"Amazon's Fallout features bizarre Vaults and reveals Vault-Tec's capitalist motives behind the experiments"
Summary
Amazon's Fallout series introduces the bizarre Vaults to a new audience, replicating the mysterious experiments of the original games. The plot changes reveal Vault-Tec's capitalist motives behind the experiments, setting the stage for disturbing Vault discoveries in season two. Vaults like 11, 12 and 21 offer tragic and twisted stories, paving the way for possible exploration in the Fallout series.
Warning! This article contains spoilers for Amazon's Fallout TV series, as well as the games and promotional materials for the franchise.
Amazon's Fallout series brought the franchise's strange Vaults to a wider audience than ever before, with plenty of macabre surprises still waiting in the wings for the second season. The series did an excellent job of replicating the atmosphere of the original games, with several scenes in which the Fallout cast discover mysterious Vaults, each with their own sinister experiments. Whether exploring the decaying and abandoned Vault 32 or navigating the strange society of Vault 4, the series only gave a taste of the more twisted experiments the games had to offer.
One of the biggest plot changes made by Amazon's Fallout series was the revelation that Vault-Tec's experiments were carried out in the name of capitalist competition, allowing large corporations to seed their own vision for the future of the world. Previously, the explanation for Vault-Tec's insidious experimentation was to test humanity's limits in sustaining a population on multigenerational starships, using each Vault as a scenario to prepare for. Whatever the motive, Fallout offers no shortage of wild Vaults that the series could explore in season two.
10 Vault 11
Fallout: New Vegas
The story of Vault 11 is one of the most tragic and twisted tales in the entire Fallout series. Upon entering the Vault, the inhabitants of Vault 11 had a choice - choose a single person to sacrifice to an automated execution system once a year, or have the entire population exterminated in one fell swoop. Not wanting to risk the whole group, the inhabitants ended up creating a morbid incentive for sacrifice. Each year, an election would be held for the Superintendent, who would be handed over to execution at the end of the term.
Eventually, this system degenerated into brutal infighting, with various political leaders trying to cheat the system or leverage their year of power in horrific ways. In the end, there were only five survivors who just wanted the carnage to end, refusing to make a sacrifice and agreeing to allow the vault systems to kill them all. This decision was met with a shocking revelation, as the Vault congratulated the survivors for refusing to nominate, revealing that if the Vault population had refused to nominate a sacrifice from the start, no one would have had to die.
9 Vault 12
Fallout
One of the main locations in the original Fallout game, Vault 12 would be the perfect place for a bit of environmental storytelling that Lucy and The Ghoul could travel to. Originally a relatively standard control Vault, the true purpose of the Vault 12 experiment didn't manifest itself until years after the doors were sealed. Intended to study the long-term effects of gradual exposure to radiation, the Vault's security door intentionally leaked radiation into the population, slowly turning each resident into a Ghoul.
Surprisingly, this didn't stop Vault 12 from being one of the most successful Vaults in the entire program. The Ghouls of Vault 12 created an entire city of Ghouls using the Vault as a base, known ever since as Necropolis. Seeing Walton Goggins' The Ghoul react to an entire city inhabited by his kind, including pre-war Ghouls he might even have known before the bombs fell, would be a perfect opportunity to check out what Necropolis has been up to in recent years after Fallout. Its location on the west coast also makes this a very likely possibility.
8 Vault 21
Fallout: New Vegas
Thematically appropriate for Fallout: New Vegas, the name of the game for the Vault 21 experiment was gambling. Situated directly beneath the New Vegas strip itself, Vault 21 was intentionally populated primarily by gamblers, using games of chance to settle all important disputes. This social experiment seemed to explore the power of luck in a society, creating one of the most surprisingly peaceful and egalitarian Vaults in the entire series.
Appropriately, Vault 21 was eventually won by Robert House himself in a high-stakes Blackjack game, officially opening its doors to the outer wasteland for the first time in 200 years. Ever the capitalist, House soon turned the Vault into a high-class luxury resort where New Vegas travelers could book a stay for the right price, offering a watered-down Vault experience for anyone with sufficient limits. With the New Vegas skyline looming in the distance over Hank MacLean at the end of Fallout season 1, Vault 21 could be one of the most likely Vaults in gaming to appear.
7 Vault 22
Fallout: New Vegas
Although only a direct neighbor of Vault 21, the results of Vault 22's experiment were far more disastrous. Hidden deep in the Mojave Desert, Vault 22 was created to study the long-term effects of genetically modified agriculture, tasking its residents with maintaining huge gardens of biologically modified plants. The idea of a paradise abundant with plant-based options is a tantalizing prospect for any wasteland survivor, but the reality of Vault 22's situation in Fallout: New Vegas in the Fallout timeline is very different.
Not housing a civilian population, the scientists residing in Vault 22 were eventually overcome by a deadly fungal strain, Beauveria mordicana. Similar to the cordyceps virus of The Last of Us fame, this mutant strain eventually took control of the plants and human life residing in Vault 22, resulting in horrific new plant-like creatures and spore carriers that quickly spread across the Mojave Desert. The overgrown Vault would be a colorful pit stop for Lucy and The Ghoul to explore on their way to New Vegas.
6 Vault 43
A man and a box of puppets
Some of the wildest experiments to come out of the Vaults of Vault-Tec are courtesy of the canonical mini-comic One Man, and a Crate of Puppets. Released alongside Fallout 3's debut on the game's official website in 2008, the comic was written by none other than the minds behind the famous gamer webcomic Penny Arcade, working alongside Fallout 3's lead designer. Although the comic focuses on the story of the sole survivor of Vault 77, it offers some brief glimpses of other Vaults.
Vault 43 is one of the most hilarious experiments the company has ever tried to understand. Seeded with a low number of inhabitants, the Vault was inhabited by 20 men, 10 women and a live panther. Living with such a dangerous creature in close proximity Life of Pi style may have been the basis for the experiment, but what information Vault-Tec could hope to glean from the Vault is a total mystery. If Season 2 were to include Vault 43, it would be a big step towards officially canonizing the promotional content.
5 Vault 69
A man and a box of puppets
Another Vault mentioned briefly by One Man, and a Crate of Puppets, the childish humor of Vault 69's number designation seems to be an ironic reference to its great experiment. The Vault was designed to test the ability of a single man to repopulate a society in decline, with 999 women and only a single man. It's not known what happened to the Vault after the time of the webcomic, and while following up a nearly 20-year promotion isn't high on Fallout season 2's list of priorities, even a subtle mention of the Vault would go a long way.
It's worth mentioning that Vault 69 also had an inverted counterpart, Vault 68. This Vault was inhabited by 999 men and a single woman, pointing to a much darker outcome. However, Vault 68 is only mentioned in the Fallout Bible, a collection of discarded documents and knowledge ideas that never made it into the games, presented in an informative book. The ideas presented in the Fallout Bible have been confirmed as non-canonical by author Chris Avellone.
4 Vault 77
A man and a box of puppets
The main Vault of One Man, and a Crate of Puppets, Vault 77 was created to test the human spirit's ability to withstand psychosis when deprived of real human interaction. Seeded with only a single resident, the only companions the sole inhabitant of Vault 77 had were a box of puppets. Eventually, the isolation drove Vault 77's Puppet Man mad, developing personalities for each of the puppets. The Puppet Man would find a way to escape his isolation and set off alone into the desert, with the puppets in tow.
In Fallout 3, it is implied that the Puppet Man from Vault 77 has become a kind of mythical figure, his jumpsuit treated with extreme reverence as if it were a sacred object. The slavers in possession of the Vault 77 suit seem to fear the return of the original owner, implying that the Puppet Man, or at least someone wearing his clothes, was a force to be reckoned with. The empty corridors of Vault 77 could be an interesting refuge for Lucy and The Ghoul in Season 2, since the precise location of the Vault is never specified.
3 Vault 108
Fallout 3
Few Vaults have been presented in such harsh conditions as Vault 108. Designed to test the effects of leadership conflicts, Vault 108's Overseer was a terminally ill man. As if that wasn't enough, the Vault was stripped of any entertainment devices, had its power systems designed to purposely fail after 20 years and provided residents with triple the amount of standard weaponry. Somehow, the result of this powder keg of volatile variables resulted in one of the strangest outcomes for any Vault.
Along with the large weaponry supplied to Vault 108 was a cloning device, capable of generating copies of a human being. In the inevitable chaos that resulted from Vault 108's experiment, a single resident known as Gary gained access to the device, cloning himself several times. The result was a society of savage Gary clones who attacked any being other than Gary in sight at the time of Fallout 3, capable only of saying his own name. The Vault's location on the east coast may block it from Fallout season 2, but a lost Gary finding his way west would not go unnoticed.
2 Vault 106
Fallout 3
Vault 106 has the rare distinction of being one of the few Vault experiments to be mentioned directly in Amazon's Fallout program. During the clandestine Vault-Tec meeting, Frederick Sinclair, owner of the Sierra Madre casino and a key executive at defense contractor Big MT, presents the idea of a Vault in which psychotropic drugs are pumped through the air supply. This turned out to be a real Vault that players could explore in Fallout 3, and his experiment had disastrous consequences for its citizens.
Immediately upon entering the Vault, the Fallout 3 player character has their vision flooded with blue lights and hallucinations from their childhood, manifesting as enemies that can cause very real damage. The few survivors of the Vault's population also infest the area, having gone mad long ago due to prolonged exposure to the psychoactive mists. Another east coast location, Vault 106 may yet appear via flashback in the second season of Fallout, having already been practically mentioned by Sinclair himself.
1 Vault 112
Fallout 3
Instead of wasting time in the real world, the mad superintendent of Vault 112, Dr. Stanislaus Braun, had more digital plans for his experiment in the Vault. The residents of Vault 112 were kept in a state of suspended animation, their brains uploaded into an idyllic virtual recreation of a pre-war American suburb known as Tranquil Lane. The practical applications of the experiment were scarce, being yet another favorite project of the disturbed Dr. Braun.
In Fallout 3, Vault 112 turns out to be a critical stop in the main story, the player character's father becoming trapped in Tranquility Lane after stumbling upon the experiment. Once again, the Capital's desert location puts Vault 112 a long way from Fallout's west coast location. But thanks to the virtual reality nature of the Vault, there's a chance that Lucy, The Ghoul or Maximums could "enter" the Vault via some kind of long-distance hack in Fallout Season 2.