This Eerie Fallout 3 Radio Hoax Will Give You Chills
The attention to detail of post-apocalyptic Washington D.C. as portrayed in "Fallout 3" has generated nuclear levels of discussion and theories over the years. Many have dubbed "Fallout 3" the highest-ranked "Fallout" game of them all, in no small part due to Bethesda's worldbuilding, creating an over-world chock full of secrets that frequently crossed the line from action-adventure into the horror genre. Vault 108 and the Dunwich Building represent this side of the game well, but fans of the series could previously argue a "Galaxy News Radio" Easter egg deserved just as much attention for its chilling nature. They could argue this if not for Bethesda itself debunking the Easter egg as fake when asked by GamesRadar+ in 2010.
The faux Easter egg supposedly required players to commit one heinous crime and one not-quite-as-heinous crime to hear it. Successfully accomplishing these would turn the best show in this nation's radioactive capital into a numbers station where the broadcast was interrupted by sequences of numbers that translated into sinisterly prophetic messages related to real-world events. Doubling down on the creepiness of this (entirely fictional) secret, the person delivering the message opened up another can of radroaches.
Three Dog purportedly predicts the future
Following the directions of the radio hoax, players allegedly had to kill Three Dog, the charismatic host of Galaxy News Radio, as well as skip the main questline for the radio station. The hoax then directed players to move on and self-destruct Raven Rock, the headquarters of the Enclave.
Tuning into GNR in the vicinity of the now-destroyed Raven Rock supposedly gave the player the chance to hear the voice of a ghost: Three Dog, whom the player murdered. But the deceased radio host would only speak in a sequence of numbers followed by morse code — messages that appeared to predict the future when translated. A March of 2014 entry supposedly read the following: "The Queen has died today. The world mourns, as on days like these, we are all Brits." Another entry supposedly predicted the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a tragedy that killed 11 people and spilled 4 million barrels worth of oil.
Elaborate hoaxes like Three Dog's death rattles in "Fallout 3" have cropped up for as long as games have been a popular form of entertainment. Even the Pokémon games have been subject to creepypasta stories. But that's all they are: stories. Although chilling, GamesRadar+ got the scoop directly from Bethesda and learned that the purported Easter egg held zero credibility. Even if Bethesda stayed silent, "Fallout" fans might still have called the theory into question, since some of the predictions failed to pan out — like the one that claimed the Queen of the United Kingdom would die in 2014.