Fallout TV show sneaks in New Vegas lead designer's map of the setting

Fallout TV series key art
(Image credit: Amazon (Twitter))

It feels like we're going to be mining the Fallout TV show for new nuggets of information for years, kind of like the way people in the show's settlement of Filly survive by mining the sinking trash of their home. Here's an example: I only just realized it's called Filly because it's a landfill, not because it's Philadelphia. Forgive me, I'm Australian. This is why I need a map of Fallout's United States, which is conveniently the latest thing to be uncovered, hidden in plain sight on Fallout's TV incarnation.

The map appears behind the TV weatherman we see on the show, and it's clearly not a map of the United States as they are in our timeline. It's actually the version Fallout: New Vegas lead designer and project coordinator Josh Sawyer drew for his home-grown Fallout TTRPG, and he replied to a tweet pointing out the map's appearance on the show saying, "[me looking at this 20 years later] what fuckin dipshit drew this up".

What makes this map different is that it illustrates a USA where the states have coalesced into 13 super-states with names like Gulf, Plains, and Eastern. (Texas is just called Texas, though it has incorporated Arkansas.) This tracks with the American flag seen in the games, which only has 13 stars on it.

A second season of Fallout has been confirmed, and we've put together a list of things we'd like to see from its continuation. Mostly it's just Norm. Give us more Norm and we'll be happy. 

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.