Characters / Fallout

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One day, a shotgun-toting man in a leather jacket walked into Junktown with his dog. The man was killed by thugs and the dog was left all alone. When another traveler walked into town a month later and befriended him, Dogmeat decided to follow the traveler to the ends of the Earth — it so happens this second traveler was the Player Character of the first Fallout game.

According to the manual for Fallout 2 where the Vault Dweller recounts his adventures, Dogmeat died running into a force field in the Mariposa Military Base, but returned in Fallout 2 in an optional random encounter to aid the Chosen One.

In Fallout 3 the Lone Wanderer finds Dogmeat in a junkyard, and Word of God is that somehow this is a descendant of the original Dogmeat. Another Dogmeat appears in Fallout 4, but he is (apparently) not related to the original Dogmeat family line and just happens to have the same name.

• Action Pet: A canine companion that fights by your side.
• Artificial Stupidity: "Bad dog! You're standing in my line of fire! That's better, now watch out for that forcef— DOGMEAT, NOOO!" So many players experienced this and recounted it, that it's canonically how the original Dogmeat died.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Once he spots an enemy, he will attack it even if the enemy hasn't seen you yet.
• Badass Family: Given the badassery of his Identical Grandson and his pups, it's safe to say that ass-biting is In the Blood.
• Born-Again Immortality: Pretty much; every Dogmeat is practically the same dog, but besides the first two sharing a Dogmeat despite his death under the Vault Dweller's care, they're all separate entities, with Broken Steel's Puppies! perk allowing you to replace Dogmeat with one of his pups if he dies and 4 featuring a Dogmeat (who is Essential and so doesn't die) of an entirely different breed. Chris Avellone's non-canon apocrypha states (in a joking tone) that Dogmeat is the "eternal dog champion" who will perennially fall and arise to save dogkind from extinction at humanity's hands.
• Canine Companion: A loyal one of the Post-Apocalyptic Dog variety.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Just how long do you think a mere dog is going to last against gun-toting bandits? Subverted in 3 if you have the Broken Steel add-on installed, with which he can now take an ungodly amount of punishment before going down.
• Dead Guy Junior: In Fallout 3 there's the Puppies! perk, added in Broken Steel. Should Dogmeat get killed in the line of duty, one of his puppies/reincarnation will appear by the Vault 101 entrance a short time later. The puppy is treated as if he were the original and is thus subject to the perk as well.
• Everything's Precious with Puppies: Awww, did Dogmeat die heroically in combat in the Capital Wasteland? Well, now your beloved companion is gone forever... or is he? With the Puppies! perk you'll never have to worry about his safety again! Whenever he bites it you'll just have to wait for a new doggie buddy to show up at Vault 101. Truly, puppies make everything better.
• Fragile Speedster: Dogmeat has tons of action points per turn and a nasty bite. Too bad he can't wear armor. Subverted in 3 thanks to the next trope.
• Heroic Dog:
  • When you first meet him in 3, he is fighting off the Raiders who killed his previous owner. Even without your intervention, he's very likely to defeat them all on his own, though he'll probably need a stimpack after that.
  • With the Broken Steel DLC installed in 3, he's able to go toe-to-toe against the most powerful mooks in the game at higher level -and win.
• Infinity -1 Sword: Like Fawkes and RL-3, he levels up with the player with the Broken Steel DLC added for Fallout 3, and can end up with insane health by time you reach level 30. The only thing keeping him from being Plus One is his lack of a long range attack.
• Killed Off for Real: The Vault Dweller's memoirs state that it's canon that the original Dogmeat died by running into a force field.
• Legacy Character: There's a Dogmeat in all four main games.
  • His 3 incarnation is a descendant of the original Dogmeat from Fallout 1. If he dies, a perk you can unlock at high level in Broken Steel allows you to adopt his puppy!
  • The 4 dog is an entirely different breed from the one seen in 3, so it may be a descendant of Dogmeat after he bred with a female German Shepard, or it may be this trope.
  • Dogmeat isn't around in New Vegas, but the player can find Rex the cyberdog as a replacement.
• Made of Iron: In 3, due to a bug/oversight^note Originally, non-human creatures couldn't level up, which resulted in a Can't Catch Up problem for non-humanoid companions i.e. Dogmeat, RL-3, and Fawkes. Broken Steel attempted a work-around to allow them to level up but the result is rather broken in terms of balance, when Broken Steel is installed, Dogmeat's health goes up by 100% of his base health every time you gain a level (human companions typically only gain about 2% of their base starting health when you gain a level). As a result after several levels he'll have more health than pretty much any other character in the game.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: Has zero karma requirements to be recruited or remain a companion. Justified since he's just a dog.
• Post-Apocalyptic Dog: One that travels, hunts and fights alongside the player in their travels across the irradiated Wasteland.
• Shout-Out: To the Canine Companion of heroes in both Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
• Stone Wall: In 3, with Broken Steel installed, Dogmeat can take massive amounts of damage (significantly more than even a Super Mutant Behemoth), but his bite attack isn't terribly damaging compared to firearms or heavy melee weapons, and he serves more as a distraction/tank, though he can take down lower level enemies like molerats or raiders.
• Suicidal Overconfidence:
  • "Dogmeat, don't get too close to that Deathclaw/Super Mutant wielding Minigun/forcefie—" (ZAP) "DOGMEAAAT!"
  • In 3, unless you have the Broken Steel add-on installed, he will die if he's caught in the crossfire when you use explosives or a powerful enough gun.
• Team Pet: He's often the only animal you can get to follow you. Fallout 2 has other dogs you can acquire, but none of them are as famous (or powerful) as Dogmeat.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: How Dogmeat survived the first game in spite of dying in it. The way you get him in Fallout 2 is a random encounter where cut characters and Dummied Out incarnations of existing characters can be found, and Dogmeat is among them and follows you out. Considering some of the other random encounters in Fallout 2, it's possible that some sort of time or dimensional travel is actually taking place here.
• Too Awesome to Use: He's an iconic companion and is actually very useful in battle. But since he can only attack in close combat, can't wear armor and, unless you have Broken Steel installed, remains at a relatively low HP level, you'll most likely let him wait at home while you go on very dangerous, high-level quests on your own out of fear he could get himself killed. Which will be very likely to happen once you run into a Yao Guai...
• Too Dumb to Live: He won't make the distinction between a low-level Raider and a Deathclaw. And he won't care either if you pointlessly try to save his life by tossing a Nuka Grenade at the latter, either.
• Undying Loyalty: No matter how implacable the enemy is, Dogmeat will protect its human owner to his last breath. Which will come along very quickly if the enemy is dangerous enough and, in 3, Broken Steel wasn't installed.
• Video Game Caring Potential: You can pet him, treat his injuries, feed him yummy food, tell him he's a good boy, and prevent him from dying horribly while he tries to defend your life. (sniff)

^{Harold and an older Bob in Fallout 3,}

A person horribly mutated by FEV, he resembles a ghoul pretty strongly, aside from having a plant growing from his head. The plant's name is Bob, but he calls it Herbert... which is pretty sophisticated humor coming from a man with a root system entrenched in his brain. Harold is an escapee from the Hub who entered into Vault 29 at 5 years old when the bombs began to fall, eventually becoming the oldest person there. As a matter of fact, he knew the Master when he was still a human, as well as the original Vault Dweller. In this game, he's a beggar in the Hub who provides information to the player for a price.

He wandered as a merchant and storyteller for quite some time, until he banded with a group of wastelanders to raid the Mariposa Military Base. After said raid went belly up, he woke up in the Wasteland, unconscious, but with a strange artifact with the FEV virus that turned him into a Mutant. He was carried back into the Hub by traders, and all his employees and partners turned on him. The Chosen One finds him in the Ghoul city of Gecko, where he's turned into a Mayor.

In the non-canon game Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, he's found in the Ghoul settlement of Los.

By the time of 3, he's migrated to the Capital Wasteland and settled in the region now known as Oasis, becoming the epicenter of it. And by "settling" we mean that he became a literal tree, with Bob turning him into what it is (being named "Herbert" by him) taking root after Harold stopped to take a rest. By the time he woke up, he found out he couldn't move anymore: Bob has grown too much and he literally puts down permanent roots, Bob growing into a massive forest with Harold as the central hub of the network.

• Action Survivor: He's survived more than a hundred years and has been around some pretty dangerous places and people, but he still endures. In fact, he's a very old friend of Richard Gray — the man who became the Master.
• And I Must Scream: He's been stuck immobile in one position for decades after the tree in his head spread throughout his body and rooted him in place, with side effects including his heart being removed from his body and left dangling several meters below the rest of him. By the time you find him in 3, he longs for death. If you side with Birch or Laurel or choose to ignore the quest, Harold will live the rest of his days as an immobile tree.
• Beat Still, My Heart: Bob growing through him in Fallout 3 has removed his heart some ten or twelve feet below his head and brain, yet he lives and it beats. It is incredibly irradiated, and going down to destroy it yourself will mutate you and make your skin as hard as bark.
• Been There, Shaped History:
  • Harold's been involved, inadvertently or otherwise, with certain events that would impact various parts of the wasteland, from being part of Richard Gray's ill-fated expedition to Mariposa, to becoming mayor of Gecko and eventually, turning into a sentient forest in the Capital Wasteland.
  • One of the dialogue options revealed in 3 by having a high enough level of Intelligence reveals that he escaped from the Mariposa Military Base.
  • "Bob" was with him when the events of Fallout 2 were taking place.
• Body Horror: He starts out in pretty rough shape, with a face heavily distorted by warped skin, with exposed gums and one eye permanently shut by scar tissue, and gets worse as the years go by and the tree spreads through his body turning his flesh to what seems to be wood and removing his heart to several meters below him, although Bob seems to have saved him from the fate of fellow FEV-sufferer Richard Grey...
• Companion Cube: He talks to and about Bob as if they were the best of friends. Again, Bob is a tree growing from his head.
• Cool Old Guy: Some NPCs remark that he has a lot of interesting stories to tell. They're not lying. Among other things, he started a successful water caravan when the vaults first opened, got turned into a mutant, became the mayor of the Ghoul city of Gecko, gave it up to become an adventurer, walked for thousands of miles from the California region on the West Coast to the Capital Wasteland on the East Coast, mutated still further into a sapient tree, accidentally propagated the first living forest seen in centuries, and became a god to a small cult of good-natured loonies called the Treeminders.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The player character can opt to burn him to death after he specifically begs him not to.
• Cursed with Awesome: He may be stuck in an And I Must Scream purgatory, but Harold is bringing genuine green life back to the world. He's also able to use his senses through the trees Bob sprouts, so he's becoming a Genius Loci too.
• Cutting Off the Branches: The sole presence of Harold in 3 means the Reactor in Fallout 2 didn't blew up. No word if the Chosen One earned the sympathy of Vault City citizens and/or Gecko's settlers.
• Deadpan Snarker: Especially in 3.
• Death Seeker: In the third game, he asks the player to kill him.
• Did You Die?: Inverted. If you ever ask him how he survived whatever calamity he got involved in, he'll say: "Didn't. Got killed." He loves that joke.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Bob has one, Herbert. Harold claims he hates it, and in the third game wonders if his usage of it annoyed Bob to the point he mutated Harold into a living tree.
• Fate Worse than Death: How he feels about his situation in the third game. The player can make him see otherwise, or they can help him escape it.
• Friend to All Children: Or at least to one. Harold enjoys the company of Yew in 3, and she's one of the few persons that Harold likes to have around.
  Lone Wanderer: Which Treeminder do you get along with the best?
  Harold: Actually, the kid is the nicest one of all. Yew's her name. She sneaks in here sometimes and just lets me talk about stuff I wanna talk about. Bob really likes her too, cause she makes me happy.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: A heroic version, he went from just a random explorer to progenitor of a whole species of radiation-resistant tree life.
• Genius Loci: In a sense. After Bob overwhelmed him and formed a forest around him, Harold developed a further mutation that allowed him to see everything going on in his forest through the trees themselves, effectively turning him into the Mind of Oasis.
• A God I Am Not: In Fallout 3, the Treeminders who care for him think that, as a living tree at the heart of a lush forest in the middle of a wasteland, he's a god. Harold has tried over and over to get them to believe that he's not a god, but they assume he's "testing their faith."
  Lone Wanderer: If people thought I was a god, I'd exploit it for all it's worth!
  Harold: Hey, I thought that too... at first. I had them sing me songs, I made them do stupid dances and things like that. Bob even told me to make Maple stand on his head for a whole day! After a while though, it just gets boring. Then it becomes a nuisance and now it's completely driving me nuts!
• The Grotesque: Even by comparison with ghouls, Harold is unpleasant to look at.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: In 3, because of his status as an immobile tree and the Treeminders' negative to killing him, he requests the Lone Wanderer to end his life. And he really wants to die.
• I Have Many Names: According to the Official Game Guide: "The Lord", "Him", "The Great One", "The One Who Grows, Gives, and Guides" and "The Talking Tree".
• Kill It with Fire: Trees burn, after all.
• Mercy Kill: Harold asks the player character to kill him off. You can fulfill his request as painlessly as possible, or... not.
  Lone Wanderer: You want me to murder you?
  Harold: Oh no, no, no. It wouldn't be murder. You'd be doing me a favor. You see, I've been stuck here for over two decades now... rooted right into the ground. The only friends I've got are Bob and those weirdos out there who think I'm a god.
• Mr. Exposition: He provides a lot of Backstory for the game, especially about Richard Grey, before he became the Master.
• The Needs of the Many: Harold's death wishes in 3 made him forgot that he's the moral and emotional support of the Treeminders and that, as revealed upon his death, without him the Treeminders are lost. The Lone Wanderer can convince him of such a thing.
  Lone Wanderer: You've become an important part of their life. Without you, they're lost.
  Harold: So, they really need me that badly, huh? I guess I never thought of it that way. Awfully selfish of me. Should we give them another chance, Herbert? Fine, fine. I mean Bob. I still think it's funny when I call him Herbert.
• The Nicknamer: He gave two names to the mutation that turned him into what he is: "Bob" and "Herbert". He says "Bob" is its "real" name but that he likes to call him "Herbert" because he finds it funny.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Harold looks like the Ghouls, but he's technically not one.
• Plant Person: Courtesy of Bob, the tree growing from his head. Downplayed in the first games, where Bob is little more than a twig and then a fruiting branch, but by Fallout 3, he's turned into a tree with a face.
• Quest Giver:
  • In Brotherhood of Steel he gives you the quests "Find Missing Pieces" and "Romp with Ruby".
  • In 3, he gives you the local sidequest "Oasis", in which he asks the player character tto kill him.
• Riddle for the Ages: Harold's ambiguous nature, whether it be a Ghoul, Mutant or anything in between, was intended by the developers of the first game to demonstrate that whatever lives in the world outside of the scope of that game won't always fall into the same neat categories as what's seen in Southern California.
• Self-Deprecation: Uses this a lot as a coping mechanism.
• Shadow Archetype: It's not apparent (because of the different rates of their mutations), but Harold has integrated with nature in the same way that the Master integrated with technology. And while both have suffered Sanity Slippage from the experience, Harold has become more benevolent (toward the residents of Gecko, the Treeminders, etc.) while Richard Grey plummeted into monstrous behavior.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: It's implied in Fallout 4 that the Brotherhood may have killed Harold for being a mutant, especially one who was "poisoning the earth" by sowing mutant seeds everywhere. Fallout Shelter Online (whose canonicity is ambiguous but which Bethesda has declined to describe as non-canon), in contrast, indicates Harold is still alive during the events of Fallout 4.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Back in 1, he gave the Vault Dweller an important piece of information that allowed him to solve the water purification problem in Vault 13... which led to the Dweller's dismissal by the Vault 13 Overseer and the foundation of the New California Republic.
• Stop Worshipping Me!: The Treeminders venerate him: he wishes they'd stop, especially because they keep twisting what he actually says into supporting their own weird beliefs.
• Transflormation: Bob slowly overtakes his body between his appearances, turning him from a ghoul to a tree man in a couple hundred years.
• Treants: Not really; Bob is the tree surrounding Harold, but Harold is the one who speaks. The Treeminders are convinced that Harold is the tree, and the confusing situation can keep the Lone Wanderer in a similar position of thought until Harold gives them his name.
• Unwanted False Faith: Despite his repeated assertions he is not a God and even when he lashes out and orders them to do cruel things, they instead believe this to be "tests" to prove their faith.
• Wandering the Earth: Between Fallout 2 and 3, he'd been wandering about the continent until eventually (and literally) taking roots outside the Capital Wasteland.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: By the time players meet him in Fallout 3, he has been stuck in one place for so long due to Bob's out-of-control growth that he doesn't really want to live anymore. He's suffering of such level of depression his fear of living forever surpassed that of his fear of fire or explosives. Thus, the Oasis quest is all about deciding Harold's fate.
  Lone Wanderer: You don't actually seem that sad. Why do you want to die?
  Harold: I've been literally rooted to this spot thanks to Bob for maybe twenty or thirty years... I can't even remember anymore. Can you imagine being stuck in one place for that long not being able to eat or to read or to sleep or anything? In the meantime, I have these Treeminders bothering me every day about things I don't even care about. I can't stand it anymore.
  
  Lone Wanderer: Hey, life is a gift. Even if it lasts a long time, be glad you have it!
  Harold: I've tried to stay happy, really I have. Bloomseer Poplar thinks I'll live for hundreds of years... maybe even more! Can you imagine THAT? Stuck here for centuries? I can't do it, I just want to be alone. Just me and Bob until the end.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
  • He fears fire, so frying him (not his heart) with any flamethrower, the Heavy Incinerator, the Shishkebab or another fire-based weapon is how you earn Negative Karma in the area and the entirety of Oasis turning on you and hunting you. Strangely, this doesn't apply to the Burnmaster (a beefed-up Flamer).
  • He's also afraid of explosives, which means that the Missile Launcher, Nuka-Grenade, Plasma Grenade and the Fat Man also work. Note that this doesn't include any mines.
  • In both cases, the ending video after the Purifier is activated in the main game will show Harold being burned, and Three Dog will call you out for your heinous action.

He is many things: an unexpected ally, a strange gunslinger, a guardian angel. Appearing to those in need, he lets off a quick shot (only one is needed) and disappears just as fast. He is... the Mysterious Stranger.

• Alternative Character Interpretation: invoked In-Universe. Nick Valentine, being presumably unaware of the Stranger's association with the player characters of previous games, considers his killings of apparently random and unconnected targets as evidence that he is a dangerous Serial Killer.
• Ambiguously Brown: The Stranger in Fallout 3 and New Vegas is tan-skinned enough to be ethnically ambiguous.
• Ambiguously Human: Whatever he is, he looks incredibly good for his age. Theories over exactly what he is range from him being a human-looking Ghoul to a renegade synth. ^note  Although his presence in Fallout 1 takes place before the creation of human-looking synths. We'll likely never know for sure.
• Arc Welding: Fallout 4 has Nick Valentine investigating a case on him, confirming that the Stranger is a real person and has been since the first game. Nick further begins speculating on how the Stranger is able to appear across the continent decades apart, and can strike without being seen and then vanish just as quickly.
• Badass Longcoat: He uses it to supposedly help hide his identity.
• Beyond the Impossible: While implied to be somehow a real person, he can show up in some pretty outlandish places. The ultimate example of this has to be Operation: Anchorage, where he can show up in a computer simulation meant only for one person. Lampshaded in Mothership Zeta, where the Lone Wanderer can comment that anytime now their "friend" should show up to help them... in an alien spaceship orbiting the Earth.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: Carries an ornate .44 magnum revolver in New Vegas. The Lonesome Drifter, heavily implied to be his son, can also give you a similar pistol.
• Deus ex Machina: Invoked. If you're in a tight spot, you might get lucky by having him show up to take out a Deathclaw or some other high-level foe.
• Disappeared Dad: He's implied to be this to the Lonesome Drifter.
• Distaff Counterpart: He has one in the form of Miss Fortune in Fallout: New Vegas, however, she does an Area of Effect attack in contrast to his single-target One-Hit Kill.
• Doing In the Wizard: Nick Valentine begins putting together a case on him in Fallout 4 and proposes how the Mysterious Stranger could operate, and in doing so makes it apparent that there may be mundane methods behind the Stranger's decades-long appearances and ability to appear and disappear at a moment's notice.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The perk worked very differently back in Fallout 1 and 2; the player character would have a random chance of gaining a leveled companion whenever they entered a hostile random encounter on the world map. This figure wore a leather jacket, had a leveled weapon, and could be either a man or a woman depending on the player character's gender. The Mysterious Stranger would also be Killed Off for Real (or at least cease showing up to help for the rest of the game) if he/she died in combat. From Fallout 3 onwards, he will randomly appear to finish off an enemy the player has injured with a VATS attack, then vanish.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: He appears just as quickly as he kills, disappearing with nary a trace. As such, his Small Guns (later Guns) and Sneak are both at 100 in 3 and New Vegas. The Mysterious Magnum that can be found in the latter also plays his musical riff when unholstered, and acts as an improved holdout weapon when one's Sneak reaches 50.
• Hand Cannon: He carries a .44 magnum capable of delivering a One-Hit Kill on even the toughest enemies in the games.
• Fedora of Asskicking: He wears one and can kill literally everything in the game in one shot.
• Inexplicably Awesome: Who is he? Where does he come from, and where does he go? Why does he help you? Well, if we knew, then he wouldn't be a very mysterious stranger, now would he?
• I See Them, Too: Nick Valentine, who's out to arrest him, will exclaim in frustration when he disappears.
• Legacy Character: Nick speculates that this may be the case-if nothing else, it would explain his different appearances in each game, and how he's managed to stay active for nearly two centuries.
• Leitmotif: His appearance and exit is associated with a cool Western riff in 3 and New Vegas and with a Film Noir one in 4.
• Murder by Mistake: A frustrating part of his design at least in Fallout 3 is his lack of proper programming when it came to his spawn location. He would appear in a random spot on the map and fire at your target regardless of whether your shot already killed the target, whether or not something was between him and the target, or whether or not some friendly NPC was in his way. Since his shot is generally a one-hit kill... There were also times he could even sidestep somewhere that made the shot he was attempting impossible wasting the perk activation entirely.
• Mysterious Protector: He shows up in battle to help out the player if they have the perk associated with him.
• Mysterious Stranger: Um... yeah. You take a perk and he shows up once in a while to save your bacon.
• Older Than They Look: Assuming that the Stranger is the same person in each game, he's been going strong since the time of Fallout 76, set nearly two hundred years before the events of Fallout 4, the chronologically latest-set game in the franchise. To this end, Nick speculates that he may be a unique Ghoul with minimal skin damage.
• One-Hit Kill: His .44 magnum deals 9000 damage per shot.
• Race Lift: Maybe. Assuming the incarnation of the character seen in Fallout 4 is meant to represent the same person as in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, his appearance is changed from a clean-shaved Asian man to a white man with a bushy mustache.
• Real After All: While the first three games in the series treated him solely as a gameplay quirk, New Vegas contained a Mythology Gag that implied he was the father of the Lonesome Drifter, and then Fallout 4 implies he's canon.
• Riddle for the Ages: Who, or what, is he? Why has he been crossing the continent for two hundred years helping random Vault dwellers? How does he know where to find you no matter what kind of crazy adventure you're on? Nobody knows.
• Serial Killer: This is the conclusion Nick Valentine comes to in regards to his motive, attacking people at random out of nowhere. In-universe, he ultimately doesn't seem to have a motive beyond helping out certain, seemingly unconnected individuals in fights, but out-of-universe, he appears at random when you have the Mysterious Stranger perk.
• Stealth Expert: Again, maybe. Nick Valentine theorizes that, due to the fact he only ever uses a conventional .44, his ability to appear and disappear at will is actually just the result of expert infiltration training rather than stealth tech. It's difficult to confirm or deny this in-game due to the fact that he appears and departs exclusively during camera transitions.
• The Spook: No known name, identity, or indeed any sign that he exists at all outside of his killings (apart from one character heavily implied to be his son in New Vegas). No obvious links between himself and those he assists, nor those he kills. Appearance changes between games. His entrance and exit is not accompanied by any tell or trace other than a unique musical sting, unlike all known forms of stealth and teleportation in the series (which use Visible Invisibility and very loud and visible effects, respectively).

The mascot of Vault-Tec and of the Fallout franchise. With a Vault Suit on his back and a smile on his face, Vault Boy is plastered all over merchandise, menu icons, and posters in-universe, beckoning civilians to a new life in the safety of a Vault-Tec bunker.

• Butt-Monkey: In the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. animated shorts, he's usually used to demonstrate the effects of going into the Wasteland poorly statted or unprepared. This invariably takes the form on him being horribly mauled by mutants, raiders and roving animals.
• Distaff Counterpart: Vault Girl, his family version.
• Expy: Was inspired by Rich Uncle Pennybags, AKA the Monopoly guy.
• Guest Fighter: He makes an appearance as a DLC Mii outfit in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
• Iconic Outfit: The blue and yellow vault jumpsuit, usually the only thing he's shown wearing.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: In-Universe. It is revealed in the TV Show that Vault-Boy is based on Cooper Howard. Specifically, Cooper was hired by Vault-Tec to promote their brand. During a photo-shoot where Coop does several poses in a Vault Suit, he improvises and does a pose where he makes a thumbs up, smiles, and winks. Apparently, the Vault-Tec Marketing Dept. liked it so much that after Coop severed his ties with the company upon finding out the truth about what they did, they used it as the basis of the iconic thumbs-up pose for their new mascot, and thus Vault-Boy was born.
• Perpetual Smiler: Most of the time, he's shown smiling.
• Product Placement: Several instances of this happen in-universe with Vault Boy in pre-war media.
• Series Mascot: Vault Boy is essentially synonymous with the Fallout franchise, often appearing in publicity material or representing it as a whole in other works.
• They Killed Kenny Again: He tends to suffer gruesome situations in every S.P.E.C.I.A.L. short.
• The Worf Effect: In the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. shorts, Vault Boy is portrayed as a badass adventurer who gets brutally murdered by the mutants in order to show how dangerous dump stats and failed skill checks can be.