Fallout Writers Banned One Very Specific Type Of Violence From The TV Series

Now that "Fallout" Season 2 has gotten the confirmation that everyone wanted, one thing that should remain consistent for next season is the show's utilization of heightened, often comical violence. This is, of course, inspired by the "Fallout" video games, which require plenty of shooting and death. But when it came to the TV show, the writers knew just where to draw the line. 

Co-showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet explained to The Hollywood Reporter how they wanted to portray the violence on the show. "We wanted the violence to feel very heightened and Tarantino-esque. Stylized," she said. "So anything that felt too real, anything that felt too real world ... that was a line we did not pass." From random guys getting mowed down by feral ghouls to an armored hand crushing a man's head, there's plenty to make people squirm, but it's all over-the-top and fantastical enough that there's usually some separation from reality. 

Robertson-Dworet continued, "Violence is certainly part of the game and the mythology of what this world is. But we want it to exist in another world. It's very intentionally heightened. It's not the violence of our world." Even people who never played the games likely knew what they were getting into from that first sequence of nukes dropping on Los Angeles, a foreboding precursor of what's to come. 

Violence and gore are par the course for "Fallout," and some of the carnage can be fairly extreme: the first episode contains a scene where raiders infiltrate a Vault and kill much of the population. In another instance, The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) cuts off one of Lucy's (Ella Purnell) fingers and sews it onto his own hand after she bites his finger off earlier. It's genuinely the Wild West, where violence is the law of the land, but for some fans, certain scenes were a bit much. 

When one Reddit thread asked fans to name the most intense scene from the series, the most upvoted response easily came from u/FR3AKQU3NCY: "The mother giving birth to gulpers and then getting eaten by them." This horrific moment occurs in Episode 6, "The Trap," and while pregnancy horror is always good for some scares, it also serves a greater purpose here: It shows just how deranged the Vaults can be in this world, and how Lucy is relatively lucky that her Vault is so tame by comparison.

While the violence on "Fallout" is tough to watch for some, the cast has largely had a blast with it. Aaron Moten, who plays Maximus, spoke in Looper's exclusive cast interviews about getting to do his own stunts: "Of course, you want to do the fight. It's really exciting, especially working with an incredible stunt team that we have this season. Gosh, it's just so fun." Hopefully, "Fallout" Season 2 doesn't skimp on the bloody, twisted mayhem.