalyptic story about monks preserving pre-war knowledge.

The Enclave emerged from the logic that there weren't enough vaults to hold everybody, so the team needed a bad guy controlling the vaults and using them as experiments.

The GECK

The Garden of Eden Creation Kit was never discussed during 99% of Fallout's development. When the manual was being finalized, there was a blank page at the end. Leonard and Jason put their heads together and within a day or two had created a complete advertisement for the GECK. It was thrown in the end of the manual and then became the launching point for Fallout 2's storyline.

Building Design

The Art Deco aesthetic came from Leonard Boyarsky's love of old ARCO Art Deco designs — "that's why they're big heads on things."

Broader Influences

Books

• A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. — direct influence on the Brotherhood of Steel
• I Am Legend by Richard Matheson — the basis for The Omega Man and the later film I Am Legend
• Elyse — source of the quadruple DNA helix concept behind FEV
• Robert Heinlein's short stories — source of General Atomics
• Every Hugo Award-winning sci-fi novel — Starting around 1992, Tim printed out a list of all Hugo winners and set out to read them all. Chris Taylor joined the effort and, being a speed reader, rapidly outpaced him ("he would leave in the evening and come in the morning and go 'oh I read A Fire Upon the Deep last night'"). Tim is sure there are subconscious influences from those books throughout Fallout.

Movies and TV

• Them! (1954) — giant ants from radiation; template for Fallout's mutated creatures
• Forbidden Planet (1956) — Robbie the Robot as touchstone for robot designs
• Dr. Strangelove (1964) — nuclear war satire
• On the Beach (1959) — US submarine reaching Australia after nuclear war
• A Boy and His Dog (1975) — post-apocalyptic setting with a companion dog
• Mad Max / Road Warrior — vehicle designs, post-apocalyptic wasteland aesthetic
• Red Dawn (1984) — US being invaded; Fallout used China instead of Russia
• WarGames (1983) — displays showing the US coast being nuked, submarines off the coast
• City of Lost Children (1995) — power armor design, tech aesthetic, computers
• Blade Runner (1982) — energy weapon designs
• Flash Gordon serials — laser and plasma weapon aesthetics
• La Jetée (1962) — French film about time travel to prevent nuclear war; later remade as 12 Monkeys
• The Day After (1983 TV movie) — depiction of life in America after nuclear war; "resonated with a lot of us"
• George Romero zombie films — feral ghouls

Games

Tabletop:

• Gamma World — obvious post-apocalyptic RPG influence
• GURPS — the game was originally being developed as a GURPS title
• Wiz-War — a board game about wizards collecting treasures that the team played constantly and even made new cards for. Tim found it fascinating because players with identical roles (wizards) played wildly differently. The dual win conditions (collect two treasures OR be the last one alive) created emergent gameplay where some players became "psychotic serial killer wizards" while others quietly won by collecting treasures while everyone else fought. This "hit the reactive part of my brain" — he loved this kind of emergent player behavior.

Computer:

• X-COM — "wildly influential on our combat"
• Crusader: No Remorse / No Regret — an isometric game the team loved playing and loved the look of
• Ultima series — hugely influential, particularly its use of the player as an avatar who must be virtuous. Tim's reaction was specifically contrarian: "I love this, but I want the player not to have to be good." This drove Fallout's multiple-solution, morally ambiguous quest design.
• Wasteland — an influence, but "not as strong as a lot of people think it was." Some team members had never played it, some played it and didn't like it. The biggest takeaway was that a post-apocalyptic world could have quests with moral dilemmas that aren't always cleanly resolvable — like the rabid dog quest at the start of Wasteland. Tim emphasizes: "We were never making Wasteland 2. We were making our own thing."

The 1950s Vision

Tim credits Leonard Boyarsky with the pivotal creative decision to ground Fallout's aesthetic in the 1950s. Once that vision was realized and instantiated in the game, "there was really no going back." Even if the Wasteland 2 license had been secured, Tim says there were things he "would have massively regretted changing" to make Fallout more like Wasteland. The game had taken on a life of its own.

References

• Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8XTWJRBFeM