In the Fallout franchise, the world is destroyed by nuclear bombs on October 23, 2077. The timeline of the games range from as early as 2101 in Fallout 76 all the way to 2287 in Fallout 4. Despite the vast number of years between the Great War and the games, there are a handful of characters who have survived the nuclear armageddon through a variety of methods and continue to live in the post-apocalyptic wasteland we know and love.
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The Fallout franchise is filled with tragic backstories for many of its characters, but some are far more dark and depressing than others.
Some characters have survived by being so exposed to radiation that they have turned into Ghouls. Others have survived thanks to unique technology such as cyrostasis. While most pre-War characters are memorable, a handful of them truly stick in the minds of Fallout players and viewers.
10 Daisy
One Of Goodneighbor's Resident Ghouls
- Fallout 4
- Merchant NPC
Daisy lives and works in Goodneighbor, a community for Ghouls. She has a shop right at the front entrance to the town, and players can talk with her about pre-War life. If they do, she recommends that they check out the Hotel Rexford to run into the Vault-Tec Salesman.
She tells the Sole Survivor that she grew up to be an angry young woman who was widowed thanks to one of the many wars fought between the US and China before the Great War. Despite that part of her past, she maintains fond memories of the library and can offer the player caps in exchange for clearing the Boston Public Library of Super Mutants.
9 The Vault-Tec Salesman
The NPC That Inadvertently Saves The Player
- Fallout 4
- NPC that can join one of the player's settlements
At the beginning of Fallout 4, a solicitor knocks on the player character's front door. This solicitor is a Vault-Tec sales agent who was tasked with registering as many of the residents of Sanctuary Hills to live in Vault 111 in the event of a nuclear apocalypse as possible. Unbeknownst to him, this Vault was an experiment on the long-lasting effects of cryostasis.
Unfortunately for him, the salesman was also never informed that he would be turned away from Vault 111, despite his dedication to Vault-Tec. He eventually became a ghoul due to radiation exposure, and players can stumble across him in the Hotel Rexford in Goodneighbor. He is ecstatic to meet someone that he had seen before becoming a ghoul, and will gladly go to live in any of the player's settlements, on the condition that the player comes to visit him.
8 Bud Askins
He Devised A Scheme To Keep Vault-Tec On Top
- Fallout TV Show
- Vault-Tec Executive
Bud Askins had an illustrious career, first working for the company that made the T-45 Power Armor and later working his way up to become one of Vault-Tec's top executives. He also devised a plan to ensure that Vault-Tec would eventually lead the world by essentially using time as a weapon. His brain was implanted in a small "brain-in-a-roomba" so that he could oversee Vaults 31, 32, and 33 using his "Bud's Buds" program.
Bud lived inside a small control room within Vault 31 from which he ensured that his own trainees would be moved into Vaults 31 and 33 to become Overseers. He also oversaw the bombing of Shady Sands, as destroying the significant surface powers was a key part of establishing Vault-Tec hegemony in the future. Despite surviving as nothing more than a brain in a robot for centuries, Bud played a huge role in the post-War world.
7 Dean Domino
Singer Who Became A Treasure-Hunting Ghoul
- Fallout: New Vegas
- Companion during Dead Money DLC
Dean Domino was a singer who performed across the US and Europe with his orchestra before the Great War. Unfortunately, he fell on tough times in the 2070s and became increasingly bitter towards the Sierra Madre's owner, Frederick Sinclair, because Dean felt trapped in his shadow. He planned to break into the casino's vaults to steal everything away from Sinclair, but the bombs fell before he could finish the job.
In the centuries after the Great War, Dean Domino stayed around the Sierra Madre out of an obsession to get Sinclair's treasure. He became a ghoul due to radiation exposure, and so he was effectively immortal. After being captured by a Nightkin working for Father Elijah, Dean Domino would go on to accompany the Courier in finally unraveling the Sierra Madre's mystery.
6 Lee Moldaver
Fusion Scientist
- Fallout TV Show
Moldaver has lived a long life, although it is never revealed as to how. Before the War, she was a fusion scientist that Cooper Howard always referred to as Miss Williams. Vault-Tec was able to acquire her research before she could finish it, which they then hid away from the world to keep energy production as a valuable way to generate profits. This led Ms. Williams to start speaking out against Vault-Tec and other corporations, although the Great War certainly interrupted much of her work.
Over two hundred years later, she lived in the New California Republic and went by the name of Lee Moldaver. She met Rose Maclean, who ran away from Vault 33 with her two children. This directly led to the destruction of Shady Sands at the hands of Hank Maclean and Bud Askins, after which Moldaver continued her pre-War work on cracking the problem of cold fusion while leading a group of NCR survivors. Despite serving as a villain for much of season 1 of Amazon's Fallout, Moldaver is a very complicated character with the potential for answers to come in future seasons.
5 Hank Maclean
Overseer and Vault-Tec Employee
- Fallout TV Show
- Overseer of Vault 33
At the beginning of Fallout season 1, Hank was the Overseer of Vault 33. He was kidnapped by Moldaver and her raiders, which prompted his daughter Lucy to leave the Vault to rescue him. Much later in the season, it was revealed that Hank had managed to hide a very sizable past from his children and the majority of Vault 33's citizens.
Hank's true past was that he was part of "Bud's Buds", and was awakened from two centuries of cryostasis in order to become the Overseer of Vault 33. In response to his wife escaping the Vault and running to the surface, he had Shady Sands destroyed in a nuclear blast. His life, both before and after the War, shaped a significant number of lives for better and for worse.
4 Sole Survivor
Fallout 4's Player Character
- Fallout 4
- Customizable player character
The Sole Survivor is either a man or a woman — based on whether the player chose the husband or wife — from Boston. The man, whose default name is Nate, is a veteran from the Resource Wars that were fought between the US and China in the decades leading up to the Great War of 2077. The wife, on the other hand, was a lawyer who graduated from Suffolk County Law School. On the day that the bombs dropped, the Sole Survivor, their spouse, and their infant son were put in cryostasis in Vault 111.
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Over the course of the story, the Sole Survivor can join many of the Commonwealth's faction, including the Brotherhood of Steel, The Minutemen, and even the nefarious Institute. No matter what the player chooses to do, the Sole Survivor definitely shapes the future of the Commonwealth.
3 Cooper Howard
Ghoul With An Important Past
- Fallout TV Show
- Veteran, former actor, and post-apocalyptic ghoul
Cooper Howard quickly became a fan-favorite character early on in Fallout season 1. His backstory is explored extensively through flashbacks to the months leading up to the Great War in October 2077. He was a soldier who fought in Alaska, which he referenced in a conversation with Bud Askins. He later became a renowned actor who played a cowboy in the days of the Wild West. He also worked with Vault-Tec, where he became its poster child with the thumbs-up pose.
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Cooper was suspicious of Vault-Tec, however, and ended up eavesdropping on a board meeting in which his own wife suggested that Vault-Tec should begin the nuclear war themselves. Not much is known about Cooper's time surrounding the War, but he did become a gun-slinging ghoul due to radiation exposure. Fans are excited to see where his story leads next, and hope to see even more answers revealed in future seasons of the show.
2 Richard Moreau
A Villain Known As "The Master"
- Fallout 1
Not much is known about Richard Moreau's life before the Great War except that he escaped death by living in Vault 8. He eventually left the Vault and traveled to a major settlement called The Hub, where he was known as Dr. Richard Grey. In 2102, he went on an expedition to Mariposa Military Base. The expedition ended with him falling into a vat of FEV — Forced Evolutionary Virus — which caused mutations that elevated his mental capacity greatly.
He went on to experiment with FEV until he developed a plan called "The Unity" to turn all of humanity into a race of Super Mutants. He formed an army of loyal Super Mutants and earned his final title, The Master, by kidnapping people and using the FEV on them. The Vault Dweller, Fallout 1's protagonist, stopped The Master and saved the world from the biggest threat since the bombs dropped.
1 Robert House
RobCo's CEO And Potential Leader Of New Vegas
- Fallout: New Vegas & Fallout TV Show
Robert House was born in June 2020. Despite being cheated out of a sizable inheritance following his parents' death when he was just two years old, he went on to become arguably the most successful business executive in the Fallout universe. He founded the mega corporation RobCo which would go on to create the Pip-Boy, the primary OS for computer terminals, and many types of combat robots.
During the Great War, Mr. House protected Las Vegas with an advanced laser defense system that shot nuclear missiles out of the sky. He survived in the Lucky 38 Casino for over 200 years, thanks to sophisticated technology that only he had access to. He went on to spur the events of Fallout: New Vegas and aims to turn the Mojave Wasteland into an independent state under his control. His success as an inventor and executive before the war combined with his ability to put himself in a position of significant power two centuries later make him the most successful person to survive from pre-war into the apocalyptic days of the Fallout games.
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