01With a franchise as large and as expansive as Fallout, it's bound to contain a fair share of secrets and Easter eggs, and, while players could spend hundreds of hours searching each entry's landscape, we'd wager that Fallout 3 has the most hidden content. So much so, in fact, that fans are still coming up with theories and rumors about the game more than a decade after its release.

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There are hundreds of these theories, and some of them are interesting and even viable. Some of the other ones, however, can be downright wild, and that's exactly why they deserve attention.

10 Cats Are Extinct

In the Fallout series, you can find a lot of dogs, the most famous of which we will get into in a moment. Meanwhile, man’s best friend’s ultimate rival is nowhere to be found in the first four games in the series. This led to many fans of the franchise theorizing that cats, at some time between the dropping of the bombs and the different time frames that the games take place in, went extinct. This was proven to be false later in Fallout 4as domesticated house cats can be found in different locations.

9 Dogmeat Is A Synth

Dogmeat is up there as one of the most iconic features of the entire Fallout series, as synonymous with the brand as The Brotherhood of Steel or Vault Boy. Dogmeat—or at least a version of him—has appeared in every Fallout game to date.

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It’s generally believed that each Dogmeat is just a different dog of a similar breed with the same name. Some fans theorize that each game’s Dogmeat is actually the same dog and that Dogmeat is a synth, maybe one of the first synths ever created.

8 The Identity Of The Mysterious Stranger

The Mysterious Stranger is another character who has appeared in every Fallout title to date, though calling him a character is a bit of a stretch, as he doesn’t ever say anything. He has, of course, attracted a bunch of different fan theories. Some of these are interesting, while others are just nonsense. One of these theories is that the Mysterious Stranger is different in every game and is the father of each respective game's protagonist.

Other theories state that the Mysterious Stranger is a time traveler sent back in time to make sure that the various heroes of the Fallout franchise are protected so they can fulfill their destinies.

7 Fallout Takes Place Within The Lovecraft Mythos

This sounds pretty strange at first if you know anything about the creations of H.P Lovecraft, especially his most popular character, Cthulhu. The world of Fallout, while somewhat bleak as it is a post-apocalyptic world, it's nowhere near as hopeless as most of the Lovecraftian stories are.

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However, Lovecraft's influence on the Fallout universe is plain to see. The Dark Heart of Blackhall in Fallout 3 is one of the more obvious examples of this Lovecraftian influence. This has lead fans to think that the Fallout universe is just another in the endless multiverse referenced in Lovecraft's lore.

6 The Enclave Are The Good Guys

This one is wild because there is nothing in the entirety of the Fallout 3 story that says that the Enclave could possibly be on the side of good.  They are a fascist organization trying to control the entirety of what's left of the US and somehow return it to some vague and nonexistent golden age.

While the Enclave are portrayed as the bad guys, some fans think that they are the game's real heroes, citing their goal of rebuilding America as an altruistic one and claiming that they have a bigger vision for the world other than just survival.

5 Female Super Mutants

Through the many different Fallout titles, you will encounter Super Mutants at some point. These hulking beasts are headstrong and not particularly intellectual. We know that super mutants were at one point all humans, both male and female, but, once they are exposed to the Forced Evolutionary Virus (FEV), usually by other super mutants, they are permanently changed into Mutants. Fans think this means that there are female Super Mutants out there, but it was later confirmed that exposure to the FEV results in the same male-like outcome for everyone, male or female.

4 Super Mutants Can Have Families

This theory plays off of the last one, as well as something called the Fallout Bible. The Fallout Bible was written by Chris Avellone, a developer who worked on the original two Fallout games. This was supposed to be a lore book with information on the various stuff within the universe, but it has largely become a non-canon resource in the eyes of current game developer Bethesda.

The Fallout Bible had some information on Super Mutants that made it seem that, not only were their different sexes for the Super Mutants, but that they have families, and this is how new Super Mutants are created. This was confirmed to be false when it was revealed that Super Mutants are created through exposure to the FEV.

3 Fawkes Is Female

mutant fawkes in Fallout 3

This is the last entry on Super Mutants, we promise. Fawkes is one of the more interesting followers you can let join your party throughout your adventures in the Capital Wasteland. He is an intelligent Super Mutant with the ability to speak. While fans knew that Fawkes was, at one point, a normal human being, some started to theorize that before being transformed by the FEV, Fawkes was female.

While this would have been a fairly interesting twist on the character—if somewhat inconsequential—lead game designer Emil Pagliarulo stated that Fawkes is and was always male.

2 Mysterious Radio Channel

This is one of the more disturbing theories that the fan base has about this game. On your Pip-Boy, you can access different radio channels. One of these was dubbed the "numbers station" by fans and could only be listened to if Three Dog and Galaxy New Radio were shut down.

The radio station played morse code which could be read out as dates. One of these dates predicted the exact day that actor Gary Coleman died. Other numbers were said to predict the day that Queen Elizabeth would die, but that turned out to be wrong. Bethesda was asked about this theory but shot it down very quickly.

1 Fallout 3 Is A Simulation

This would be kind of interesting, as it would make Fallout 3 a game within a game. Even if this theory isn't correct, there is one time that the player enters a simulation in-game. This is when the Lone Wanderer finds that his father is trapped in a pod living in a mad scientist's simulation of a 50s neighborhood as a dog.

Fans say that the loading screen for this mission is a clue that the whole game is an in-story simulation. Fans say that, because the simulation's loading screen is the same as the rest of the games, this means that the entire game is a simulation, as well.

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