Fallout’s Latest Episode Quietly Slips in a Brilliant Fallout: New Vegas Meme

Spoilers for this week’s episode of Fallout ahead. Another week brings another episode of Fallout, and this installment places a strong focus on Lucy’s (Ella Purnell) personal philosophy known as the “Golden Rule,” while also expanding on the political tensions within the Brotherhood of Steel. The episode feels like a major step forward for the series, carefully balancing narrative progression with respect for Fallout’s long-established lore. From iconic locations to deep-cut references, the callbacks are plentiful. Here’s a closer look at what “The Golden Rule” delivers.

This week’s episode offers a flashback to Shady Sands during its prime. While viewers previously saw the city in ruins, this episode reveals what daily life looked like in the New California Republic’s capital before its destruction. Longtime fans will recognize Shady Sands as one of the first major locations featured in the original Fallout game released in 1997. Because the television series is canon to the games, the city’s destruction was always an inevitable part of its story.

Shady Sands ultimately meets its tragic end when a mind-controlled stranger enters the city carrying an armed atomic bomb. When confronted by Maximus’ father, the man repeatedly mutters a single phrase: “Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.” Fans of Fallout: New Vegas will recognize this line as a recurring piece of dialogue spoken by New California Republic NPCs with limited interaction. In the game, the phrase highlights the monotony of NCR patrol duties, and over the years it has become one of the franchise’s most widely shared memes.

Elsewhere in the episode, Maximus (Aaron Moten) and his Brotherhood of Steel chapter establish a new base of operations at Area 51. The location houses a collection of pre-war artifacts for the Brotherhood’s use, but its most striking discovery is an icebox containing an alien corpse. The alien is identified as a Zetan, best known for its appearance in the Fallout 3 downloadable expansion “Mothership Zeta.” Zetans can also be encountered in Fallout: New Vegas, but only if players select the Wild Wasteland trait—otherwise, the mystery remains unresolved.

The episode also makes use of the concept of Reclamation Day. When Norm (Moisés Arias) awakens the Vault-Tec Junior Executives inside Vault 31, he convinces them that Reclamation Day has arrived in order to secure their cooperation. In Fallout lore, Reclamation Day marks the moment when Vault dwellers are meant to return to the surface and rebuild civilization. This idea is most prominently featured in Fallout 76, where players begin as residents of Vault 76, the first vault to open after the Great War, tasked with resettling Appalachia.

Throughout the episode, various Brotherhood of Steel chapters debate uniting against the chapter based in the Commonwealth, despite the risk of triggering a civil war. Fallout 4 players will recognize the Commonwealth as the Boston-inspired setting of that game. In that storyline, the Brotherhood was led by Elder Arthur Maxson, whose growing obsession with power led him to deploy the Brotherhood’s so-called freedom-enforcing super-weapon, Liberty Prime. His descent serves as a reminder of how power can corrupt even the most disciplined factions.