Fallout viewers are debating whether the show's timeline conflicts with one of the games

A small detail in the Fallout show has some fans worried that the events of Fallout: New Vegas just got kicked out of the franchise’s timeline. 

Note: Discussing this will entail some necessary spoilers of both the Fallout show and the game New Vegas, so be aware that spoilers follow from here on out.

While the Fallout TV show has only been out for less than a week, one particular detail has already lit up some discussion, centered around the timeline of events in Fallout‘s version of America and their relation to the Obsidian-developed RPG Fallout: New Vegas.

The detail in question is a blackboard in a Vault 4 classroom that’s meant to be teaching some of the wasteland’s history. Many of Vault 4’s residents are refugees from Shady Sands, the former capital of the New California Republic that Hank MacLean nuked sometime before the events of the show, which takes place in 2296. The blackboard lists an event labeled as “The Fall of Shady Sands” as occurring in 2277, and it shows an arrow indicating the capital was nuked sometime after that point. 

The reason this is a problem for some fans is that New Vegas takes place in 2281, and none of the NCR citizens in that game mention anything called the “fall of Shady Sands.” The worry is that the show is establishing a new timeline where the NCR collapsed before the events of New Vegas ever happened, but when you look at the larger picture, that doesn’t seem to be what’s actually happening here. 

Mojave, mo’ problems

There are a few reasons to think that New Vegas’s place in the canon is safe. For one thing, Bethesda’s design director Emil Pagliarulo has explicitly said the game’s story is still canon. 

When it comes to that “fall of Shady Sands” label on the blackboard, there’s no reason to think the fall was a singular event. “Fall” here seems to be a label that the residents of Vault 4 are applying retroactively to mark when the NCR started losing power. That actually lines up with the lore of New Vegas, where we learn that the NCR has stretched itself too thin and is struggling to maintain control over all of its territory. 

There’s also a detail in the show that seems to imply the NCR had already abandoned Shady Sands by the time the nuke fell. A sign in the town refers to it being the “first capital” of the NCR, which means something must have driven the NCR to relocate, and that probably has a lot to do with why we don’t see much of them in the first season.

We know that, even though Shady Sands was destroyed sometimes after 2277, plenty of people still live in the area, because those are who Moldaver is trying to give electricity to with cold fusion. We also see proof in the show that the NCR had a heavy presence in New Vegas, just like it did in the game. The finale’s credit sequence shows us an NCR vertibird in the streets of the city — maybe that’s where it set up its new capital.

There’s still plenty we don’t know about the state of the NCR or other notable locations like the Boneyard, the Hub, and of course New Vegas itself. Assuming the show gets a second season, I’m excited to see what direction it takes. Drastically diminishing the power of the NCR is a big lore change, but to be fair, the writing was on the wall for the faction by the time they pushed into the Mojave.