Trivia / Fallout 2

• Bowdlerise: The UK version of the game edits all drug references by referring to them as 'chems'. Notably, this is a case where the censored term actually stuck, and all future Fallout games call drugs 'chems' regardless of region.
• Contest Winner Cameo: The patch renames the Arroyo villagers Dumar and Standing Fist to Cameron and Lucas respectively, after Cameron Rapmund and Łukasz Kawarski, the winner and runner-up of the official Fallout trivia challenge.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: Some reviews written around the time the game came out (and for a long time, the "Reaction" section of the Wikipedia article) mentions that having the mutants be created by genetic engineering instead of radiation-induced mutation betrayed the 1950's pulp feel of the original game. However the FEV is mentioned in the original game, and is an important part of The Master's backstory (though it's possible the reviewers didn't bother going down farther into The Glow than they had to; the computers containing this information are on the lower levels.)
• Creator Backlash: Chris Avellone has expressed dissatisfaction over how Denser and Wackier the game ended up being, and has suggested that fans not take certain elements as canon. Avellone, Timothy Cain, and Leonard Boyarsky all regret the inclusion of talking deathclaws.
• Dummied Out:
  • Because Black Isle Studios ran short of development time, quite a few places and quests were only halfway implemented or completely left out of the game, which leaves a couple of plot threads, such as finding Sulik's sister and exposing the cattle rustlers in Klamath, hanging in the wind. Fan-made patches, such as the Restoration Project, seek to restore them to a playable state. Still, there are many things even the Restoration Project has yet to explain, such as the "Brotherhood" area in the Oil Rig.
  • There was originally a quest to retrieve Sulik's sister from slavers, but it was Dummied Out of the game prior to release. She would eventually be featured in Van Buren, turning out that Sulik never did find her.
  • At one point, the Enclave patrol you witness Louis Salvatore's dealings with could have their vertibird boarded to Navarro, and then stolen to the oil rig.
• Executive Meddling: The publisher, upon seeing the finished game, demanded that a tutorial level be included, and the developers were forced to rapidly knock one out literally days before release. The universally-loathed Temple of Trials was the result.
• Role Reprise: Of the few characters that appear in both the isometric and 3D games, Marcus is of the even fewer that has the same voice actor between both appearances (Michael Dorn).
• Throw It In!: The Bozar was intended as just a powerful sniper rifle. It was accidentally set to be able to do burst fire during development, and the developers felt the "automatic sniper rifle" was fun and left it like that.
• Urban Legend of Zelda:
  • The creators specifically and maliciously started a rumor that made its way into several FAQs and countless forum discussions, by having some NPCs claim that you would have gotten 100% completion if you did action X once the game is over.
  • Also, many rumors abounded regarding Sulik's sister Kurisu and methods for actually finding her in game. Such is the frustration at not eventually rescuing her that some mods have placed her in the game. The planned Van Buren version of Fallout 3 planned to tie up that dangling plot by including her with an explanatory backstory, but it was never realized due to the project's cancellation. The only way the story can genuinely be given closure is if you download the Restoration Project, which will add a quest where you can find Sulik's sister at a slavers camp and then free her as well as the other slaves.
  • Numerous walkthroughs stated that a street boy named Cody from New Reno will show you the crashed alien ship location like in Fallout 1, and give you the Alien Blaster — a powerful beam weapon. They came with photoshopped screenshots. There is no such location, but the Alien Blaster is available elsewhere. It is possible to talk to Cody and give him food, but he is very easy to scare off, making this rumor hard to disprove.
  • The Fallout 2 Restoration Mod mentioned on the game's main page is the source of a significant number of these. The mod started as an effort to implement Dummied Out content and fix bugs, but over time grew into a massive expansion of the game and its mechanics designed to modernize it and add features fans had long desired. Despite all this, the mod's out-of-control reputation for "restoring cut content" meant that many people and websites — including the Fallout wiki, until recently — have falsely reported that all of the mod's contents are Dummied Out parts of the game itself. Some of the most notable cases of this:
    • Many people claim that the companion Cassidy was intended to have a talking head, some going as far as to claim there is a fully-functional Dummied Out one in the game's files. It is actually a fan-made talking head from the total conversion mod Mutants Rising that was later added to the Restoration Mod. This particular piece of misinformation was so widespread that when Fallout: The Board Game released an expansion containing cards based on Fallout 1 and 2 content, the visuals on Cassidy's card were based on the fan-made talking head. It even got to the point that when his daughter appeared in Fallout: New Vegas, she greatly resembled Cassidy's talking head as he appeared in the mod.
    • Many claim that the cut EPA location had most of its assets and writing done but was never finished and got Dummied Out. In reality, it was cut very early in development and survived only as a rough-draft design document that was eventually leaked onto the internet. The Restoration Mod's team personally designed the levels themselves and wrote all of the location's dialogue, as well as the three companions available at the end of it — while the design document did mention having a choice of three companions as the location's final reward, these companions were never actually written or designed, and the ones in the mod are Original Characters written by the modders.
• What Could Have Been: The developers had planned an even bigger game that what was shipped, but many things got the axe before release due to an accelerated development schedule and some ideas just not working out.
  • A good ending for the Vault 13 intelligent deathclaws was planned, but was cut due to conflicting with the Enclave plot. Gecko and Vault City has several endings related to each that were cut or prevented from playing due to scripting bugs. The Hubologists were meant to have three different endings related to their shuttle, which was also meant to be a location the player could visit.
  • Several locations were cut. Most prominently Sulik's tribe. Also cut was the Abbey, a monastery with monks guarding pre-war knowledge in a Shout-Out to A Canticle for Leibowitz, and the Environmental Protection Agency, a pre-war underground base nearby New Reno that would have featured unique game mechanics and items. Myron still alludes to the EPA in the final game, and several concepts related to it were later used in the Fallout: New Vegas DLC Old World Blues.
  • Ian from the first game was planned to show up at the Abbey. When the location was cut, he was cut along with it.
  • More pre-rendered videos were planned for events like getting the car and the desert transaction outside New Reno, but were cut due to a lack of time and disk space concerns.
  • Numerous titles and addictions for the player, such as the Virgin of the Wastes title, portraits for each Karma level, and alcohol and Tragic addiction were scrapped due to time or scripting bugs. A food system was also considered, but ultimately cut from the game.
  • Sulik's tribe and his sister Kurisu were intended to be seen in-game, but were cut early enough that the developers had very few details worked out about both before scrapping them. The cancelled Fallout: Van Buren would have featured Kurisu as a possible party member.
  • Many random encounters were cut. Most notably a series of encounters with Kaga, a previous candidate for being The Chosen One who had been exiled from the tribe and planned to be a recurring threat throughout the game. Others include a second encounter with King Arthur's Knights (which is still in the game files and stopped from playing due to an oversight), a Renegade Brotherhood member who would've pulled a Big Damn Heroes in your favor against an ambush of lobotomites (the lobotomites themselves were cut from the game), and the Federation Crash Site encounter having a "Phazer" weapon along with the hypos.
  • Many useless and/or niche items were meant to be parts of quests or alternate solutions that were cut out of the final game. These include using the Radscorpion Limbs to expose the Duntons as cattle rustlers, using the Heart Pills to cover up the murder of Westin or using them to fix Cassidy's heart issues, and planting the Marked Cards on a con man named Three-Card Monte in New Reno.
  • Fannie Mae in Redding would have had a quest line related to her Jet addiction, with the player having options to help clean her up or cause her to overdose by supporting the addiction.
  • Several quests related to the Hubologists and the Shi were cut out, along with a third area of the Den and a related quest to establish an orphanage for the Den's children to stop them from stealing.
  • The Gekko reactor keycards were intended to work on the doors at the Enclave base.