History Characters / Fallout

** Elements of the U.S. Army and National Guard managed to survive, initiating contingency measures in the initial weeks following the Great War. While some would go to forge their own destinies, notably the Brotherhood of Steel, others either deserted their posts, were overwhelmed by societal collapse, or had simply been killed to the last man.

* MirroringFactions: To the People's Republic of China. Both were ultimately authoritarian dystopic hellholes that refused to get along, leading to a pointless and bloody conflict in the form of the Resource Wars that only culminated in the near-extinction of all life on Earth.

* TheRemnant: The Enclave is all that remains of the Pre-War American government. There are mentions of other surviving government figures in ''Fallout 76'', but these appear to have long-since fizzled out by the time ''Fallout 1'' takes place.

* ArchEnemy: The Shi are this to the Hubologists, an aggressive ChurchOfHappyology that has sought to not only subvert the Shi's scientific achievements for their own pointless endeavors, but also abduct and brainwash their children.

* HiddenElfVillage: Downplayed. While the Shi are well-known enough within and beyond San Francisco, offering their services to most anyone who could afford to, they generally tend to shun outsiders and stick mainly around Chinatown. That doesn't stop them from hiring non-Shi as extra security, such as San Francisco native Conrad Kellogg [[spoiler:in his younger years before winding up in the Commonwealth]].

** While there hasn't been a peep out of mainland China since the apocalypse, a handful of Ghoulified Chinese infiltrators still remain in Washington D.C 200 years after the Great War, intent on continuing their mission to undermine the American war effort, even though there is no longer a War, or even an America!
** There's also Captain Zao in Boston, the ghoulified captain of the ''Yangtze'', the nuclear submarine that nuked Boston, but he has lost any interest in anything other than returning to China, and won't be hostile unless the player attacks him.

A pre-war collective of western European nations that began to fragment during the Resource Wars due to their dependency on the Middle Eastern oil fields, collapsing entirerly some time before the Great War. Virtually nothing has been heard from across the Atlantic Ocean since then.

* DividedWeFall: PostPeakOil put an end to any sort of European alliances, collapsing the whole continent back into the same warring city-states it had been centuries before.
* TerminallyDependentSociety: With no native oil of it's own (there's no mention of the deposits in eastern Europe), Europe was reliant on imports from the Middle East, and once those became too expensive, war was the only option.

* BenevolentAI: The Shi Emperor is revealed in ''Fallout 2'' [[spoiler:to be the ''Shi-Huang-Ti's'' supercomputer, which has since gained sentience. Unlike John Henry Eden, however, the Emperor is genuine in being a good leader and has no intention of conquering the wasteland.]]
* HiddenElfVillage: Downplayed. While the Shi are well-known enough within and beyond San Francisco, offering their services to most anyone who could afford to, they generally tend to shun outsiders and stick mainly around Chinatown. That doesn't stop them from hiring non-Shi as extra security, such as Kellogg in his younger years.

* WackyWaysideTribe: After a fashion. While the Shi play a subdued role in New California, they stand out by virtue of being the only notable Asian faction in the series, and until Captain Zao in ''Fallout 4'', they were the only non-hostile Chinese in the franchise.

* BackFromTheDead: The West Coast branch of the Brotherhood of Steel was almost completely wiped in the Brotherhood NCR War. However, [[spoiler:the destruction of Sandy Springs reduced the NCR to scattered remnants]] which allowed the Brotherhood to once again reestablish itself as a major power on the West Coast by the time the show takes place. It's implied that the East Coast Branch may have had a hand in this, as they are shown receiving reinforcements and orders from Brotherhood forces operating in the Commonwealth.

* WeAreStrugglingTogether: By the time of ''Fallout 4'', the Brotherhood's myriad branches are shown to have grown progressively divergent in worldviews when it comes to facing the future, which has resulted in bouts of infighting. Be it the East Coast Brotherhood's willingness to make compromises, or how various West Coast chapters remain firmly traditionalist in upholding the Codex.

** Across the continent, another Chinese nuclear submarine ran aground off the coast of San Francisco after the Great War. The survivors, however, managed to establish a new society in the ruins of Chinatown, becoming the Shi by the events of ''Fallout 2''.

[[folder:Shi]]

* BenevolentAI: The Shi Emperor is revealed in ''Fallout 2'' to be the ''Shi-Huang-Ti's'' supercomputer, which has since gained sentience. Unlike John Henry Eden, however, the Emperor is genuine in being a good leader and has no intention of conquering the wasteland.
* HiddenElfVillage: Downplayed. While the Shi are well-known enough within and beyond San Francisco, they generally tend to shun outsiders and stick mainly around Chinatown.

* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: If the hidden bunker in Point Lookout is any indication, then it's likely that the Pre-War Chinese government had little intention of actually bringing its operatives back home. Those ''not'' gassed to death or shot by hardliners were likely to be simply left to either fend for themselves in the ensuing chaos or continue awaiting orders that would never come.

* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: If the hidden bunker in Point Lookout is any indication, then it's likely that the Pre-War Chinese government had little intention of actually bringing most its operatives back home. Those ''not'' gassed to death or shot by hardliners were simply left to their own devices in the ensuing chaos.