99 Fun Facts About Fallout 4

Fallout 4 launched in November 2015 for Windows and which consoles?

PS4 and Xbox One. Bethesda then opened both consoles to mods made by PC players, first on Xbox One and, after a delay, on PS4.

From which numbered vault does the Sole Survivor emerge?

The Sole Survivor emerges from Vault 111, the cryogenic vault on the hill above Sanctuary Hills, where residents were frozen in pods instead of living out their lives below ground.

Which faction does Preston Garvey ask the Sole Survivor to rebuild?

The Minutemen: Garvey promotes the Sole Survivor, a newcomer, to be their General, and the group can then retake its old base.

Fallout 4 opens on October 23, 2077, the day of which event in the series' timeline?

The Great War: the family reaches the vault with moments to spare, and the Sole Survivor walks out exactly 210 years later, on October 23, 2287.

The Commonwealth is Fallout's version of which real region?

Boston and Massachusetts: the state's formal title is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the game keeps that name for the ruins in and around the city.

What is the name of the Sole Survivor's kidnapped son?

Shaun, the infant taken from the spouse's cryo-pod, turns out to be Father, the elderly director of the Institute, which wanted his uncorrupted pre-war DNA.

Who shoots the Sole Survivor's spouse in Fallout 4?

Conrad Kellogg, a mercenary working for the Institute, shoots the spouse while taking the baby. After his death, Dr Amari uses an implant from his brain to let the player relive his memories.

Diamond City, the Commonwealth's largest settlement, is built inside which real landmark?

Fenway Park is the real home of the Boston Red Sox, and the ballpark still shapes the town: Diamond City's guards keep the peace in old baseball padding.

Which faction arrives in Fallout 4 aboard the airship Prydwen?

The Brotherhood of Steel flies in from the Capital Wasteland under Elder Arthur Maxson. Side with the Institute or the Railroad, though, and the player ends up destroying the airship.

In Fallout 4, what are the Institute's artificial humans called?

Synths: the newest models are all but indistinguishable from people, and the Institute uses them to replace residents of the Commonwealth it has abducted.

Which is the only mandatory companion in Fallout 4?

Dogmeat, the German Shepherd met at the Red Rocket truck stop, is the one companion the main quest requires: he tracks the mercenary's scent during the quest Reunions, and was modelled on a real dog named River.

Which companion is an Institute Courser?

X6-88 is the Institute Courser, an elite retrieval unit, who can be recruited as a companion after the Sole Survivor joins the Institute and helps him recover a runaway at the raider base Libertalia.

Which companion can be romanced only after moving from a robot into a humanlike body?

Curie is a lab robot found locked in a secret wing of Vault 81, where she worked on a cure for every disease. She asks for the new body herself, wanting to become more human.

What does a companion who idolizes the Sole Survivor grant?

A unique perk, earned when the companion's affinity score reaches 1,000. Actions they approve of raise it, and if it sinks far enough they walk out for good.

Fallout 4's perk chart took the place of which system from earlier Fallout games?

Skills are gone: each level-up brings one point to spend on the chart, so opening a Master lock or hacking a Master terminal now takes ranks in Locksmith and Hacker.

Power armour in Fallout 4 must be fed with what to run efficiently?

Power armour runs on Fusion cores, which drain with use and can be pulled from generators or bought from vendors; the suits were redesigned to feel like vehicles and can mount a jet pack.

Which convenience is disabled when playing on Survival difficulty?

Survival difficulty disables Fast travel and manual saving, adds hunger, thirst and sleep needs, and raises damage in both directions; the revamped mode arrived as a free update in 2016.

What does V.A.T.S. stand for?

V.A.T.S. is the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System, which slows time so the player can queue shots at specific body parts; each queued shot drains Action Points.

Fallout 4 was the first game in the series to feature what?

A fully voiced protagonist, so every reply is spoken aloud. Bethesda did not repeat the experiment: its next big single-player game, Starfield, went back to a silent hero.

Which studio, maker of Doom, helped Bethesda with Fallout 4's gunplay?

id Software, Bethesda's sister studio and maker of Doom, advised on Fallout 4's shooting so that real-time gunplay felt as solid as a dedicated shooter's rather than a fallback, as it had in Fallout 3.

Fallout 4 runs on which game engine?

The Creation Engine is less new than it sounds: it was built on Gamebryo, the engine behind the two previous Fallout games, and keeps much of its framework.

Bethesda said Fallout 4 out-talked Fallout 3 and which other game combined?

Skyrim: Bethesda counted just over 111,000 recorded lines. Yet players choose each reply from a few paraphrased words, and modders soon put the full lines back on screen.

How did Bethesda tease Fallout 4's reveal trailer?

A website countdown: it appeared the day before, and the trailer went out as it hit zero. Gameplay followed eleven days later at Bethesda's E3 press conference.

Bethesda valued the Fallout 4 copies it shipped for launch day at roughly what?

$750 million, Bethesda said, for 12 million copies, a little over $60 each. The figure counted copies shipped to shops, and the publisher did not say how many players had actually bought one.

Whose Steam record for concurrent players in a non-Valve game did Fallout 4 break at launch?

Grand Theft Auto V had taken the mark from Bethesda's own Skyrim earlier that year. Fallout 4 won it back with more than 440,000 people playing at once on launch day.

Fallout 4's collector's edition included a wearable replica of what?

The Pip-Boy Edition shipped with a wearable plastic Pip-Boy that held a smartphone running the companion app, mirroring the in-game wrist computer on a second screen.

Which two ceremonies gave Fallout 4 their top prize?

The D.I.C.E. Awards and BAFTA Games Awards both gave Fallout 4 their top prize in early 2016. The Witcher 3 had beaten it at The Game Awards and won again at the developers' own ceremony.

Which voice actor plays both Codsworth and Nick Valentine?

Stephen Russell voices both Codsworth, the Mister Handy butler, and Nick Valentine; he had earlier played the master thief Garrett in the original Thief games.

Which was the first add-on released for Fallout 4, in March 2016?

Automatron, released in March 2016, lets players build and customise their own robot companions, then sends them after the Mechanist, whose machines have been attacking caravans across the Commonwealth.

In a Fallout 4 add-on, the captive Jezebel is which model of machine?

A Robobrain runs on a preserved human brain. The Rust Devils hold Jezebel captive, and she trades what she knows about the Mechanist's hideout for the promise of a new body.

Far Harbor is set on a fictionalised version of which real place in Maine?

Far Harbor's island is a version of Mount Desert Island, home of Acadia National Park; the town stands in for Bar Harbor, and Acadia appears as the fog-bound refuge run by DiMA.

In Far Harbor, the Valentine Detective Agency sends the player to find a missing girl named what?

Kasumi Nakano, who fled her parents' coastal home believing she might not be human, is traced to DiMA's colony at Acadia; her parents Kenji and Rei hire the agency to bring her back.

In Nuka-World, what title does the player inherit by killing Colter at the end of the Gauntlet?

Overboss: Colter had grown idle in the job, so the three raider gangs used the Gauntlet to find someone able to kill him. The winner inherits the title and the gangs with it.

Which Nuka-World raider gang works like an organised-crime outfit, in it chiefly for the money?

The Operators, led by Mags Black, want wealth above all. A player who runs the park finds that whichever gang they neglect most turns on them and seizes its power plant.

Fallout 4's three Workshop add-ons all expanded what?

Settlement building: Wasteland Workshop added cages for capturing live creatures, from cats to Deathclaws, and arenas where the catch can be made to fight.

Fallout 4 VR officially supported only which headset at its December 2017 launch?

The HTC Vive, whose maker first billed the game as an exclusive. Bethesda replied that it arrived first on Vive but wanted as many platforms as possible, and HTC withdrew the word.

Which mobile spin-off, in which you manage a vault as Overseer, launched for iOS in June 2015?

Fallout Shelter was announced at Bethesda's E3 2015 press conference and released on iOS the same day. The free-to-play game had grossed $100 million by June 2019.

Fallout's dog companion, dating to the 1997 original, was inspired by the dog in which film?

Mad Max 2 gives its drifter hero a dog, and the 1997 game nods to the film: the stray in Junktown follows any player wearing a leather jacket, as his dead owner did.

Nick Valentine's mechanical body carries the preserved memories of whom?

A pre-war police detective, also named Nick Valentine: the Institute loaded the man's recorded memories into a prototype, and the machine now runs a detective agency in Diamond City.

A class-action lawsuit over the Fallout 4 Season Pass objected to the later arrival of what?

The Creation Club, a store of paid extras, arrived in 2017. The 2019 suit quoted Bethesda's pledge that the pass would 'get you all of the Fallout 4 DLC we ever do' for one price.

The Institute grew out of which pre-war academic body?

Commonwealth Institute of Technology staff and students took refuge beneath it when the bombs fell. Over the generations their shelter was dug ever deeper under the campus, and what was built there became the Institute.

Which Fallout 4 companion is a Diamond City newspaper reporter?

Piper prints her own newspaper with her sister's help, and her criticism of the mayor got her thrown out of town. She is one of 13 companions in the base game.

How does the Sole Survivor's family get its place in the vault?

A salesman signs them up: the Vault-Tec rep knocks on the door in Sanctuary Hills that same morning. When the bombs fall, the family runs for the vault and is tricked into cryogenic pods.

Which former Institute scientist supplies the schematics for the teleporter into the Institute?

Brian Virgil fled the Institute and hides in a cave in the irradiated Glowing Sea. In return for his help he asks the player to fetch a serum from inside the Institute.

Why is the Sole Survivor's son an old man when found?

The surviving parent was refrozen: the kidnappers put them back into cryogenic suspension, and the pod opened again only 60 years later. The search for a baby started that late.

Series veteran Ron Perlman plays which small part in Fallout 4?

A TV newsreader: Perlman reports that the bombs are falling. The series' usual narrator does not voice the opening this time, and the husband, Nate, says 'War never changes' instead.

What did Fallout 4's new character creator replace the old series of sliders with?

A freeform sculpting interface replaced the sliders: the player drags each feature into shape at a bathroom mirror, while the spouse stands alongside and passes comment on the choices.

Who hosts Diamond City Radio in Fallout 4?

Travis Miles hosts Diamond City Radio with no confidence at all, until Vadim Bobrov of the Dugout Inn ropes the player into building him up through a bar fight and a rescue. His broadcasts change afterwards.

Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition reached which platform in February 2026?

Nintendo Switch 2 got it on February 24, 2026. The November release had broken many PC players' existing mods, and negative Steam reviews flooded in.

Which 1970s television superhero star voices Magnolia, the lounge singer at Goodneighbor in Fallout 4?

Lynda Carter, television's Wonder Woman, also wrote and recorded five original songs for the game, which Magnolia performs at the Third Rail bar.

Which singer sued Bethesda's parent company after his 1961 hit The Wanderer featured in Fallout 4 commercials?

Dion DiMucci said the adverts set his song against repeated killings in a dark, dystopian landscape, and demanded that they be taken down.

Which real warship, crewed by robots under Captain Ironsides, sits wedged atop a bank building in Fallout 4?

USS Constitution landed there after its robot crew fitted rocket engines to the 1797 ship and tried to fly it; the Sole Survivor can help them try again.

Which game beat Fallout 4 to the Game of the Year prize at The Game Awards in 2015?

The Witcher 3 won three awards that night, more than any other game, and also beat Fallout 4 in the role-playing category.

Which everyday objects serve as the standard currency of the post-war Commonwealth in Fallout 4?

Bottle caps work as money after the war because they are hard to counterfeit and few exist; traders usually just call them caps.

In the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system of seven character stats in Fallout 4, what does the letter C stand for?

Charisma sits fourth in the acronym, after Strength, Perception and Endurance and ahead of Intelligence, Agility and Luck.

Which real walking route, marked in red brick, leads the Sole Survivor to the Railroad's hideout in Fallout 4?

The Freedom Trail in the game ends at the Old North Church, where a spinning seal in the catacombs opens the way in once the right word is spelled out.

Which fedora-wearing gunman sometimes appears during V.A.T.S. in Fallout 4 to finish off an enemy?

The Mysterious Stranger vanishes before anyone can speak to him, but Nick Valentine reacts when he shows up and keeps an open case file on him.

Which towering pre-war robot is rebuilt in Fallout 4 to lead the Prydwen crew's assault on the Institute?

Liberty Prime first marched in Fallout 3; for the sequel its parts are carried in aboard the Prydwen and reassembled on a specially built gantry.

Which Bethesda director wanted Fallout 4 to show the world as it was before the bombs fell?

Todd Howard had the idea in 2009, when a small team began planning the game; full production had to wait until the studio's fantasy epic was finished.

The Sole Survivor's four-legged companion in Fallout 4, first met at a Red Rocket truck stop, is which breed?

German Shepherd River, a developer's pet, was the model: she sat in on team meetings, and the companion's brown eyes are copies of her own.

In which Fallout 4 town does the Sole Survivor find Preston Garvey's group trapped in a museum by raiders?

Concord built the museum to celebrate its part in starting the Revolutionary War; by 2287 a raider gang holds the main street outside.

Which reptilian predator bursts from the sewers during Preston Garvey's museum battle early in Fallout 4?

A Deathclaw announces itself with loud banging underground; luckily the player has usually just climbed into power armour and picked up a minigun.

In which suburban neighbourhood does the Sole Survivor's family live before the bombs fall in Fallout 4?

Sanctuary Hills stands on a small island reached by bridge; two centuries later the family robot is found there, tending the ruined street.

Codsworth, the Sole Survivor's robot butler in Fallout 4, is which model of household robot?

Mister Handy was the model the family bought before the war; Codsworth was refused a place in the vault and spent 210 years keeping house alone.

To which rank does Preston Garvey promote the Sole Survivor after the two join forces in Fallout 4?

General puts the player at the head of Garvey's militia, which goes on to retake its old fort and beat off an Institute attack.

Which Fallout 4 companion first appeared in Fallout 3 as the child mayor of Little Lamplight?

MacCready earned that post by punching the previous mayor in the face; by Fallout 4 he is a grown sharpshooter who has walked out on a mercenary gang.

Which injectable item is the standard way to restore lost health quickly in Fallout 4?

Stimpak injections also mend crippled limbs, and the syringe carries a small gauge showing how much medicine is left.

Which heavy weapon in Fallout 4 launches mini nukes and shares its name with a 1945 atomic bomb?

Fat Man was the codename of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki; the in-game launcher is sold as a hand-held catapult for portable nuclear bombs.

Which heavily irradiated region of Fallout 4's Commonwealth marks ground zero of a huge nuclear detonation?

The Glowing Sea is the largest zone poisoned by a single bomb anywhere in the series, yet people live there, in a village built around the crater.

Which cult, whose members revere radiation, occupies a former submarine base in Fallout 4's Far Harbor add-on?

Children of Atom call the base the Nucleus; its previous occupant let them settle there in return for guarding the old memories he left behind.

Which villain sends armies of hostile robots against settlers and caravans in a Fallout 4 add-on?

The Mechanist turns out to be Isabel Cruz, a young inventor who meant to protect people; shown what her machines did, she can be talked into retiring the persona.

Which everyday hair accessory does the Sole Survivor use up when picking locks in Fallout 4?

Bobby pins held hair in place before the war; afterwards they became lockpicks, turning up by the handful in suitcases and bathroom cabinets.

Which collectible figurines in Fallout 4 each give a permanent boost when the Sole Survivor picks one up?

Bobbleheads each raise one stat for good or grant another lasting bonus, and a display stand for them can be built at any home base.

The armoured mirelurks that haunt the Commonwealth's shores in Fallout 4 are mutated forms of which animals?

Crabs are their ancestors: the lore traces mirelurks to the horseshoe crab and the blue crab, and one companion says they were far smaller before the bombs.

Which rank does the companion Danse hold in the military faction based aboard the Prydwen in Fallout 4?

Paladin Danse is first met holed up in Cambridge with the last of his recon squad, and asks for help fetching an item from ArcJet Systems.

Which pulp radio hero can the Sole Survivor dress up as to fight crime in Goodneighbor in Fallout 4?

The Silver Shroud costume and hat are recovered from Hubris Comics for superfan Kent Connolly, who then asks the player to become the hero for real.

Which well-equipped mercenary army in Fallout 4 tattoos each member's blood type on the forehead?

The Gunners fly their own aircraft and field combat robots, and carried out the massacre at Quincy that scattered Preston Garvey's group.

The Castle, once the headquarters of Preston Garvey's militia in Fallout 4, is which real harbour stronghold?

Fort Independence was lost in 2240 when a sea creature overran it; winning it back also restores a radio transmitter that reaches the whole region.

Which Diamond City newspaper in Fallout 4 borrows the name of a real colonial paper shut down after one issue?

Publick Occurrences was the first multi-page newspaper in Britain's American colonies; it offended the governor in 1690 and was closed within days.

Which Elder, the last descendant of the order's founder, commands the airship Prydwen in Fallout 4?

Arthur Maxson appeared in Fallout 3 as a boy squire, having been sent east as an infant to be raised by the Elder of that chapter.

From which region, the setting of Fallout 3, does the airship Prydwen arrive in Fallout 4's Commonwealth?

The Capital Wasteland is the ruined Washington, D.C. of the earlier game; the main story of Fallout 4 picks up ten years after the events there.

Which hand-cranked energy weapon is the signature arm of Preston Garvey's militia in Fallout 4?

The laser musket is a home-made rebuild of a laser rifle: turning the crank charges jury-rigged capacitors, normally enough for a single shot.

By what one-word name do the Institute's scientists know their elderly director in Fallout 4?

Father was raised inside the Institute and rose to lead it; it was he who had the Sole Survivor released from the cryogenic pod, curious to see what they would do.

Who leads the Railroad from its hidden headquarters when the Sole Survivor first arrives in Fallout 4?

Desdemona, Dez to her agents, is wary of anyone who finds the hideout unaided, because earlier security breaches have made her cautious.

Which Super Mutant Behemoth lurks underwater on Fallout 4's city common, wearing armour made from pedal boats?

Swan was once Edgar Swann, an Institute worker used in its experiments; he spends most of the day submerged and walks the water's edge before dawn.

Which Fallout 4 heavy weapon lets the Sole Survivor load household clutter and fire it at enemies?

The Junk Jet was built by a mocked ArcJet Systems technician bent on revenge against his colleagues; it lies on a table in the rocket control room there.

Before the war in Fallout 4, what was the profession of Nora, the female version of the Sole Survivor?

Lawyer Nora graduated from the Suffolk County School of Law, while her husband Nate is a retired army veteran.

Which walled village in Fallout 4 makes every visitor sit the SAFE test before opening its gate?

Covenant uses the test to hunt for hidden androids among its visitors; those it flags may later be kidnapped and interrogated at a secret compound.

Which engine powered Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas before Bethesda changed technology for Fallout 4?

Gamebryo gave way to newer in-house technology with dynamic lighting, which lets any structure or item in the world cast a shadow.

A pre-order bonus for Fallout 4 on Windows added a robot-butler announcer pack to which Valve game?

Dota 2 is Valve's multiplayer battle arena game; the pack replaced its usual match announcer with the voice of the Fallout household robot.

Which actress, also Jack in the Mass Effect series, voices the female Sole Survivor in Fallout 4?

Courtenay Taylor had already played several minor characters in Fallout: New Vegas before returning to the series for this lead role.

Which composer, who also scored Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, wrote the music for Fallout 4?

Inon Zur is an Israeli-born American composer; his Fallout 4 score was shortlisted at The Game Awards in 2015 but lost to Metal Gear Solid V.

Which Goodneighbor brain specialist helps the Sole Survivor relive a dead mercenary's memories in Fallout 4?

Doctor Amari works at the Memory Den, where people go to relive their own past; she also quietly helps the Railroad give runaways new memories.

Which unique weapon, built by a bored Overseer, sits behind a Master-level lock in Fallout 4's opening vault?

The Cryolator sprays super-chilled nitrogen gas that eventually freezes most enemies; the lock cannot be picked at the start, so the player has to come back for it.

Which mob boss holds Nick Valentine captive in a vault beneath a subway station early in Fallout 4?

Skinny Malone leads the Triggermen gang and has an old rivalry with his prisoner, which is why he had him locked up rather than killed outright.

Which Diamond City mayor in Fallout 4, brother of the ghoul Hancock, is secretly an Institute agent?

McDonough won the 2282 election on a promise to remove ghouls from the city, and his own brother begged him in vain to call it off.

At which old army base does the Sole Survivor corner the mercenary who killed the spouse in Fallout 4?

Fort Hagen yields the cybernetic implant from the mercenary's brain, and as the player walks back out the airship Prydwen arrives overhead.

Which real soft-drink maker sold its own Nuka-Cola Quantum through Target stores to promote Fallout 4?

Jones Soda made the tie-in with Target and Bethesda in 2015, and came back with a Nuka-Cola Victory flavour when the Fallout TV series launched in 2024.

Which elderly member of Preston Garvey's group in Fallout 4 uses chems to trigger visions she calls the Sight?

Mama Murphy says the Sight lets her see past, present and future and sense people's life energy, but only while the chems last.