The Bleachers: A Diamond City Story is a Game Mod for Fallout 4. It was created by Nexus Mods user MunkySpunk and released on 4 October 2019.
The mod adds a new area in Diamond City: the Bleachers district, built into the outfield seating area. The Bleachers consists of the Left Field Diner, Centre Field Greenhouse, Right Field Sheriff's Department, and residential areas. It's a tight-knit community, and not very friendly to outsiders who aren't there to buy things — but all things considered, it's an okay place to live. Help some locals out, and you just might earn a place in the Bleachers family.
A sequel/expansion, The Fens Sheriff's Department, was released on 3 February 2023 and replaced The Bleachers by incorporating its content. The original Bleachers content is sometimes referred to as "Chapter 1" of the mod, and the new content as "Chapter 2". The mod can be found here
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The Bleachers contains examples of:
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The Gunners at one point invade the Atom Cat Garage and take the Cats hostage.
- Anti-Frustration Features: During the Large Marge Escort Mission, Marge's pathfinding... isn't great... so she'll teleport to your side if you get more than ~50 metres away.
- Several quests are literally just you listening to long conversations; they can be skipped with a cheat holotape you get when starting the mod.
- Apocalypse Not: The Bleachers district is in much better shape than most of the Commonwealth, having clean, non-ramshackle buildings, running potable water, textile manufacturing, and a biologist engineering crops to grow better in irradiated soil. Mod characters sometimes joke that the rest of the wastelanders must not know how to even clean a room.
- Arms Dealer: Before the apocalypse, Whitworth was a government minister who negotiated secret weapons sales to other countries. After the apocalypse, he used those same skills on a smaller scale and now owns a gun shop.
- Artificial Limbs: The Sheriff has an artificial arm that's built from parts of combat robots.
- "Ass" in Ambassador: If Lily comes on the mission to negotiate with some ex-Gunner informants, she takes the extremely diplomatic approach of getting mad when they insult the Sheriff and telling them she's glad the Sheriff killed their families and she wishes they died too.
- Avenging the Villain: The Colonel's motivation is to avenge his family that died in the big attack on Diamond City years ago.
- Berserk Button: Being a dog-lover, Lily is absolutely incensed at the idea of a dog-fighting ring and takes great joy in violently killing the people running it.
- For the Sheriff, it's when Lily is put in danger. That's one of the only things that can make her visibly angry.
- Calling Card: One quest involves you helping Lily build up her reputation by the two of you killing Raiders and leaving her literal cards on the bodies.
- Caring Gardener: Dr. McClintock, though she's no mere hobbyist, but a biologist specializing in genetically modifying plants. Her aim is to develop tougher crops that can grow across the entire region.
- Civilians Are Irrelevant: In the FSD endgame when the Sheriff goes to war with entire factions, she doesn't bother to consult with Diamond City's mayor despite supposedly being there to guard him and his people. However this is justified since the mayor is extremely incompetent and the Bleachers are de facto independent from the rest of the city.
- Character Shilling: During the "Orientation" quest, multiple characters you meet get described by your guide as "the best [job] around" or words to that effect. The characters also compliment each other a lot in the coffee scene and pre-mission briefings.
- Chekhov's Gun: During your tour of the FSD, your guide mentions that Dr. M found the natural cistern using special equipment that can detect underground spaces. That same equipment later gets used to locate the Institute and plan out the attack on it.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The FSD are very fond of this trope, thankfully you usually don't have to witness it on-screen (most cases are probably also not possible to render in the game engine). 'Highlights' include people being burned alive, locked in a flooding room, savaged by attack dogs, crucified, and one unfortunate soul literally getting his head shoved up his own ass.
- Cycle of Revenge: The Gunners attack Diamond City. The Sheriff fights them off and publicly executes the prisoners of war to Make an Example of Them. The Gunners who got away spend years working on a plan to destroy the Sheriff's Department. The Sheriff finds out and kills even more Gunners as revenge.
- Lily's parents get killed by Raiders. Lily spends years killing and torturing Raiders and cultivating a reputation as "The Scourge". Lily gets kidnapped by Raiders and sold to the Institute. Lily survives and kills even more Raiders as revenge.
MDP: One thing I've learned is people keep tracin' back blame and stop wherever it's most convenient for the story they want to be true.
- Death Faked for You: Lily gets kidnapped by the Institute for interrogation, and a synth clone of her is killed to fake her death.
- Death or Glory Attack: The FSD's liberation of the Atom Cats and counterattack on Quincy used basically every soldier they had, and if they lost or even just took too many casualties, that probably would have been the end of their organization.
- Decapitation Presentation: The heads of enemy robots are made into spiked maces that the FSD uses in battle.
- Defector from Decadence: The Sheriff was raised in the Brotherhood of Steel, but she and her team deserted after being punished for defending civilians when it gave no tactical advantage.
- Developer's Foresight: When the FSD starts fighting factions in the endgame, any factions that were already destroyed in vanilla quests will be skipped over. If you've completed the vanilla main questline with another faction, there will also be a special quest called "Not In My House" where the Sheriff negotiates with them to leave Diamond City alone (sometimes... Aggressive Negotiations.)
- Do with Him as You Will: Lily confronts the owner of a dog-fighting ring by crippling him and throwing him into the dog pen, where the hounds kill him.
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: Invoked by the members of the FSD, who constantly call you Lily's sidekick and minimize your contributions to their victories. This is partly hazing of the newbie, and partly a way of stroking Lily's ego. They do genuinely respect you underneath the ribbing.
- Easy Impersonation: In the quest "The Shoe Is On The Other Hand Now", your character dresses up as Mr. Dr. Pepper to lure out some people trying to kidnap him. MDP is a slightly thin white man, and the plan succeeds even if your character is a muscular black woman or a fat Chinese guy. This is eventually justified as it turns out the leader of the kidnappers had her eyes wounded in a fight, and she still nearly figures you out before your backup arrives.
- Elites Are More Glamorous: The Sheriff's Department is the elite guard division of DC and are much stronger & cooler than the baseball-pad-wearing rank-and-file, whom they enjoy mocking. This mod's second half mostly revolves around you working for the FSD, while the vanilla guards barely have any presence in the base game.
- Expansion Pack World: The first iteration of the mod included only the Left Field Diner. The second added the Centre Field greenhouse and residences, and the current mod added the Right Field area and several buildings around the Commonwealth.
- Fantastic Racism: The FSD is extremely hostile to any and all synths, to the point where the Sheriff brutally murdered an escaped synth seeking refuge in the Left Field.
- Foreshadowing: During the dinner scene, MDP warns Lily that Raiders aren't all stupid and will eventually figure out a way to get revenge for all her One-Man Army rampages against them. He even mentions Monsignor Plaza as a place Lily's already made enemies in. Sure enough, the Monsignor gang ends up killing her.
- Gang of Hats: The mod features several Raider gangs that differentiate themselves with some silly costume, such as the Pumpkin Raiders who wear plastic pumpkin helmets and the Honey Raiders who dress like honeybees.
- Good Is Not Nice: Lily and the FSD are undoubtedly working for the good of the innocent people of the wasteland. But that doesn't stop them from ruthlessly eradicating anyone they deem a threat, often involving cruel and unusual deaths, and stringing up the bodies as a warning to others.
- Guilt-Free Extermination War: In-universe, the Bleachers believes that every synth is acceptable to kill because they're probably working for the Institute, and even renegade synths could be a Manchurian Agent. And the Institute is openly trying to kill every surface-dweller because they believe they're a detriment to humanity's progress. Whether this trope is actually true depends on the player's opinion, but the characters sure like to talk about how justified what they're doing is.
- The Heart: Lily for the denizens of the outfield.Dr. McClintock: Before she moved here, we were just a bunch of people living in the Bleachers. She helped us become a family.
- Heroic Heelization Speech: During the "Wetwork" quest, if you ask Lily whether blowing up the Institute is right when there are many innocent people in there, she'll reply that she knows those people don't deserve to die but that she's willing to give up her conscience for the good of the Commonwealth.
- Hero of Another Story: The Sheriff has a very minor role in The Bleachers, but is the head of Diamond City's elite defence forces and "has had an urban gunfight with Super Mutants/Gunners/Raiders/Synths/Forged a couple times a week for a decade". She also gets A Day in the Limelight in The Fens Sheriff's Department, where the player joins said defence forces and gets quests from her.
- Insistent Terminology: You and Lily are not "partners" or "traveling together", you are her "sidekick". Don't bother arguing, she ain't budgin'.
- Intelligible Unintelligible: Gary and Tary have a vocabulary of two words, "Gary" and "Tary", but everyone except the Sole Survivor understands them fine. It's not a prank either; at one point Gary delivers a vital medical update, which isn't the sort of thing people would just pretend to understand.
- It Gets Easier: The Sheriff discusses this trope at the end of the "Shishkebab Runner" questline, calling it "scar tissue" that grows "when you wound your soul". She hopes to protect innocents from having to develop scar tissue.Sheriff: Those tears on your face right now, they mean you aren't a monster, it's not too late.
- It Was with You All Along: The ultra-powerful singularity bomb used to destroy the Institute was actually found by Crenshaw on a random patrol. He had it on his shelf as a keepsake, unaware of its function until Whitworth saw it. Whitworth says it's a miracle the thing never went off.
- Leet Speak: Vault 816, which is much larger than other vaults, got its name from the leetspeak for "BIG".
- Logical Weakness: When vanilla factions fight the Institute, an important part of the battle is seizing their teleporter device so that you can stop their reinforcements and bring in your own. But the teleporter transmits its contents over radio waves, so the FSD simply... sets up a radio jammer.
- Locked Out of the Loop: After discovering that the Institute has a device that can literally look at people's memories, FSD leaders become extremely reluctant to give information to subordinates, in case one of them gets captured and interrogated.
- Lured into a Trap: Lily is ambushed and killed by raiders after being lured to a certain building by rumours of an intact motorcycle. Except that was Actually a Doombot.
- Kill and Replace: In the base game, the Institute kills people in secret and replaces them with synth clone spies. This mod expands on that by having random enemies be revealed as synths via the presence of a "Synth Component" on their bodies. Apparently,
about 1 in 20 citizens of the Commonwealth are Institute spies.- The Gunners of Vault 816 killed its previous inhabitants, an isolated religious cult, and avoided detection for years by having the entrance guards pretend to be cultists and keeping up the isolationist policies.
- Never Bring a Gun to a Knife Fight: The Sheriff's signature weapon is a tomahawk. Yes, a ranged weapon... that requires effort to throw... and has inferior range compared to guns. Despite this, the Sheriff is widely respected as the best fighter in the city.
- No Historical Figures Were Harmed: Barbara McClintock is based on the scientist of the same name, who is stated to be a personal hero of the character's writer.
- Non-Indicative Name: The "Sheriff's Department" and its "Deputies" don't have anything to do with law enforcement. Instead they are a paramilitary group that defends DC against attacks.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: The Sheriff; only a handful of characters know her real name and they all guard it zealously. You can learn it if you complete the vanilla story first with the Brotherhood of Steel, then complete the FSD story, and attend the "Not In My House" quest.
- Only the Worthy May Pass: You won't be allowed into the main Right Field complex until you prove your trustworthiness to the Sheriff, a little ways into Chapter 2.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The Sheriff is normally very terse and quiet, so when she raises her voice or starts ranting, you know she really hates someone.
- Orphan's Ordeal: Lily lost her parents to Raiders at age 5 and refused to be adopted, living on the streets of DC instead. She was further mistreated by other children, such as being forced to drink shoe polish.
- The Paragon Always Rebels: From the Brotherhood's perspective, this is what happened when one of their best officers went rogue, convinced her squad to desert and started calling herself "The Sheriff". From the Sheriff's perspective, of course, she was going to the side of good by doing this.
- Passing the Torch: In the final quest, the Sheriff tells Lily, to everyone's surprise, that she wants them to be the next leader of the FSD.
- Post-Apocalyptic Dog: One quest has you and Lily rescuing a bunch of dogs from a Raider dog fighting ring. They will then take up residence with the Atom Cats.
- Pretentious Latin Motto: The Sheriff's Department has Mitte Nuntius, "Send a Message", referring to their tendency to Make an Example of Them.
- Ragnarok Proof: The first quest involves tracking down a pre-war motorcycle engine, which would be at least 200 years old. It's sitting in perfect condition inside a display case in a trashed factory.
- Satellite Love Interest: Rizzo. Yeah, what more's there to say? His entire role in the mod is to be Lily's boyfriend and, to a lesser extent, a spokesman for how the Bleachers collaborates with the Atom Cats. They do make such a nice couple, though.
- Scavenger World: Obviously present as it's a Fallout game (mod), but discussed in particular by Mr. Dr. Pepper. He runs a business selling Nuka-Cola, a pre-apocalyptic soft drink. He's come up with new recipes for adding stuff to existing bottles, but doesn't have the knowledge or equipment to make the soda from scratch. He sends you to find CO2 and syrup for a soda fountain, but freely admits that once this supply dries up, his business is doomed. On the other hand, he doesn't think that will happen for decades since there's a lot less people around to drink soda compared to before the apocalypse.
- Shout-Out: During the dinner scene, Mr. Dr. Pepper serves Mom's Spaghetti which he says will "cure weak knees, heavy arms and sweaty palms".
- One of the FSD officers is called Lieutenant Dan.
- Slave to PR: Sister Luna is so protective of her reputation as a shrewd merchant that when she gets scammed, she hires an mercenary stranger to solve the problem rather than asking one of her extremely tough friends who would do it for free, just because she can't risk word getting out that she got the short end of a deal.
- Speech-Centric Work: People in this mod really love to talk compared to vanilla characters, especially Lily and Dr. McClintock. But the crown jewels have to be the dinner, coffee and reception scenes, which clock in at about 30, 40 and 45 minutes of pure dialogue respectively. They're the longest conversations in the entire Fallout series and have even been known to cause troubles with the game engine (though thankfully nothing permanent).
- Still Wearing the Old Colors: Despite leaving the Atom Cats for the Bleachers, Lily still has their signature flame decals on her power armour.
- Supporting Protagonist: The second half of the mod shifts focus heavily towards the high-ranking FSD members and their quest to protect the Commonwealth. The Sole Survivor is just considered a mercenary who came by at the right time to get hired to fight in some important battles.
- Take That!:
- Dr. McClintock describes the Institute's attacks on the Commonwealth as "a poorly thought-out plot device wedged into a nebulous story by someone who thought it would work".
- Mr. Dr. Pepper states that taking missions from him will work just like how the Minutemen do things: Do stuff for him and he'll toss you caps as well as call you "General".
- The owner of the dog-fighting ring that you fight with Lily is named Michael Vick, after the NFL player who was found guilty of running real-life dogfights.
- The story behind Vault 816 is that it was a trap by Vault-Tec to eliminate people who don't want vaccines. The residents died a few months after the nuclear war when a flu started going around and they tried to cure it by walking on the heavily-irradiated surface. It's worth noting that this mod was made during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Teleporting Keycard Squad: Frequently, right after you pick up the relevant item on a Fetch Quest, a new group of enemies will spawn in right behind you. Specific examples include Super Mutants when you're retrieving the soda fountain parts and Raiders when you're investigating the motorcycle.
- Tempting Fate: After you and Crenshaw fight through an Institute base, he remarks that you should have plenty of time to search it since "it's not like they can teleport or anythin'". Cue more Institute goons teleporting in.
- Terror Hero: The FSD tries to cultivate a reputation for being as badass and merciless as possible in order to dissuade enemies from coming near Diamond City.
- The Only Way They Will Learn: When Lily goes behind the Sheriff's back to take a synth-hunter job, the Sheriff finds out in secret, but lets them keep going in hopes that the morally-grey nature of the work will eventually make them choose to stop. She's right.
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Dr. McClintock, a biologist, repeatedly finds ways to use soil and water analysis to help defeat DC's enemies.
- Torture Always Works: Averted for the Institute as their attempts to interrogate a captured Lily come up blank due to her Heroic Spirit; they have to resort to their mind-reading device. But played straight for the Sheriff's Department as they repeatedly torture and/or threaten people and always get truthful, complete and accurate information. And usually after they get the info, they kill the guy anyways if they think he deserves it.
- Trademark Favorite Food: MDP loves Nuka-Cola, dresses in Nuka Corporation merchandise and has even invented his own special recipes. Of course, since he runs a diner that primarily sells Nuka-Cola, it's possible he's just playing a persona for marketing purposes.
- Trail of Blood: A large one of these in the Institute Counter-Ops facility will lead you to your goal.
- Undisclosed Funds: Dr. McClintock is said to be probably the richest person in the Commonwealth due to her monopoly on cotton. She lives a fairly modest life though, and pumps most of the money into funding the Sheriff's Department.
- Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: Mod characters have different dialogue options depending on whether or not you speak to them while they're working, unlike vanilla characters who say the same things at all times of day.
- Unknown Rival: The Colonel has spent years working to get revenge on the Sheriff, but she didn't even know he existed until a few days before confronting him. Initially this is because the Colonel tried to remain secret, but during the confrontation, the Sheriff invokes this trope by interrupting his Motive Rant and saying she doesn't care who he is, he's just another enemy that she'll kill.
- Untrusting Community: Lily describes the Bleachers like this, stating that they are all paranoid because of synth infiltrators. In The Bleachers it mostly just appears as some people not giving you their quests until you prove yourself with others. The trope becomes more prominent in The Fens Sheriff's Department as your character is considered a fringe mercenary and frequently marginalized.
- Urban Segregation: Diamond City is built in a baseball stadium, and the Bleachers district is located... in the outfield bleachers. It is wealthier and more developed than the city centre on the field, and also has a rivalry with the Upper Stands district built into the infield bleachers.
- Walking Spoiler: Lily doesn't get killed by Raiders in Mass Chem, that was actually a clone. She survives, comes back later and is involved in most of the quests after that. That character's central role in the plot makes it hard to discuss the second half of the mod without giving that away.
- Wedding Finale: Lily and Rizzo's wedding is the final scene of the main questline.
- Where It All Began: The first and last combat missions of chapter 2 take place in the Institute's counter-ops facility. The main difference is the first one has you rescuing Lily, and the last one has Lily fighting by your side.
- Work Hard, Play Hard: Lieutenant Harkins is an expert Cold Sniper while on duty, but likes to get drunk and party in her free time. Somewhat amusingly, she's started going to other cities to do this because her reputation has made the people of DC too afraid to loosen up around her.
- You Killed My Father: Pretty much every major character on both sides of the FSD vs. Raiders And Gunners War has had a spouse or family member killed by the other side, which motivates them all to fight as hard as possible.
