Characters / Fallout 4: Protagonist and Family

Fallout 4 Main Character Index
Sole Survivor and Family | Companions (Main Story Companions) | Factions (The East Coast Brotherhood of Steel — The Railroad — The Institute) | Commonwealth Citizens (Diamond City — Goodneighbor) | Island Citizens | Nuka-World Citizens

Protagonist

The Sole Survivor

"It's good to be back."

Voiced by: Brian T. Delaney (male), Courtenay Taylor (female)

"This isn't the world I wanted, but it's the one I found myself in."

The Sole Survivor of Vault 111. You entered the Vault on the day of the Great War in 2077, only to wake up about 210 years later to an Apocalyptic future. Unlike most games with a selectable gender, both protagonists exist in the same universe as a couple - though only one rises from Vault 111. And unlike the previous games in the series, where the player character had the same background regardless of their gender, the male and female player characters actually have separate backgrounds: the male PC is a military veteran who fought in the Sino-American conflicts, during the Anchorage Reclamation specifically, while the female PC is a law school graduate.

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• Abusive Precursors: Invoked by Piper if she hates the Sole Survivor, who says she now understands how the Great War started.
• Acrofatic: Nothing is stopping you from cranking their build to the max in the "obese" direction and subsequently giving them a starting Agility of 10.
• Action Dad: Or mom depending on your chosen gender. You both had an infant son and can fight your way through legions of raiders, mutants and robots in the Commonwealth.
• Action Girl: Any female Sole Survivor worth her salt is either going to be this or develop into this. A female Sole Survivor even literally has a perk you can access called "Action Girl", which increases the rate at which your Action Points regenerate.
• Action Survivor: You were just a typical member of the Pre-War Suburban America community and now you are the Sole Survivor of Vault 111 and one of the few people left (besides Ghouls) that was born before the Great War. Needless to say, your actions after leaving Vault 111 are going to leave a lasting impact on Boston and the surrounding areas. This is more apparent with the female character since the male character is at least established as having combat training and experience.
• A Degree in Useless: The female player's law degree becomes quite useless in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. Potentially subverted, though, depending on if the player decides to focus on Charisma and become a natural-born Guile Hero as a result or focuses on administrative tasks as the General of the Minutemen or Institute Director.
• All-Loving Hero: A potential way of playing the hero with regard to the Factions as they try to befriend all of the various organizations. Sadly, there's no way to make any of the organizations have peace with one another save the Minutemen.
• Amazonian Beauty: A good-looking Female Sole Survivor with a build scaled to muscular can be this, especially on 100%.
• Angrish: Whenever the Nerd Rage perk kicks in, the Survivor grumbles, then abruptly bellows a barely-coherent Cluster F-Bomb. It really does sound like a normally calm/wimpy person flipping their lid.
• Ambiguously Trained: The female Sole Survivor is only explicitly stated to have gotten a law degree, though the Vault-Tec rep's unwillingness to speak to your spouse about being selected for Vault 111 due to "your family's service to the country", and the protagonist's matching skills imply a military or government background of some kind.
• Ascended Fanboy: You can opt to really get into being the Silver Shroud. "Death has come for you, evildoer! And I . . . am its SHROUD!"
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: You're nominally the leader of the Minutemen if you accept Garvey's offer, the second in command of the Brotherhood of Steel as a Sentinel if you side with them, and the single most dangerous person in the Commonwealth. You can also become the leader of the Institute if you side with them. Also doubles as Asskicking Leads to Leadership because Garvey selects you, in large part, because you wiped out a large group of raiders (and a Deathclaw) by yourself and Maxson promoted you in light of your impressive service. You can actually be General and Sentinel at the same time.
• Authority in Name Only: If you decide to follow the route of the Minutemen, in theory you are their leader, in practice the true leader is Garvey and you are his right hand. The same goes for if you become the Institute's leader, you just take orders from the directors to do various tasks. However, this is an Acceptable Break from Reality, as sitting in on meetings and listening to bickering underlings every day would be boring and frustrating for the vast majority of players.
• Badass Bookworm: The Sole Survivor gains special perks from reading books. Also, the female Sole Survivor was a lawyer before the War.
• Benevolent Precursors: In the "Hi, Honey!" tape, both Nate and Nora are described as being "kind, loving, and funny", and after stepping out of Vault 111 210 years later, they can help rebuild the wasteland. If Piper likes the Sole Survivor, she will happily remark that although she heard the common folk were nicer before the war, she never expected to see it first hand.
• Berserk Button: Kellogg. The encounter midway through the main quest is one of the only ones that is absolutely impossible to talk out of, and all dialogue options range from thinly-veiled disgust to a Cluster F-Bomb.
• Big Damn Heroes: Towards the Minutemen at Concord, as well as the Brotherhood of Steel at the police station. Both would've been overrun by raiders and Feral Ghouls, respectively, if not for the Survivor's timely intervention.
• Breaking Speech: As the Silver Shroud, s/he pulls off a good one to demoralize Sinjin's mooks.
  Sole Survivor: After I kill all three of you, I'm coming to get you NEXT.
• Broken Pedestal: You could become this to any accompanied ally, depending on your actions and whoever you're accompanied with.
• The Bully: The Sole Survivor can commit deeds such as mocking beggars, talking down to civilians, and more. Some of the companions will label the Sole Survivor as such if certain conditions are met.
• Canine Companion: Has a lovely dog with him/her.
• Canon Character All Along: Zigzagged; Writer Emil Pagliarulo stated on Twitter that Nate was actually in Fallout 1◊ as one of the soldiers in the intro cutscene during the Annexation of Canada (specifically the one who cackled as his comrade executed a civilian), only to backpedal when people pointed out the implications of him being a war criminal as well as how this interferes with Nate being part of Operation Anchorage.
• Canon Name: As the spouse, the male and female Sole Survivors' names default to Nate and Nora respectively.
• Call-Back: The male Sole Survivor is mentioned as having been in the 108th Infantry during his service, the same unit as Elliot Tercorien from Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta.
• Chick Magnet: They're already married at the start in a hetero relationship, but depending on player choice they can get one or more of the following to fall for them: Piper, Cait, Curie, Magnolia, Preston, Danse, Hancock, MacCready, Gilda Broscoe and Porter Gage.
  • Actually, it’s completely possible to romance ALL of the above in a single playthrough, as Danse is the only faction specific companion that the player can make an enemy of in the main quest line. Technically, an enemy could be made of Preston or Porter Gage depending on which side is taken in the Nuka World expansion, but even a Sole Survivor that has chosen to become a raider warlord doesn’t necessarily have to send raiders to the Commonwealth.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Actually encouraged by the Main Quest as it goes out of its way to make sure you start friendly to all four factions even if you are committed to one path or another. The game wants you to be able to develop friendships and relationships to their people as well as have sympathy for their views. It also requires you to betray at least one of these factions and more often two (the Minutemen are always loyal to you and are not on any other faction's chopping block, unless you become enemies of the Institute, but the other three hate each other).
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: If you decide the Sole Survivor should help Sanctuary before continuing the search for Shaun, this is a good explanation for that behavior. Comes up several times throughout the game, but this is the player's earliest opportunity.
• Cool House: Potentially. The Red Rocket Truck Stop has been stated to be designed to serve as one of these for the Sole Survivor. Many fans have remodeled the area (and spots in other settlements) to become a fortress or palace in equal measure. Others have made use of the Settlement mechanics to do the same elsewhere.
  • The Red Rocket Truck Stop, at the very least is a Cool Garage, being a mostly-intact tinkering facility in the otherwise barren Commonwealth.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character:
  • They serve as one to the Lone Wanderer from Fallout 3. The Lone Wanderer was a teenager who left a life of comfort and safety in Vault 101 to search for their father. By comparison, the Sole Survivor is a family man/woman who left the cold and decrepit remains of Vault 111 to find their son.
  • And to an extent, they're also one to the Courier from Fallout: New Vegas. The Courier was an experienced Wastelander who set out on a quest for revenge against the guy who shot them in the head, and ended up dragged into a three-way battle between the NCR, the Legion, and New Vegas for control of the Mojave Wasteland. Conversely, the Sole Survivor is a Fish out of Temporal Water who finds themselves in a post-apocalyptic future, with no experience of surviving a post-apocalypse America, and must enlist the help of one of the squabbling factions just to find their son.
• Crusading Widower: Or Crusading Widow. The PC's husband/wife is killed and their infant son kidnapped while they can only watch helplessly. Once free, they swear to find whoever is responsible and rescue their son.
• Deadpan Snarker: With shades of Sad Clown/Stepford Snarker. You can choose "Sarcastic" options in dialogue, which are even more noticeable since the characters are voiced.
• Death from Above:
  • After completing the Old Guns quest in Fort Independence, you gain the ability to build artillery cannons that you can install in any of your settlements. Once that's done, you can toss out a smoke grenade, and if there are any artillery teams close enough they'll flatten whatever you've smoked with a barrage of heavy coastal mortar fire.
  • This can also be done literally with Power Armor.
• Disappointed in You: The Sole Survivor can say this to Shaun at the top of the CIT Ruins after the Battle of Bunker Hill if you choose to go against the Institute. It has little to no effect on him, although he will outright call you an idiot for daring to think for yourself.
• The Ditz: You can act like this during the Railroad questline. When asked the code phrase "Do you have a geiger counter?", you can say you've got one on your wrist, instead of the proper response. When speaking to Old Man Stockton, you can say you work for the Railroad out loud, all while a whole bunch of people are standing around.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Cait will actually comment on the Sole Survivor leering if you rest your crosshairs on her ass for a while.
• Doomed Hometown: Sanctuary Hills, the housing development you start the game in, is nice to look at, isn't it? It doesn't last. Unlike most examples of the trope, you do get the chance to rebuild it into a potentially thriving settlement, although the green grass and hot rods will never come back.
• Double Reverse Quadruple Agent: The game more-or-less expects you to join and work for multiple opposing factions at the same time. In most Wide-Open Sandbox games, this would qualify as simply being a mercenary, but here, you're able to infiltrate the Institute for the Minutemen, the Railroad and the Brotherhood; the latter two are also bitter rivals. And in Nuka-World, you can infiltrate the raider gangs in the amusement park for the Minutemen, or vise versa.
• Dull Surprise: Their general demeanor after emerging from the Vault. Entirely justified given everything they've gone through, with a popular theory being that they're in shock most of the time. And the above being said, they also get plenty of moments in dialogue to emote their butt off.
• Emperor Scientist: Subverted in the Institute ending as the Sole Survivor is ostensibly not an official scientist even if they're a relatively good engineer (with houses, armor, gun, or laser mods) as well as computer programmer. They do, however, potentially have the chance to take over the Commonwealth with a Synth army.
• Evil Overlord: In the Nuka-World DLC, the player becomes the Overboss of the raider gangs of Nuka-World, and should you decided to bring the raiders to Commonwealth, you will become the enemy of the Minutemen. Unless the player doesn't find Preston Garvey until after helping those raiders set up their first outpost, in which case Preston will demand Nuka-World be removed of its raiders the minute he ends his monologue at the statue.
• Eviler than Thou: In "The Silver Shroud" you can kill Kent in front of Sinjin. Doing so will leave Sinjin at a loss for words and make his soldiers panic by saying "He's/She's crazier than Sinjin!". Some of the companions will also be horrified or shocked by this (with the exceptions of Cait and X6-88).
• Female Gaze: As shown above, both the female and male Sole Survivors have lovely shots focused on their rears on the back cover of the game's box art.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: They are a citizen of Pre-War America who got knocked out in 2077 and then woke up around 210 years later to the ruins of Massachusetts.
• Forced to Watch: No sooner does the Survivor wake up from their cryogenic sleep the first time (150 years after they were first frozen) then they witness their spouse being shot to death and their son kidnapped. Trapped behind the stasis chamber, there's nothing they can do other than bang their fists helplessly as the horrible sight unfolds. After that, they can do nothing to prevent Kellogg putting them back to sleep for another 60 years.
  • Gets subjected to it again by accident if you go to the Memory Den before finding Nick Valentine. If you agree to use their services, Dr. Amari slots in the most recent memory the Sole Survivor has of their family...which is the aforementioned scene of their spouse being shot to death and their son being kidnapped. Amari and Irma are both mortified by what they'd done and apologize for putting the Survivor through that again before recommending them to Nick.
• Four-Star Badass: Ascends into one should they accept Preston's "election" to be the Minutemen's General. Doubly fitting for the male Survivor, given his military background.
• From Zero to Hero: A straight example with Nora, who was a law school graduate who took maternity leave while she had Shaun. It's only when she wakes up 200 years in the future after witnessing the murder of her husband and abduction of her baby that she turns into a survivalist in the wasteland.
• Gadgeteer Genius: The Protagonist can build and modify weapons, clothing, Powered Armor and even entire settlements from scratch using junk that is lying around. Given that the male Survivor was a soldier in an incredibly brutal war, his familiarity with setting up this kind of stuff is well justified overall.
  • Justified as well (if humorously) for the female protagonist, who was a lawyer before the War. After all, make-do repairs using whatever is available is known as "jury rigging".
• Gamer Chick: With the presence of playable Pip-Boy video games, a female Sole Survivor can become this.
• Genius Bruiser: Possible with a build that favors Strength and Intelligence.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: If the scripted background for each version of the PC counts. The female PC (who has a law degree) can be played as a violent idiot with abysmal Intelligence and a bloodthirsty streak, for example.
• A Girl in Every Port: Possible to achieve, if the player romances all romanceable characters, then sends them back to their normal base of operations or permanently settles them at different towns across the Commonwealth.
• Guile Hero: As usual for Fallout, you can be a smooth-talking charmer who manipulates others into helping you, or just into giving you money. The main questline actively encourages this — among the Railroad, the Institute, and the Brotherhood of Steel, all three want you (to some degree) to earn the trust of the other two in order to infiltrate them and learn more about them, allowing the player numerous opportunities to play the factions against each other, inform them of one another's plans, and run missions for them that undermine the others. And in the end, if you so choose, you can betray all three of them and destroy them all to rule the Commonwealth with the Minutemen.
• Gunship Rescue: By tossing a smoke flare, the player can call in a vertibird and climb aboard. While flying, they man the minigun mounted in the side.
  • Extra points if you use one to get to one of your settlements that is under attack.
• Happily Married: Back before the War, the player is living a happy life with their spouse and newborn son. Tragically, both of them are gone by the end of the main story.
• Has a Type: A female Sole Survivor who romances either Preston or Danse evidently has a thing for soldiers, given who her husband was. Averted in the case of a male one, as there aren't any lawyers post-War; the only companions that come anywhere close to an attorney are Piper and Nick, and the latter can't be romanced by either protagonist. However, Piper does very much physically resemble the default appearance for Nora, making a romanced Piper potentially a Replacement Goldfish for a male Sole Survivor.
• Healing Factor: With certain perks at their higher levels (such as Life Giver or Solar Powered) and an issue of Astoundingly Awesome Tales, the Sole Survivor can slowly regenerate health and even lose rads.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Played with. While you can name them anything you want, there are 924 names in particular that are voiced. Although the only person to refer to you by name in voiced dialogue is Codsworth, your Mister Handy.
• Heroic BSoD: Justified, and it takes quite a bit of time for you to just process what happened from the moment the Great War began.
• Human Popsicle: Vault 111 placed all its denizens in cryogenic stasis. You were the only one who survived: the Vault-Tec staff all died in a mutiny because the Overseer was an overly-paranoid asshole, your spouse was shot, your son was kidnapped, and the life support systems for the rest of the cryogenic stasis pods were switched off.
• Idiot Savant: Taking the perk of the same name turns them into a high-functioning one. It grants 3-5 times EXP gains at random (higher chance the lower your Intelligence stat), and plays a cheerfully offensive dumb giggle whenever it procs.
• I Have No Son!: The Sole Survivor can express shock, anger and dismay towards elderly Shaun's role as Institute Director, saying he's not the Shaun they wanted to raise, and the man before them is not really their son.
• I'm a Humanitarian: One of the perks under the Endurance stat is "Cannibalism", which lets you eat the flesh of dead humans to regain health. Of course, most of your companions don't like it. Except Strong, he loves it.
• Informed Attractiveness: No matter how unrelentingly freakish you manage to make your character look, your spouse will always comment on how gorgeous you are at the start of the game.
• Jerkass: The game's Grey-and-Grey Morality technically prevents you from being genuinely evil unless you go out of your way to kill non-hostile characters, steal, and become a cannibal. Even then, people will mostly treat you as alright. Instead, the darkest you can roleplay is always choose the sarcastic option which makes you an obnoxious Deadpan Snarker even in the most inappropriate of situations. However, in Nuka-World, you can become flat out evil by becoming a raider boss and bully the settlers in the Commonwealth.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Nevertheless, the majority of players who choose sarcastic options and play a more forgiving style will end up being this.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: All junk (and even many useful items like weapons or apparel) yields various raw resources that you will need to do any manner of crafting; be it weapons crafting or settlement building or power armor upgrading and maintenance. In the territory of a Settlement, not even the things bolted down are safe from the Player's kleptomania, as even many objects of decorative ambiance will yield raw materials. Companions will often comment on the acquisition of junk, wondering just what you were planning to do with it.
• Large Ham: Choosing the "Speak as Shroud" speech option during "The Silver Shroud" sidequest will have you unleash your inner hog by imitating a 50's pulp radio star. The miscreants you're speaking to are understandably perplexed. Briefly.
  Sole Survivor: I am the hand of Justice, and I cannot fail. Death has come for you, evildoer! AND I! AM ITS SHROOOUUUD!
  • Using Psycho or taking the Nerd Rage perk will result in the Survivor swearing at the top of their lungs in sheer rage/bloodlust. In the case of Psycho, they might just roar instead, though.
  • Doing the Vault 118 sidequest in Far Harbor will inevitably have them adopt an overly melodramatic manner of speaking for the duration of the quest. Furthermore, the Sole Survivor can also put on either a rather comical "cowboy accent" when at Dry Rock Gulch in Nuka-World or speak as the Silver Shroud to the Protectrons there if they brought the outfit with them.
• Like a Duck Takes to Water: Either version of the Sole Survivor can (and most likely will) take to living in the Wasteland easily, despite being a Fish out of Temporal Water who (in the case of the female Sole Survivor) may not have even had any combat experience or even held a gun prior to escaping Vault 111.
• Living Relic: Piper outright describes the protagonist as "my own pre-war relic."
• Mama Bear: For the Female Sole Survivor. They bravely travel a vast, dangerous wasteland for the sake of their missing child.
• Manipulative Bastard: The gameplay seems designed to have the Sole Survivor join all the various factions and see their point of view before deciding which one he/she sides with, unlike in Fallout: New Vegas where you could only do this for a limited time. It's entirely possible for the Survivor to play all the factions against one another until they strike.
• Meaningful Name:
  • The default female name, Nora, comes from Mr. Freeze's cryogenically frozen wife. Victor is also on the list of Codsworth's spoken names, if you'd like to play a male Survivor and make the comparison more appropriate. Unfortunately, the closest you can get to "Freeze" or "Fries" is Frost.
  • Additionally, "Nora" also sounds very similar to NORAD, an organization formed by both the US and Canada that provides aerospace warning for most of North America created during the Cold War out of fear for being caught unprepared from a Soviet first strike. "Nate" also sounds similar to NATO, the geopolitical bloc and military alliance originally created by the United States during the Cold War to help "contain" Communism's spread. Both names are quite fitting since the Fallout universe is set in an Alternate History where the Cold War essentially never ended.
• Mirror Character: "The Devil's Due" sidequest gives the Sole Survivor several noticeable parallels with a Deathclaw, of all creatures.
  • The Deathclaw has its egg stolen by hired guns, had its partner killed while trying to defend the egg by the Survivor in the Museum of Witchcraft, and is a non-stop killing machine. The Sole Survivor had Shawn stolen by hire guns, had their partner killed by Kellogg when they tried to protect Shaun, and is also the biggest badass in the Commonwealth with a high body count.
  • To hammer it home, if the Sole Survivor returns the egg to the nest, the Deathclaw will not attack the Survivor, but instead will let them take a melee weapon made of its own claws, allowing the Survivor to fight and kill just like a Deathclaw.
• The Mole: The main character is likely to take this role in some capacity, either infiltrating the Institute for the benefit of whatever organization that helped them go there, infiltrating the BoS/Railroad for the benefit of the Institute, infiltrating the Nuka-World Raiders for the Minutemen, or vise versa.
• Mum Looks Like a Sister: Due to being stuck in cryostasis, the Sole Survivor retained their youthful looks and look more like the now elderly Shaun's child rather than their parent.
• Nice Guy: The lower right option invariably has the Survivor act almost superhumanly friendly.
• New Era Speech: Can give one to the entire Commonwealth as a member of the Institute, though you can change the wording and tone to either something less sinister or outright admit a desire for conquest and control.
• Non-Indicative Name: The "Sole Survivor" is not the only one to remain alive from their Vault nor the pre-war era itself. Not counting the several ghouls in this very game who date from before the war (including one who is seen in his pre-ghoul form during the prologue), there are prominent standouts: the Think Tank of the Big MT, Mr. House, the abductees of Mothership Zeta, and countless other survivors of the Great War. Heck, the list only gets longer if one includes sentient robots and the ZAX super computers.
  • Also, if it's meant to refer to Vault 111, Shaun is still alive for the majority of the game.
  • That said, by the end of the main story, no matter the choices made, s/he is, indeed, the "sole survivor" of their family and Vault.
  • Lampshaded by the game which has characters refer to them by their status as the Vault Dweller like the original hero of Fallout.
• One-Man Army: Defeats hordes of mutated wildlife, raiders, Super Mutants, robots, etc. throughout the course of the game. As a literal example, it's possible for them to take down the entire Gunner army responsible for the Quincy Massacre by themselves. The game actually tracks your character's kills by enemy type in the Pip-Boy's stats screen: it will easily be in the thousands by the end of the game.
• One-Man Party: Invoked with the Lone Wanderer Perk, which makes them stronger in attacking power and Carry Weight if they have no companion (or Dogmeat) with them.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Guaranteed one way or another since, by the time you two are reunited, Shaun's already a frail old man, dying of cancer while you (having just exited cryostasis) still retain both youth and vigor. The only difference you can make is whether your last parting words with each other end on good... or bitter terms.
• Person of Mass Construction: They're capable of building anything from basic fences and decorations to entire buildings and automated defenses within seconds provided that they have the resources as well as being able to clean up various garbage around settlements. If the player wants, they can rebuild entire settlements all across the Commonwealth.
• Polyamory: The Sole Survivor can engage in a relationship with multiple partners.
• Pop-Cultured Badass: There are a couple of moments the Survivor can be this. In "The Silver Shroud", they can talk to Kent about how they listened to every episode of the titular superhero on Pre-War Radio (and their Large Ham gusto during said quest is likely them doing their absolute BEST to imitate him). They've also apparently watched Frankenstein, as they may ask Dr. Amari to say something like "Igor, fetch me the BRAIN!" when giving her Kellogg's brain to examine his memories, Funetik Aksent and all.
• Precision F-Strike: While dosing themselves up with the combat drug Psycho, the Sole Survivor either bellows incoherently or screams "FUCKING KILL!" at the top of their lungs.
• The Quiet One: Ironic given they're Suddenly Voiced. The Sole Survivor actually speaks less than any prior Fallout protagonist and asks fewer questions.
• Really 700 Years Old: By the time they leave Vault 111, they're over 210 years old. At least, in terms of time passed.
• Retired Badass: At the time the bombs fell, neither Sole Survivor was working. The male Sole Survivor has been discharged from the army (and mentions rejoining the civilian workforce) and the female Sole Survivor had taken an unknown amount of time off work in order to give birth to Shaun. They had both mentioning finding work, though.
• Robosexual:
  • As a borderline example, the Sole Survivor can potentially romance Curie, a Ms. Nanny medi-droid after she undergoes Brain Uploading into a Synth body, or Magnolia, a Synth singer living in Goodneighbor. They can also choose to romance Paladin Danse, who turns out to have been a Synth all along but unaware of it.
  • For a much more unambiguous example, in one Far Harbor sidequest, the player can have a one night stand with Gilda Broscoe, who just happens to be a robobrain, essentially a Brain in a Jar on tank treads.
  • A bug can cause Curie to go back to having a robot body after giving her a brain transfer into a synth. You can still increase affinity with her and romance her in her robot body if that happens.
• Robot Buddy: You have one in Codsworth, your Mr. Handy, who waited over two centuries in your house for your return. That's not even counting the number of Synth companions you can get ^note Two by default, a third who starts out unaware that they're really a synth, and a fourth who starts as a Ms. Nanny droid and can get uploaded into a synth body. The Automatron DLC adds the custom-built robot Ada, and the ability to customize your existing robot companions..
• Sad Clown: A sarcasm-prone Survivor is this in a nutshell. Their snarks almost always stem from how pissed off, disappointed, or just plain done with the world they've become.
  Sole Survivor: My favorite ballpark's become a shanty town. Today's been great.
• Second Love: If the Sole Survivor romances any of their companions, they can become this.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Getting thrown over two centuries into the post-apocalyptic future, your family long gone, and having all that on top of surviving harrowing battles against the Chinese before the Great War (if you're the male PC) aren't exactly bound to do wonders to your psyche.
• Simpleton Voice: If the player has the Idiot Savant perk, the Sole Survivor laughs in this style whenever it activates.
• Sole Survivor: It's their title! When you wake up after the prologue, all of the Vault-Tec scientists and security personnel are long dead and all of the cryo pods aside from the ones you and your spouse were in have malfunctioned and everyone is dead from life support failure.
• Static Role, Exchangeable Character: Unlike the gender options of previous Fallout games, the male and female main characters of the game are both canonical, but whoever ends up as the greatest warrior of the Commonwealth and whoever as their posthumous spouse is your choice.
• Stout Strength: Similar to Acrofatic above, nothing is stopping you from setting the Sole Survivor's build to "obese" and their starting Strength and Endurance to 10.
• Suddenly Voiced: In a first for the Fallout series, the Player Character now talks in conversations and will provide occasional commentary on the surrounding world.
• Terror Hero:
  • When the Sole Survivor plays the role of the Silver Shroud, eventually s/he can use his persona to intimidate a room full of mooks into running away.
  • Kessler, the mayor of Bunker Hill, also comes to see the Survivor this way after witnessing him/her fight in a three-way battle over the settlement as part of the Brotherhood of Steel, the Institute, or the Railroad. Rather than earning Kessler's gratitude for protecting her town, she tells the Survivor that his/her powerful friends scare the living crap out of her and that s/he now owns the settlement if s/he pleases. She says the same thing when going through the Minutemen questline after destroying the Institute.
  • With the Intimidation, Wasteland Whisperer, and Animal Friend perks, it's possible to intimidate and pacify foes of lower level than you, from Raiders and Gunners, to freaking Super Mutants and Deathclaws!
• That Thing Is Not My Child!: In the endings that don't support the Institute, there's a last-minute encounter as you leave the base: a synth child claiming to "know" he's your son. You have the option of rejecting and abandoning him in the soon-to-be-destroyed Institute base.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Discussed. In Far Harbor, DiMA suggests the Survivor might be a synth, due to the fact that your earliest memory is the day the bombs fell (i.e. the beginning of the game). It is up to the player to deny it or not, but DiMA admits that this could just as easily be associated with trauma. This is never explored or brought up again, but the game itself more or less makes it clear they aren't a synth due to conflicting details.
• Trauma Conga Line: As if experiencing the nuclear destruction of your world wasn't traumatic enough, you also have to witness the murder of your spouse and the abduction of your son without being able to do anything to stop it — and when you finally get out of cryosleep, you discover that you're the only one who made it — everyone else asphyxiated to death due to cryogenics failure.
• Tragic Keepsake: The surviving spouse keeps their fallen beloved's wedding ring in addition to their own, promising to avenge his/her death and find their lost son.
• Unwitting Pawn: Becomes one to Bobbi No-Nose in "The Big Dig", by helping her dig to a location that's supposedly Mayor McDonough's strongroom, only for it to actually be Hancock's. Which is what Bobbi planned all along and kept the Survivor in the dark about.
• Warrior Therapist: As your companions grow to like you more, most of them will turn to you for help with any emotional baggage or personal problems they have. The Sole Survivor can even lampshade this trope in one of their sarcastic responses.
  Sole Survivor: (to Gage) I feel like you should be laying on a couch while I take notes and then charge you a couple thousand caps for the session.
• Was It Really Worth It?: invoked In some Dummied Out content, Piper asks this question to a male Sole Survivor in response to his fighting in the Sino-American War. He has many different answers.
• Wasteland Warlord: As general of the Minutemen, you have a large paramilitary force at your command, and a mini-empire of settlements spread out across the Commonwealth that you can lord over. And with Nuka World DLC, you can go full Evil Overlord and terrorize these same settlements with your raiders.
• What the Hell, Hero?: All companions, except for Dogmeat and Ada, have dialogue where they call you out on your behavior if you get them at low enough affinity. You do have to try pretty hard to get them to their lowest affinity though, since their affinity grows, gradually, when you have them as a companion, even if you don't get any "likes" or "loves" from them.
• Wild Card: Like in New Vegas, you are an unpredictable element inserted into the setting and are the fulcrum determining who wins and who loses. You have the ability to just ignore following the instructions of the Railroad, Brotherhood or Institute and go for a Minuteman ending.
  • PAM, the Railroad's future-predicting robot, even outright calls you a "Rogue Variable." The larger the group and the longer the time-frame, the more inaccurate her predictions become, and as an individual you're capable of doing pretty much whatever you want.
• Would Hurt a Child: Unfortunately, unavoidable for the Sole Survivor regardless of the player's input. The Institute and Brotherhood of Steel both have children amongst their number and all endings result in one side or both being destroyed thanks to the Survivor's efforts. However, the Minutemen ending doesn't require that you defeat the Brotherhood, and has Preston allowing anyone left in the Institute to evacuate.

The Protagonist's Family

Nate/Nora

Nate and Nora's default appearances^noteImage from The Art of Fallout 4.

Voiced by: Brian T. Delaney (Nate), Courtenay Taylor (Nora)

The player character's spouse. As mentioned above, they are the canonical name, nature and back story for whichever PC gender the player doesn't select. Nate is a retired soldier, a veteran of the Sino-American conflicts, while Nora is a lawyer.

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• Dad the Veteran: Nate's backstory.
• Decoy Protagonist: If the Sole Survivor is female, then Nate becomes this, as he provides the opening narration.
• Doomed Hometown: Sanctuary Hill, the hometown of the player character, their spouse, and their child, is wrecked by the War.
• Happily Married: The spouse is happily married to the player character and is the father/mother of their infant son.
• The Lost Lenore: Dies within the first few minutes of the game, leaving their spouse to mourn.
• Mama Bear: Or Papa Wolf if your character is female. They're seen carrying their baby out as the family escapes to Vault 111 when the War starts. This protectiveness is what ultimately causes their death by refusing to give Shaun up to the people taking him away.
• Static Role, Exchangeable Character: They are the character you didn't select to be your player avatar.
• Too Happy to Live: And then the bombs fell.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Unfortunately, your spouse doesn't survive very long while in the Vault, suffering from a bullet related death after Shaun is forcibly taken away from them.

Shaun (UNMARKED SPOILERS)

Voiced by: Tony Amendola

The protagonist's infant son during the prologue, taken away from them in a tragic turn of events. It's later revealed that he was kidnapped by the Institute for his near pristine Pre-War DNA (which was utilized to derive the template used in all modern Generation 3 Synths) and ultimately became the head of the Institute. He meets up with the Sole Survivor as a man in his sixties, and is now named "Father," with him hoping to convince the Sole Survivor to join him and help rule the Commonwealth.

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• Abusive Offspring: Shaun does love his surviving parent deep down, generally tries to be open and honest with them, was clearly hoping and expecting that they would survive out in the wasteland and appoints them to be the next Director. However, he let them out of the Vault into an irradiated wasteland with no care for their physical and mental health (rather than greeting them as soon as they thaw and bringing them to the safety of the Institute), outright puts them in danger by setting them up to fight powerful enemies such as Kellogg and his Coursers and Synths, leads them to first meet a child synth of himself as an experiment, snaps at them if they criticise him, and orders them around if they join him.
• Affably Evil: He's very polite and always cordial to the Sole Survivor, even when he's likely facing down the literal barrel of a gun in their first meeting.
• Alas, Poor Villain: His death is genuinely heartbreaking, and is practically guaranteed to make the Sole Survivor feel uncomfortable in any ending. Most poignantly, in the endings where the Sole Survivor sides against him, instead of furiously rambling, screaming, or attempting to attack the person destroying his life's work and seemingly dooming humanity's future (from his perspective, at least), he instead gives a bitter, weary sigh and coldly asks the Sole Survivor to leave him alone so he can at least pretend to die in peace.
• Ambiguously Evil: Easily one of the most morally ambiguous members the Institute has to offer.
• Antagonistic Offspring: If you side against the Institute, since he's its leader and your child. He tries very hard to avert this, however, and if you're on his side, well...
• Batman Gambit: He pulls one on you if you side against him; Shaun II.
• Berserk Button: His tone of voice noticeably gets more angry when he talks about the Railroad, compared to the Minutemen and Brotherhood.
• Big Bad: As the leader of the Institute, he's largely the one responsible for the sorry state of the Commonwealth via countless atrocities, such as the massacre at University Point, the kill-and-replacement program with the infiltrator synths, and the creation of the Super Mutants. Like Caesar from New Vegas, the main character can side with him, but he's still clearly the most villainous faction leader and the central figure in the game's conflict. Notably, his Institute must be destroyed in all other faction endings.
• Big Good: The Institute certainly sees him this way.
• The Chessmaster:
  • He unfreezes his father/mother after 60 years in order to name them his successor. Why he did this rather than take them to the Institute directly off the bat is never made clear, but there are hints that, deep down, Shaun knew his own sheltered upbringing prevented him from ever understanding or empathizing with the surface people. Therefore, he lets his would-be "heir" experience the harshness of the wasteland firsthand, giving them a different mindset. He then has Kellogg babysit Shaun II to serve simply as bait for his parent, and then sends Kellogg out on what's essentially a suicide mission just to set him up for his parent to kill, knowing full well that Kellogg's cybernetic parts will eventually lead them directly to the Institute.
  • However, it also doubles as Complexity Addiction. Even if he felt the need to prove the Survivor to his colleagues, nothing really prevented him from bringing them to the Institute first, explaining things, and then sending them on their way with the Institute's perspective coloring any future interactions.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: If you consider him to be the villain of the game:
  • To Caesar/Edward Sallow. Both are elderly men with cults of personality formed around them, and who have near-dictatorial control over the most villainous faction in each game. Both Father and Caesar are also geniuses slowly dying of cancer who see their factions' terrible actions as Necessarily Evil for building a better world out of the hellish Wasteland. However, Caesar is not only much more dangerous as a combatant and commander than Father is, but is also generally pettier and more prone to fits of rage. Father, in contrast, comes across as far more professional and articulate, being more of a refined scholar than a barbaric warlord. Father also seems to want to close off the Institute from the surface for the time being so they can rebuild society as a utopia underground, while Caesar is obsessed with aggressively expanding the Legion's influence over all of the known Wasteland.
  • He's also one to Mr. Robert Edwin House (also from New Vegas). Both are intellectual leaders who, through very different fashions, predate the Great War. As in the above, both are also elderly men (though House is massively more so) who also both lead the most scientifically inclined factions in their respective games. Both are also morally ambiguous, with House being more of a moral grey between the NCR and Caesar's Legion and Father being one of the more moral members of an amoral faction. Both are also sheltered from the realities of the waste, and both are to some degree responsible for the success of their faction and the troops used by them (Securitrons are an invention of Mr. House, and Gen 3 Synths are derived from Father's genetics). Father, though, is the leader of the Institute and genetic template for Synths, but he is not irreplaceable; most notably, the player themselves could fill the same role and was kept alive, in part, for that very reason. Similarly, House can be usurped by the Courier and Yes-Man. House is the sole reason New Vegas is what it is, and he is the sole reason the Mojave Wasteland is less destroyed than other regions. The Commonwealth fared better due to circumstances entirely unrelated to Shaun (mainly dumb luck and being a low priority target in general for the Chinese). House is also sheltered not as much by choice but instead by the fact that he physically cannot leave his containment without dying. Father prefers to stay inside the walls of the Institute and refuses to see them in ways that threaten his personal worldview of the Institute being humanity's saviors. House is less ignorant, as he shows an understanding if one rather cold and mathematical of the other factions around him and their leaders. Father keeps a close eye on other factions through the Institute's Sinister Surveillance. House is also focused on his own faction - New Vegas itself - but interacts with the others, wishing to have the NCR's citizens and soldiers as customers and taking a far dimmer view to Caesar's Legion. Father dismisses the whole of the Commonwealth as a lost cause and wishes for nothing more than to dominate it. In this way, both have autocratic ambitions, but Father more so, over a greater area, as House does not want to annex any of the NCR. Another similarity comes from their games' narratives: Three of the endings to New Vegas involve killing House, and three of the endings to Fallout 4 involve siding against Father.
• Cradle To Grave Character: The game begins with Shaun as a baby, the game proper has him as an old man leading the Institute, and one way or another he will die by the end of the game, either from the player's actions or from his terminal cancer.
• Death by Irony:
  • The Institute took him because he was a pre-war cryogenically frozen infant, meaning he had some of the most untouched DNA in the world, free of damage from radiation and everyday mutagens. Not even the Institute scientists had such pure DNA because their ancestors were still exposed to some fallout when the bombs fell. By the time of the game, he has terminal cancer, which is frequently caused by radiation damage.
  • He can be killed by Kellogg's pistol, the bullet arriving 60 years late. Or more banally, an Institute weapon.
• Dissonant Serenity: Shaun can be called out on this by his surviving parent when they speak of his mother/father's death. Shaun replies that he's had sixty years to come to terms with it, and never knew how much his parents loved him.
• Doomed Hometown: Shaun's hometown does not survive the war.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: It's only through the treatment of Synths as slave labor and the constant oppression of the Commonwealth to prevent them from becoming anything more than a useful petri dish and resource-gathering site that the Institute can maintain its high standard of living. Father's desire to continue maintaining an unsustainable status quo because it lets him live such an easy life can be seen as a parallel to people not trying to fix serious problems because of the sacrifices that they'd have to personally make to do so.
• Emperor Scientist: Subverted. Shaun points out that the Institute is stuck in a rut because they're a bunch of academics and it needs a leader like the Sole Survivor to really influence the world. He's also fully aware that he's not the best man for making the sorts of decisions the Commonwealth needs. Furthermore, the game quickly shows that the Institute's supposed unity is actually an illusion, and the organization is fraught with lots of politicking and backstabbing behind the scenes.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Played with in regards to his relationship with the Sole Survivor, his only surviving parent. The reason he freed you from Vault 111 and is so welcoming of you when you arrive at the Institute is that he wants to form a relationship with you after not knowing you for all his life. If you side with the Institute, his final words as he dies are to thank you for fulfilling his dreams, because he's spent his entire life wondering what you were like, and even though the two of you didn't get to spend as much time together as he'd have liked, he's grateful for the time you did have. On the other hand, Shaun is rather distant and detached when you first meet him, and is surprised to hear you say that you love him even though you don't know him. Depending on the conversation path, Shaun calmly reveals that being raised in an environment like the Institute, he doesn't know what it's like to receive that kind of love, so he doesn't know how to interact with people beyond professional relationships and can't properly express his feelings towards you. If you betray the Institute, Shaun won't hesitate to banish you forever, but he makes it clear he didn't want things to turn out this way.
  Shaun: After all I've done... The lengths to which I've gone to give you a new home, a new life... For us to be a family...
  • On that note, he truly cares about the Institute, not just as an organization, but as a people. The reason why he banishes you from the Institute if you betray him is precisely because he loves them and puts his loyalty to them and their wellbeing above his relationship with you in light of your actions. The best way to talk him down during "The Nuclear Option" is to promise to save as many Institute personnel as possible, in which case he agrees to help you for their sake. In the same conversation, he clearly takes your attack on the Institute personally; he bitterly tells you that you're destroying everything he loves and is in disbelief and disgust that his own parent would do this to him.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: In a conversation with Shaun after the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Sole Survivor can admit that they still love him regardless of whether they agree with him or not.
• Everyone Has Standards: Played With. He personally finds Kellogg to be an abhorrent person and sees his killing of his parent as unnecessary collateral damage. However, unlike you Shaun's had 60 years to deal with the loss of a parent he's never known, and only considers Kellogg useful enough to be kept on a short leash. However, while Kellogg is a brutal, amoral thug who has lost all reason to live but caps, he doesn't normally engage in the kind of senseless brutalities like the destruction of University Point or FEV experiments Shaun has approved. In some ways, Kellogg's a far better person than Shaun ever was.
• Fantastic Racism: Adamantly refuses to believe Synths are anything more than high-functioning machines. He also loathes cyborgs and bans any research into them, and has a general contempt for the people of the Commonwealth.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Cowardice. Father is so absolutely terrified of the surface world "corrupting" the seemingly utopic Institute that he refuses to have the Commonwealth treated as anything more than a useful scrap yard/petri dish.
  • Lack of Empathy as well. Rather than protecting and bonding with his surviving parent, Shaun treats them as a pawn.
• Fatherly Scientist: Utterly averted. Despite the name "Father" coming from his DNA being used to create Gen 3 Synths, Shaun repeatedly insists that Synths are just machines and nothing more. The only one he shows any fondness towards is the one designed to be a younger clone of himself.
• Freudian Excuse: His hatred of Kellogg would go a long way to explaining why he hates both Synths and Cyborgs. Also, the fact that he was recruited for his pure human DNA might be why he's against cybernetic transhumanism.
• Gaslighting: Leads you to believe that S9-23 is him and that you've only missed ten years of your son's life, to see how the young Synth would react to extreme emotional stimuli. Father never seems to consider how traumatic this could be for his parent.
• Generation Xerox: As literally as possible with Synth Shaun.
• Happily Adopted: Abducted, actually, but he's perfectly content with how the Institute taught and raised him.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Three of the game's four endings revolve around blowing the Institute to kingdom come, and the portion of players that sympathize with them is not particularly large, so when Shaun thaws out the Sole Survivor to have them succeed him as Director, his life's work is more than likely to be destroyed by the very person he put in charge of leading it. Justified in part due to his nostalgia for a life he never had as he gets older & closer to death with his cancer.
• Hypocrite:
  • Shaun doesn't consider Synths to be people, yet in the end, sends his 10-year old Synth duplicate to be adopted by his parent, with a tape from him requesting that the boy be raised as the Survivor's actual son and treated as family (though that can be Hand Waved as a possible Heel Realization on Shaun's part and his attempt to make up in part to the Sole Survivor). He also bans any research into cybernetics, but still secretly conducted experiments with FEV to see if it could be controlled.
  • He also defends the Institute's more reprehensible actions by basically saying morality no longer has any meaning After the End, but will gladly call out the Brotherhood, the Railroad, and even the Minutemen for the atrocities they've committed.
  • When talking to him on his death bed when siding against him, he'll ask the Sole Survivor what "righteous pretense" they've come up with to justify the destruction of the Institute. This from a man who considers the Institute to be mankind's last, best hope and uses that as justification for all of their atrocities.
  • If the player sides against him and mentions at their final confrontation that Shaun should have seen this coming with all the enemies the Institute has made, Shaun snidely remarks that he "hadn't thought to count [the Sole Survivor] among them." This from the man who openly admitted that he had no emotional attachment to the Sole Survivor.
  • He considers the Commonwealth not worth saving due to how much of a Crapsack World it is. But there's the fact that his own organization is primarily responsible for the Commonwealth being such a terrible place, being the cause for all the paranoia up there, the Super Mutants, the failure of the Commonwealth Provisional Government (possibly) and the University Point Massacre. As such, it seems rather high-handed for him to ignore his role in making the Commonwealth what it is.
• Ironic Name: As the leader of the Institute, his name is "Father", which is ironic, because he's actually your son.
• It's All About Me: An interesting variant; At least part of Father's motivation for keeping the Institute the way it is seems to be rooted in how it's only through the oppression of both the Commonwealth and Synthkind that the Institute's status as a "utopia" is maintained. Shaun seems to have decided at some point that granting the Synths equal rights and fostering diplomacy with the Commonwealth would make them unable to live in an almost post-work peaceful oasis, and that he's unwilling to make the necessary societal changes since it'd risk him and the rest of the Directorate no longer living the "high life".
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Silver rather than gold, but it still counts. For all his flaws, he still means well, is dedicated to making the world a better place, and genuinely loves the Sole Survivor.
• Kick the Dog:
  • The Institute's FEV experiments, despite not having produced any worthwhile data for almost an entire century, were continued at his orders.
  • And while Kellogg was the one who actually carried it out, the University Point Massacre was heavily implied to have been ordered by him.
• Knight of Cerebus: Fallout 4 wasn't exactly sunshine and rainbows even before Father showed up, but the huge Reveal around his identity is shockingly dark and has the story plunge into some truly uncomfortable places.
• Last Request: Shaun wishes you to care for Synth Shaun as your own son. Even before that, he frees you because he's dying and wants to make you Director of the Institute and have you kill Kellogg.
• Life Will Kill You: He is dying of cancer. Not even because of radiation exposure, as he's never left the Institute. He simply has it due to bad luck, and the Institute cannot cure him.
• Living Out a Childhood Dream: Invoked and discussed by Father in the Institute ending when he gifts the Sole Survivor the child synth Shaun on his deathbed and tells his parent that accepting this artificial child version of himself as part of his parent's family achieves a boy's dreams.
• Mad Scientist: Like the rest of the Institute, even meeting his biological parent is no reason to stop running experiments, such as creating a Synth version of himself to see how closely it would react compared to his real younger self.
• Meaningful Name: "Shaun" is an Irish name meaning "God is gracious." He was certainly a gracious and vital gift for the Institute, as his DNA was necessary to create all modern Synths.
• Monster Progenitor: Kinda. He's perfectly human, that's why the Institute needed him; his cells are the basis for human Synth organic parts. Hence his nickname of "Father."
• Moral Myopia:
  • Shaun looks down on the Commonwealth as a whole, viewing it as a hopeless region doomed to destruction despite the Sole Survivor's efforts to rebuild, stating that the Institute is Humanity's only hope. However, one of the key reasons the Commonwealth has never been able to rebuild & thrive is because of the Institute's actions & manipulations. Under Shaun's leadership, the Institute has wiped out entire settlements, abducted countless civilians for experiments, replaced them with Synths, unleashed Super-Mutants, and has deliberately sown great distrust & paranoia among the people of the Commonwealth.
  • Shaun's attitude is best displayed during the non-Institute faction endings as he is on his deathbed. As his surviving parent leads an assault on the Institute itself, he decries how his/her actions are an atrocity that dooms humanity. The Sole Survivor can express bewilderment at this statement, pointing out how the Institute has made themselves enemies with virtually everyone in the Commonwealth, who would be justifiably hellbent on destroying them.
    Sole Survivor: "All the enemies you've created, you can't imagine why I'd be standing here?"
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: He's the one who freed the Sole Survivor from their cryogenic status and discreetly gave them the means to get into the Institute, and the player can choose to make those decisions bite him in the ass hard and lead to the Institute's downfall. Though in his defense, he was expecting (or at least hoping) his parent would side with him and the Institute.
• Non-Action Big Bad: As a sickly old man, he is not a physical threat; he carries an Institute pistol at most and can be easily killed. In the final mission, he's already on his deathbed.
• Not So Stoic: If you go against his orders at the Battle at Bunker Hill, he will be unable to keep the exasperation and disappointment out of his voice, especially if you admit that you turned against him.
• Offing the Offspring: Potentially the recipient of it. Shaun, himself, arguably does this every time he orders a Generation 3 Synth destroyed since they're all made from his DNA (not that he sees it that way).
• Once per Episode: In Fallout 3, the way you designed your character had a visible effect on the appearance of your father. In Fallout 4, Shaun's appearance (including his older self) is now based on how you've designed either one or both the Protagonist and their spouse.
• Passing the Torch: In the Institute storyline, he eventually declares his parent his successor as Director of the Institute.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Sure, he opposes the Railroad and doesn't see the Synths as people... but he programs his younger Synth duplicate to think he's the real Shaun and the Sole Survivor's son, leaving a tape begging you, his parent, to take him in as such and raise him to become a part of the Commonwealth. He does this even if you and him became enemies. Though whether this counts as Pet the Dog or Kick the Dog is debatable, considering how extremely screwed up the whole idea is, not to mention the clear emotional manipulation involved.
  • In the final non-Institute story mission, you can convince Shaun to hand over the personal password to his terminal in order to shut down some Synths on your way by promising him to show mercy to the rest of the Institute.
  • While the primary reason for the "Synth Retention" side-quest is to get the Institute's property (in the form of a Synth) back "home," Father also starts the quest because he's concerned about the many innocent Settlers in the area getting killed to the Libertalia Raiders under Gabriel/B5-92.
  • Even if the player outright admits to Shaun that they freed the Synths and killed the Courser during Bunker Hill, he will still forgive them and cover up the incident if they apologise.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Shaun's first time on the surface caused him to decide the Commonwealth isn't worth saving and that the Institute should isolate itself and keep doing its thing — with no regard for the lives of those above ground.
• The Slow Path: It's revealed that Shaun is the current leader of the Institute, taken from the Vault after 150 years in cryogenic stasis. He ends up waiting an additional 60 years for his surviving parent to arrive at the Institute's base of operations eventually.
• The Sociopath: Shows off a noticeable Lack of Empathy, does experiments for the sake of satisfying his own curiosity more than anything, lies to you if you fail Charisma checks, and justifies atrocities by saying it's for the good of humanity (without explaining how). He even admits to the Sole Survivor that he's never known love in the sixty years he was raised by the Institute and that his desire to be with his only surviving parent is something akin to "biological nostalgia."
• Universally Beloved Leader: The people of the Institute revere him, both for being the DNA source of the Synth project and for his tutelage as Director. After his passing, everyone mourns him, and a memorial is set up in the atrium - something no previous Director was given.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: If the Synth duplicate of himself as a ten-year-old is anything to go by.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • His near-pathological fear of the surface world is rather cruel and short-sighted... but isn't exactly unmerited, especially given just how much of a Crapsack World the Wasteland generally is.
  • His criticisms of the other factions - the Brotherhood's zealotry, the Railroad's ruthlessness and lack of a long-term plan for the Commonwealth, and the Minutemen's failures - are neither unique to him nor without merit.
  • Part of Shaun's reluctance to aid the Commonwealth and refusal to grant Synths equal rights is because it would fundamentally ruin the Institute's high standard of living. While this perspective is incredibly selfish and ultimately incorrect, it's still completely understand why he would believe this.
• Walking Spoiler: It's hard to talk about him without revealing that he's Father, head of the Institute.
• We Can Rule Together: Subverted. Shaun knows the Sole Survivor will outlive him since he's both old and terminally ill. That's why he wants you to take up the throne for him and lead the Institute into a better world.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He's become a true believer in the Institute's mission of creating and maintaining a utopia that will "redefine mankind" and prevent something like the Great War from ever happen again. And to maintain that aforementioned utopia, he's perfectly willing to have Synths forever remain slaves, annihilate both the Railroad and East Coast chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel, and keep the Commonwealth under a brutal occupation/conspiracy that prevents them from ever posing a potential threat to them.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Shaun is curious if the Sole Survivor can feel love for his Synth duplicate, pointing out that, due to Kellogg's memories, the boy was the person the Survivor was expecting to find. He's completely unaware of how traumatizing this could be to his parent.
• Younger Than They Look: Downplayed. On the one hand, he still looks and acts like an elderly man regardless of his actual age. However, his cancer has prematurely aged him, to the point where he looks more like a man in their late seventies than a sixty-year-old.
• Your Days Are Numbered: He's dying of cancer when you meet him. While the Institute can extend his lifespan, they cannot fully cure him, and he would rather pass on naturally.

Shaun II (UNMARKED SPOILERS)

Voiced by: Aidan Sussman

A Synth duplicate of Shaun at age 10, originally created to lure the player towards Kellogg, and to test what young Shaun's reaction from meeting his father/mother would be like. The Sole Survivor can adopt him (or not) after Father reprograms him to think he's the real Shaun and their biological son.

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• All-Loving Hero: Sees the good in everybody he meets, even Kellogg and Strong. Averted if you leave him to die in the Institute, as he'll call out a helpless Dying Declaration of Hate.
• Cheerful Child: He's quite optimistic, excitable, and generally just hopeful for the future.
• Death of a Child: If you reject him and refuse to take him with you in the non-Institute paths, "Shaun" gets nuked with everyone else inside the Institute facility.
• Early-Bird Cameo: He's the young Shaun that stayed with Kellogg in Diamond City. His appearance there skewed the Sole Survivor's perception of time passing, making them think it was only ten years instead of sixty when he was abducted.
• Gadgeteer Genius: If adopted, he can build things for the player out of stuff they bring back to him from the wasteland.
• Give Him a Normal Life: The real Shaun sends him to you to give the both of you a chance at becoming a real family.
• Good Counterpart: Unlike the real Shaun, who instantly gave up upon catching his first glimpse of the outside world, he's hopeful for the future, believing in the Commonwealth's ability to rebuild.
  Shaun II: I don't know why the Institute said the Commonwealth was so bad. Look at all the stuff people are building!
• Luke, You Are My Father: After he's reprogrammed by Father a.k.a. the real Shaun.
• Never Grew Up: Maybe. While there are Institute scientists who explicitly say that synths cannot age, they are not members of either the Robotics or SRB divisions of the Institute, the ones most likely to intimately understand synth biology. Those divisions don't explain one way or another, but it is worth noting that there are synths who have explicitly been above ground and undercover for decades, cover that would be difficult to maintain if synths had no way of showing the passage of time without returning to the Institute to be "aged" manually. Additionally, the comment about him never aging falls into Ambiguous Syntax - the scientists could be talking about Synth Shaun being unable to physically age, or they could be talking about Synth Shaun ostensibly being "retired" as soon as his role in luring the Sole Survivor into the Institute's clutches is finished (meaning that he will never get the chance to grow up as he would be killed beforehand).
• The Philosopher: He sometimes makes philosophical musings, some of which in fact deal with his true nature (though he's unaware of it), such as wondering if a Synth copy of a dead individual counts as being the same person. Or if being made a Synth after death is a form of reincarnation.
• Replacement Goldfish: Of the real Shaun.
• That Thing Is Not My Child!: The Survivor's potential reaction to him.
• Tomato in the Mirror: He's programmed to be unaware that he's a Synth or that Father is the real Shaun.
  Shaun II: If humans make Synths, who makes humans like you and me?
• Walking Spoiler: Because of being a big part of the bait and switch on Father's identity.