Fallout is one of the biggest franchises in gaming, but it wasn't always that way. When the first game came out way back in 1997, it was an attempt by RPG veterans Black Isle Entertainment to break out of the conventions of the genre which had been dominated by sword and sorcery tropes (like DnD) for years. Fallout was a massive success for the company at the time, followed a few years later by its denser, tougher, weirder sequel, before languishing in limbo for a few years until being catapulted into the massive, console-and-pc juggernaut that is the modern 3d games, culminating in the divisive, action-heavy Fallout 4.
Whether you're a die-hard fan of the original games or never hit the series until the blockbuster success of Fallout 4, you've probably been swept up in the staggering depth and wall-to-wall weirdness of the post-apocalypse of Fallout. Black Isle and Bethesda have managed to cram a lot of stuff into each one of the games and I'm going to take you through what I think are some classic Fallout quests and hidden areas that you may not have come across in your first playthroughs. Since the fun of a lot of these is discovering them for yourself, I've omitted major details as much as possible while trying to be clear enough about what to do to trigger these events.
Most of the list will also be from Fallout 4 but don't take that to mean that it's got the most secrets of the series: each one is absolutely packed with things to do, so if you're a fan of the more modern games, you should definitely check out the older titles too!
25 Become A Comic Book Icon (Fallout 4)
Since Fallout is set in a world of the future where the 1950s never ended, there are a ton of little references to the 'silver age' of entertainment, like radio dramas and comic books. One place where both these things meet is in 'The Silver Shroud', Bethesda's take on the classic radio serial The Shadow. You can find Silver Shroud comics all over the world and listen to his adventures on the radio, but if you head to Goodneighbor you can take a more active role in the story.
A ghoul named Kent Connoly will send you after the authentic Silver Shroud costume used in the filming of the serials, located in an old comic book shop near Diamond City. It's not an easy fight to grab onto it and, when you return it to Kent, he decides to gift it to you as a reward. Now you can run around The Commonwealth as the fedora-wearing hero you always wanted to be
24 Man Your Battleship (Fallout 4)
The real USS Constitution is a tall ship anchored in Boston harbor. Fallout 4's USS Constitution has rocket engines bolted onto it, is sticking out of the side of a building, and is populated by robots constantly under assault by bandits. Go figure.
If you choose to help out the crew of the revolutionary battleship, you'll find yourself fending off waves of bandits while trying to repair the ship's engines. Succeed and you'll give the robot crew the freedom they've dreamed of for so long... for about twenty seconds, as the ship crashes into the building across the street immediately after launching. They seem pretty pleased with their progress, however, and you still get rewarded, so, to each their own, I guess.
23 It's Been A Long Time Coming (Fallout 4)
Nick Valentine is the best NPC in the Fallout series, period. He's a hard-boiled detective android voiced by Thief's Stephen Russel (what's not to like)? If you help Nick out on some of his old cases and travel with him for long enough, he'll open up his oldest cold case to you: the 200-year-old final moments of, human Nick Valentine's girlfriend by Boston gangster Eddie Winter.
It's a long quest, requiring travel to 9 police stations around the Commonwealth to gather as much evidence as you can. Then it's a pretty straightforward showdown with Eddie and his raider gang in an underground stronghold. Once that's done, enjoy a classic film noir coda with Nick and the ability to gain his final companion perk.
22 Become A Pro Arm Wrestler (Fallout 2)
Fallout 2 is one of the great video game sequels, taking the best ideas laid out by the original Fallout and digging deeper, creating a totally realized world and letting the character run amok in it. After F2, there was nowhere for the series to go but become the massive, 3d open world it has grown into.
This unmarked quest in Fallout 2 is a great example of the humor of the series. A super mutant named Francis is sitting at a table at a bar, looking for someone to beat him in an arm wrestle. Beating Francis requires a Strength of 9, one point below the max, 8 points in Endurance, and even a few points in Luck. Even with those stats, you might want to take some steroids to even the odds. If you win, you get a unique Power Fist. If you lose… just don't lose.
21 Messages In A Bottle (Fallout 4)
This unlisted quest in Fallout 4 is extremely difficult to find and I wouldn't advise making it your priority. Rather, I'd just keep an eye on where they are and looking for them when you find yourself in the area. The classic paper messages in glass bottles are littered all over the Commonwealth, and not in obvious places. They're mostly where you'd expect to find them, like on beaches or submerged in deep water. One is so deep you basically need a diving suit, or other item or perk, just to get to it.
Each one is a brief, often heartbreaking story, written by someone who is likely long dead. One is a reference to Die Hard, another gives hints at the location of some treasure, and one simply says "I'm screwed!" Finding all 6 leads you to a chest with gear appropriate to your level.
20 Discover The Lost Patrol (Fallout 4)
Back to Fallout 4 for a bit. While exploring, it's always worthwhile to check your radio for new signals. You'll not only find new tunes, but you'll get clues about nearby settlements and even find some quests this way. You may pick up a distress signal being sent by the remains of a Brotherhood of Steel recon unit that has been separated and mostly eliminated. You'll eventually follow the breadcrumbs to a special bunker locked behind an access code (a code you'll have acquired if you followed the quest there). Inside is a haggard old survivor of the lost patrol who can be convinced to rejoin the Brotherhood. He'll reward you with a unique laser pistol and the ability to see his sweet old man beard whenever you want.
19 Get Your Hands On This Machine (New Vegas)
New Vegas has a really cool stock of unique weapons and equipment available to the player. One of the coolest is "This Machine," a medium range rifle modeled after the famous M1 Garand. This Machine is chambered for .308 making it as powerful as a sniper rifle but usable in close quarters. Carved into the wood on the side of the gun is the phrase "well this machine [eliminates] commies" which is almost certainly a response to Woody Guthrie's famous "this machine [eliminates] fascists" which was carved into the side of his guitar.
This Machine is a reward for helping out Contreras, a supply officer working for the NCR in Camp McCarran. Contreras is running a little side action and, while not strictly legal, his supply of weapons, ammo, and equipment is worth turning a blind eye to.
18 Unraveling A Secret (Fallout 4)
While not what most people would think of as a horror game, compared to Resident Evil 7 or Alien: Isolation, Fallout has always had one foot in horror. The existential dread of nuclear annihilation, the zombie-like feral ghouls, and the upsettingly frequent twists, are definitely scary. This quest in Fallout 4 has some classic ghost story elements: an expedition to a lost city, a strange artifact, unnatural long life, supernatural powers, and, depending on your morality, a deal with the devil.
I won't spoil the details but it's a fun, Lovecraftian ride that can result in you freeing Lorenzo Cabot from his centuries-old prison and being offered a vial of his blood (a renewable serum that grants you superhuman strength). Or you can electrocute him from a distance, it's up to you.
17 Beauty And The Beasts (New Vegas)
If your only experience with Fallout is the recently released 4, you should really check out New Vegas. Developed by Obsidian Entertainment, a company famous for taking the bones of other games and making weird, complex, brilliantly written sequels or spin-offs, they took the framework of Fallout 3 and ran with it, adding tons of depth to a game with literal subterranean secrets.
In New Vegas, the Courier can arrive at Thorn, which is exactly like the arena in Thor: Ragnarok but sorely lacking a lipstick-wearing Jeff Goldblum. The owner, Red Lucy, will send the Courier on hunts to gather eggs she can use to breed animals to fight in the arena and will even pay the Courier to fight the beasts themselves. The reward is… unexpected, to say the least.
16 A Different Type Of Tag Sale (New Vegas)
The location marked Camp Searchlight has a terrible secret behind its pleasant-but-also-spooky name: the camp has been horribly irradiated, so much so that stepping foot inside means almost instant death by radiation and the air itself is so polluted that the whole town has a murky green fog over it. It's easy to just pass the Camp by but, unfortunately, the New California Republic has lost some soldiers to the radiation and needs their dog tags recovered. I guess the NCR doesn't leave a man behind, even if they've been horribly mutated into abominations.
Plunging into Searchlight is a nightmare of low visibility, oppressive radiation poisoning, and deadly feral ghouls. Finding nine of the ten dog tags is straightforward enough, you can easily loot them off the corpses of the dead, but the tenth, of course, provides a more complex moral dilemma...
15 Bring A Gunslinger Out Of Retirement (New Vegas)
One of the best things added by New Vegas is the expanded companion system, which allows the player to give simple commands to their buddies. This makes them more useful in combat which in turn makes you care about their stories. All the companion stories are worth seeing through but my favorite is the retired vaquero-turned-mechanic, Raul.
Raul's story is an amazing Mexican western odyssey of revenge and pain worthy of Robert Rodriguez. Once you've fulfilled the requirements, Raul can be convinced to put on his vaquero outfit and fight once again as a gunslinger, where he becomes one of the best combat-focused companions in the game. Raul is even voiced by Danny Trejo, so you can travel the Mojave with Machete himself by your side.
14 Ghouls In Space (New Vegas)
This is one of my favorite Fallout quests despite being little more than an errand run. It has some horror elements in the spooky Nightkin enemies, super mutants equipped with permanent stealth fields, and one thing missing from most of the quests in Fallout: hope.
The ghouls holed up in the REPCONN facility have a plan: use the adorable red and chrome rockets to launch themselves into space and escape the devastation of Earth forever. You can help or hinder them and, honestly, sabotaging their rockets so they crash immediately after launching might be more humane than letting them try their luck in space. However you feel about their chances, the enthusiasm of their leader, Jason Bright, is infectious and you get a hip, retro spacesuit for your troubles.
13 What's Cooking In The Casino? (New Vegas)
There's something suspicious about the White Glove Society who run the Ultra Luxe Casino in New Vegas, and it's not just their weird Eyes Wide Shut-style masks and outfits. When a rancher asks you to find out what happened to his missing son, Ted, he probably expects you to find him tipsy in a ditch somewhere on the strip, but the truth is much more alarming. (See the post title for a clue…)
This quest holds a special place in my heart because I actually stumbled on it, like all good RPG quests, by just messing around and exploring. While following my insatiable desire to pick every lock in the game, I arrived in the meat locker of the Ultra Luxe and discovered what happened to the rancher's boy…
12 Find The Oasis (Fallout 3)
Harold is a beloved recurring character in the Fallout series, appearing way back as a resident of The Hub in the original game. He's easily identified by the little twig growing out of his forehead, a side effect of the FEV mutation that turned him into a ghoul, which he calls 'Bob.' Bob and Harold run into the player a few more times, several generations later in Fallout 2, and finally in a secret area of Fallout 3.
Harold has lived a long, difficult life and by the time he encounters the Lone Wanderer in DC, Bob has grown so big that it's taken over Harold's body, turning the friendly old ghoul into a living, talking tree, the only one of its kind. You actually hear rumors about Oasis on the radio and seeing its greenery is pretty breathtaking after the hours spent in the post-apocalypse.
11 The Crashed Spaceship (Fallout 3)
Wander way up to the north of the Capital Wasteland for a while and you'll be lucky to see one of Fallout 3's strangest sites: the ditch left from a crashed flying saucer and its deceased alien pilot, Area-51-style. Finding it is a real pain, it's not marked on the map at all, and I only found it when, by random chance, I saw the ship fly over my head in flames and slam into the ground. If you're very close, you'll pick up an alien distress signal and get some minor radiation. In the wreckage is the Alien Blaster, one of the most powerful weapons in the game, and a few power cells for it. Use these sparingly: as far as I know, there is no way to get any more so once they're gone, they're gone.
10 The Mystery of Vault 106 (Fallout 3)
Easily the highlight of the Fallout series, for me, is exploring all the Vaults scattered around the various world maps of the games. The company of Vault-Tec may seem benevolent, providers of fine nuclear shelters to the American consumer, but many of the Vaults hold a sinister purpose: social, biological, and psychological experiments designed to study how humans behave in close quarters and under extreme stress. There are plenty of lists about the craziest vaults out there, but the experience of Vault 106 is unique due to the hallucinations the player experiences while exploring. I won't say more, it's worth investigating on your own.
9 The Replicated Man (Fallout 3)
The day Fallout referenced Blade Runner was the happiest day of my life. The Replicated Man quest actually isn't that hard to find, you get it from the science area of Rivet City, but completing it sends you all over the Capital Wasteland like a pip boy-wearing Harrison Ford/Ryan Gosling.
The best thing about this quest, though, is not hunting down an android who looks and feels human, but that the whole thing is one big preview of the main quest of Fallout 4. The battle between humans and 'synths' and the mysterious Institute was explored fully in F4, SEVEN YEARS after the release of Fallout 3.
8 The Rat God - Fallout 2
This is another example of the creativity that went into the early Fallout games and helped set them apart for all the fantasy RPGs of the time. A seemingly straightforward, even classic, RPG quest to go underground and eliminate a rat infestation becomes a weird and slightly sad tale in the world of Fallout.
Seems the mole rats besieging Trapper Town are being led by Keeng Ra'at, a huge, intelligent albino mole rat with the power of speech. When the Chosen One eliminates Ra'at, the infestation ends. Later in the game, the player can encounter Brain, Ra'at's brother, who mourns for the only other member of his kind but knows that Keeng was insane and had to be put down. Geeze, Fallout, sometimes it's okay to be generic. You don't have to break our hearts all the time.
7 Be A Lab Rat In Vault 81 (Fallout 4)
You'll probably find Vault 81 pretty naturally during your playthrough of Fallout 4, it's pretty close to Diamond City in the hills just outside Boston. It's cool to find a Vault in full working order. You can even get your haircut there! As with all the Vaults, this one does have a secret and it's not that the residents are all xenophobes (that's not a secret at all).
The secret is that the Vault was originally intended to be a testing ground to discover a universal cure for all diseases. When the original Overseer found out, she sealed the scientists in the secret, research area of the Vault where they worked until they perished. The player, following an addict who uses the secret area to hide his stash, can blow to lid off the secret and either help or screw over the Vault dwellers, in true Fallout fashion.
6 Sell The Artifacts Of Abraham Lincoln (Fallout 3)
The Museum of History in the Capital Wasteland of Fallout 3 is a treasure trove of artifacts from the world gone by, a hallowed place to remember the US as it was, before the bombs fell and wiped out almost all life on Earth. It's also a great place to loot to make a ton of caps.
This is another unmarked quest, meaning you have to pay attention to what people tell you to figure out who wants what, but you can find several items owned by Lincoln in the halls of the Museum and then sell them to a few people around the Wasteland. You may want to hold onto a few until you need the caps, though. Lincoln's repeater is a rifle chambered for .357, meaning it's a long range gun that hits like a magnum.