Fallout Season 2, Episode 2 Winks at Fans with Brilliant New Vegas Easter Egg

This article contains spoilers for “Fallout” season 2, episode 2 – “The Golden Rule”

We’ve already seen the crater, but now we’ve seen the Shady Sands incident itself. The first flashback of this event in “Fallout” Season 2 Episode 2, “The Golden Rule”, continues the story involving brain chips and RobCo’s enigmatic CEO Robert House (Justin Theroux) which was introduced at the very beginning of the season premiere, “The Innovator”. Here we find out that Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan) used said brain chip technology on a caravanner (Pancho Cardeña), who then smuggled a nuclear weapon into the middle of the Shady Sands colony. Stripped of his own faculties, the poor guy can only repeat one sentence over and over: “Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you want nuclear winter.”

If you watched the episode with a friend who suddenly screamed and punched the air upon hearing the line, there’s a reason for that. “Patrolling the Mojave…” is not just a random phrase. Rather, it is one of the most famous sayings in video games from which season 2 of “Fallout” is directly inspired: “Fallout: New Vegas”. ‘Fallout’ Season 2 Captures the Original Games More Faithfully Than Everand the fact that the New Vegas episode of the stellar video game adaptation takes a moment to adapt this classic phrase And its repetitive nature only adds to the experience.

Some ambient video game lines become so iconic that any fan can recognize them by heart. “I was an adventurer like you. Then I took an arrow to the knee…” from “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” is one of the most famous examples from the first-person gaming era and is uttered by many guards throughout the game’s various settlements.

“Patrolling the Mojave…” belongs in the same unofficial Hall of Fame. Anyone who has spoken with enough non-player characters patrolling the Mojave Desert in the “Fallout” video games will have heard it enough times to appreciate its inclusion in the TV show adaptation, especially given the way Cardeña’s doomed, unnamed RVer repeats it endlessly — not to mention the clever way the series weaves that phrase into Hank’s increasingly disturbing storyline. It’s a fun addition to the many Easter eggs in ‘Fallout’ season 2and it will be just as entertaining to see what other surprises the second season of the series has in store for us.

“Fallout” season 2 is now streaming on Prime Video.