The show is apparently canon. It's not like the All Roads comic, Fallout Tactics, or the Fallout Bible where it's considered flavor materials and only elements of it are later added to the canon.
"We view what’s happening in the show as canon," Bethesda director Todd Howard told Vanity Fair. "That's what's great, when someone else looks at your work and then translates it in some fashion."
https://www.gamesradar.com/is-the-fallout-tv-show-canon-bethesda-games-todd-howard/
The show takes place in 2296 making it the furthest along we've seen the world of Fallout so it might gives us some leads on canon endings of Fallout 3, NV, and 4.
I've only watched through the show once but I am wondering what you felt were significant additions to the canon or lore of Fallout?
Here's some stuff I thought of:
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We knew there were Vault-Tec brand vaults in Canada following the annexation because of letters found in mailboxes outside of Vault 101 in Fallout 3 but a lot of people assumed this would be limited to major cities. Some people believed the settlement to the north mentioned in The Pitt DLC was a reference to Toronto and thought there might be a vault there. The map in one of the latter episodes seems to suggest there are a lot more vaults up there than people thought.
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I feel like there were enough references to the situation the Brotherhood of Steel is currently in with the early episodes to suggest what happened to them in the non-isometric games but I'd need to rewatch it to dig deeper. I don't know if there are mentions of their command structure or the Mojave chapter. Either would likely be a giveaway. I don't think the destruction of the Prydwen in Fallout 4 is out of the question. In Fallout 4 Captain Kells talks about the prior construction of airships on the West coast and Scribe Rothchild from Fallout NV mentions a rogue detachment of the Brotherhood of Steel that might be able to fill emerging power vacuums.
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Even with Shady Sands gone I feel like the NCR might still exist elsewhere. The population of the NCR according to a holotape in Fallout 2 is around 700,000 and with around 30,000 people in Shady Sands I feel like that means there were a lot of people outside this region. Unless this is being retconned. The whiteboard in the show, if I recall correctly, had a note that said the fall of Shady Sands was in 2277 which would have put it during Fallout 3 and before Fallout NV.
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I think it has finally been confirmed that Vault-Tec kicked off the nuclear war in some way like the cancelled Fallout film from back in the day originally wanted.
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New Vegas might may have been destroyed. It looks like it isn't lit up and the buildings have been further damaged.
I haven't played all of the more recent games. I'm much more familiar with 1, 2, and New Vegas^1^. Some additions I found interesting that might already be covered in game lore:
This show also kinda/sorta shows that a game with radically different starting points make for interesting storytelling in this setting. BoS squire, Enclave scientist, Vault dweller, and Ghoul wanderer all look like compelling backgrounds now.
^1^ - Yup, I skipped Tactics. But I did play Fallout Shelter for a bit, so there's no accounting for taste.
^2^ - I never did beat Fallout 1. I'm pretty sure Vault 33 is never going to logistically recover from this.
I have gone through a rollercoaster of opinions about Goggins shooting the weak spot on the T-60.
It was cool in the moment, but on reflection it makes no sense. A design and specific manufacturing flaw that stayed identical between multiple radically different designs is strange. It’s like a guy who drove an M-48 Patton tank talking about design flaws in the M1 Abrams.
But then I thought, Goggins did have that bandolier of different specialist ammo. What if he only had one extremely potent anti-armor round? He could make up some nonsense about the armor having a weak spot, shoot it, and then the BOS soldiers would be freaked out thinking that he had an advantage.
Which is a lot of head canon, but I like it.
And was this weak spot not present when fighting Maximus in Filly?.. Was Maximus wearing a different armor set, or was this a plot hole??
You’re absolutely right that the weak spot would be the same. Maximus was wearing T-60, and the design flaw was from the T-45s and apparently never fixed anyway.
I'm with you on this. In general I dislike nonsense in an otherwise grounded story. An effective bluff would have worked a lot better, both for lore, and for Cooper's character. Having him just go for the lights and mysteriously disable everyone's armor in the dark, ala Batman, would have also built Cooper up as more resourceful and sly.
But this scene in particular just screams "rule of cool" to me, and just further cements Cooper's terrifying reputation. 200 years in the wastes and he's practically an indestructible aimbot, and can hip-shoot a deadly accurate hole in damn near anything. They needed something to put him on even footing with power armor while sticking to the "man in black" gunslinger trope. And I have to say, it works.
Edit: I completely forgot. Cooper is, at his core, an actor. He doesn't even have that accent in the flashbacks, except for when he's on camera. One could argue that he got lost in the role some time back, but maybe he's just playing the part to survive. Considering this, a really damn-good bluff would absolutely be a better character moment than the other options.
Goggins be like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DaoMEdBHc4
The most mind blowing piece of new lore given by the show to me is that radroaches have teeth. Professor Head mentions them gaining incisors.
Yeah, someone really thought that one through. Chitin is only so tough and doesn't work on edible things at large scale - what's the sharpest lobster claw you've ever seen? Adapting to grow mineralized mouth parts ("teeth") is one of a few things that makes giant scavenger bugs plausible.^1^
I hope that munching on some power armor is the only point where that is relevant to the story.
^1^ - Lungs or gills are needed too since insect respiration is mostly passive and takes advantage of a bug's small size. FWIW, radscorpions are actually more plausible thanks to an organ known as book lungs.