Welcome to the Fallout Lorecast, the podcast that explores the boundaries of our knowledge about the world of Fallout. In today's episode about the pre-war businesses across the Fallout games, we're going to be talking about some very mundane kinds of businesses and products, the kinds of things that are very common in our own world, the kinds of things that you probably didn't notice very much when playing through the game or took very little notice of. But the more I play through Fallout and the more I research the work that goes into these games, including the designing of these companies and the different types of products and all the things that I've been doing on this series so far, the more I appreciate the level of detail. Now, a lot of the companies that we're talking about today don't have a large amount of detail, so what I actually mean here isn't the depth of detail in, say, Don Shire Pottery, Incorporated, which is one of the ones we're going to discuss, but instead the way that there are so many different additions to these games of the types of companies that you would see in specific locations and how thorough they are to cover pretty much anything you would think of. I'm really starting to understand that this is one of the reasons why these games feel like, well, real worlds. I mean, we know they're not real. You're playing a video game or you're watching the TV show, but there's something about the level of detail here that makes it stand out. And you see this in only a few other game series. Oftentimes, when somebody designs a role-playing game, the focus of the game and the things in the game, the people you talk to, the merchants, the products, is mostly about the player. What weapons can you buy? What materials do you need to craft the weapons that you want to buy? What other kinds of things can you put into the world that make it feel a little bit more fleshed out? Let's drop some food over here, or let's put some materials in this vendor, or this vendor makes potions. But when you trace all that stuff back, usually it's tied to the things the character can do, which makes a lot of sense. But yet, across the follow-up games, we get all sorts of things that don't really need to be there, but that the developers added just for the sake of making it feel like a more fleshed out world. And I know that nothing I'm saying right now is groundbreaking. I'm sure most of you listening to this are like, well, yeah, of course, that's part of why I like Fallout so much. And it's one of the things that we praised about the detail scene just behind the characters in the TV show. But I'm not saying this as if it's a first-time acknowledgement that this exists. I'm saying it in a way that I've learned to appreciate it even more than I did before. There's something about going through every single one of these businesses and looking at who they are, a little bit about what we can tell about their history, where they show up in the games and the products they make. That gives me such an appreciation for the developers and the developers across decades, because this is a trend, as we've seen, that goes all the way back to the first two Fallout games and is something that Bethesda has only continued to expand on. Now, I haven't done a count of exactly how many of these businesses trace their origins to which game, but it sure seems like a large percentage of them, maybe a majority of them, were originally created for Fallout 76. And that seems surprising to me in some ways. But also, when I think about it, that game's map is huge. It's basically when it was released four times the size of Fallout 4. And sure, the other games get their expansions and all that, but it makes sense when you're trying to fill out that much real estate that you're going to make businesses that fill in the buildings and there's going to have to be some details about them and you can't just draw from existing businesses across the franchise. So there you go. Little aside, a little bit of appreciation for all of the attention to detail and we're going to get into it. So here you go. More Fallout pre-war businesses starting with, well, the most exciting one I've mentioned so far, Don Chire Pottery, Incorporated. Here we go. You gaze upon one of America's greatest minds, preserved through the miracles of science. Do you remember that we talked about the treasure exhibit at the Jamaica Plain Town Hall Basement? This was a number of episodes ago. It would have been, I don't remember, the last or previous one of these that we did and how there was this list. There was a transcript of all the different inventory, the different treasures that were up on display. Well, this is the only reason we know about Don Chire Pottery, Incorporated, because in that display, in the center table, there are 10 things, 10 items. The holotape instructions is the first one. The mayor's welcome message in a holotape. Treasure inventory, another holotape. The terminal with the holotape player, which is a Robco 2076 model. A globe, which was a gift from Hyde Charter School. Anchorage Veterans Flag, which is a memorial to Private McKinney. American flags, two of them. I guess those count as the same item because they're just two examples of the same thing, which was a gift from Colonel Nelson in the US Army. Homme Dulse Cigars from 2077. Selected works on the history of Jamaica Plain and the final item. An ornamental vase, which was gifted by Don Chire Pottery, Incorporated. Now, these are all part of this time capsule sort of display thing. And if you actually look at the pottery that's on the table, it is a vase. It is a white vase. The background is white. The two other colors on it are a kind of a gold sort of color. It's almost like a dark gold. And then you have a medium to darkish blue hue. It appears to have what look like plant like structures going up the sides with what appear to be heart shaped blue leaves. It's the sort of thing that if you were to quiz anybody about even the existence of this, they probably wouldn't have noticed it, let alone remembered how to describe it. But this is kind of amazing because somebody had to take the time to make this, right? They made a piece of pottery from the Don Chire Pottery Incorporated in corporation, corporation, however that works. And that's all we know. There's no other details about Don Chire Vases, the pottery company, nothing else that I can find. And this is part of Fallout 4 and doesn't seem to come back for fall at 76. You would imagine something like a pottery company like this might have a location near the Whitesprings, where fancy people who have a lot of money can go by things like fancy vases or vases, I suppose is what they would call it. But there isn't a location run by Don Chire at the Whitesprings. However, I did a little digging. Turns out that that vase I described can be found at a shop at the Whitesprings without any labels. It's exactly the same design. It's exactly the same model from Fallout 4. So let me restate. Don Chire Vases, the name, the company, any of their shops, none of that transferred from Fallout 4 to Fallout 76. But this one model of a white vase with gold and blue leaf designs on it does show up in at least one location, the store that I'm about to talk about. But as for the business, that's all we know about Don Chire Pottery Incorporated. Now, it's not a coincidence that I just talked about potentially having Pottery at the Whitesprings, because alphabetically, the very next company is Decorat. This is a location on the grounds of the Whitesprings. This is a retail store that sells, guess what? That's right, vases, including the one I just described, but also more interestingly, ones from China. Now, this raises questions in my mind. I'm sure it raises some questions in your mind as well. First of all, the Chinese were enemies of the Americans. They were most likely not trading and hadn't been for a considerable number of years. But clearly, when you walk into this location at the Whitesprings and it is very run down, there are what appeared to be displays and desks and shelves and a cuckoo clock. I mean, there's there's a variety of stuff here that very clearly would have been filled with vases and plates and other types of delicate cutlery. Maybe who knows. But what we do know is there are some vases that are strewn on the floor. And if you look closely at them, they appear to be Chinese in origin. And there is the Donshire vase up still on it on a desk on a table, kind of behind a glass display. But on the floor are Chinese vases. And you can tell by the designs that they come from somewhere in the east, most likely China. And that raises the question of, well, are these contemporary to the Donshire vase? Because Donshire clearly has a store in Fallout 4 that was destroyed when the bombs went off, which means it was a contemporary to 2077. Those vases were new. They don't look like old vases. They don't look like antiques or anything like that. They look pretty modern and contemporary. And yet the ones on the floor might actually be older. So maybe this location, Decorat, included a selection of newer items from companies like Donshire, which they could have gotten access to because it was an American company, I'm assuming it's an American company. We don't really know those details, but it looks like the kind of place that was probably run and at least managed in the United States. And then you've got these Chinese vases on the floor, which could be actually really, really old. But what's confusing about this is that they're laying on the floor and they're not broken. If these were antiques, then they probably are more brittle. And the fact that they haven't actually broken on the floor is a little confusing. So were these contemporary items done in an antique style? And if so, why were people OK with shopping at Decorat for items from China? And we know these locations, the way that they're broken down, are basically a time capsule. What is left here is what was here when the bombs dropped, which means that the rich people who went to the Whitesprings were shopping for Chinese artifacts at this location. Now, what's probably going on is that the creators didn't think about this too much and they just put different types of vases in a location. But when you think about it a little bit, it starts to seem odd, which seems to imply that a significant portion of the wealthy people who were at the Whitesprings didn't actually care. In fact, they may have thought this was a good thing because maybe getting vases that were made in China were rare. And so they were doing it for the monetary value and status without any care about what this looked like politically. And when you think about it like that, it tracks, right? Rich people not really caring about the things the rest of us care about so much. So there you go. It's funny, the little details you find. Now, physically, the shop is the southernmost shop in that like span of shops outside the Whitesprings. If you've played 76, you've been here, you know, there's ghouls that run around, you know where this is. But there really isn't that much else we know about it. There's a building, there's a logo, there's some items inside that are still there. But otherwise, that's it. You're going to drink a new Coca-Cola, then you're going to probably want it to be cold, close to freezing temperature. And there's a company coming up next. That's all about freezing. Deep Freeze Kitchen Storage Corporation. Their slogan is cleanliness is next to godliness. Both are below freshness. And when I explain to you where this company is discovered, that will start to make a lot more sense, because the people who were using this Deep Freeze Kitchen Storage Technology were not so worried about godliness as much as they were worried about freshness of human parts that they were storing in these freezers. That's right. These freezers are located at the Ultra Luxe in New Vegas. This is the location of the Gourmand restaurant. It is run by the White Glove Society. And it's a lore show. So if you haven't played New Vegas yet, because you've watched the show and just haven't gotten this far in it, spoilers, they eat people. And when your business revolves around only the freshest of long pig, well, then you need the best freezers. And that's where Deep Freeze Kitchen Storage Corporation comes in. Now, this is the only place this is mentioned, and we know the name of it because of the terminal entry when you go to enter into the freezers. There's a simple display that mentions the name of the company and then gives you access. And it also has the slogan, the cleanliness is next to godliness. Both are below freshness thing. But otherwise, Deep Freeze Kitchen Storage does not come up in the other games. It's only in New Vegas. And I find this interesting because storage, specifically freezer storage, is not just beneficial if you're trying to store human meat to consume later. Excuse me while I vomit. But also for other foods, but also for science. Now, how do I know this? Well, I've mentioned on the show before that my wife is a scientist. She runs a research lab. I've seen their facilities. They have multiple Deep Freeze storage devices set at very different temperatures because some of the research that they do has to do with preserving brains. Yes, they do research on brains. They're trying to solve things like Alzheimer's. And that storage needs to be very specific so as not to harm the samples. So this is a very important type of technology for science. Now, where else do we see the science of Deep Freeze in Fallout? Well, obviously, cryo freezing individuals, whether it's Vault 111 or the TV show. There's multiple instances of cryo storage for people on the TV show. So it makes me wonder, is a company like Deep Freeze involved with them as well? But we don't get a name. In fact, as far as I can remember, we don't seem to have any names on the freeze technology used in Fallout in the vaults at all. It may be that's all just Vault Tech or maybe Vault Tech bought the technology from a company like Deep Freeze. Now, let's come back to reality a little bit. Let's do the meta perspective here. Chances are this was something that was implemented very quickly by a dev in a terminal and then was forgotten and not distributed. There are like models in the game of vases like we've talked about before, where you could pull up the same model and then use it in a later game. This is the name of a company that shows up in a terminal. So there may not be strong records for the developers across development teams for something like this. And because it is such a subtle reference, it's not something people think about. If I had asked you what was the name of the kitchen storage freezer company that shows up at the Ultra Luxe, chances are like, I don't know, one in a thousand of us might have actually remembered that or noticed it because we recently did a playthrough or something. But otherwise, it doesn't come to mind. So my guess here is that this is just kind of one of those forgotten companies. But it would make a lot of sense in a future update or future game to see Deep Freeze come back, wouldn't it? Oh, I don't know anything, Mr. I just think it and then I don't. We have so many little minor companies on this episode. And we're continuing with the cold because the next one is deep powder ski equipment. This is a company that shows up only in Fallout 76. And it makes sense because there are ski resorts in Appalachia. You go up into the mountains and you can ski, at least you could have before the bombs dropped. In fact, there's a whole section of the storyline between the bombs dropping and then the time that we get to play in Fallout 76 of people who were stranded up on the ski slopes and all the stuff that goes on with that. You can go back and listen to those episodes if you want. But this is a company that only shows up in the logos in and around the area. Deep powder ski equipment and the logos that you can find and the advertisements that you can find are kind of this orange skewed deep powder symbol. It kind of moves across the top left of the of the logo with a snowflake symbol kind of above the deep part of it and then below it ski equipment in this, I don't know, aqua blue color. And on the advertisements, you see a ski boot and a glove in similar orange and kind of aqua blue in the cranberry bog. There's also a big billboard that still is kind of half there. And you can tell that this was the logo that was up on that billboard. And interestingly, at the bottom right side of that billboard is an American flag. I'm guessing somebody just decorated it at some point. I don't know. But that's it. That's all we know about deep powder ski equipment. And there's nothing else interesting about this one that I could find out. So on to the next one. Now, some of the last ones we've talked about only show up in like one or two games. And that's pretty common for a lot of these companies. This one is deluxe. Now, if I just said the name deluxe, you may not remember that this shows up in fall three, New Vegas four and 76. Because it is a brand of vacuum cleaner. And many of the locations you go to, you can see the vacuum cleaner. And many of the locations you go to have these old homes or businesses that would have had these types of products just kind of strewn about. So you can come across these in lots of different locations. And every home needs to vacuum up. But also maybe you want to clean up the outside world, like the streets that your cars drive on. And what better way to do that than through an industrial sized vacuum cleaner connected to a vehicle that drives on the roads. Well, you're not going to find that in one of the video games, but you are going to find it in the tabletop RPG by Modiphius. Now, I know that this is tangentially related, that once you start moving past the games, the question of canonicity becomes a thing. But it's worth at least explaining because it's a really fun idea. And I feel like it fits the sort of goofy, weird tech fallout vibe. So imagine a lawnmower, a riding lawnmower with one seat and a wheel, no covering. It's not like a car. It's it's like a lawnmower. But instead of at the front of the vehicle, you have like an engine driving blades on the bottom that chop the grass. You have a gigantic vacuum cleaner. And you can see this. If you go to Modiphius's site, Modiphius.net, and you look up the fallout terrain, print at home industrial vehicles, it is among things like forklifts and tractors and things like that. But then you have this gigantic street cleaning vacuum. Here's the description. In the post war world, sanitation is more than just cleanliness. It's survival. Side note, it's funny that there's another reference to cleanliness here when we just talked about the deep freeze slogan. The deluxe brand EasySan Street Cleaner is engineered to keep your communal spaces spotless, ensuring a healthier environment for all. With its integrated waste compactor, the EasySan efficiently takes care of dirt and radioactive particles. Funny that it mentions radioactive particles, right? But it makes sense because the vehicles are, well, at least a large significant portion of the vehicles are powered by fusion, which contains radioactive components. Continuing on, it says, while its compact design means it can maneuver through narrow or crowded spaces with ease, built with the same dedication to safety and quality that deluxe products are known for, the EasySan Street Cleaner is your first line of defense against weird sludge and grime of all kinds. Now, I would imagine that many different cities and towns and places like that probably purchase some of these in order to clean the weird sludge and grime off the streets of their neighborhoods. I don't know. What else is going? What else is dropping on the streets? Like, what else is going on here? What are these fusion vehicles leaving on the ground? Now, I know there are still gas vehicles around and gas vehicles tend to pollute, of course, and they run with oil and the oil drips on the streets. That's a regular thing that has to be dealt with. And oftentimes, if you're in a place where it doesn't rain very often and then it rains, all of a sudden the roads get real slick because the oil and the rain mix. I get that all. That's that's a thing, right? But in our world, we don't need gigantic vacuum cleaning machines in order to clean the roads. We use street sweepers and those types of things. So maybe this is just their equivalent of a street sweeper. Maybe this is also for just sucking up paper and plastic garbage that's just on the streets. But it seems like the marketing material is focused on weird sludge and grime and radioactive materials, which, again, makes me wonder how much those vehicles were dropping on the streets and what kind of things there were. Does that mean that if you were kids running around outside and you kick a ball into the street and you don't have shoes on that you could run into the road? And if it hadn't been recently cleaned, that you might be in danger of radioactive exposure on the bottoms of your feet? Maybe that's a real thing. It's not something I'd considered before in the fallout world. And this is what I'm talking about with the intro and some of the other things I've said so far is just that the more you dig into this stuff, the more it feels like there's some underlying. Some of the other interesting pieces that seem to connect in weird and interesting ways and props to the development teams for all of that. All right, for our last one this week, we're talking about some more domestic products. Seems to be a theme that's going on here. DeMarco Boil Housewares. Now, this is a business that shows up in fallout 76 only and they sell housewares. And this is a place that's located at the Valley Galleria, which is a location in Appalachia. You can if you play the game, you've been here, you've seen this. But that location is actually two floors and on the different floors are different products. On the first floor, there are things like big appliances, washers and dryers, refrigerators, showers, toilets, stoves, sinks. Other furniture, tables and cabinets, dressers, chairs, sofas, cribs and desks and beds and those types of things. Now, notice I mentioned refrigerators. So you might be thinking, is there a deep freeze here? No, no deep freeze freezers, but other products that were similar. And this is one of those things that could have worked out, right? Had the developers thought about or rediscovered deep freeze. And like I said, it was kind of hidden in a hollow tape. So it makes sense that they wouldn't have thought of it. But I can imagine going to a location like this and finding a deep freeze freezer meant for domestic use as one of the things that you could find at a place like this. The logo has a very pretty script similar to a lot of the other scripts that are used because they kind of harken back to this Art Deco kind of design. It says D Marko DE with a capital D, capital M for Marko dash boil with a capital B. Those are clearly last names. And then housewares and housewares is in red. The main script on the names is kind of an off white. And there are little pictures of furniture and like almost like little clip art images in the background. Now, as far as I can tell, this is the only location that this exists in. And it shows up at first in Fallout 76, like I mentioned, many of these businesses first show up in Fallout 76. So I wouldn't be surprised if we get a future Fallout game in a town or city that happens to have a strip mall in it somewhere kind of like the Valley Galleria. And we might see another DeMarco boil housewares. But for right now, there's nothing else too notable about this one. If you have any questions about Nuca World, I'd be delighted to answer them. You know what I think would be really cool is if you guys, as you discover other things in these games, like these little businesses or little details, if you share them, if you post them on, say, the Discord channel, and be like, Hey, look what I found. I never noticed this little detail before because there's so many fun little details. In fact, it's one of those things I've considered doing more video content on. I'm always going to focus primarily on the audio episodes for the show. But the idea of exploring really, really in detail some of these locations and actually showing the video of some of that is something I would consider. Let me know if that seems appealing to you. But also thanks to our patrons for helping to support the show and welcome to ENT, our newest patron. So glad that you're here. If you would like to get ad free episodes or t-shirts or stickers or join us for our patron chats, patreon.com. Follow Out Lorecast is the place to do that. Plus, you can get shout outs like Germanator or Larry D or the main monkey or Ira M. These are all of our sentry bots. So if you sign up at that level, you get shout outs every week. Thank you for your continued support. Also, if you'd like to help out in other ways, please consider leaving a review on Apple podcasts. I'll read out five star reviews in future episodes. Or you can just comment. Send me some nice comments on Spotify. In fact, some people leave in debate things and have little conversations on there. It's it's kind of crazy. But that's a thing. You can help out and do that. Otherwise, thanks for being here and let me know if you can explain the Chinese pottery at the White Springs. I'd be interested to hear other explanations. All right, stay safe out there. I'll see you next time. 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