/fog/ lore

1. The Mysterious Stranger is from Montana, and his son lives in New Vegas, who worked as a coal miner for a while.

In Fallout New Vegas, we meet an npc named "The Lonesome Drifter". He mentions his father, who left him when he was a child. He mentions growing up in Montana, where he worked as a coal miner for a while. When asked about his father, he tells us that he was a "mysterious" man, who at times was almost like a "stranger". So far, this could all be a coincidence, but then we find that his gun is identical to the otherwise unique Mysterious Stranger's firearm, an engraved unique .44 magnum. These are the only two copies of this weapon in the game. As if this isn't enough of a heavy handed implication, we then find that the unique Mysterious Stranger's gun makes the Mysterious Stranger's tune play when you draw and holster the gun, the same tune that plays when the Mysterious Stranger draws his own gun when he visits you.

This creates three possibilities to explain the Mysterious Stranger. The first is that he discovered a Zetan artifact that was buried in the coal mine he worked at, and it gave him supernatural powers (not necessarily magical powers). This is very similar to Lorenzo Cabot. There is already precedent for a person obtaining supernatural powers from discovering a Zetan artifact.
The second possibility is similar, but instead of a Zetan artifact, it was an Ug-Qualtoth artifact. It's not actually known whether Lorenzo Cabot's artifact (and by extension, the theoretical Mysterious Stranger artifact) is of Zetan or Ug-Qualtoth origins, but the scenario would otherwise be the same.
The third possibility is that his powers are not derived from an artifact like Lorenzo Cabot's are, but rather that his powers are the result of a mutation, more like Mama Murphy's and The Forecaster's powers. He developed super fast and/or teleportation powers from his superhuman mutations while these other two examples developed precognition and remote viewing abilities (Mama Murphy looks at the screen of a terminal inside the Corvega facility from her chair in Sanctuary).

2. The Necronomicon exists in Fallout and had very real power until it was destroyed in Fallout 3.

It goes by a different name, but the Krivbeknih is the stand-in for the Necronomicon, going along with the Cthulhu theme of the Fallout 3 Pointe Lookout DLC. A bloody book that bleeds when you stab it, that has "dark powers", as described by those that have seen it. When the player retrieves the book from the ritual site in Pointe Lookout, the floor and walls and table shake, and the objects sitting on the table wobble and fall around. Then, should the player chooses to destroy the book, it explodes in a fiery poof when pressed against a pillar bearing the markings of Ug-Qualtoth. These sort of Cthulhu inspired supernatural themes are a major part of the Point Lookout DLC. Using game mechanics (which is usually a bad thing to do, because gameplay often departs from lore, but it's worth mentioning), the player receives a pretty hefty positive karma boost of +500 when they complete this quest, meaning the book was, as far as the game is concerned, actually very evil and not just a prop.

3. Ug-Qoltoth exists and has very real power over impressionable minds (especially ghouls) and is presumed to be asleep (just like his inspiration, Cthulhu).

In Fallout 3's Dunwich Building, the player can discover a basement housing an ancient Ug-Qualtoth artifact. The notes around the building imply the pre-war corporation was involved in the occult, and that they apparently had very real results, but we can look at the present-day effects the building has had. We learn that a man is looking for his father in the building, and the father goes crazy. The man goes crazy over the course of his investigation as well, and starts repeating names and phrases. Some other things that Bethesda included to clearly imply that there is real supernatural phenomeon associated with the building and Ug-Qualtoth: In the Dunwich Building Entrance, one will find a "self-opening" door (upper area in the south corridor), but one needs to come from the east. The hallucinated flashback happens in the beginning of the forsaken Dunwich ruins, after some stairs and a left path. Upon entering the room where the unknown adventurer refers to "Billy" a coffee pot is thrown to the floor and a fan on the desk is knocked over. Ronald Laren from Girdershade can be asked about anything interesting in the area: he tells the player character that they are at the "ass end of the Capital Wasteland" and warns them to "stay the hell away from the Dunwich Building," saying that it is "bad mojo." He also states that he hears "weird shit" going on in there. Footsteps can be heard in the Dunwich Building even when no one is there. It's not the companions or the feral ghouls. The footsteps always sound right on top of the player. Occasionally the screen may flicker. A severed head can be found on a table on the first floor of the Dunwich Building, just before the forsaken ruins. It is placed upright on the table with Jaime's seventh log. However, exiting to the forsaken ruins and returning causes it to disappear. When facing the door to the entrance, the player character will be pointed south. After entering, they will be facing north. The story told in the personal logs found in the Dunwich Building, the name of the building, the whispering obelisk found in the virulent underchambers, and many other facets of this location refer to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. See especially The Dunwich Horror. The strange voice near the Obelisk is actually repeating the name "Alhazred," which is also the name Jaime repeated several times in his last audio tape. Sometimes the voice may instead repeat the name "G'yeth," also repeated by Jaime in his last audio tape. In the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, Abdul Alhazred is the author of The Necronomicon, while G'yeth is presumably a homage to R'lyeh, the underwater city in which Cthulhu, an Old One, 'waits dreaming.'

4. Zimmer is a synth.

That is, the Zimmer we meet in Fallout 3 is a synth. A real human Zimmer could also exist elsewhere. This comes from the fact that a synth component spawns on Zimmer's corpse when you kill him. This isn't common knowledge for two reasons.
The first is that Zimmer has synth components in his inventory, so when you kill him, and the player finds 2-3 synth components, they don't think it's weird. Zimmer hands you a synth component when you ask him about them during his quest, and his inventory reflects this. It's important to note the difference between spawning a component, and having one in your inventory. A character's inventory can be checked through the pickpocket menu. Here, we can observe a synth component in his inventory. However, when you kill him, you will find that many plus one, meaning the game spawned one on him to represent he is a synth. There are two different ways to verify this. The first is that Victoria Watts also shows you a synth component if you ask her about them during the Replicated Man quest, but she does not have an extra synth component on her corpse should you kill her. So we know that it's not a bug with npc's who have synth components to show you during the quest spawning one on death. Victoria Watts doesn't spawn an extra one when she dies. The second way to verify this is to actually check the game files themselves. Karma indicators like fingers and ears are set to spawn on any corpse that is part of a badkarmafaction or goodkarmafaction, so synth components might automatically spawn as well, right? We find that this is not the case, because npc's need to be flagged individually in order to spawn a synth component. Zimmer was flagged to spawn a synth component on death, it's not an accidental omission, since it's an extra thing the developers had to do.
The second reason this isn't common knowledge is because Zimmer is set to essential unless you specifically side against him in the Replicated Man quest. The only way for the player to kill him is to tell on him to Harkness, and have Harkness or themselves kill Zimmer. A second contributing factor is that Zimmer disappears from the game world as soon as he walks out of Rivet City, so even if you side with Zimmer and then want to kill him, you only have seconds to do it. Before and during the Replicated Man quest, he is essential, and only loses his essential status when one of the endings is chosen (side with Zimmer or Harkness).

The reason for the Zimmer we meet being a synth makes sense as well. We know that the Institute SRB sends coursers to retrieve escaped synths. Harkness is an escaped synth. But Harkness is hiding in a city with armed guards, so blasting in and taking him isn't an option. So the usual method of synth retrieval isn't as attractive. They need to negotiate with local law enforcement, so they send a courser who is better at that. A courser that thinks it is Zimmer, head of the Synth Retention Bureau, can speak with the authority of that office and can negotiate with local law enforcement for the return of their synth. It actually doesn't matter if the Zimmer synth is programmed to think he is Zimmer, or if he's aware it's a lie. The result is the same. Additionally, this is supported by the fact that Institute personnel hate going to the surface. They don't do it often, and they are known to send synth agents in their stead. If the head of the SRB needed to negotiate on a sensitive case, it stands to reason he would send a synth to do so, just like the Institute does with its negotiations with the Commonwealth Provisional Government some years later. It's their exact MO. Alongside this, the "real" Zimmer is listed as deactivated on a SRB terminal in Fallout 4, and Justin Ayo is standing in as "acting director". But this doens't actually tell us anything. Justin Ayo could be the real director, using the Zimmer synth as his surface agent, and not tell the rest of the institute. This is in line with his behavior of not telling the rest of the Institute things. People talk about the SRB keeping secrets from them, and that they don't like it. This also makes sense when considering Justin's personality. He's one of the only department heads who openly opposes the player as director, so it makes sense that he would want to have some secrets from you, and having a fake "Zimmer" as the real SRB head gives him some freedom to act, but point to someone else. "Well my boss said to do it" or "my boss asked for it" gives you a lot of leeway in your own actions, and this fits so perfectly with his personality.

5. Pinkerton is a synth.

Essentially the same as above. Pinkerton's corpse has one more synth component than it did if you check his inventory upon death, and the same methodology for accounting for the possibility of it being in his inventory and it being a bug and all that as above apply. The reason for this being less known is similar as well. Pinkerton is essential until you complete both the Replicated Man quest AND the Wasteland Survival Guide quest. Because these are both long term and often late game quests, Pinkerton is essential for most of the game, and stays that way in many people's games. But, should you complete both of these quests, he loses his essential status. You can walk up, kill him, and find your synth component.
But the reason for this one isn't quite so clear. Zimmer is an agent of the Institute, and it's clear why he would be made, and why he was sent. But Pinkerton was one of the founding members of Rivet City. He has been here for many years. The likeliest explanation for this is that Pinkerton is one of the synths left over from the Institute's original plan of helping the surface. In Fallout 4, we learn that, initially, the Institute did devote synth personnel towards the goal of helping the surface. They sat in on CPG meetings, they lent a hand in some efforts, small things like that. It's possible that Pinkerton was one of these "emissary synths" so to speak, and he helped establish Rivet City as part of his task to help the surface in a way he saw fit. He ends up establishing a successful city in the wasteland.

6. Pre-war pipe weapons existed.

This one is actually quite simple, and I'm not sure how it even became an area of contention. The "Street Guns of Detroit" issue of the Guns&Bullets magazine clearly show that pipe weapons existed in some capacity pre-war, but we can do even better than this. There are a few other pieces of lore that point towards pre-war pipe weapons: In Fallout 4, there is a terminal that discusses confiscating weapons from people at a military checkpoint. In Fallout 4, we learn that Boston was under marital law after riots, afterwards people in that area weren't allowed to have weapons. In Fallout 3 and 4, we learn that weapons were confiscated from anyone deemed a "dissident", and the definition of a "dissident" became wider and wider as time went by. In Fallout 4, A BATFAL terminal discusses the permit system for acquiring things like combat armor, and how they regulated this process. The series, starting in the first game, makes it clear that guns were ubiquitous in pre-war america, but this changed during the war, where they became regulated in some areas. American attitudes dictated that they still wanted their guns though, so they made their own in the areas where they were more heavily regulated.

7. Pre-war jet existed, though it was home-made and not called Jet

We know that Myron "invented" Jet around 2230. But we also know that the discovery was more accidental, and that he happened to notice that the mushroom collectors were high all the time, from being in the brahmin-dung filled rooms he was growing mushrooms in. Eventually he put 2 and 2 together and made Jet from brahmin dung, rather than the mushrooms he was trying to use. A lot of slaves died in process of perfecting the formula, but it was still essentially just finding the right ratio of brahmin dung and other ingredients. We know that this means the Jet is essentially brahmin farts, and huffing farts to get high has existed in the human realm of discovery for thousands of years. So if Jet is just brahmin farts, next we look at if it was pre-war.
Brahmin are mutated cows. Even among brahmin, there is a very rare one-headed baby born. We also learn that "In the pre-War days, big meat companies had experimented with a cheap protein extract for growing food. However, the product had to be abandoned due to contamination from a skin bacterium, which caused it to act like an amphetamine when ingested. By the time this was discovered, tons of the material were irreversibly contaminated, and rather than destroy it, the meat companies fed it to their cattle in an attempt to recoup their losses. These cattle were the ancestors of the post-apocalyptic brahmin". So we know Brahmin are mutated cows, but that this extra protein extract was actually present in pre-war cows, and that it's the cow dung that makes jet. So pre-war individuals who made jenkem using these mutated pre-war cows would essentially be getting high off Jet, long before Myron established his formula.

However, there is one important distinction to be made. Cow farts are not an amphetamine. It is specifically the amphetamine-like protein extract that upgrades cow farts into the drug we know as Jet. Without that amphetamine-like protein extract, cow farts would not have the effect Jet has on people.

8. Pre-war super mutants existed.

Not only that, but possibly in a few different instances. In Fallout 4, we see the head of one of them in the robobrain facility, and in Fallout 76 we see an entire town of people turned into super mutants. In Huntersville, Wes-Tek had been experimenting on animals in a lab setting, and wanted to upgrade their experiment to testing on people and in a natural environment. They introduced their early stage of FEV into the local water supply. The people thought it was a contagion outbreak, so were quarantined. We do get an interesting insight into the relationship between pre-war corporations and the military here. One of the officers at the Huntersville site started to investigate the situation because he felt like something was fishy, and he was immediately replaced by a "loyal" soldier who didn't question his orders. We learn that Wes-Tek could get officers relocated if they interfered with their experiments, that the military was assisting in, that had harmful effects on the populace they were supposed to protect. Not that corruption is new to pre-war america, but this is pretty extreme.
A second thing we learn from all of this is that super mutants, at least the dumb ones, seem to share many traits even among isolated populations. The solitary head in the robobrain facility had a makeshift metal helmet, which means even a super mutant in a lab setting, that only had access to his jail cell, still fashioned a gladiator-like helmet for himself. We learn that the Huntersville mutants, totally 100% isolated from the Boston mutants or the Capital Wasteland mutants, still do many of the same things. They still make blood bags, makeshift barricades, eat people, make makeshift armor, decorate with spikes, etc. We learn that super mutants are predisposed to certain traits, such as violence, stupidity, and even specific things like ostracizing intelligent members (Graham in 76). Totally isolated populations of super mutant society develop similarly.
We also learn that intelligence can vary, even within "dumb" super mutants. We know from Fallout 1 that intelligent super mutants are made from people who have unmutated DNA, and the FEV doens't react "unexpectedly" to their mutated DNA and make them dumb as a side effect. From Fallout 76, we learn that even these dumb mutants can vary in intelligence, since some of the conversations the player can overhear reveal that some super mutants are sinister and evil, and at least some minimum of intelligence is required for these traits. You cannot be evil without knowing what evil is, or else you're just an animal acting on instinct if you harm someone or do something we would say is "evil". Most super mutants are motivated by hunger and hatred, and will comment on these two things often during combat. But in 76, we can overhear some conversations that reveal a more sinister splinter of mutant, who talk about hunting people and doing things "for fun" rather than for hunger or hatred.

9. Pre-war ghouls existed.

This one is short. Eddie Winter's doctor knew a ghoul, and used the ghoul he knew to base the procedure he used to make Eddie a ghoul. So not only is Eddie himself a pre-war ghoul, but he even came after another naturally-occurring ghoul that he was based on as well. There was tons of radiation in the pre-war world, from cars to power plants, so it stands to reason someone would be ghoul-ified by accident.

10. Oswald teleports.

There are many individuals with supernatural powers in Fallout. This is not to say "magic" in the Gandalf or Harry Potter sense of the word, that sort of supernatural isn't shown to exist, but certainly X-Men style of supernatural. The Forecaster in Fallout NV and Mama Murphy are both shown to have abilities that would be right at home in an X-Men comic book. Mama Murphy truly does see the future. She senses the deathclaw approaching the museum of freedom, and later on she fairly accurately describes each ending of the game, if you ask her depending on the faction you joined. And is if there was ANY doubt that her powers are real, she accurately lists off the alpha-numeric code that is located on a terminal inside the Corvega Assembly plant. As if there was any ambiguity left over whether she really has powers or is a good guesser and/or says vague things like many fortune tellers in real life. We also have Lorenzo, who very obviously blows open doors with his psychic powers. This doens't have to be Harry Potter magic, it can be pseudo-science like in X-Men. The Forecaster also says things that he can't really have known sitting out on the outpost he lives at. Supernatural powers, in the X-Men sense not the Harry Potter sense, definitely exist in Fallout.
Oswald is a Glowing One, but is also a mutant a-la Murphy and Forecaster. He happens to be both. He has the abilities of a Glowing one, but also has the abilities of a psyker, like Lorenzo. He simply happens to be both. The way the fight happens, it's not possible for him to jump into a trap door, roadie-run all the way across the room, jump out of the trap door, and be standing there in the amount of time he does so on screen during the fight. It's instantaneous in the game.
This is also a good time to talk about gameplay vs lore. We know that mole rats and scorpions can burrow, and second later appear somewhere else. We also know that these beasts can do so vertically where it doens't make much sense for them to be able to do so, and we know they can even do so through rock or buildings. It doens't make sense for them to be able to do this, but it's just gameplay. Bethesda didn't code these beasts to act differently depending on environment, they just coded the burrowing and popping up mechanic. Them going up a vliff through rock doens't make sense, but it's a gameplay limitation that's not in the game to have them account for terrain like this. That's asking a lot from Todd. But in the case of Oswald, he's one person. They can make him do whatever they want, because it's just him. They knew what room he was going to be in when you fight him, because they placed him there. There is no need at all to wrote anything he does off as a gameplay convention. It's a custom fight. Todd could have made Oswald fight however he wanted, and he chose to have him INSTANTLY reappear on opposite sides of the room. He knew what room the fight was going to be in, and so could have made trapdoors in the room, and could have made it easy to point to that and say that's how. He could have made it so that Oswald took several seconds to relocate. But no. There are no trapdoors, and Oswald instantly reappears. The implication is that oswald developed the power to teleport, like in his pre-war magic shows. Because that's how comic book heroes get their powers. Xavier was a professor? Of course his superpower is intelligence. Scott Summers is blind? of course his superpower is eye lasers. Harleen Quinzel was a psychologist? Of course she's insane. Pamela Isley is a botanist? Of course her superpower is plants. It's such a common trope. Oswald is a magician by trade? Of course he's got some real magic tricks once he mutates. Fallout is heavily inspired by these sorts of comic books, with all the silver shroud and unstoppables stuff.

11. Synth components are located in the brain.

We know a few things about synth components. The first is that they are located in a place that you cannot get to without killing the person. Right off the bat, this narrows down the places they could be pretty significantly. The brain, the spinal column, and one of our necessary organs is pretty much what we've got already. It isn't in any extremity, and it isn't even in the kidney or the spleen.
A second thing we do know is that courser chips, not synth components, are located in the brain. Courser chips being in the brain is stated in Fallout 4. Another thing stated in Fallout 4 is that coursers are selected from among the gen3 synth population based on personality traits. They receive extra training and equipment, and become coursers. So if coursers are selected from among the gen3 synth population, and courser chips are in the brain, then we do know where synth components are. Unless personality traits and some extra PT in the morning suddenly shift the location of a plastic chip in your body.

Also, as if any confusion remained, Virgil explicitly states they're in the brain when you ask him about the courser at Greentech.

12. China shot first.

Two pieces of evidence suggest this. The first is simply stated. In The Switchboard, a pre-war American military intelligence base, there are terminal entries describing nukes in the air, and that they should respond in kind. The terminal is literally:
230913ROCT77 IONDS REPORTS 4 PROBABLE LAUNCHES **DEFCON 2**
230917ROCT77 NORAD CONFIRMS BIRDS IN AIR **DEFCON1**
230926ROCT77 AUTHENTICATED ORDER -- RESPONSE SCENARIO MX-CN91 -- REPEAT
This is clear that they detected "birds in the air", raised the Defcon level in response to this, and then initiated "response scenario". Not first strike, but response. The order of events is clear.
But even without this, we can surmise. America was already winning the war. Anchorage was won, the chinese were pushed off the continent, and the writing was on the wall. America was free to invade mainland china if they wished. America had invested in power armor and fat man launchers, while chine invested in subterfuge and stealth technology, and the American investments had simply won. Chinese solders dropped their weapons and ran when power armor showed up. Chairman Cheng saw what was inevitable, and instead of signing a treaty like one would expect, he launched his nukes and destroyed the world rather than admit defeat. Now, there is a possibility that some other force interfered and had a hand in the nukes being launched, but that isn't what's being discussed here. Here is simply that nukes from China were in the air first, regardless of the hand that launched them.

13. Ghouls do and do not need to eat/drink.

In Fallout 4, Billy sits in a refrigerator for hundreds of years without food, water, or even sunlight. Eddie Winters also sits in a little bunker for just as long. These events are fairly conclusive that ghouls do not *need* to eat/drink.
However, in earlier Fallout titles, ghoul settlements were disbanded when they went without water and many ghouls died during this. Additionally, Harland in the Repconn facility basement in New Vegas clearly says he needs to eat radroaches and drink old water from pipes to stay alive.
So how do we reconcile this directly contradictory information? The answer is found in biology.
When animals, including humans, go without sustenance for long periods of time, they don't just drop dead. They fall unconscious when their body makes a last ditch effort to conserve calories. We actually die some hours after this while unconscious. Remaining conscious and active may be why ghouls "need" food, even though they can go hundreds of years without eating if they fall unconscious.
This allows Billy to remain in the refrigerator for 200 years. He falls into this hibernation state for long periods of time, and is only awoken occasionally when there is noise nearby. This lets him yell out to the player how he does in the game, while also explaining why he is not dead. This also explains why he's not crazy. He just fell asleep for most of the ordeal.
This allows Harland to be correct in what he says as well. If he doesn't eat and drink, then he will become weak and sluggish from a lack of energy, and would therefore be easy pickings for the Nightkin he is guarding the room against. He will die if he doesn't eat and drink, just not from starvation.
This allows Eddie and Coffin Willy to do what they do in their respective games.
This also allows for ghouls settlements like the Slog to make sense. They eat the tarberries for energy.
This also allows for Necropolis to be disbanded if they don't find water. They don't die from dehydration per se, but they do become weak and enter an involuntary hibernation if they don't get food and water, and that is as good as dead while in the desert and some buzzard or whatever just eats you. Many ghouls do die if Necroplis doesn't get water.

This involuntary hibernation theory allows for all the information we know about ghouls to simultaneously be true, and brings all conflicting data into one theory.

14. Did China have power armor?

China didn't field power armor, because they never completed their own power armor, but they were studying it and reverse engineering it. So it was never on the battlefield, but a very small number of experimental suits existed as part of a research project. This was implied in Fallout4 when the US pondered whether power armor countermeasures were worth investing in, and brought up again in 76 when we get to actually see what the experimental (not deployed) chinese power armor looked like.