Fallout Season 2 Name-Drops The Most Disturbing Bio-Weapon From The Games

Major spoilers for "Fallout" season 2, episode 5, and its source material ahead.

"Fallout" season 2 has been packed with shocking reveals so far. Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan) has turned out to be more dangerous than he seems, and the Ghoul (Walton Goggins) has gradually revealed his direct involvement with the apocalypse during his final months as Cooper Howard. Elsewhere, Norm (Moisés Arias) is pretending to be Bud Askins' successor to glean more about Vault-Tec's schemes from its employees, which leads him to an abandoned company facility in this season's fifth episode. 

Last week, as you may recall, one of Vault-Tec's aforementioned company men began to tell Norm about a mysterious Phase 2 for the company's Future Enterprise Ventures, which is apparently "very important to the experiment" being carried out within all the vaults. After using Barbara Howard's (Frances Turner) abandoned terminal in the latest episode, Norm discovers exactly what he was talking about — namely, the Forced Evolutionary Virus (or FEV). And while Norm's attempts to gather more intel are interrupted by another Vault-Tec employee, those familiar with the "Fallout" video games will know all about this deadly biological weapon. 

As a reminder, "Fallout" season 1 already established that Vault-Tec conducted some grisly experiments in its vaults, and the original games only further explore this in greater and more graphic detail. The Forced Evolutionary Virus, however, is much more dangerous than any twisted psychological test or parasitic fungi that Vault-Tec has previously inflicted upon its hapless vault-dwellers. Rather, the FEV is a human-made megavirus created by West Tek before the War, and it has the ability to alter living creatures' DNA on a fundamental level. Now, thanks to season 2, we know that Cooper's wife Barb (Frances Turner) was also the overseer of this horrific experiment to boot.

FEV has existed since the pre-War era and even led to the Mariposa Rebellion that helped establish the Brotherhood of Steel. In the "Fallout" games, FEV isn't airborne and can only be transmitted through direct contact. It's identifiable by its liquid green sheen and is usually stored inside giant vats or in aerosol form. The virus is pretty resilient, too, and it can resist radiation, allowing it to survive in highly radioactive areas. The FEV's prime objective is to "correct" its host's DNA, and this is often used to turn humans into super mutants or enhance a particular aspect of human cognition (like developing extraordinary psychic abilities).

West Tek, which has been replaced by Vault-Tec in the "Fallout" show, specifically used FEV to overwrite DNA strands for inhumane experimentation purposes and spent a lot of time refining various strains and strengthening the FEV by trial and error, which inevitably led to horrific deaths. Case in point: The already-suffering settlement Grayditch was tragically annihilated in "Fallout 3" after a scientist unwittingly turned a group of giant, benign ants into aggressive killers by using the FEV mutagen on them. Conversely, FEV can be used to attain superhuman-esque abilities, as the regenerative nature of the virus can make viable hosts immortal. 

Considering how power-hungry every faction is in "Fallout" the show, this does not bode well. It's also worth noting that the FEV-2 virus strain from the games is responsible for creating most of the mutated creatures found across New California and the Mojave Wasteland. That includes the enhanced Deathclaws, centaurs, floaters, the Nightkin, and other super mutants. If Vault-Tec successfully subjects the vault-dwellers to Phase 2, they'll become experiment fodder in the worst way possible.

"Fallout" is streaming on Prime Video.