There’s one Fallout TV show Easter egg that the creative team was sure no one would catch – but the fans did

One of Fallout’s most popular Easter eggs was completely missed by the Prime Video show’s creators, says makeup department head Michael Harvey.

In a new interview with PC Gamer, Harvey explained that when one of the show’s writers, Westworld’s Jonathan Nolan, first approached him about the small-screen adaptation, he told him not to “carbon copy anything” from the source material. “[He] explicitly told me [to] use the game as a reference,” Harvey went on, noting that Nolan suggested he “lean into the world” and interpret it in a new, imaginative way.

For the most part, Harvey heeded Nolan’s advice. But when it came to one particular minor character, he couldn’t help himself and had costume designer Amy Westcott doll the guy up like he was lifted straight out of the video game.

“I figured, you know what? Nobody’s ever going to catch it,” he told the publication. “[Nolan, who’s a self-proclaimed Fallout fanatic] didn’t catch it. The writers didn’t catch it. But boy, Reddit caught it, and they went wild for it. They went nuts over it, and they’re like, ‘We know exactly who that character is. We can tell you what game, what map, and what that person was.'”

Said character, it turns out, is Rink, who gets about ten seconds of screen time in ‘The Past’, the show’s fifth episode. Rink’s appearance is based on Cricket’s, an arms dealer players occasionally interact with outside Diamond City and Vault 81. Talk about a deep cut…

Starring the likes of Walton Goggins, Kyle MacLachlan, and Ella Purnell, Fallout takes place in a post-apocalyptic version of Los Angeles that has been ravaged by nuclear war. Purnell plays a Vault dweller named Lucy, while MacLachlan stars as Hank, her Overseer. Set 219 years after the global conflict in 2077, it sees Lucy, who has lived her entire life in a vault deep underground, forced to come up to the surface for the very first time. 

Already binged the lot and can’t wait for more? Check out our guide to all things Fallout season 2, or our picks of the best shows on Amazon Prime Video right now.