History FalloutNewVegas / TropesSToZ

* StuffBlowingUp: The Powder Gangers' WeaponOfChoice is sticks of Dynamite and power charges. The Boomers venerate anything that goes... well, ''[[ShapedLikeItself boom]]''.

** [[DeathWorld The Villa]], a decayed husk of a city built near what was supposed to be the greatest casino in the West. Infested by maybe-undead Ghost People who only kill, holograms ridiculously deep into the UncannyValley, polluted by a toxic atmosphere that won't let you ''sleep'' exposed to it, populated by a schizophrenic Super Mutant, a mute surgical experiment, a ghoulified Old World star, and an insane former [=BoS=] Elder, where EverythingTryingToKillYou is taken to 12. Even yourself.

** Though the further away you get from Legion or NCR areas the more violence and despair there really is. Most of Utah is considered a horrible place to live, and Raul even says how before the Legion took over Arizona that the the whole state was overrun by raiders and warring towns.

* WhatMeasureIsAMook:
** The final ending to Joshua Graham's path in ''Honest Hearts'' depends solely on how you treat the White Legs captured leader, Salt-Upon-Wounds. If Joshua Graham spares him, then Joshua will become much more merciful and pleasant. Apparently the dozens of White Legs he slaughtered to get to that point don't matter. Or for that matter, the countless people who were killed, maimed, enslaved and crushed by the Legion, of which he was one of the core architects and the right hand Caesar. ''Or'' the many people, including the population of New Canaan, destroyed by Salt-Upon-Wounds. Both are merely {{backstory}} to redeeming one ruthless warlord by sparing another.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: All three of the main factions qualify to varrying levels of degree. Even a Good Karma Courier going for the Wild Card ending counts as it requires you to murder your employer to take control for yourself and forcibly drive out both the Legion ''and'' NCR with an army of robots just like House planned on doing.

"[[RuleofThree Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a Nuclear Winter]]."

* StuffBlowingUp: The Powder Gangers' WeaponOfChoice is sticks of Dynamite and power charges. Cranked UpToEleven with the Boomers, who venerate anything that goes... well, ''[[ShapedLikeItself boom]]''.

** Any of a number of [[StupidEvil female characters in the game who openly support]] [[StayInTheKitchen Caesar's Legion]]. [[NoWomansLand It's not as if it's a secret what they do to women]]. Though at least one of said characters was lied to.

** During the final assault on Legate Lanius' camp, two NCR rangers arrive before the player and head up the climb toward the Legion's military leader. NCR rangers are famed sharpshooters, while Lanius is the greatest hand-to-hand combatant in an army that specializes in hand-to-hand combat. Naturally, the NCR rangers decide to run at Lanius with knives.

* ScarsAreForever[=/=]WoundThatWillNotHeal: The Marked Men get their skin ripped straight off of their flesh by the searing winds of The Divide, but because The Divide is so full of radiation, the Ghoulified soldiers are kept alive through it all, [[AndIMustScream and are unable to die as their skinless bodies are put through mind-breaking agony year after year after year]].
** Averted with the [[PlayerCharacter Courier]], who despite having been shot twice in the face and undergone surgery to remove the bullets and heal has absolutely no scar nor wound to show after recovering for a few days.

* VendorTrash:
** Much of the Misc Item category is this. None are immediately useful like ammo, weapons, apparel, or aid items. Many can be used as crafting items. You can even make your own vendor trash in the form of tanned hides, which makes them much more valuable (especially the tanned golden gecko hide).
** The ''Old World Blues'' DLC does its level best to subvert this. The personality constructs in the Sink can break down completely worthless items and turn them into incredibly useful crafting material. The Book Chute can turn pencils and clipboards into scrap metal and duct tape weighing ''twice'' as much as the materials you recycled, Muggy turns worthless dishes into valuable gun materials, and the Biological Research Station turns plants you don't use into a generic slop which can be converted into the kinds of plants you do. The whole place is a hoarder's wet dream.

-->'''[[spoiler:General Oliver]]:''' If our situations were reversed, [[WhatAnIdiot I'd see you hang.]]\\

* ViolationOfCommonSense: The couple who stole Vance's 9mm submachine gun from the display in Nipton tell you about their plans to go on a robbing spree similar to Vikki & Vance (who themselves are {{exp|y}}ies of Bonnie and Clyde). To talk them out of it you first have to pass a speech check telling them ''it sounds like a great idea''. This will cause them to voice their doubts about it, and have second thoughts and drop it.

* UnreliableExpositor: Major Knight of the Mojave Outpost and Jimmy from Westside are both this in terms of the Legion's policies concerning homosexuality. Jimmy says that Caesar [[BuryYourGays punishes homosexuality by death,]] (Experience from being a former slave) but Knight says the Legion is more tolerant of same-sex relationships than some parts of the NCR. (Though the player has to activate a Confirmed Bachelor check with Knight to even hear that.) Companion Cass's dialogue implies it (in a rather disparaging way) to be a common practice, directly contradicting Jimmy's story.

->**Courier:** But the girl is sick. With classic symptoms of, uh... Vagina Dentata?
->**Canyon Runner:** I think my Latin is better than yours.

** This trope is especially noticable in relation to ''Honest Hearts''. No matter how imminent the Second Battle of Hoover Dam is, no one takes any notice if the Courier leaves the Mojave for almost a month.

** Diplomacy (and judicious use of seductive perks like Black Widow or Confirmed Bachelor) can open as many doors for you as a lock pick or a hacked computer terminal. The speech stat still reigns king, however -- if you're lucky, you can pass a speech check that doesn't require speech ''or'' barter, such as using your intelligence, explosives, et cetera rating instead. Passing speech checks is no longer percentive, either.

--->[[spoiler:'''Allen Marks''' (on recording): "Prolly shoulda stayed at home... and taken care of my ma. She... always used to say people who... murder and steal... die bad in the end."]]

** The most valuable (currency-wise) item in the game are gold bars from the ''Dead Money'' DLC. However, they weigh 35 pounds and most vendors don't have over 10000 caps on them at a time. On the plus side, if you can manage to drag out the entire set, you could purchase the entire inventories of the Gun Runners and Van Graffs and still have leftover change.

** There are several items in the game (ammunition, high-end weaponry in good repair, and certain medical supplies) which are worth significantly more per weight than the gold from the Sierra Madre and thus worth more than their weight in gold.

** The Fatman, which has less than 20 mini nukes to use in the ENTIRE game, at least until GRA came out and added more to purchase and new variants. The three Holy Frag Grenades which are even more powerful than the Fatman can only be obtained in a special encounter. And the Alien Blaster, a ridiculously powerful energy pistol that comes with a limited supply of ammo that you only get once.

** Mister [=RADical=], who found himself a radiation suit and assumed it made him totally immune to radiation because he couldn't "feel" any radiation in a highly radioactive area. Just in case you don't know how radiation works, you typically ''don't'' feel it, only its after-effects, and by the time radiation levels get high enough that you ''can'' feel them, you're as good as dead several times over. Radiation poisoning takes time to develop fully, which incidentally it did for Mister Radical, who passed it off as food poisoning. You find the idiot dead near a radioactive dump site, probably either been killed by his radiation poisoning or by the Golden Geckos inhabiting the place, and according to a log he had on him, he was preparing to drench himself in a fluid that was so horribly radioactive that, had he done so, it would have killed him and turned everything within a hundred feet of him nightmarishly radioactive in seconds.

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome:
** Hardcore Mode, which requires you to eat, drink, and sleep regularly, and keep track of your ammo and money's weights. Crippled Limbs must be healed by either a trip to the doctor or using a Doctor's Bag or Hydra item rather than just pumping stimpacks into it, and companion deaths are permanent.
** The NCR and the First Battle of Hoover Dam served as a reality check for the Legion. Conquering a bunch of disorganized tribes one by one is quite different from trying to take on an actual country that has a (comparatively) well-trained and well-equipped professional army. Also, human wave tactics worked very well in the past against tribals who focus on close combat, but against people with access to semi-automatic firearms and explosives, [[CurbStompBattle not so much]].
** The Mojave chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel got a similar lesson during the battle for the HELIOS One Solar Power Plant. The NCR was able to wipe out most of their forces simply because they had the ability to trade blows and replace lost manpower, while the technologically superior, but far smaller, Brotherhood could not. The fact that the Brotherhood's Elder and commander was a scientist who had no knowledge of military tactics, and a [[ControlFreak personality]] that made him [[GeneralFailure completely unfit for command]] certainly did not help.
** With the [[SillinessSwitch Wild Wasteland trait]], you will get [[WhenEldersAttack attacked by murderous grannies]] wielding rolling pins coming straight from a Monty Python sketch at one point. They last roughly as long as you'd expect violent grannies with improvised weapons would when attacking (without provocation even) a wastelander with a body count numbering in the hundreds wielding anything from a BoringButPractical {{Handgun}} or [[KnifeNut combat knife]] to a GatlingGood or [[EnergyWeapon Frickin' Laser Beams]] whom WouldHarmASenior (even if only in self-defense) and probably is a CombatPragmatist to boot.

** [[spoiler:Mr. House, more specifically the Mr. House that is the half-brother to the one in the Lucky 38, during his reign at H&H Tools.]]

* SinisterSouthwest: ''New Vegas'' adds some Western flavor to the series' normal post-apocalyptic wasteland. But the Dead Money DLC steers firmly into this trope: you get roped into a heist of the legendary Sierra Madre casino that's been bottled-up since pre-War times. Along the way you have to deal with a poisonous fog, creepy Ghost People, backstabbing companions, and ghostly (but still quite deadly) holograms that populate the casino and surrounding villa. [[spoiler:And then you find out the whole thing was built as a trap for a rival of the owner, who just so happens to be one of those backstabbing companions]]. As the narrator says, getting to the casino is not the hard part.