A U.S. Patent and Trade Office filing indicates that Bethesda might be bringing its post-nuclear world to the small screen.

It's possible that your next trip through the Fallout universe may come not by way of a videogame but through a television show. A USPTO application filed by Bethesda Softworks LLC of Rockville, Maryland, seeks to claim the Fallout trademark for "Entertainment services in the nature of an on-going television program set in a post-nuclear apocalyptic world."

It's not much to go on - hardly even enough for a decently-proportioned rumor - but the filing becomes more interesting in light of last week's comments by Erik Todd Dellums, better known to the world at large as Fallout 3 "What's a disc?" disc jockey Three Dog, who teased a possible reappearance of the character on Twitter. "To all my #Fallout3 and #ThreeDog fans: There may be more of the Dog coming! Fingers crossed!" he wrote, adding in a separate tweet that the tease was officially sanctioned. He tweeted earlier today, however, that the filing was "news to me."

The assumption at the time was that Bethesda was cooking up Fallout 4 and while that's still almost certainly going to happen at some point, this filing muddies things a bit. Bethesda could also be lining up a trademark claim against the makers of the popular Nuka Break web series; Wayside Creations released a teaser for the second season last month which featured a prominent Dracogen logo, and if Nuka Break has become a money-making enterprise rather than a straight-up love offering from fans, Bethesda may take a somewhat dimmer view of it.

Or maybe it's something else entirely. We don't know! But we'll let you know if we find out.

UPDATE: We may have found out! As Nukapedia points out, this trademark application filing appears to be an extension of a filing that dates back to February 2009. That filing, like this new one, is for an "on-going television program set in a post-nuclear apocalyptic world," and while it's not a guarantee that something isn't up, it does seem far more likely - almost certain, really - that Bethesda is maintaining this trademark for possible future considerations.

Source: U.S. Patent and Trade Office

