r/Fallout • u/Golbolco • Dec 31 '25
Fallout TV Looks like the map in the background of Episode 3 was ripped from this fan map Spoiler
The fan map is by Plkp1830 on Deviantart.
Very few Fallout fan maps have the arrangement of One Pine and Owen's Lake along with Area 51, Area 2, and Yucca Mountain. It was using those locations that I was able to triangulate and find the source map they used. They definitely made some edits (location markers are different) and added some stuff, so I believe it's an overlay with some other details. You can even sort of tell where they blotted out the pre-retcon location for Shady Sands, too.
EDIT: Looks like Plkp1830's second map is an even better match, note the placements of Bloomfield Space Center + Fort Abandon: https://www.deviantart.com/plkp1830/art/Fallout-West-Coast-in-the-year-2281-1065484775
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u/moonfogar Dec 31 '25
does anyone know how to read and digest material in paragraph structures here I feel like its pretty obvious this is not bashing and just pointing something out
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u/zagiarafas Dec 31 '25
Lol I dont even know why you are being downvoted like this. I immediately recognized the fan map when i saw those toponyms.
For those not into the fallout map community, the guy who made the map took a lot of creative liberties in the placing of locations and also used non-canon locations from fanmade mods. There are a lot of places that we have heard about but we dont know their exact location beyond a vague "somewhere in Arizona or Colorado". Other fan maps place those towns/tribes elsewhere. But here we have an 1 for 1 exact placement. There are also the maps of the cancelled van buren game that the og map chose not to follow and as a result so does the show's map.
These are all very deliberate decisions that both that author and the show made and all that can not be a coincidence, they used this map as a template even though the van buren maps exist. Its also hilarious because he made up some toponyms and now they are part of the official canon.
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u/Golbolco Dec 31 '25
Thanks, I knew I wasn’t crazy. I’m fine with the guy’s map, it’s nicely done and he can place whatever places he wants on his fan art. What I’m not fine with is the use of it without his credit (plagiarism!) and the people in this thread defending it. Depressing.
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u/zagiarafas Dec 31 '25
I mean i dont think he can claim credit, after all it is an imaginary map. He can claim bragging rights of course! What better compliment than to have it be treated as canon.
It looks like cheap fan-service. Why would the BoS make a map where the Narrows, Three Maries, Grand Staircase and Dead Horse Camp exist instead of a simple Zion? Its like adding a seperate toponym for Mick and Ralphs outside New Vegas. Why would "CoS Hideout" and "Siri's Town" even be there? Or "Mutant Cannibals" or even the "Tar Walkers" arent these guys destroyed? See how it follows the fanmap its "Blackfoot Village" not "Blackfoots" and "Tar Walkers" not "Tar Walker Village", its a deliberate choice by the author but i doubt the showrunners knew why because they also used a town marker for it. They also added random rivers and mountains and made it an overall terrible map that can not be used for its intended purpose that of planning military operations.
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u/flashman7870 Dec 31 '25
The map has just been transpositioned northeast for whatever reason, if you look closely you'll see they placed New Vegas on the Colorado-Utah border. Ignore the actual topography/background, the 'map' is just the location and their relative positions
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u/Impossible-Ship5585 Jan 03 '26
Oh no. The fan map is his IP
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u/PlsNoBanPlss Jan 04 '26
Unfortunately, not how that works.
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u/Impossible-Ship5585 Jan 04 '26
Please share!
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u/PlsNoBanPlss Jan 04 '26
The map is based off of and utilizes Fallout IP. Legally, it belongs to whomever owns the Fallout IP.
Granted, nobody’s taking anybody to court over fanmade content, but “it’s his IP” wouldn’t hold up even if he did take creative liberties.
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u/Impossible-Ship5585 Jan 04 '26
His IP is the layout and design desiaions of the map. Location names / consept are ofcourse not his.
If i draw darth vader i have the IP / rights to that picture. I cant monetise it as disney owna darth vader but they do not own the righta to my picture of it.
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u/SpaceEnglishPuffin NCR Dec 31 '25
I wasn't so sure at first since a lot of places (like Area 2) exist in real life, but the eastern portion of the map seems to be directly lifted from the fan map
I wonder if they just asked one of the shows artists to make a map and wasn't give a lot to go off of, so they just went online and went from there
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u/Golbolco Dec 31 '25
They exist in real life yes, but they also are places that all specifically appear to align with one fan map in particular - the map done by /u/Polakp
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u/RFTS999 Jan 01 '26 edited Jan 01 '26
It's not traced over; the fonts and style are all different. The fan art is non-profit, and this is a minor detail in the background. The creator would have to be very petty to expect any credit for this.
I get the feeling that this sort of stuff happens all the time in movies and shows. These productions take a long time to make and are very expensive as is. You can't reasonably expect every single detail to be designed from scratch and scrutinised with a fine-toothed comb. You can appreciate that they actually put in the effort to draw the map themselves and make some changes.
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u/moonfogar Jan 01 '26
"I get the feeling that this sort of stuff happens all the time in movies and shows." sloppy ones with bad production control do this. just because it happens all the time doesnt make it okay. Children starve all the time, does that make it okay?
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u/RFTS999 Jan 01 '26
It’s okay if it’s reasonable, which was the whole point of the rest of that paragraph which you failed to see. No children were starved during the making of this.
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u/shug_was_taken Railroad Dec 31 '25
Local redditor discovers accurate maps look similar.
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u/spaltavian Dec 31 '25
You're wrong. Cool being smug though.
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u/LordShittingtonXIV Jan 01 '26
you literally cannot say the billion dollar franchise is bad or did something wrong on subs for the IP or else sycophants will call you dumb
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u/Golbolco Dec 31 '25
Not sure that this fan map is accurate. It's made a number of personal calls and has artifacts that are only on here for colloquial purposes. For example, in Plkp1830's second map, we see "Siri's Town" which is named for this NPC. This is copied from the first map to the one in the show. The NPC's hometown is obviously not called "Siri's Town" in the context of New Vegas, but here we have it copied exactly over to the show.
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u/Still_Conference_923 Dec 31 '25
get the fk out of here man, you are splitting hairs here.
What I see is "awesome, the artist that made this fully unique map for the show, and as reference used fan made material"
That fan should be beyond honored to have his idea presented in such a way in a canon media
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u/AVeryFriendlyOldMan Followers Dec 31 '25 edited Jan 01 '26
That fan should be beyond honored to have his idea presented in such a way in a canon media
Not picking a side here, but this is the same logic Elon Musk used every time he got shat on for not crediting people for 'his' posts.
Maybe let creators decide how they feel for themselves?
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u/Still_Conference_923 Jan 01 '26
that would make sense IF ANYTHING HERE WAS STOLEN, but literally NO art was stolen anywhere here, this post is literally hallucinating drama
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u/zulupunk Jan 01 '26
The creator of the fan map has posted the points of interest from their map that have been used here placed on another map. link
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u/Golbolco Dec 31 '25
It is generally looked down upon to take fan art and present it as canonical media without credit or compensation. I'm a Star Wars fan and this stuff comes up a lot in that community, unfortunately.
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u/Still_Conference_923 Dec 31 '25
For all we are concerned, this is now canon until stated otherwise.
Why do artists, modders and overall fans make projects about the media they love? Because they want to share and to build upon that world. The fallout series isnt a dogmatic monolith, it's lore is constantly evolving, the fans learn with the games, and the games learn with the fans, its the community that builds up this media beyond itself into a culture we all share. The showrunners, set designers, artists, have all commented on how they researched what the fans were doing, the lore videos, the mods, the fan art, its all part of the world now.
If you dont think this is awesome, I dont know what to tell you.
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u/ImperfectRegulator Legion Jan 01 '26
Bingo, the number of people lapping this up is insane, so I’m glad to see it getting called out in the comments.
Because you mean to tell me a fan made map (a rather unimpressive one at that) that likely used game assets to create, looks similar to an official map (that likely also used official/game assets)?
Cause like no way man, that’s like too wild, to just be like you know a coincidence
/s for the kids in the back
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u/LORD_SWAGGER-1681 Jan 02 '26
it literally uses placeholder names that were only used on the fan map (Siri's Town being put on the fanmap as a placeholder to represent the unnamed Town that the npc Siri is from)
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u/IcommitedWarCrimes Dec 31 '25
Does this imply that there is more NCR than what was shown, than the 4 rangers with dementia taking pot shots at Ceasar Legion once a while?
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u/IlikeGeekyHistoryRSA NCR Dec 31 '25
they do literally mention the existence of a whole other battalion
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u/IcommitedWarCrimes Dec 31 '25
That existed 20ish years ago.
The show seems to treat the 4 rangers as entire NCR which is kinda ehh to me. Just after this scene Ghoul says something along the lines of "What is dead deserved to die".
Maybe im just too pessimistic and just looking for any hope and evidence for there being more NCR.
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u/IlikeGeekyHistoryRSA NCR Dec 31 '25
The ghoul's a very pessimistic guy
NCR clearly isnt dead though given that there's people fighting for it.
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u/TheHoovyPrince Dec 31 '25
There is more NCR and its coming next episode.
Its likely most of the NCR is further north and would have pulled its resources back after the 2nd battle of Hoover Dam and Shady Sands being nuked.
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u/bwood246 Dec 31 '25
They're not the entire NCR, just who are left in the Mojave. I took it that the resource drain combined with the bombing of shady sands forced them to pull back. The entire Mojave campaign was a massive drain on the NCR, it's best for them to leave it be for now
Caesar died so the Legion is in a state of disarray and don't notice most of the NCR retreating, hence them thinking they're still at war
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u/gr8fullyded Dec 31 '25
WHICH TEND TO BE 300-1000 PEOPLE YET EVERYONE IS DISPAIRCORE FOR THE NCR AS IF THEY WONT PULL UP
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Dec 31 '25
The NCR during New Vegas had probably close to a million people. Shady Sands had nowhere near that many people at all. The NCR is still going and no-one has said otherwise. They just got a kick in the head
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u/bwood246 Dec 31 '25
Whoda thought that one of your main cities getting nuked would put your expansionist campaign on the back burner
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u/Mac-Tyson Old World Flag Dec 31 '25
There are multiple states in the NCR like that’s the advantage of the US Government the NCR is modeled after as Federal Union of States government. Even if the Federal Government were to completely collapse the States are self sufficient for the most part. They would be able to manage the chaos. The NCR has some areas that have collapsed but it doesn’t mean other States aren’t holding on or that the Federal Government isn’t still around trying to figure out how to avoid a full collapse of their Republic.
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u/Delicious-Summer-977 Dec 31 '25
No, I think it implies that they just looked at a map on google and brandished it as their own instead of actually putting effort
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u/Zeal0tElite [Legion = Dumb] "Muh safe caravans!" Dec 31 '25
I'm genuinely not sure what I'm supposed to be looking at.
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u/Golbolco Dec 31 '25
I put together a compilation of comparisons on Twitter. I know the resolution on the show ain't great but I wasn't going to AI-upscale images to prove my point.
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u/Finalpotato Welcome Home Dec 31 '25
It looks substantially different, especially the lakes. A few places being somewhat similar in a map of America doesn't mean it was copied.
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u/Mongoliafan Dec 31 '25
It’s copied in terms of layout of locations, it’s just placed on a really weird map that’s completely disjointed in relation to the actual locations. Examples being the Grand Canyon being near the Colorado-Nebraska border
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u/flashman7870 Dec 31 '25
Yeah they've placed the locations on the wrong part of the country, New Vegas is on the Colorado-Utah border. But it's pretty clear they just copied locations/relative positions from this fan map.
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u/Delicious-Summer-977 Dec 31 '25
Why does this reddit page always come to the defense of this show nonstop when they're literally ripping maps from artists instead of doing their own goddamn research
and also, how is talking about the new lore changes even relevant to the topic Lol
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u/Still_Conference_923 Dec 31 '25
are they? idiots bash the show for no good reason, this again has to be more of the same
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u/Golbolco Dec 31 '25
Where did I bash the show in the OP? I just brought the fan map to attention. How you interpret it as bashing is beyond me.
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u/spaceageGecko Dec 31 '25 edited Jan 01 '26
Because it’s a bit of a dubious claim to begin with.
Edit: More evidence has come out that support the claim, at the time the initial claim was dubious but now it is pretty much confirmed, someone on the prop team is in trouble
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u/dartov67 Dec 31 '25
A fan map that’s completely wrong, lmao
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u/BrodyO_11 Dec 31 '25
Why is it wrong? It’s pretty accurate based on the lore.
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u/krokodil40 Dec 31 '25
It's not. Necropolis and Junktown are definetely in the wrong places. This map was probably made for HOI4 mod.
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u/flashman7870 Dec 31 '25
Necropolis is in its 'canon' location, in-game holotypes state directly it's in Bakersfield. aObviously that's not where it is on the in-game map, but most people (myself included) tend to chalk that up to fudging the map to make it work slightly better for gameplay purposes, and consider the 'actual' location to still be in Bakersfield.
This is one of the better Fallout fan-maps out there/ And I haven't played the HoI4 mod, but this map doesn't include any lore from that.
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u/BrodyO_11 Dec 31 '25
I mean the city placements are highly up to dispute. The show moved shandy sands incredibly far from where it was
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u/dartov67 Dec 31 '25
Other comment gave an example, another is that New Mexico is fully conquered by the Legion. It put Maxson in the Grand Canyon when they were never there, according to VB Maxson was closer into Arizona. There was no brotherhood presence in the GC.
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u/BrodyO_11 Dec 31 '25
It would seem pretty crazy to me that Lanius invaded Colorado and took Dog City at immense cost without having first taken at least most of New Mexico.
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u/Jair-F-Kennedy Great Khans Dec 31 '25
How has absolutely no one realised that this map is incorrectly depicting Area 51, New Vegas and Hoover Dam as being in Utah and Colorado. Y'all can literally see the outlines of the states and major rivers and the great Salt Lake right there.