When you look at Fallout 3 objectively, you'll notice that it does in quite a few ways deviate from both Fallout 1 and Fallout 2. Now, on the other hand, if you examine the 90's Film "Tank Girl", you'll notice quite a few similarities:

Both take place in a "Wasteland"
Both have a scarcity of drinking water
Both of diabolical but buffoonish organizations attempting to rule: Water & Power, The Enclave
Both had Malcolm McDowell playing a fairly sinister lead: Kesslee, President Eden
Both main characters find themselves thrust into the Wasteland: Rebecca, Lone Wanderer
Both suffer from "Mutant Attacks": Rippers, Super Mutants
Both have leaders who are in some way "mechanized": Kesslee, Eden
Both main leads are captured and brutally interrogated
Both have references to purifying water: Ripper's Creator, James
Both have an organization which at one points fights to give water to everyone: Rippers. BOS
Both contain an ending in which water is returned the Wasteland.

So what do you think....did the creators of Fallout 3, grab some inspiration from Tank Girl?

Would be rather ironic, if the movie was much of an influence. There was quite a bit of an outcry with the Tank Girl movie, as it really had almost nothing at all in common with the comic series (which didn't take place in a post-apocalyptic Wasteland, for starters...) Fans of the comic book were largely unimpressed with the movie, and even the creators of the comic pretty much admitted that they were just swayed by the money and later lampooned the movie rather harshly in further editions of the strip.

For myself, I thought it was kind of a fun movie, but I enjoyed it as a movie and not as anything to do with the comic.

Anyways, I would find it kind of funny if a major influence of Fallout 3 (which some fans of the originals felt strayed quite a bit from the source material) was a movie that also strayed quite a bit from the source material.

The only thing that might have been inspired by Tank Girl is those loveable mini nuke bras. Hello briast cancer!

It's hilarious how such revealing armor has such a high DR in FO3. This must be due to a very high 'deflection' modifier due to distracting male opponents.

Who knows....maybe Fallout 4 will be "Tank Girl"...now wouldn't that be a curve ball, for every fan of the original Fallout....