The second episode of Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. Fall The adaptation offers viewers a small gift in the form of a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo by a two-headed cattle. In those 0.5 seconds, I knew immediately that I would die from the strange creature and also that I needed more.
The cattle, called Brahmin, appear throughout the video game series, according to Fanatic. They are depicted as mutated cattle with two heads and a large udder. The website states that they can be found throughout the post-apocalyptic United States, particularly in the Commonwealth.
Like traditional livestock in the real world, the creatures are used as transportation, fertilizer, milk, meat, and material in the video game.
The animal appears in episode 2 of the main video Series, which follows a group of survivors almost 200 years after an apocalyptic nuclear disaster. Lucy (Ella Purnell), an optimistic Vault resident, leaves her safe haven to venture into the post-war world and is shocked by the destruction she witnesses. As Lucy navigates a new city, she notices the crowded roads, street food vendors, and colorful personalities.
As she walks, the young woman is surprised by a loud “moo” and looks up to see a two-headed cattle with a large saddle being led by a tough-looking cowboy. Lucy smiles softly at the animal before continuing her journey.
At this point in the story, the two-headed mammal is not part of Lucy’s journey, but we can only hope that the animal makes another appearance.
For years, fans of Fall The video game has been discussing the animal and its origins. The Brahmin fits the common description of post-nuclear war life that often sees traditional animals with Blinky-style genetic mutations, the three-eyed fish found in the lake outside the nuclear plant in The Simpsons.
In 2020, a Fall fan shared his theory about reddit, writing that the beef industry modified cows to “massively increase the twinning rate” before the war. Nuclear radiation then caused those offspring to be born as dicephalic parapagus twins instead of identical twins.
Scientific research has long doubted that radiation has a direct cause in these types of mutations in animals. “It is very difficult to attribute an anomaly to any particular environmental factor or event, and sometimes things just go wrong on their own,” he wrote. National Geographic in a 2013 article about two-headed animals. The outlet reports that the mutation is commonly caused by an axial bifurcation, in which the embryo does not fully pide into twins, supporting Reddit’s claim above.
Shady science aside, the Fall The series left us wanting more mutant livestock!
