In Fallout 2, after you beat the game you can continue playing. Remember that defunct vault near the beginning? The one with the toxic sludge on the ground and the elevator where you kill golden geckos. It's called "toxic caves" on the world map, but it is clearly a very small vault with 3 levels (including the first cave level, where you take a ladder down to the actual vault structure).
Well, if you have one of the original pressings of the game and you have not patched it, you can return to the toxic caves after the game is over and if your have the item "heart pills" from the West murder case, you can kill yourself in the elevator.
After the usual death scene plays, the screen will stay black without the menu screen opening up. After several minutes, you will begin to hear a hollow, echoey white noise -- cave sort of sound. The screen will slowly fade back in to your character in a pile of that nasty biomass goo that was all around The Master from the first game. Your character will stand up and the usual ambient soundtrack will start playing, but white noise will be there.
Explore this new level, but DO NOT pick any locks. Those areas are extremely off limits and the developers put some very nasty programming tricks into the code to protect their secrets.
As you continue further into the level, you will hear the white noise continue to increase in volume and the ambient soundtrack you are so used to will exhibit strange artifacts. This may be because of the difficulty of playing two music tracks simultaneously in the Fallout engine, which wasn't designed to be able to do this.
After passing locked door after locked door, you will come upon many of the characters you met earlier in the game. Oddly, you only find characters that died, or that would reasonably be expected to die after you last saw them. Like the official endings, the characters found vary dpending on how you played the game... if you were the good guy and tried to solve problems without violence, you will only find a few bad guys and other unfortunate victims here. If you slaughtered every town however, you will see several hundred characters.
Regardless of what you did earlier, none of the characters will speak to you or react to any action in any way. They can't be pickpocketed, killed, pushed aside, or healed. If you try to use First Aid, Doctor, or any healing items on them, the game will tell you in the text box "It's much to late for that, Chosen One".
It would appear that this area is meant to be or mimic purgatory, or possibly even hell, this conclusion being based on the fact that the area is populated entirely by dead characters. the final character, standing just before the final door is always a Player Character model from the first Fallout. This is the only character you can interact with and, as you approach, the white noise reaches a crescendo and the ambient music abruptly cuts out. If you simply bypass him and open the final door, the game will play the end credits once again, only with pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims in the background. This is in extremely poor taste and many wonder why the creators would be so insensitive. When asked, they deny the sequence exists and call it a hack that was never meant to be published in the game at all. After it ends, you are greeted with a typical game over screen and are booted back to your desktop.
If you talk to the final character however, he will explain that he is in fact the Vault Dweller from the original first game, your ancestor. He will tell you that he is disappointed in the way you turned out, and will then turn his back on you after of which your character will collpase into a pile of bones in a strange death animation that I have never seen in the game itself. Afterwards, the game will fade to white and lock up the computer, forcing a hard reset.
There is, however, a third option. Those locked doors I mentioned earlier, there is one door, and it's always random as to which door it is, but if you get lucky in picking, you can use any heavy explosive device to blow it open. Inside, you will find a single footlocket holding a 10mm pistol with no clip in the picture/sprite, and no ammo in it. None of your normal 10mm rounds can be used. You can however, "load" the gun with the easter egg found in the basement of New Reno Arms. Fire this into the head of the final character (using the targeting system, be sure to target the head. Not the eyes or anything specifically, just the head), and the game will cut to an over-the-shoulder video showing a young man playing an unidentified game that is very much like Fallout. Some people claim that this is an early version of either Fallout Tactics or Van Buren, but nothing on the screen seems to fir either of those games. Also neither of those games had started development at the time of the original pressing of Fallout 2. The video itself is poorly lit, with the apparent intention of being a creepy cipher, but nothing sppoky actually happens in the video. The man simply plays the unknown game and the video slowly fades to your desktop. This is a cook trick, in which I'm not sure how they managed to perfect a gradually translucing screen back then).
Another strange trick is that according to many players, the final character always amtches the character they most recently played in Fallout. Both gender and their apparel at the end of the previous game our represented, and upon using the menu to take a closer look, the text box reveals: You See: The Vault Dweller, and the name of the character you played will be displayed afterward (example: You See: The Vault Dweller, Jack). This appears to be a savegame hack however, because if you do not have a Fallout 1 saved game on your PC, the Vault Dweller will be the original, male model wearing his jumpsuit. If you have Fallout 1 installed on your computer however, but no saved games, Dogmeat will be there next to the Vault Dweller, his character model in a sitting position. He will not move, and when you try to interact with you, the text box tells you, You See: Dogmeat. He is cold, and does not move. He seems to be completely unresponsive. If just flashing the cursor over him however, the text box reveals You See: A saddened dog, who acts as if his owner is missing. This displays even though he is in his "sitting position", right next to the Vault Dweller.
Another strange thing is, if again, you have the first game installed on your computer, however with no saved game, upon passing the several unresponsive characters in the long hallway, at some point you will reach a certain character who will certainly stand out. This character will seem to be the death animation of Fallout 1 when one is killed with a flamethrower, known to players casually as the "Fire Dance", however the animation will never finish, and the character will never fall down into a pile of ashes. Instead, it will loop over and over. If you move the mouse cursor over it, the text box reveals You See: Ian. You cannot talk to him or interact with him in any usual way, he will just simply stay there, as the "Fire Dance" death animation loops over and over again. However, if you have a Flamer on you, you can attack him with it. If attacking him regularly without using the targeting system, The death animation will finally end, with "Ian" falling down into a pile of ashes. The ashes will however remain there. You can loot the ashes to gain a leather jacket. This jacket is special, however, as if you put it on and then interact with Dogmeat, the dialogue box pops up. In perentheses, it will read [You see a saddened frown turned upside down as he is reunited with his 'original' owner], in which after clicking OK, the dialogue box ends and Dogmeat will no longer be there, and your leather jacket will be gone. If however, instead of interacting with Dogmeat with this leather jacket you instead interact with the Vault Dweller, a dialogue box again pops up. It will read: "I'm so sorry....", after which again, you can only click one response, which displays as [OK]. However upon "taking a closer look" at the Vault Dweller, it may read (strangely, this only happens in random rare occasions) a deep weight has been lifted.
There is nothing further you can do here, except leave the area. If you have Fallout 1 installed on your computer, saved game or not, the end credits to the first Fallout will role (with the Hiroshima-Nagasaki victims pictures) instead of the second credits, and you are again, booted back to your desktop. If you watch these special credits closely, somewhere randomly in the credits, it will say "War... War Must Change". Many people believe that this "Secret Ending" (especially with parts of it such as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victim credits) was added in secrecy by the developers of Black Isle without the heads of Interplay's (Fargo specifically) knowledge (which is probably why it is disavowed and 'disowned') as an Anti-Nuke message, much like the Hideo Kojima revealed the entire Metal Gear Solid series to be.
....*turns off Fallout 2 and never plays it again* xD
