The Disturbing Fallout Season 1 Moment That Shocked One Of The Show's Creatives

The live-action adaptation of "Fallout" is full of horrifying and freaky horror moments. This is a show full of mutant monsters, of cruel capitalists enslaving people with microchips, cannibals, and much more. Though the original games by Interplay Entertainment and Bethesda Softworks aren't technically horror games, they nevertheless can be as messed up and gruesome as any horror title, and few moments in the show are as disturbing as what came early in the first season.

In an interview with Windows Central, co-showrunner Graham Wagner revealed there was one moment in the first season of "Fallout" so disturbing that it shocked even him. It comes early in the second episode, during a flashback explaining the backstory of Dr. Siggi Wilzig (Michael Emerson) and the experiments he did for the Enclave. Specifically, he conducts behavior experiments on puppies, throwing those who fail the tests into an incinerator.

"I didn't protest, I just recall being like 'Are we f***ing doing this?' and then we're there on set building a beautiful, beautiful puppy replica," Wagner recalled. "It literally had a heartbeat and could breathe, and then we're just chucking it in the incinerator, and I was just like 'I've done some dark s***, that definitely is the darkest.'"

As co-showrunner, Geneva Robertson-Dworet explained in that same interview, the key to the collaboration between the duo was finding the balance between dark humor and moving the plot along. When they could show restraint, they instead lunged forward, even if it meant literally showing a puppy being thrown into raging fire.

"Fallout" is a stellar video game adaptation, in no small part due to the show's understanding of the fine balance the games walk between darkly comedic and utterly horrifying. "Fallout" takes place in a cruel world where the unthinkable has already happened. Nuclear armageddon obliterated the vast majority of civilization, turned the world into a wasteland, and gave rise to monsters of all shapes and sizes. What remains cannot be anything but barbaric and monstrous. What sort of creature can live in the wasteland other than something as unnatural as the deathclaws that rule the desert?

When it comes to the callous killing of puppies, it is but a small part of the many horrific things players experience or learn about in the "Fallout" games. The player constantly maims and kills people, and even eats them if they have to. There are people used for organ farming, giant genetic experiment farms, and much more.

And yet, when everything has gone to hell, what else is there to do except laugh? That's the key to "Fallout." It is gruesome and dark, but it is also hilarious. After all, a prominent mechanic in the "Fallout" games involves becoming a drug addict. Throughout the games and even the show, you encounter cartoonishly absurd and funny scenarios and characters, like the woman selling flea soup in the TV show (really), or the giant mecha that speaks only in anti-communist propaganda in the games. 

"Fallout" is a world of absurdity, of realizing nothing matters because things cannot get worse, so might as well laugh — even if it's at a dog being thrown into an incinerator.