steal bobby pin / entire town turns hostile
A Fallout 3 post.
Vault Boy, the thumbs-up mascot of the Fallout video game series, smiling on a bright yellow sunburst. This meme is named after Fallout 3, released by Bethesda in 2008 and set in a post-nuclear Washington, D.C. The captions are about the game's strange logic and the habits it builds in players. The top line is a situation. The bottom line is how it plays out in the wasteland. "Steal one bobby pin" / "Whole town turns hostile." "Whole body crippled" / "Walk to the doctor." "Finally hit 100 lockpicking" / "Box contains 8 caps and a bobby pin." And the classic player habit: "Search every desk, drawer, fridge and ammo box" / "Carry 17 guns." Vault Boy smiles through all of it. He's the face of a world that ended in nuclear fire, and he still looks like he's selling breakfast cereal. That cheerfulness is Fallout's whole sense of humour. **Why it caught on:** every player had the same odd wasteland moments and wanted to share them.