Fallout reveals chilling meaning behind Vault Boy’s thumbs up

Fallout’s Vault-Boy, the franchise’s smiling, winking mascot, gets his own origin story in the new TV series — and the meaning behind his thumbs-up is terrifying.

Before the Prime Video’s adaptation, there’s a few things we could have told you about Fallout Vault Boy: his design was partly inspired by Monopoly’s Milburn Pennybags (did you even know that was his name?), he’s the poster child of the Vault-Tec Corporation, he is not the same as a Pip-Boy, and he represents the player’s stats, perks, health, and karma.

However, the games haven’t told us anything about why he looks the way that he does within the context of Fallout — and as it happens, his thumbs-up pose has a darker meaning.

In the opening scenes of Episode 1, Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins) is asked to do a thumbs-up at a kid’s birthday party. He politely refuses, and his daughter asks why.

Prime Video

“Back when I was in the Marines, they taught us if they ever drop a really big bomb… hold up your thumb just like this, and if the cloud is smaller than your thumb, then you run for the hills,” he explains, and she asks what it means if the explosion is bigger than your thumb. “They told us not to bother running,” he says.

Later, it’s revealed that Howard became Vault-Tec’s biggest celebrity ambassador, much to the ire of those who believed the corporation was profiting from fear-mongering and encouraging nuclear war. And, to make things worse, he was the one who inspired Vault Boy, as he asked if he could do a thumbs-up in his first photo shoot in a Vault-Tec suit.

As for the thumb test, is it true? Not quite, at least according to a 2018 University of Leicester study. “This theory works for a relatively small nuclear detonation, [but] further investigation is required to test whether it would also extend to larger nuclear blasts,” it reads.

“Further research is also required to investigate the survival likelihood if the cloud appeared larger than your thumb. Having the stem of the mushroom cloud smaller than your thumb may mean that you could be relatively safe, but it is still always a good idea to evacuate anyway.”

If you’ve binged every episode, find out everything we know about Fallout Season 2 and questions the next season needs to answer. We also worked out each character’s SPECIAL scores and perks, and if you’ve seen Fallout: New Vegas fans going mad over the series, we’ve broken it all down for you.