Characters / Fallout: New Vegas - The Strip

Fallout: New Vegas Main Character Index
Courier and Companions | New California Republic | Caesar's Legion | The Strip | Settlements | Other Factions | Other Characters | Dead Money Characters | Honest Hearts Characters | Old World Blues Characters | Lonesome Road Characters

Lucky 38

The crowning jewel of New Vegas and its most iconic casino. Ruled over by the mysterious leader of New Vegas, the Lucky 38 is the tallest structure in the ruined city and can be seen even from the far reaches of the Mojave Wasteland. For years no one has been inside save for an army of advanced security robots and Mr. House himself. Unbeknownst to most of the residents of The Strip, the Lucky 38 would soon open its doors once again to a package Courier seeking a very valuable misplaced package...

Leader

Robert Edwin House

Robert Edwin House

"You see that you and I are of a different stripe, don't you? We don't have to dream that we're important. We are."

King of Diamonds

Voiced by: René Auberjonois (New Vegas)

Played by: Rafi Silver (2024 series)

"I am Robert Edwin House, President, CEO, and sole proprietor of the New Vegas Strip. I oversaw this city's renovation starting from 2274 onward. The Three Families are my employees. Before the Great War of 2077, I was the founder, President, and CEO of RobCo Industries, a vast computer and robotics corporation."

A successful Pre-War businessman, Mr. House is the mysterious de facto ruler of New Vegas, controlling the Strip and the city proper through his army of Securitrons. Before the Great War, Mr. House was an extremely intelligent and ruthless tycoon who foresaw the coming of the hostilities between the U.S. and China and arranged it so that his beloved Vegas, along with himself, survived long after. Emerging after the remnants of civilization had reformed himself, Mr. House rules from within the Lucky 38 Casino and has wasted no time in setting up the city of New Vegas, working to exploit the factions interested in the Mojave.

He also plays a somewhat important role in the Fallout (2024) series. Spoilers for that show will follow.

---

• Age Without Youth: Thanks to his life support, Mr. House is 261. He definitely looks his age, but his mind is as sharp as ever and he doesn't seem particularly concerned about his physical condition. Unless you disconnect him from the network and open his life support chamber, that is.
• All for Nothing: In three endings out of four, where his efforts end with the Courier killing him on behalf of the NCR, Legion, or themselves. And as seen in the Amazon series, whichever ending is canon, it ended with New Vegas in ruins, rendering his efforts to preserve it moot.
• Alternate Company Equivalent: To BioShock's Andrew Ryan, down to being voiced by a cast member from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. There is even a challenge which involves killing him with a golf club. The challenge is called "A Slave Obeys".
• Always Someone Better: In Old World Blues, Dr. 0 is intensely jealous of House for being a more successful roboticist while 0 is merely able to create knockoffs of his work.
• Ambiguously Evil: While the TV show has him at the table discussing the terms of instigating the Great War, he's shown actively questioning whether such an "investment" is worth the payoff as well as pointing out how the Vaults are unreliable at preserving humans considering how fickle humans are, comparing them to rats devouring each other when locked up. At no point during his appearance was he shown to actually agree to Vault-Tec's plans, raising the question of whether he was indeed complicit or if him being there simply gave him the memo to prepare. It's possible he merely disagrees on pragmatic grounds, or he was just trying to say the right thing in order to leave the building alive since by that point he would know too much.
• And I Must Scream: The player has the option to cut House off from his network but leave him alive. He'll eventually die due to his exposure, but he estimates it'll take a year, during which time he will be completely alone inside his life support capsule. If the player tells him this, he immediately begs you to just kill him.
• Anti-Hero: Something of the sort, if you take his claims of wanting the humanity to prosper (by his rules and with him in charge) at face value, and he also opposes the bigger evil of Caesar's Legion. Though after the Amazon series implied him to be partially responsible for starting the Great War, he's firmly a Nominal Hero.
• Anti-Villain: A Well-Intentioned Extremist. House wants to rebuild humanity back to the glory of the pre-War days, and to be the economic superpower and financier controlling it all, but he claims he has no intent to oppress or abuse people, just to be their benefactor while they live comfortable lives. He engages in morally dubious acts to come to power, is very open to the idea of Pay Evil unto Evil, and controls the people via a system of Bread and Circuses. And as an overall, he operates on Vegas-focused Blue-and-Orange Morality — he only does something if it helps him achieve his goals or benefits Vegas, and has no interest in things that don't. Thus he is villainous through both indifference and a Lack of Empathy, although how The Courier formulates an opinion of him falls down to personal opinion.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: He's not the strongest leader in the wastes, or the most charismatic, or the most experienced. What he is good at is calculating probabilities and predicting others' actions, at determining where the ball is going to land and having one of his mechanical minions in place to win big. Before the war, he saw the political situation deteriorating to the point where global war was inevitable. His calculations for when missiles would hit Las Vegas were off by less than 24 hours. ^note  Though, the live-action series shows that he was at the planning table of the war, so he had a good headstart on everyone.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: He gained control over Vault 21 by challenging the gambling-obsessed Vault to a game of Blackjack and beating them.
• Benevolent Boss: Some condescension while answering questions aside, he's much better at employee relations than either Caesar or Colonel Moore; as long as the player doesn't screw up and shows House respect, he will praise their abilities and show respect in return. As long as his employees don't give him a reason to do so otherwise, he generally has a rather hands-off approach towards governing, leading the Omertas to refer to him as "Not-At-Home". In fact, he's one of two bosses open to some of the Courier's suggestions (he can increase your paycheck if you back up your argument, and will ask your opinion about the Omertas problem). Finally, complete his path with good karma, and it's revealed he's very proud to have you as an employee, and gives you any amenity you could ever want.
• Berserk Button:
  • The Brotherhood of Steel. He hates them with a passion and is not shy about letting you know it. Any other group he treats with either annoyance or disdain, but given the opportunity, he'll rant at length about the failings of the Brotherhood. However, he has a good reason for this, as the Brotherhood have devolved into knight templars who actively confiscate technology from travelers they encounter, and House is reliant on his Securitron robots as his offensive forces, so peaceful coexistence between the two sides was never in the cards. He also considers the Brotherhood Too Dumb to Live after their fiasco at HELIOS One. Amusingly, his cultured and precise way of speaking briefly goes out the window when asked why he hates the Brotherhood:
    Mr House: Because they're ridiculous!
  • He will also get quite upset if you deny him the Platinum Chip in front of him, to the point that he'll just sic Securitrons on you if he finally has enough of your bullshit.
    Mr House: Do you really think I'm going to let an upstart come into my home and ransom my property to me? I spent two centuries searching for the Platinum Chip! It's my invention, my property, mine! Now be a good courier and deliver it!
• Big Bad Ensemble: For a Legion- or NCR-aligned Courier, in tandem with the other faction. The show would help at least make him arguably a greater evil, at least in regards to the whole Fallout setting. Though why he "miscalculated" on the Platinum chip becomes more ambiguous, since the series retcons him to know about the bombs dropping and the vaults.
• Big Bad Wannabe: For an NCR, Legion or Independent Courier. He has grand ambitions about setting up a military dictatorship in Vegas, but can be easily killed within five minutes of stepping onto the Strip before he can do anything.
• Big Brother Is Watching: Double Subverted. He's authoritarian, his portrait looks like it's straight out of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and he has a robust surveillance system. That being said, he claims he isn't interested in what people do in private. Then, upon gaining control of the Mojave, he immediately makes an allusion to Mussolini and turns Vegas into a police state.
• Big Good: In his own mind anyway, when really he's a Greater-Scope Villain. He isn't unambiguously "good", but fills this role to the people of the Strip, and the game's plot nudges the player into working for him, being that they begin as a hired courier for him seeking out his property and either go out of their way to contact NCR or the Legion, or are only approached by them when they take notice of the player's work for House. And in contrast to NCR and the Legion, House's "faction" is just House himself directly giving orders to the player, and his personal power and influence make him a target — in all three main questlines other than House's own, the player has to eventually get rid of him to proceed. He's also the man who had Victor save your life at the game's beginning.
• Blatant Lies: He claims he has no desire to interfere in people private lives and that he wants to promote trade with the NCR and technology, yet his ending consists solely of creating a police state, with no mention of technological development or trade.
• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: He's not a "dictator," he's an "autocrat." In practice, there isn't much difference between the two save for the negative cultural connotations of the former, which is probably the reason House prefers the latter term.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: House claims his only interest is securing and expanding a prosperous future for mankind; he sees New Vegas as the way to do this via its economic and technological potential, and he is the best one to run New Vegas due to his genius in such matters. Thus, as far as House is concerned, all three of those elements directly correlate to one another — what he decides is best for Vegas is what's best for humankind. When combined with his belief that Utopia Justifies the Means, House's decision-making process boils down to "how does this benefit me or New Vegas" and then "is the result worth the risk and cost of doing it." Beyond those two questions, the morality of things is irrelevant to him either way.
• Body Horror: This is what his physical body has become. It's even classified as an "abomination" in the game code!
• Born Lucky: Though it doesn't get as much play as his Insufferable Genius qualities, his Luck Stat is 10 out of 10. In this case, it represents his ability to predict probabilities and manipulate them to his own benefit.
• Bread and Circuses:
  • House's method of governing; he is ruling over a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, after all. There's plenty of food, water, power, and shelter; Securitrons keep the peace; and prostitution, gambling, drugs, and the right to keep firearms for defense are all permitted. Hypothetically, as long as you don't cause trouble and don't question his authority, you can enjoy a life of comfort and safety in New Vegas that most wasteland inhabitants can only dream of. And they can all partake too — if they can afford it, that is. While opinions in the rest of the Mojave differ from place to place, around Vegas itself people don't mind House being in charge over the NCR and Legion, since House has so far not caused them much grief.
  • This trope is also how House tries to convince the player to work for him; you should know enough about his power and influence to understand that being his right-hand carries a lot of benefits, and being his enemy carries a lot of dangers. If you invoke Only in It for the Money as the reason you aid him, he tells you that he's offering you something far greater than money, but if that's your interest, then don't worry, you'll have plenty of it.
• Captain Obvious: Combines this with Gentleman Snarker against you when you take some of the dumber conversation paths. House makes no effort to hide his disdain and condescension towards you for being so foolish.
  House: I knew I could rely on Caesar to return the Platinum Chip to you.
  Courier: What makes you think Caesar gave me the Chip?
  Editor files for dialogue read "sigh of impatience - oh, the burden of intelligence"
  House: The Chip unlocks this bunker. Hence you have it.
• The Chessmaster:
  • House has been playing everyone since before the Great War, and aside from losing the Platinum Chip before he could put it to use, he's been winning. So far, he's managed to put The Strip solidly under his control, knows more about the NCR and the Legion than they know about him, and has manipulated the NCR into financing and protecting his interests. Now that the Chip is on its way back to him, he's about to have all he needs to make his final plays and take over the Mojave Wasteland.
  • Taken to 4D levels, come the Amazon Fallout (2024) series. Although he's present for only one scene, it's during an incredibly pivotal one for the entire franchise. During the meeting where Vault-Tec is formulating the conspiracy to kick-off Nuclear Armageddon, House is one of the major corporate representatives present, alongside the likes of Repconn, WestTek, and Big Mt. When Vault-Tec offers each corporation their own selection of Vaults to use for the litany of experiments they've since become infamous for, everyone begins clamoring and brainstorming ideas. All except House, who remains solely fixated on the business end of matters, as well as the "hows" and "whys" of getting people actually into the Vaults. Otherwise remaining quiet. With this information and House's true end goal for humanity in mind, look at the Vaults surrounding New Vegas. Even if House had no direct hand in them, most of their experiments is specifically geared towards his own end-game. Hardier vegetation to survive hostile and alien climates. Social experiments to determine how people will react when kept in tight quarters, with barely enough supplies, but an abundance of weapons. A society built around peaceful conflict resolution via Lady Luck (and perhaps a little slight of hand). Vaults to study the psychology of dividing two groups, and the mental disorders that may arise. Then a control group, healthy and sane, to apply it all to. Out of everyone present, House is the only one who bothered to truly think about the future. Morally depraved though it may be, credit is due. Few people can play a game like that.
• Control Freak:
  • The dark side of his calculating and pragmatic nature. He desires to have absolute control and oversight over all aspects of New Vegas in the name of ensuring efficiency, and anyone whom he views as a threat to his authority or the Mojave, he will either demand assurance of their loyalty, or have them removed from the region by force, even if it means their extermination.
  • Once you deliver the Platinum Chip to him and then use it at the Fort, House already has all his ducks in a row to take over the Mojave once the Second Battle for Hoover Dam begins. In the meantime, his questline concerns you making sure that "outside interests" like the Omertas, the Boomers, and the Brotherhood of Steel don't interfere with his plans. With the Boomers, House recognizes the use of the firepower they command, and so his preferred solution is that you ensure they're firing on his enemies when the Battle begins, but if negotiation with them is deemed implausible, then he accepts their extermination as an alternative.
    "You can't let indeterminate variables rattle around in your equations like that. They have to be accounted for, one way or another."
  • With the Brotherhood of Steel, he demands their destruction outright because he feels that there can be no negotiation with them, and so he sees their removal as the only solution. His fears are justified, however; in endings where the NCR leaves the region and the Brotherhood isn't wiped out, they degenerate into raiders who harass travelers in the Mojave to seize technology from them by force. On the other hand if they ally with the NCR they become a force for good in the region, which reinforces House's blind spot when it comes to them.
  • When it comes to the Kings and Freeside, most House endings have him gunning down the Kings to take command of Freeside, even though the Kings are one of the nicest factions in the game and keep the peace in Freeside on their own volition; it's only if they go to war with the NCR that House leaves them alone, appeased of their loyalty to New Vegas.
  • His Securitrons are all over the Strip to not only keep order, but to surveil visitors so House knows exactly who's coming and going at all times. If he takes over the Mojave, he sends Victor to Goodsprings as a guardian, as a "token of appreciation" for the town's role in the Courier's journey, but Victor also monitors the town for House. House also implies he has spies in the casino families that relay him information on their dealings, while publically keeping his Securitrons out of the casinos to allow them "privacy".
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Played with in that while he's certainly not above incredibly ruthless and morally dubious actions in regards to politics, when it comes to business he's largely implied to be fairly honest in his dealings in how he tries to fulfill his ends of a bargain.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • The man has thought out every contingency well in advance, the only wild card being your actions. It's rather telling that his planning for the Great War was only off by a day. Given that Fallout (2024) reveals that he was seated at the same table as the Vault-Tec executives plotting to instigate the Great War, it's little wonder he was only off by one day.
  • In a way, leaving both Kimball and Oliver alive in the end counts as this. While he does want them alive as scapegoats for the NCR's defeat, House notes that because they will be blamed for the NCR's loss, their political careers are more or less destroyed. In the case of Oliver, House even calculates a roughly 40% chance of him committing suicide.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: If you sterilize his life support pod while he's still connected to it, he explodes. Raul, Cass, and Lily all lampshade what a horrible way to go this is.
• Cynicism Catalyst: If Fallout (2024) is any indication, the Vault-Tec meeting likely cemented for House the notion that the Great War was no longer just "hypothetical" and that the people trying to make it happen had no care for things like democracy or humanitarianism.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: He's been confined to a life support chamber for the past two hundred years or so, and while some players might find him sympathetic, he's just amoral enough that others would regard him as evil.
• Deadpan Snarker: As befitting his condescending nature, he can be quite sarcastic when talking about other characters.
• Defector from Decadence: In his own mind at least. Given his questioning and doubting tone towards Vault-Tec's schemes in Fallout (2024), and how his long-term goals clash with theirs's, no wonder he opted to pursue his vision alone.
• Democracy Is Bad: He aims to become the sole autocrat ruling over the Mojave. If the player calls him out on this, he will simply tell you to look out the window and see how well the last democracy ended up. Not that Pre-War America was particularly democratic.
• The Determinator: One of House's major strengths is that he doesn't give up. His parents died when he was a child, and his brother cheated him out of his inheritance to leave him with nothing, but House went on to found RobCo and become a multibillionaire before he was 30. To say nothing of what he sacrificed to achieve his own form of "immortality." There's also the tale of how he managed to handle defending Vegas with inferior software, which caused him to spend five years battling power outages and system crashes, and he was even put into a coma for a while. Yet he endured and kept going.
• Don't Create a Martyr: The reason he doesn't want NCR President Kimball assassinated — alive, Kimball will become the scapegoat for the NCR's failure to take the region once House comes to power. Dead, he's a martyr for the cause and House will be blamed for kicking out NCR.
• Do with Him as You Will:
  • He leaves Benny's fate for you to decide, as he doesn't actually care either way what happens to him.
  • If the White Glove Society end up becoming cannibals again, he gives you permission to kill them off, since that's a massive breach of their contract.
• Do Wrong, Right: If you initially refuse to give him the Platinum Chip, listen to him go off on his furious tirade, and then finally give in, House will lecture you one your short-sighted attempt to get one over on him in a way that implies he's honestly disappointed in how you went about it.
  House: You played that very poorly, you realize? You're fortunate that I have a certain tolerance for greed. I expect my business partners to be self-interested - but smartly so.
• Dying Declaration of Hate: He has a pretty brutal one for you if you pop open his chamber.
  "May there be... A hell for you! A Tartarus! Bleak... Unending..."
• Earth That Was: Possibly. If you pick the right conversation path, he claims that his ultimate goal is to use the NCR's economy to restart technological development, eventually enabling manned spaceflight and allowing humanity to colonize other planets, but since his plan can only be fully enacted after his ending (per Word of God, full control of the Dam is essential to the plan), it's impossible to know whether he's sincere or not in the timeframe of the game.
• Easily Forgiven:
  • He doesn't care if the Courier bugs the Lucky 38's mainframe on behalf of the Followers of the Apocalypse. In fact, if the Courier tells him about the Followers' offer beforehand, he will practically dare him/her to do it.
  • If the Courier waits until after House loses his temper to give the chip, he actually recovers from his tantrum fairly quickly and simply chastises them for (what he assumes is) attempting a power move on him. He won't even stiff them on the payment (including the bonus from the Barter check).
  • You can tell him you helped the Omerta's plan to poison and massacre the Strip and will let the matter go since you were honest about it. Although he does ask where the Courier and him are standing at right now because it does sound like betrayal.
• Eccentric Millionaire: Comes with being inspired by Howard Hughes. According to Raul, there were a lot of strange stories about him during the later parts of his life, including a former actress girlfriend of his talking about how the two never had sex and all he did was perform brain scans on her while making her dress up in different outfits.
• Elaborate Underground Base: His Securitron factory under the Fort. The Lucky 38 also has a number of subterranean levels that seem to be much larger than the ones aboveground.
• Emperor Scientist: He was a talented businessman, robotics engineer, and computer scientist. Two hundred years After the End, he's become the supreme ruler of New Vegas and has managed to convert three powerful tribes to his cause, thanks to an army of Mecha-Mooks and his uncanny ability to analyze situations. With the help of the Courier, he can expand his influence across the entire Mojave Wasteland.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • He's cold, calculating and ruthless, but even he is appalled that the Courier would allow humanity's future to be guided by the Legion.
    Mr House: Slavery....the future of....mankind? What...have you...done?
  • In the live-action series, House is notably the only one among those invited by Vault-Tec to abstain from proposing a vault experiment and even openly questions their plans on sparking the Great War, musing whether all that death and devastation are worth the "investment".
    Mr House: There's a lot of earning potential with the end of the world.
• Evil All Along: Played With. Although in the game, he is far from a good person, he appears to be more morally gray than evil. In the TV series, it is revealed that he was invited by Vault-Tec, and may have been complicit in helping instigate the Great War.
• Evil Genius: Or just Genius. One of his defining traits is that House really is the technological and economic visionary he says he is, and his main strength is the foresight and careful planning that he puts into all his ideas to make sure they work.
• Evil Overlord: If you view him as evil. Even if you don't, he has several of the usual traits — he rules over his people from an intimidating and impenetrable fortress, no one ever sees him in person, his will is carried out by a lone lieutenant and an army of replaceable minions, and he's planning to Take Over the World. House could even be seen as a Deconstruction of the trope, showing that one can be the "Overlord" part without necessarily being "Evil".
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: The Lucky 38, which (barring the odd mountain) can be seen from any vantage in the Mojave.
• The Extremist Was Right:
  • House may be an arrogant dictator who rules The Strip with an iron fist, but he did protect it from being nuked to hell thanks to his genius and pre-planning, he's spent the past seven years building the Strip into a prosperous, clean, and safe oasis, and he plans to do the same thing to the whole of New Vegas and the Mojave Wasteland once he takes over. Moreover, when you look at what he did with RobCo, his alleged goal of guiding mankind to space in the near future isn't as ridiculous as it may seem.
  • In-game, while his wish of wiping out The Brotherhood of Steel is over-the-top, he is right about them being a quasi-religious cult who are hoarding tech for themselves. Should you spare them in the Independent ending, they will begin raiding caravans for tech to confiscate, much like raiders. He also relies very heavily on technology that they would want to take away from him, so a confrontation down the line seems inevitable given the Brotherhood's goal and methods.
• Fantastic Racism: His official policy (as explained by his Securitrons) is to treat even non-feral ghouls and super mutants in the same manner as robots and cyberdogs: they're not allowed on the Strip unless they're under the supervision of a human who agrees to be legally and financially responsible for them. While this makes a certain amount of sense for Super Mutants given just how much damage they can cause and their typically volatile personalities even among the best of them, non-feral Ghouls have no more capacity for violence and destruction than the average human. Although this policy doesn't appear to be strictly enforced, as the Gomorrah (of all people) have ghoul bartenders, Hadrian apparently has no problem getting on the Strip by himself, and House allows Raul and Lily to stay in the Lucky 38 suite.
• Fascinating Eyebrow: Just look at the picture.
• Fatal Flaw: House assumes that everyone working for him will remain loyal and play by his rules for as long as the paycheck comes in; it gets him betrayed by Benny, the Omertas, and potentially the Courier themselves if the player so desires.
• Fiction 500: House is far and away the richest man in the post-War world. No word on whether he was number one pre-War, but he was still rich enough to spend many, many billions of dollars designing and building his personal defense system for Vegas (and still be filthy rich when he was done). His brother prevented him from getting any of his inheritance, but by the time he was in his twenties, he had created RobCo which in 7 years became THE biggest robotics company and created the Pip-boys, Stealth Boys, Protectrons and Securitrons as well as working on Liberty Prime and House's life support system.
• From Nobody to Nightmare:
  • As far as the other major factions are concerned. The NCR didn't even know he existed until he sent out one of his robots to greet them, while Joshua Graham states that the Legion didn't consider him enough of a factor to find out any more than the basic facts about him before invading the Mojave. Yet if you side with him, by the end of the game he'll have eradicated the Legion, forced the NCR from the region, and will reign over the Mojave.
  • He was also this to his own half-brother. Screwed out of his own inheritance, he single-handed made his way through CIT (the Fallout equivalent of MIT) and made his own company before slowly buying out his family's business, leaving his brother with a single factory in which he succumbed to his own madness and paranoia.
• Gambit Roulette: He specializes in these, due to his ability to predict and manipulate probabilities. It's even invoked by his Meaningful Name.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: He has a Luck stat of 10. According to the backstory, he won ownership of Vault 21 from its inhabitants by beating them in Blackjack. Any player who has tried playing Blackjack with 10 Luck can attest that the game becomes almost unfairly rigged in their favor and lets them easily clean out the casino banks.
• Gang of Hats: As part of his efforts to preserve the spirit of Vegas, he invoked this on the three tribes he galvanized into the casino families. The Omertas and Gomorrah represent the seedy criminal element, the Chairmen and The Tops the fun swingers, and the White Gloves and the Ultra-Lux the posh luxury. House says the Omertas were intrigued by the stories he told them of pre-War crime families and ran with them, while Benny says the Chairmen were given their clothing and explicitly told to dress and act the way they do.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Prime series implies that House, along with Vault-Tec and other pre-war corporate moguls were responsible for instigating the Great War in order to rule over the aftermath, though how complicit he was is somewhat questionable.
• A God I Am Not: His capabilities are god-like, but he makes it clear that he doesn't want to be viewed or worshipped as one.
• Good Is Not Nice: If you view him as a good guy. He is extremely arrogant and egotistical and can be rather condescending in some conversations with the Courier. House may keep his people and his allies content and happy, but don't think he's unwilling to resort to underhanded methods to defeat his enemies, or that he'll go light on those who betray him.
• Hero Antagonist: Becomes an antiheroic example if the Courier sides with Caesar's Legion. Despite his autocratic rulership of New Vegas, he does essentially desire for the Mojave Wasteland to be free of the Legion's Omnicidal Maniac leader.
• Honest Corporate Executive: Straddles the line between that and the opposite trope. He's certainly not above incredibly ruthless and morally dubious actions in regards to politics, when it comes to business he's largely implied to be fairly honest in his dealings in how he tries to fulfill his ends of a bargain. His long term plans could be seen as benevolent towards humanity as a whole, but in the short term he's not concerned about the slums surrounding his ideal city and isn't above wiping out factions out of pettiness (as he does with Kings if they ally with the NCR and Courier helps him take over the Mojave).
• Horrible Judge of Character: House seems determined to surround himself with the most untrustworthy people possible, while not doing enough to try to keep them loyal. He picked Benny as his original protégé, and he doesn't know how close Benny came to overthrowing him until it was too late to intervene. He courted the support of the White Gloves and the Omertas, but he never even bothers to make sure they're actually obeying him. If he wins, he slaughters the Kings if they make peace with the NCR, not realizing they value their independence enough to not join them. And he trusts Courier Six completely, including giving them the password to his bunker, without even trying to make sure they're not doing work for the NCR or the Legion behind his back.
• Howard Hughes Homage: He is, basically, Howard Hughes for the Fallout 'verse and is the picture for the Trope Page. His old look, economic views, and pursuit of technology for the betterment of mankind all harken back to the Hughes when he was the famous Self-Made Man, while his obsession with Vegas and his infamous seclusion in the penthouse of a hotel resemble Hughes in his decline. His given name Robert also sounds very similar to Hughes' middle name Robard. To really drive the point home, in the game there is a picture of House where he stands in identical pose and clothing as one of the most famous pictures of Howard Hughes.◊
• Humanoid Abomination: A literal example, since he's classified in the game as an Abomination. The reason seems to be that his body has withered to the point of barely looking human, more like a Ghoul.
• Hypocrite: One of his major character traits is that he looks down on making decisions based on primal emotions and thinks himself above such things, concerned only with the betterment of mankind. Despite this, quite a few of his actions are based on his personal feelings about things, most prominently his attachment to the memory of Las Vegas and his attempt to cultivate New Vegas in its image.
  • For example, he wants the Mojave chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel to be wiped out, and will not even consider trusting or allying with them.
  • He holds the Kings in contempt because they refused to became another of the Strip families, and will destroy them if they maintained good relations with NCR. That's just petty.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • The following exchange, which only gets funnier if you later betray House.
    Courier: The Omertas were clever, but no match for me.
    House: Arrogance was their undoing. (obviously condescending) There might be a lesson in that. But, moving on.
  • He calls the Brotherhood a bunch of emotionally unstable techno-fetishists, while he's the most technologically dependent faction leader and gets so riled up about the Brotherhood that he loses his normally stoic attitude.
    Mr. House: Don't tell me that you've fallen for the stories of noble paladins on crusade, preserving mankind's technology in a benighted age?! Dross!
    • He also says the Brotherhood are ridiculous to be gallivanting around the wastes, pretending to be like "Knights of Yore." Spoken by the guy who rebuilt Vegas to match his nostalgia.
• Immortal Ruler: Nearly 300 years old and rules the Strip with an iron fist.
• If My Calculations Are Correct: He all but invokes the trope by name when the player asks how he reaches the decisions and conclusions he does. House is constantly talking about how he weighs all the factors in order to calculate the odds of what will happen, then moves ahead basing his plans on which outcome he concludes is most likely to occur.
• Insufferable Genius:
  • If Mr. House has a flaw, aside from certain disabilities, it's that he's a genius. And he knows it. He's never so droll as to directly point it out, but he obviously talks down to people, and won't even consider the idea that he might be wrong.
  • If you remove him from his life support, he'll ask why you betrayed him. You can tell him that you "just didn't like him".
  • His obituary declares that he was a visionary genius that mankind is not likely to replace, is recognized as humanity's best hope to ensure their survival and prosperity, had incalculable knowledge of several subjects, and generally talks of him like he's a Messianic Archetype. The key part of his obituary is that he wrote it himself, and left notes at the end containing his doubts if anyone on the Strip is literate enough to read it.
  • After his death, various characters can mention reading his obituary, dryly commenting that all they were left with was the impression that whoever Mr. House really was, it's clear that the guy had a really high opinion of himself. Even Caesar gets on it.
    Caesar: I've read Mr. House's obituary. Had a high opinion of himself, didn't he?
• It Is Beyond Saving: As House admits to the Courier, he not only knew he couldn't "save the world," but neither did he care to, being content to save Vegas and its surroundings from the Great War. Given what's revealed in the live-action series, this may also explain his complicit silence about Vault-Tec’s conspiracy, whether or not he was part of it.
• Ivy League for Everyone: He's an alumni of the CIT, the setting's equivalent of MIT, which establishes his credentials.
• Kick the Dog: If he takes over the Mojave, the only way for the Kings to survive is if they start a street war against the innocent NCR citizens. House will see this as loyalty towards New Vegas and decides to leave them in control of Freeside. In all the other outcomes, it will result in him ordering the Kings to be killed off. It's rather uncharacteristic of him, since NCR citizens are his primary customers. You'd think he'd do the reverse: kill off the Kings for scaring away his customers and tolerate them if they leave them alone.
• Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Although his demand that the Brotherhood be destroyed might come off as cruel, if you complete the game on the Wild Card path and left the Brotherhood alive, they will begin to harass or even rob traveling merchants and caravans in the Mojave even if you had them make peace with the NCR beforehand, making House's fears of them completely justified. Not to mention if you complete Veronica's quest by convincing her to leave the Brotherhood, they will massacre a group of completely innocent Followers of the Apocalypse to protect the Brotherhood's secrets.
• Kung Fu-Proof Mook: VATS is incapable of targeting him. Of course, since the Pip-Boy is actually a RobCo product, it would make sense that he would set it up that it can't be used against him. Not that it does him any good.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After enjoying a head start on preparing Vegas for the apocalypse due to his complicit silence about Vault-Tec’s conspiracy, it is only appropriate that a factor as simple and unavoidable as bad luck manages to derail House’s plans on a scale measured in centuries.
• Last-Name Basis: His employees, residents and guests of New Vegas always call him "Mr. House" and is rarely ever called by his full name.
• A Lighter Shade of Grey: There's no question between the NCR and the Legion of which is the "evil" faction — with NCR and House, it's quite a bit muddier. The two really do want to rebuild a peaceful and stable civilized society in the wasteland, but their views of how to do it are incompatible and the end result differs greatly with a mix of pros and cons. Thus it's up to the player's personal discretion to decide who's in the right and worth backing, or neither of them. This is eventually subverted in the television series, where it is revealed that he is just as bad as the Legion, being in the same room as those plotting to instigate the Great War itself.
• Like a Son to Me: If you finish the game on his behalf, script notes spell out that he feels this way about you, as he declares you the best employee he's ever had. The script also says he used to feel this way about Benny, but that didn't work out as well.
• The Man Behind the Curtain: Cass even makes a few references to The Wizard of Oz to lampshade it.
• Man in the Machine: His physical human body is contained in a life support capsule beneath the Lucky 38, wired up to the casino's computer systems. The entire fortress is his body now, and his Securitrons his arms to control the Strip.
• MegaCorp: He founded and ruled one of these before Great War, RobCo. And he wants to turn all of New Vegas into one. See One Nation Under Copyright.
• Meaningful Name: In casino-speak, "the House" refers to the casino ownership, and as the saying goes, "the House always wins" — casinos discreetly manipulate their games to rig them against the player and minimize their chances of winning so they can turn a higher profit, and casinos don't necessarily always have to tell players the odds of winning. Accordingly, Mr. House rises to power by likewise discreetly manipulating events to produce outcomes favorable to him, and he has a secret home-turf advantage that the NCR and the Legion don't know about, his Securitron vault with an army ready to emerge and seize Hoover Dam at his word. The quests connected to him also play on this; his questline to the ending is named "The House Always Wins", and the quest for killing him is "The House Has Gone Bust".
• Mecha-Mooks: His army of securitrons.
• Metaphorically True: House states that long ago he came to the conclusion that Nuclear War was inevitable, which is why he took great steps to prepare Las Vegas for its eventuality. But, he leaves out the fact that he was involved with Vault-Tec's plan to launch their own nukes to trigger said nuclear war. It's easy to see such an event inevitable if you're either compliant in making sure it happens or got an advance warning.
• Mr. Alt Disney: In addition to his shades of Howard Hughes, his obsession with converting New Vegas into The Theme Park Version of its former self, his portrait, and his seclusion in what amounts to a suspended-animation chamber all bear similarities to pop-culture images and urban legends about Walt Disney.
• N.G.O. Superpower: Before the War, he personally designed, financed, and constructed a privately held defense system for Vegas that incorporated an anti-missile system that puts the SDI to shame and a standing army of killer robots, each with as much firepower as a squad or more of human soldiers.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Without your help, he does little. Justified for a few reasons, most importantly that his Securitrons are not frontline combat ready and he can't afford to use them for such until you deliver the Platinum Chip to him; without it, he has his hands full keeping the Strip orderly.
• No One Sees the Boss: He only interacts with other humans via monitors or robots, including the player.
• Not So Above It All:
  • Despite the image of a coldly logical and calculating leader he is trying to create for himself, some of his actions make it quite clear that he is still very much human in some areas. Case in point: a possible ending has him deciding to punish an NCR-affiliated Primm for their loyalty to the republic by making them his subjects and imposing strict surveillance by Securitrons and heavy taxes upon them. His motivation can really only be described as pure and simple pettiness.
  • His disdain for the Brotherhood of Steel (and his subsequent insistence on wiping them out) in part stems from how ridiculous they are in his eyes for hoarding technology from outsiders.
  • He's very attached to the memory of Las Vegas and has tried to cultivate New Vegas in the same image despite the fact that no one except him appreciates the idea. He allows Gomorrah and the Omertas to keep operating in spite of their seedy, illegal activities, because it wouldn't quite be Vegas without them. In some of the potential first meetings you have with him, he proudly asks what you think of the Strip, and waxes poetic on how hard he's worked to recreate the Vegas of the pre-War era.
• "Not So Different" Remark: A Dummied Out piece of dialog from Veronica based on a post-House ending has her state that she's proud of fighting for House (or in her words, "the kooky old geezer") since he reminds her of Elijah, or at least the parts of Elijah that she admired.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: He's retroactively revealed to be one in the TV show. House desires to restore the Mojave to its prewar glory with him serving as a Benevolent Dictator. However, before the war, House was in on Vault-Tec's plans to spark the Great War in order to gain control of a new world free from the baggage of the old. In other words, House simply wants to create his version of a perfect world, and was perfectly willing to have the entire world destroyed to do so. That being said, there is some ambiguity on whether House ended up accepting the plan, as he's the only one to express any hesitation and never outright agrees with it. MacLean making his way to New Vegas implies that House at least said he did.
• One Nation Under Copyright: His preferred title for himself is "Chief Executive of the Free Economic Zone of New Vegas." All economic activities in the city are licensed by, and answerable to, House, and no-one below a certain level of wealth is even let through the gates of the Strip, on penalty of death. If the 2024 series is any indication, it's likely he had been planning on this from the very beginning.
• Orcus on His Throne: He never leaves the Lucky 38 casino, instead delegating his Securitrons or the Courier to do his legwork for him. Given the right dialogue options, the player can call him out on the fact that he never does anything himself, though it turns out there's a very good reason he can't get more personally involved in things.
• Pastimes Prove Personality: An unmarked Sidequest for Mr. House involves collecting snow globes for him. Why snow globes?
  Mr. House: What of it? I enjoy them. There's something about a little diorama set inside a glass dome that I find... pleasing.
  
  J.E. Sawyer: It's for the Citizen Kane reference, partially because it's especially fitting for Mr. House. He has no interest in physically interacting with the world but wants absolute control over New Vegas. Snow globes are perfect static worlds in miniature that can't be directly touched but can be (literally) turned upside down any time the owner desires.
• Pet the Dog:
  • He's impressed with what he hears of what the White Gloves have done with the Ultra-Luxe, musing that "if I were ambulatory", it sounds like the kind of place he'd like to go. Considering his ego and history, that's quite the compliment.
  • He recognizes the Courier's potential and that they are a skilled and resourceful ally, and he's not shy about letting them know he knows this. Depending on the player's karma at the end of the game with House's ending, he lets them live a life of luxury in the Lucky 38, either out of fear or gratitude, and is proud of the Courier and his own choice in making them his lieutenant. G.E.C.K. script notes state that his thoughts on you are that if he had ever taken the time to have a family, you would have been the child he'd have wished for.
    "You know, I've had thousands of employees in my time. Few met my expectations, fewer still surpassed them. Your performance has been nothing short of spectacular."
  • Taking certain dialogue paths inquiring about his life support systems have him muse that once technological and economic prosperity return to Vegas, he may look into making the technology available to others, particularly to you.
  • If the player reads the treaty he prints off to give to the NCR leaders during the second battle of Hoover Dam, they'll see that in exchange for withdrawing the NCR military out of Vegas, he'll divert water and power back into their territory for only 5 caps per kilowatt hour of electricity/gallon of water and allow all NCR citizens to stay in Vegas. While it's certainly true that House has his profit margin in mind when doing this (he admits prices may be subject to change without notice), it's still a lot nicer than kicking all of the NCR out of Vegas and extorting them for completely unreasonable sums of money. Especially since control of the Hoover Dam and his army of Securitrons give him a near complete monopoly over these valuable resources as well as the means to defend his assets with lethal force should he need to.
  • According to Yes Man, one of the first things that House plans to do after taking New Vegas is to enlist the Followers to give medical aid all over the region.
• Pragmatic Villainy: House is very calculating and intelligent and does not make wasteful decisions with his resources and allies. At least, that's what he insists.
  • When you ask him how you can be sure that he will not abuse his power once he's in control of the Mojave, he tells you that his only interest is in the progress of mankind, when he takes power he'll keep the peace but otherwise will leave people to live their lives. The implied reason is simple — why bother wasting resources oppressing people when you can earn their loyalty more easily by appeasing them?
    "I have no interest in abusing others, just as I have no interest in legislating or otherwise dictating what people do in their private time. Nor have I any interest in being worshipped as some kind of machine god messiah. I am impervious to such corrupting ambitions. But autocracy? Firm control in the hands of a technological and economic visionary? Yes, that Vegas shall have."
  • While he wants to exterminate the Legion because they want to raze New Vegas, he intends a peaceful truce with NCR once he takes over the Mojave and ousts them from the region. "Why would I want to go to war with NCR? They're my best customers." As revealed in the Amazon TV series, this stands in stark contrast to Vault-Tec's plans of nuking Shady Sands and crippling the NCR.
  • He wants you to stop a Legion assassination attempt on NCR President Kimball because House finds it more useful for him to remain alive for now. Kimball came to power during the time of the First Battle of Hoover Dam, and the seven years stalemate against House and Caesar has ruined his reputation. Thus when House takes over, the Mojave will be seen as "one man's misadventure", and Kimball and his administration will become the scapegoat House needs so NCR doesn't blame him for their failure to take the Mojave. On the other hand, should Caesar's assassination attempts succeed, Kimball will become a martyr for the Mojave cause and NCR-Vegas relations will strain once House takes over, possibly meaning another war.
    • Similarly, he doesn't want you to kill Caesar, because the Legion gives the NCR a bigger worry than him in the immediate future. House is counting on the Legion–NCR war to keep the latter from attacking Vegas while House makes plans to expand his power, and removing Caesar puts that position at risk. Nonetheless, if he dies then he'll simply accept it and move on.
  • He made it a point to outlaw cannibalism among the White Glove Society because it's culturally unacceptable. He also doesn't just have his Securitrons rush the Tops and kill Benny because it's both bad for business, and because some harm might come to the Platinum Chip.
  • He prefers people only be killed for good reason, and otherwise would have them left alive to possibly be of use later. If you kill Benny you can ask him why he didn't ask what you did with him, and he says he doesn't care what you did with Benny once you had the Platinum Chip because Benny has ceased being relevant to him, and will flat out insult you by hoping killing him satisfied your "barbaric behavior". If you destroyed the Boomers rather than allying with them, he'll be a bit annoyed at being out a potential ally, but accepts that at least they're not a threat anymore. If you advise that he have his Securitrons storm Gomorrah and exterminate the Omertas for plotting to betray him, House objects to the idea on the grounds of how many civilians would be killed in the crossfire, though he agrees his Securitrons are enough to handle the Omertas and decides to wait until they make their move to take care of them.
  • If you handle the Omerta problem before House gives you the quest to do so, he still pays you for your services so as to not "disincentivize your proactivity." Though he doesn't do this for other quests you may complete before he tells you to. Of course, there's a good reason for the difference — while the other factions are certainly threats to House's survival or obstacles to his long-term plans, a chemical terror attack in the very heart of New Vegas itself would be incredibly destructive and potentially even crippling even if House wins.
  • The live-action show reveals that he was the closest one to a dissenter among the corporate executives in The Conspiracy to bring about The End of the World as We Know It, not because he was necessarily against the idea of building a monopolized corporate future on the ruins of the old world, but due to how he realized that Vault-Tec's plans would render all that "investment" for naught, and he wasn't going to gamble on an uncertainty such as playing with Nuclear Armageddon even if it was deliberately orchestrated. Hence his development of New Vegas not only as a fortress city to ensure as minimal damage was done to his corporate infrastructure, but also with financial and humanitarian considerations factored in to make his monopolized corporate future a reality.
• Prescience by Analysis: His ability to calculate odds lets him predict the most likely outcomes and plan for them, which is the game's justification for his maxed-out luck.
• Properly Paranoid: One of the things that makes House so effective is that he considers every outcome... and he has an uncanny habit of being right.
  • Back in 2065, Mr. House was certain that it was only a matter of time before a nuclear war between the superpowers took place, so he spent a large amount of his personal wealth setting up missile defenses to protect the area around Las Vegas. 12 years later, the Great War happened. (Though given what you learn in all the games of the buildup to the war, one might call this less "paranoid" and more "realistic".) Although the show would reveal it was less "realistic" and more he helped "expedite it", so he knew exactly when he needed to be ready for the end.
  • He hired six couriers to transport the chip, the other five carrying useless junk, to throw off anyone who might intercept them, hires mercenary teams to clear the road ahead of them, and had Victor following you personally, just to make sure nothing happened to the chip. As the intro of the game should hint, something did. Following that, he has Victor continue to follow you on your way to New Vegas to protect you and intervene if you go somewhere too dangerous.
  • When you first meet him, he refuses to discuss the other factions or the Platinum Chip with you, saying that at this point in the business relationship, you don't need to concern yourself with such things and he doesn't feel he can trust you with the knowledge until you have proven yourself. Given Benny's betrayal, rather understandable. Given that the Wild Card option is precisely you betraying House and completing Benny's work, very understandable.
  • He orders you to kill off the Brotherhood, even though they haven't done anything to him, based purely on speculation that they will oppose him when he comes to power. At first, this may make House seem cruel, but without the NCR to pressure them into reform, the Brotherhood eventually devolve into a band of power-armored raiders, attacking caravans and seizing technology that they deem the wastelanders unworthy of having (which is most of it) by force. As one can guess of his dream to head to space and leave Earth behind, this is the last thing he wants.
  • He states that he wouldn't mind the current state of affairs with NCR, except for the fact they're planning to get rid of him and seize Vegas for themselves, so he's not going to give them the chance. He's right, but it's partially his fault — the NCR is also Properly Paranoid, concerned that House is planning to use the conflict with the Legion to expand his power beyond the Strip. You really can't blame the NCR for this, given that House very well might if he found it expedient enough.
  • House says that the Omertas have always been the most troublesome of the three Families, but lately they've been quiet and peaceful; he doesn't trust it, they're up to something. He's right — they've secretly allied with the Legion.
  • Doc Mitchell and the Weintraub siblings begrudge him because he took over Vault 21 and filled most of it with concrete to prevent someone from digging into it and using it as a secret passage in and out of the Strip. As it turns out, he wasn't quite paranoid enough, since Benny is still able to use the remainder for just that purpose.
• Realpolitik: House managed to bring the NCR to the negotiating table and hash out the New Vegas Treaty in 2274. As he explains to the Courier, the mutual threat posed by Caesar's Legion meant that the NCR had no choice, for the calculus of power demanded it.
• Really 700 Years Old: He's been alive since before the Great War. It wasn't easy. Not at all.
• Repressive, but Efficient: His vision of New Vegas, as befitting a man whose schemes have all been achieved through robotic servants. He plans out every new development in terrific detail and brings harsh punishments to those who break their contracts with him. Should he succeed in taking over Vegas, his first idea will be to work on making the trains run on time...
• Resignations Not Accepted: Zigzagged. At first he is adamant that you will do as he says and deliver the Chip to him. Telling him you have no interest in working for him offends him, and in some cases if you try to end dialogue, he'll become indignant and keep talking. On the other hand, once you deliver the Chip to him and activate the Securitron vault, he becomes much more lenient if you tell him you're not interested in working for him anymore, telling you "when you change your mind, I'll be waiting". The reason of course is that the Chip is the most essential part of his plan; once you deliver it, you've fulfilled your part and House is giving you the chance to reap the benefits. If you back out at that point, it's your loss.
• Rich Genius: He's perhaps the greatest computer scientist of the setting and used his talent for technology as well as business acumen to become the richest man of his time.
• Rich Recluse's Realm: Today, New Vegas is run exclusively by Mr House, though nobody has ever seen him in person, and only robots are allowed to attend him at the Lucky 38 — unless you're seriously valuable to him. If you side with him over the course of the game, House is eventually able to expand his dominion to encompass the entire Mohave Wasteland.
• Robot Master: As the founder of RobCo, he was the greatest roboticist of his time and aside from the Securitrons is responsible for the Protectrons, Mr. Handies and Sentry Bots. It's even implied that he had a hand in the creation of Liberty Prime. Naturally, his power comes from his platoon of heavily armed of robots that's just a fraction of what he has in store.
• Robosexual: Conversations with Jane, the Securitron based on the "neurocomputational matrix" of one of his pre-War girlfriends, imply that he is one. Although, since he's revealed to actually be a withered husk sequestered in a stasis pod, it's probably more about the company and less about sex.
• Self-Made Man: He was orphaned at an early age and cheated out of his inheritance by his half-brother, but through his intelligence and hard work he founded RobCo Industries on his 22nd birthday, one of the most wealthy and influential corporations in history. By the time he was thirty, he was already a billionaire three times over.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: He's not as bad as Arcade, but he'll slip into it on occasion.
• Shadow Dictator: No one has ever seen him or been inside the Lucky 38 until the Courier comes along. His mysterious nature has earned him the nickname of "The Ghost-Man of Vegas", with Ulysses even treating him as an old-world spirit of sorts.
• Shrouded in Myth: No one really knows who (or what) Mr. House really is, but everyone has their pet theory. After you recruit him, Raul — one of the few people in the world around during House's pre-War glory days — will regale you with several of them.
• Skewed Priorities: He's willing to pay 2000 caps for Mojave Snow Globes. Compare that to how much he's willing to pay you for the Platinum Chip — 1,000 caps by default, 1,250 if you pass a higher-level barter check.
• Smug Snake: If you view him as evil. He is confident and arrogant to the point he's almost unflappable, and even when the player holds power over him in some manner he insults and sneers rather than beg or cower.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • Becomes this to NCR and the Legion if you pursue his questline. In the midst of the Second War for Hoover Dam erupting and the two factions fighting it out, House pulls the rug out from under them and takes control of Hoover Dam himself.
  • For House, the Great War turned out to be this, as it happened 20 hours before the Platinum Chip was scheduled to arrive. It not only forced him to make do with less efficient backup systems, but the resulting strain set his plans back by generations.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: In a cut line, where the Courier breaks into his control room.
  "Just, uh, stay away from the console! It doesn't do anything!"
• Too Clever by Half:
  • He's certainly good at balancing the NCR, the Legion, and the Three Families of the Strip against each other to his own advantage while ensuring that he always comes out on top. However, for all his powers of persuasion and coercion, he's hardly omnipotent. In fact, in some endings, the very fact that his plans depend on his predictions of other people's actions to succeed proves to be his downfall.
  • He gets completely blindsided by Yes Man and the Courier in the Wild Card ending as he is far too confident in his own powers to foresee Benny creating a back door into his system or that the Courier might not do as he intends...
  • House approached the Slither Kin, a tribe known for relying on treachery and guile to capture travelers and either kill or enslave them. House made a deal with them, converted them into the Omertas, and then expected them to be 100% loyal to him. Except, the Omertas make a deal with Caesar's Legion and plan to betray House for them.
• Token Good Teammate: For an arguable standard of good, as the show would reveal House was part of The Conspiracy among all the other corporations to bring about the Great War and end the Old World for their own profit—but compared to the incentives of every other executive who survived the Great War who all want to purge everything associated with the Pre-War world so they can continue with their great experiment as they saw fit; House is revealed to be the only one invested in preserving the modern Wasteland as it is, even going as far to seek a truce with the NCR as he saw them as potential customers, which is miles more generous compared to his fellow executive Hank MacLean who had Shady Sands nuked for reasons that can only be described as insanely petty.
• Tranquil Fury: On two occasions. Both of which are related to the player defying him.
  • Should you recover the Platinum Chip but refuse to hand it over, House will bluntly inform you that "delivery of the Platinum Chip is non-negotiable." Refuse to give it to him again, and he'll have a full-on Villainous Breakdown over the Chip being his property. Refuse a third time, and he'll have this to say, in a tone of voice that completely lacks the rage he expressed just moments before:
    "You needn't be afraid of me. It's my Securitrons that are going to kill you."
  • Should you plan to destroy House's bunker (which contains his Securitron army) at the behest of Caesar, and let him know what you're about to do, he'll threaten you by saying that if you go through with it, your punishment will be the purpose of his existence. If you tell him that you're going to blow his bunker up anyway, he says the following in a restrained tone of voice that nonetheless makes it clear your course of action has made him very, very angry:
    "Then there will be no safe haven for you."
• Tyrannical Town Tycoon: Was a somewhat benevolent version of this pre-war, having bought up almost every business in Las Vegas and effectively having absolute power over the city.
• Übermensch: He rejects the moral and ideological systems of other, lesser men and plans to reshape the Mojave (and, eventually, the world) by the sheer force of his will.
• Uncertain Doom: By the time of the show. We see New Vegas is run down by 2296, but whether this is due to House dying, the loss of clients due to the NCR's decline, or some other reason is as of yet unclear.
• Unscrupulous Hero: He wants to rebuild humanity and has standards but doesn't mind killing anyone who gets in his way.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: His semi-immortality and his obsession with progress has caused him to become detached from his fellow man. It is quite clear that when he gives you the order to destroy the Brotherhood's bunker, he hasn't given any thought to the fate and life of its members because it didn't occur to him, he just sees a problem he needs to get rid of. Likewise with the Kings, if he chooses to retake Freeside in his ending.
• Villainous Breakdown: He has quite an impressive one if you have the Platinum Chip in your possession, but you refuse to give it to him.
• Villain Takes an Interest: If you view him as a villain. The Courier gets his attention the moment they are shot, which prompts House to have the Courier's life saved just on the mere chance they could be useful to him. After observing the Courier's trek across the Mojave, House decides then and there that he absolutely could use a person as resourceful as that in his operation and immediately invites the Courier into his penthouse.
• Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: He claims ownership of New Vegas because he saved it from the nukes hundreds of years ago, even though Benny argues that that argument doesn't entitle him to anything.
  Benny: Mr. House hides Vegas under his skirt when the bombs fall a thousand years ago, so it belongs to him? Forever? You buy that? Baby, every boss has a line to explain why he's special, why everyone gotta do what he says. Just figuring that out?
• Wasteland Warlord: While certainly far more civilized, cerebral, and eloquent than the usual raider warlords prowling the wasteland, Mr. House is still an autocrat and the ruler of New Vegas, and his army of Securitrons are a force to be reckoned with.
• We Can Rule Together: House makes it clear to you in dialogue trees as soon as you complete his first quest that when he takes over the Mojave, he wants you to be a crucial part of it, and your reward will be a place of power and luxury by his side when the dust settles. And if you side with him, he lives up to the promises.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He wants to restore the world to its pre-war glory and plans to rule it as a benevolent dictator. But his means of coming to power is to remove NCR from the area by force and, rather than try to pacify the many factions of the Mojave that are gearing up for war, manipulate their allegiances so they either work for him or will be destroyed by the inevitable Second War for Hoover Dam.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • If the player goes to The Tops before the Lucky 38 and Benny ends up escaping, House will scold them for ignoring his attempts to help. Similarly, he has a few choice words for you if you open his life support chamber (particularly if you tell him you're doing so under Caesar's orders). However, if the player manages to kill Benny and take the chip, he'll be particularly impressed.
  • If you tell Mr. House in his actual form that you're going to kill him, he'll deliver a Dying Curse towards you regardless of your karma. Especially if you're doing the Independent run.
    "May there be... a hell... for you... a Tartarus... bleak, unending..."
• Xanatos Speed Chess: This is House's primary strength, and the expression of his high Luck stat. He doesn't have direct control over a lot of matters beyond the walls of New Vegas, but he is very good at reading a situation, taking a chance, and coming out ahead when his gamble pays off. Save for Benny's betrayal, one could say House's rise to power can be summed up as a hot streak playing Gambit Roulette.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Opening his stasis pod exposes his incredibly feeble body to microbes. He estimates he'll be dead in a year, at most.
• Zen Survivor:
  • This counts for his early, Pre-War life. Being orphaned and then subsequently screwed out of his family fortune by a bitter half-brother, he clawed his way to the top and was taught many values of self-reliance and rising above the pettiness of others.
  • Post-War, he is definitely this. In the initial time period after the War, the systems and mechanisms of his shelter and life-support constantly blacked or shorted out, forcing him and his securitrons to constantly scramble to fix it. Furthermore, all of the damage and stress he endured placed him into a coma for years afterward. By the time he woke up, the city he'd worked so hard to protect from the bombs had fallen into decay and was populated by tribals. By the time you meet him, he's interested in you strictly because you aren't on the same base level as the greater portion of humanity.

House's Robots

Victor

Voiced by: William Sadler

"Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit, it's my ole pal from Goodsprings!"

A robot with the personality of a stereotypical cowboy. Initially residing in Goodsprings, he was the one who found the Courier after they were shot in the opening. Beneath his friendly demeanor lies many secrets...

---

• Body Backup Drive: Like Yes Man, Victor will admit he is just a personality that can be uploaded to any Securitron body if the original is destroyed.
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: If one attempts to recruit him to help deal with the Powder Gangers in Goodsprings, he agrees to help, but doesn't do anything to help at all. If spoken to after, he initially reacts like it hadn't happened yet, and when pointed out that its over, is surprised that he somehow "blacked out" before apologizing. With a high enough Science skill, both the Courier and Victor can learn that he received a remote override that shut him down temporarily, most likely by House to avoid any possible issues with losing his spy in Goodsprings.
• Manchurian Agent: Victor genuinely has no idea that he's being remotely controlled by Mr. House. He's being completely honest with you when he says he has no idea how he does the things he does or why, but he nonetheless does them because that's what he's programmed to do. It's only when you get to Vegas that he is brought back up to speed.
• Mysterious Protector: Early on in the game, Victor can occasionally appear to help fight off enemies if the player's having trouble. It's because he's acting as House's eyes and ears on you and trying to make sure you get to Vegas safely.
• Nice Guy: He's nothing but sweet and helpful to the Courier entirely of his own accord, and despite some of the residents finding him off-putting he is noted to be friendly with the people of Goodsprings as well. He's so kindhearted that Mr. House has to shut him off remotely if asked to help fight off the Powder Gangers, since he's naturally inclined to say yes.
• Ninja Pirate Robot Zombie: He's a robot rolling around on a unicycle wheel who thinks he's a cowboy.
• Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: Victor spends a good part of the first half of the game being very ominous and suspicious. Rarely giving direct answers to personal questions, and always just running into you by coincidence. Despite the leery behavior, he turns out to actually be a helpful robot trying to get you safely to your destination.
• Shout-Out: To Vegas Vic, a neon sign over the Pioneer Club in real-life Las Vegas.
• Unwitting Pawn: To Mr. House. Whether he knows it or not, from New Vegas, Mr. House is giving him commands to help the Courier that coincide with his own friendly nature so that he doesn't immediately realize it. He's also the one who hired the couriers for the Platinum Chip in the first place at Mr. House's command.

Mr. New Vegas

Seven of Diamonds

Voiced by: Wayne Newton

"This is Mr. New Vegas, and each and every one of you is wonderful in your own special way."

The gravel-voiced AI personality who acts as DJ of Radio New Vegas. He will often report on activities happening out in the Mojave Wasteland.

---

• The Charmer: "I tried to test my charisma on a Vit-o-Matic Vigor Tester^note The "love-tester"-style arcade machine on which you choose your SPECIAL scores during character creation once. The machine burst into flame." He only says this with the Wild Wasteland trait.
• Deadpan Snarker: His commentary on the news stories slips into this sometimes, where he follows up a sober description of everyday wasteland brutality with a cheesy joke, delivered in the same stoic voice.
  "Refugees at Bitter Springs are giving startling accounts of the Legate known as Lanius, who is said to be Caesar's top field commander. One refugee told us the Legate took over an underperforming squad of troops by beating its commander to death in full view of everyone. The Legate then ordered a tenth of his own force be killed by the other nine-tenths."
  "...And you thought your boss was a pain."
• Endangering News Broadcast: A few of his broadcasts involve him sharing NCR military information over open airwaves so anyone with a radio can hear. Makes sense, since he is an ally of Mr. House and thus is working to circumvent the NCR's position in a subtle manner.
• Mr. Fanservice: At least some of the ladies of the Mojave consider him to be "charming" and "a real gentleman". An Informed Attribute, as he makes no physical appearance (since he is an AI, after all).
  "People sometimes ask me, 'Is there a Mrs. New Vegas?' Of course there is. You're her. And you're still as perfect as the day we met."
• Verbal Tic: He drawls on the word "New" a lot, emphasizing his status as a propaganda machine for House. One of House's defining aspirations for New Vegas is that it is a new society, untainted by old world values.
• The Voice: Is never seen in-game, and unlike the radio stations in Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, it is impossible to visit the physical broadcast location, which is presumably somewhere in New Vegas that the player never visits. Even his playing card refuses to reveal what he looks like, showing only a microphone. As he is actually just an AI personality programmed by House, he likely doesn't exist as anything other than a computer terminal buried somewhere in the Lucky 38.
• Voice with an Internet Connection: He somehow knows about every event that takes place in the wasteland and reports about them on his radio show. It is revealed that he is actually an AI programmed by Mr. House before the war.
• Worst News Judgment Ever: Averted, unlike Three Dog from Fallout 3. All of his reports are generally fairly newsworthy, they're unbiased and have outside commentary, and most importantly, the Courier is almost never mentioned. Any time you're responsible, he'll at most mention a third party or a civilian but won't name names. His only direct mention of you is your miraculous recovery at the beginning, and that is newsworthy in itself.
  • He also has a lot of news stories about the goings-on of the Mojave before you got shot in head. However, these are almost all dependent on certain quests and will be replaced with new news once you complete them.

Jane

Two of Diamonds

Voiced by: Gwen McGee

"I'm Jane, one of Mr. House's girls. We keep him... entertained. We don't get many guests lately; perhaps we can entertain you as well."

A Securitron with the personality of one of Mr. House's favorite girlfriends from before the war. She seems to be in charge of running things around the Lucky 38 and will buy any snow globes the Courier finds to add to Mr. House's collection.

---

• No Celebrities Were Harmed: An allusion to actress Jane Russell, who starred in films made by Mr. House's inspiration Howard Hughes.
• Robot Maid: She's an advanced combat robot that serves a role similar to a secretary and makes sure Mr. House is happy.
• Sexbot: Hilariously, a lot of dialogue implies she serves as this for Mr. House despite the fact that she's a standard-model security robot with a woman's face displayed on her screen. At least one companion will even comment on it. It gets even funnier when you learn House's physical body is, for all intents and purposes, a shrivelled up thing so inhuman the game calls it an abomination connected to the Lucky 38's mainframe, rendering a sexual encounter with her a... strange affair, on all accounts.
• Sexy Secretary: She seems to have been designed with this trope in mind.

The Tops

A classy casino built as a fun alternative to the shady Gomorrah and snooty Ultra-Luxe. The Tops is run by the Chairmen, a group of friendly reformed tribals who like to talk in hip lingo and treat their customers to a good time. The highlight of The Tops is the Aces Theater, where guests can view various acts and musicians in addition to the various gambling and boozing available in the other casinos.

The Chairmen

In General

Ten of Diamonds

"Ring-a-ding-ding, baby."

A group of tribals formerly known as the Boot Riders, reformed by House to embody what is "cool". They currently run the Tops Casino and Aces Theater.

---

• Camp: To the point of making it an art form.
• Challenging the Chief: A custom of theirs back in their tribal days.
• Expy: In-universe, to the Rat Pack and similar entertainment of Vegas's 1950s-60s heyday.
• Jive Turkey: The group all speak in swinger slang.
• Token Good Teammate:
  • Among the Vegas families. Sure, one member (and his four thugs) is kind of a dick, but the faction as a whole is comprised of mostly legitimate businesspeople. At least they aren’t cannibals or slavers.
  • Even before they became "civilized" by House, it's implied that they held some degree of honor. If you disagreed with the Chief's decisions, you could challenge him to a duel to the death. If you won, the rest of the tribe would follow your word on the matter without question.

Benny

Joker

Voiced by: Matthew Perry

"From where you're kneeling must seem like an 18-carat run of bad luck. Truth is... the game was rigged from the start."

Benny is the head of the Chairmen, one of the Three Families who rule the Strip. He is the one who shot the Courier in the head at the start of the game and stole the Platinum Chip. Ambitious, charming, and backstabbing, Benny will do anything to further his place in the world, and his latest plan has the scope of taking over the Strip and possibly the entire Mojave Wasteland.

---

• Affably Evil: He's quite charming and nice, if a bit sleazy and murderous. He even makes it clear right at the beginning of the game when he has the Khans dig you a grave, and when the Khans start protesting that he should just get it over with, he snaps back that he isn't a "fink" and wants to look someone in the face when he kills them.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Can be subverted and played straight if the player character is a female. You can have sex with Benny, but it can just be a means to get the chance to kill him in private. Benny himself is even somewhat weirded out about the fact that a girl he has shot in the head and left for dead thinks he's hot and wants to have sex with him despite that. Not enough to stop him from doing it, of course, but unsettled nonetheless.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: Benny is a world-renowned asshole. If you kill him, the only person in the entire Mojave saddened by his death is Swank, and then only if you failed to persuade him that Benny was plotting against House. Almost every group in the game except the Boomers and the Brotherhood make comments about how glad they are that he's gone, and some people will even lament that they weren't there to see him die.
• Arch-Nemesis: The Courier's, for the first half of the game, at least.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: He's a relative pushover in-game, but the All Roads comic shows that despite his dandy-like appearance, Benny is actually highly skilled in wasteland survival and combat, impressing even his Great Khan henchmen. He used to be a wasteland tribal warrior prior to Mr. House's takeover and renovation of New Vegas, and took over the tribe by defeating the previous leader in a knife fight.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Well, an expensive suit, anyway. Tasteful is another thing, although it seems to have a certain tacky chic to it, considering that it grants Speech and Barter bonuses. Although the game refers to it as a "suit," it is actually two non-matching pieces, a black-and-white buffalo plaid sport coat and solid gray dress slacks.
• Big Bad Wannabe: He's aiming to take over the Mojave, but is nowhere near as smart, strong and/or persistent as the Courier or House. While he might have succeeded in being able to take over the Strip by usurping House, it's highly dubious as to how well he could have dealt with the Legion or NCR, to say nothing of the many outside factions he'd have to deal with.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Averted. His method for disposing of the main character is to shoot them in the head. It doesn't work.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: He killed his tribe leader in order to side the Boot Riders with Mr. House and reform them as the Chairmen, then he began plotting to overthrow House, and he runs out on the Great Khans he hired to ambush you without paying them. When it comes to his dealings with you, Benny talks a lot about how We Can Rule Together, but is never sincere about it. Dummied Out dialogue implies that he would have ambushed you after freeing him from The Fort, mocking you for showing mercy to a weasel like him.
• Consummate Liar: He lies to you time and again. If you actually trust him, then there is something wrong with you.
• Crazy-Prepared: Apparently, Yes Man being able to follow anyone's orders was something of a contingency. Just not a very well-thought-out one.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: If you ask about his background, Benny will tell you about how he became tribe leader through Klingon Promotion, taking down his former boss. In the tie-in graphic novel All Roads, one of the Great Khans he is travelling with reacts with shock to the revelation that he used to be a tribal. His friend responds as they are crossing the wasteland by telling them that "It's midday and he's setting the pace. You tell me."
• Depending on the Artist: Most famously, his look in the intro cutscene versus his comparatively doughy in-game model. Even in the tie-in comic, he seems to change faces from panel to panel.
• Didn't See That Coming: Take your pick. The Courier surviving a bullet through the head? The fact that they are fully capable of chasing him down both the long way to the Strip or even the short way? The Yes Man trap you can potentially set for him? All of his plans and ideas never took into account variables that he had no way of accounting for in the first place, Yes Man in particular because he didn't imagine someone else would find and easily take advantage of his specified programming.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Becomes pretty much irrelevant after the end of the first act (i.e. chasing Benny down).
• Distracted by the Sexy: If you seduce him with the Black Widow perk.
• Do with Him as You Will:
  • If you don't feel like dealing with him personally when you meet him in Caesar's camp, you can simply walk away and let them do as they will.
  • This is also essentially what Mr. House tells you. He has no interest in Benny aside from the Platinum Chip, and will even mock you if you try to brag about killing him.
• Easily Forgiven: Depending on how you play. The Courier of all people may end up saving him, as the Courier may give him a stealth boy and a pitchfork to escape. (Which will turn Cesar's entire camp hostile, so the Courier will have to flee.)
• Enemy Mine: You and he can decide to try and cut your way through Caesar's tent at the Fort. He'll likely die fighting.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Proven in the game intro when, upon a Great Khan asking him why he waited until the Courier was conscious to kill them, he actually gets offended, making it quite clear he considers it reprehensible to shoot someone without looking them in the face. As bonus points, he even apologizes to the Courier for having to kill them for merely being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He's also creeped out by the White Glove Society and is very wary towards the Omertas.
• Evil Counterpart: Plays this role to the Courier, being groomed as House's lieutenant but betraying him to take Vegas for himself. However, if the player is evil and out to to claim an independent Vegas as their own personal kingdom, Benny could be considered their Good (or at least, A Lighter Shade of Gray) Counterpart, as he does actually have hopes for the Strip and his fellow Chairmen beyond power for its own sake. Additionally, in the Collector's Edition deck of playing card, Benny and the Courier are the Jokers, and in tarot, the two Jokers are the Magician and the Fool. The Fool is the spirit in search of experience, and represents cleverness and aimless wandering, while the Magician represents trickery and deception, and the pursuit of personal power. And in some interpretations, it is the meeting with the Magician that starts the Fool on their journey to meet the other Tarot symbols.
• Face Death with Dignity: Unless you decide to crucify him for your own amusement, he actually admits defeat and dies with his head held high. If you decide to execute him, he'll refuse your offer to close his eyes and simply asks that you "make it clean". However, should you decide to face him in the arena, he'll be incredibly grateful, since it is a worthy death in-line with his tribal roots.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: He carries an In-Universe case of this. Yes, it's an expensive suit that shows off his prestige, but it's also tacky as hell with its black and white checkered pattern. Some NPCs remark on its strangeness when you ask them about Benny, like Johnson Nash and No-Bark Noonan, and the White Gloves in the Ultra Lux will call his jacket a crime.
• Flunky Boss: If you opt to just attack him on the floor of The Tops after convincing Swank to let you bring in your gear and kill him, he'll be backed up by four thugs wielding knives and submachine guns. He'll put up a little more of a fight than if you fight him in the arena and can even overpower low-level players, but a high-level player still should have no problem with him.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: He's surprised that the Courier lived when confronted, even though Mr. New Vegas regularly runs a news story with enough details ("shot in the head near Goodsprings") to identify them.
• Graceful Loser: When you have him at your mercy in Caesar's tent, he actually tells you his plans with Yes Man and encourages you to finish them, even if you plan to kill him.
  Benny: Look, I ain't a harbor for illusions. I ain't expecting to get out of this shin-dig alive. That's why I'm trying to hand you my scheme, baby. It's called having a legacy.
• Hidden Disdain Reveal: It's implied that Yes Man's Irrational Hatred for the Khans comes from listening to Benny talk down on them in private.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Part of the reason it is so easy for the Courier to lure him into a trap and potentially take over his plans with Yes Man is because he programmed Yes Man to be completely incapable of saying no to any request but didn't take into account the possibility of someone other than himself finding Yes Man and politely asking him about said plans or to adjust Benny's schedule.
• Hypocrite: Call the Khans out for not looking the Courier in the face before killing them. When the still-alive Courier comes for him, however, Benny has no problem luring them into a trap and having them killed out of sight.
• I Call It "Vera": Benny's gun is called Maria and has Our Lady of Guadalupe on the handle.
• Idiot Ball: Hilariously, what gave him away in his attempt to pose as a member of the Legion was the fact that he didn't change his well-groomed haircut. Caesar admits that Benny had been doing so surprisingly well at infiltrating his fortress, he was actually disappointed such a Worthy Opponent at outsmarting his troops was brought down due to a menial thing like vanity.
• Impossibly Tacky Clothes: His buffalo plaid sport coat is quite loud, and other characters mention it often.
  White Glove Society Member: I know Benny was murdered, but if you ask me, the real crime was that chequered jacket.
• Jerkass Has a Point: If you call him out on his murderousness, he counters with the fact that the stakes of his plan — the fate of three entire nations — are so high that yes, he's perfectly willing to murder to achieve success. Turns out he's right; in every ending path, you'll be forced to assassinate people.
• Jive Turkey: Benny and The Chairmen all speak in '50s style Rat Pack slang.
• Klingon Promotion: He became leader of the Chairmen back in the day by winning a knife-fight to the death against the then-chief, Bingo.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: To a very evil Courier.
• Meaningful Name: As listed under Evil Counterpart, he and the Courier are the Jokers in the Collector's Edition deck of cards. In Euchre, the Joker is the highest trump possible, and is referred to as the Benny card.
• Missing Steps Plan: Benny's plan to take over the Mojave only goes so far as "use Yes Man to take control of the Securitrons". Beyond that, he hasn't really thought things through. The player can directly ask Benny what makes him think he can succeed in his plans, and Benny admits things are still "coming together", and script notes for this dialogue spell out he's not certain about this.
• Mythology Gag: Benny's suit is similar to the one Vault Boy wears in the image of the Smooth Talker perk from the first two Fallout games. That perk raises your intelligence to +1 for dialogue purposes, while Benny suits has a vaguely similar effect of raising both the Speech and Barter skills to +5.
• The Nicknamer: Calls the Courier "Baby" regardless of gender.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: His name, position, and especially his suit are all references to Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, a well-known mobster who helped build the Las Vegas Strip as we know it today.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: Both times he has you at his mercy, he shoots you square in the head. One of them being at the very start of the game. Surviving both encounters is nothing short of a miracle on your end.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Considering what the Courier accomplishes over the course of the game, and implicitly before the story begins, the fact Benny could capture them is certainly remarkable.
• Opportunistic Bastard: Benny will do anything to gain more power and has more ambition than actual ability.
• Pet the Dog: When you confront him at his casino, there is a route where he traps you in a room and is about to send four assassins to kill you. But you can speak with him through intercoms before he does. If you beg him for mercy, point out that you are just a courier who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and promise that you'll never go after him again if he lets you go... he actually lets you go.
  • He hired Emily Ortal to reprogram Yes Man, promising her that he'd help the Followers of the Apocalypse in exchange, but then banned her from his casino after she finished the job. While that was a dick move, Emily is fully aware of his plans to turn on Mr. House, making her an extremely dangerous witness: all she'd have to do is whisper a few words to a securitron, and Benny would be done for. This is the point where the villain always has the witness murdered to keep them quiet. But Benny never harms her or tries to go after her, similarly to the Courier route above he actually lets her go. Also worth noting that even though he didn't keep his promise to her, ultimately his plans to overthrow Mr. House would still benefit the Followers.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • Happens when you deliver a Bond One-Liner to him over the intercom while he thinks he's talking to the thugs/cleaners who are there to get rid of your corpse.
  Benny: The cleaners will knock twice. Tell them to be thorough.
  Courier: Yeah, it's a real mess up here — four bodies.^note Other options: "Your little trap failed, Benny." or "I'm coming for you, Benny."
  Benny: What the fuck?!
  • If you choose to have him crucified by Caesar's Legion, he does not take this well:
  Benny: You sick, vindictive fuck!
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: All Roads in particular casts Swank and Benny like this. Benny is scheming to take on Vegas, Swank is worried about the extremes he'll go to... and about him getting cigarette burns on the carpets.
• Smug Snake: He'd be a lot more efficient as a liar if he weren't so arrogant.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • Whether Mr. House could have actually succeeded in taking control of the Mojave on his own is debatable, but what is certain is that Benny's actions have significantly disrupted his plans and the delicate balance of power between the factions fighting over the territory.
  • Benny is also responsible for one of the biggest spanners: his schemes led him to make Yes Man, who can allow the Courier to become a spanner to all the factions. For delicious irony, Benny's plans can then be used to become his own spanner as you murder him, usurp him, and proceed to do his job better than he could have.
• The Starscream: Mr. House was grooming him as his lieutenant, but he underestimated Benny's ambition. Benny's decision to betray him came out of nowhere from his perspective.
• Starter Villain: By the time you're ready to confront him, it should be clear to you it's just the end of phase one in a much larger conflict.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: As a bit player in the grand scheme of things, Benny isn't some super badass or an ultimate Arch-Enemy — he's a guy, admittedly a capable tribal, that doesn't actually have much in the way of armor or gear beyond his special Maria handgun and doesn't quite compare to what the Courier's potentially gone through. If you hit the point where you can directly confront him, there's a pretty high chance that unless you've got the difficulty cranked up, Benny can die in seconds. About the only fair chance he gets is in a Duel to the Death at the Legion arena, and a melee-specced build will still butcher him.
• Take Up My Sword: If he's captured by the Legion and facing certain death, he'll tell the Courier he doesn't mind, so long as they continue his project of ousting House.
• Token Evil Teammate: Of the Chairmen, who are otherwise the Token Good Teammates of the Three Families.
• Token Motivational Nemesis: The game began as he gloats and shoots you in your head as he steal your package. Regardless of whether you kill him (or sparing him for whatever reason, given how he's already showing his sleaziness by others' impression of him and him in person), not only said package is something that could empower Mr. House, the de facto leader of New Vegas, but the access to certain areas such as Mr. House's own domain and the bunker draw the notice of two major factions vying for control of New Vegas... or you can discover Benny's own pet project and make it your own.
• Ungrateful Bastard: He was originally supposed to ambush the Courier with a Stealth Boy and try to kill them after the Courier saved his life from Caesar's Legion.
• Villain in a White Suit: His suit is a black and white checkered suit, something that often considered tacky and a "crime" by the White Glove Society.
• Villainous Legacy: Should you decide to go the Yes Man route, this will mean that Benny's plans will come to fruition, even after he dies.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • If you free him from the Legion, he disappears. In a deleted scene, he was going to ambush The Courier later on and mock him/her for showing him mercy.
  • It's entirely possible to go through the NCR route without ever confronting Benny, and thus he'll just stay at the Tops indefinitely for the rest of the game unless you decide to kill him.
• White Is Pure: Benny is anything but a saint and his black and white checkered suit reflects his obsession with image and presentation. This best shown by how he was caught by Caesar's Legion, although he disguised himself as a soldier and used a stealth boy to infiltrate the base, he was ultimately caught because he was too vain to ruffle hair for a little while.
• Wild Card: To the point where the Collector's Edition playing cards makes him into one of its two jokers, along with the Courier. Stealing the Platinum Chip turns Benny from House's chosen protégé into this. It doesn't work out... Not for Benny, at least.

Swank

Jack of Diamonds

Voiced by: Jesse Burch

Benny's right-hand man. Swank is unaware of his boss's plan to overthrow Mr. House.

---

• Anti-Mutiny: He will help the player if he's convinced that Benny is working against Mr. House, since he happens to like his current position of luxury.
• The Creon: Unlike Benny and the Omertas, Swank actually seems to like working for Mr. House, who personally describes him as both dependable and unimaginative.
• Klingon Promotion: After you deal with Benny, Swank becomes the leader of The Chairmen and will officially run The Tops. He especially qualifies if you got his help by convincing him that Benny was up to no good.
• Nice Guy: He is one of the friendlier guys you'll meet in The Strip and has some sensible things to say of the various factions of Vegas. Swank will also help the player deal with Benny if he's convinced that he's up to no good, specifically by letting them carry their weapons and letting you search Benny's private suite.

Tommy Torini

Six of Diamonds

Voiced by: Ron Yuan

"Hey, hey! Welcome, welcome, welcome to the finest entertainment experience in New Vegas! My name is Tommy Torini, and how can I make your night?"

Tommy is a high-ranking member of the Chairmen who runs the Ace's Theater. Unfortunately, he's in desperate need of some new talent to bring in more paying customers, especially with such stiff competition coming in from Gomorrah and the Ultra-Luxe.

---

• Badass Bystander: He has a 99 in Energy Weapons and a perfect 100 in both Guns and Melee Weapons.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Tommy is one of the nicest, politest people on the Strip. He also has Energy Weapons, Guns, and Melee Weapons as his tagged skills, all of which are nearly perfect.
• Jive Turkey: As with all the other Chairmen.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: He looks an awful lot like Rat Pack member Sammy Davis Jr., complete with eyepatch.
• Third-Person Person: Tommy's the kind of cat who loves talking about himself in the third person, ya dig, baby?

Theater Performers

Billy Knight

Voiced by: Rob Corddry

"Hey, what about that suit Benny wears? If I had a suit like that, the ladies would be all over me. What, you expect a punchline? The guy pays my salary! It's true!"

A down on his luck comedian who is stuck advertising himself on The Strip in the hopes of landing a stable job. Luckily for him, the Courier is looking for acts for the Aces Theater and can talk him into joining their line up. Once recruited his stand up routine will begin every evening at 4:00 pm.

---

• Awful Wedded Life: About of a quarter of his jokes are about this:
  I take my wife everywhere, but she somehow keeps finding her way back.
  I've been married for 17 years. Where did I go wrong? Oh!
  My wife and I know the secret to a happy marriage. Two times a week we go to a nice restaurant. She goes Mondays, I go Fridays.
  I told my wife she's good-looking for a ghoul. It's just too bad she's not a ghoul. Ay-ay-ay!
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: Zigzagged a bit. He has absolutely no problems making fun of Mr. House and his securitrons or The Tops as a whole, but draws the line at directly insulting Benny since the guy controls his salery.
• Police Brutality: He pokes run at the Securitrons in one of his jokes:
  I love these robots with the friendly little policeman's faces. Sure, they still rough you up, but they look so happy!

Hadrian

Voiced by: Chris Ciulla

"It's great to be up here, looking down at all your smiling faces. That won't last long."

A ghoul working as an insult comic at the Atomic Wrangler for the Garret Twins. He really wants to move on to bigger and better things but is stuck in a contract that prevents him from leaving. Once the Courier convinces the Garrets to void the contract for him he can be found performing at The Tops each day at 1:00 pm.

---

• Deadpan Snarker: Comes with being an insult comic, he even has a few choice things to say about the Courier.
• Insult Comic: His bread and butter. He'll even mock the Courier depending on their SPECIAL score and Karma:
  High Intelligence: Somebody told me the other day you were bright - I wasn't sure if he meant smart, or radioactive.
  High Endurance: Buddy, you look tough enough to drink a pint of glowing water. Why don't you do us all a favor and try it?
  Low Agility: Boy, you're clumsy, you're so clumsy that when you slip in a shower, you fall up.
  Low Charisma: My friend, you got style, grace and charm. The style of a feral ghoul, the grace of a super mutant and the charm of a deathclaw!
• Jerkass: He's pretty rude even when he isn't performing.
• Pet the Dog: If the Courier is able to break his contract with the Garrets and get him a gig at The Tops, he drops his insult comic act and graciously thanks them.
• Shout-Out: A clear tribute to the late Don Rickles.

The Lonesome Drifter

Voiced by: Gregory Alan Williams and Joshua Sawyer (songs)

"My story's a long one, friend, and I can't say it's all that interesting."

The Lonesome Drifter is a mysterious traveler and guitarist from Montana, on a journey to no place in particular in hopes of finding his long lost father, who abandoned him and his mom. He's very heavily implied to be the son of the Mysterious Stranger. He's also one of the people you have to recruit to be performers at The Tops, as part of the quest "Talent Pool" and plays songs on his guitar each night at 10:00 pm.

---

• Ancestral Weapon: His revolver was left to him by his missing father.
• And Then What?: You have the option of asking him what he will do if he ever finds his father:
  Lonesome Drifter: Can't say as I really know. Maybe I'll just ask him why. Maybe I'll punch him right in the mouth.
• Disappeared Dad: His father, possibly the Mysterious Stranger, ran off on him and his mother for mysteriously while he a child.
  Courier: When did your father leave?
  Lonesome Drifter: Long time ago, now. I never even knew him. Ma always said he was a mysterious feller, always traveling on in secret.
• The Gunslinger: His look invokes this: He wears a cowboy hat and duster, and his weapon is a revolver.
• Hero of Another Story: He has traveled who knows how far from Montana on his journeys. While talking to Follows-Chalk in the Honest Hearts DLC, he will mention how a man fitting the Lonesome Drifter's description helped ignite his interest in civilization outside Zion with his stories.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Subverted. When the Lonesome Drifter discusses how he has come from Montana to New Vegas in search of his long-lost father, the Courier, provided they are male and have the Lady Killer perk, can nervously ask him if he wouldn't happen to be around 17 years old. The Lonesome Drifter responds that he is actually 28, and the Courier replies with relief at the revelation.
• Nice Guy: He's a pretty friendly guy.
• No Name Given: His real name is not stated.
• Offing the Offspring: Assuming the Mysterious Stranger really is his father, it's possible to invoke this, if you turn him hostile while you have the Mysterious Stranger Perk, he could be killed by his own father. Amusingly, the developers had plans to make the Mysterious Stranger teleport in and kill the Courier if the player tried to target the Drifter with VATS, but they were never implemented in the game.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: He wields the Mysterious Magnum, a unique a .44 Magnum revolver with a silver finish left by his missing father, that plays a part of The Mysterious Stranger's Leitmotif whenever it's first drawn or holstered. With a barter skill of fifty or more, you can convince him to give it to you as payment for finding him work at The Tops.

Bruce Isaac

Voiced by: Gregory Alan Williams

"Robbed" is such an ugly word. It's more like I took care of a payroll problem for him. Also, I might have... umm... sort of... plowed his daughter. A little."

A former singer at the Shark Club in New Reno who was forced to leave town after robbing a dangerous mob boss and getting a little too intimate with his daughter. He's currently hiding out in Novac hoping to avoid getting capped by mafia thugs when the Courier finds him and offers him a job at The Tops, which he gladly accepts. He performs each night at 8:00 pm.

---

• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When he mistakes the Courier for an assassin he immediately begins groveling for his life.
• Continuity Nod: The mob boss he is running from is Mr. Bishop, and he had slept with his daughter. This means that the Chosen One sided with the Bishops in New Reno, and slept with Bishop's wife or daughter, whose son grew up to be the new mob boss of New Reno.
• In Love with the Gangster's Girl: He slept with a famous mob boss' daughter and this is after he already stole money from the guy. The fact that he's still breathing by the time he meets the Courier is a minor miracle.
• Too Dumb to Live: Robbing a mob boss and sleeping with his daughter wasn't a very smart decision.

Other

Yes Man

"This is going to be great! I'm going to help you accomplish so much, whether I want to or not!"

Voiced by: Dave Foley

"What can I do for you today!?"

A Securitron reprogrammed by Benny to be subservient to him, hence the name, Yes Man is the key piece in Benny's plan to rule New Vegas.

---

• Angrish: If the player destroys the Securitron Army underneath Fortification Hill, while he cannot directly insult you, it is clear that he is at a loss for words at how detrimental your actions are. The most he can say is that you sure are brave for doing such a thing and how it'll make everything more... challenging.
  Yes Man: You... blew it up? It's just funny, because... that... army seems like the secret weapon that seems like the whole point of... you know?
• Appropriated Appelation: The name of Yes Man apparently started off as a mocking nickname from Benny. Being the only human he's ever interacted with until you found him, he doesn't have any other name to use and so goes by that.
• Benevolent A.I.: He is programmed to help others accomplish their goals no matter his actual opinion on the matter. In the ending, he upgrades himself so that this only applies to The Courier.
• Berserk Button: Yes Man seems to have a particular hatred of the Great Khans, likely just him parroting Benny's actual opinions on the Khans. He also dislikes the Brotherhood on a smaller scale for about the same reasons as House. However, unlike House, Yes Man cannot make the Courier exterminate said factions, but will note that keeping the Brotherhood alive is a poor long-term choice and hopes that the Great Khans will die a grisly death in some other way.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Despite his cheery demeanor, this is the AI that masterminded a plot that puts him in total control of a Securitron army and, by default, Vegas itself. He also tends to favor most of the brutally pragmatic options that House puts forward (such as exterminating the Brotherhood) and doesn't hesitate to subtly chew you out for leaving factions he dislikes alive.
  • He's also responsible for setting up the plan to ambush you and help Benny put two bullets in your noggin (he's awful sorry about it, though, once he knows who you are).
  • Also, there's a piece of Dummied Out dialogue for the Independent ending that hints at a sadistic side:
    "Greetings, General Oliver. The disappointment you're about to experience delights me!"
• Body Backup Drive: Every time the player character kills him, his "neurocomputational matrix" is just uploaded into another robot. This could go forever, making him one of the few immortal characters in the game. This is put into the game for a very specific reason: since Yes Man is unkillable, even if you screw yourself out of being able to do any other ending, you can still finish the game on the Wild Card path.
• Cannot Tell a Lie: He is programmed to be forthcoming with any and all information he has available to everyone who asks him any questions. He comments that it probably wasn't a very sound decision on Benny's behalf to make him behave like that.
• Cheerful A.I.: He was programmed to be overly cheery and helpful, likely because Benny's the kind of asshole who doesn't want backtalk from his lackeys. If you destroy House's Securitron army, he twists his rather clear anger at you for wasting such a valuable weapon into admiration of how brave you are for making your quest more "challenging."
• Chessmaster Sidekick: He serves as this to Benny and potentially the Courier if they pursue the Wild Card questline since it's ultimately Yes Man making the plans and handling the logistics. In the Independent ending, Yes Man goes so far to upgrade himself so that only the Courier is capable of giving him orders.
• Dissonant Serenity: It's rather disturbing to listen to him talk about murdering certain people/factions he doesn't like while keeping his cheerful, happy tone.
  "You should accept his invitation, and then murder him when he least suspects it!"
  "I sure hope they get eaten by scorpions!"
• Death Seeker: Some of his lines have shades of this, beyond just being a doormat.
  (after the Courier throws a grenade) "I wish I could throw myself on a grenade!"
• Double Standard: He has a humorous moment of this if you get the Great Khans to aid the NCR.
  "That's not aiding the enemy. Not when you do it."
• The Dragon: To Benny, and you if you go for the Wild Card path.
• Dragon-in-Chief: Although The Courier can potentially be a one-man army, able to garner the allegiance of various minor factions, Yes Man is primarily responsible for the Courier's rise to power.
• Dude, Not Funny!: If you make it clear to him that you're the Courier that Benny shot:invoked
  "Ha ha ha, that's... not funny, you getting shot in the head. I guess I really shouldn't have taken so much pride in how I set that up. I feel really bad now."
• Extreme Doormat: If you decide to attack him, the most he can do is egg you on to do the deed and say how much he deserves it. However, he can't be Killed Off for Real, since he'll just upload himself to another Securitron.
  "That's it! Make me take my medicine!"
• Hidden in Plain Sight: After killing Benny and chatting with him, Yes Man takes position right outside the Tops on the open Strip... with House's Securitrons rolling by completely oblivious. This is because of measures taken in his reprogramming to make him a ghost on the Lucky 38 network.
• Honest Advisor: While his programming forces him to severely sugarcoat things Yes Man tends to make it clear when he considers certain actions very questionable. This ranges from choosing to ignore/spare problematic factions to outright shooting yourself in the foot by destroying the Securitron Bunker.
• Irrational Hatred: He has no real reason to hate the Khans, but he would really like it if they died horrible deaths. It's likely that Benny implanted this hatred into him one way or another.
• I Work Alone: Played with. He tells the Courier that the only thing they need to win the battle of Hoover Dam are the upgraded securitrons, so the Courier doesn't have to win the allegiance of another faction, and just needs a report. If the Courier ends up gaining the allegiance of a faction anyway (or convince them to help the NCR), Yes Man will compliment their diplomacy skills. (Except with the Brotherhood, and the Great Khans where he would be very annoyed, although he can't show it openly.)
• Large Ham: Very cheerful and nice.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: No matter how questionable your actions may be, Yes Man cannot disobey the player in any way and will be forced to progress with his plan. Even if it includes trying to take over Vegas with no standing army whatsoever, to which he's forced to justify to himself that you clearly have some reason to do so. He can, however, lampshade your idiocy and question your actions in a somewhat passive-aggressive manner.
  "This is going to be great! I'm going to help you accomplish so much, whether I want to or not!"
• Mook Promotion: If you decide to go the Wild Card route, Yes Man will go from being just a securitron, to being the sub-ruler of the strip (and arguably the true ruler of the strip).
• Nice Guy: Aside from some passive-aggressive tendencies and an irrational hatred of the Khans, this pretty much sums up his personality in a nutshell.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: If you blow up the Securitron army, Yes Man will not let you forget that it would have been really useful to have a massive army of robots at your command, but you certainly can't be dumb enough to do such a thing without a good reason.
• Please Kill Me if It Satisfies You: He's the reason Benny was able to track down and shot the Courier carrying the platinum chip and Yes Man tells this fact in a mocking tone, without initially realizing that he's talking to that same courier. Then, depending on the dialogue options, Yes Man then may offer the Courier to destroy him to alleviate the anger, warning that his personality will just be transferred to another Securitron if that happens.
• Servile Snarker: He can be incredibly passive-aggressive if you do something that seems like it would cause some problems later on, such as blowing up the hidden Securitron army.
  Yes Man: Oh, yeah, I'm sure you're right. I mean, for one thing, it's you saying it, and you always know what you're talking about. And if you had, you know, a huge killer robot at your command, yeah, that would just clutter things up. And a lesser person might want that kind of overwhelming force on their side, but you know—where's the challenge in that?
• Sycophantic Servant: His general demeanor is that of a complete lickspittle, and not even attacking him will make him change his behavior. It's explained that Benny reprogrammed him to make him this way on purpose.
• Undying Loyalty: At the end of the game, Yes Man upgrades himself to be more "assertive" so that only the Courier can give him orders.
• Vengeance Denied: Due to his functional immortality, Yes Man notes that you cannot properly take vengeance against him for planning Benny's ambush. You're free to attack him, but it won't do any good. He of course apologizes for how incomplete your vengeance must be.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Destroying the Securitron Vault leaves him utterly dumbfounded since you've essentially destroyed your ace in the hole. As such, while he can't outright call you out, he'll make his frustrations clear.
  • Leaving the Brotherhood alive is something that he takes personally due to the fact that as an advanced AI he'd be one of their targets. As such, he reasons that it's because you just see him as just another machine.
  • Although he cannot show open anger, it is clear that he does not like that you convinced the White Gloves to become cannibals again and align themselves with the legion, or help the Omertas with their coup d'état.
• Wild Card: He is needed for you to get the Independent Vegas ending.
• Yes-Man: Benny calls him this. The name stuck.

The Ultra-Luxe

The Ultra-Luxe enjoys a reputation as the fanciest and most sophisticated casino on the entire Strip, which is entirely earned. From the strange masked waiters to the extravagantly decorated interior, the Ultra-Luxe feels outright alien compared to the dirty ruined world outside its doors. Run by a clan of people known for their taste and wealth, the casino caters to only the highest of high society... though they have their share of dark secrets and are hiding plenty of skeletons in their closet.

The White Glove Society

In General

Eight of Diamonds

"You see? We remain the very picture of courtesy, even in the face of such impolite accusations. We have nothing to hide here."

—Marjorie

A group of tribals reformed by House with a love for sophistication and luxury. Founded by Marjorie, they currently run the Ultra-Luxe Casino.

---

• Cane Fu: Their preferred weapons are dress canes. They are actually surprisingly effective melee weapons that hurt like hell.
• Cannibal Tribe: Before they were the White Glove Society. Interesting enough, the developers originally named them the Sawneys (aka Sawney Bean) though in-game their original name is never revealed (with House stating that he's contractually obligated to not reveal it).
• Everybody Knew Already: Their general creepiness and the fact that it's a rumor that everyone talks about makes the fact they used to be cannibals less surprising.
• Exact Words: The White Glove Society has never eaten human flesh. But they weren't always the White Glove Society. In their tribal days, however...
• Expy: In-universe, to the glamorous and exclusive mink-lined side of classic Vegas luxury.
• Face–Heel Turn: If you help (or allow) Mortimer to return them to their cannibalistic ways.
• Faux Affably Evil: They're very pleasant, despite being former cannibals, and they acknowledge their cannibalistic past just to emphasize they've put it behind them. However, they laugh about it if you help Mortimer turn them back to cannibalism, and they eagerly embrace the idea anew. Their attitude towards cannibalism is more that they dislike the negative connotations it means for the group and their publicity; they still don't find anything wrong with the act.
• High-Class Cannibal: They live a life of luxury and see themselves as being a cut above the common savages of the Wasteland. They were also a Cannibal Clan at some point in their history, though their contract with Mr House forbids them from eating human flesh these days. Some, such as Mortimer, have reverted to "the old ways" and would like to see the contract broken.
• I Am Spartacus: A variation, and a villainous one at that. Mortimer's plan is to trick the other members of the Society into consuming human flesh so that (1) they can become accustomed to the taste and (2) it'll be almost impossible to punish because everyone is just as guilty.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Or well, they used to be. Some, like Mortimer, still are.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Potentially. If you bump into them they will sometimes say "I prefer to converse with interesting people". They will say this even if you're Mr. House's right hand or the de facto leader of the Strip, meaning they're talking down on people who are more important than themselves.
• Upper-Class Twit: They insist that they are the best and most sophisticated people in the world.
• White Mask of Doom: Their members put on a white mask because their leader Marjorie thinks it will add to their mysterious and elegant atmosphere. But many people comment on how it just makes them creepy.

Marjorie

Queen of Diamonds

Voiced by: Marianne Muellerleile

"I know our reputation hasn't always been spotless, but that's all in the past now."

The prestigious founder of the White Glove Society who is in charge of running the Ultra-Luxe, the finest casino and resort in all of New Vegas (and probably the rest of the world) which is the envy of its competitors The Tops and Gomorrah.

---

• A Lighter Shade of Black: Compared to Mortimer. See Not So Above It All.
• Even Evil Has Standards: For all of her faults she detests the Legion and considers them to be brutal savages. She also tries to keep her society from practicing cannibalism and wants to keep it outlawed.
• Exact Words: Marjorie tells the player that the White Glove Society have never committed cannibalism. She will, however, acknowledge that they were not always known as the White Glove Society.
• Not So Above It All: Marjorie is indignant if you try to bring up the family's history of cannibalism. Once you and Mortimer turn them back that way, she giggles you two are mischief-makers as if it's a grand joke. And even if you do stop Mortimer, she just sees him and what he tried to do as minor nuisances, and seems more worried with the negative publicity the act would have earned them than the act itself.
• Rich Bitch: She founded the White Glove Society, a group that looks down on even most of the residents of the Strip, which is one of the wealthiest communities in the entire wasteland. (For the record, just getting into the Strip requires either a passport or 2000 caps. Most wastelanders are lucky to even have a hundred.)

Mortimer

Voiced by: Jude Ciccolella

"There is a meat sweeter than the most cornfed livestock. Most of you have tasted it. All of you have coveted it."

The front desk manager of the Ultra-Luxe and second-in-command of the White Glove Society.

---

• Affably Evil: He is very polite to the Courier despite being one of the few characters in the game with very evil karma.
• Arc Villain: Of Beyond the Beef unless you side with him, being the ringleader of the conspiracy to return the White Gloves to cannibalism.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Depending on how "Beyond the Beef" is completed, he can be thwarted at his moment of triumph by the Courier, who can note that they switched the recipe to imitation human flesh and exposed his proclivities in front of the rest of the White Gloves, forcing him to make a run for it. If you are fast enough, you can even shoot him down before he makes it out of The Gourmand.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: He rocks a fancy suit, nice top hat and treats human flesh as a delicacy that only the finest and most sophisticated people deserve to enjoy. What makes this especially noteworthy is that the wasteland setting of the game makes most forms of luxury and refinement unheard of in even large and civilized settlements.
• Meaningful Name: His name is derived from the Latin morte, meaning death.
• "Not So Different" Remark: He can be swayed to help an Evil Courier when the latter points out that (if the Cannibal Perk has been unlocked) they both know what it's like to have "the Craving" — an unexplainable urge to consume flesh. Alternately, if you have high-enough Speech, you can lie through your teeth to convince him of the same thing.
• Pragmatic Villainy: He wanted someone high-born and healthy, but he knows not to attract the wrong type of attention. Thus when he finds out his men snatched the son of a prominent cattle baron to use for their meal, he asks the player to return the kid to his father and trick them into not blaming the family. Short of that, if you must kill him, make it a frame job.
• Rich Bitch: Cannibalism aside, Mortimer is also much more elitist than Marjorie, who's already pretty elitist herself. If you talk to him about becoming an honorary member of the White Glove Society, he will dismiss this as a foolish idea of Marjorie's part, claiming that only people born in the clan are worthy of its privileges.
• We Will Meet Again: Should he be outed before Marjorie and the other White Gloves, he makes a run for it but not without swearing to come back and drive the Society to the ground (assuming he survives the escape attempt). Marjorie however isn't so worried it'll happen, assuming he survives.

Philippe

Voiced by: Jesse Burch

"I'm the fucking god of New Vegas brahmin fusion cuisine, that's who. No, no, that doesn't even give me the credit I deserve. I fucking invented edible food. Do you like eating? Good. You owe me your entire goddamned garbage existence."

An extremely arrogant, prideful chef with severe psychological issues who works for the Ultra-Luxe. He cooks the people Mortimer captures and serves them as gourmet dishes.

---

• Angrish: If you manage to lock him in a freezer, he'll be so angry that he can't even curse properly.
• Angry Chef: He's the closest thing that the Wastelands has to a gourmet chef who also happens to be an egomaniacal and foul-mouthed asshole. The Courier can point out that his anger points to deeper issues, including Psychological Projection.
• Bad Boss: If his comments towards the player when he mistakes them for a waiter are any indication.
• Evil Chef: He is one of the few people in the game to have very evil karma. Not surprising given his status as a cannibal chef working for the equally depraved Mortimer.
• Freudian Excuse: As a sufficiently-knowledgeable Courier can point out, him treating others like crap is clearly projection coming from his terrible upbringing.
• A God Am I: He declares himself "the god of New Vegas brahmin fusion cuisine" when angered, and takes credit for inventing edible food.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: His childhood is so exaggeratedly horrible that it just becomes plain silly, especially in how simply getting to talk about it is enough to emotionally break him.
• Jerkass: Most of the White Gloves at least attempt to be polite to the Courier, even while being condescending. Philippe is just a whiny crybaby with an over-inflated ego.
• Laughably Evil: Big time.
• Locked in a Freezer: You can trick him into going into the freezer and locking him inside.
• Made Myself Sad: With a high enough Medicine skill, you can psychoanalyze him, which will cause him to rant about his awful past before running off and crying.
  Philippe: Oh. I see how it is. You think because my father walked out on us when I was five, now I have to yell at people. Or because my mother was a deranged chem fiend who regularly brought strange men home who told me to call them uncle. Or because my sisters would lock me in a shipping crate when they didn't want me around... and my brother... God, I'd forgotten about that. How could they do that to me? I... I can't stay here. I need to be alone.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Most prominent if the player passes the medicine skill check. He'll end up running out of the room crying.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: He's one of the more profane characters in the game.
• Small Name, Big Ego: While he is the head chef of the most high-class restaurant in the Mojave he greatly overestimates his own importance and insists that he somehow deserves credit for inventing edible food.
• Supreme Chef: Credit where it's due, the man is a genuinely good cook.

Chauncey

Voiced by: Avery K. Waddell

"Yes. The White Glove Society strictly forbids eating humans. But we weren't always the White Glove Society.

A member of the White Glove Society that has become disgusted with the actions of his fellows and attempts to aid a detective in uncovering the truth of the Ultra-Luxe. When the detective doesn't show he decides to aid the Courier instead, which leads to his demise at the hands of an assassin.

---

• Black Dude Dies First: He is the only White Glove to suffer a plotline death at the hands of an assassin while meeting the Courier in a sauna. All of the others can potentially survive.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: He becomes disturbed at what the White Gloves have become and tries to aid the Courier in stopping them. This leads to him being assassinated for giving away the society's secrets.
• He Knows Too Much: Meets his end at the hands of an assassin for giving the Courier critical information about the kidnappings happening at the Ultra-Luxe.
• Plotline Death: Even if you barricade yourself and Chauncey from anyone, he will die to the assassin after he spills the beans to you during the quest.
• Sacrificial Lion: Dies to an assassin immediately when he's done telling you about Mortimer's plan.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: He gets shot dead by an assassin mere minutes after meeting the Courier in the sauna.
• Token Good Teammate: He hates what has become of the White Gloves and wants to stop them from harming any more people. Unfortunately, this gets him killed for aiding an outsider and giving away important information.

Guests

Heck Gunderson

Three of Diamonds

Voiced by: Peter Renaday

"Beg your pardon, stranger, but I'm looking for someone. You ain't seen a young man with dark brown hair and a white hat on lately, have you?"

A big name brahmin and bighorner rancher who lost his son Ted while conducting business with the White Glove Society. He's at his wits end from worry and is willing to accept help from anybody with a good pair of eyes and legs, promising a large reward for the safe return of his son... or the names of the people responsible if something has happened to him.

---

• Beware the Nice Ones: He's very polite and friendly to the Courier, but more than one NPC will tell you that he has an infamous reputation as a cattle baron who destroyed his competition by often less than legal means, which earned him the nickname "Hurricane Heck" from his enemies.
• Cattle Baron: He owns a vast amount of ranches and supplies a large portion of the Mojave's food. He's also developed a reputation for ruthlessness and intimidation, earning him the moniker "Hurricane Heck" back home in the west.
• Disproportionate Retribution: If the Courier returns Ted to him unharmed they'll have to pass a speech check to convince him not to cut off New Vegas from his food suppliers and starve them out. The only way to persuade him not to do this is by pointing out that it would be giving the White Gloves exactly what they want, never mind that he wouldn't have gotten his son back at all if not for the Courier.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's got a fierce temper and is willing to disproportionately punish all of New Vegas for the actions of a few White Gloves, but he genuinely loves his son Ted and handsomely rewards the Courier for his safe return.
• Papa Wolf: One of his unambiguously positive traits is his genuine love of his son Ted. He's willing to starve out the whole strip as punishment for his kidnapping unless the Courier can talk him down.
• Red Baron: Puns aside, his ruthless way of business has earned him the epithet "Hurricane Heck", according to Chauncey.

Ted Gunderson

Voiced by: Ari Rubin

"Who gives a rat's patoot if they're sorry? Sorry's what they'll be when they're strung up and lynched by my daddy's posse. These White Knuckles got hell to pay, I'll see to that when I get out of here."

Heck's kidnapped son and heir to his name. Ted is found deep inside the kitchen at the Ultra-Luxe as a prisoner of Philippe, who intends to cook up and serve the boy as a meal for his boss Mortimer. He can be rescued by the Courier or left to his fate.

---

• Asshole Victim: He's not especially nice and only his father seems to even give a damn about him, which means there's no real penalty for leaving him to his fate and framing his dad for the murder.
• Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: Even if you take the most difficult path to resolve the sidequest (rescue him and expose Mortimer without letting him see you during the dinner service, via sabotaging the meal), he'll still give you flak for not showing up sooner, and complains in front of you to his father about it.
• Guest-Star Party Member: For all of a few minutes — you can either use him as backup as you gun down the White Glove Society, or have him sneak out with you (potentially following while you reveal Mortimer's deception to the Society).
• Jerkass: He's not nearly as friendly or polite as his father and isn't particularly grateful to the Courier for saving him from becoming a main course in the Ultra-Luxe's dinner hall.
• Spoiled Brat: It's clear that his father's manners and politeness didn't rub off on him.
• Ungrateful Bastard: He seems more concerned over getting his revenge against his kidnappers rather than thanking the Courier for saving his life.

Gomorrah

The shady and sleazy Gomorrah does a lot to live up to its namesake. Run by a group of mafia gangsters, known as the Omertas, this den of sin offers just about every vice imaginable. Sex, booze, drugs... gambling isn't the only addiction they endorse. Gomorrah isn't nearly as fancy or high-class as its competitors, but its many patrons don't seem to care so long as they get to fulfill their darkest desires and have a good time.

The Omertas

In General

Nine of Diamonds

"You play some games, have some fun."

A group of tribals formerly known as the Slither Kin, reformed by House in the shape of old-world crime syndicates. Led by Nero and Big Sal, they run Gomorrah Casino and strip-club.

---

• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Their only internal rule is "Never betray the family"; everything else goes. However, it's possible to turn Big Sal and Nero against one another with a speech check by telling the former you're working for the latter.
• Becoming the Mask: Even compared to the other Families, the Omertas really bought into the stories House told of pre-War crime families and ran with them.
• Cluster F-Bomb: The staff at the other casinos try to keep their guests happy by being polite and respectful to them. But not the Omertas. It's implied to be mostly just an act, since Carlitos and Cachino can speak in a more civil manner.
• Defector from Decadence: Carlitos, Joana's lover, states that one of the reasons he left the Omertas was that he grew disillusioned by their way of life.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Sure, they are evil, but unlike every other casino, they have no prejudice whatsoever. They even encourage Raul, a ghoul, to have fun, outright stating they don't discriminate.
• Expy: In-universe, to the mobsters like Bugsy Siegel who were instrumental in the development of Las Vegas in its early days.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Their bouncers comes across as blunt and rude during your first visits, but they eventually soften, especially if you help Cachino take out Sal and Nero. Their behavior was apparently an act to put up the atmosphere they want.
  Pre-quest Bouncer: Hey! No one but Omerta's are allowed to carry weapons.
  Post-quest Bouncer: I know you're good for it, but we still have to pat you down.
• The Mafia: The theme of their casino. They live up to it. House even admits that his main reason for keeping them around is purely nostalgic, because they remind him of the mafia groups in the pre-war days, and Vegas just doesn't feel right without that shady element.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Lanius despises them and states that he personally wants them dead for their dishonorable actions, implying this would happen if others don't wipe them out.
• Smug Snake: Smug pawns of the Legion.
• Stupid Evil: In light of their very clear track record in regards to treatment of outsiders, siding with Caesar's Legion to bomb the Strip and aid their conquest of New Vegas qualifies Big Sal and Nero as this.
• Token Evil Teammate: Of the families. Though should Cachino succeed in having Big Sal and Nero sleeping with the fishes, he promises to keep the Gomorrah on a tight ship.

Nero

Ace of Diamonds

Voiced by: Alex Mendoza

The don of the Omertas.

---

• Big Bad Duumvirate: While officially Big Sal is actually The Dragon to Nero, the two seem to share equal authority.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: They're very impressive.
• Curse Cut Short: If you work with Cachino to take out the Omerta bosses, you'll get this exchange when you give the signal to him:
  Courier: We're here for a change in management. Cachino, NOW!
  Nero: What the fu—?!? (Cachino blows his head off with a shotgun)
• Meaningful Name: Nero was the name of an infamous Roman Emperor, who is thought in popular culture to have set Rome on fire. The Nero in New Vegas is collaborating with Caesar to do essentially the same to New Vegas.
• Too Dumb to Live: Allies with the Legion, who have a well-known history of wiping out or enslaving their pawns once they are done with them, which is exactly what happens should the Legion win.

Big Sal

Voiced by: Alex Rocco

Nero's right-hand man.

---

• The Dog Bites Back: His motivation for trying to betray Mister House appears to be personal spite and envy against Mister House.
  Big Sal: Caesar asked us to provide a distraction on the Strip. So when he gives the word, we're going to launch an all-out assault on the Strip. First we're going to blow the Embassy, then we're going to use soldiers to kill every last motherfucker on the Strip. Then we'll run this joint. That'll teach Not-At-Home what can go on while he sits in his fucking ivory tower lording down from on high.
• The Dragon: To Nero.
• Dumb Muscle: Sal's intelligence is a measly 3, which is classified as "Cretin" by the Vit-o-Matic Vigor Tester.
• Evil Sounds Raspy: His raspiness is on par with some ghouls.
• Too Dumb to Live: Allies with the Legion, who have a well-known history of wiping out or enslaving their pawns once they are done with them, which is exactly what happens should the Legion win.

Cachino

Voiced by: Liam O'Brien

A senior member of the Omertas.

---

• Affably Evil: He is an unpleasant Jerkass at first, but after you blackmail him with his ledger during the main quest, he becomes unfailingly chill and polite towards you as he helps in stopping his boss' plan to cause havoc on the Strip.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: He is a horrible person, has Evil karma and is a chronic rapist, but his journal reveals he has legitimate guilt over his actions and he's horrified by his bosses's attempts to chlorine bomb the Strip and massacre the survivors.
• Anti-Villain: Cachino is explicitly a rapist, and is otherwise an murderous thug for the Omertas. Even so, he recognizes that what he does is wrong, and balks at his bosses plans to massacre the Strip for Caesar.
• The Atoner: In his journal, he expresses regret at the things he's done, and continually promises himself he'll never do them again. It's insinuated that he may finally turn over a new leaf now that he has the responsibility of running Gomorrah. He talks of "running a tighter ship" than his predecessors.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Stealing his journal and threatening to blackmail him with it actually causes him to become much calmer and more polite. If the Courier returns the journal to him, he keeps his word and helps them stop Nero and Big Sal's plans without any hesitation.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • He may be a hustler and a rapist, but he knows something serious is up with the Omerta bosses and will even help you ruin their plans to help the Legion chlorine-bomb New Vegas.
  • He's creeped out by Clanden, and will express some disgust towards him if you show him the tapes of Clanden torturing and murdering prostitutes.
  • He also has standards in another way: he is very well aware that the things he does are wrong and wants to stop, but he never quite seems to get the willpower to.
• Heel–Face Turn: If the Courier gives him the chance, he puts his misdeeds behind him and works to make Gomorrah more reputable than it was prior to his ascension.
• Nominal Hero: Despite not being a good person, helping him overthrow his bosses is considered the "good route", so he ends up fulfilling this role.
• Token Good Teammate: Believe it or not. To put emphasis on how ridiculous this is: an entire quest is devoted to establishing how big of a bastard he is and his in-game karma is Evil, and yet when you reach the Omertas' actual quest, siding with him is the good option.

Omerta Contractors

Clanden

Voiced by: Jesse Burch

A contractor working for the Omertas. He's actually a terrorist-for-hire who is making chlorine bombs for the Omertas' assault on The Strip.

---

• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Cachino suspects him to be this, as he's too polite and virtuous for someone working for the Omertas. He's right, as Clanden is a serial rapist.
• Demolitions Expert: His explosives skill is maxed out.
• Faux Affably Evil: Even if you successfully blackmail him about his murders, he still keeps up a cheery attitude.
• Hand Cannon: Carries a .44 Magnum Revolver.
• Karma Houdini: It's possible for Clanden to simply be blackmailed to abandon the Omertas, in which case he will never be punished for his crimes, unless you happen to find him after he leaves Gommorah. He can be found southeast of Ranger Station Charlie fighting two Vipers. You can gun all three of them down, or let him fight the Vipers and kill whoever comes out on top.
• Mad Bomber: He is an insane bomb-maker who murders prostitutes in his free time.
• Mask of Sanity: He appears to be a friendly, reasonably person when you first meet him, but then it's revealed that he's a sadistic serial killer and bomb-maker.
• Serial Killer: Rapes and murders prostitutes, all while he records it in holotapes.
• Snuff Film: He makes holotape recordings of his murders, which you can use to blackmail him.
• Torture Technician: He loves to torture women to death while recording himself.
• Walking Spoiler: His true nature is a major spoiler for the Omerta storyline.

Troike

Voiced by: Emerson Brooks

"As a little pet project, I've been making some thermite. Thermite burns as hot as the devil's asshole, and can melt through just about anything."

A smuggler being blackmailed by the Omertas into assisting them on their plans for New Vegas by bringing in guns and working for them. He suffers from chem and sex addictions, but is very good at what he does and has a lot of knowledge about certain subjects.

---

• Boom, Headshot!: He can be killed this way by the Omertas if the Courier has him rig the thermite bomb himself.
• Crazy-Prepared: He rigs up a load of thermite, just so he can fight back if Nero and Big Sal decide to stab him in the back.
• Demolitions Expert: He has a tagged explosives skill of 67 and knows how to make a thermite bomb to destroy the Omertas' weapon stockpile.
• Frame-Up: He's been blackmailed into helping the Omertas after he got high and beat a prostitute to death there. You can find out that he's actually innocent, and they merely took advantage of his blacked-out state to convince him that he did.
• Functional Addict: His addictions have left him a mess, but he still manages to do his job and can help the Courier foil the Omertas' plans for New Vegas.

Gomorrah Prostitutes

Joana

Voiced by: Mela Lee

"I'm... I don't know what's happening to me. I can't feel a goddamn thing anymore, empty and poisoned like the wasteland. I'm afraid I won't make it out of here, not without Carlitos. If the Med-X doesn't kill me first, Cachino or another Omerta will. Ha, I look pathetic, huh? The great Joana and now... I don't even know why I'm telling you this."

A Gomorrah prostitute that can be found in the courtyard at the back of the casino. Passing a skill check will convince her to reveal that the Omertas have her hooked on chems and force her to work for them as a sex slave. She's worried that if she doesn't get out soon the drugs or one of the bosses will end up killing her and asks the Courier for help escaping. She'll sleep with a Courier of either gender for 100 caps or for free with certain dialogue checks.

---

• Addled Addict: The Omertas have her so addicted to Med-X that its starting to affect her health. She's worried that if she doesn't get out soon either it or one of the higher ups will eventually kill her.
• Born Unlucky: Her luck attribute is only 3, which makes sense considering her current predicament.
• Brainless Beauty: She has an 8 in Charisma and a 3 in Intelligence. She also got hooked on chems by the Omertas, something that another prostitute working in Westside was smart enough to avoid.
• Damsel in Distress: Is this to Carlitos, who's been trying to figure out a way to rescue her from Gomorrah. The arrival of the Courier allows both individuals to enact a plan to rescue her once she gives the word.
• Sex Slave: The casino bosses have got her so dependent on hard drugs that she's basically become their sex slave. Cachino in particular seems to fancy her and apparently rapes her quite regularly.
• Third-Person Person: It's clearly an affectation meant to make her seem more appealing, since she drops the third-person speak if the Courier helps her leave Gomorrah.

Dazzle

Voiced by: Andrea Thompson

"A hundred caps. No kissing, no rough stuff."

Gomorrah's other prostitute who can be found in the courtyard near Joana. She'll sleep with a Courier of either gender for 100 caps or 50 with a skill check.

---

• Everyone Has Standards: Unlike Joana, she's very cautious about doing drugs on the job and will refuse to give the Courier a discount unless they can convince her that they know what they're doing.
  Courier: How about we just split this Med-X and... relax for a while?
  Dazzle: Hmm... I don't know. Doesn't that... mess you up?
  Courier: I used, like, a whole bunch of this stuff and I'm still fine.
  Dazzle: That's nice, honey, but no thanks.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: Blond hair, skimpy clothes and a perfect 10 in Charisma? Oh yeah.
• Happiness in Slavery: Her comments about her past imply that the Omertas bought her as a sex slave when she was younger. Despite this, she doesn't seem to want to leave since working in a casino as a prostitute beats whatever kind of life she had before. Deciding to wipe out the Omertas will even turn her hostile, unlike every other prostitute in Gomorrah, all of whom seem quite unbothered by the Omertas' deaths.
• Sex Slave: While she seems to have avoided getting addicted to chems like Joana she makes a comment about the Omertas buying her at some point in her past. It's implied that the main reason she stays with them now instead of trying to leave is because its a better life than what she had in Westside.

Other Strip Residents

Sarah Weintraub

Four of Diamonds

Voiced by: Lora Cain

"Leather suits are good times! Thinking about that just blows my top!"

The owner and proprietor of the Vault 21 hotel and gift shop on the New Vegas strip as well as the sister of Michael Angelo (real name Sheldon Weintraub). She rarely leaves the vault, and asks the Courier for assistance collecting valuable vault merchandise to sell to tourists, promising them a good reward for their help. She'll accept any vaults suits (and Boomer suits with a speech check) they have in exchange for caps and will even agree to sleep with them once they find enough.

---

• Betty and Veronica: The cheerful Betty to Red Lucy's Veronica.
• Brains and Bondage: Subtly implied. She has a 6 in Perception, Charisma, Intelligence, and Agility, has Science as a tagged skill, and shows great excitement at sleeping with the Courier once they bring her enough vault suits. See her quote above.
• Doomed Hometown: Sort of. Vault 21 was re-purposed by House into a booming hotel. But Sarah very clearly misses how it used to be, as it's now largely empty and many sections were filled in with cement.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: Her blonde hair is one of her most notable features, and she's clearly meant to be one of the sexiest women in the game.
• Ms. Fanservice: She's blonde, has a fondness for leather, and is one of the few NPCs that will sleep with the Courier. She is also one of the few NPCs to have a portrait on the special edition playing card set.
• Nice Girl: She is one of the few characters in game to have Very Good karma.
• Shout-Out: "Sarai Weintraub" is a supporting character from the Hyperion Cantos- Sarai being the original name of the biblical Sarah.
• Totally Radical: She tends to drop a lot of antiquated slang into her dialogue.

Michael Angelo

Five of Diamonds

Voiced by: Jesse Burch

"It's this place - my inspiration ebbs and I don't know how to stop it! I Can't feel the warmth anymore..."

Sheldon Weintraub, better known by his pseudonym Michael Angelo, is a Reclusive Artist from Vault 21 who is also the brother of Sarah Weintraub (its current owner) that has set up a workshop on The Strip to make neon signs and lights for Mr. House. Unfortunately, his crippling agoraphobia has led to him hitting a rut and becoming unable to find any good inspirations to make new art. To help him out the Courier can travel the Mojave with a camera to snap a couple photos of other great works of electrical art to help him get his mojo back.

---

• Named After Somebody Famous: Ever since leaving Vault 21 he's taken the artistic name Michael Angelo, a reference to Michelangelo Buonarroti, one of the most famous artists of all time who is mainly known for his work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
• Nervous Wreck: Getting behind on his work has left him worried about Mr. House finding out that he hasn't been getting much done and sending someone to pay him a visit. Once the Courier delivers the photos he requests he perks up and isn't so fearful anymore... unless they just decided to rob him the first time they met by posing as a hired thug and taking all of his caps.
• Reclusive Artist: In-universe; He has agoraphobia due to living in a vault for his entire life, meaning he is incapable of leaving his studio and feels deeply uncomfortable in anywhere that isn't a dark and cramped indoor environment.

Walter & Ethel Phebus

Voiced by: Peter Renaday & Marianne Muellerleile, respectively

"Ethel's going to be madder than a wet hen but you reap what you sow, kid, and Heck's earned every ounce of misery he gets. So, we have a deal?" - Walter

"If you don't mind, I have to look after my husband..." - Ethel

A wealthy brahmin rancher and his wife who have come to New Vegas not to strike it rich or enjoy a luxury vacation but to settle a score with a hated rival. In the past a man named Heck Gunderson stole much of Walter and Ethel's property and now that he's alone and without his army of guards Walter feels its the perfect time to strike back and deliver a little well deserved frontier justice to the crooked cattle baron. The Courier can assist him by agreeing to a hit on one or both of the Gundersons or talk him out of his quest for vengeance altogether and convince him to return home with his wife.

---

• A Lighter Shade of Black: Walter's a brahmin baron himself and is perfectly willing to murder Heck's innocent son as a form of vengeance against his ruthless father, but if even half of what he tells the Courier is true he's definitely the lesser of two evils.
• Foolish Husband, Responsible Wife: Ethel is a lot more sensible and down to earth than her husband and will try to convince the Courier to talk Walter out of his vendetta against Heck before someone gets hurt.
• Graceful Loser: Walter wants the Gundersons dead, but if the Courier tells him they won’t help him, he understands and graciously wishes them well.
• Happily Married: Though they have some disagreements about how to deal with Heck Gunderson they both seem to genuinely care for one another and will be horrified if the other is killed.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Walter's a firm believer in this, but his wife Ethel notably isn't.
  Ethel: Everything he says about the evils of Heck Gunderson is true, but I've never held the notion that fighting evil with evil carries the world forward.

Mister Holdout

Voiced by: Gregory Alan Williams

"My stock and trade? Allll kinds of easy-to-hide weapons for slipping into and out of casinos, they won't give you a second glance."

A weapons dealer who offers a small selection of concealable holdout weapons that the Courier can slip past the casino guards with a high enough stealth skill.

---

• Coat Full of Contraband: He wore a trenchcoat identical to the Mysterious Stranger's in the E3 2010 demo. He instead wears pre-War businesswear in the final game.
• Friend in the Black Market: He's a sneaky weapon merchant who specializes in items that can be hidden from the bouncers running the casinos.
• Mr. Exposition: He basically serves as a free heads up for the player on the casino weapons ban and explains to them how they can smuggle in certain holdout weapons. He also sells a few such weapons himself to allow the Courier to stock up before they unknowingly get caught in a patdown and lose all their offensive gear.
• Stealth Expert: He's able to sell a selection of holdout weapons on the Strip right under the noses of the Securitrons, which is pretty fitting as his shop's specialty is easily concealable stealth weapons.

---