How did the Fallout series get its name? Tim Cain recalled title options for the original game

The creators of the post-nuclear war game took a thorough approach to choosing its title. In the end, they settled on Fallout, but there were other notable options.

Fallout creator Tim Cain continues to reminisce. This time, he decided to share the story behind the origin of the series’ name.

Interplay Entertainment, which previously owned Fallout, wanted the game’s title to avoid connotations (to have no associative meanings), to ensure it could not be shortened into an unfortunate acronym, and to avoid being a cliché.

Early in development, the game was called Test Bed (named after the engines being tested), and then the title was changed to GURPS after Interplay acquired the license to use the Generic Universal RolePlaying System (named GURPS). While developing the setting for what would become Fallout, the game was titled Vault 13. However, they quickly realized that a sequel to such a game would have a very strange name, so they decided to come up with something better.

Some of the potential names for the game known today as Fallout (there were far more of them):

• The Vault
• Ground-Zero
• Survivors
• Warriors of the Apocalypse
• Radstorm
• Nuclear Winter
• Doomsday Winter
• After the Bomb

Among them was the title Fallout. At first, Cain was not very fond of it because the game had no actual radioactive fallout, but Interplay founder Brian Fargo approved it; ultimately, Tim Cain reconsidered his decision, and today the game series is known as Fallout.