History FalloutNewVegas / TropesAToB

* AceCustom: Played with in the case of the unique weapons. While some do fit the bill by being either tricked out (for example, Vance's SMG/9mm SMG, Ratslayer/Varmint Rifle and AER 14 Prototype/LaserRrifle), customized (Paciencia/Hunting Rifle, Medicine Stick/Brush Gun and All-American/Marksman Carbine) or finely ornated (La Longue Carabine/Cowboy Repeater, Lucky/.357 Revolver and Maria/9mm Pistol), others are just [[PaletteSwap recolored]] (Golden Gloves/Boxing Gloves, Cram Opener/Bladed Gauntlet and Knock-Knock/Fire Axe) or just dirty, battered and/or rusty (Chance's Knife/Combat Knife, Survivalist's Rifle/Service Rifle and Oh, Baby!/Super Sledge). The full aversions are Liberator, Recompense of the Fallen, Elijah’s Advanced LAER, and Blood-Nap, the unique Machete, Dog Tag Fists, LAER, and Bowie Knife respectively, which look exactly like their generic variants.

* AceCustom: Played with in the case of the unique weapons. While some do fit the bill by being either tricked out (for example, Vance's SMG/9mm SMG, Ratslayer/Varmint Rifle and AER 14 Prototype/Laser rifle), customized (Paciencia/Hunting rifle, Medicine Stick/Brush gun and All-American/Marksman Carbine) or finely ornated (La Longue Carabine/Cowboy Repeater, Lucky/.357 revolver and Maria/9mm pistol), others are just [[PaletteSwap recolored]] (Q-35 Matter Modulator/plasma rifle, Cram Opener/Bladed Gauntlet and Knock-Knock/Fire Axe) or just dirty, battered and/or rusty (Chance's Knife/Combat Knife, Survivalist's rifle/Service Rifle and Oh, baby!/Super Sledge). The full aversions are Liberator, Recompense of the Fallen, Elijah’s Advanced LAER, and Blood-Nap, the unique Machete, Dog Tag Fists, LAER, and Bowie Knife respectively, which look exactly like their generic variants.

** The Marked Men, hostile residents of the area called The Divide in the ''Lonesome Road'' add-on. Being ghoulified is already a pretty nasty fate, with certain perks, but for the Marked Men, ghoulification means they only continue to live after the perpetual storms in the Divide kick up winds so strong ''the flesh is torn off their bodies, leaving the muscle exposed''. The Marked Men live their lives in such terrible pain with nothing at all that can dull it as a result. As a silver lining, it's erased any enmity they once held as members of NCR and Caesar's Legion, joining together in shared pain and the immense hatred for those who don't suffer like them. It's relatively minor in that they still can act and even retain some semblance of themselves, but years upon years of being flayed alive by the very place they're trapped in has to count in some way.

** The "scientist" in charge of the Helios One solar power plant is named Fantastic. He works in the same room as the much more sensible and sensibly named Ignacio Rivas.

** The end of ''Dead Money'' features [[spoiler:37 gold bars valued at about 10,000 caps]]. They each weigh 35 pounds, though, and the next part of the quest is a timed escape, so to get more than two or three out you have to strip down, stick all your loot in a container next to the elevator, then deal with Elijah one way or another and sprint out. On top of that, there are no vendors in the Mojave with enough money to buy even ''one'' (sans the ''Gun Runners' Arsenal'' DLC), so outside of using them to buy a metric ton of weapons and ammo from the Gun Runners, the only thing you can really do with them is trade them to the holo-vendors in the Madre for Pre-War Money and exchange the PWM for more Sierra Madre Chips.

* {{Bowdlerization}}: Just like in ''VideoGame/Fallout3'', the Fat Man launcher is renamed "Nuka Launcher" in the Japanese translation, due to [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki what happened to Hiroshima]]. However, the "Little Boy" mod for the Fat Man is [[SubvertedTrope left as is]].

** A possible fate for [[spoiler:Mr. House]] if you chose to [[spoiler:bring him out of the chamber but spare him. He will be unable to control anything or have contact with the outside world. But his medical equipment will keep him alive for at least a year. He will be totally cut off from the outside world as he dies a slow death.]]
** Possibly [[spoiler:Father Elijah]] as well, if you [[spoiler:sneak out of the vault as opposed to fighting him. This results in him accessing a computer and triggering a trap which locks him in the vault. However, he does have access to several guns, so it's more a question of how long it'll take before he's DrivenToSuicide.]]
*** [[spoiler:You can do to yourself as well...if you choose to read the computer and activate the trap yourself. This results in a NonStandardGameOver.]]
** The Y-17 Trauma Override Harness was designed to bring a soldier automatically back to camp. However, several bugs in the software of the suit included malfunctions in the IFF and the inability to sense if the wearer is even alive, resulting in an "unpredictable wandering state." It left anyone who wore the suit to watch helplessly as it gunned down friends and loved ones and wander aimlessly and ceaselessly before slowly dying of starvation or dehydration. Many of the suits [[AnimatedArmor continued to wander after the occupants died]].

** Playing with with Low-Intelligence S.P.E.C.I.A.L. is frequently this. Sure, if you set your Courier's Intelligence to 3 or lower it leads to several funny conversations with other characters, but these interactions are generally few-&-far between, with most conversations staying the same regardless.[[note]] In sharp contrast to ''[[{{VideoGame/Fallout1}} Fallouts 1]] & [[VideoGame/Fallout2 2]]'', where having low intelligence makes the avatar [[HulkSpeak unable to speak properly]] and does affect how NPC interact with them.[[/note]] But the big downside to having Low Intelligence is that it makes leveling up much harder & it takes longer, since you only get 12 or less points per level to allocate. Also, some of the more [[BoringButPractical useful perks]] in the game, such as the "Pack Rat" and "Educated" perks, cannot be picked when leveling up since they have higher intelligence requirements. And finally, since there are more high-intelligence checks in the game than low-intelligence, having a dumb avatar would make persuasion checks harder. Unless you are explicitly [[TheRoleplayer playing the game to roleplay]], having low intelligence is not worth it.

** Swift Learner used to make at least some sense to take. You didn't normally hit the level cap in the old games unless you intentionally farmed random encounters for experience for a long time. In the newer games, hitting the level cap is easy, which makes taking this perk useless unless you're playing through the core game quickly and want to level up fast.

** From a gameplay perspective, playing with Low Intelligence is frequently this. Sure, if you set your Courier's Intelligence to 3 or lower it leads to several funny conversations with other characters, but these interactions are generally few-&-far between, with most conversations staying the same regardless. But the big downside to having Low Intelligence is that it makes leveling up much harder & takes longer, since you only get 12 or less points per level to allocate. Also, some of the more [[BoringButPractical useful perks]] in the game, such as the "Pack Rat" and "Educated" perks, cannot be picked when leveling up since they have higher intelligence requirements. And finally, since there are more high-intelligence checks in the game than low-intelligence, having a dumb avatar would make persuasion checks harder.

* BodyMotifs: The ''Old World Blues'' add-on gives us [[EyeMotifs eyes]]. The cover of the DLC is a digital eye, the projection from the satellite at the Mojave Drive-In and on Mobius' broadcast screen is a moving eye, the Think Tanks make use of eye monitors with Dr. Mobius having a damaged one, and before their current design, they were [[https://i.imgur.com/VWTdqiw.png originally intended to be a single eye monitor]] connected to their brain.

** From a gameplay perspective, playing with Low Intelligence is frequently this. Sure, if you set your Courier's Intelligence to 3 or lower it leads to several funny conversations with other characters, but these interactions are generally few-&-far between, with most conversations staying the same regardless. But the big downside to having Low Intelligence is that it makes leveling up much harder & takes longer, since you only get 12 or less points per level to allocate. Also, some of the more [[BoringButPractical useful perks]] in the game, such as "Pack Rat" and "Educated" perks, cannot be picked when leveling up since they have higher intelligence requirements. And finally, since there are more high-intelligence checks in the game than low-intelligence, having a dumb avatar would put the player at a disadvantage.

** From a gameplay perspective, playing with Low Intelligence is frequently this. Sure, if you set your Courier's Intelligence to 3 or lower it leads to several funny conversations with other characters, but these interactions are generally few-&-far between, with most conversations staying the same regardless. But the big downside to having Low Intelligence is that it makes leveling up much harder & longer, since you only get 12 or less points per level to allocate. Also, some of the more [[BoringButPractical useful perks]] in the game, such as "Pack Rat" and "Educated" perks, cannot be picked when leveling up since they have higher intelligence requirements. And finally, since there are more high-intelligence checks in the game, having a lower-intelligence avatar would put the player at a disadvantage.

*** The More Perks Mod makes this a more viable option since the Mod adds a few more "Strike First" abilities when diplomacy fails. For example, combine with the "''Merciless''" perk, which grants a higher critical chance if you shoot a fleeing enemy, and you have a golden opertunity to whittle hostiles down before they actually start shooting (Particularly useful on harder difficulties)

* AnythingThatMoves: An option, since the player can take the perks for both homosexuality and heterosexuality, as well as sleeping with ghouls and [[SexBot FISTO]]. A lot of the prostitutes are this.

* AbnormalAmmo: 12 Gauge coin shot, a shotgun shell loaded with [[MoneyToBurn legion denarii]].

* AbortedArc: Since in the NCR route you don't need to confront Benny or retrieve the Platinum Chip, it's possible to do this in regards to the Benny and Platinum Chip sub-plot (even though getting revenge and getting the chip back had been the Courier's motivation until that time), since you can forget about them, and complete the game anyway.
* AbsurdlySharpBlade: The Cosmic Knife. Log files left behind by the chefs in the Sierra Madre Casino state that the chefs are almost always nearly cutting off their fingers with them, and that they effortlessly cut through the ''cutting boards'' so often that they're going through at least one per day.

* AllianceMeter: Used to measure your standing with the various factions. In the case of Mr. House though, he'll consider you his employee until the moment you act against him. The Alliance Meter is actually much more important than the Karma Meter in many ways. People don't care if you're good or evil out in the wasteland, they care if you've been killing their friends.
** One unusual wrinkle to this trope is that fame and infamy do not subtract from one another. If you've been very good to a faction, then do something brutal to that faction, you'll get a "mixed" reputation that is not quite the same as a "neutral" reaction. People belonging to that faction will comment to you that they have no idea whose side you're on or what you're up to.
** Another wrinkle is that your reputation among factions is reset to neutral while you wear armor of another faction, allowing you to infiltrate a faction that hates you normally by wearing the armor of another faction they like. In turn, wearing the armor of a faction they hate can make people normally friendly attack you.
* AllThatGlitters: ''Dead Money'' deals with this. There's a huge pile of gold in the Sierra Madre vault. [[spoiler:It's real, but it's also a trap, and barring trickery, nearly all the gold will remain in the vault forever.]] The inverted version of the trope is also brought up. [[spoiler:The greatest treasure in the Sierra Madre is not the gold in its vault, but the fact that it's an almost-intact Pre-War facility with technology unavailable anywhere else in the Wasteland, with the exception of the Big MT. Side with Elijah and gain control of the facility, and you become an unstoppable force capable of trivially annihilating all the warring factions of the Wasteland.]]

** The Powder Gangers do trade with at least one town (which happens to be full of degenerate lowlifes), but they're escaped convicts and it shows

** This becomes a survival skill in ''Dead Money'', as there are lots of supplies hidden out of the way by various "guests" of the Sierra Madre, and just as many traps in the way, if not more.

* AmericansHateTingle: In-universe. While Sunset Sarsaparilla was popular in what became the Mojave Wasteland, where it was first produced commercially, it sold very poorly in the Northeast. This is also a HandWave as to why it didn't appear in ''VideoGame/Fallout3''.
* AnachronismStew: Let's see here. You wake up in a town with an old western theme, and move outward to find old-west convict chains, "prospectors" and sarsaparilla, plasma weapons next to lever-action rifles and sticks of dynamite, crime families, Elvis impersonators and swanky casinos; a billionaire from before the end, many vaults each sporting different threats from ghouls to plant people, a faction of high-tech hoarding xenophobists, another faction that instead hoards explosives, many varieties of raider groups, and a Roman Empire-inspired army, clad in armor made mostly from football equipment, fighting a war against American soldiers dressed like British Tommies and Texan Rangers. Also featuring robots of all shapes and sizes; such a cowboy and dominatrix. And that's before you get into the [=DLCs=] which, among other things, feature what amounts to a forced casino heist with ghosts and zombies, a tribal war involving automatic firearms, an interplay of mad science and psychiatry, and finally, an (ongoing) apocalyptic wasteland.

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

* 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.
** 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/{{Godzilla}} 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=]".
** ''Old World Blues'' has the [[spoiler:[[LethalJokeCharacter Legendary Bloatfly]]. It's harder to kill than the Legendary Deathclaw and fires insanely powerful plasma bolts at you. When it dies it drops over 50 bloatfly meat and 20+ buffout.]]
** Colonel Royez and Gaius Magnus from post-Lonesome Road, [[spoiler:which appear when you nuke NCR or Legion territory respectively.]] They are two ghouls with utterly insane amounts of health (Capable of withstanding about five Holorifle shots to the face on Normal difficulty without dying), and constantly regenerate health as well. To make it worse, they both have high-end unique armor, one of which ''adds even more health regeneration''.

** From ''Dead Money'', the Cosmic Knives. Not only are they easy to find, but you can clean one [[IncendiaryExponent and superheat it later]] to give it a massive stat boost and the power to set things on fire. Helps out in the first few quests, when you have almost no ammo or items. The Knife Spear (a [[BladeOnAStick stick with knifes taped on it]]) can actually carry you through the entire DLC, barring a few instances where shooting things is necessary.

** The Survivalist's data entries in ''Honest Hearts'' are quite poignant, particularly when the vault dwellers enter the picture. Especially gruesome is the story about the old couple that happened to be looking in the direction of the bomb when it went off, and they were instantly blinded. The narrator mentions that he can do nothing for them except ease their pain. Another one tells of the narrator's attempts to kill all of the members of a cannibal group, messily and in great detail.

* AceCustom: Played with in the case of the unique weapons. While some do fit the bill by being either tricked out (for example, Vance's SMG/9mm SMG, Ratslayer/Varmint Rifle and AER 14 Prototype/Laser rifle), customized (Paciencia/Hunting rifle, Medicine Stick/Brush gun and All-American/Marksman Carbine) or finely ornated (La Longue Carabine/Cowboy Repeater, Lucky/.357 revolver and Maria/9mm pistol), others are just [[PaletteSwap recolored]] (Q-35 Matter Modulator/plasma rifle, Cram Opener/Bladed Gauntlet and Knock-Knock/Fire Axe) or just dirty, battered and/or rusty (Chance's Knife/Combat Knife, Survivalist's rifle/Service Rifle and Oh, baby!/Super Sledge). The full aversion is Liberator, the unique Machete, which looks exactly like a normal one.

* BlackAndGrayMorality: There are no completely "Good" factions in this game. Some of them are decent but have their flaws, like the Followers, many are a mix of virtue and vice like the Chairmen, and several, most prominently the Fiends, are certainly evil. With the three major factions, the NCR and Mr. House are firmly Grey (it's up for the player to decide who's ALighterShadeOfGrey between them), and the Legion is Black with a small touch of Grey to them.

* ArtisticLicensePhilosophy: {{Downplayed}}. Caesar misrepresents Hegel's Dialectics by saying it was about Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis, a formation that not only predates Hegel by several years (Hegel himself attributes it to Kant) ), but that Hegel was in fact dismissive of. Hegel's actual dialectics were something closer to Abstract (Idea)-Negation-Concrete, meaning we project our abstract ideas onto the world only to find flaws in them (or in the world), and reconciling them allows us to produce something "concrete". The "downplayed" part is that this is actually a common mistake in philosophy and something Caesar (or the writers) got wrong on his own, though it does accidentally indicate in-universe that Caesar's knowledge of Hegel is [[WickedPretentious more second hand than he lets on]].

* BadassAdorable: Stripe, a knee-high deathclaw with dark coloring featured in ''Old World Blues'' if you have selected the Wild Wasteland trait. An Expy of the main villian from ''Film/{{Gremlins}}''. So cute, so able to claw you to ribbons. He hits harder than the Legendary Deathclaw and his small size makes him harder to hit. At least you can stand in the fountain and shot from a safe distance.

** This shows in the ideology of NCR and, to some extent, also Caesar's Legion. Both factions consider autarchical communities and tribes as unruly and chaotic and they consider uniting them into one big entity an only way to maintain any kind of order. Given the Raiders' activity they are at least partially right.

* The "Jean Sky Diving" landmark near Goodsprings, is incorrectly referred to as "Jean, pro du sky-diving", as in "Jean, a pro of sky-diving".