What is it that you think of when you think of the Fallout games? Is it the scorched, blasted world in all of its desolate glory? Is it the ridiculous gore which makes Skyrim's decapitations look like something from Reading Rainbow? Is it that time that you blew up Megaton, just for a laugh, or robbed that trader before turning him into a pile of dust? For me, one of the things that I always think of are the games' secrets. It's not exactly new for developers to utilize their open worlds to bury a metric megaton of secrets, but Fallout does them exceptionally well. It does this by tending to keep them locked in the game's aesthetic. You have the beauty and efficiency of the faux-1950s world which went all Dr. Strangelove, and the savagery and dog-eat-dog (sometimes literally) world which replaced it.

Whether you want to talk about a door with an exceptionally rude welcome mat, a wasteland serial killer, the option to make yourself essentially a vegetable, the desirability formula in Fallout 2, an Indiana Jones moment gone wrong, or many more, the series is chock full of hidden depths for you to explore. This has been a consistent theme among all the games. Even in the CRPG days, the games beat almost all its rivals when it came to content. Now, there's only a handful of franchises which could even hope to compete with Fallout's vaults of hidden content. With no further ado, let's start the list!

25 Fall(out) Damage Begone!

[Via gosunoob.com]

You ever wished every game could be Portal 2? Me neither, but there is something I’d like to pilfer from Portal 2 and insert into just about every game – its lack of fall damage. Luckily for us, in Fallout 4, you can find an item that lets you do just that. The item, called the Freefall Legs, was invented by Jack Rockford just before the beginning of the great war, but he was locked away from his new armor, which can be found in the Mass Fusion building.

To get to them, you’re going to exploit physics, clutching an item and backing into the wall. This will eventually allow you to exploit your way up to the room where the boots can be found. Equip them, and fall damage need never bother you again. Hop, skip, and jump your way from the highest heights, and enjoy baffling your enemies!

24 Turns Out It Doesn’t Work In Real Life

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Do you remember that scene from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which saw your friend and mine, Dr. Jones, survive a nuke thanks to a fridge? By climbing inside the lead-lined fridge, he was able to survive not only the radiation, but the blast wave. I guess some unfortunate dweller of the Mojave saw that film and decided to take it as inspiration when the bombs dropped. Sadly, it didn’t work out too well for them.

Southwest of Goodsprings Cave, you can come across this unfortunate soul, still in their chilly casket. Their hat gives you a perception boost, so feel free to grab it. I’m pretty sure that Indiana Jones, a man with a penchant for looting ruins, would approve.

23 The Reason Behind The Mannequins

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Another unmissable part of Fallout 4 are the mannequins. Why, oh god, why, are there so many of these dummies all over the Commonwealth? Giving out flashbacks to Doctor Who’s Autons aplenty, they can be found doing all kinds of extremely un-mannequin like activities. For example, you can find a trio menacing a corpse in a bathtub. You can find some apparently caught mid-fight with each other. Some are just creepily standing around. The weirdest part is that there’s no real explanation as to why they’re there. They just are.

Some have suggested they’re used as decoys to draw enemy fire, but that wouldn’t explain, for example, the trio around the bathtub. Others have said that they could be a reference to I Am Legend, which I’d buy, but why not lampshade it a bit more? Either way, Bethesda, please, no more mannequins.

22 Where Everyone Knows Your Gone

[Via fallout.wikia.com]

For people of a certain age, Cheers is one of the strongest cultural links to Boston. The bar, with its colourful cast of regulars meandering through life, has gone down in TV history. It seems only right that it’s enshrined in Fallout 4’s Commonwealth too. Near Swan’s Pond, you can find a set of steps winding their way down into a basement. Make your way down there, and you’ll discover that show regulars Norm and Cliff were sat at the bar when the bomb dropped, while everyone’s favourite shrink, Frasier Crane is propped up by the door.

What’s the name of the bar? Prost, the German word used to toast your buddies! I can think of far worse ways to go into the nuclear hellfire than drinking with your friends.

21 You Won’t Get A Deal Like This Anywhere Else

[Via fallout.wikia.com and lifer226/Youtube.com]

I know how easy it is to feel antipathy towards Vault-Tec, and honestly, the company higher-ups deserve it. What about the low level employees though, like the salesman we meet at the beginning of Fallout 4? Do they deserve our pity? As you’ll find out if you go to the Hotel Rexford, he, in particular, certainly does.

Despite working for Vault-Tec, this guy didn’t get into one of their vaults, and found himself turned into a ghoul by the blast. Two hundred years later, he’s morose and completed his butterfly-like transformation into a fully pathetic figure. He was trying to win a set of steak knives as part of a company-wide promotion. That’s possibly the worst reason to be condemned to wander the wastes for eternity that I’ve ever heard.

20 Attack Of The Grannies!?

[Via fallout.wikia.com and vgfacts.com]

So I bet you thought I was done talking about Monty Python references huh? Well, in Fallout: New Vegas, there are two more, one which references my favorite sketch of all time. Firstly, in the basement of the church at Camp Searchlight, you can find three holy frag grenades, each of which detonates with the power of a mini nuke, and which tactically reminds us to count to three, not five.

The second reference, and my favorite, is the strange gang which can sometimes attack you in-game. This is a gang made up not of young guys in Roman cosplay, or the NCR’s military getup – they wear pink dresses and grey bobs. Maud’s Muggers, as they’re known, are old women, who tear at you wielding knives and bats, referencing a Flying Circus sketch about Hells Grannies, a bunch of motorbike-riding tearaway elders. Watch out for the Keep Left signs too.

19 Andale, Andale!

via YouTube.com (Steady Eddie)

The small, apparently ideal little town of Andale, known as the “greatest town in Virginia” holds a dark secret that’s easy to miss without investigation. The town survived the war without as much damage as the rest of the wasteland, and plays host to four families. However, the problem of food scarcity is universal, and once food ran out, the families turned to…unconventional sources. By which I mean human parts. Outsiders are routinely slaughtered for meat. If you refuse to keep their secret, the villagers will turn hostile, and attempt to turn you into literal shish kebab.

The town with a dark secret has been explored in other Bethesda games too. In Oblivion, you can come across the village of Hackdirt, where the seemingly normal villagers worship Daedra and have warped underground neighbours who hate outsiders with a passion.

18 Not Quite Antioch

[Via gamebanshee.com and nerdist.com]

If you can get past the now ropey graphics and its aged interface, there’s a whole heap of fun to be had in the original Fallout games. Fallout 2, in particular, is full of more cultural references than you could shake a Fat Man at. One of my favorites is the special encounter you can have with the heavily-armed Knights of King Arthur. At the location, you’ll find King Arthur surrounded by men in power armor, who will ask if you saw their Holy Hand Grenade.

You can come across them fighting a rat later in the game, a reference to the scene in The Holy Grail where the knights battle the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog. If you wait until they’ve been dealt with, you can grab the Holy Hand Grenade, and all its explosive power, for yourself.

17 Unidentified Grounded Object

[Via fallout.wikia.com]

The 1950s wouldn’t have been the 1950s without the huge amount of sci-fi which came about thanks to Cold War paranoia. It seems only fitting that the Fallout games continued this grand tradition. In Fallout 3, near the MDPL-13 power station, you can find a crashed and abandoned UFO, and next to it, a dead alien. At this site, you can also find the Alien Blaster, a weapon which crits every time, and can kill anything in the game with a single headshot.

While the alien secret was made explicit in the Mothership Zeta DLC, which saw the Lone Wanderer abducted by extra-terrestrials, as well as a spacewalk, the single UFO in the base game offered a tantalizing hint to players that the wasteland wasn’t ALL we would get.

16 Is That Plant Singing, Or Is The Radiation Getting To Me?

via imgur.com

I’m willing to bet that if you’ve played the Fallout games you’ve probably also played The Elder Scrolls series, right? Well, if you have, you’re probably au fait with the glowing blue plant Nirnroot, a rare potion ingredient, which, in Oblivion, had a habit of singing. Did you know that you can find an extremely similar plant in Fallout 4, suggesting that they may actually take place in the same universe? Wander on to the Brotherhood of Steel’s flagship, the Prydwen, and you’ll find a hydroponic lab growing a variety of plants. One of the plants stands out in particular, bearing blue leaves and going by the name “experimental plant.”

Makes you wonder how the elves, Argonians, Orcs, and Khajit survived the apocalypse really, doesn’t it?

15 It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

[Via gamesradar.com]

Well, isn’t this seasonal! If you pay close attention in Fallout 4, you’ll find that the survivor was unfrozen and booted out into the wasteland on October 23, 2287. If you wait until Christmas day, then pay a visit to Diamond City, you’ll be in for an enchanted surprise. The buildings boast Christmas trees and lights, and the guards now greet you with a merry (for Fallout) salutation of “Ho [REDACTED] Ho.”

The Commonwealth may not be that happy a place, but even they need to let off some steam and celebrate the holidays. Well, holiday. New Years, Halloween, and Easter etc aren’t celebrated, but they couldn’t forget the big one. I hope I find a Deathclaw Gauntlet or a Big Boy under the tree.

14 Jurassic Bark: Part Deux

[Via es.fallout.wikia.com]

Futurama had a fair few emotional moments, but none moreso than the episode “Jurassic Bark,” which saw Fry’s faithful dog waiting for his return, never to come. It’s one of those episodes which will reduce a grown man (okay, me) to tears. Well, the devs of Fallout: New Vegas decided that we hadn’t had enough tears, so we needed to be reminded of that god damn moment again in the Lonesome Road DLC.

Wend your way into the Cave of Abaddon, and you’ll find a fossilized dog, going by the name of Seymour. As well as sharing the namesake of Fry’s hound, he also shared the same fate, getting enrobed in stone, only to be found years later. Next to him, you’ll find the body of Sunflower Summers, who was his owner, presumably.

13 Down To A Sunless Sea

[Via nexusmods.com]

If you’ve explored much in Fallout 4, you can’t have failed to see the huge wreck of Skylanes Flight 1981. Sitting between two huge slabs of rock, the flight was hit by the shockwave of one of the atom bombs which fell that morning, and broke into a bunch of smaller pieces. The plane is far from inconspicuous, that isn’t the secret here. What is the secret is that you can enter the plane’s wreckage, if you so choose, and listen to the black box recording.

While there evidently wasn’t much time for the pilot, crew, or passengers to worry, it’s still a haunting listen, with the pilots getting increasingly worried as the situation becomes clearer. The plane also contains a hidden compartment containing chems and weapons under the cockpit.

12 The Formula Behind Desire

[Via videogamingbear/youtube.com]

So the old CRPGs like Fallout 2 and Baldur’s Gate tended to have formulae for just about everything. One of these formulae is a pretty interesting one, literally calculating how desirable your character is. To do this, the game would take charisma, agility, strength, and, ahem, endurance, multiplies them, and divides them by 100. Traits and other modifiers are then added, and the final score is calculated, indicating just how desirable your character is.

This formula came about due to an experience with dating that developer Tom French had. According to French, the girl he was seeing had also been into another guy, who French described as “much better looking.” From this, he decided that charisma had to play a big part in attraction, and factored it into the game’s formula.

11 Gonna Need A Bigger Boat

[Image via dorkly.com]

Seeing as how Fallout 4 is a game that doesn’t so much base itself in but also scream “Massachusetts,” it’s no surprise that the game features a Jaws easter egg. Just north of the Salem Museum of Witchcraft, you can come across a boat called the Orca, named for Quint’s boat in the movie. On the deck, you’ll find a huge mutant river dolphin with its jaws clamped around the waist of a chap who looks an awful lot like Quint. He’s even dressed in the same blue shirt. Take a look underneath the boat, and you’re in for another surprise. Floating beneath the boat, you’ll find a battered and broken diver’s cage, like the one Hooper used in the movie during his vain attempt to poison the shark.

10 Weird Art

[Via fallout.wikia.com]

So let’s talk about serial killers in the Commonwealth. As far as I’m concerned, there are basically two: you (yes, you, specifically,) and Pickman. Now, at least you’re just killing people to survive and probably for some sweet loot. Pickman is killing people for a much weirder reason. He’s killing people because he wants to use their bodies to make art. I would have thought that a box of watercolors and some paintbrushes would have been easier, but Pickman uses flesh and blood to make bizarre sculptures and paintings.

The aim of his quest is to put him out of commission, and stop his sick hobby once and for all. If you’re not squeamish, you can also steal his knife, which causes bleeding damage and is a pretty effective melee weapon.

9 A Little Bit Of Leatherface Is All I Need

[Image via fallout.wikia.com]

You ever seen the Texas Chainsaw Massacre? If you have, you’ll never forget the haunting visage of Leatherface, who wears a mask made of sewn together faces. If you want, you can steal his look and get a similar vibe in Fallout 3. If you decide you want to side with the ghouls who live under Tenpenny Tower, rather than evicting them with violence, you’ll be given a sewn-together ghoul mask, which prevents feral ghouls from attacking you. Now, there’s a few things that make me uncomfortable about this.

Firstly, it looks horrifying. Secondly, can you imagine what wearing one of these would be like? It’s making my skin crawl. Lastly, and most horrifyingly, is that some poor ghoul had the job of sewing together faces of their compatriots into a mask. Absolute nightmare fuel.

8 Hear The Lamentation Of Their Mutants

[Image via Noise/Youtube.com]

While wandering across the Commonwealth, you’ll find scattered issues of the comic Grognak The Barbarian. Apparently a smash hit, this thinly-veiled Conan ripoff is everywhere. The comic’s publishers, Hubris Comics, are also based in Boston, so why not pay them a visit? If you go to their headquarters, west of Swan’s Pond, and fight your way to the top of the building, you’ll be in for an awesome surprise.

You’ll find a skimpy Grognak outfit, allowing yourself to maraud around the landscape in style. There’s also Grognak’s axe, and this isn’t made of plastic, it’s a real weapon. The attacks from this battleaxe stagger enemies and make them take bleed damage, and only uses as much AP as a combat knife. Go out there and live that Grognak dream.

7 Making Your Pip-Boy A Game & Watch

[Via imgur.com]

Fallout’s pre-war world was a strange place. Even though they had a bunch of Jetsons-esque tech, like robot servants, their gaming tech had apparently only just reached Donkey Kong before the nukes started to fall. When you wake up, you go visit Vault 111’s recreation area, and play a holotape with the game Red Menace etched into its magnetic tape. The game is a Donkey Kong clone, with a berobed enemy reminscient of the Spy vs Spy duo, but wearing a Chinese flag, lobbing bombs at you.

The aim of the game is for Pip Boy to rescue Pip Girl, who’s stranded just past the anthropomorphic Chinese flag. There’s also a couple of other retro games in Fallout 4, including Missile Command (apt), Pitfall, and Space Invaders.

6 A New Game: The Mojave Or Tatooine?

[Image via vgfacts.com]

If there’s one thing we’ve learned so far, it’s that the Fallout series LOVES its cultural references. In Fallout: New Vegas, during your very first encounter with Caesar’s Legion, there’s one that I’ve somehow managed to miss until my most recent playthrough. When you encounter the Legion at Nipton, they’ve just finished putting the town to the sword, conducting a lottery to decide if you’ll be killed, and how.

Lying face down in the dirt, you can come across a pair of skeletons, bearing the names Owen and Beru. Just as with Luke Skywalker’s adoptive parents, they had been brutally ended in their desert dwelling. Unlike Luke however, you have no personal attachment to them, so feel free to loot them for any valuables. What? Don’t give me that look.