Lucy searches for the head and runs into Maximus on the way. The mystery of Vaults 31, 32, and 33 grows deeper.
Tropes:
- Agony of the Feet: Maximus crushes Thaddeus's foot with his power armor prior to Thaddeus managing to steal the fusion core.
- All for Nothing: Lucy is rocked to see a sign for Shady Sands, established with 35,000 people, and realizes that "Reclamation Day," where the Vault could open to repopulate the Earth, the moment everyone there is working for, has already happened... and failed.Lucy: What happened?Maximus: What always happens. Everyone wants to save the world. They just... disagree on how.
- This also foreshadows the various different concepts behind the Vaults, at least some of which had sincere intentions of rebuilding society (albeit in a One Nation Under Copyright sense).
- Anti-Radiation Drug: Maximus is able to strike a deal with Lucy when he promises to treat her radiation sickness with the RadAway in his possession.
- Clothing-Concealed Injury: Maximus' suit helps to hide the fact that he was seriously wounded in the shootout with the fiends.
- Desolation Shot: We are treated to a wide shot of the ruins of Shady Sands and the impact crater of the bomb that destroyed the city many years ago.
- Destroy the Evidence: Not only has Vault 32 been scrubbed clean of any evidence of foul play, but Norman finds the Overseer's terminal has been rather conspicuously destroyed even though everything else is in perfect condition.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Lucy explains to Maximus that she is reluctant to get him out of the armor because everyone she met on the surface so far was out to kill her.
- Great Offscreen War: The NCR capital at Shady Sands was destroyed at some point between Fallout: New Vegas and this series, when Maximus was still a kid. The party responsible is not revealed, but the Brotherhood of Steel certainly showed up in the aftermath.
- History Repeats: Again, a Brotherhood knight opens his helmet and reveals something that causes his squire to break with him, with the squire leaving him to die while the knight screams that he will kill the squire. Subverted in that this time, Maximus isn't a real knight, nor a Dirty Coward like Titus was.
- I'll Kill You!: Maximus yells this after Thaddeus when the latter leaves him stuck in the T-60c suit.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Maximus tells Lucy that the wastelanders that tried to attack them are known as "Fiends", which he defines for her as "people that eat people."
- Internal Reveal: Maximus reveals his identity to Thaddeus. The latter doesn't take the news well and refuses to team up with him.
- I Warned You: Thaddeus is in tremendous pain after getting his request of a Slave Brand fulfilled by Maximus. The latter notes that he told him so beforehand.
- Landslide Election: Betty wins with 98% of the vote. Given Norman's investigation, there's an implication the vote may have been rigged in her favor, though 200 years of cultural conditioning has certainly made the Vault dwellers predisposed to vote for residents of Vault 31 in times of crisis.
- Major Injury Underreaction: Maximus takes a bullet to the shoulder in a gunfight but plays it off as a graze. In a later scene it becomes apparent he's seriously bleeding and needs medical attention.
- Mythology Gag:
- The pair of cannibals that Maximus and Lucy run into are called "Fiends" by Maximus, the implication that this is the Brotherhood's terminology for raiders that are cannibalistic. The Fiends are a specific faction of drug-addled raiders in Fallout: New Vegas, though only one of their particularly psychotic members, Cook-Cook, was actually noted for his cannibalism.
- Despite being completely different characters, the female Fiend is a dead ringer for Cricket
, an arms merchant from Fallout 4, down to the outfit, heavy red undereye makeup and drug-addled complexion.
- Not Quite the Right Thing: Maximus tells Thaddeus that he's not really Titus, reasoning that he should be honest if they're going to return to the Brotherhood and keep their story straight. Thaddeus turns on him immediately, stealing the fusion core and leaving Maximus to die.
- Out of Focus: The Ghoul doesn't appear in this episode at all.
- Schmuck Bait: A hospital with a sign reading "Medical supplies" is used to trap people and send them to a vault below.
- There Are No Coincidences: Norman goes through the election logs and learns that, without fail, Vaults 32 and 33 have elected individuals from Vault 31 for Overseer each time an election has been held. Chet chalks it up to the local motto ("If things look glum, vote 31."), but Norman refuses to believe a 200-year streak could be maintained on a mere motto.
- Walk and Talk: We get exposition when Lucy and Maximus converse while walking down the railway tracks.
- Wham Shot: Betty announces a resettlement program for Vault 32 and guides her citizens there. All the corpses are gone, every wall is cleaned, everything is pristine. Norman, quite understandably, is more suspicious than ever.
