Bethesda director and executive producer Todd Howard has said he won't be making a cameo in the Fallout TV show, despite plenty of opportunities to do so. The Toddster's appearance or otherwise has been speculated on ever since the show was announced, but Howard says he's more comfortable in the background.
The topic came up in a recent interview with IGN, and Howard was pretty clear it's a 'no' from him:
"They've offered me a whole bunch, even in Season 1," says Howard. "I was going to be in the sort of Dr. Strangelove Vault-Tec room, where they're talking [about] all the experiments, and some other things. I think I'm best behind the camera.”
Spoiler alert for Season 1, obviously. This scene is one of the revelations that occurs towards the end of that season, and is a flashback to how Vault-Tec executives and various other business big-hitters divide the various vault experiments between themselves before they agree to drop the bombs. Having Howard in there would've seemed like a pretty neat nod to me, but perhaps an executive from a company owned by Microsoft participating in a corporate carve-up to humanity's detriment would've been too on-the-nose.
The interviewer pushes Howard on whether he'd consider a more throwaway appearance, such as being one of the extras blasted away by Walton Goggins' The Ghoul.
"I said no to all of them so far," says Howard. "I don't want to distract. Everyone goes, 'oh, there's Todd!'"
Well maybe not everyone, but fair point. Asked if he fancied being Bethesda's Stan Lee, Howard simply says "not at this time."
This isn't brought out explicitly at any point, but a minor awkwardness here would be that Howard is not the creator of Fallout (nor has ever claimed such). Howard is obviously one of the most important figures in what Fallout has now become, and his role can hardly be diminished, but Fallout's co-creators are Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky.
To me that makes the Stan Lee comparison a little bit of a stretch, though your mileage may differ. Lee made a cameo in pretty much every Marvel film made until the latter years of his life, but in that case had co-created many of the characters and extended universe, as well as leading Marvel creatively for a lifetime before it hit cinematic gold. To put all controversies about credit to one side for a moment, it is indisputable that so much of what made Marvel Marvel was Lee's fizzing inventiveness and seemingly endless imagination.
So however Howard may rationalise it, I can't help but feel any unwillingness may have some of that beneath the surface: which honestly speaks well of him. Howard can't really avoid being presented as the 'face' of Bethesda's various mega-franchises, and deserves all the garlands and praise there is, but he can avoid unnecessary fan service.
Fallout Season 2's first episode premieres December 17, and this time around focuses on New Vegas, with one episode a week releasing until early February. The good news is, according to PCG's Jody Macgregor, it's pretty great so far.
