History Characters / FalloutNewVegasOldWorldBlues

* ItCanThink: They can still open doors, operate weapons, and may speak on occasion. In a few places, they've built homes, or at least gathered collections of appealing stuff. If you splice them with robots, you can get self-aware [[BrainInAJar Robobrains]].

* DropTheHammer: They wield sledgehammers and super sledges.

* TheAlcoholic: Implied by the well-stocked bar occupying the front room of his house at Higgs Village and the bottle of wine on his nightstand.

* MadScientist: With pride. The fact that they tend to dose on Mentats like it were candy doesn't help a bit. They've also been doing virtually the same things over and over and over for more than 200 years. Vivisection ''can'' get boring, you know. Finally, this is ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'', and '50s ''Science!'' was imagined to be a little different from regular old science.

* AmbiguousGender: It has a male voice, but it has one regardless of the Courier's gender because female voice modules are hard to find. It is also a brain -- if a gender can conclusively be assigned to a brain, and if it's automatically the same gender as the former owner, is another discussion altogether.

** During the conversation with him, he can admit to naming himself and the Forbidden Zone as references to [[Film/ForbiddenPlanet Old World sci-fi movies]] he was fond of.
** He can be heard singing a song about different parts of an atom's construction, in the tune of DemBones.

** His human form, visible on the intro slide of the DLC [[https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_developer_statements/Old_World_Blues#Chris_Avellone:_Think_Tank_Intro_Art,_2011_July_27 (the one on the right, with a beard)]] is based on Dr. Morbius from ''Film/ForbiddenPlanet''.

The antagonist [[spoiler:(or so he seems)]] of ''Old World Blues'', he has been threatening the Think Tank with intelligence-eating Robo-scorpions that keep them huddling in their base until he comes to destroy them.

* TokenEvilTeammate: The Toaster again.

* TheStoner: While all the Think Tanks are Mentats addicts, Mobius' drug habits are even worse, including Psycho and Jet. He claims he gets the dispensers mixed up.

[[caption-width-right:750:[[labelnote:As a human]]https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mkbmr2q.png[[/labelnote]]]]

[[caption-width-right:750:[[labelnote:As a human]]https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dr0human.png[[/labelnote]]]]

[[caption-width-right:750:[[labelnote:As a human]]https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/8human.png[[/labelnote]]]]

[[caption-width-right:750:[[labelnote:As a human]]https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/boroushuman.png[[/labelnote]]]]

[[caption-width-right:750:[[labelnote:As a human]]https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dalahuman.png]]]]

[[caption-width-right:350:Left to right: 0[[labelnote:*]]Pronounced "oh"[[/labelnote]], Dala, Klein, 8, and Borous.]]

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dalahuman.png]]

** Muggy can break down various ceramic objects into useful crafting materials.

* PoweredArmor: One that functions to automatically bring soldiers back to base on foot rather than directly empowering them, though its FlawedPrototype status inadvertently turned it into an ArmoredCoffin instead.

-> '''Voiced by:''' Jim Ward (Wild Wasteland)

Motorized suits that automatically fight against anything in their path. Originally designed to recover and defend incapacitated soldiers and/or corpses, the inventions would lack direction to any home bases and end up wandering aimlessly while designating potential threats to their wearers.

* AdaptiveAbility: Research in the testing facilities describes them as recording neuro-auto-muscular movements to be able to fight and learn other behaviors.
* AndIMustScream: Those who get incapacitated in any way are forced to move as the harnesses overtake their motor functions and walk them back to friendly territory. This would include injuries like broken limbs. On top of that, there ended up being no way to take them off or have them work properly, forever trapping the wearers well into the time that the Courier finds them.
* AnimatedArmor: Engineered as this to recover soldiers that get critically injured on the battlefield.
* ArmoredCoffins: They unintentionally became these, giving no escape for the wearers or methods to shut them down, all while remaining battle-ready and hostile. Also literal as all of the wearers are now dead and forever preserved in them.
* BittersweetEnding: In a good ending slide, the Sink Auto-Doc manages to find a way to shut the suits down, finally freeing the corpses after so many centuries.
* DemBones: The bodies inside of them have long since decayed down to the bone. You can hear them rattling in combat.
* EliteMooks: They have armor as tough as reinforced combat armor and are equipped with powerful energy weapons, at times regardless of the Courier's level, making them more dangerous or at least better equipped compared to the Lobotomites.
* EnergyWeapons: Their weapons of choice.
** MagneticWeapons: May be seen sporting Gauss rifles.

** RayGun: They can carry laser-shooting weapons of all kinds.

* FlawedPrototype: The threshold that the suit considers for activation had issues and would not recognize if the wearer was dead. Many suits went programmed with no base to head back to, leading to unpredictable wandering. Also see GoneHorriblyWrong below.

** They aren't coded as robots and thus won't take EMP damage. Oddly, they are also recognized as female and take extra damage with the Lady Killer and Cherchez La Femme perks.
* GatlingGood: They wield gatling lasers and the unique enemy holds a K9000 Cyberdog Gun.
* GoneHorriblyWrong: The final kinks that weren't ironed out included lacking the ability to tell friend from foe and having no way of shutting off, rendering them berserk.
* HardCodedHostility: They view anything as an enemy. Doubles as an in-universe case of programming this, as they lacked a system that could cease fire on identified allies.
* ImAHumanitarian: Not the users and harnesses themselves, [[CaptainObvious of course]], but they can drop the human flesh consumable item.
* InterfaceScrew: Unintentional on the game's part. Due to their long names, their HP and DT are pushed below the screen should the player have the Living Anatomy perk.

* MoreDakka: If laser [=RCWs=] and gatling lasers are in their hands.
* PosthumousCharacter: All of the wearers are dead by the time the Courier comes across them. The Y-17 master trauma harness was once a scientist named Mr. Harris.
* PoweredArmor: One that functions to automatically bring soldiers back to base on foot rather than directly empowering them.

* SuddenlySpeaking: As mentioned in the ShoutOut above, the otherwise silent pile of animated skeletons may have a line to speak if you have the Wild Wasteland trait.
* UndignifiedDeath: The Y-17 master trauma harness' wearer died when he choked on a buffalo gourd seed while inside the suit.

* HumanoidAbomination: Thanks to the above-mentioned BodyHorror. The game doesn't officially classify them as "Abominations" like the Ghost People or the Think Tank, however.

* ScrewYourself: You can actually hit on your own brain with the Cherchez La Femme/Confirmed Bachelor perk, to its incredible disgust. [[spoiler:This still works though.]]

[[caption-width-right:350:Left to right: 0, Dala, Klein, 8, and Borous.]]

* BigBad: As it turns out, [[spoiler:they -- Dr. Klein in particular -- are the ''real'' instance of this trope in ''Old World Blues'', and not Dr. Mobius as the player is led to believe.]]

* BodyHorror: Similar to [[spoiler:Mr. House]], their current form is considered so alien that in-game they classify as "Abominations".
* BrainInAJar: They are literally brains floating in jars full of "biogel", on flying platforms.
* BrainUploading: They underwent a variant of this to achieve immortality as [[BrainInAJar Brains in Jars]] to keep running their experiments. [[spoiler:They intend to eventually reverse the process once the schematics for their requested inventions are taken.]]
* BrokenMasquerade: By the time you show up, [[spoiler:the Think Tank are on the verge of breaking from the EternalRecurrence tampering Dr. Mobius did to keep them from leaving Big MT]]. All thanks to the actions of Elijah, Ulysses and unwittingly, ''you.''

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: Encountering them at the first floor of the Dome, they dramatically announce their presence before descending into bickering with each other. It takes awhile for them to get back to acknowledging the Courier's presence or intelligence and they can barely understand them despite speaking the same language. After going through a couple tangents, their arguing is stopped when they detect a broadcast from Dr. Mobius.
* EternalRecurrence: Their mental patterns are on a loop, so they're barely aware of what they're really doing. They don't remember the outside world except in the vaguest sense, and they continuously do the same experiments over and over, learning nothing from them.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: They removed Dr. Mobius from the team due to him taking actions that even they found abhorrent ([[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and also probably from disagreements regarding research methodology]]). [[spoiler:In the end, it's the other way around.]]

* EvilIsPetty: They all have an ego on them in some form. Dr. Klein sees himself as clearly in the right in any dispute, especially with a particular argument with Dr. Mobius. Dr. 0 hates Mr. House with a passion and has [[DartboardOfHate knives embedded into a nearby picture of him]], and he built a tiny, weaponless Securitron and gave it obsessive issues. Dr. Borous refuses to admit that there may be anything wrong with his assessment of the fertility of his creations and made one of the testing facilities into a high school environment where he can exact revenge on those who wronged him in his youth.
* ExpressiveAccessory: Despite just having monitors with static eyes and mouths for "faces," they get a lot of mileage out them by expressing their emotion through stretching and tilting them. They'll contort their eye-stalks sideways in an angry or worried expression, jut their mouth-stalk forward to emphasis a word and their monitors will shiver in fear and/or frustration.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Likely unintentional, but their [[spoiler:plan]] involves them [[spoiler:putting their minds and consciousness into Lobotomites so that they can escape the limits of Big MT, with them essentially going through BrainUploading in the process.]] Meanwhile, in ''VideoGame/Fallout4'', one of the companion quests - [[ThePollyanna Curie's]] - involves her [[spoiler:having her mind and consciousness downloaded into a braindead [[ArtificialHuman Synth]], with the process being essentially BrainUploading, and her doing this so as to escape the limits of her mechanical Ms. Nanny body.]] Also, their [[spoiler:teleportation technology]] looks a ''lot'' like that developed by [[spoiler:the Institute]].
* ForScience: It is stated as their literal motivation. Not science as applied toward any specific goal. Just... "science". It's also notable that their interpretation of "science" has become somewhat unglued over time.
* FullConversionCyborg: The only organic parts of themselves left are their brains.
* GoMadFromTheRevelation: Downplayed. When they met [[spoiler:Ulysses]], their encounter reached a breaking point for them when he [[spoiler:angrily rebuked them for not knowing or being aware of their past and surroundings]]. The scientists were so shaken that they allowed him to leave unharmed. Even after having repressed his response from memory, they never felt the same afterwards [[spoiler:and came closer to breaking their recursion loop]].
* GreaterScopeVillain: They're responsible for like the Nightstalkers and Cazadores that have overrun the Mojave, as well as the Cloud and the state of the Sierra Madre, and the dust storms of the Divide. The man-eating plants of Vault 22 originated in Big MT too, though no specific Think Tank member claims responsibility for that one.

* HeelFaceTurn: [[BecauseYouWereNiceToMe If you befriend at least three Think Tank members]], [[spoiler:they'll stand up to Dr. Klein when he tries to [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness get rid of you]] during the final confrontation and overrule him, thus making him agree to serving you]].

* KnowNothingKnowItAll: It is made clear that Dr. Klein has absolutely no idea about his actions. Dr. 0 is ''seemingly'' almost as bad -- his scientific specialty is apparently limited to "taking robots apart" and he tends to destroy his equipment a lot -- but he is willing to admit that he is not all that good at the thing he ostensibly specializes in, and he did produce both Muggy and Securitrons that are ''better'' than [=RobCo's=] Mk. II in some hardware respects despite centuries of being in the open with no maintenance. [[note]]Their [[AIIsACrapshoot software]] did not fare quite as well.[[/note]] The rest of the Think Tank seem genuinely skilled and productive in their areas of expertise, [[EvilutionaryBiologist Dr. Borous]] [[DemonicSpiders dangerously so]]. Their general lack of sense can be attributed to centuries of Mentat abuse, as well as that the biogel that the brains float in is corrosive over time. All of the scientists were geniuses when they were human. [[note]]According to WordOfGod, Klein is more the [=Lab Director/College Dean=] than the biggest genius. He is there to push them around and keep the group somewhat focused on research since, [[OnlySaneByComparison relatively speaking, he is the most sane]] and has the most forceful personality.[[/note]]

** Dr. Mobius [[spoiler:also applied one to them, limiting their perceptions of the world only to the Big MT and causing their damages minds to go worse.]]
* MadScientist: With pride. The fact that they tend to take Mentat doesn't help a bit. They've also been doing virtually the same things over and over and over for more than 200 years. Vivisection ''can'' get boring, you know. Finally, this is ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'', and Fifties ''Science!'' was imagined to be a little different from regular old science.

** All their names have to do with [[spoiler:infinite loops and endless repetition. A 0 (a loop), an 8 (a sideways infinity symbol), Klein (as in a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle Klein bottle]]), Mobius (as in a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobius_strip Möbius strip]]), Borous (short for [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oroborous Ouroboros]], the snake that eats its own tail - though you can point out that it is spelled incorrectly), and Dala (short for [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala Mandala]], a circular geometric pattern). All of these names were designed by Dr. Mobius to further set in the infinite loops that the Think Tank are trapped in to keep them inside Big MT]].
** Many of their names also hint at their specialties such as Borous (named after the Ouroboros), being an expert at creating monstrosities, or 8 (a reference to octave) being a sound specialist

* TheMindIsAPlaythingOfTheBody: They've existed as these robotic abominations for so long that they've almost completely forgotten what it's like to even ''be'' human. Their knowledge of anatomy has vanished as they seem to think fingers are penises, they have no understanding of body language or regular human physical actions (with Dala in particular being fascinated by them), andare just in general operating on a wavelength [[BlueAndOrangeMorality that's completely divorced from human and possibly even biological thinking]].
* MissingStepsPlan: They resolve to find certain technologies in order to deal with Dr. Mobius [[spoiler:and to allow them to escape Big MT]]. When you retrieve the technology for Dr. Klein, he struggles to realize why they wanted them in the first place. He then discovers code in the tech that will open the doors to The Forbidden Zone.

** Later, it's revealed that their real purposes is [[spoiler:experimentation having to do with the brain, heart, and spine, all of which can then be used to put the Courier back together. This will allow for them, and by extension the Think Tank, to leave the Big MT.]]

* OverratedAndUnderleveled: During ''Lonesome Road'', in one of Ulysses' holotapes he remarks how powerful the Think Tank are, stating that they're too powerful for even him to defeat, and that it would take a hundred Elijahs to challenge their full, combined power. Dr. Mobius likewise plays up the difficulty of the Courier facing all five Think Tank members in a straight out fight. However, in-game they're quite a push-over once you override the Pacification Field that prevents you from shooting them and the ending narration notes how easy the battle was. He may simply be referring to what the Think Tank could do if they were focused and [[spoiler:no longer under the influence of Mobius' tampering]], and considering that in one cut ending they [[spoiler:pretty much annihilate the Mojave, destroying the NCR, Legion, and House presence in the process]] it's not inconceivable that this is the case. [[spoiler:Mobius]] may have his own reason for telling you about how dangerous he thinks the Think Tank are: [[spoiler:He doesn't want the Courier to kill them -- they ''were'' his friends once, after all.]]

* TheRemnant: Like the Enclave, the Think Tank and Big MT in general are technically a remnant of the research contractors that the US Government turned to before the Great War. Of course, with all the red tape and interference wiped out in 2077, their pursuit of science took on ever weirder and more depraved directions.

* WasOnceAMan: They were scientists working of Big MT and living in the Higgs Village before deciding to transfer their brains to robots to overcome the limitations of the human body.

* WorthyOpponent: The Think Tank seem to consider the Vault-Tec Corporation to be one, given how Big MT had to resort to "cheaper" albeit even more amoral measures to match them in experimenting on whole groups of people.

A would-be roboticist with a very questionable grasp on technology, a somewhat confusing name and a serious bone to pick with Robert House.

* AchievementsInIgnorance: His Berserk Securitrons are running on a Mark VI operating system, while Mr. House only has them upgrade to Mark II. While uncontrollable, they're quite strong. Of course, it could also simply be [[WalkingTechbane his own custom OS]] rather than being in the same series.

* FlatWhat: If you suggest to using a slash to tell the letter and number apart, he initially responds with this.