Fallout Players are Still Spooked by Tim Cain's Face Haunting Their Desktop. This Easter Egg is 25 Years Old
It's a common tradition among Fallout fans to come across a certain jumpscare. The father of the series still likes to visit players' computers.
The first installment of Fallout turned 27 this year, which means that more and more people are trying to play it on better equipment than in the 90s. A good computer, will not save us from pixel graphics, but in return, it will allow us to discover other tidbits that only a few have seen before - an example is the jumpscare featuring the creator of Fallout in his own person.
Easter egg from twenty years ago
Just a few hours ago, a post appeared on the Reddit forum for Fallout, in which the author encountered an easter egg in the form of Timothy Cain's icon for the first time, replacing the standard radiation symbol from the first Fallout game. Belonging to the new group of fans, the player initially didn't know who he was dealing with.
Hate to break it to you but you’re gonna have to get a new PC, you’ve been inflicted with the Cain virus.
As explained in the comments, Tim Cain was replacing the main icon when setting a higher monitor resolution and large icons. In 1997, few people could afford such settings, which is why the "virus" didn't attack computers too often. Today, however, hardware has many more capabilities, and new fans often come across this easter egg.
"I am sorry my head frightens you"
The most interesting is thing is the fact that Tim Cain had no idea his head was in the game. Father of Fallout commented on this topic nine years ago in one of his posts, explaining the situation and apologizing to fans for the jumpscare.
To be fair, I had no idea that icon was in the game. Another programmer added it secretly as the "large" size icon, and I never used large icons in Windows 95 so I just saw the regular Fallout icon. Unfortunately, after Windows NT, all Windows versions started using the large size icons by default, so that's what most people see now.
- Tim Cain
It's worth mentioning that although Tim Cain is no longer working on new Fallouts (taken over by Bethesda), the developer remains active online, where he is happy to share interesting facts from the industry. He recently spoke out about the rising costs of developing new titles.