Fallout/WMG

Washington DC had an operational missile defense system.
The capital wasteland has an anomalous number of standing buildings and monuments. It is unlikely that it took many hits from nuclear devices. Fallout New Vegas showed that anti-missile systems did exist. So it is highly likely that the US capital would have similar defenses (in Real Life the only city with its own missile defense is Moscow, but Fallout world isn't real world). One of the proposed missile defenses in real life was actually a Surface to Air nuclear missile. This would account for reports of nuclear explosions and the high amounts of radioactive material. Even if this were not the case Washington DC is likely to have been an extremely high priority target for the Chinese. They would likely have used both missiles and bombers. The sheer number of nuclear weapons deployed against the capital would result in severe irradiation from successfully destroyed nuclear weapons alone. A handful of nukes might have even made it past the defenses and done some relatively minor damage.

The Fallout games are all immersive VR History Lessons.
All of the games are in fact sessions of a History Class (most likely College Age considering the content) about how The New World developed out of The Great Nuclear War. The narrator from the start and end of each game? Obviously the teacher.
 * Schools of the New World must be very lax considering that you can change the outcome of historical events, have sex, take drugs,steal and kill practically everyone in what is basically their equivalent of the Oregon Trail game.
 * What if it was a reprogrammed version of what was essentially VR Grand Theft Auto?
 * Or its used to show how history can change.

The next installment will involve water in a big way
Think about it. In Fallout you had to retrieve a water chip, in Fallout 2 The Enclave was trying to poison the water, in Fallout 3 you had to bring clean water to the Capital Wasteland (and The Enclave was trying to poison it again), and in Fallout: New Vegas you had to help a faction take over Hoover Dam (how that relates to water is obvious). So, the next installment of the series will involve water.
 * These are very superficial interpretations of the plots.
 * Fallout 1: The water chip is your first objective, but its optional and much less important than the Super Mutant plot line.
 * Fallout 2: The GECK was your objective and you were trying to get it before the Enclave. "Poisoning the water" is also flat out wrong. They were trying to distribute an airborne version of the forced evolutionary virus, not a water borne version.
 * Fallout New Vegas: Water was definitely not the only factor for the NCR defending the dam. It was a defensible location that provided huge quantities of power. Water, if anything, was probably a minor concern due to the difficulty for caravans traveling from California to New Vegas, while power can be sent through power lines. The water caravans were already a powerful group in California before the events of Fallout 1.

The reason why atomic technology is so widespread is because the bomb was never dropped...
...possibly because X-day, the planned invasion of Japan went through. As a result, America didn't know what the repercussions of atomic technology, (What the hell were they thinking would happen if a car engine exploded, anyway? Too Dumb to Live doesn't even begin to cover that...) such as radiation sickness, what to do with all the waste, amd mutations in offspring of people exposed to radiation.
 * They believed Heisenberg's (incorrect) estimate of critical mass of U-235 being in the order of tons, rather than ~50 kg; thus making it safer for commodity use.
 * That works because I, the guy that originally made the WMG, would hate to believe they'd run around with something that liable to cause a dangerous explosion if they weren't assured it was safe. Of course, the fifties people were Too Dumb to Live, so who knows?
 * Or perhaps Heisenberg was right in the alternate reality?
 * Originally, people in the Fallout universe weren't running around with fission reactors in their cars, nor were atomic technology - well, fission, at least - all that widespread (for instance, the car that could be found ran on electricity supplies by energy cells or microfusion cells, and was not implied or suggested to be special in that. Another example would be the Master, a highly intelligent if also insane character, regarding nuclear weapons with great fear): it came in with Fallout 3. But there is something of an in-universe explanation/handwave for people being willing to drive around with things that go boom and spread radiation if things go wrong: desperation in the wake of the oil crisis. With petrol becoming increasingly inaffordable, the car-heavy lifestyle of the Americans would become impossible to maintain for any but the richest (and towards the end, not even them)... unless cars using something else than petrol as fuel began to made. Since the microfusion cells were only made a fair bit into the oil crisis, the main alternative, given the established technologies of the pre-Great War world, would be... atomic power. They were likely being phased out of use by 2077, with the West Coast being ahead on that (it would explain why less New Vegas cars go mushroomy when shot, and why the Highwayman was not remarked on as special), but then the Great War intervened, and the cars that had been adopted out of desperation to maintain the lifestyle to which Americans had become accustomed were left to rust in the wreckage of the old world.
 * Atomic energy actually isn't that widespread in anywhere, except Fallout 3. In the earlier games, anything atomic based was extremely remarkable and usually dangerous, such as Gecko's power plant. Fallout 3 made everything nuclear powered to get around explaining where all the abundant supplies of energy were coming from. People that played Fallout 3 first, then were under the mistaken impression that the technology in the older games were identical to Fallout 3, even though other sources of energy were far more common.
 * Yeah I'm one of those people.

James and Catherine are from the Commonwealth.
Pinkerton mentions that Dr. Li and her science team from the Commonwealth with the intent of working on a "Purity Project". As it's established in the game that Project Purity was Catherine's idea, it's likely that James and Catherine were both on Li's science team that came to Rivet City from the Commonwealth.
 * According to a framed picture in New Vegas, James and Catherine may have been from Vault 21.

The NCR and the society that arises from the East Coast (Project Purity, the Eastern Brotherhood, etc.) are doomed to go to war when they meet near the middle of the country.
Because War, war never changes.

The "white flashes and voices" at the beginning of the third game are due to the events in the "Walking with Spirits" quest in Point Lookout.
After you have completed the Nadine will ask you if you have lost your memory. She says that after her own experience, some of her memories were just "flashes of white light and voices," not unlike the flashes at the beginning of the game when the player is transitioning from baby to child to adult. This troper theorizes that the story of Fallout 3 is narrated retrospectively, where the lapses in memory in the player's past are due to.

The Fallout universe is a Bizarro Universe of the Metal Gear universe.

 * Fallout = "War never changes."
 * Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots = "War has changed."

Enough said.

Confessor Cromwell is right.
Confessor Cromwell, the "crazy" preacher in Megaton, claims that each atom contains an entire universe within it and when an atom is split, more universes are born. Now, where does the Fallout Alternate History begin? Right after World War Two! And what happened at the end of World War II? Atom bombs got dropped! So the Fallout universe is entirely inside one of the atoms split by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
 * Didn't Cromwell's speech imply that the Big Bang was the Great Division? If so, it'd be a massive coincidence.
 * The divine events would have been, in order: Big Bang, Hiroshima/Nagasaki, THE ENTIRE EARTH.

The Brotherhood of Steel were working for the Enclave at one point.
The Brotherhood of Steel operative at San Fransisco was lying about the contact refusal. The Enclave did try to contact the Brotherhood of Steel, and they did form an alliance. One of the Elders must have learned about the FEV saturation plan and decided to back out. For a final 'fuck you' to the Enclave, they sent the Chosen One to steal the Vertibird blueprints from Navarro.
 * Alternatively, the Brotherhood are still working for the Enclave, but they're helping themselves to their technology in the process. They hired the Chosen One since the Enclave would know if the Brotherhood of Steel stole their blueprints to copy. Chances are they also stole some of the FEV vaccine for their soldiers to ensure they could survive.
 * The Brotherhood of Steel was formed when a group of soldiers discovered the horrible experiments at Mariposa and announced their secession from the US, just before the bombs fell. The Brotherhood told the Enclave where to stick it before they even existed.
 * Seems very far fetched. The Enclave are very vocally behind the position that all mutants should be killed and their definition of "mutant" is anyone not a pure-blooded Enclave member. The Brotherhood of Steel originated from a splinter group of the military that literally stood against everything the Enclave stood for despite not actually knowing the Enclave existed.

Vault-Tec was secretly subverted by the Communists
It's so obvious. The Vaults are clearly supposed to be the perfect Communist utopia from a Communist dictator's perspective. Everybody gets what they need, everybody gives what they can. All wear identical clothes to symbolize absolute equality, like many Communist countries have tried to get people to dress, and the absolute power belongs to the Overseer who plays the role of a benign(?) Big Brother who decides who get to be more equal than the rest, and keeps any dissent down. In fact the Vaults are so ridiculously obviously Communist communities that it's a small wonder that the paranoid pre-War US government didn't shut down the entire project as soon as they learned the details of how life in the Vaults would be run.
 * Some of the abandoned vaults in the Capital Wasteland have cash registers. They also had Jet canisters inside locked rooms.
 * There was cash in Soviet Russia, too...
 * This is an interesting possibility, but it is negated by the fact that we already know the purpose of the Vault program. We also know that Vault-Tec was subverted - not by the Communists, but by the United States government, which effectively nationalized the company long before the Great War. The Vault Program was actually a massive psychological experiment designed to test the viability of long-term space travel and colonization, which was the Enclave's original plan for surviving the apocalypse.
 * Even so, it's still hard to put down the Communist theory when, after getting onto an old computer in Vault 92, you can look up that there's a new food that can be purchased for ten "work credits." Hmmm...
 * In a community where there's only a few hundred people locked into 1,000 square meters it's perfectly normal for some form of regime involving austerity and strict order to exist. Think about it, free commerce and that level of isolation are mutually exclusive. For the same reason having money when there's nothing to buy with it besides food which is already strictly portioned and clothes which are freely available from the clothes extruders is completely pointless. In that respect having the option to work harder to get work credits and get the new type of food is a step towards democracy, since the main point of Communism is that everyone is equal gets equal stuff and everyone who is different acts different or even the possession of something unique, like jewelry or a freaking violin (see China and the Red Army) makes you an enemy of the State worthy of a death sentence.
 * Considering how one of the Vault members in the first game is granddaughter of Soviet ambassador in US, I think US and USSR were working together on them.
 * One counter-point to the OP would be that not all Overseers were possessed of absolute power, it depended on the purpose of the Vault in question (most of them were, but not all them)

The Enclave is the Hero Doomed To Failure of the Fallout series.
What is the world of Fallout, when you look at it objectively? You've got immortal (and more relevantly, sterile) ghouls. Immortal, sterile, and inherently hostile Super Mutants. Human-wise, you've got mindless Raiders, who decorate their houses with the corpses of the dead. The rest of humanity? They've suffered from so much radiation over the course of 200 years since the Great War that they are content to sit in the ruins of the old world, eating the last bits of prepackaged food and waiting to die. Even the Brotherhood of Steel doesn't bother improving the technology they get. The Enclave is the only faction in Fallout that realizes that the world of Fallout is a Crapsack World that has to be wiped clean if humanity actually wants to survive and thrive. But their plans are consistently thwarted, and by who? Vault Dwellers, sons/daughters of Vault Dwellers, and people who were Vault Dwellers for 95% of their life. Pure (or significantly pure) humans, with initiative and drive to change the world. By 'saving' the world from The Enclave, the Player Characters doom humanity.
 * Vault Dwellers are actually pure specimens, but I digress; the Enclave are certainly nice guys underneath all the genocide and DNAism. To be fair, there have been attempts to genuinely improve the standard of living; New Californian Republic is an entire nation devoted to bringing back the United States under a different name, where they actually produce and are trying to turn the tide on Humanity vs. Radioactive Nature.
 * Yeah, the Brotherhood aren't' improving technology, but aren't they at least manufacturing new materials and equipment?
 * If the Wild Mass Guesser had really played the first two Fallouts, he would have realized that not only have people on the west coast been growing their own crops and raising their own livestock for a long time, but that by Fallout 2, a veritable section of California has cleaned up nicely as NCR and brought order to the wastes without resorting to the Enclave's genocidal methods. Besides, even if you sympathize with the Enclave's goals, the fact that they've consistently been beaten despite having the best technology, arsenal, manufacturing, and at one point, the remaining source of oil in the entire world, proves that they are an utterly stupid and incompetent bunch unfit for deciding how the world should be run.
 * Also, as shown by Broken Hills and Jacobstown, among others West Coast Super Mutants aren't inherently hostile, and can, in fact, become productive members of society. Admittedly, the point about them being sterile still applies. Even the Capital Wasteland Super Mutants aren't all inherently hostile, as Fawkes and Uncle Leo shows.
 * I would like to mention to the above-the-above commenter that the Brother cannot manufacture anything, they can only maintain equipment.
 * You know, except for all the stuff they manufacture, like basic weapons and armor, ammunition, medical supplies, and various other things. If they were doing nothing but maintaining old gear without making any new stuff they would have died out before too long.
 * The Brotherhood's goal is not to improve tech, its goal is to acquire and preserve technology and knowledge so that once society is stabilized, it can be properly studied, utilized, and improved. In a post-apocalyptic society, that's pretty damned useful and important.
 * The Draco in Leather Pants view of the Enclave neglects that the Enclave pre-dated the nuclear bombing and helped instigate it. Their goal was to instigate a nuclear war to wipe out all of their opponents, who they assumed hadn't spent a good decade before hand preparing.

The only real person is the PC.
You are actually in a virtual reality made by the US government to simulate what would happen in a post nuclear US. Everything before the great war actually happened, and your character was a person who found out about the secrets of the US government, and, as punishment, gets sent to live in the horrible future that is Fallout. The Sequels are different people getting sent inside, and the spin-offs are the commercial versions.
 * That would explain that green tint that was everywhere in Fallout 3. It's The Matrix!
 * This actually makes sense if you read The Manual of Fallout 1. It takes screenshots and uses them as "a simulation". Even referring to different buttons.
 * Read the Xbox Live store description of the game. It says exactly what you describe.
 * This also explains why the protagonist always has rotten luck. The government is just fucking with him/her.
 * That makes Tranquility Lane a simulation inside a simulation.
 * You know how at the end of Operation Anchorage you have a chance to persuade General Jinwei to abandon Anchorage? Isn't it odd that Jinwei is speaking Chinese, yet you understand him? You know where else this phenomenon occurs? When a player is playing a foreign translated copy of Fallout 3. The subtitles are translated, but the voice acting isn't.
 * Russian fully translated version would gently tap your shoulder and smile while you'll realize you're wrong.

Myron didn't actually invent Jet like he claims.
He just found a way to re-create a pre-War narcotic with on hand materials. This is why it can be found on the east coast or in abandoned Vaults.
 * To be fair, the farming companies who create it originally simply tried to get cover the whole thing up and hide the narcotic(By feeding it to their livestock).

Post-apocalyptic Earth is being quarantined by aliens
Random Easter Egg-like encounters include the TARDIS and a crashed alien spaceship (later built upon as the expansion pack Mothership Zeta.) Why don't either the aliens or the the Doctor help out where they could surely do some good? Because Earth has been declared off-limits, perhaps for study, or perhaps they just don't want people willing to nuke themselves loose in the galaxy.
 * THOSE BASTARDS! But, wait. Fallout is in a separate time perio-- OH MY GOD! Of course! The Doctor screwed up, and is trying to find out where the timeline split! That's why you find his TARDIS in the desert, that was his first search!
 * Holy crap, that's brilliant! Fan Fic. Write it. NOW.

The first nukes were launched by aliens!
In the DLC for Fallout 3, Mothership Zeta, you can listen to audio recordings of alien prisoners. One of these recordings is an American military officer telling the aliens the troop strength of America, followed by him struggling not to tell the aliens the codes for launching ICBMs. The recording cuts off while he is screaming "Get out of my head!" I propose that the aliens got the codes, and since they are dicks(vast amounts of evidence supports the dick theory), they started nuclear war for lulz.
 * Or, they saw a planet where the humans were developing nukes, robots, and space travel, felt threatened, and blew up the Earth to keep humans from taking their aggression out into space. Just like The Day the Earth Stood Still, but with explosions.
 * It is implied, at a few points, that China sent the first nukes (backed up by the Shi Emperor's logs and Rickardson's comments). Still, that doesn't mean the aliens weren't involved, and there still is room for America to have sent the first nukes.

Ensemble Darkhorse Vault Boy is a real person and is the CEO of Vault-tec
Dunno, sounds like a pretty cool idea doesn't it.
 * Mothership Zeta revealed that the CEO Vault-Tec was horribly tortured to death by the aliens do you want that to happen to Vault Boy?
 * Actually, It was the Vice President of Vault-Tec Commercial Operations.

The enclave killed most, if not all the kids in Little Lamplight

 * Since the only way into the vault is through the underground caverns, the kids would've defended the entrance, and the enclave would end up having no choice but to cut them down.
 * Beyond Gameplay and Story Segregation, why are the kids still there when you finish the mission? I just figured that they had something to negate the radiation on the surface entrance.
 * Maybe the kids hid / ran away when they noticed a bunch of evil guys in power armor coming in.
 * Alternatively, they went through Murder Pass to get to the Vault. They probably would have more then enough firepower to deal with the Super Mutants that are lurking around there.
 * Col. Autumn had the Magic Plot Device Serum that let him survive that earlier radiation attack. What's not to say he had more of it and just used the front door?
 * The fact that the door is broken shut. And is still broken shut after you return to it. The only possible way he could have gotten through would be Murder Pass. And I actually kinda wish they had the kids disappear after that event, because it would make a damn fine dark moment.
 * While I agree that it would have made a fine dark moment, it would have been out of character for Autumn to pull that off. I believe that he told Mc Cready that either they let the Enclave in, or the Enclave will do so by force. Since it's known that Autumn wants to rule the wasteland to build something new, having a lot of kids killed is just not a good idea.

The Narrator is the Vault Dweller, from Fallout 1.

 * Last we heard of him, he was wandering the Wasteland, old and cynical, but still Badass. Due to the doses of radiation he received at The Glow, he's survived through the whole series, watching over events in the Wastes as a silent protector, acting only when something truly terrible, like The Master, arises.
 * He actually did show up in Brotherhood of Steel. There actually was a threat like the Master arising, and the Vault Dweller showed up and helped out the main characters. Of course, the game is non-canon.
 * The Vault Dweller wanders the wasteland, only appearing when needed? You mean he's the dude with the revolver in the Mystery Man perk?!
 * ...and that's why Mysterious Stranger was only introduced in Fo2

The world Fallout takes place isn't earth but Magrathea form Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the Same planet that Guardian of Forever is on.

 * That Explains the Whale why the Guardian of Forever is there the crashed shuttle Craft and heck why the doctor was there he was checking on the Guardian and besides Magrathea is a wasteland on the surface
 * Or maybe the authors just read Hitchiker's Guide and are fans. In Fallout 2 especially they were specifically looking for puns to pull after the more serious Fallout 1. Like "You should have used the amputated toe on Horrigan's corpse" by Random New Reno Prostitute is a reference to old sty;e point and click adventures like King's Quest where you get a counter of how many interactions you've figured out through the game. Like if you did use the toe on Horrigan you'd get max points.

The Brotherhood of Steel is on it's way to a civil war.
Or some kind of major factional split. The seeds of this were planted by Elder Lyons when he broke away from his main mission of collecting technology to protect the Capital Wasteland. Assuming the game counts a good/neutral Lone Wanderer as canon, Lyons' Brotherhood members almost single-handedly repulsed and annihilated a considerable Enclave force, recovered valuable water reclamation technology and kept the Super Mutants from overrunning the East Coast. This is in sharp contrast to Casdin's Outcasts, who have stuck to the original mission and accomplished precisely nothing. Assuming the war with NCR makes it into official canon, the Elders at Lost Hills might face something of a crisis between those who want the Brotherhood to adapt into a force interested in improving conditions for humanity in general, and those who want to continue with their isolationism.
 * While Tactics isn't completely canon, Fallout 3 confirmed that there is a contingent of the Brotherhood operating out of the Midwest that's completely ignoring Lost Hills. If the war with NCR is canon, then it wouldn't be altogether inconceivable that members of the West Coast Brotherhood, demoralized after a rather pointless and unsuccessful war, would try to head to the Midwest or the East Coast, where the Brotherhood wields considerably more influence than it does near its own HQ.
 * As of New Vegas the war with the NCR is cannon and the brotherhood were pretty much wiped out

A Heel Face Turned Enclave Base and a Heel Face Turned Chinese base worked together to build space ships to leave Earth when the nukes started flying.
The resulting group called itself The Alliance, succeeded and colonized a new solar system. Over time people forgot about the nuclear war and just think that the Earth was used up. Remember the start of Serenity? There were explosions happening on Earth's surface as the ships left. Explosions seen from SPACE.
 * I knew I wasn't the only one who had this idea. The western feel, mixed with the high-technology, it all makes sense.
 * Plus, look at the Alliance's flag (best seen in The Train Job). It's the Chinese flag on top of the American flag. Most importantly, look at the crazy experiments of the Enclave (like, say, the Vaults) and then look at what the Alliance as been up to.

Punga fruit and Cave Fungus will save humanity
Think about it, the Pitt could easily be saved by feeding trogs to pools of cave fungus, then making a soup from it using the Punga fruit(the only other natural radiation free food around) to flavor it. Cultivated in large amounts they could end the dangers of radiation poisoning, mutation and many cancers.
 * There is the minor issue that punga fruit is implied to be an hallucinogen...
 * Punga seeds, specifically trying to take them from the mother Punga causes hallucinogenic effects, not the fruit itself.

Fallout AI have the same AI stages as Halo and Marathon AI.
That is, smart AI go from normal to rampancy and through the stages. Rampancy is made up of 4 stages:
 * 1: Melancholy - Seen as a deep sadness, as the AI is depressed that it is not human.
 * 2: Anger - The AI becomes enraged because it is not human.
 * 3: Jealousy - The AI becomes jealous of humanity.
 * 4: Meta-stability - The AI gets over not being human. This is the "Holy Grail" of A Is.

Eden was in the third stage, which explains why he works with the Enclave (He's a smart AI, programing doesn't matter). You don't talk him to death, you talk him to Meta-stability. He then, in a Big Damn Heroes type moment, makes a Heroic Sacrifice. The reason he doesn't tell you to not use the FEV is because he is too busy and just forgets.
 * I think that Eden's AI started out as a normal AI, but you just made it go "rampant" for all of five minutes by talking it to death. It goes into the melancholic state (or may skip over into anger because you outwitted it, or maybe even into jealousy) and commits suicide by way of destroying Raven Rock.

The Lone Wanderer did survive the ending.
When s/he activated Project Purity and passed out from radiation sickness, the "ungodly amounts of radiation" the Wanderer absorbed changed him/her into a Ghoul. The limb regeneration mutation s/he got early on demonstrated that s/he had the genes necessary to survive extreme radiation poisoning. The rumor that s/he died was just a bit of propaganda that the Brotherhood spread because they didn't want to acknowledge that the so-called "Last, Best, Hope of Humanity" had turned into a filthy ghoul.
 * ...Except that you can clearly see the remains of your character in a slide are nothing more than a pile of goo.
 * Um, no, s/he's not a ghoul. Broken Steel's Word of God basically says that an "Energy Spike" of the non-radioactive kind caused Lyons and the Wanderer to be knocked out.
 * Broken Steel retcons the original ending, though. The radiation was lethal before, like the zone near the entrance to Vault 87 (which would kill the Wanderer regardless of his radiation resistance).
 * I don't think it was so much as a pile of goo as not knowing how your character looked. Also, radiation cannot and will not turn you into a pile of goo.
 * Then how do you explain the Plasma rifle?
 * ...Plasma?
 * I can list a number of other things radiation can't do. Guess how many appear in Fallout!
 * I don't know, you tell me, I never stuck around a radiated place long enough.
 * As far as I know, the Plasma Rifle doesn't really have anything to do with radiation, just being really, really hot.
 * Hot as in Rule of Cool, that is.

James survived his sabotage of Project Purity and rescued Colonel Autumn.
Building on the previous Guess: James was a brilliant scientist, and was born outside the Vaults. He probably knew that he, and therefore his offspring, had the genetic mutations that would cause them to survive the radiation and become ghouls. Recall that you don't see any bodies in the Purifier when you return. James rescued Autumn from the Purifier because he somehow knew of Eden's plan to spread FEV, which is why Autumn's behavior changes once you find out about FEV. It was all a necessary plot to destroy Eden and stop his plan to induce the plague.

Colonel Autumn's reasons for opposing Eden's Final Solution are largely selfish.
Ol' Colonel Foghorn Leghorn just took a massive dose of radiation to the face. That sort of thing has been know to cause mutation. For all he knows, he's no longer completely "pure" anymore, and might be vulnerable to Eden's FEV. That seems a pretty good reason to oppose releasing the FEV.
 * He DID scream like a Feral Ghoul when he fell over...
 * Seems like good sound reasoning to me.
 * ...Except that if you ask him, Autumn will claim that the plans for the FEV were scrapped "months ago", no matter how much time has progressed in the game. This suggests that he was opposed to said plan long before he himself was in any personal danger.

The Brotherhood of Steel was founded by Communist China.
The dead Chinese soldiers found in the Capital Wasteland are not burnt, so they must have died after the nuclear holocaust. This troper would postulate that they may have been sent by the remnants of the Chinese government--like the Chinese equivalent to the Enclave--to fetch something or scout out the ruins of Washington.

If so, what was their mission? We know from Operation: Anchorage that the United States had some military technologies that China lacked, so the Chinese Enclave would likely want to get their hands on some, now that there would be no resistance from the United States government.

So, the Brotherhood of Steel was sent by the Chinese Enclave to scavenge and repair American military technology to help rebuild China. Roger Marxson, supposed founder, was actually an American war survivor who joined the Brotherhood when it had only just arrived in America and was still operating secretly. As Chinese Brothers died of age, battle, and radiation, and as the Brotherhood of Steel's range of operations became more widespread they recruited more and more Americans. Eventually, there were few enough Chinese members that the Brotherhood's dedication to China evaporated, and the organization took up the cause of humanity as a whole.

The reason the Chinese soldiers in Fallout 3 didn't have power armor is simply because they hadn't found any at the time they died.
 * That's been Jossed since Fallout 1. The Brotherhood are in fact what's left of the American Army, or at least a band of deserters. Even aside from the official story, you can get the warts and all diary of Maxon, the founder of the group, in the military base, with a couple of incidents that definitely wouldn't be in a piece of after the fact propaganda.
 * Also, the reason no Chinese soldier would have Power Armor is that as of the war they hadn't developed that technology. They did have a powered combat suit that diverged in technology more toward stealth-based missions, and it's featured in a recent DLC.
 * Plus there was a reason why they lunch the nukes, the US was kicking China's ass because they didn't have power armor
 * It's worth mentioning that a fair portion as to why power armor would not have been available to the Chinese had much to do with interest in the U.S. projects. Consider the public "acknowledgment" of a massive project that was guaranteed to wipe out them darn commies probably garnered more attention from the Chinese than their backup development in Power Armor technology. Keep in mind that the curve ball the Chinese was waiting for during Anchorage was Liberty Prime, not the immediate deployment of T-45d power armor suits. In the face of retreat after the death of their general (not to mention the nearly unstoppable U.S. advance), would any have had the foresight to loot the dead for power armor? And that crap isn't easy to carry unless you're already wearing one.
 * Perhaps the biggest flaw in this theory has much to do with the Enclave. With a still-existing nuclear arsenal and an orbital nuclear platform, not to mention eyes and ears everywhere, it wouldn't have been out of their power to hunt down the Brotherhood of Steel if they'd considered them a reasonable threat, whether by foot or with nukes (and with predefined headquarters, that would have made it easier)- but even President Eden never took the opportunity to make such a claim. If it had been the truth (and the Enclave certainly had the means to confirm such a "fact"), all it would have taken to dissuade public appeal from the Brotherhood of Steel would be to tell it and provide the proof.
 * While that is a good point, for the sake of the argument how would they know that anybody alive actually CARES about that fact? Even if the Brotherhood of Steel started as a Chinese deep cover infiltration unit in the U.S., it's been I-don't-know-HOW long since the actual nuclear war, which has long fallen into the realm of mythology. Nobody save for the Enclave and a few groups with access to very deep databases really seems to know jack schiesten about the war or even prewar history. Cross-ocean travel is probably non-existent anymore and many in the Wasteland probably wouldn't even KNOW the Chinese existed. And besides, assuming this hypothesis is true and the Brotherhood of Steel was a Communist Chinese cell, the Chinese regime STILL nuked the living crap out of them along with everybody else on the Continental US and would probably serve as some proof to the Wastelanders that the Brotherhood of Steel is at least recently sufficiently divorced from the hated great war enemy to be trustworthy, which would make this revelation a very * blank look/huh?* moment as people ask if they should care. Doesn't explain why the Enclave apparently has never TRIED to do so anyway, though.
 * This WMG has been explicitly Jossed multiple times. The Brotherhood of Steel weren't actually founded anywhere near DC, and they originated from a group of U.S. Army mutineers at a military research facility on the West Coast. The player can actually find the diary of the group's founder in the first game, which describes the group's creation in detail.

Gary Staley, of Gary's Galley, is one of the Garys from Vault 108.
It's hypothesized that Gary 1 may have committed suicide (having 9 rounds in a 12-shot magazine), and Gary 23 somehow came into possession of a Pip-Boy; who's to say that one of the clones didn't develop a higher degree of sentience and escape from Vault 108? The door to the Vault can be opened by clicking anywhere on it, while other Vaults are operated by the separate control-panel; perhaps Gary X (later Gary Staley) already released the Vault door while leaving years, decades, or even over a century before? The Garys in the Vault don't seem to have aged since their creation, but exposure to the irradiated Wastelands may have started the aging process in Gary, allowing him to blend in with the regular humans, even fall in love and reproduce. As to the different physical appearances of the Gary Clones and Gary Staley? Obviously, Gary X found out about the man in the bow who performs facial reconstruction and gained a new appearance from Pinkerton, probably pawning stuff he brought from the Vault.
 * Since Gary 1 is in the Vault, maybe Gary Staley is actually Gary 0, the source of the Garys!
 * If he's the original, then he's not a clone, and thus not ageless like the others. If he is a clone, then it's more likely that he's Gary 2 (or one of the other early ones). The fact that Gary Staley uses the same voice actor as the Gary clones certainly lends credence to this whole theory.

The City of Ember is one of the Vaults.
Let's see... A giant underground city, constructed prior to a nuclear holocaust which devastates the world, housing a mixed-race population who speaks (apparently) with America accents who believes that there is nothing in the world outside, and probably no way to get there. And, of course, the last bit is a lie. (Mostly.) Clearly Ember is one of the Vaults that was given a name rather than a numerical designation; possibly it's not one of Vault-Tec's, but Vault sponsored by a private organization or by the government/s. This is supported by the Fallout-style fliers plastering the station entrance/exit; it doesn't look like the other Vaults because, like Little Lamplight, it was built inside a pre-existing cave-system.

Paranoia takes place in a Vault Gone Horribly Wrong.
Granted, a lot of Vaults were designed to Go Horribly Wrong, but still. Giant underground city, nuclear holocaust, ect. ect. ect.? All there. Plus, we know A Is and cloning tech exists in the Fallout universe. (Ah, Gary!)
 * Well it would have to be a really big vault since vaults only have room for 1500 people

The Fallout Universe is an Alternate (possible?) future of Watchmen
It's a reality where Veidt's plan was thwarted/failed/exposed afterwards by Rorschach's journal, and war came. Vault-Tech one of Veidt's competitors/subsidiaries, developed the Vault's as backup in case the initial plan failed. All the uber-tech is either courtesy of Veidt, or reverse-engineered by the government from Drieburg's abandoned Owl-Nest- note that he had laser weaponry and (albeit, a faulty prototype of) powered armor, both of which are ubiquitous amongst Fallout's more tech-savvy factions. The mutants, and indeed FEV, are part of a failed attempt to recreate Dr. Manhattan, the most successful, albeit still failed attempt being The Master from Fallout 1. The Mechanist and the Antagoniser are simply a small-scale repeat of the same social aberration/fad that lead to the existence of costumed heroes before the war.
 * "The accumulated rads of all their dirty water and sugar bombs will foam up around their waist and all the mutants and Megaton Settlers will look up and shout 'Save us!' ... and I'll look down and whisper 'Tunnel Snakes Rule.'"
 * Alternatively, Veidt's plan worked... technically. In Watchmen, tensions are high between the Soviets and the U.S.A. In pre-War Fallout, the Soviets and the U.S.A. were relatively friendly, though the Soviets had slid down from superpower status - the war that brought down the world was between the USA and China. And, of course, it was in 2077, not in the late 20th century.

If you seduce Burke with a female character during The Power of the Atom he eventually kills himself
He leaves Megaton and doesn't appear anywhere after that, so something must've happened to him. Remember the love letters he keeps sending after the mission? They start as upbeat and romantic, but over time get a darker streak as he slowly slips into depression for not being able to be with the woman he loves. Now, read the fourth letter and don't tell me that it doesn't look like suicide note.
 * The ending - "But it is a burden I shall continue to carry, because someone must. And I am a man of responsibility" - pretty much tells you he's still out there, looking for evil bosses to work for.

Megaton was built from the Chinese bomber that dropped the bomb the town is built around
Due to the city's size, probably several aircraft, but the sheer amount of Mandarin spread around Megaton indicates that at least some of them were Chinese in origin.
 * Talk to Manya about the town's history and she'll confirm this; in fact, the bomb was still attached to the plane when it went down. And more material was obtained from a nearby airfield that had already been looted of everything except those planes.

The Fallout universe is the result of ending to Dr. Strangelove
And the Vaults were made to counter the Mineshaft Gap.

Rockopolis was a trog city
Like ghouls, there are trogs in the wastelands that maintain their humanity. Rockopolis was their Underworld. There's not a whole lot of evidence, but their leader, King Crag, sounded inhuman on the Daring Dashwood radio programme. There's also a note connecting the citizens of Rockopolis with the Pitt (before the DLC was released), which also refers to them scornfully as "hole dwellers", which trog(lodyte) translates to.
 * That's because it is.
 * What is what? Do you meant this was stated in game? If so, I never saw anything more than the implication.
 * Daring Dashwood calls it the Trog City of Rockopolis

Vault Dwellers are genetically superior to Wastelanders.
Somehow the Lone Wanderer, a 19-year-old marriage counceller/garbage man/whatever with no combat experience is able to single-handedly defeat dozens of Raiders, super mutants, zombies, ect. cetera single-handedly. I postulate that residual radiation in the Wasteland has decayed everybodys genes--making them weaker, stupider, and slower than non-irradiated people. The Lone Wanderer avoided this decay by being brought up in a Vault. We only think the Lone Wanderer is powerful. In fact, he is just as strong as you or me; it's everyone else in the Wasteland who have devolved into something mildly subhuman.
 * That would also explain why the wasteland is still in such bad shape after 200 years. There is plenty of old technology left to scavenge yet you're the only one who does anything about it. Old power stations, fission batteries, robots and radio transmitters are in operating condition and only need a little bit of work to be brought back online, yet most Wastelanders just sit around doing nothing while the world continues to decay.
 * On the other hand, both of the Lone Wanderer's parents were wastelanders, so s/he comes from that same genetic stock. Maybe it's environmental, rather than genetic factors, that made the Lone Wanderer into a superhuman.
 * Then again, the Lone Wanderer also plows through the crack shocktroopers of the Enclave, who are pure-strain humans in Powered Armor. Maybe L.W. just inherited massive badassery from his/her daddy, Liam Neeson (if you follow him from Vault 112 to Rivet City and watch him fight the many hostiles in the way, you'll notice he can apparently shrug off several missile launcher shots to the face without much difficulty).
 * Thus making the Lone Wanderer's daddy a Badass Longcoat/Science Hero. Apparently said badassery is genetic!
 * Or maybe the energy unleashed by the nuclear war breached the fabric of reality and gave James the powers of another Liam Neeson character, Qui-Gon Jinn. This subconscious Force ability was then transferred to the Lone Wanderer!
 * Your dad is an Important NPC, so he's nigh impossible to kill and will just fall unconscious anyway. Clearly, you inherited that perk. Loading a save after you die is just you waking up!
 * Or possibly its a combination. Wastelanders have had to survive for generations in an irradiated resource scarce environment and in general have gotten 'tougher' genetically. However, they don't have as ready access to the clean water and nutrients they need to grow up to be as strong and smart as they could be. The Lone Wanderer however has the toughened genes of two of the wastelands best scientists and grew up in a vault where they got plenty of water and green vegetables to grow tough and strong. Thus, Lone Wanderer is tougher than most wastelanders due to having a good diet growing up and is tougher than Enclave forces due to inheriting the strength of the wasteland survivors. The Lone Wanderer in effect combines the best of both 'pure humans' and 'wastelanders' while being unable to fit in with either of them.
 * You're all thinking too hard. The vault dwellers have been eating clean food and drinking clean water. Every piece of food and every drop of water the wastelanders have ever taken in has been radioactive. They all have cancer and/or radiation sickness. Radiation sickness cripples your stats, and well the cancer is obvious. After all, you're the only one who is using rad-away. If everyone was constantly using it, it wouldn't have lasted 200 years.
 * Lets not forget that most people you attack do not have Pip Boys. Vault tech Assisted Targeting is the superpower our little Lone Wanderer has in his holster.
 * Three Dog does mention and suggests using rad-away in one of his few speeches that aren't related to the Lone Wanderer, so the concept of using rad-away isn't unique to the Lone Wanderer.
 * The protagonist can easily subdue several vault security guards in body armor and helmets using only a baseball bat, at level one. These are people trained to be tough and combat-capable, whereas the Lone Wanderer might have been working as a fry chef or tattooist for the last few years. Evidently, being Vault-raised and Vault-bred is not a strict formula for making you better than everyone else.
 * Out of the four protagonists only one was a true Vault dweller, Fallout 1's The Chosen One was a tribal, The Lone Wander was only raised in a Vault and the Courier was from the NCR.
 * Perhaps it's the Pipboy that makes the LW so powerful? That would explain why Dad, as well as the protagonists from previous Fallout games are always so badass.

The Falloutverse has been cursed by the White Witch.
This is why the trees never have any leaves on them, and why we never see any characters celebrating holidays. She's made it always winter and never Christmas!
 * NUCLEAR Winter! * ba-bump TING* I'm here all week, folks!

The U.K. survived, and they're just being dickeads by refusing to send any foreign aid to nuclear-devastated regions.
Colin Moriarty appears to be Irish, Alistair Tenpenny claims to be English and James might be English. Therefore, a few people have come from the U.K. to America since the bombs dropped. But if the U.K. was just as devastated by the war as America, then how would they have transatlantic transport available? Because they weren't. The U.K. survived, and have become isolationists. Moriarty and Tenpenny either ended up in the States because they intended to seek their fortune because the U.K. and Ireland were in such a terrible state, or they ended up there because the wild, untamed wilds of North America provide far more options than any variety of post-apocalyptic U.K. or Irish governments.
 * Of course, if the U.K. and Ireland were in a better state, why would they cross the ocean in the first place? And Fallout 2 showed that capable vessels still exist, and Tenpenny is rich enough to buy one/pay for a trip.
 * James states that part of his training as a doctor was being able to tell if a kid was just acting sick in order to skip class. He may have been joking, judging by his tone. But perhaps he's telling the truth. If he is, then we know he's not from the Capital Wasteland, because there are no schools there. Obviously, this means that he is from England and England still has functioning schools. Why are there functioning schools in England? Because England wasn't destroyed.
 * "Training" doesn't necessarily equate to "medical school." It may have just been learning medical abilities from other people who happened to know something about medicine. Unless you think all the other first-aid givers in the game, like Red and Doc Church, also crossed the ocean after they graduated?
 * You completely missed the point there. It's about the "skipping class" part, not the medical training. Kids cann't skip class if there are no schools.
 * Since when you need a school building to have classes? All you need is a teacher and something for him to write on. Kids don't show up when he tells them to = skipping class.
 * Actually, there are two schools that have been shown. One in the Republic of Dave, the other in Little Lamplight. And I'd bet a large sum of money that there are still educated adults who pass on what they know to the next generation (at least, those that will listen, anyway). Rivet City almost certainly has a sort of education system due to the presence of the science lab and that there preservation society museum-thing. And then there's everything OUTSIDE of the Capital Wasteland, like in Virgina, Delaware, and Maryland, that could have a place secure enough to have a sort of school system. Perhaps even a compulsory one, which is really the sort of education system James seems to imply to be used to. Alternately, he might just be talking about his twenty years in Vault 101. Lotta school years there...
 * They also could be staying out due to the Enclave. Considering these guys conquered Canada for oil, staying away from the incredibly well armed nutjobs seems a good idea. The NCR is way to far away to contact, and they're the only organized group that might make friendly contact.
 * Hell the Enlance may still be up in Canada (which would be in a lot better state than the U.S.) this explains how they can still get all those solders, and weapons after losing their oil derrick. they still have a few more and whole cities still intact they only choose DC as there main base because it's the former capital
 * From a strategic point, the Enclave (I assume that's the Enclave you mean?) wouldn't do things halfway; they'd either keep themselves in a safe place until America could be taken back or they'd move all their resources to D.C. in order to keep morale up amongst their subordinates. Besides which, the predecessors of the Enclave sought refuge on an oil derrick when the bombs fell, then moved back to the mainland after it had cleared somewhat.
 * According to https://web.archive.org/web/20130815195718/http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Resource_Wars, about 20-25 years before the USA vs. China war that went nuclear, Europe was wrecked in what were called the "Resource Wars", when the European Commonwealth took military action against the Mid-East in response to raising oil prices, and everything quickly Got Worse. Of course, since it seems no nukes were used in Europe, they'd probably still be in better shape than the US and China...
 * Probable, if only because it didn't seem at that point that other countries had the means to wage was as the US and China did. Given the fact that all Fallout 1, 2, and 3 all open with narration that the entire world was destroyed, 'a little better off' probably isn't that much better.
 * The Troper thinks the UK probably suffered like the rest of the world, so odds are places like London and the Home Counties will be in a similar state to Washington. If it has picked itself up again, odds are it's split into nation-states, like a possible Republic of Cornwall, or the United Soviets of the West Midlands. I imagine Scotland may be better off, and Ireland has probably sealed the borders as it's a smaller island and lacks a nuclear deterrent, and isn't as much of a target.
 * Seeing how the only Nation that took part of the Great War war the US and China they may be the only two nation that fired Nukes, radiation, would still effect of lot of areas. So most of the world are fine and just staying the hell away for the wastelands
 * Opening narration for all three main games state that 'humanity was destroyed' during those two hours. (Paraphrasing here.) I'm sure Ron Perlman wouldn't be saying that if all they meant was 'all humanity within the U.S.A. and China.'
 * "And by "America", I mean The World!" -The Amazing Screw-On Head Given the glimpses we've seen of the state of pre-war American democracy, we can assume that the Narrator is being a little biased.
 * All right, assuming you don't want to believe Ron Perlman: Narrator, look at the time line as presented in the games and supplementary material: Europe is already at war with the Middle East in 2052, and the European-Middle Eastern conflict's nuclear exchange spurred the creation of Vaults. Even assuming Europe/the UK/so on weren't involved with the U.S./China debate, they would have been in turmoil over the oil the U.S. was bogarting. This resource conflict outright bankrupted smaller countries and exacerbated the Europe/Middle East conflict, which only ended when their oil ran out and both were almost ruined; this would be when the European Commonwealth split into nation-states to fight over whatever's left on the Continent, presumably retaining the Commonwealth's nuclear weapons. It's only after this that China becomes desperate enough for oil to get aggressive, spurring the US/China conflict that led to World War III. Even if the rest of the world wasn't drawn into the U.S. vs. China event, there was plenty of conflict beforehand to ensure they were ruined or near-ruined before America or China launched their missiles; once that happened, we know that at least China, the US, and the U.S.S.R. launched full-scale nuclear attacks. Even assuming the other countries had no nuclear participation in that war, and taking into account the military buildup of the U.S. (from which we can extrapolate that their nuclear arsenal must have been considerable, with the other two powers maintaining similar numbers to serve as effective checks), the radioactive fallout alone from such a large-scale conflict would have been enough to poison anywhere the wind could carry airborne particles. Unless someone managed to build super-science force-fields over entire continents - which were, as stated, devastated economically and possibly sociologically from the build-up and the effects that would have on the population - it's likely that the rest of the world suffered irradiation as well, if not direct hits. Most of the damage would have come from fallout anyway as opposed to direct strikes, when the radiation deadened the soil/plant life and poisoned anyone who survived the initial blast... which would be just about everyone in not-targeted countries. So sure, maybe the U.K. and Europe (that isn't the U.S.S.R.) and Asia (that isn't China) and Africa were spared direct hits... assuming the targeting computers weren't just shooting nukes off willy-nilly like bottle-rockets... but they still get to deal with radiation poisoning, blighted landscapes, and presumably mutant animals and ghoulified survivors. The best thing that could be said was at least they'd be spared intentional experiments like the Super Mutants and FEV, and that's assuming there weren't mad scientists or paranoid governments elsewhere in the world
 * This troper's personal theory is that nukes were dropped on everywhere but because Vault-Tec was a sham in the U.S. other nations had decent government and privately owned Vaults in place. Britain was nuked as hard as America but almost everyone survived. Then when they came out there was nothing in the wasteland for everyone. The population of the UK is more packed in and whilst most Americans were dead, leaving enough scavenging for all the British folk didn't have enough food to go 'round and it's a heck of a lot worse. I personally think the only country leaved unschaved was Australia. Seeing as how the universe is kinda set around 1950's ideas and all there'd be a situation like "The Beach" where the folks of Melbourne are staring out at the wasteland and wondering if anyone else's still alive.
 * Vault-Tec appears to be a U.S.-based company; probably there weren't international Vault-Tec branches, and if they were it's likely that they had the same proportion of safe-to-experimental Vaults. Maybe privately-owned vaults existed, although given the lifestyle of America at the time you'd think they'd have more personal Vaults in the US. (They might have, we just don't see them.) Australia's being all right, like everywhere else, would depend on how much sway (and how many bases, ect.) China or the US would have there. Even one base or resource holding would be enough to make it a target, and in case of a nuclear war I'm assuming that seventy nukes are as good as one.
 * See the succinct discussion here.
 * I like the theory that while America is horrifically torn up, most over countries are actually doing fine. Travel to America is forbidden due to the high radiation levels. Of course I'm likely overlooking many details and the effects of radiation, but this'd be funny as heck.
 * Link's broken. It's still a silly idea.
 * From Fallout New Vegas opening Narration:"When atomic fire consumed the EARTH...". Every nation was affected.If there were a nuclear attack on the one nation, would a very close nation retaliate with them? Yes, and so on, ad oblivion. As for private Vaults,it is said in the game that any personal shelters in the US were terrible unless you were rich enough to contract Vault-Tec into making you a personal one, like Mr. House. While other nations would have had good shelters in place for COG, it is made clear that the US was the only nation with a Vault program. And the Vaults, while they were sadistic experiments, they were the only way humans survived at all, fitting perfectly with the Grey and Gray Morality of the Fallout series.
 * Mr. Tenpenny came to the Capital Wasteland from England. How screwed up must England be if D.C. is better by comparison?
 * Not much - indeed, it can be better off, from the perspective of an outside observer. Mr. Tenpenny has his tendencies towards being a self-centered, bigoted jerk, so that he regards DC as better by comparison might as well mean that England is under the control of an NCR-style state (complete with de jure ghoul-smoothskin equality and a legal system that frowns on eccentric millionaires doing whatever they feel like) as it can mean a nuked wasteland harder to survive in than even the Capital Wasteland.
 * It could just mean that there are fewer people in the Wasteland and no real over-arching law, so he can do pretty much whatever he likes. If the UK population survived in any kind of number, and given how much smaller it is compared to the U.S. - even per-annexation - it's possible the Wasteland just offers more freedom due to its size and the comparatively skeletal population. Given the tech and organization needed to survive a nuclear holocaust, even one you're just a footnote to, it's just as easy to picture what's left of the U.K. as an iron-fisted fascist state, geared towards preserving what exists at the cost of innovation or anything that could be described as dissident. Does that make Tenpenny less of a bigot? Not at all. But in such a hypothetical situation, a drunken egomaniac would seize the first chance he had to give himself the life he thinks he deserves. Or, you know, maybe England is a mythical fairy realm of magic and daffodils, and King Arthur rose from his ages-long slumber just before the bombs dropped to erect a mystic shield over the land he once ruled, enveloping it in a protective mist like Brigadoon. But no, turns out King Arthur's a ghoul and the Knights of the Round are battling mutant Gauls along Hadrian's Wall.

Mister Burke is an undercover Enclave agent.
If you refuse to detonate the bomb and wind up not killing him, or if you are female and use the Black Widow perk (resulting in his leaving Megaton)... where the hell does Burke bugger off to, anyway? It's like he just drops off the face of the Earth. He could be anywhere; why not Raven Rock or some other, similar facility?

He consistently mentions that he's 'helping to rebuild humanity' in the letters he writes, which is almost verbatim what the Enclave claims to be doing. And he never discloses anything that might help pinpoint his location. Furthermore, an Alternate Character Interpretation of why he breaks off his 'relationship' with the Female!Lone Wanderer could be thus: he knows exactly who she is by then, and is concerned that continuing said relationship could result in either his cover being blown, or that he'll eventually be forced to kill her.

It's been shown in-game that there are Enclave operatives living covertly in the Capital Wasteland: Greyditch, for example. Granted, William Brandice was a deserter from the Navarro branch, but this troper can easily imagine the Enclave deliberately planting people in certain settlements, in order to observe them more closely. Eyebots can only do so much, after all.

Then there's Tenpenny himself: his dialogue options suggest that Burke showed up out of the blue, just like he did in Megaton. It's never mentioned where he came from before that, or what he did to impress Tenpenny- or whether it was Burke that approached his employer to begin with, not the other way around. Furthermore, he appears to be subtly phasing Tenpenny out of a position of power ("I hardly even need to think anymore"); Tenpenny Tower relies more on the machinations of Mister Burke than it does on its benefactor. I'm paraphrasing, but- myeh.

Detonating an atomic bomb in the middle of a Wasteland settlement might seem slightly counterproductive to Eden's stated goal of restoring the Wasteland to a position of stability, but- remember that the Enclave are prone to drastic measures. Megaton does contain not only a ghoul, but also a crazy priest whose preaching could result in people mutating. They also seem to harbor former Raiders (Jericho) and slavers (Doc Church). All of whom fall into the Enclave's list of 'undesirables'. They could pick off the aforementioned undesirables one by one, but that would raise suspicions, risk retaliation, and there is no guarantee that killing off a select few people would stop others from similar categories from coming to Megaton. Since it is a Wretched Hive with a live atomic bomb at its center, there's a very obvious solution to the host of problems Megaton provides. It just happens to coincide with Tenpenny's wishes- it could also explain why Burke didn't want to evacuate the inhabitants ("The place, the people, they're one and the same.")
 * However he is impressed by Roy Phillips ghouls killing everyone in Tenpenny Towers.
 * Siding with Phillips gives Burke access to a small army of Ghouls and Feral Ghouls. The Enclave have shown itself to be perfectly willing to use and control muties (Deathclaws, all the creatures being experimented on in Raven Rock) for their own purposes.
 * Also, Burke seems to have an intense fascination with death, which would probably cause him to be impressed with any town massacre, even one committed by muties.

A majority of players seem to side with Lord Ashur and consider Wernher to be Starscream/Frank Fontaine. I submit instead that Wernher is Moses.
A former high-ranking general of the megalomaniacal God King rebels, becomes a slave, and leads the slaves to freedom by unleashing a plague of living horrors upon the civilization of the slavers. For his trouble, he gets to rule over the new nation created by the slaves (although it takes the slaves a while to get there and set things up).

As for the rather distasteful "kidnap the baby" thing, Moses was pretty harsh towards Pharoah's first-born also. By biblical standards Wernher's actions are actually pretty tame.
 * The main problem with this theory is Wernher himself: namely the fact that if you side with Ashur, Wernher more or less goes into a rage and condemns everybody. Now, unless he was having one HELL of a Heroic BSOD, this seems to indicate he wasn't nearly as well-intentioned as Moses was.

The three dead bodies found outside of Vault 101 are the remains of the scouting party sent out by the previous overseer.
The current overseer locked them and the previous overseer out to help prove the wasteland is dangerous and promote his isolationist agenda.

Evil Genius takes place in the Fallout universe before the Great War.
That would explain the flat screen TV for the Staff Room, the weird science involved in the super weapon, the laser security doors and trap sensors, and especially the very small nuclear power generators. It also allows a 1950's/60's-style theme, thus hinting at a period that explains how the word Hippie exists in mainstream language in the Fallout 'verse, a world that supposedly never left the 1950's in terms of popular culture and technology. Also of note is that the Evil Genius world screen shows Canada and the United States split into three vertical regions (in Fallout 'verse, Canada was annexed shortly before the Great War), but this is a bit of an anomaly as the half-60's period would have had to occur so close to the Great War that there would certainly be signs in the D.C. Wastelands.

Speaking of Canada...
Since Canada basically became part of the US, it's possible that some of the last few Vaults were built north of the former border. However, they may not have survived... Even if nukes didn't hit the ex-country, there is mention of unimaginable seismic activity brought on by the bombs. Canada is made up mostly of land that would easily be devastated by the kind of massive changes described.
 * Except that a large chunk of it is located on some of the most stable rock in the world. If anything Canada would be better off, because there are less people and would therefore not be nuked as much.

Mister Burke is the avatar of Atom
So, you have this shady character, out on a mission to blow up a live atomic bomb, and he has both the equipment and utter lack of morals to do so. So why, pray tell, does he just sit around Megaton waiting for someone to come do it for him? Really, it doesn't take much explosive know-how to rig the bomb to explode, and someone of Burke's caliber could surely pull it off no problem.

The reason is quite simple (okay, not really). The bomb, dubbed Atom, is worshiped as a god by a small cult of fanatics. And though they are few in number, relegated entirely in the Megaton community, their beliefs in the power of Atom are strong, strong enough that He has become of a lesser deity and conjured up the resolve to create an anthropomorphic personification of His will. It is none other than Burke! But Atom is no kind and loving god. He is a weapon of war, and desires to do what He was built to do: to invoke death and destruction on a wide scale, and His worshipers want nothing less of Him. Hence Burke's personality. But there is a problem; a bomb cannot just set itself off. As Burke is merely an extension of Atom, he cannot do anything directly to cause the bomb to go off, all he can do is influence others to do the deed for him. His side of the Power of Atom quest is in fact the last few steps of a long, convoluted Gambit Roulette meant to eventually blow that bitch to hell.

This also explains why Burke disappears off the face of the earth if you disarm the bomb. By doing so, the Lone Wanderer has destroyed the physical anchor of Atom. Without the bomb's explosive power, Atom loses most of His power and can no longer sustain His avatar. Burke simply fades away (but not before he uses what little time he has left to put a hit out on you), and all Atom can do is exist within the minds and empty wishes of His followers. Meanwhile, if you set the bomb off, then the beliefs of the Church of Atom finally come to fruition, and countless universes are born among them, all of which Atom is the Ruler Supreme, ascending to the position of a greater deity. So by setting it off, not only has the Lone Wanderer destroyed an entire settlement for a mere pittance of bottlecaps, he has unleashed a Cosmic Horror upon all existence!

Argyle was previously Brainwashed into blindly following whoever held his "Contract" (Dashwood, in this case), much like Charon
For those of you who have Charon as a partner, you might have noticed that he tends to make frequent wisecracks, much like Argyle does in the "Adventures of Herbert Daring Dashwood" program. It's one of those things where the Old Hero had a journey that paralleled the main character's. And we never DID find out where Charon came from and who brainwashed him...

Believing that Dashwood is really a Retired Badass rather than the bumbling idiot the Radio Show makes him out to be isn't much of a stretch: The wasteland has a high fatality rate, and the fact that he somehow managed to survive into old age despite his relatively low Luck Stat ought to count for something...

Of course, he claims that he met Argyle when he accidentally stole his girlfriend, but that could just be a lie invented to keep up the appearance of the Happy-Go-Lucky adventurer Dashwood is portrayed as.

Little Lamplight is secretly under Super Mutant control
There are a lot of things about Little Lamplight that just don't add up. How can the population be sustained? Sure, they might be able to take in orphans, except that they live the farthest away from civilization, so it's doubtful many orphans could even survive the trip, not to mention it takes some convincing to have them accept Bryan Wilks. Or how have those kids been able to stay around this long when the only thing between them and the Super Mutants is a flimsy wall of junk with a gate operated by a simple pulley system? C'mon, game mechanics aside, it wouldn't take much for those hulking brutes to smash that wall down. So what gives, how can Little Lamplight even exist?

Maybe because the Super Mutants want it to! Murder Pass appears to have been at one point inhabited, so maybe the mutants invaded it, capturing a few kids and driving the rest back. They tried dunking them into the FEV, but sadly, none of the kids came out as successful mutants (for all we know, they might be those failed FEV subjects you find in Vault 87, or Fallout 3's variation of centaurs). However, due to the combined power of their simplistic brains (or an unseen mastermind that has yet to be revealed), the Mutants saw a golden opportunity in Lamplight. The kids may not make good Super Mutants now, but they might when they grow up, and even better, when that happens, they won't have the ability to fight and defend themselves. So the Mutants took some surprisingly subtle motions to make the kids mistrust adults and kick them out, set up a poorly defended place for them to go (Big Town), where they can harvest them. And better yet, with Little Lamplight being the only location in the Capital Wasteland where grows a radiation-absorbing fungus (that thrives on human flesh), the Muties have ensured a "breeding ground" of sorts to produce the best kind of Super Mutants possible (the less radiation the subject has been exposed, the better results FEV will have after all). This would also explain the prevalence of mutilated human body part strewn all over their haunts; they're trying to make the fungus more widespread!

But that''s not all. Whenever going into any Super Mutant hovel, you'll find these cages made out of shopping carts, and Behemoths have them strapped to their backs. These seem too small to hold an adult human, but a child could fit in quite nicely. They most definitely cage kids in these for transport to Little Lamplight, where they abandon them.

So the Super Mutants of Fallout 3 either an intelligent mastermind leading them who we never find out about, or they're an entire army that has mastered the art of Obfuscating Stupidity!


 * Alternativly there's a more sinister option. Maybe Lamplight has an army of crazy kids that have been abused to the breaking point and become like raiders, attacking and killing anyone who so much as looks at a kid funny. Hurt a kid and they'll kill you and rescue the child. They are like Talon Company but in scout uniforms. Trinnie, the alcoholic junkie from Rivet City is a former member.


 * A more Squickful, yet not unrealistic option, is that they are indeed maintaining their population naturally. Lamplighters don't get exiled to Bigtown until they hit 18, yet puberty -- functional puberty, at that -- hits several years before that. Sometimes as early as 11 or 12. Between the hormones, and the fact that it's extremely doubtful that they have contraception, it really isn't impossible that any female Lamplighter has already had a couple of kids by the time she's grown old enough that it's time for her to go to Bigtown. Yeah, that sort of thing is highly illegal in our world, but these are a bunch of kids living in what MacCready himself calls "fucking anarchy" and who've been in a hole in the ground for two centuries without any form of adult supervision. If nobody's going to stop them, those kids that are old enough doubtlessly have sex, and once she's had her first ovulation, she can have her first child. Something similar happens in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, where it's stated that the youngest children were all born from couplings between the older ones -- there's a pregnant 16-year-old girl who already has at least one baby old enough to be a toddler, who gets pointed out to Max when he's being told about how The Tribe got started. Still doesn't explain why the Super Mutants don't try and grab all the kids they can, though.
 * If they just took all the kids at once, they'd have a huge haul, but it would also be their last haul. If they leave some kids, they'll eventually reproduce, ensuring a constant supply.
 * Or, y'know, kids that were conceived in Bigtown just get escorted to Little Lamplight.

The US and China are the only "wastelands", everywhere else is more or less fine.

 * The great war was only between the US (and Canada) and China, while everyone else was busy with other stuff. And I don't think the two it the type to randomly fire nukes that other nations for no reason, also since radiation doesn't work the same in real life, odds are it wouldn't spread to other areas via win.
 * Not compatible with the (semi?)official timeline. Europe's already in ruins by the 2077. Regardless, global nuclear war and the following winter would badly hit pretty much everything.

In Fallout 3, if you reach the "Saint" class level, you will actually become one.
Listen to the preacher in Rivet City go through his whole sermon on Sundays. You have done at least as much good, if not way more, than Saint Monica if you have "Very Good" karma status (heck, the picture in the PC version is Vault Boy as Jesus Christ). So, the citizens of the Capital Wasteland, informed of your deeds by Three Dog, decided to christen you "Saint {Name}".
 * One Problem. Canonization in the Roman Catholic Churuch is a long, complicated process. But in short, you need to be:
 * A. Catholic, which there is little or no evidence for.
 * B. Dead, which is a problem if you bought the "Broken Steel" add-on, negating the "Sacrifice" part of your Heroic Sacrifice.
 * Then a bishop has to give permission to do reasarch, the body must be checked for heretical activity, the Pope must make a proclamation of the guy's virtue, etc. All of which are nearly impossible in the current state of the Fallout world. Also I doubt the Church of Atom would make the Lone Wanderer a saint for disarming their bomb, and I don't see any evidence of the presence any other organized religion in the Capital Wasteland.
 * But who says they're Catholic? This ain't A Canticle for Leibowitz, you know.
 * You forgot the bit where the Vatican is probably destroyed, and even if it isn't, the church in Rivet City has no way of contacting them. They could make anyone a saint if they darn well pleased.
 * Well we don't know the anything about Europe over than the EU broke out into civil war.
 * We know a hell of a lot more than that. Europe wasn't in a civil war; they were fighting with the middle east, and nuclear weapons were most definitely involved. It's strongly implied, though never outright stated, that both were involved in the Great War, and are thus just as much a radioactive ruin as North America. Considering the religious undertones of a European-Mideastern conflict, it's safe to assume the site of the Vatican is flat as a pancake.
 * So would Mecca and Israel probably. Holy sites tend to be nuke magnets during global thermonuclear war.

Liberty Prime is a Transformer

 * And his Alternate Mode is...
 * Chuck Norris.
 * No, it's Teddy God-damn Roosevelt.

The Nuka-Cola Corporation secretly started the war in order to control the economy of the post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Even before the war, Nuka-Cola probably had catalogs full of various items like toys, chems, furniture, and robots which people could get by saving up their bottlecaps and buying stuff with them. Some people started collecting the caps and even trading them for stuff (possibly while on lunch breaks) and then somebody in the company got the idea that bottlecaps could become a viable currency. The Nuka-Cola Corporation then secretly began setting events in motion that would end with the U.S. and China getting caught in a nuclear exchange that would annialate their governments... and then secret underground Nuka-Cola factories set to work. The survivors might have found a few surviving shops that 'conveniently' accepted Nuka-Cola bottlecaps as currency and willingly bought items like tin cans or bullets with caps. These first shops were controlled by Nuka-Cola so that they could get all the armor, weapons, and loot they wanted in exchange for easily manufactured bottlecaps. Now, over 200 years later, the Nuka-Cola Corporation is still at work making bottles of Nuka-Cola and bottlecaps which it uses to both feed the survivors and to buy the ancient treasures of a destroyed civilization.
 * Nuka-Cola probably did catalogs full of toys; a rabid soda fan explains that after the success of the drink, the Nuka-Cola corporation released promotional items, like the trucks with the Nuka-Cola logo on them. It's entirely possible that they kept this 'caps-for-gifts' program going on even as the bombs dropped: maybe they added 10 mm pistols to the prizes? That's why everyone wants caps! To get that neato Nuka-Cola merchandise, of course. And it explains how there is any form of economy at all; Nuka-Cola continues to be made, caps continue to be collected, and caps get exchanged for guns, either via shop or mail-order. TL;DR the Wasteland's economy is kept alive via a softdrink prize campaign.
 * This whole theory goes out of the window in Fallout 2 where caps are pretty much worthless and the $NCR has taken over
 * This theory explains the economic predominance of Caps in Capital Wasteland and East Coast. An economy propped up by neo-Nuka-Cola never gained predominance in the core regions.
 * The "any form of economy at all" part was disproved for the west back in Fallout 1 - the bottle caps were explained as backed by water (as a way to simplify things for the water merchants), and the why of having bottle caps as a curreny were that they were hard to counterfeit and easily transportable and stored.
 * Maybe there was a different reason for adopting Caps on the East Coast?

Everything that happens after you first 'wake up' as an adult is a Vault-Tec simulation.
In fact, the Vault Dweller has awakened inside a simulation pod. The entire game from that point is a simulation based on Vault-Tec projections of what a nuclear wasteland would look like, supplemented by what they can pick up as radio signals from outside. Its purpose is to serve as the next phase of testing after the G.O.A.T.

The purpose of this simulation is to determine the newly-adult candidate's suitability for reproduction, based upon how well they would do in a hypothetical post-nuclear survival situation. The test ends once the candidate is 'killed' in the simulation. Candidates who fail to make it out of the simulated Vault are chemically neutered before they even leave the simulation pod, whilst candidates who make it all the way to 30th level not only gain full breeding privileges, but are slated to have sperm/egg samples put on ice in case they're needed to supplement future generations.

In fact, Vault 101 has never been opened, and isn't slated to be so for several more generations. By that time, it is hoped, the population will have been honed into perfect survivors.
 * This very premise is used in parts of the first game's manual, though it obviously isn't canon, given the sticky-notes pasted over much of it.
 * Accept your perceived Reality.

If you enter Vault 106 you never leave
Notice that if you fully explore Vault 106 the hallucinations stop appearing(IIRC), this isn't because you've gained immunity to them it's because they've stopped being purple.
 * Alternately, you do leave but continue to experience hallucinations. For instance, not all NPCs are really there.

The Lone Wanderer becomes Braun's new plaything.
Braun doesn't have all that many protections to keep the player from getting to his control terminal. Mad genius with a sadistic side as big as all outdoors; it's not that unbelievable that he let you kill the others so that you'd think you were successful and give him the chance to play with a new toy. Making everything that happens after Tranquility Lane just a way for Braun to set you up to have everything taken away. Save the Wasteland, build a new life for yourself, then have everything you've built be destroyed, over and over.

Elder Lyons purposely caused the schism between the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood of Steel.
Lyons wanted to keep the people of the wasteland safe, while still pursuing their original quest of technology scavenging. Chances are that the two objectives would crash into each other, such as if a settlement had some technology the Bo S would want, so Lyons engineered the schism and created the Outcasts as a ludicrous plan to keep the original dream alive, while allowing him to concentrate on the Super Mutant menace as well.

Slavery will never end in the Pitt.
Sure, on the surface, it seems as though that in the long term, the Pitt has a bright future ahead of it. No slavery. One of the few bastions on the east that is actually producing. An immunity to radiation and with it a cure of TDC. But... in all of his ambition and vision, it seems Ashur has forgotten completely about the basic necessity of food. The place is too irradiated for plants to grow and there are no visible attempts at forming any sort of agriculture. Even the normal wasteland critters, from mole rats to Yao Guai to Brahmin, are notably absent. Really, there are only two sources of food to feed the denizens of the Pitt: pre-war scavenged goods, which are reserved for Ashur, his family, and slavers, and Trog meat for the slaves. Obviously, the scavenged stuff is in limited supply, else it wouldn't have to be rationed like it is, and once it's all gone, it's gone forever! And as for the Trog meat...Trogs are really the only 'animal' the Pitt has, and they only come about when someone comes down with a severe case of TDC, mutates, and goes insane. If a cure for that is reached, and administered to the populace, the Trogs face extinction, and no Trogs, no food.

Hence, slavery can never really end. As awful as TDC and the Trogs are, they are every bit as necessary for the current system to work. If Ashur wants to keep the mill up and running, he can't give the cure away to everyone, he has to keep a portion of the population sick and on the bottom rung of the social ladder in order for Trogs to continue to be made. Either that, or remove the middleman entirely and resort to straight-up cannibalism. As it is, the Pitt is too polluted to produce any food of its own, and too isolated to be able to reliably transport it from outside, and there currently appear to few visible means to address the issue right now. And if Ashur doesn't realize the new problem that will arise in the wake of the cure...then the Pitt can only fail.
 * The raider's mention in game that their main job is to raid caravans for food. Plus they have the train system to get to the Capital Wasteland where they could hunt and trade for food.
 * The primary purpose of the cure is to allow residents of the Pitt to have children so they can stop having to enslave new workers. Once TDC is eradicated, the Pitt isn't a terrible place to stay. It's got shelter, space, and safety. They might begin farming the surrounding countryside. Also, remember that Werhner touted the cure as a 'cure for mutation', not just TDC. With a bargaining chip like that, they'd be able to acquire whatever resources are needed. Considering most everyone in the wasteland has at the very least a sixth toe and most probably have some form of cancer...

It takes place in the same alternate reality as BioShock (series)
Although just not at the same time.

Megaton is doomed to become a mutant haven.
Think about this: The clean water system is faulty (After the Lone Wanderer's death no one is giving Walter scrap metal to fix it) and residents are gathering daily around a radioactive bomb. When you consider that this little fort is therefore receiving more radiation then any other human civilization in Fallout 3, you must assume that mutations cannot be far behind. The good news is non-violent mutants will have protected safe haven from Raiders. Not to mention outsiders will become very easy to spot.
 * Well, unless poisoning Project Purity/ letting it explode is canon, (Which doesn't exactly leave much room for a continuation of the story of the Capital Wasteland) Megaton is getting Aqua Pura from Brotherhood of Steel water caravans.

The Capital Wasteland is a recently re-settled area.
It was the central hub of the USA government and military. It's obvious Chinese would want it razed to the ground. The amount of destruction and radiation was so big that the whole area become uninhabitable for more than 100 years (except perhaps by ghouls and supermutants). This explain the abundance of pre-war goods, lack of agriculture (people are trading pre-war stuff and technology that drained out elsewhere for food) and relatively primitive socio-political structure (compared to the California at the end of F2 where the expansive city-states like NCR and Vault City already existed). The way I see it, humans first entered the area around 50 years before the game start (future founders of the Rivet City, BOS scouts), but the large scale emigration fueled by the population boom in the Missisipi Valley/South/New England and a sort "pre-War stuff" rush didn't start until about 20 years ago (the time Pinkerton was ousted of the Rivet City council)

Vault-Tec knew the apocalypse would happen, and may still functioning.
If you look at the barter bobble-head, you will see that Vault-Boy is holding a bottlecap. Now, with this piece of information alone, it might prove that they were made after the war. BUT, one of the Vault-Tec employees' terminals shows that employees could buy Vault-Tec items, one of which was a bobble-head. Of course, this might mean the barter bobble-head was made after the war, but that would mean that Vault-Tec was still functioning. Furthermore, the Vaults were actually a social experiment, and, if I'm correct, Vault 12 actually relied on the radiation resulting from the war, meaning they still need collect data.
 * That they knew it was coming is almost confirmed; just look at all of the advertisements that point out that you will die in the coming nuclear apocalypse if you don't reserve a spot in the Vaults. The other half seems likely as well.
 * Adding to that, if you do in fact, collect all of the bobbleheads "Vault-Tec C.E.O isn't just an achievement, but is in fact, the official way Vault-Tec planned on having a new C.E.O. They were all originally put in vaults, or left with the Enclave (There are bobbleheads in Vaults `101, 106, and 108, and one in Raven Rock) But most of them were scattered, by people who escaped the vaults, or Enclave patrols. Anybody who collected all of them would need to then go to Vault-Tec headquarters in Downtown D.C. and get into the mainframe to be officially made the C.E.O, but this information was never known to the player character.

The Iron Giant is the divergence point into the Fallout timeline
The Iron Giant was launched at the Earth from an alien race for unknown reasons, but it's clear that it was built as a weapon of war. The Aliens you meet in Fallout are the same ones, returning to collect the Giant and determine if it has accomplished its mission. For the Americans, the invasion of the mainland and a nuclear warhead detonated over US soil sent the country into its tailspin of nuclear paranoia and aggressive expansionism that led eventually to the war. At the same time, The Iron Giant showed the US military that a bi-pedal robotic war machine was viable, so they focused their research on replicating the Giant. Their most successful effort was Liberty Prime.
 * Adding to this, the Giant's weapons spurred the United States to put in large amounts of funding into energy weapons research, soon proving Tesla's theories correct. From there, by records of the Giant and through examining the , the first energy weapons of the Fallout Universe were created. The plasma weapons you see are a direct attempt to mimic the weaponry of the Giant.

Ghouls are the allegory of Jews
If you think about it, it could make sense. Lets assume that Atom is real. The Ghouls would then be Atom's Chosen People. Glowing ones would be miracle workers or prophets (heal other ghouls, even when dead). Griffon and Azrukhal's... unscrupulous business practices are a more negative spin. Forced into slavery in the desert(Charon and Gob), living in land that is technically theirs, but treated as second-class citizens until finding their own land (Underworld) in the mid-eastern part of the map. Hunted down in their surrounding areas. I don't know about Feral ghouls, ... maybe Israelis With Infrared Missiles?

Fallout 3 takes place in the Command and Conquer universe and the Great War was a desperate solution to the Tiberium problem.
There is far too much radiation around to be the mere result of an atomic war. What really happened was that Tiberium had arrived on earth and spread all over. Atomic energy is widespread because Tiberium is an atomic fuel and the fuel was plentiful. Unfortunately, it spreads on its own and destroyed a lot of the other vital resources of the Earth and drove the various nations into desperation to get those resources. The big clincher is that the scientists who discovered Tiberium realized that it spreads on its own and if left unchecked would destroy all life on Earth... but the only ways to prevent that would be to either harvest every last crystal of Tiberium on the planet or to bombard the entire planet with neutrons that would turn it into marginally less dangerous radioactive elements (still radioactive but not self-replicating). The whole war was in fact instigated by the various world factions as a desperate means to cleanse the Earth of Tiberium. Civilization was largely destroyed and the radioactive remains of the destroyed Tiberium are scattered over vast swaths of the planet... but at least the planet hasn't been systematically converted into a mass of radioactive crystal. The very existence of Tiberium was intentionally erased from all records to keep people from thinking of its benefits and trying to grow their own Tiberium farm from shards of it... and causing this whole mess all over again.
 * Totally impossible. The reason the Great War stated in the first place was because of the world running out of sources of energy. If an energy source as powerful as Tiberium exist in the Fallout universe, there won't be a Resource War in the first place. Also, the radiation levels on the West Coast (as seen in Fallout 1 & 2 & New Vegas) are not where as high as the DC area. Finally, the very nature of tiberium and the way it spreads will make the vaults totally useless.

Most or all of the nuclear bombs dropped on the Capital Wasteland were neutron bombs.
Neutron bombs were designed to release high amounts of radiation, but cause less destruction than normal nuclear bombs. This is the reason why so many buildings are still standing, and perhaps along with heavier, more durable construction methods used in anticipation of the war.
 * The game seems to support this with most nuclear weapons that appear being similar to those dropped on Japan in world war 2.
 * Surprisingly, neutron bombs are still nukes and make one hell of an explosion. The reason they were developed was less to kill people and have the infrastructure still standing, but rather to kill soldiers in armored vehicles, who aren't all that affected by heat and blast waves. Detonating a nuke over a city creates a field of rubble.

The Mother Punga in Point Lookout is actually a physical manifestation of an Eldritch Abomination.
Both the Tribals and Swampfolk have a unique trait that allows them to do additional unresistable damage to you with each attack they land. For the Swampfolk, this could be justified by the fact that, given the existence of the Tome of Eldritch Lore in their possession, testimony by Obediah Blackhall, and the weird goings on in the Dunwich Building in the game, that they are backed up by supernatural, and quite possibly Lovecraftian forces. The Tribals don't apparently share their beliefs but they do worship the punga plant and the Mother Punga in particular. From this it can be inferred that the Mother Punga is an entity similar to the one(s) worshipped by the Swampfolk, if not the same one altogether. The addled state of mind the Tribals are perpetually in is not merely the result of  but the Mother Punga having broken their minds from prolonged exposure to her powers, but in return they gain superhuman power to protect the punga fruit they cultivate (and are secretly eldritch abominations in larval form themselves). The hallucinations the Lone Wanderer experiences were not due to being exposed to spores with hallucinogenic properties but from temporarily going mad from the revelation.
 * That is the best way to justify Fake Difficulty I have ever seen.

The main character is fluent in Chinese.
How else would they be able to read all those training manuals? It's unlikely that the Chinese army would have been nice enough to print them in English for the benefit of any enemy soldiers who happened to stumble across them. Also, in Point Lookout you're able to read some email correspondence between two Chinese spies; this is rendered in English, but given the lack of any reason for it to have been written that way is probably an example of the Translation Convention.

As for how they learned the language- it could well tie into the above theory that the vaults had secret ties to communism. Perhaps they mandated that all vault-dwellers be taught Chinese so that they could read and listen to propaganda in its original language.
 * The Pip boy has translation software, occasionally it doesn't work properly. There may also be similar software in terminals he runs across.
 * The stealth instruction manuals are a bit easier to explain away than the emails. It stands to reason that in the years leading up to the war, the Chinese would've begun a massive draft to try to maximize their quantity advantage. Comic-book style manuals on stealth and weapons handling, illustrated very thoroughly so that they could be used by anyone from any language background or even the completely illiterate, were distributed to resistance forces in Europe in WWII so the partisans could improve their soldiering skills quickly. It worked then, at least somewhat, so if the Chinese had a language barrier and/or illiteracy problem within their own forces, language-neutral training materials might help. Now, the real elite special forces types probably wouldn't be trained out of books, heavily illustrated or not, so I suspect the comic book fields guides would be geared more towards training sappers quickly from among the conscripts.

Everybody's sense of time has been distorted by radiation--the game actually takes place twenty years after the bombs fell, not 200.
This shift in the time frame makes areas like Tenpenny Towers much more plausible (e.g. it turns Allistair Tenpenny from a complete monster to a delusional old man pining for earlier days), explains the general state of the world much better (food not consumed by Rad-roaches, books and audio diaries in readable if damaged condition, etc.), and generally tightens up the world a fair bit.
 * Jossed heavily in Fallout 3. The old woman in Vault 101 remembers the old days from her youth when there were more people, the 1000 people in the Vault have dwindled to a few dozen, your Pip Boy records the time as 200 yaers after the war and has ne reason to be wrong.
 * Jossed again by the presence of Harold and Bob/Herbert. Last we saw Harold was 40 years ago in Fallout 2, and the tree in his head was quite small. The tree in Harold's head has now gotten so large that he's taken root in DC. It does take a while for trees to grow to that size... let alone take deep root.

The Super Mutants are the reason the Capital Wasteland is so primitive when compared to places like the NCR and New Vegas.
Fairly obvious, but hasn't been directly stated in canon. The West Coast had the Vault Dweller to deal with the Master's army, the main impediment to re-establishing a large-scale civilization. The East Coast had to deal with wave after wave of Super Mutants and the only check came in the form of the Lyons-led Brotherhood forces that arrived some twenty-odd years ago. Without the constant stream of Super Mutants, the East Coast probably would have had its equivalent of the NCR by now.
 * Lyons and several other characters tied to the main quest do flat-out state that the Super Mutants are the main reason why there hasn't been very much development of human civilization in the Capital Wasteland area.

Moira is already becoming a ghoul
This explains why she survives the explosion if you blow up Megaton: the only thing it did to her was burn off patches of her skin. This also explains why she needs you to go out and get irradiated for her book: it wouldn't have any effect on her.

Feral Gob would kill Moriarty.
It's no secret that half of Megaton would like to put a bullet through his head, and chances are without your help, Moriarty would never lose ownership of Gob, so as a final resort he gives into his feral side and rips the bastard apart. Sure, they'd probably have to kill him for that, but at this stage its probably on his Bucket List.

All Raiders have a deathwish.
This is the only explanation as to why they keep attacking you. Either that or they are Too Dumb to Live, which is equally possible.
 * Raiders are doped up and have probably acquired some serious brain damage from all the drugs they're taking.

Ant Agonizer and Mechanist would become a serious threat if not stopped.
Ant Agonizer thinks she's a super villain, so like most, she will numerous evil plans over time, such as mutating people into ants, creating ants of kaiju size, Fire Ants and of the like, she might not KNOW how to do it, but chances are she can find out. Mechanist would escalate himself and perhaps even create a Humongous Mecha. At this stage, Ant Agonizer would have surely torn apart Canteberry Commons, which would obviously piss of Mechanist. The attacks would move to the next settlement until they found something she can't destroy in one attack ( e.g. Rivet City) and the city would slowly be cleared out, if not immediately evacuated.

Ant Agonizer would make her minions wear Psycho-Tic helmets.
Just thinkin'.

Ant Agonizer would become a viable threat by herself.
One day Machete gets sick of the superhero bullshit and puts a bullet through Mechanist's helmet. Ant Agonizer declares this a victory and runs off. After fighting the Mechanist for so long, she has actually become quite good at it and eradicates Canteberry Commons within an hour. She uses the town to create a new hive and raids Mechanist's hideout to build special Ant themed weapons, and equips her ants with weapons. She moves onto the Wastes where she tears apart some Wastelanders until she reaches the next settlement. Perhaps word gets out and the Brotherhood of Steel decide to check it out, unprepared for the event and get blown apart. She keeps going until her ants are virtually tanks.

Ant Agonier could have been damn useful in Greyditch
Had the Lone Wanderer been able to talk her out of acting like a loony comic villain, her "ability" to commune with Giant Mutant Ants of the Capital Wasteland could have saved the settlers there from the Giant Mutant FIRE-BREATHING Ants created by a well intentioned but woefully unprepared scientist.

Or failing that, be a scientist's assistant. If she really speaks Ant, the potential applications are staggering.

Fallout takes place in the HP Lovecraft universe
Lets see... weird inexplicable stuff? Check. Eldritch Abominations? Check. Then there's the Dunwich building...

The East Coast Brotherhood is going to turn itself into the eastern equivalent of the NCR.
Or something to that effect. On the West Coast, the Brotherhood stayed out of the region's politics and the result was a steady erosion of prestige and influence. Once the Capital Wasteland starts to form an organized, collective government, it's going to be controlled by the Brotherhood in one way or another.
 * Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Slowly, advanced technology is re-introduced into the wasteland. The Brotherhood wisely stays OUT of the power structure.
 * They don't necessarily have to control everything. Perhaps the Brotherhood, using the new water purifier and all the advanced suits of power armor they are getting from the Enclave, will turn the Capital Wasteland into a federation of sorts, with the Brotherhood forming the military wing. The Brotherhood will have no shortage of recruits aching to join them, and with the water purifier and the research done on growing vegetables in Rivet City, all settlements will have large farms outside their walls and will breed brahmin, finally giving the wasteland a steady source of food. The Brotherhood, using it's massive amounts of power armor and soldiers, will steamroller south to Point Lookout and conquer the tribals there, which shouldn't be too hard if Gameplay and Story Segregation is in play. They will turn most of Point Lookout into a massive Punga-Growing operation. They will also move north into the Pitt, where Ashur, surprised that the Brotherhood is finally making progress, will join them as well, with the Pitt becoming the main industrial zone for ammo and weapon production and for repairing power armor. This will also let him abolish slavery. Before long, they will turn the wasteland into a prosperous nation to rival the NCR. Running to low on weapons or power armor also shouldn't be a problem, as long as they make sure to maintain their equipment, since the Enclave had MASSIVE stores of the stuff.

New Vegas will deal with the original purpose of the Vaults;
The Mojave wasteland survived the War without almost any problems, so most likely the Great Experiment was left untouched. But even so, just think for a second. Blue moon...
 * The final quest, if achievements are anything to go on, is called The Legend of the Star.
 * Jossed. The Legend of the Star deals with you collecting fifty special bottle caps as part of a centuries-old Sunset Sasparilla contest, sort of like collecting McDonald's Monopoly pieces.
 * Not Jossed, Play through The House Always Wins quests. Robert Edwin House plans include space travel to find a new planet for colonization, like the Vaults’ original purpose.

Battlefield 2 takes place in the Fallout verse
This is before the advent of power armor, which if you'll remember, was a pretty late development in the war. What you're fighting in is the Resource Wars. All the major players are there -- US, China, Europe (EU), and the Middle East (MEC).
 * The Resource Wars was a civil war between the European Union. Still an interesting theory.

The aliens from the Mothership Zeta add-on are from Mars
Think about it. The aliens of the Fallout world are very similar to the cliche aliens from science fiction stories made in the 1950's: 1. They're little green men. 2. They probe and experiment on humans. 3. Their technology includes death rays, force fields, and saucer-like space craft 4. According to Sally, the Mothership bridge looks like the one from the Pre-War science fiction TV show Captain Cosmos.

So were did aliens in '50s sci fi typically come from? Mars! Keep in mind that the Fallout world not only has different history than ours, but different laws of physics. (Ex. radiation makes ants become giant)So maybe in the Fallout world, Mars is capable of supporting life, or was sometime in the past. (One of the alien captive logs was made around the 1600's)

The Capital Wasteland Brotherhood of Steel, now probably the dominant division of the faction will ally with the New California Republic

 * If a Good/Neutral character is canon, and so is Broken Steel, then the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood of Steel is in control of the Capital Wasteland. They're purifying as much water as possible, which is going to go a long LONG way if people are thinking of fixing the wastelands. All of the technology they're scouring from the ruins of the Enclave means that they've got the best toys in the area. The Outcasts, even if you give them a crapload of Tesla Armor and Plasma Rifles, have slim to no chances of keeping up with them. And adding to the fact that the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood Division will now probably be seeing better trained, not Red Shirt recruits because there's no immediate crisis going on. Once contact is finally reestablished with Lost Hills, way in Californey, after some much desereved "And you probably thought we wouldn't last!" The current Brotherhood leaders in the main base will be forced to start paying more attention to Lyons and his crew. The fact that they're losing power in the West Coast is also a major factor, and if the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood and the NCR come into contact with each other, working together would be a huge plus for quite a lot of the wastes. The Brotherhood supplies the water and tech, and the NCR is the government.
 * As an extension, the Brotherhood becomes a part of NCR and the original organization is restored, with the Brotherhood returning to its original role as the military under command of a civilian government, with NCR replacing the civilian leadership role that the Enclave was originally intended to fill by the prewar powers.

The Lone Wanderer never returned to Earth
Let's assume events happened in the following order. Main Quest, most side-quests with the possible exception of side-quests that can become inevitable or are triggerd by events i n the Main Quest (Trouble on the Homefront, Rescue From Paridise and MAYBE part of Wasteland Survival Guide and Power of Atom) Then fter waking up in the Citadel he decided to not get involved in what the Brotherhood was doing for a while. so he was wandering around the Southwest area of the Capital Wasteland and picked up a distress call. he thus decided to answer it for whatever reason. and then the eventsof the Operation Anchorage DLC. some time after that he was wandering around the Northern most parts of the Wasteland and picked up Werhners distress call and got sucked into The Pitt. after dealing with that he returned to the Citadel and finished dealing with the Enclave. then headed South to investigate Point Lookout. after Returning to the Wasteland he picked up a strange broadcast near Minefield and decided to investigate that. which ofcorse leads to his abduction. and finally after defeating the Aliens he, Sally, Toshiro, and Tercorian decided to stay unboard the ship for good and not bother with the Wasteland anymore
 * That could work...But to continue the game you HAVE to leave. Otherwise that's not really Wil Mass Guessing.
 * yes you dobut that is only from a gameplay and mechanics standpoint to support the Wide Open Sandbox having no real end. but from a story standpoint and even from a player standpoint you arn't required to leave you can just abandon that profile and start over. again this is assuming a Linear progression of events as I have outlined. and ofcorse there IS the fact that if This Galaxy Aint Big Enough is the last quest that isw done chronologically the Lone Wanderer has nothing left to do baring any mods
 * Well you could say that after the events shown in the game, he/she decides to leave Earth.
 * It's how I ended my game (as noted, I had pretty much done everything by that point, and my character was a scientist...).

Three Dog is God.
He knows everything you do, God is Dog backwards, and he's black. He's obviously God.

Rad Away is imported Vodka.
From where? Why, The Zone, of course! It explains its anti-radiation properties. The whole IV deal is just for show, you really just put the tube into your mouth and suck the bag dry.
 * Hell it is used as part of the Caravan lunch in New Vegas. Guess it was used to mix up the instant mash
 * Not really, since you don't get drunk or lose Perception from it. Besides Rad Away is orange so if it was any kind of alcohol it'd be whiskey not vodka. Either that or TANG.

Elder Lyons was sent east to be gotten out of the way, not just to look for tech.
The expedition was sent in 2254, which would have been about the time the Brotherhood went to war with the NCR. It's likely that Lyons already sympathized with outsiders and opposed the war for any of a number of reasons. Though not an Elder at the time, Paladin Lyons must have had some kind of influence within the Brotherhood. Lyons then became something of a Reassignment Backfire following the discovery of Liberty Prime, which meant he still had some sway. The acquisition to the Purifier has only increased this and Lyons is probably regarded with a strange mix of disgust and envy by the isoltationist-minded Elders on the West Coast.
 * Supported by the Mojave chapter doing something similar to Veronica, who was a relatively respected scribe with subversive ideas. It could be unofficial Brotherhood policy to give troublemakers out-of-the-way jobs.

Fallout 3 is really a video simulation in Fallout New Vegas.
Fallout 3 is really a video simulation in
 * That would be a great theory, but there are events referred to by several characters in New Vegas that clearly occurred in Fallout 3. Meaning the events of Fallout 3 would have to be real.

The Lone Wanderer is a perfected super mutant from The Master's army.
Think about it. He/She's better than "puny humans" in every single way. Perhaps James just gave you Fake Memories of being his son/daughter so you wouldn't awaken to your true potential?

What happens when you get too irradiated?

 * Picture this. You're trying to get into a highly irradiated area. Despite having a huge amount of rad-away and your intelligence at 10 and a medicince skill of 100, you still end up collapsing due to radiation sickness. But maybe you're character doesn't die. The game just reloads a new save file. Because if it didn't, maybe you're character would wake up in that irradiated area, still gaining rads, but radiation sickness effects are starting to lessen. As you wander, you take a look at your chacter from third-person view. There seem to be open patches where skin used to be, and other parts of your skin seem to be discolored. Congratulations, you've started the process of ghoulification.
 * And think about the part of The Wasteland Survival Guide where you need to get irradiated. If you go the extra mile and get the amount of rads for the bonus, Moira says you're now suffering from a small mutation that will heal your limbs whenever you get up to at least Advanced radiation sickness. Full ghouls are healed by radiation. So, if you complete that bonus objective, you've become a partial ghoul, without any of the negative affects, such as losing skin and hair.

The plan to leave Earth has alredy worked and resulted in The Aliance

 * The Americans and The Chinese made a deal to avoid hitting the ships with the nukes so they could leave, they leave behind the experimental Vaults (control Vaults are experimental), The Mutants (Ghouls, Super Mutants, Wastelanders, etc) and the "Rejects" (the Enclave, they didn't heve room or didn't liked them for any reson... WHOULD you travel god knows how many light years with a Jerkass. They also got leaved behind with out their knowledge.

The Nuclear Holocaust was caused by bored AI, not the US/China

 * Skynet in 2 believes this to be possible, so why not?

The obligatory Time Lord theory

 * The Vault Dweller, the Chosen One, the Lone Wanderer, and the Courier are all the same character: a Time Lord in its various incarnations.
 * The player is his own grandpa?

There is a good in-strory reason why so many doors are boarded up in Three and New Vegas.
A boarded up door is scavenger shorthand for "The roof has collapsed, door won't open." Obviously, if the door could have been opened, it would have been sometime in the last two and a bit centuries.

The reason you can offhandedly fire a death ray at Canada is because a coder at Bethseda once ate a terrible poutine.
However, in doing his research he got Upper Canada and Lower Canada mixed up, and had the wrong province death rayed.
 * Clever, but the death ray hit a very sparsely populated area of Canada, so no Canadians were harmed.
 * And anyway, the US annexed Canada back in 2075-76, so if anyone was hit they'd still be Americans.

after the end of the game Veronica joined Lyons Pride
Because damnit she deserves a happy ending and what better ending than joining up with a chapter that believes in her viewpoint.

The Brotherhood of Steel will soon be gone from the West Coast.
Over and over again, New Vegas tells us that the Brotherhood is dying. The war with the NCR pretty much gutted them to the point that hiding in a hole in the ground can be considered valid strategy. Worse, the Brotherhood is unwilling to take any step to adapt to the changing times. Plasma rifles and Power Armor were enough when humanity was reduced to tribes, but now that countries are forming, it's just not going to cut it. Reformers like Veronica have to worry about their lives being threatened if they try to change things. And even if the Mojave branch strikes a truce with the NCR, the main branch is still hostile. Even an incredibly lenient Elder like McNamara stubbornly clings to the Codex, so it's likely the other Elders would prefer to let the organization die rather than adapt and survive. By the time 2300 rolls around, it wouldn't be surprising if the only Brotherhood factions of any worth are the ones in the Midwest and East Coast.

Dr.Lesko intentionally engineered the firebreathing ants
Seriously, there's no way you can accidentally give mutated bugs the ability to shoot fire. Why did he do this you may ask? The Ant Agonizer payed him to. She wanted to be taken seriously as a threat, as most of the time her ants were just curb stomped by the Mechanist's robots. Lesko succeeded in creating the firebreathing ants and sent some of them to the Ant Agnonizer, who then tested the ants by burning down Lesko's hometown, Grayditch. This induced a My God, What Have I Done? moment from Lesko, who chased the Ant Agonizer off and stopped sending her new ants, but he was left with no way to stop the fire breathing ants. That is, until the Lone Wanderer came along...

The Capital Wasteland is in fact purgatory
Most non re-spawning characters are in fact moving on to heaven or hell. Enemies like raiders are being punished by being killed again and again, mostly by one person, the lone wanderer, who in turn is either a soul seeking redemption or one of the staff. The super mutants? demoted demons. The enclave? dead soldiers unaware they are dead.
 * So... you're saying... I should kill Moira because then she can go to heaven? Because, I'm not sure I have the heart to do that.
 * Moira is a staff member, a test of morality, bad people kill her and get to stay longer, good people help her and ascend quicker.

The fallout series takes place after The Jetsons
Think about it.
 * No, it happens at the same time. Why else would they avoid the surface?

The Mad Max Trilogy takes place during the first years of the Fallout Series
This is a concept I've been toying with for a while, actually. During the Resource Wars, Australia distanced itself from the UK in order to protect its wealth of natural resources. Unfortunately, when the war between China and America began, China invaded, with America also annexing a portion of the southern part of Australia (backed up by America's annexing of Canada for oil, Australia has one of the largest naturally occurring quantities of Uranium.) A stalemate begins between the two, resulting in a police state which is very similar to the initial Mad Max movie. This also explains why there is such a fuel shortage, as all of Australia's resources are either being used by China or America, depending on the part. After the nuclear war happens, the major cities in Australia are reduced to rubble, while the smaller towns in the Outback are left relatively normal. This results in vehicle-bound 'Raiders' of sorts, such as the Lord Humungus and his merry band. It's not that much of a stretch of the imagination, since the aesthetic of a lot of Fallout is based on the films. Also, by the third film, (probably 30 or 40 years since the War, depending on how eternally youthful Mel Gibson is) there are already evidences of mutation, being the Master/Blaster duo.

Myron was -not- killed at the end of Fallout 2. Long enough for him to create a less addictive jet aided by the Chosen One.
This would account for the weakened form of Jet and why it's so widespread in Fallout 3 and New Vegas despite "Jet being quickly forgotten" by Myron dying.
 * Jet wasn't forgotten. Myron's epilogue states that the creator of Jet was forgotten.

Casear's Legion is active in The Captial Wasteland and Burke is part of the Frumentarii
As mentioned in the theory of him being an Enclave operative, Burke will vanish of the face of the Earth if you don't kill him when you defuse the bomb. Indeed, he seems to have a level of power beyond what Tenpenny provides, as his contract note indicates he has the power to punish the Talon Mercs for failing their contract, a threat that Gustavo's goons would hardly be able to carry out given their reluctance to drag themselves a few miles to take care of Roy Phillips. Much like the Legion Burke repeatedly states that he is trying to create a nobler future. Even is dress sense seems reminiscent of Vulpes, and his plan for the bomb bears an uncanny resemblance to the Legion tactics at Camp Searchlight. While it may seem strange that he would be operating so far away from Legion turf, bear in mind that if an eccentric shopkeeper from Megaton can shift multiple copies of her books to the Vegas area, then it's entirely possible that Caesar would dispatch operatives to the Capital, given that it was the centre of the old world's government and thus a possible seed of resistance against his ideals. In fact, it's the Legion who sends the Talon mercs after you for having good karma, as they feel your altruistic tendancies are simply sustaining the corrupt world of the wasteland rather than allowing progress. Littlehorn and associates are in fact Legion members undercover, who hope to destablise what little order the Wasteland has to make way for the Legion's eventual takeover.
 * Expanding on the this, the next fallout game will feature the remnants of Caesar's Legion (having been decimated from their loss to the NCR) travelling across the mainland and invading the Capital Wasteland, now more or less rebuilt because of the large number of Brotherhood Peacekeepers than the Project Purity making agriculture possible. The central conflict of the game will be a fight for the lands a few hundred miles west of the Capital Wastes (the ruins of Cincinatti)? Between the Capital Brotherhood, the Legion Remnants, and a new resurgent Enclave force, having rode in from the North on a pair of Mobile Base Crawlers.

If not killed, Roy Phillips would take over the Capital Wasteland
Just think about it. Roy has shown the ability to control feral ghouls. That's not a big problem with normal ferals or roamers, but think about this: He can control Feral Ghoul Reavers. A single Reaver can slaughter an entire squad of Enclave Hellfire troops before going down, and there are dozens of the damn things hidden beneath the metro stations. If you don't kill him, he unleashes the Reavers on the Citadel and every major settlement, exterminating every smoothskin wastelander and paladin in the wastes. Good thing pretty much everyone who's ever played the game killed him...

Marcus is being set up to take Harold's place as the main recuring character
With poor old Harold rooted down in Washington, Obsidian/Bethesda reintroduced Marucs for this purpose, as he has the advantages of being a popular charcter plus he can be used no matter the time period on account of his Super Mutant longevity.

The Lone Wanderer/The Courier are both psychic
To some extent, they both have telepathy and telekenisis. You know everybody's names before they talk to them. Whenever you pick something up (as in to move it around), it floats in front of you, even in third person view. Both of their true backgrounds are muddled; the Wanderer was born to scientists of all things outside of Vault 101, who could have done anything to the baby. The Courier was shot in the head, therefore he/she lost any memory of their psychic life before then. Psychics aren't new to the Fallout series, there were several super mutants in the original Fallout, and in Fallout New Vegas, there's the young character known only as 'The Forecaster' who can sense happenings in the wasteland without actually experiencing them.

Marcus will travel East and come into opposition with the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood
After successfully curing of the Nightkin Marcus will go to investigate the Mutant situation in Washington, possibly with Neil and Lily in toll. After meeting Fawkes and Uncle Leo he'll decide that the Mutants there could be cured of their madness and will try to help them. However, given that they gun down even sentient Ghouls on principle, the Brotherhood won't have any of this and will oppose him at all turns. Large doses of Gray and Gray Morality ensue, forcing the player to pick sides. Things will only be made worse when a former Lietaunt of the Master surfaces and recruits the Vault 87 Mutants to his cause, fighting against both the Brotherhood and Marcus, having discovered a cache of advanced technology and a cure for Mutant sterility, making the threat of them replacing humanity as a whole valid again.

Things will culminate when the hostile Mutants launch an attack on settlements around the Wastes, forcing the player to choose between releasing Marcus's cure and a modified version of the FEV, which has been altred to only effect Mutated life but has no effect on humans. The cure will strip the Mutants of their homicidal tendencies but takes longer to set in, leading to massive casualties across the Capital Wasteland as well as the destruction of Project Purity by the Mutant army. If you choose the FEV it will lead to an epidemic that wipes out most Ghouls and Mutants but saves the vast majority of the Wasteland. This will naturally piss of one of the two sides, leading to a final boss fight with either Marcus or Liberty Prime.

Fallout 4, a spin-off game, or some later game will involve Chicago, the Enclave and the Brotherhood... but not as we know them
From Fallout Tactics, we know that the Midwestern Brotherhood is getting fairly fascistic, and several of the endings strengthen that tendency. We know from Fallout 3 that a) one of the endings where that doesn't happen is non-canon and b) that the Midwesterners are in a relatively bad way. We know from New Vegas that the Enclave has or at least had a base in Chicago, after the events of Tactics. We also know, from the same game, that a not-insignificant portion of the Enclave's rank-and-file weren't all that bad. So, an insane theory: One of the future Fallout games will be centered in Chicago, and will involve or at least allow working for the Enclave, or, more accurately, a branch/incarnation in which the more idealistic elements have ended up on the top (remember, the leadership of the Enclave has been killed twice at this point), to stop the Midwestern Brotherhood, which has descended into something as bad as Autumn's Enclave thanks to the strains of the Tactics war and now the war with the Enclave. Basically, Fallout 3, but in reverse.
 * The problem with this theory is that the only thing that is canon about Tactics is that there is a chapter of the Brotherhood somewhere in the Midwest. None of the endings for it can possibly be canon, including the "fascist" ending, because of elements, groups or technology that do not exist in the series canon.
 * Actually, a bit more than that is supposed to be canon - the Broad Strokes of the overall storyline of Tactics are canon ("major events", and the war that dominates the entire later half of the game can hardly be called anything but major). The fascist thing was not a reference to a specific ending, as such - actually, we do know which ending is canon, since there is only one that leaves the Midwesterners a weak group (the Calculator has *not* been made un-canon, but it must have been destroyed) - but more to what they were doing across the entire game. And desperation has a tendency to breed harsh measures...
 * We do not know which ending is canon. Keep in mind Caesar's Legion is a We Have Reserves force and the biggest weakness of the Brotherhood of Steel has always been numbers. Even with unlimited recruits, the Brotherhood is still limited by the amount of armor and weapons they possess. Given Caesar's anti-technology stance, it is very plausible the Calculator could have survived Fallout Tactics, but been destroyed early on in any conflict between Caesar and the Midwestern Brotherhood.
 * Also never mentioned the Calculator was not canon. It is comparitively one of the more plausible elements from Tactics with similar technology being seen in the mains series.
 * Turning into a facist organization requires some Character Derailment. Only one ending really allows for this to occur in a plausible fashion and this ending is probably the only one that is definitely not canon. The Midwestern Brotherhood has shown no intention of rejoining the main branch and the only plausible reason behind this is if they wanted to maintain their more inclusive policies.
 * Point to point counter: it was mentioned that the Calculator was not canon. "Only thing that is canon... there is a chapter of the Brotherhood somewhere in the Midwest", if you look above. Caesar's Legion is highly unlikely as the cause of a fall: when the Capital Wastelanders-to-be reached the Pitt (IE, after they passed the Midwesterners' potential territories), Caesar had just established his first capital, and at no point before or during 2281 did Caesar's Legion reach northern Utah. Not that kind of fascist organization - more willing to accept recruits, but also inclined towards labour and concentration camps, forcibly acquiring control of towns, etc... as during the game, rather than the non-Good karma Calculator or Barnaky Calculator endings. Granted, it might be easier to get the Enclave's Better Side and the Midwestern Brotherhood to meet at the middle than to get the Enclave to be the better side of the two.
 * The counter to the Calculator is not a counter: by Word Of Fallout 3 Lead Designer, Bethesda considers "most of the major events as more or less canon, just not the details that contradict Fallout and Fallout 2". The Calculator is not a contradiction to either of those games (Vault 0 might be seen as it, but not the Calculator itself), and most of Tactic's plot derives from the Calculator, IE it being made uncanon would make most of the major events uncanon. Now, it is an easy mistake, since the only thing that Fallout 3 establishes as canon is the existence of a chapter of the Brotherhood somewhere in the Midwest, but Bethesda does not consider only that as canon.

The Vault Dweller, Chosen One, Lone Wanderer, and Courier are all related.
] It's canon that the Chosen One is a descendant of the Vault Dweller, and enough time passes between the games to assume that the Chosen One's progeny sowed their wild oats and had descendants on both coasts.
 * Almost definitely false. Considering the implied child of the Chosen One is in New Reno, that is a huge leap considering virtually no one crosses the state, let alone the country. In addition, if you assume the Vault 21 picture is canon and not simply an Easter Egg, it is completely impossible for the Lone Wanderer to be related to any other character no matter how you try to massage it. James and Catherine only had one child (so they can't be siblings), some dialogue marks the Courier as being active before Vault 21 opened, and no one entered Vault 21 before it was opened.

The origin of Bob.
Some time before Harold's expedition to Mariposa, he ate a fruit (one of those weird knobbly ones you can use to make super stimpacks), and unknown to him one of the seeds of the fruit got stuck in his back teeth until the expedition. When Harold was mutated by FEV, so was the seed, and it started growing, first slowly, then rapidly.

The 'Extremely Interesting Changes' that President Dick Richardson mentions are the same changes that cause most wastelanders to become stupid mutants.
Title explains it all.

The Master in Fallout 1 is the Master from Doctor Who.
After his latest encounter with the Doctor--the 12th Doctor by this point--the renegade Time Lord known as the Master was forced to flee to Vault 8 under the alias Richard Moreau to escape the nuclear holocaust that devastated Earth in 2077. In 2092, he was exiled from Vault City for the murder of a strong opponent to his experiments involving genetic mutation. He changed his alias to Richard Grey and set out across the Wasteland to find a new place to continue his experiments. Eventually, the Master came upon the Hub, where he met a prominent trader named Harold. He teamed up with Harold on May 22 2102 to investigate vicious attacks on Harold's caravan by mutated creatures. Unknown to Harold, the Master only wanted the knowledge of these creatures for his own sinister experiments. On June 23 2102, Harold and the Master stumbled upon the Mariposa Military Base, where the Master discovered critical data on the Forced Evolutionary Virus created by the U.S. government. Before the party could escape with this knowledge and samples of the virus, however, they were ambushed by the mutants, who took Harold and the Master captive. Harold managed to escape--though not without partial exposure to the F.E.V.--but he was forced to leave the Master behind. Upon further examination, the mutants discovered the Master's Time Lord chemistry and immediately threw him into a vat of F.E.V. to test the virus' effects on him. During the long months he spent in the vat, the Master was forced to go through his regeneration process, but the exposure to the F.E.V. warped his body into the hideous blob you see in Fallout 1. After his defeat at the hands of the Vault Dweller, the Master went through a proper regeneration, cleansing him of the effects of the F.E.V. Where--and who--he is now is a mystery.

China launched the first nukes out of desperation.
It's not that unlikly. look what was happeing when the First nuke was launched (FNL for short. 1. they invaded Alaska to get oil. a while before FNL the force had been completly destroyed, as evdienced by the operation anchorage sim. 2. there country itself was under attack, on news paper reporting the capital was about to be taken the day before FNL. 3. this is a lesser reason, but they might have heard of liberty prime from one of there spies, and a huge nuke chucking, lazer shooting robot would scare anyone to extereme measures.
 * The problem with that is the timeline. Anchorage was retaken almost a year before the first bomb dropped and the Chinese. In addition, the simulation is not an accurate assessment of what happened in Anchorage. General Chase was starting to go insane at that point and was modifying the simulation to suit his delusion of what happened there.
 * Liberty Prime, which didn't exist in the original games, would have been tactically insignificant. It's a walking tank, that's it. If anything, it would have been less important than a tank because tanks move faster and have smaller target profiles.
 * The United States tactically had the larger incentive to use nuclear bombs, just beyond the fact that every pre-War US commander was shown to be an arrogant, partially delusional, hardcore military officer bent on wiping out the Chinese completely. China could win the war through attrition due to greater numbers. They could make the same assaults over and over again until they finally overwhelmed the defenders.
 * That last one was probablly wrong, because the capital of China was about to be taken. and while Prime might not be significant, the armies of powered armor were.

We haven't seen the last of the Gary clones
As noted above, the clones seem to be ageless. Besides that, only 14 of the original 54 clones can be found in the Capital Wasteland; That leaves 40 of them unaccounted for. It's likely that some of these were killed by the non-clone residents of Vault 108, but it's unlikely that all of them were; The fact that you find Gary 23 on the other side of the Capital Wasteland indicates that not all of them were against the idea of leaving the vault.

It's A Small World After All; the fate of the rest of the world
Since Fallout has been sold in many parts of the world, this can be a place for all international Fallout fans to discuss what could have happened to their specific countries. If your country isn't here, feel free to add it on. Australia had no official vault system in place - it was just too chaotic to get anything done, especially with the economy already crumbling from lack of oil. But ironically, all those mines turned out to be a godsend; they were deep and winding enough to shield people deep inside the earth while the surface was scorched with atomic fire. Most of the east coast cities were wiped out, killing a large portion of Australia's population. But in smaller remote towns, far away from any strategic areas and too small to be noticed, were spared any direct nuclear attack. The vast central deserts of Australia were mostly untouched. But nuclear war and the resulting fallout was only the beginning of Australia's problems. Being one of the harshest contintents in the world, living in the sun-baked deserts was hard enough with human infrastructure; now that civilization had fallen, no more water was pumped across drought-infested farms, no more truck envoys delivered supplies, and no more people could travel the distant highways. The people who survived were now utterly at the mercy of an unforgiving country ... and an unforgiving wildlife, which had changed and mutated over time. As it once had been when Australia had been colonized by the Aborigines and the British so many centuries ago, life in Australia would be a long and bitter struggle.
 * AUSTRALIA: Australia's fate in the lead-up to the war wasn't pretty. While other countries had the ability to wage war on others for their oil resources, Australia didn't, meaning that it had no choice but to teeter towards bankruptcy as fuel prices soared and petrol ran dry (sorry, no Mad Max here). But Australia did have one thing going for it; lots of natural resources including iron ore, rare metals, and uranium. Unfortunately this just meant that Australia was another victim of the Resource Wars - the UK tried to bring its former colony under control but was too occupied with the Middle East to do much; China invaded to take over the vast mineral deposits; then the US invaded to try and wrest it away from China. Australia tried to side with the US (Australia adopted a lot of the Red Scare fever along with the already present Yellow Peril fears), but as massive mining machines tore up the land and people died in skirmishes across the country, Australia was just exhausted of being fought over like a bone between two massive war dogs. The last independent remains of Australia's army tried to take back some key areas before the bombs finally dropped and ended it all.
 * Also, there's probablly insane, High Octaine Nightmare Fuel monsters. If Death Claws and such are what come from America's wildlife, imagine what the nukes did to salt water crocs, and kangaroos!
 * I've been thinking quite a lot about that - totally not because I'm making a fanwork based on this idea, or anything - and I'd love to utterly screw with people's expectations of what the wildlife would be like. "Oh god, a giant Huntsman spider! Wait, it's green on my compass? It's harmless? Oh, well thank god for that. ... Oh hey, a flock of mutated sheep! Neat! ... Wait, why are they -- oh god! They're trying to eat me! Nooo--"
 * USSR: We already know something from canon to extrapolate from, that's: USSR existed until the Great War without breakup, but it became a Vestigial Empire and not a major world power; it was still something of a Cold War-esque rival to USA, but not as major as China, and Soviet-American diplomatic relations were still going on during the War; there are still enough high-tech left for Dukov to cross the ocean; and not all of the world was frozen in the 50s, only USA. So my (aurora369's) version is the following:
 * The time period it is stuck in is late 1980s - early 1990s, the time when the real USSR was a crumbling Vestigial Empire. The computers are Mikroshas, Korvets and Robotrons (roughly ZX Spectrum and Amiga in terms of advancedness), the city architecture is very similar to one in Half-Life 2 except more ruined, the country architecture is all wooden log houses, all rusted cars are VAZ and Volgas with fusion cell-powered motors and even these are not nearly as plentiful as in USA (the automobile revolution only happened in The New Russia), the clutter found in ruins is all from these photos. The local counterpart to GNR plays Vladimir Vysotsky, Viktor Tsoi, Nautilus Pompilius and Mashina Vremeni, the local counterpart to the Enclave Radio plays The Union Indestructible, Slavyanka's Farewell, VDV March and so on. Still no sex.
 * Little or no actual nuking of the country took place, since USSR did not take a side in the Great War, only sold uranium to China. It is also so unbelievably huge that even just-in-case nuking would take no less devices than a thorough nuking of China. Most of the apocalypse and depopulation was from fallout and famines caused by nuclear winter. Moscow definitely wasn't blown up (it has a dedicated missile defence system in Real Life), but most of the city fares little better than Washington, D.C. Possibly some American nukes fell on the uranium mines in Siberia.
 * No supermutants, because of almost no FEV ending up on Soviet turf (some minuscule amounts carried in by global wind patterns, enough for huge radcritters but not enough for supermutants). Quite a lot of ghouls, especially on the Chinese and Western borders where fallout was most severe; possibly some ghouls predating the war by a century as a result of Chernobyl/Techa/Semipalatinsk. There should be an all-ghoul kolkhoz town that finally perfected real communism. Possibly a unique local variety of mutant to replace supermutants, springing from Soviet Superscience.
 * BTW, much of that superscience is a Darker and Edgier variation of stuff from Alice, Girl from the Future. Clunky Werther and Rusty General lookalikes replace all those Mr.Handys and Protectrons, and the local plasma pistol is the blaster from that 'verse.
 * The local Hunting Rifle, on the other hand, is an old, trusty Mosin-Nagant, complete with a bayonet.
 * Much colder climate because of leftover glaciation from nuclear winter. Because of that, huge rad-gnats migrating south from the taiga to the former temperate zone.
 * Scared of the Yao Guai? They are harmless, cute and cuddly compared to the Siberia Guai, after all, the former were originally just little black bears! And the latter grizzly-sized brown bears were dangerous enough before mutation; now they are the size of a rhino, ten times the ill temper of a rhino and would scare a deathclaw to death with their roar. And yes, they really do walk the streets of ruined (and possibly some surviving) Russian cities and towns where drunk Russian men come out of bathhouses to wrestle them. Probably that's why Dukov sits in a building in a dangerous ruined city filled with mutants and worse, drinks, parties and is not afraid of anything. What the white bears have become is the reason no one goes to the frozen North.
 * The vaults are replaced partly by metro tunnels, partly by simply living in the vast forests. It's Truth in Television that all Soviet Metro stations and tunnels were built deep underground and fitted with massive sealing doors and life support to double as Vaults.
 * The political landscape is pretty much eternal Civil War again, now with Soviet Hardliners/the local Enclave, similar in conviction and cruelty to the Bolsheviks of old, vs Disaster Democrats.
 * To put it all simple, more cold snow, cool vodka and hot lead than ever before! And we Russians like it that way!
 * SINGAPORE: There could be two possible fates for the island. Either the Chinese annexed it and was using it as an important port (much like Hong Kong) or the US maintained an alliance with it during the American-Chinese War, possibly using it as a base of operations to strike upwards into Southern China. Either option would make it a militarily significant target, which almost certainly means it was nuked to oblivion by either side. However if the Chinese saved all their nukes for the American heartland and it escaped relatively unscathed I would imagine it to be a primitive pirate base of operations, complete with a thriving Slaver's market.
 * ENGLAND: England has undergone a cataclysm. Nuked by various middle eastern countries, completely run out of fuel and a series of riots completely destablizing what order remains, leaving a broken husk of a country. The surviving authority figures declare England to be the last surviving section of the Commonwealth, and start Operation ANGEL. Hundreds of years pass. London is seperated by zones. There is the Pacified Zone, where everything is in a pre-war state, much like the Strip. However, there is only one (Birmingham Palace) since Operation ANGEL began and it is highly controlled. No-one gets in or out. Along with that, there are the Controlled Zones (Government soldiers in towers, vague law, similar to Freeside) and the Uncontrolled Zones (Similar to Capital Wasteland. Mutants, no law and occasionally settlements). There is also a unique zone called the Prison Zone, formerly a dock, where the massive husks of aircraft carriers are put to use as prisons. All is not stable in the London Ruins, as a civil war is going on. The Rebels have fought the Government multiple times in the Controlled Zones, and the Rebels are hidden within the Uncontrolled Zones.
 * The Government is highly incompetent. This is mainly because Operation ANGEL was not very well planned. They cannot replicate their best weapons, their ammo is reused and they are running out of food, water and materials. They cannot even call for help due to the waters being dangerously radioactive, all their planes requiring fuel to get across the Channel that they do not have and all their radios being broken due to age of all the replacement parts. If they do not do anything about the resource crisis they will completely destroy what little remains of England. The Government control one of the last fuel deposits, under Birmingham Palace. However, they used a lot of it when they sent a plane across the channel (It did not come back) and they are hoarding it. They only control the London Ruins (Barely). They have three types of soldier. The Pacifier wears Riot Gear, wields riot shields with shotguns and patrol with five other Pacifiers in uniform fashion. They are deployed in Uncontrolled Zones. The Patrolsman wears Urban Camo Kevlar Armor (UCKA) and wields a L 85 A 2, and are usually in Controlled Zones. The Guard wears the British equal of Power Armor, wields a high power sniper rifle and is deployed in the Pacified Zone as guards.
 * The Rebels are a strange mix of communism and democracy. They wish to keep the "Everyone is Equal" part of communism along with the "Everyone Decides Who Is Leader" part of democracy. This would be utopian, but it's unrealistic. They are mainly based within the Uncontrolled Zones, and attack Controlled Zones regularly. Their main goal is to take control of the Pacified Zone and begin their new government. Their weapons are improvised from the environment or stolen from the Government. Molotov Cocktails, lead pipes, pistols made out of scrap metal or hastily repaired Government weapons are only just to start with their arsenal. They pride themselves on their improvisation.
 * Wales, Scotland and Ireland are all fine though.
 * I shall add more at a later date. Watch this space.

Mothership Zeta is the Lone Wanderer watching a pre war movie
The area that you enter Mothership Zeta in is actually just a rare intact pre-war drive in theater. The Lone Wander is simply watching a movie and imagining himself in it.
 * Turns the entire game into Unreliable Narrator because you can visually see the area you enter Mothership Zeta without being close enough to interact with it.

Aliens Caused the War
Motherhip Zeta's Alien Captive Recorded Log 17 there is an audio recording of someone resisting the alien mind control, in the audio log he was about to give the aliens America's launch codes. . . mabe nuclear apocalypse occurred shortly thereafter?
 * No other games in the series treats aliens as canon. The Great War and the nuclear escalation weren't surprises, which is why the Enclave had years of time to prepare for it.

The reason why the United States stayed in cultural stasis is because of the Enclave
In the Fallout Universe the Enclave was the secret shadow organization behind the workings of the United States Government before the Great War consumed the world in nuclear fire. Having control over the economy and the flow of information they would be able to brainwash the human populace into believing that the 1950s "Leave it to Beaver/Slice of Life" way of life was the ideal way for every American to live. You might ask why the people wouldn't begin to question their Government and create the counter-culture movements that occurred in our world. Before the Great War the United States Government brutally stopped riots that were held by American citizens showing the Enclave's totalitarian policies influencing the Government; there probably was a counter-culture movement in the Fallout series like in our world but it was shut down in a similar fashion.

There actually wasn't a cultural stasis in the Fallout series, the Enclave just left behind all the evidence to troll the survivors of the nuclear war
Furthermore all evidence that would prove that the Fallout pre-war society was like ours has long since rotted away as it realistically would. Every thing styled in a 1950s vision of the future was just placed there as one big practical joke.

Fallout 4 will take place in Alaska, or at least have DLC that takes place there, because of its energy and resource importance.
The Americans successfully repelled the Chinese from Alaska during World War III/The Resource Wars meaning that the oil was successfully reinstated into American hands where it belonged. Then the Great War happened preventing America from getting the chance to use it. Logically this means that Alaska is the last reserve of oil left on planet Earth and is a gold mine of energy that any post-war society would find highly beneficial, not to mention the vast wilderness of forests that span thousands of miles long and is filled with a vast diversity of animal and plant life. The only reason why it has been left untouched all this time is because the United States has been a Wasteland for so long that traveling that far, especially into a cold Alaskan environment where your troops will freeze their asses off, was too risky. I propose that Fallout 4 will take the NCR ending of Fallout New Vegas as canon and explain that with Hoover Dam under their firm control the NCR felt that they now had enough energy resources to span an expedition to the Frozen Wasteland of Alaska to further improve NCR society.
 * Odds are Alaska has little to no oil left. The Enclave refer to the Oil Rig as being over the last accessible oil field. If the Alaskan oil fields were still productive, the Enclave would have fortified it. Although I will concede that a previous never-mentioned, super powerful branch of the Enclave appearing randomly would be Bethesda's style.
 * Alaska also isn't a frozen wasteland.
 * At this point, oil isn't that important a resource since almost no one has the manufacturing capability to make anything where oil is that important. The reason oil was so useful for the Enclave was because the Enclave had vertibirds, which used oil up until Fallout 3 randomly decided to make them nuclear powered.
 * The NCR is over-stretched militarily. Unless they find a way to directly transform electricity into people, then having more energy is not going to improve their situation.
 * Mounting expeditions to far away lands because there might be something there is also an egregious waste of resources. Which is part of the reason Fallout 3 is so absurd to reuse West Coast factions.

The Mysterious Stranger is the immortal Chessmaster behind everything in the games.
The Mysterious Stranger was the first man to discover the secret to immortality and survived the nuclear halocaust. Faced with 100's of years to think about it, he roamed the earth seeking out exceptional individuals and manipulated world events slowly but surely to help with his master plan to revitalize humanity. His presence with you is explained by him ensuring that his plans come to fruition.

The Luck Stat is minor reality warping affecting only probabilities and can be boosted by placebo effect/confidence.
If luck is the ability to calculate probabilities, how does it explains an increase in critical hits? It's simply impossible to calculate probabilities so fast to get more "lucky hits", even our modern computers couldn't do it. And calculating probabilities would be useless at roulette, yet luck nudges roulette spins in your favor. And then, how could "lucky" shades and the Naughty Nightwear be lucky? The former is a normal looking pair of glasses, the latter a normal looking piece of underwear. The probability calculator implants helps calculating probability, so if the Courier has an 80% probability of a positive event happening, then it should happen, then the courier nudges probabilities in his favor from having probabilities supporting him.