Fallout 4: Difference between revisions

{{tropelist}}

* [[Adorkable]]: Travis, the owner and DJ of Diamond City Radio, is very shy and constantly bumbles his delivery yet still tries to do his job. {{spoiler|His questline eventually leads him to become much more confident and having a matching smooth radio voice to boot.}}

* [[Aluminum Christmas Trees]]: The titular town in the ''Far Harbor'' DLC exists in real life Maine as Bar Harbor.

** The law school Nora got her JD from does exist, albeit under a slightly different name.

** To a much lesser extent, there's also "Welcome home."

** From solely the ''Nuka-World'' DLC, there's the phrase "The real deal."

* [[Artificial Human]]: One of the main plot points of the game is that of synthetic humanoids - or, as everyone properly calls them, "Synths." Gen 3 Synths are [[They Walk Among Us|virtually identical to that of ordinary humans]], but have the following differences: They're [[Made of Iron]] in comparison to ordinary Wastelanders, [[The Needless|require no food or water to survive]] (and, by consequence, can neither gain nor loose weight), are either [[The Ageless]] or [[Immortality Begins At Twenty|just age incredibly slowly]] in comparison to ordinary humans, cannot interbreed with each other or have children with humanity, [[The Immune|are immune]] to radiation poisoning, [[Healing Factor|heal from injuries at a slightly accelerated rate]] than ordinary humanity does (along with generally having enhanced senses and strength), and can have their minds completely overwritten/reprogrammed. The division between how organic and mechanical they are is pretty blurry.

* [[Artistic License Nuclear Physics]]: As in every other game in the series, the laws of physics have more in common with 1950s pulp ''Science!'' than reality.

* [[Best Served Cold]]:

** Nick Valentine's questline eventually leads to a confrontation with a ghoulified gangster boss named Eddie Winter {{spoiler|who was responsible for killing the fiancee of the original Valentine. By then however, he's largely forgotten about it, having taken place over 200 years earlier}}.

** The Sole Survivor's family ''also'' counts as this, considering how {{spoiler|the Sole Survivor is a [[Fish Out of Temporal Water]] suffering from PTSD, their beloved husband/wife is [[The Lost Lenore|long dead]], their son Shaun is now the main leader of the Institute ([[Big Bad|and potential main antagonist]]), and their "replacement" child is a Synth copy of the original Shaun at 10 years old}}.

* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: Much like ''New Vegas'', all of the endings to the main storyline have their positives and negatives.

* [[Call Back]]/[[Continuity Nod]]: In ''Far Harbor'', [[Arc Villain|High Confessor Tektus]] claims that "the great prophet" [[Fallout 3|Confessor Cromwell]] told his chapter of the Children of Atom to go north and "spread Atom's word", which is how they eventually got to the Island.

** Most of the songs playing on Radio Freedom and the Settlement Recruitment Beacons (the Minutemen's two radio stations) were also played on Enclave Radio in ''Fallout 3''.

** The Institute can be described as what [[Fallout New Vegas|the Think Tank and Big MT]] would be like if fully sober and sane.

** The Minutemen are akin to a prototypical NCR crossed with the Desert Rangers seen in the first ''Fallout'' games. The formal founding of the NCR itself is captured in a flashback sequence via someone else's memories - {{spoiler|Conrad Kellogg's.}}. The radio in the sequence specifically mentions Aradesh's election as its first president.

** Dunwich Borers, the same company that owned the infamous Dunwich Building in DC (as seen in ''Fallout 3''), had operations around Boston that are just as Lovecraftian.

** Quite a few characters from ''Fallout 3'' make a return.

** The ''Far Harbor'' DLC reveals that there's at least someone among the Children of Atom {{spoiler|who's a defector from the Enclave}}.

* [[Central Theme]]: A few different ones are offered over the course of the game.

** [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|Who deserves to be a part of society?]] While this is most obvious with the questions surrounding the Synths on how sapient they are, this really applies to all of the Wasteland's different "races". The very few "pure" humans left, irradiated humanity, Super Mutants, Ghouls, Synths, all variants of mutated folk - it ultimately doesn't matter, as they ''all'' have to live together. Unfortunately, [[Fantastic Racism|some think they're better than others]].

** What do you [[Sadistic Choice|have to give up/are ''willing'' to give up]] [[He Who Fights Monsters|in order to make the world a better place?]]

** Part of the Brotherhood's rationale behind stopping the Institute, according to Elder Maxson, is to make sure that it doesn't become ''even more'' of a threat.

** The Minutemen are a benevolent example, as they can go from being almost wiped out to the last man at the start of the game's plot to becoming ''the'' dominant force in the Commonwealth.

* [[Genius Bonus]]: The Brotherhood of Steel's airship - the ''Prydwen'' - is named after a ship used by [[King Arthur]] and his knights while searching for magical weapons.

** It's possible to find two men - Mikey and Moss - [[Serious Business|having a spirited discussion]] [[Seinfeldian Conversation|about the definition of a sandwich]]. This was the subject of a real life 2012 court case in Massachusetts.

** The {{spoiler|[[Offing the Offspring|Fillicide]]}} Ending: Quite possibly the '''darkest''' ending possible ([[Video Game Cruelty Punishment|and one of the most difficult to accomplish]]). {{spoiler|The Sole Survivor [[Go Mad From the Revelation|Goes Mad From The Revelation]] upon first meeting Father/Shaun in the Institute and kills him. This renders the Institute ''permanently'' hostile, meaning the Sole Survivor must also [[Kill Em All]] before they can leave, and the surface Commonwealth collapses into violent infighting and war between the Institute's remains, the Railroad, and the East Coast Brotherhood.}}

** For the ''Nuka-World'' DLC, the Sole Survivor could opt to side with any of the dominant Raider gangs to wipe their rivals out and ultimately plunge the Commonwealth into darkness.<ref>However, you should try and wait to do this until ''after'' accomplishing the main storyline for the base game. This is one of the only ways to make the Minutemen hostile to the Sole Survivor, and will render you S.O.L. if you've already suitably antagonized the Railroad, Institute, and Brotherhood.</ref> The Sole Survivor can, of course, [[Take a Third Option]] and kill every single one of them.

* [[Mythology Gag]]: Quite a few appear.

** The first trailer begins in a manner similar to the intro of [[Fallout 1|the first game]], by slowly panning out from a TV set to show the ruins of the Wasteland around it.

** Porter Gage calls Mirelurks "Mudcrabs" in a reference to ''Fallout's'' sister series, ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]''.

** The relationship between the Commonwealth Minutemen and the Settlers they protect is heavily based after that of the Desert Rangers from the original ''[[Wasteland (video game)|Wasteland]]''. The ''Fallout'' series is generally seen as the [[Spiritual Successor]] to ''Wasteland''.

* [[My God, What Have I Done?]]: Captain Zao's long since regretted his part in the Great War. It's also implied that his submarine, the ''Yangtze'', may have been responsible for launching the warhead that wound up landing in what became the Glowing Sea.

** You can get this reaction from the {{spoiler|Mechanist, but only if you convince them to accept the truth that their Robobrains are directing their bots to kill innocents.}}

* [[Not So Different]]:

** Captain Zao is this to a Minutemen-aligned Male Sole Survivor. Both are the last living residents of the Pre-War militaries that nearly caused the extinction of all life, and simply want to rebuild their long-since dead nations into what they ''should'' have been. And his friendly demeanor to the Sole Survivor can help show that China wasn't that different from the United States before the Resource Wars and resultant Great War.

** Both the Minutemen and Railroad are rather similar in their outlooks, to the point that it's possible for the two factions to join forces.

** To a degree, the Railroad and the Institute. As both, due to lacking resources in one way or another, have to resort to subterfuge, covert operations and generally keeping a low profile. Also, the fate of Synths under their "protection" is largely the same - having their personalities destroyed through memory wipes, but they happen for different reasons - the Institute do so because they view the Synths' self-awareness as software bugs, and the Railroad do so because giving Synths new personalities & appearances makes it harder for the Institute to track them down while taking away their traumatic memories.

** Similarly, most of the Institute's countless scientists are quite friendly and pleasant to the Sole Survivor, despite the horrific actions that their experiments have accomplished on the surface. This is partly due to both [[Believing Their Own Lies|cultural indoctrination]] [[Bigger Bad|started by the Institute's founders]], and that most of the Institute's residents [[Locked Out of the Loop|genuinely haven't the faintest idea about ''any'' of their atrocities.]]

* [[Ragnarok Proofing]]: Utilities seem to have held up remarkably well, given a nuclear war and over 200 years of neglect. Some buildings still have working water fountains, and working lights, computer terminals, and recorded announcements are ridiculously common. Implicitly [[Justified Trope|Justified]], with it being implied that Boston was ''especially'' "prepared for the future," even when compared to other American cities.

* [[Really 700 Years Old]]:

** Technically, the Sole Survivor and Shaun {{spoiler|aka Father/the Director}}, though they [[Slept Through the Apocalypse]].

** The enigmatic, intellectually-minded and seemingly human Cabot family have managed to maintain a Pre-War lifestyle and have clear memories of how life was like generation before. {{spoiler|This is explained as due to an immortality serum that the family patriarch, Lorenzo Cabot, discovered in an alien wreck 400 years earlier, also giving him telepathic powers in the process. Said immortality however doesn't extend to bodily harm, meaning that they're just as prone to gunfire as most anyone else in the Wasteland.}}

* [[The Remnant]]: Initially, all that's left of the Minutemen (at least who still openly identify as such) are Preston Garvey, a handful of volunteers and a small group of wasteland refugees. It's up to the Sole Survivor however whether the Minutemen can rise into new heights or disappear forever in blood.

** Vertibirds and Power Armor more advanced than the T-51 (the T-60, which is explained away as being a [[Super Prototype]] that was around before the Great War) appear, though only in limited quantities and present solely during the ''last'' years before the bombs fell post-Battle of Anchorage. The T-60 in particular is also described not as a wholly new model, instead as being a more refined upgrade on the T-45 as seen in ''Fallout 3''.

** Drugs like Jet, which were implied to have existed prior to their discovery in ''Fallout 2,'' are confirmed to have been around in the Pre-War world, implying their rediscovery by Myron was a coincidence. Since the crafting recipe is pretty much poop fumes (fertilizer + plastic), it's likely that Myron wasn't the first one to come up with it.

* [[Right-Handed Left-Handed Guns]]: Some of the guns are modeled this way, notably the Thompson and, particularly glaringly, the bolt-action hunting rifle. Possibly [[Justified Trope|Justified]], as [[Truth in Television|current militaries often ''do'' supply bolt action rifles with opposite to normal actions,]] with the intent of the wielder using their left hand to cycle the weapon & their right to operate the trigger, allowing for faster shooting. [[Rule of Cool|Or it might have been done to just give the reload animations a more unique look]].

* [[Romanticism Versus Enlightenment]]: The East Coast Brotherhood of Steel and Institute fall along these lines, respectively.

* [[Scenery Gorn]]: In addition to the blasted ruins left behind by the War, there's the Glowing Sea, an irradiated hellscape where the nuclear bomb meant for Boston actually landed.

* [[Scenery Porn]]: Both the Pre-War and 2287-era Commonwealth are quite a sight to behold, to say the least.

**** A ''third'' reference to Lovecraft is the Kingsport Lighthouse. Kingsport was the earliest fictional town in what became known as [[Lovecraft Country]], and in ''The Festival'', a group of cloaked cultists perform pre-human rites there.

**** A ''very'' obscure one involving Cabot House. {{spoiler|The House may be named after the Cabot Museum from the H.P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald story ''Out of the Aeons''. The museum is located in Beacon Hill and used to be a mansion before its conversion.}}.

** The Bloodworms found around Nuka-World (especially at Dry Rock Gulch) are more or less the Graboids from the [[Tremors|''Tremors'']] franchise, albeit scaled down heavily in size.

** The caricature of Father that appears in the quest pictures looks exactly like [[Mega Man|Dr. Light]].

** A corpse can be found beside a tractor, a broken fence and two Feral Ghouls, referencing a scene from Episode 1 of Telltale Games' ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walking_Dead_%28video_game%29 The Walking Dead]''.

* [[Shown Their Work]]:

* [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism]]:

* [[Story Breadcrumbs]]:

** Considering their [[The Spartan Way|impressive training]], superior armaments compared to most other factions, and usage of [[Powered Armor|Power Armor]], Brotherhood Paladins & Knights ''also'' count as this.

* [[Take That]]: One can sometimes find tiny hairbrushes on dead Deathclaws, which might be a jab at [[Fallout Tactics Brotherhood of Steel|Fallout Tactics']] infamous "hairy Deathclaws" redesign.

* [[Town with a Dark Secret]]: Vault 81 is a rather benevolent example. On the one hand, it's a rather upbeat time capsule of Pre-War America that's a control vault in all but name, though it's (rationally) wary of outsiders. {{spoiler|But its original purpose, as a testing ground for diseases and bioweapons, was never implemented in the first place. The first Overseer sealing away the few scientists meant to conduct the experiments, while said scientists developed a conscience and willingly accepted their fate}}.

** [[Stepford Smiler|Covenant]], however, plays this straight.

* [[Wacky Wayside Tribe]]:

** The [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|Viking ghoul raiders]] around the ''FMS Northern Star'' wreck. They're much less wacky however in that they're strongly implied to be what's left of a Norwegian ship crew who've been stranded in the Commonwealth since the Great War. [[Bilingual Bonus|Their entirely Norwegian dialogue]] even highlights how they want to be left alone and just want to get home.