GAME · 2008 · USA
Fallout 3
- Developer
- Bethesda Game Studios
- Publisher
- Bethesda Softworks
- Platforms
- Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3
54 archived facts 6 topics 2 sources Last reviewed Nov 2026
54 Interesting Facts About Fallout 3
Interesting Facts (11)
- #001
The glass pyramid at L'Enfant Plaza was demolished in 2013.
- #002
One of the few titles where you can use your hands, and you can punch your way through.
- #003
In one of his many broadcasts, President John Henry Eden states that he grew up in "rural Kentucky" and had a dog named "Honey." The town of Clarkson, Kentucky, hosts the "Clarkson Honeyfest" every year on the last Thursday, Friday and Saturday of September, celebrating the town's ties to the honey industry. It is known as Kentucky's Official State Honey Festival.
- #004
Adams Air Force Base, essentially the location where it takes place, is a real-life location.
- #005
Med-X was originally called morphine, but this small change was made so the game could receive an MA15+ rating in Australia; Bethesda later decided to use this edit in all worldwide versions. Ironically, this also fit the game's fiction, since real-world drugs had never appeared in the series and fictional names had always been used.
- #006
Many of the quest names in the game are taken from 1950s song titles.
- #007
The sound made when VATS is used is the same sound used at the beginning and end of combat in the original Fallout.
- #008
The quest 'Those!' is an obvious reference to the 1950s classic film Them! (1954).
- #009
During the quest to activate Project Purity, the Enclave takes over the scene. James, played by Liam Neeson, says, 'I don't know who they are, I don't know what they want.' This line mirrors Neeson's 'I don't know who you are, I don't know what you want' from Taken, released the same year.
- #010
Fallout: New Vegas (2010) was built on Fallout 3's source code, and a significant amount of Fallout 3 content that was not reused in New Vegas can still be found in the game files; these include items, weapons, armor, notes, robots, creatures, interior cells and architectural elements.
- #011
Inside the Citadel, in the hospital section, there is a robot doctor. When you encounter it, it greets you with 'please state the nature of the medical emergency'. This is the exact phrase used by the Emergency Medical Hologram (EMH), aka 'The Doctor', in Star Trek Voyager.
Production Story (14)
- #012
Fallout: New Vegas (2010) was built on the source code of Fallout 3, and a significant amount of leftover Fallout 3 content that wasn't reused in New Vegas can still be found in the game files, including items, weapons and armor, notes, robots and creatures, interior cells, and architecture.
- #013
The cars in the game are based on the nuclear-powered concept car the Ford Nucleon. That explains the radiation caused by their destruction.
- #014
Production for Fallout 3 started immediately after The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
- #015
Originally Med-X was called morphine, but to obtain an MA15+ rating (instead of being refused classification) in Australia they had to make this small change. Bethesda then subsequently decided to use this edit for all worldwide editions. Ironically, this worked in the game's lore, as there were never any real-world drugs within the series; they always had fictional names.
- #016
According to developer Joel Burgess, Bethesda's holding company ZeniMax Media rejected multiple offers from other companies wanting to work on Fallout 3, with the sense being that Bethesda had to make its own game.
- #017
Lead designer and writer Emil Pagliarulo wrote most of the main story for Fallout 3 early in development, then let other designers rewrite and suggest changes once the team expanded.
- #018
Bethesda kept Fallout 3 an in-house production and did not hire anyone who had worked on the original Fallout games, according to product manager Pete Hines. Hines said the studio's mindset was to treat Fallout 3 as if it had made the original games.
- #019
Bethesda developers later said they considered Fallout 3's shooting mechanics among the game's weaker elements; Burgess remarked that the studio had no first-person shooter experts and that the mediocrity of the shooting did not matter, which he said spoke to some of the ways they were successful.
- #020
According to Pagliarulo, the shift to the Washington metropolitan area came from the adage "write what you know", since Bethesda was based in Rockville, Maryland, near Washington, D.C.
- #021
Burgess wanted Washington, D.C. in Fallout 3 to be hard to explore, with tougher enemies and more radiation, and the game engine required the area to be divided into zones linked by the Washington Metro.
- #022
Playtesters often had trouble navigating the Metro and found the increased difficulty less enjoyable, and Bethesda dropped an attempt to remove the dividers between zones after Burgess said the initial test did not show promise. Burgess described the whole Washington, D.C. area as "the big mistake I feel I made on [Fallout 3]".
- #023
About six months before Fallout 3's release, Bethesda judged the map too small, since the barren wasteland setting made players notice locations too quickly compared with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, where mountains and trees hid distances. Bethesda therefore increased the map size by roughly 20 percent and spread out locations.
- #024
Inon Zur was influenced by post-apocalyptic films like Mad Max 2 and Vietnam War films like Full Metal Jacket when composing the music for Fallout 3.
- #025
Inon Zur said he wanted the music for Fallout 3 to sound as if it comes out of a boom box rather than something symphonic and heroic, because the technology in Fallout is low-tech and the sound helps represent that aspect.
Behind the Scenes (9)
- #026
The sound heard when a mini nuke is fired is that of the Bethesda lunch bell.
- #027
According to Emil Pagliarulo, Fallout 3's development reflected Bethesda's choice to work more collaboratively and let developers voice opinions, unlike the rigid process he described for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, where the original design document had to be followed regardless of feedback.
- #028
According to lead producer Gavin Carter, Fallout 3's karma mechanic was designed to show players the immediate consequences of their actions and to make them question whether they had chosen correctly. The player character's father, James, was created as a moral compass who would react to the player's earlier actions.
- #029
Executive producer Todd Howard wanted Fallout 3's combat to combine real-time and turn-based play, which led to the V.A.T.S. system; Howard stressed "cinematic" combat and Simonet added slow-motion effects when the player used V.A.T.S., inspired by the slow-motion car-crash replays of the Burnout series.
- #030
Fallout 3's map was originally comparable in size to the map in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Bethesda incorporated monuments from the Washington metropolitan area as visual landmarks to help players navigate, such as the Washington Monument visible in the distance when leaving Vault 101.
- #031
Late in Fallout 3's development, Bethesda found that no one had modeled the White House; lacking time to create another significant location, the studio instead showed the White House's remnants in a giant crater and explained it was one of the locations targeted by nuclear attacks.
- #032
To avoid overwhelming players with combat and to keep the map unpredictable, Bethesda spread out enemy encounters in Fallout 3 and added random encounters, such as contract killers attacking a character or a giant scorpion attacking a robot.
- #033
In an interview with Edge, Blindlight manager Lev Chapelsky said that former U.S. president Bill Clinton was jokingly offered a voice role in Fallout 3, but the offer was quickly turned down.
- #034
Hines stated that Bethesda would not have permitted Bill Clinton to voice a role in Fallout 3 even if he had accepted, and said the studio never named Clinton as its choice or instructed Blindlight to pursue him.
Characters & Cast (1)
- #035
Erik Dellums, who voices the Galaxy News Radio DJ Three Dog, made his movie acting debut in the Spike Lee movie "She's Gotta Have It" where he was credited as "Dog 3".
Easter Eggs & References (16)
- #036
A lot of the quest names are also the names of '50s songs.
- #037
Inside the Citadel, in the hospital bay, there is a robot doctor. Upon meeting him, he greets the player with the phrase "Please state the nature of the medical emergency." This is the same phrase used by the Emergency Medical Hologram (EMH) from Star Trek: Voyager, also known simply as "The Doctor."
- #038
When a Mister Gutsy robot is killed, his last words are that of the marching chant during the boot camp chapter of Full Metal Jacket (1987). Mister Gutsy is designed to have the personality of a gunnery sergeant.
- #039
Lesko from the quest Those! could be a reference to the character Lesko from Phase IV (1974), a movie about two scientists studying hyper-intelligent ants.
- #040
During one of his many broadcasts, President John Henry Eden states that he grew up in "rural Kentucky" and had a dog named "Honey". The town of Clarkson, Kentucky is host to the "Clarkson Honeyfest", held each September on the last Thursday, Friday and Saturday of the month, which celebrates the town's ties to the honey industry. It's known as the Official State Honey Festival of Kentucky.
- #041
There is an NPC named Ronald Laren who can be found in the small settlement of Girdershade. His name is strangely reminiscent of the Star Trek: The Next Generation Bajoran character Ro Laren, played by Michelle Forbes. Very little can be found in common between them, other than the fact that both characters are supposed to be competent fighters. Coincidentally, Ronald is tied to a quest that leads the player to the Nuka-Cola Factory, where another Star Trek Easter egg can be found, as cited in other trivia entries.
- #042
In the Little Lamplight caverns, the Mayor's name is RJ McCready, an obvious reference to the main protagonist from the movie The Thing (1982).
- #043
The quest 'Those!' is an obvious reference to the '50s movie Them! (1954).
- #044
The opening sequence is a reference to the iconic opening sequence in Fallout 1, including the narrator's famous line "War...War never changes".
- #045
One of the names that Butch and his friends consider for their gang is 'The Vault Dwellers'. The vault dweller was the title of the playable character in Fallout 1.
- #046
During the quest to activate Project Purity, the Enclave takes over the scene. James, played by Liam Neeson, says "I don't know who they are, I don't know what they want." This line mirrors the line Neeson says in the film Taken, which came out the same year as this game. In the film, Neeson says "I don't know who you are, I don't know what you want."
- #047
The sound when you use VATS is the same as the sound that was used at the beginning and end of combat in the original Fallout.
- #048
In the beginning character generation tutorial, the player is given a sweetroll and then is challenged for it. This is a reference to Bethesda's early character generation system which asked a series of questions, including: "While in town the baker gives you a sweetroll. Delighted you take it into an alley to enjoy, only to be intercepted by a gang of three other kids your age. The leader demands the sweetroll, or else he and his friends will beat you and take it." The 'baker', Old Lady Palmer, and the 'three other kids your age', Butch and his friends, happen to be sitting at adjacent booths.
- #049
A picture of the Lone Wanderer's father and mother, James and Catherine, can be found in the game Fallout: New Vegas, inside Vault 21.
- #050
Contains a major spoiler — show
After accepting the Nuka Cola challenge, whilst in the Nuka Cola factory a robot provides you with the password to the shipping manifest terminals. The password is 'NCC1864'. This is the registration of USS Reliant from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982).
- #051
Contains a major spoiler — show
In the Nuka Cola factory, while reading the marketing strategy for Nuka Cola Quantum, it is learned that the slogan was to be "Take the leap... try a Quantum!", a nod to Quantum Leap (1989).
Deeper Meaning (3)
- #052
The New Testament of the bible possesses the Book of Revelation, a book from which a quote is taken in the game. In the New Testament, there is an author named James. This author wrote about the anointing of the sick. Anointing is a ritual performed in the Christian religion believed to rid the sick of any dangerous influences. James, the father of the lone wanderer, heads up "Project Purity", a project dedicated to ridding the waters of the wasteland of any radiation. Essentially, James is anointing the wasteland by introducing pure water to the water sources.
- #053
Pagliarulo sought a "rawness" in Fallout 3's dialogue and included occasional profanity, and another goal was to give the player a sense of moral ambiguity at important decisions.
- #054
The New Testament of the Bible contains the Book of Revelation, a book from which quotations are taken in the game. The New Testament has an author named James, who wrote about the anointing of the sick. Anointing is a Christian ritual believed to deliver the sick from any dangerous influence. The Lone Wanderer's father, James, heads "Project Purity," a project dedicated to purifying the waters of the wasteland of all radiation. Essentially, James blesses the wasteland by adding pure water to its water sources.
Sources & editorial notes
Sources for the entries on this page
- Wikipedia Fallout 3 — Wikipedia
Information from external sources is independently selected, consolidated and edited by Arka Evren. Sources are listed for verification and further reading. Encyclopedia text is used under its licence (CC BY-SA). How we work