History FalloutNewVegas / TropesAToB

* ActorAllusion: In ''Dead Money,'' Dean Domino's EstablishingCharacterMoment is to trick you into sitting on a bomb. His other big name role, [[VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty Fatman]], died sitting on a bomb himself, which you had to find and disarm.

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking:
** Legate Lanius is a [[MadeOfIron solid iron]] murder machine [[spoiler:and serves as the game's "final boss" for every non-Legion ending path.]] Averted with the NCR President Kimball and General Oliver, and even Caesar himself, who are all bog standard humans that go down after a couple decent headshots. Also a case of AsskickingLeadsToLeadership, as Lanius got the job as Caesar's right hand man by singlehandedly killing off his entire former tribe in combat. Lanius being a sheer freak is acknowledged in the setting, with characters like Lucius indicating that he only has significance because of his freakish, protagonist-like toughness.
** Marcus has as much health as a [[KingMook deathclaw alpha]], and his punches do as much damage as one too.
** [[LargeHamRadio Tabitha]], [[EverythingsDeaderWithZombies the Vault 34 Overseer]], [[HumanoidAliens the Alien Captain]], and Jean-Baptiste Cutting are all quite tough, each of them being a fairly worthy boss encounter.
** Joshua Graham, the legendary Burned Man, is equipped with a [[CoolGuns powerful customized Colt .45 pistol]] and, despite only wearing a light kevlar vest for armor, has a DT of 50. For comparison, a full suit of the best PoweredArmor in the game grants a total DT of 36. He pretty much laughs off anything short of direct headshots from the best firearms in the game.
** Salt-Upon-Wounds, the leader of the White Legs and "final boss" of the DLC, is no slouch himself. He has more health and armor than a Deathclaw Alpha, and is armed with a custom Power Fist. Graham still curbstomps him, though.
* {{Autodoc}}: Appears as a plot device or for specialized procedures, but rarely used to heal the player. For example, the Autodoc owned by Caesar has had its diagnostic module burned out.

** Downplayed with the Anti-Materiel Rifle. It has a high repair cost (and even that can be completely mitigated through Jury Rigging), low firing rate, weighs 20 units, requires a perfect 100 skill in guns to wield, and its ammo is very rare and expensive. [[LudicrousGibs But using it on anything that moves results in exactly what you would expect to happen when you use a rifle designed to destroy military equipment on a living, breathing organism]] (let's just say you'll be able to kill a Deathclaw with a single bullet).

--> '''Guard''': You must be desperate.\\

** Legate Lanius is a [[MadeOfIron solid iron]] murder machine [[spoiler:and serves as the game's "final boss" for every non-Legion ending path.]] Averted with the NCR President Kimball and General Oliver, and even Caesar himself, who are all bog standard humans that go down after a couple decent headshots. Also a case of AsskickingEqualsAuthority, as Lanius got the job as Caesar's right hand man by singlehandedly killing off his entire former tribe in combat. Lanius being a sheer freak is acknowledged in the setting, with characters like Lucius indicating that he only has significance because of his freakish, protagonist-like toughness.

* BeefGate: Used liberally in the beginning. The two north roads to Vegas lead you right into Cazadores and Deathclaws. To the south, straying from the road is a good way to get giant Radscorpions on your tail, and those things are hard to kill in the early game. Generally, if something manages to kill you in two hits while anything you currently have can't inflict a single scratch in return, it's usually a good sign you should probably not be in that area yet. On the plus side, limiting specific monsters to specific ecological regions avoids the "anything can pop up anywhere" problem seen in ''Fallout 3'', where you'd have Deathclaws showing up just outside the walls of major settlements once your character reached a high-enough level.

* ArmorPiercingSlap: Literally, see above. Get your Unarmed Skill high enough and you can eventually take a perk that allows you to negate an enormous amount of an enemy's armor with your melee weapon or punch attacks. Combine this with the Bloody Mess perk that turns enemies into chunky salsa when they die, and congratulations! You are now the Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar.
** For bonus points, have Wild Wasteland and kill Rawr the Deathclaw in Lonesome Road. Turn his claw into [[ShoutOut Fist of the North Rawr]]. [[WordOfGod Even the developers agreed with this description!]]

** The Fiend lords are Motor Runner, Cook-Cook, Violet, and "Driver" Nephi. The latter is a lapsed New Caananite (like Joshua Graham) -- Driver is a punny reference to both his old job as a "driver" for the brahmin which pulled the caravans, as well as his new weapon (a unique [[GolfClubbing 9 iron]]), but Nephi is simply his name.[[note]]Nephi is the son of the prophet Lehi and author/namesake of the first two books of the [[UsefulNotes/{{Mormonism}} Book of Mormon]].[[/note]]

** You haven't lived till you've had all of [[BadassArmy Camp McCarran]] come down on you like the [[DisproportionateRetribution fist of an angry god after ganking one of their butter knives]]. However, if your reputation with NCR is high enough, then instead of just starting to shoot at you, the person who saw you stealing may just take the item back from you while throwing some "WhatTheHellHero" comment.

** The Fiend lords are Motor Runner, Cook-Cook, Violet, and "Driver" Nephi. The latter is a lapsed New Caananite (like Joshua Graham) -- Driver is a punny reference to both his old job as a "driver" for the brahmin which pulled the caravans, as well as his new WeaponOfChoice (a unique [[GolfClubbing 9 iron]]), but Nephi is simply his name.[[note]]Nephi is the son of the prophet Lehi and author/namesake of the first two books of the [[UsefulNotes/{{Mormonism}} Book of Mormon]].[[/note]]

* AnAxeToGrind: A few of them, especially the fire axe and its superior version, Knock-Knock (appropriately hidden in a fire station). Throw in some RuleOfCool and technobabble, and you get the Protonic Inversal Axe (which is a ShoutOut to ''VideoGame/{{Wasteland}}'' and its most powerful melee weapon, the Proton Ax.)

* BackAlleyDoctor: The medic at Novac, Dr. Ada Straus, has dirty tools, sells addictive chems on the side, and implicitly doesn't have any sort of training whatsoever -- her Medicine skill rests at a measly ''12''. For comparison, the default Medicine at the start is 15 -- after being shot in the head.

** The "Hunting Revolver" is a Magnum Research Big Frame Revolver[[note]]Although the Hunting Revolver is a double-action gun with a swing-out cylinder, where the actual BFR is single-action and has a loading gate[[/note]].

** The "Grenade Launcher" (a different weapon) is a [[RareGuns China Lake NATIC]]. The Holorifle from Dead Money also resembles a China Lake, though only visually - the internal components have been stripped and replaced with advanced HardLight weaponry.

** You haven't lived till you've had all of [[BadassArmy Camp McCarran]] come down on you like the [[DisproportionateRetribution fist of an angry god after ganking one of their butter knives]]. The only improvement in this department from ''Fallout 3'' is that people have stopped telling you to leave their stuff alone whenever you even glance at it. That is to say though that if your reputation with NCR is high enough, then instead of just starting to shoot at you, the person who saw you stealing may just take the item back from you while throwing some "WhatTheHellHero" comment.

* BigBad: Caesar, as the leader of Legion, who are basically Roman Nazi slavers hellbent on assimilating Mojave and bringing their genocidal reign of terror on the inhabitants. While you never actually ''have'' to deal with him (unlike TheDragon, Legate Lanius), he's clearly the most villainous of the main faction leaders and drives the main conflict of the game. Although, unique among Fallout Big Bads, it's possible to kill him far before the final battle actually happens. If you do, then Lanius steps into the position of BigBad.

** Downplayed with the Anti-Materiel Rifle. It has a high repair cost, low firing rate, weighs 20 units, requires a perfect 100 skill in guns to wield, and its ammo is very rare and expensive. [[LudicrousGibs But using it on anything that moves results in exactly what you would expect to happen when you use a rifle designed to destroy military equipment on a living, breathing organism]] (let's just say you'll be able to kill a Deathclaw with a single bullet).

* AffectionateParody: Has one in the form of Machinima/CouriersMindRiseOfNewVegas.

** Potential companions include Lily, Raul, (Craig) Boone, Veronica, and even ED-E (pronounced "Eddie" or "Edie-E"), relatively normal names when contrasted with [[Literature/TheGrapesOfWrath Rose of Sharon]] Cassidy and [[AwesomeMcCoolname Arcade Gannon]], as well as [[GuestStarPartyMember tutorial "companion"]] Sunny Smiles.

* HundredPercentHeroismRating: The karma meter returns from ''[[VideoGame/Fallout3 3]]'', but rarely comes into play (one companion, Cass, will abandon you if you're evil). What actually matters is your reputation with each faction, which changes dialogue with even minor [=NPCs=], affects quests offered and their outcomes, and can of course block certain endings if you can't get near a given faction without them opening fire. Since you can't lose popularity or infamy, people could end up singing your praises for all the {{Fetch Quest}}ing while simultaneously calling you out for blowing another of their outposts last week.

* AndNowForSomethingCompletelyDifferent: All four DLC packs do a GenreShift or shift in tone. ''Dead Money'' turns the game into a SurvivalHorror-type level with item management, and focuses on how the events from the Pre-War period affects the citizens of the Mojave, with optimistic endings and solemn looks at the past. ''Honest Hearts'' is a complete story-guided history lesson and adventure game rolled into one, with an Aesop on how the factions affect the entire society outside of New Vegas, and has several PlayerPunch style endings with varying levels of DownerEnding outcomes. ''Old World Blues'' is a comedic open-world sandbox with overpowered weapons and armor perfect for fighting the powerful enemies of the Big MT, and generally explains any mysteries in the main game, while setting up how the actions of the people of the Big MT affected previous [=DLCs=] and the game, and has happy and wacky endings. ''Lonesome Road'' is an uber-hard linear gauntlet that tests all the player's skills, and how the actions of you, the Courier, helped cause the events of the game, with {{Bittersweet Ending}}s that are a subversion of ''Dead Money'''s, with a solemn look at the present, and an ambiguous take on the future.

** The personality matrices in The Sink can turn VendorTrash like toasters and mugs into useful crafting components. The Book Chute in particular can turn otherwise useless books into blank books, which can in turn be used to make skill books.

** During Beyond the Beef, if working with Mortimer, you have the oportunity to offer one of your companions to be eaten in the place of Ted Gunderson. If you offer Cass, Mortimer will comment that he thinks the chef can skip the whiskey marinade with her.

* ArtisticLicenseEngineering: Likely included to add gameplay difficulty; the rate at which firearms degrade is tremendously overstated in game, with some firearms being able to fire less than 100 rounds before they break. Even with old, pre-War weapons, this still doesn't make sense. In real life, most guns, even those of only average quality, can fire tens of thousands of rounds before requiring anything more than a cleaning, and high quality firearms can sometimes fire over ten thousand rounds before they even need to be cleaned. People have even managed to dig up old, rusted guns that have been buried for over a century, scrub them down, and then successfully fire hundreds of rounds from them.

** An even tougher foe could be found in an unused file for the game (which was eventually included in a mod, "New Vegas Uncut - A Wilder Wasteland") -- after defeating the four aforementioned monsters, a message will display indicating that something bigger and badder has woken up and will pursue you across the Mojave. This manifests itself in "Franchise/{{Gojira}}", a massive Fire Gecko that is far larger than any other creature in the game. Gojira was allegedly a joke enemy created by developers at Obsidian to "terrorize Camp [=McCarran=]".

** An even tougher foe could be found in an unused file for the game (which was eventually included in a mod, "New Vegas Uncut - A Wilder Wasteland" -- after defeating the four aforementioned monsters, a message will display indicating that something bigger and badder has woken up and will pursue you across the Mojave. This manifests itself in "Franchise/{{Gojira}}", a massive Fire Gecko that is far larger than any other creature in the game. Gojira was allegedly a joke enemy created by developers at Obsidian to "terrorize Camp [=McCarran=]".

* BonusBoss: The four Legendary monsters. The toughest of them, the Legendary Deathclaw, is by far the most powerful thing in the entire game, with more health than the final boss. Like all deathclaws, it is also very, very fast. He also {{one hit kill}}s pretty much all but the toughest and most heavily armored of characters. Nice knowing you.
** If even the Legendary Deathclaw isn't a challenge, you can look for a tougher foe in the DummiedOut content. Open up the console and type player.placeatme ["0011324a"] 1. [[spoiler:It spawns a giant gecko named Gojira.]]

** The overall theme of the DLC ''Dead Money'' is how greed can make people unable to let go of their own vices, and it gets them killed. To illustrate this point, the casino vault is filled with dozens of gold bars that are far too heavy for you to carry to escape alive, proving that even the player must set aside their greed in order to move on... except that it's fairly easy to exploit the game mechanics to get away with all the gold without a scratch. (Good timing with a Stealth Boy or using Elijah's dismembered body as a bag are two tricks.) And even without the gold, there's a ton of money to be made by looting everything in the Villa. So the real Aesop is "Greed can get you killed if you follow it blindly; choose your battles and KnowWhenToFoldEm, and you'll get away scott-free."

** The courier could have claimed the fateful delivery at the beginning of the game was a flubbed job, but the Mojave Express has a very strict delivery policy and enforces it with freelancer teams sent to hunt down and kill non-cooperative couriers. [[GameplayAndStorySegregation Not that you ever see any.]]
** If you opt out of working for House, every other ending path requires the player to kill or disable him. He cannot be talked down, and you cannot disable him without pulling him out of his pod, condemning him to a slow death. If you choose to work for House, on the other hand, he requires you to destroy the Brotherhood of Steel at Hidden Valley. In both cases your dialogue options are fairly limited, which can be odd for Speech-centric characters -- even if your Speech skills can't talk everyone out of their established positions, it's unusual within the game that it doesn't even let you try.