Absurdly Short Production Time: Usually, game companies take 2-4 years to make sure they get it right. Obsidian was only given... 13 months. Factoring in at least 2 months for pre-planning (confirmed by J.E. Sawyer) and at least a month of basic bug testing, they made the entire game in ten months. Very impressive when you realize the scope of the game, although Sawyer has gone on record stating that they needed 5 more months to fully flesh out the game, specifically to add the post-game content and more Legion territory.
Acting for Two: All of the game's dialogue is voiced, with a huge cast of generic NPCs that share a voice actor. It becomes especially noticeable when the actor in question has a distinctive "neutral" voice. For example, three of the four male Remnants are voiced by Peter Renaday.
Banned in China: The game is banned in India not due to world-ending nuclear war and the close-up dismemberments of your enemies, but for featuring mutant cattle called 'brahmin.'
Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Joshua Graham's most iconic line is usually quoted as "I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me". In the actual game, he only says "me" once, the second time (when describing what saved him, he just says "the fire inside" with no "me" added.)
Colbert Bump: Big Iron by Marty Robbins has gained some new fans because of its inclusion in the radio.
Creator's Favorite: Chris Avellone has been open about loving Ulysses, stating he's fascinated by the idea of meeting characters the player has influenced without realizing their impact, and that Ulysses is his Author Avatar for his views on the Fallout universe.
Defictionalization: The collector's edition included chips from the major casinos in the game as well as the Platinum Chip. In a less profitable vein, many fans play Caravan in real life.
Descended Creator: Sam Riegel, who was the voice director for the game, voices Chris Haversom, the Token Human of the Bright Followers (which are comprised of ghouls).
During the battle of Hoover Dam, in what is assumed to be a developer oversight, Colonel Moore will tell you about the NCR's victory and her promotion to Brigade General, and that NCR scouts are currently busy with pursuing and harassing the remains of the Legion's army that are hastily retreating back to Arizona, like the dialogue is supposed to be heard after the end of the game. This suggests that the game was at one point going to feature a Playable Epilogue. Word of God has confirmed that Obsidian had planned for additional gameplay after the Battle of Hoover Dam, but didn't feel that they had enough development time to do it proper justice. Quite a bit of post-endgame dialogue and radio commentary exists and will actually play properly if using a mod that continues the game after completion of one of the final quests.
"The House Always Wins V" has an unused optional quest stage to "Inform Mr. House that you've negotiated a peaceful solution with the Brotherhood," which is impossible in game. Mods restore this feature. Notably, unlike a lot of New Vegas cut content, the "peaceful solution to the Brotherhood" thing wasn't cut due to the rushed development but was deliberately cut as per Word of God, Mr. House and the Brotherhood would never have gotten along due to House's advanced technology and the Brotherhood tech hoarding mentality and any alliance between the two would have been out of character. Plus, it would make the Yes Man and Mr. House questlines much more similar with each other than it already is.
Apparently, it would be possible to complete the NCR questline while keeping Mr. House alive, as there's an unused note in the game files in which Mr. House agrees to let the NCR annex the New Vegas Strip in exchange for NCR citizenship and immunity from prosecution for any act prior to the annexation. There's also cut NPC lines related to that note, talking about Mr. House surrendering.
Apparently, you were supposed to be able to speak to the three Fiends members you hunt for Dahtri. Quite frankly, their dialogue is hilarious.
There's a house in Cottonwood Cove, a third floor of Gomorrah hotel rooms, and two unused sections of the New Vegas sewers (northwest and southwest), which were presumably made inaccessible for not containing anything of interest.
Unusable Welding Guns can be found in various locations; they were likely meant to have crafting functions that were never implemented.
There are more crucified men in the game files than those who actually appear in-game. The mentioned-only Mayor Steyn of Nipton also exists as an unused NPC, using the model of the Tops chairman, and his corpse was probably meant to appear.
Primm Slim has unused lines for returning Vance's gun to its proper place. This option is restored in a mod.
The Scorpions gang was originally going to play a part in Quartermaster Contreras' quest line, but it was cut from the final game.
Slides and voiceover narration for two alternate endings to the Dead Money DLC are unused: one has the Courier die in the Sierra Madre Vault after Father Elijah turned it into a Gas Chamber, and the other involves Christine Royce killing Elijah and trapping the Courier in the Vault.
The DLC Old World Blues was supposed to have an ending in which the Think Tank escapes from the Big MT and uses the entire Mojave Wasteland as a test site for even more weird scientific experiments. As seen here, one slide image is still in the game files (named nvdlc03_endingslide_failure08, suggesting at least seven more slides were deleted) and Chris Avellone released the text for the intended narration.
In the quest Crazy, Crazy, Crazy, when handling the ham radio to talk to Tabitha, there exists an unused additional option to tell her of a "dumb-dumb" revolt. Interestingly, this option isn't technically cut but is unobtainable as it requires the player to know that Tabitha is paranoid, which isn't possible to find out.
Similar to the case above, there's an unused option in the quest Return to Sender where you can convince Chief Hanlon to abandon his plans by telling him that Caesar has cancer and the Legion is doomed because of that. The option isn't technically cut, but it's unobtainable because the only way to find that information out requires progressing into the Legion's questline to the point it will turn the NCR hostile towards you, which in turn will make Return to Sender unavailible.
There is an icon for an unused .30-30 round in the game files. .30-30 is a very popular hunting round in North America (particularly for deer) and is the most popular caliber for lever-action rifles. Word of God is that it was cut due to having too many similarities to the .308 caliber round. The lever-action weapons in the final game use .357 Magnum/.38 Special, .44 Magnum/.44 Special, 20 gauge shotgun shells or .45-70 Gov't rounds.
As was first planned for Van Buren, there was originally meant to be a mention of the Enclave destroying San Francisco in the past out of belief that they were the ones who destroyed the oil rig, but Bethesda wanted it to be an option to still be explored in future games, so this was scrapped.
According to Chris Avellone, Bethesda was unhappy with the Dead Money ending in which the Courier joins Elijah. They asked Obsidian to remove a similar ending from Old World Blues in which the Think Tank escapes the Big MT and subjects the Mojave to horrific Mad Scientist experiments, even though the dialogue was already recorded and ending slides made.
The Ontarian Michael Hogan lends his voice to the Nevadan Doc Mitchell.
Foiler Footage: Veronica's voice lines about Elijah after completing Dead Money were already recorded and Dummied Out in the game when it was first released. To avoid spoiling the add-on to people looking at the files, Veronica's lines were disguised with player lines about a non-existent quest to get an accelerator involving two ghouls named Abraham and Monte.
Yes, Primm is a real place, and it does have a rollercoaster (attached to the Buffalo Bill hotel — all three hotels in Primm are much larger, but no one really cares), and does have Bonnie and Clyde's death car (not his gun, though, but it does have his jacket, and the car is in a mall attached to the hotels). Hoover Dam, Goodsprings, Black Mountains, Nipton, Nellis Air Force Base, and a lot of other real-world locations are snuck in as well (mostly things only native Nevadans would recognize, like camping sites).
This is also played for a joke with "Repconn" which is a very slightly veiled joke to "PEPCON", an actual factory for rocket fuel that was formerly centered in Henderson Nevada... before it blew up on May 4th, 1988.
Memorial Character: The background-only characters Sprtel and Wood, inventors of the Sprtel-Wood 9700 Gatling Laser. They were named after Scott Sprtel and Brian Wood, two victims of traffic accidents.
The Other Darrin: Christine from Dead Money has a speaking cameo in Old World Blues, where she has a different voice. Justified, however, in that it's not actually her voice she's using in Dead Money, but rather that of the long-dead Vera Keyes.
Dr. Whitely is voiced by Ron Yuan in the base game but by Jesse Burch in Lonesome Road.
Orphaned Reference: Considering the sheer amount of content cut from the game, there are quite a few of these:
The developers created an elaborate series of symbols◊ based on actual "hobo code" that were to be placed on various walls of buildings and settlements, indicating whether an area was dangerous, was worth looting, had clean drinking water, etc., with the player presumably learning the meaning of the symbols somewhere in the game. For whatever reason, the "hobo code" system was cut, but not before someone on the dev team placed a large "Doctor here" symbol on the side of the New Vegas Clinic.
Besides Jane, Mr. House originally had another female-programmed private Securitron named Marilyn based on Marilyn Monroe in the Lucky 38 penthouse, who was cut late in development due to issues with her voiceover. However, Veronica still says "I was surprised [House] only had the two robot sex slaves." Marilyn and Jane also both appear on the 2 of Diamonds card in the Collector's Edition card deck.
After killing Driver Nephi, Bert Gunnarsson says he hopes his soul finds peace, even though the dialogue option where Bert talks about his past with Nephi was disabled.
One of Rotface's tips is "There's a guy out on the main drag who sells second hand adventuring gear. He's got an okay selection, but where does it come from?" which refers to a cut merchant in Freeside named Tom Dooley.
Jason Spisak, who usually plays heroes, plays the villainous Vulpes Inculta.
Jason Marsden, known for playing wide-eyed, innocent young boys, voices Boone, a twenty-six-year-old hard-edged disillusioned Cold Sniper who lost the woman he loved to slavers. This is especially jarring considering he previously voiced Myron in Fallout 2, an InsufferableTeen Genius that was (allegedly) responsible for the creation of Jet and infamously dabbled in slavery and Black Comedy Rape.
Danny Trejo, as in Machete himself, voices Raul Tejada, a ghoul mechanic who's an all-around kind, soft-spoken, and thoughtful fellow who's more fond of revolvers than blades.
Michael Hogan is typically cast as hard-ass military men. Doc Mitchell is a mild-mannered doctor and Non-Action Guy.
Pre-Order Bonus: Somewhat uniquely, there were four different potential packs unlocked depending on where you preordered the game - the "Caravan Pack" from Steam or Wal-Mart, the "Mercenary Pack" from Best Buy, the "Tribal Pack" from Amazon or Direct2Drive, and the "Classic Pack" from GameStop or EB Games. A week after the release of Lonesome Road, all four were bundled together as the "Courier's Stash".
Promoted Fanboy: Matthew Perry, who voices Benny and also played Chandler Bing in Friends is a big fan of Fallout 3, to the point where he got carpal tunnel syndrome from playing it too much. This lead to Bethesda offering him a role in New Vegas.
Consequently, there is also some from Oblivion, since Fallout 3 recycled some Oblivion props.
Various non-radio music from the series gets reused as well. Besides the reused Fallout 3 various songs from the first two games are used at different points i.e. the Shady Sands theme from Fallout in the Old Mormon Fort or the Redding theme from Fallout 2 playing when you encounter the Wrecked Highwayman among plenty of others.
The DLC is based around this. Originally, there was another partner character named Ulysses, who was once a part of Caesar's Legion. He was cut from the main game due to time constraints, but eventually became the central character in a Myth Arc across all four DLC mini-campaigns, culminating in Lonesome Road.
A majority of the plot itself was taken from Fallout: Van Buren, including the Caesar's Legion faction. What all didn't fit into New Vegas proper was reused for DLC, mainly Honest Hearts and the plot with Joshua Graham (who is now The Atoner instead of a Token Evil Teammate). And what didn't fit there still get scattered mentions as background lore, such as Denver being full of cyberdogs or Father Elijah visiting the Ciphers tribe.
Hoover Dam was originally a Lost Colony of the NCR that had lost contact with the main government in California. The dam was a real city in addition to a power plant, while in New Vegas it's simply a power plant with a significant military presence. In both cases Caesar's Legion and the NCR are fighting viciously over it.
Van Buren was supposed to have a major war between the Brotherhood of Steel and the NCR that started some time after the defeat of the Enclave in Fallout 2 and went on into some sort of stalemate. Though several details are different, this backstory element was more or less transplanted wholesale in New Vegas.
There was originally going to be a subplot in Van Buren about a Renegade Splinter Faction of the Brotherhood of Steel called the "Circle of Steel" that used Stealth Boys for their war with the NCR. The Stealth Boys turned out to cause insanity and addiction, and their use was outlawed, but the "Circle of Steel" stole them and deserted. The Stealth Boy insanity was referenced in a few side quests in New Vegas where it seemingly only affects Nightkins, and the Circle of Steel was referenced in Dead Money and Old World Blues where they're now apparently Brotherhood hardliners and their equivalent of Internal Affairs (with Christine being a member sent to assassinate Elijah).
The climax of Van Buren was to take place on a orbital missile platform set to rain down nuclear death. You would have to make a Sadistic Choice as you could only prevent some of the missiles from launching, or stop them all by blowing up the entire satellite with you on it before it could launch. At the end of Lonesome Road you face a similar situation: missiles are launching which you could set to strike either in NCR or Legion territory or both, or you could stop them all but that requires a Heroic Sacrifice from ED-E.
The Big MT, setting for Old World Blues, is a combination of the Tibbets Prison Facility from Van Buren and the EPA compound that was cut from Fallout 2. One of the appliances in The Sink, the Toaster, is based on a toaster found in the cut EPA building. The only difference between the two is that the cut toaster would simply ask you if you wanted toast (a reference to the toaster from Red Dwarf), the Toaster has a simple-minded obsession with destroying the Earth.
Saved from Development Hell: Caesar's Legion was going to be part of the stillborn Van Buren game following Fallout 2. Some NPCs from Van Buren were also recycled and given slightly different roles (Alice McLafferty and Arcade Gannon for example). The setting of Old World Blues, the Big Empty, came from the original design concepts of Van Buren's opening location, the Tibbets prison facility.
Staff-Created Fan Work: The game's director, Joshua Sawyer, made his own Game Mod simply called JSawyer that acts as an unofficial director's cut. The mod greatly corrects errors in the game, fixes DLC issues, made Hardcore Mode actually hardcore, made the rewards for Dead Money less game-breaking, and added Damage Resistance back into the game for certain armors. This was created after the game had finished production and they weren't going to continue working on it officially.
Posters advertising the singer Dean Domino were made to be used as generic clutter in the base game before the design for Dead Money was locked down. When the devs noted the similarity to what they were already planning for the ghoul character, they decided to name him Dean Domino.
Tourist Bump: The game helped put the real-life Goodsprings (which prior to the game was essentially a ghost town) on the map as a tourist spot. In return, the Pioneer Saloon (the real life version of the Prospector Saloon) and the general store (now the Ghost Town Cafe) are filled with references to the game, including a framed version of the box art and various donated merchandise such as NCR flags and Nuka-Cola bottles, and the monument outside to those who have contributed to the town through use as a filming location includes an entire wall of fans who donated to keep the saloon alive.
The most common rumors that abounds in the fandom is that certain characters (mainly Benny, Victor and Vulpes Inculta) were originally supposed to be available as companions at some points in the game but this feature was cut due to time constraints. Joshua Sawyer, the game's lead director, debunked those rumors in a livestream and claimed that the only character that was supposed to be a companion is Ulysses, who was cut from the game during development and only returned as the main antagonist of the Lonesome Road DLC.
There is a persistent statement among Legion fans that there were plans to have more of the Legion's "positive" traits shown but they were cut due to the short development time of the game. While the Legion do have cut content, and the developers have never denied that, no where has it been stated that the Legion's cut content was meant to make them look better than they appear, and most of the cut content was locations and interactions that, if anything, reinforced that the Legion is a brutal and cruel faction.
What Could Have Been: Obviously a lot due to the scope of the game, but also due to strict time constraints (Obsidian had only 18 months of development instead of the requested 24):
Romances were considered, but scrapped early on in development. A remnant of this can be found by looking at the available companions: of the four human companions, there's two men and two women, and one each of the men and women are gay, so hypothetically speaking, a player character of any gender or orientation would have someone to pursue.
There were early plans to extend the game beyond the final battle, but the amount of variables (ie, programming a Mojave with the victory of four possible factions and numerous minor details) made it impossible to program within the deadline. Many characters have Dummied Out voice lines for the post-endgame, and J.E. Sawyer wanted to have two new forms of money: for an NCR victory, an $500 bill showing either President Kimball or Chief Hanlon, depending on the ending, and the back commemorating the Courier; for a Legion victory, a double aureus worth 200 caps with the Courier on the back and a conquered General Oliver on the front.
Ulysses, the antagonist of Lonesome Road, was originally intended to be a companion in the main game, but was cut due to time constraints. He would have been unique among the available companions as actually being sympathetic to the Legion and especially untrusting of the NCR. Much of that personality remains in his Lonesome Road appearance, but if he'd been in the main game as originally intended, there might've been motivation to actually work with the Legion. As it stands, you can earn a pair of Luck-boosting sunglasses... but you lose the loyalty of CraigBoone and ArcadeGannon, and you'll likely end up killing at least a few factions/settlements that you actually liked. Of course, Ulysses could be persuaded to reluctantly serve the bear or another cause and will tell you about the battle of Hoover Dam.
Word of God states that there were originally more Legion territories planned east of the Colorado River, but they were cut due to time constraints. These would have included mainly civilian settlements, while all Legion settlements that remain in the game are primarily military camps.
A later interview also mentions Sunny Smiles, Yes Man, and Muggy from Old World Blues as other companions they wanted to add. The reason the latter wasn't implemented was because adding a companion through the DLCs that would work in the core game would've taken more time than allowed.
Originally, if you destroy the Securitrons under the Fort, you were originally going to be forced to fight a seriously pissed off Victor the next time you enter the Lucky 38.
Many instances of cut content (including the example directly above), have since been released in a mod series appropriately titled "New Vegas Uncut".
The New Vegas Strip and Freeside were meant to be whole zones by themselves. E3 2010 showed off the whole Strip, and it is also rendered that way in the intro cinematic. Freeside was a single massive zone, including a number of generic NPCs like beggars and pickpockets. Both instances were "sectioned off" due to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 not having the necessary processing power to render all the NPCs running around the Strip and Freeside without some serious slowdown or even game crashes. The Strip just had two scrap metal gates separating it into three zones. Freeside, however, got hit harder: fences/gates made from junked buses were added, and NPCs were cut to reduce the memory problems. Appropriately, there are a pair of mods that convert the Strip and Freeside to their early open area builds.
All four of the Fiend leaders were supposed to have the Courier talk to them, rather than just Motor-Runner. Driver Nephi was the least crazed and mostly in a state of deadpan anger and he was also to be a former friend to Bert Gunnarsson and a former Mormon as well. Violet was supposed to be constantly high on Psycho and violently protective of her dogs. Finally, Cook-Cook was a fast-talkin' madman who loves his Brahmin Queenie far too much. He behaved differently towards the Courier depending on their sex; he acted more of a creep towards women than men.
According to an interview with Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart, the game was originally pitched as "Fallout: Sin City" and there were plans on letting you choose to play as either a Ghoul or a Super Mutant, but engine limitations regarding weapons and armor led to the idea being scrapped.
Obsidian considered making a Fallout game set in the former Los Angeles area, the Boneyard, as Fallout: New Vegas 2, or Fallout: Los Angeles.
Very early on, the game was pitched as an interquel set in between Fallout 2 and Fallout 3. This was shot down by Bethesda, as they apparently have a policy about only making sequels (until Fallout 76).
Like with Fallout 3, there were some loose plans to include the Floater enemies from Fallout 1 and 2, but due to time constraints this was dropped early on. They're still Dummied Out in the game, using the Centaur's model. Word of God is that they were cut since the animation team didn't have time to do a proper skeleton and animation for such an odd creature.
It was initially possible to negotiate a peaceful solution between Mr. House and the Brotherhood, as evident by an optional objective left innote evidence suggest that, much like with the NCR and Yes Man routes, doing so would've involved getting the Brotherhood to support the NCR; however, said feature was eventually dropped, as director Josh Sawyer felt it wasn't true to Mr House's character. Whether or not this would've lead to the Brotherhood fighting alongside a House-aligned player in the final battle or if they would've just ignored the finale is unknown. Much like with other cut content, mods restore this functionnote for those who put Hardin in power and for those who keep McNamara in charge.
There is also a note in which Mr. House agrees to let the NCR annex the New Vegas Strip in exchange for NCR citizenship and immunity from prosecution.
There is a cut dialogue option to convince Caesar to spare the Brotherhood for the time being by having them attack HELIOS One while the Legion attacks Hoover Dam. Again, a mod restores this.
Two alternate endings to the Dead Money DLC were cut: one had the Courier die in the Sierra Madre Vault after FatherElijah turned it into a Gas Chamber. The other involved Christine Royce killing Elijah and trapping the Courier in the Vault.
Old World Blues was supposed to have a particularly horrifying Downer Ending where the Think Tank escape the Big MT and unleash their experiments on the Mojave.
The game files contain an NPC labeled "Vault 11 survivor", indicating at some point it was planned for the player to be able to meet him in person.
According to Chris Avellone, the original NCR-Brotherhood war would have been far more tragic than it is in the finished version. Originally, the NCR mistakenly believed that the Brotherhood and the Enclave were one and the same because due to their shared use of advanced pre-war technology. When the actual Enclave nuked San Francisco in revenge for the Oil Rig, the NCR would retaliate against the Brotherhood believing that they were responsible, thus setting off the conflict.
The Big Guns skill was supposed to return from previous games, but the design team wanted all skills to play a role from the very beginning of the game to the ending (unlike in Fallout 1, 2 and to a lesser extant 3 where Big Guns and Energy Weapons only really came around in the mid-game) but couldn't find a way to fit in Big Guns in a plausible and balanced way in the early game. There was an experiment with an industrial "rivet gun" being an early game Big Gun but this was found dissatisfactory and the whole skill was cut fairly early on with little to no opposition from the dev team. The weapons associated with the skill were reshuffled into Guns, Energy Weapons and Explosives skills.
Welcome to Corneria: Dr. 8 in Old World Blues does have dialog, as shown in the game's text files. However, he has a limited amount of responses to the Courier's lines, often repeating them in the same conversation.
The Developers were undecided whether Benny would betray you again or become your Companion if you spare his life in Caesar's tent. In the end neither option became canon. His becoming a Companion would have taken too much time and resources, so it was scrapped. The devs put in a scene where he betrays you, but took it out of the finished game. So, if he lives, canonically he just keeps his promise to "get out of your hair forever."
"Caesar can quote Cato to his purpose" is a paraphrase of a line from The Merchant of Venice: "The Devil can cite Scripture to his purpose." (Though Shakespeare is pithily reflecting much older wisdom.)
"Am I playing Vergil to your Dante?": The Divine Comedy, where Vergil serves as Dante's guide through Hell.
"Why don't you make like Odysseus and get lost?" The Odyssey.
"Victrix causa diis placuit sed victa Catoni." is from Pharsalia by Lucan. Translated it is simply: "the winning cause pleased the gods, but the losing cause pleased Cato." Considering its context, it fits very well.
in the game files in which Mr. House agrees to let the NCR annex the New Vegas Strip in exchange for NCR citizenship and immunity from prosecution for any act prior to the annexation. There's also cut NPC lines related to that note, talking about Mr. House surrendering.
