*sigh* Bishop, just because something existed, that doesn't mean that it's suitable to fit it into the setting. Let's take a closer look at this and hopefully you'll be able to see where you went wrong and put the proverbial Mormons into Star Trek. I would have thought that the parallel of New Reno would have been obvious, given that it was a wasteland and the whole mob thing in the game was kind of cute. It's been debunked a load of times before, so I'm guessing you're either being purposefully obtuse for the sake of acting like so, or your memory went to hell.
Now, onto more examples, especially from a sci-fi writing standpoint.
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Gays are a predominant part of San Fran today, but you didn't really see any Gay Pride floats in Fallout 2, nor were the Shi/Hubologists/others holding hands, wearing rainbows, and buttfucking each other.
That may be because it was and still is irrelevant to the storyline and presentation of the setting. It's a wasteland, not a hit parade for after the bombs fall. The Mormons would have been up shit creek the first time a real shades of grey decision had to be made that also challenged their pussy-passive reality. They're too busy fucking like dumb bunnies to bring about the end of the world to really have any hope of surviving any setting in any form other than the kind of culture that leads to marketing departments.
If you really wanted to have an idyllic place to have something go wrong because they were naive, there'd certainly be areas like Shady Sands or other small communities, maybe there could be a section of a city where people are definitively staked out in territory and say "No Mutants Allowed". Racism and bigotry could be expressed in the form of speech, or actions like spitting upon someone as they walk through a town, or a variety of other methods. Making what seems to be nothing more than a clone of Vault City that is placed on the map with a giant red x, with the legend of "Here be Mormons" is pretty absurd when it has been done before almost to the letter.
You have also broken one of the most significant unwritten rules of sci-fi. Introduction of a real-world religion into a sci-fi setting when it wasn't part of the setting before does little to impress those who prefer sci-fi that isn't written by some crackpot "Creationist Scientist" or similar. Keep the religion out of my sci-fi, please; most of sci-fi and fantasy readers are of the same feeling and have been so for quite some time. We don't follow sci-fi and fantasy, which are by nature different worlds, to have to deal with a real-world religion and dogma represented in what is essentially an alternate reality. It's the reason why many of us don't care to deal with this shit again, through another medium, with what is supposedly entertainment. We've had enough of these lunatics before, and now they're going to be represented "faithfully" or in a way that doesn't offend Mormons, for what reason? Why do you have this problem in understanding this cubed tarbaby of a subject? Relion, real-world religion, and then putting it into a setting in which there was really no determinate religion set forth before, the only religions present were in small cults or shamanism, some small references and a drunk priest. BIS, again while you were still an Interplay forum fanboy, at least had the creative sense to rename the Scientologists spoof in the game. It's more than just the name, it's how the elements fit into the game, which a parody of a real-world cult tends to do so, given that cults are wont to arise in a breakdown of society, but in general cults are able to defend themselves worth a damn. Frankly, Mormons are worthy of FOT, or actually more like F
OS, considering the writing suicide attempt of including a real-world religion into a sequel of science fiction where it wasn't present in the first place.
Because there's Mormons in Utah and that was where Van Buren was set. Well, if that kind of logic passed for design decisions, I'm quite glad that I didn't have to deal with more Mormons in a game that claimed to be Fallout. By your "logic", pink and rainbow would be a prevalent theme during late-game Fallout 2. The oil tanker would have been decked out like a Carnival Cruise. With brocade. Let's not forget that Reno does have a significant gay and lesbian community as well.
Worshipping toasters (or more humorously, a TV that has video playback but no sound - possibly leading the player to disbanding the cult by sneakily repairing the TV and exposing the leader as a fraud, or be run out of the area for killing their God, depending upon various circumstances and skill checks) has more relevance to post-apocalyptic sci-fi than Mormons, and frankly, is a shitload more creative on all accounts, especially if you got into what other scraps might have been considered for use in ceremony. "Templars" with hubcaps bearing a fictional vehicle's name and with sharpened roof TV antennas are pretty amusing, when you think about it. This also fits into the general setting of Fallout much more than Mormons.
Back again to the gays. Why weren't they put into the setting? Probably because there wouldn't be much use to it, it wouldn't have appealed to the players, and it was pretty irrelevant to the designs of a post-apocalyptic world that pretty much means in itself that civilization died or is no longer anything like we should expect it to be. After all, that's why people follow the genre, but I could be mistaken. Perhaps they just like the pretty buildings in rubble.
After all, why have the Enclave? Why not go for something even more cliché, real-worldly, and would undoubtedly make some Deus Ex fan happy? FEMA! Creative? Fuck no.
Besides, I thought there was "miles-wide radioactive tornadoes" that roamed the area...
Which, if you went by how faith should be adhered to instead of medicine or poisons, reinforced by no diseases during their time in the Vault, would likely result in the Mormons praying to God as they died from the radiation. But that's if you go by the words of Joseph Smith and if the traditions are "faithfully followed", as has been claimed about the Mormon church. (Apparently, polygamy is supposed to have some function other than setting up a Jerry Springer episode of Book of Mormon proportions (can't say biblical, sorry). Maybe it's to empty the guf so Christ will come again or something like that. It's like trying to fuck the world to Judgement Day, especially if the originator of the "religion" really was trying to retain some or most of the Jewish practices and beliefs. This then brings a real possibility for a post-apocalyptic wasteland, Soylent Mormons, as they would have to resort to cannibalism to feed that many people, because they are nowhere near as dirty as the raiders who mercilessly tear them apart whenever they go to work in the fields to provide enough food for the cattle...err...flock. Mormon-on-a-Stick.)
A special encounter's worth, if that. Thirty or so Mormons fucking to try and summon Christ's second coming to end the world and take them all to Heaven. Amusing, and catches the attention, for about five seconds, then it really begs the point of having a purpose for including it.
