Fallout's Mysterious Strangers

[Music] hey how's it going guys it's nate here and welcome back to another investigation video so the fallout franchise has no shortage of mysterious and strange individuals from robotic humans to aliens to ghosts this is a universe that has everything however perhaps the most mysterious individual of all is the mysterious stranger like that's actually the dude's name in fallout 4 if the player has a high enough luck stat and the appropriate perks unlocked it's possible for a man called the mysterious stranger or ms as we'll sometimes refer to him as to randomly appear when you're in combat and lend you a hand for a few seconds before vanishing into dust we can only catch a glimpse of him but he boasts a stunning noir detective-like outfit and most importantly uses a special signature weapon that will take down any creature with just a single shot making the ms a very valuable ally in boss fights but who exactly is this gentleman why is he helping us and where is he coming from and going to well those questions run deeper than you might think because players have been asking them since 1997. you see the mysterious stranger has actually been featured in just about every single fallout game ever made or at least every canon fallout game that didn't get cancelled from fallout 1 to fallout 3 to fallout 76 to the chinese only fallout shelter online mobile app he's been in them all baby and as a result the true nature of the stranger is probably one of the franchise's most popular questions in the past 23 years literal thousands of form posts have been made on this topic and so many cool details have been found supporting various theories and conclusions like there are some big connections to the institute that we'll talk about soon and new vegas basically confirmed the stranger has a secret son you get the idea honestly i had always thought this was one of those things that the writers never really had a coherent explanation for i had figured the ms was more or less just supposed to be a gameplay mechanic slash easter egg without much more meaning it wasn't until folks in my discord told me about a certain mission from fallout 76 which made me say holy mother of adam that i finally began to question if maybe there was a more coherent story here after all and indeed around 100 hours of research later i'm convinced they're actually is and this has evolved into one of my favorite gaming mysteries when preparing this video i stumbled across quite a few things that haven't been covered anywhere else and there are some more recent discoveries by the community that make it all the more interesting thus in today's video we'll be investigating everything currently known about the mysterious stranger covering his appearances in all of the games and the unique information they each reveal trying to piece together the truth behind this oh so elusive man so without any further ado let's do further and see if we can solve the mystery of the mysterious stranger alrighty so we'll begin this investigation by breaking down what fallout 3 tells us about the character i know this may feel like a weird place to start seeing as he's appeared in just about all of the games and we'll touch upon each of them but trust me let's just pretend fallout 3 was where it all began you'll see why i'm doing this later on anywho after the lone wanderer had gotten their luck special stat to level 4 or higher a perk called mysterious stranger could be purchased once obtained every time your character enters vat's targeted combat there will be a 10 chance for a mysterious stranger man dressed in that noir detective outfit to appear and fire a single shot from his revolver at whomever you're fighting killing them and then disappearing without a trace [Music] that's it that's the mysterious stranger in action he'll be gone before you even exited vats okay so who is this filler where is he coming from and why is he helping us well our first clue comes from the mysterious stranger perks description in fallout 3's player guide it reads quote you have a guardian angel but with a deadly hand cannon instead of wings meet the mysterious stranger aka real name farmer an odd and eldritch entity said to appear to aid you in combat before you draw your dying breath of course it helps to have set a prayer to farmer first end quote whoa what he's an eldritch entity named farmer who we should pray to what the heck does that mean a description like this seems to imply the stranger is some kind of divine and supernatural being like a spirit or a god or something like that it sounds a little far-fetched but it's not necessarily impossible we know that ghosts are canon in the fallout universe and as we've discussed before on this channel there are some dark magical elements at play if you know where to look who's to say the stranger isn't just an extension of those let's keep digging our next lead comes from the town of megaton one of the largest human settlements in the capital wasteland that if the player can actually decide to blow up if you so choose but that's not why we're here in this town we can meet a woman named moira brown she operates the local general goods store and is arguably one of the best connected traders in the wasteland though you wouldn't know it by talking to her she comes across as way too excitable and doesn't seem well versed in world affairs nonetheless moira will offer the player a short series of quests to help her gather information for a book she's riding got something to sell hey i hear you're that stray from the vault i haven't seen one of you for years good to meet you i'm moira brown i run crater side supply but what i really do is mostly tinkering in research say i'm working on a book about the wasteland it'd be great to have the forward by a vault dweller help me out would you if you choose to assist her she'll give you a unique hat called the shady hat as a reward this hat uses the exact same model and texture as the mysterious stranger's fedora and it grants the player plus one perception and five sneak when worn moira fails to explain how she got the cap in the first place however many suspect that given the obvious similarities this article of clothing could have some association with the mysterious stranger himself maybe this was his old hat that he traded away or maybe bethesda was just reusing assets we don't know for sure but still this is an important thing to note now our last clue in fallout 3 can be found in the mothership zeta dlc during the events of this expansion the player is abducted by an alien spacecraft and must make a daring escape back to earth along the way you'll cross paths with a variety of other captive humans with similar dreams of freedom one of these fellow human captives you meet is a woman named soma she apparently used to be a raider of sorts before being abducted herself though despite such a brutal past she actually ends up becoming a pretty valuable ally anyway if the player has the mysterious stranger perk unlocked during the events of the mothership zeta dlc there's a chance soma may randomly say the following quote hey guys nate from the future here so i actually wrote this part of the script wrong and made a bit of an oopsie it's not soma who delivers the unique dialogue it's actually you the player who has a unique dialogue choice available after soma gives you a plan to escape the ship take a listen it's gonna take both of us to get out of this place they want us alive for something who knows what point is if it looks like one of us is gonna kill the other they'll step in to stop it so that's what we do we throw a few punches make it look real and then jump them when they come in to break it up yeah that's what i've got i don't see you coming up with anything brilliant mr i've been here five whole minutes oh okay so does that mean you're in all right i'll hold back on you make sure you don't get too roughed up okay and you be ready soon as they come in to get us you take them down all right let's take a step back so far we've learned that fallout 3 introduces the mysterious stranger in vats suggests his name may be farmer and he might kind of be supernatural and now it's telling us that he's mingled with other people through soma this is an interesting assortment of information though it's nowhere near enough on its own to draw any solid conclusions so we should move on to another game however before we do that let's talk a little bit about vats the mode in which the ms is featured you see we never get to see the stranger in normal combat he can only be encountered in vats or the volt tech assisted targeting system as it's called why is that well chances are it's just a gameplay mechanic but maybe there's more to it according to the lora that's with some kind of advanced technology developed by the voltec corporation and implanted on pip-boys of all of their dwellers when used in gameplay it simply allows us to slow down time and shows us the probability of successfully hitting certain targets the closer you are and the more action points you have the higher probability your blows will land the exact science of vats has been lost to history we're not quite sure how exactly it works or how volt tech came up with it but maybe there's some sort of connection between it and the stranger i mean volt tech was a pretty shady company known for its experiments it's not totally beyond the realm of possibility that the stranger is one of their creations alternatively if you want to put on a tinfoil hat it could be a link to the institute okay so this probably sounds like a crackpot theory especially if you're familiar with a stranger but bear with me fallout 3 featured a popular side quest called the replicated man wherein we learned that north of the capital wasteland in the ruins of old boston a secret group of scientists calling themselves the institute had figured out how to create robots that were indistinguishable from people well one of those robots was so intelligent it developed free will and escaped from the institute's custody fleeing down to the cap wasteland we'd have to figure out where that bot was hiding and either agree to keep it secret safe or report him to the institute ambassador that was looking for him spoiler alert his name is harkness and he's the chief of security at rivet city he had his mind wiped so he doesn't even know he's a robot anyway if the lone wanderer chose to side with the institute they would reward you with a cybernetic enhancement called wired reflexes which would improve your vat's chance to hit by 10 across the board harkness you say yes yes that makes sense he used to work for a special branch of the commonwealth police after all and he's right here in rivet city excellent i must wait find an opportune moment to confront him thank you for your discreet assistance and continued discretion regarding this matter and now for your payment this combat module will directly affect your central nervous system i think you will find it quite beneficial this hinted at the possibility of the institute having some sort of advanced knowledge about vats or at least access to a similar technology how else would they be able to offer such a modification maybe they even helped volt tech design vats or something speaking of androids the stranger's outfit actually bears a striking resemblance to the trench coat worn by rick deckard in the 1982 sci-fi film blade runner in blade runner rick deckard was a private bounty hunter who hunted down robots that pretended to be people in a futuristic society and indeed the replicated man's side quest from fallout 3 borrowed heavily from that film and its source material novel and later on in this video we'll talk about how it inspired bethesda in fallout 4. now rick deckard actually turned out to be a robot himself at the end of the film ironically enough though he was a human in the books perhaps the mysterious stranger is also some type of robocop bounty hunter maybe that's how he moves so fast and is so powerful who's to say well maybe we'll find some answers in fallout 3 successor fallout new vegas fallout new vegas released in 2010 and is set in the mojave wasteland of nevada in the year 2281 roughly six years prior to the events of fallout 4 and 4 years after the events of fallout 3. in this game the mysterious stranger returns and is effectively the exact same character from fallout 3. he looks the same works the same wears the same clothes his perks are the same literally nothing has changed about the dude at all though now he has a son yes a son near the eldorado gas station it's possible to encounter a man calling himself the lonesome drifter when spoken to the drifter will come across as polite and talkative and will tell you his entire life story if you give him the chance evidently he was born quite a ways up north in montana to a single mother his father was apparently a real mysterious feller who was never around always traveling on his own adventures thus the lonesome drifter and his mother were forced to make ends meet on their own they each worked overtime at the local coal mines for years until his mom passed away and the drifter decided to move on and search the wastes for wherever his father went take a listen howdy there partner my story's a long one friend and i can't say as it's all that interesting well i was born in a little town out montana way me and ma didn't have much ever since my pa up and left that he did never did know why ma always said he was a real mysterious fella even when he was with her like he was a stranger sometimes maybe maybe i just never felt like i belonged back home it sure wasn't easy ma worked her fingers to the bone to make sure we had enough to survive and i worked the coal mines from when i was 15. after my diet i guess i wanted to find my paw and get some answers from him been out here looking ever since but he ain't an easy man to find can't say as i really know maybe i'll just ask him why maybe i'll punch him right in the mouth hell the more i talk about it the more the whole damn thing sounds like a dumb idea maybe i should don't suppose you know any place or fella with a guitar i might find a job huh ah well it was worth a shot now if your charisma and barter skills are high enough the drifter will reveal to you that his father did leave him a single revolver to be remembered by and you can convince the drifter to give you said weapon the item is named the mysterious magnum and it will actually play the same musical riffs used by the mysterious stranger when he appears slash disappears each time it's drawn and holstered [Music] aha so the drifter's dad was the mysterious stranger notably the magnum does quite a bit more damage than a normal 44 though isn't exactly the one one-shot kill we see from the perk furthermore it comes with some unique flower-esque engravings fun fact fallout new vegas project director josh sawyer confirmed on the something awful forms that obsidian had originally hoped to create a unique event wherein the mysterious stranger would intervene and prevent you from killing his son in vats but they ran out of time and just forgot about it now hold on a second take a good long look at new vegas's mysterious stranger this guy seems to be what in his early 20s maybe 24 25 years old tops yet he's supposed to be the lonesome drifter's father how's that possible the drifter looks older than him if the player has the ladykiller perk the drifter will even reveal that he's 28 years old the mysterious stranger doesn't look that age what's going on here well it's easy to assume that maybe there are just multiple mysterious strangers running around the world and the one that visits us isn't the one who fathered the drifter problem with that theory is remember obsidian's josh sawyer literally confirmed new vegas's ms is the dad when he talked about that unique event the studio had to cut so the only possible explanations are that the stranger is a time traveler or that he otherwise is somehow immune to the effects of aging possibly thanks to supernatural powers or an advanced technological enhancement neither of those ideas would be very surprising actually as there are multiple examples of people avoiding age in the fallout universe in fallout 4 our protagonist gets cryogenically frozen we meet centuries-old cyborg men in new vegas we meet cyborg people at big mt you get the point the mysterious stranger's old age is far from impossible furthermore maybe he's not old at all maybe he really is 20 some years old but he's just a time traveler that would explain why he only appears in vats when our perception of time is radically altered and how he's able to teleport into thin air i mean all the anti-aging cream in the world couldn't make you do that so the marty mcfly theory makes some sense anyway let's move on we're not quite done with new vegas yet fallout new vegas also introduced a new perk called miss fortune that was very similar to the mysterious stranger here's how it worked the misfortune perk is also unlocked once you've acquired the appropriate lux skill its description reads quote misfortune is a character that randomly appears in vats to help you out when you have the misfortune perk just when your enemies think they have the upper hand misfortune appears to turn their world upside down effectively misfortune works in a nearly identical fashion as the mysterious stranger [Music] once obtained it's possible for a woman called misfortune to spawn in a rather flashy getup when you're in vast combat like the stranger misfortune will fire a single shot out of a 44 revolver but rather than instantly kill your enemies her attacks will merely cause them to fall unconscious and or suffer some sort of bad luck event like their weapon might break or if they have any explosives on them they may detonate randomly and cause damage you get the idea so while the mysterious stranger kills your foes misfortune causes them to suffer some bad karma notably her outfit isn't detective like at all she wears a studded red leotard with feathers and a scarf covering her face miss fortune looks more like a dancer than an investigator why is that it sure seems like the two characters are a part of the same club there could really be a faction of mystical folks out there leveraging these powers rather than just a single individual why they dress so funny we don't know and sadly new vegas doesn't provide us a whole lot more info and misfortune doesn't appear to have a son or daughter of her own what a shame lucky us in 2015 fallout 4 released and the mysterious stranger perk returned once again though miss fortune didn't fallout 4 was set in the boston area six years following the events of new vegas and 10 years after fallout 3 in 2287. now fallout stranger behaved the exact same way as new vegas and threes however the character himself had changed a little no longer was he a young looking asian man now he was a middle-aged caucasian dude with the caterpillar on his lip additionally his trench coat was now buttoned up rather than left open oh and also this probably doesn't mean much but for some reason the stranger carries around a pack of gray tortoises in his inventory despite the fact that we're not supposed to be able to access his inventory without console commands i don't know it's weird so what's the deal with these changes well many believe that fallout 4 stranger is actually the lonesome drifter from new vegas maybe after we met him in the mojave the drifter made his way to the commonwealth and became the new mysterious stranger it's a very fun theory to consider though honestly it doesn't hold up to scrutiny the drifter may have had a similar looking mustache but he also boasted darker skin darker hair and was asian as well according to the game files so this dude is definitely a different person so if he's not the lonesome drifter and he's not the drifter's father then who is he well like misfortune fallout 4 stranger could just be a different person a part of the strange mysterious club maybe there's a bunch of mysterious men and women running around the wasteland and this is just another example or maybe he's meant to be the same stranger we've been seeing bethesda just decided to change his look a bit without necessarily meaning anything by it whatever the case there's more in fallout 4 to examine than just his charming mug you see in vault 114 the player could find a magazine titled astoundingly awesome tales number seven the man who could stop time and when picked up we'd gain an additional five action points that could be used as extra stamina or in vast mode and oh boy who's that on the cover maybe i'm just reaching a bit but that dude looks like he's wearing a similar trench coat as the strangers obviously the faces don't match but the outfits do end in the game's files this magazine cover is actually titled mysterious stranger magazine zero one which erases any doubt what's he doing here well we're not sure comic book covers in the fallout universe are very very weird sometimes they communicate valid lore related points however other times they're totally meaningless it's possible the debs put the stranger here just to reference the vast related benefits it could offer and that was all still though with a title like the man who could stop time it does seem to quite strongly substantiate our time traveler theory but wait a minute as i keep saying there seem to be a lot of mysterious strangers out there so are they all time travelers let's move on now from this point onward in the video we're going to be looking at a lot of clues related to the institute so i'd like to take a second to briefly run through the faction's history just so we're all on the same page the institute is an organization of scientists living in a giant futuristic bunker beneath the commonwealth its origins date back before the war you see long ago the commonwealth institute of technology or cit as it was called was one of the world's leading universities and research centers it's based on the real life mit in the days leading up to the big kaboom cit's leaders saw the writing on the wall and built a giant bunker underneath the campus that could shield members from danger thus when the bombs did fall many students and professors fled to the shelters and survived the blasts these lucky survivors were some of the earth's brightest minds and they decided that the end of the world wouldn't stop them from pursuing their research thus while underground they continue to make science their number one priority and so did their children and their children's children and their children's children still do you know what i mean fast forward 200 years later and the institute is still thriving to this day they are easily the most advanced faction in the wasteland we've ever encountered and they play a central role in fallout 4's narrative the institute's most famous achievement is the synth a type of android that is so advanced it's nearly indistinguishable from a normal human being one of the big ethical dilemmas fallout 4 forces the player to consider is whether or not these droids should be treated like real people and whether or not they may have actual consciousness and self-awareness the institute insists that synths are just robots without any rights that should do their bidding unquestionably and they claim that any who escape or think they're real people are just bugged okay so what does any of this have to do with a stranger well earlier in the video when we were still talking about fallout 3 i briefly entertained the idea that the mysterious stranger could be a sith and that would actually explain quite a lot we know some of the institute's more advanced androids are capable of teleporting and they could theoretically live forever explaining the agelessness there also could be a bunch of similar synths explaining the multiple strangers furthermore remember that crackpot theory of mind where i suggested the institute could have some association with vats based on the reward they give us in fallout 3 well fallout 4 basically confirms it within the institute's main compound on a terminal in the robotics wing we can find an entry titled unique project which reads as follows quote overriding directive do not alter our synth's basic function notwithstanding father has granted clearance for a rather unique project in select gen 3 synths the synthetic brain is indeed capable of accepting specific enhancements to the visual cortex basal ganglia and right parallel cortex the result is substantially improved combat effectiveness due to two factors 1. an increased understanding of weapon accuracy to the extent that the combatant can actually visualize the percentage of effectively hitting targets for smaller areas on those targets two an altered sense of perception that mimics the effect of slowing or even stopping time recommend we comment surgery and field trials on appropriate operatives in the near future end quote visualizing percentages altered sense of perception that mimics the slowing of time that's vats baby so the vats based reward we got in fallout 3 wasn't just a coincidence the institute really was experimenting with this tech again maybe they even had something to do with the creation of bats in its own right this is a really cool concept but it doesn't quite help explain the stranger i mean the institute is capable of giving their sins bats that's great but we're the ones who use that's not the stranger and there's nothing that tells us they're capable of deploying synths while other people are in bats don't forget we know that at least one of these mysterious strangers has a son and since r as far as we know biologically incapable of independent reproduction why would the institute have since in the mojave wasteland anyway it just doesn't add up he can't be a droid although there is one synth in the commonwealth that might know something nick valentine nick valentine is a unique older synth that was given the memories and personality of a detective who lived before the great war of the same name valentine ended up escaping from the institute many decades ago and moved to diamond city where he started a new life and put his skills to work becoming the settlement's most renowned detective he plays a critical role in fallout 4's main quest line as he helps the sole survivor find their missing son what does he have to do with the mysterious stranger though well evidently one of the cases detective valentine had been investigating before we showed up was the mysterious strangers you see beneath nick's bed at his home in diamond city the player can find a note titled the mysterious stranger it reads as follows quote case the mysterious stranger sightings of a man dubbed the mysterious stranger have been popping up sporadically across the old u.s for years now best case the man's an immoral lunatic worst case a prolific serial killer all anyone knows is his mode of operation appearing suddenly killing without remorse disappearing without a word the stranger has no known accomplices no clear method for selecting his targets no calling cards left behind sightings ranged from the new california republic all the way to the east coast stretching back decades now he's come to the commonwealth last thing this place needs is another psychopath running amok time to start putting together the pieces to put this one away description human mail outfits vary but most recent sightings describe a large overcoat and fedora gaia's taste i'll give them that much one man multiple men a ghoul with minimal scarring might explain the long passages of time between sightings appears and disappears suddenly suggesting perter natural infiltration abilities slash access to advanced cloaking tech all but the earliest descriptions suggest the stranger uses only conventional arms making infiltration training more likely perps like this make me wish the institute had sprung for thermal detection before giving me the boot signing locations the commonwealth confirmed the capital wasteland confirmed new california republic hold rumors shady sands really old rumors end quote ah okay so nick valentine had opened a case on our guy before we showed up furthermore if you have nick as an active companion when the mysterious stranger appears he'll say the following lines of dialogue you stop damn vanished what the the stranger slipped right through our fingers he was just here you saw him right that was him the stranger he was right here where'd he go haha that's pretty neat note that nick is the only character in the game that will react to a mysterious stranger appearance nobody else will so much as acknowledge his existence now i had always thought that this was where valentine's relationship with the stranger ended i.e all he was doing was investigating the character and there is nothing more to it bethesda probably just put all this in as a fun little easter egg or whatever however what if there was more to it than that isn't it a little funny that the stranger and nick dress so similar heck nick's outfit looks quite similar to what the ms wore in fallout 3 and new vegas also remember how i mentioned the mysterious stranger carries around a pack of grey tortoises in his inventory despite the fact we can't ever get into his inventory without using console commands well the only other person in the game who carries grey tortoises around is you guessed it nick valentine furthermore in fallout 4's game files we can actually extract the exact scripts used by the voice actors for all of their lines when we look at nick valentine's scripts we find that bethesda told the voice actor the mysterious stranger was his quote-unquote nemesis not just an ordinary suspect admittedly script notes aren't exactly canon and there's a good chance bethesda told the voice actor this just because they wanted him to sound as surprised and dramatic as possible oh yeah and volt 114 that place where we find the astoundingly awesome magazine with the mysterious stranger on its cover well that just so happens to be the same place where we meet nick valentine for the first time in the game as we have to rescue him from some bad guys here so nick was running an investigation on the stranger he dresses the same way he carries around the same pack of grey tortoises in the game files he was told the stranger was his nemesis and we meet him in the same place where we find the magazine by themselves i think any one of these little coincidences could easily be written off as accidental and meaningless though when you put them all together it gets a little creepy some players have proposed that maybe the mysterious stranger is the original nick valentine i.e maybe he's the detective nick got his mind from what if somehow that original dude managed to survive the great war and discovered some sort of time travel slash anti-aging tech that allowed him to continue living for the centuries to come nick himself tells us he has no idea why the institute chose some random cop to put in a synth what if there was something special about him my memories my personality they're all lifted from some cop who volunteered for an experiment back before the war they scanned his brain and copied it onto the hardware that runs between my ears don't know why they chose to make a robot based on some pre-war cop instead of a math genius or a bio engineer nick was a hell of a cop a guy with good instincts and a good heart alternatively ignoring our earlier points the stranger could just be a more advanced synth that uses the same mind as nick valentine but again we'd have to ask why he was following us around in the mojave and whatnot it's so weird and frustrating there's so much that connects the mysterious stranger to valentine in the institute yet the lore seems to disprove all of our theories one might say there's a lot of smoke here but no fire which is what makes what i'm about to say so frustrating as you probably know fallout 4 currently has a marketplace called the creation club where players can purchase paid ma i mean mini dlcs from bethesda in 2019 the creation club got a new mod added called the noir penthouse priced at 600 credits or roughly six buckaroos the noir penthouse's main selling point was the new noir theme department player home it offered however before we could obtain it we'd first have to complete a side quest this side quest would begin when we heard a mysterious signal play on our radios when followed the signal would lead us to a dead institute courser dressed in a very familiar outfit yes this is the same damn set of clothes worn by nick valentine just with different coloration on the dead robot's body would be a unique 44 revolver called early retirement as well as a few holotapes that would explain everything to us sort of apparently the institute had created this synth to destroy slash recapture escaped robots and he went undercover in diamond city taking up the role of a detective to gain the local's trust so they could tell him more information huh this guy was pretending to be a detective in diamond city sounds a little too similar to nick valentine now doesn't it furthermore there's actually a custom script that came with this mod which allows nick to wear the same detective outfit something other characters can't do now the institute had apparently provided the robot with a full penthouse in downtown boston to act as a base of operations and a place to rest and relax the player could steal his keys and then the apartment would be all yours effectively completing the quest obviously it's very weird that the institute would give one of their androids a full apartment seeing as the things literally don't require sleep or relaxation at all they can just teleport back to the institute if they needed that anyway and in this condo there's a luxurious shower comfortable furniture a luxury kitchen all things since really don't need or want and stuff the institute definitely wouldn't be providing there are also diamond city newspapers in the home that were created as late as september of 2287 suggesting the dead courser we just saw had been active around the same time nick valentine had been why didn't we hear anything about him what the hell is going on here how did this courser get his own condo why does he dress and behave so similar to nick what does this all mean well probably nothing you see the content uploaded onto bethesda's creation club isn't always canon in fact more often than not it isn't according to bethesda they try and make most of their creations at least consistent with the lore but they know that doesn't always happen and we shouldn't take this stuff too seriously furthermore it also seems to be another blade runner reference you see in blade runner that movie about the robocop bounty hunter we talked about earlier the concept of killing robots is referred to as retiring them so when bethesda provided this courser with a unique revolver called the early retirement they were referencing that film and this courser detective may even be a reference to rick deckard or one of the fellow characters thus we should take all of this creation club stuff with a grain of salt let's go ahead and move on we're not totally done with fallout 4 yet but it's time we talk about the most recent game in the franchise fallout 76 a game everyone loves fallout 76 takes place in the year 2102 just a couple decades after the bombs originally fell in 2077 this is by far the earliest fallout game ever made and the mysterious stranger returns once again this time appearing the same way he did in fallout 3 and new vegas with a similar face seeing as fallout 3 and new vegas take place literally around 200 years later this basically confirms the time travel slash aging theory this guy is definitely very old or a time traveler no matter what but i digress now the thing that caught my attention so much in fallout 76 was a location called riverside manor and the order of mysteries faction let me explain at riverside manor a large well manner in the fallout 76 map we could learn the story of frederick and shannon rivers frederick river was a pre-war inventor and businessman who had acquired an astoundingly large fortune and he was a huge fan of the silver shroud comic book series the silver shroud was a pre-war comic book superhero who dressed in a actually fairly similar outfit to the mysterious stranger he wore a black fedora and black trench coat with the occasional red bandana thrown in in the comic books he protected the streets from criminals using his signature tommy gun he would take out some of the biggest threats to boston the silver shroud's partner in crime slash life partner was his wife the mistress of mystery as she was called in fallout 76 we would learn that frederick rivers had essentially turned his wife into a real world mistress of mystery before the bombs fell he outfitted her with some of the greatest equipment money could buy built a gigantic training facility and even purchased a pre-war advanced us military mainframe called kryptos to run his operation on funnily enough it seems frederick never bothered to turn himself into a real silver shroud he was just sort of living vicariously through his wife anyway i digress after the bombs fell frederick and shannon stepped their whole game up tremendously as now actual raiders were threatening the innocence of appalachia shannon started running around assassinating raiders and scavengers that committed crimes and in many ways was now effectively an actual superhero notably she wielded a unique 44 revolver that apparently the comic book character had used as well also frederick provided her with a special device that allowed her to effectively disappear whenever she wanted to this device was basically just a stealth boy modified with some hallucigen gas but you get the idea you can kind of see where i'm going with this in many ways it seems like shannon was starting to resemble misfortune from fallout new vegas but there's more to the story as time passed frederick and shannon started adopting numerous girls who had been orphaned from the great war they eventually ended up adopting something like 20 kids and they put those children on the same training program as shannon rivers effectively making all of these little girls mistresses of mystery as well they named this new faction of theirs the order of mysteries now sadly for all intents and purposes the order of mystery seemed to have collapsed before we the player had arrived one of their members had betrayed them to the raiders and shannon as well as numerous higher ranking members were killed though there were many survivors and we don't know what happened to frederick rivers his fate is left ambiguous you can see where this is heading what if frederick had survived and what if he decided to become a superhero himself maybe he would end up finding himself a fedora and trenchcoat and getting one of those unique 44 revolvers and start fighting crime we don't know in fallout 76 there's this entire little quest line where the player can kind of join the order of mysteries despite the fact that it's dead thanks to the kryptos mainframe being re-accessed it's some weird stuff but it really makes us wonder maybe frederick rebuilt the order of mysteries and this time started allowing men into the ranks and more boys and girls joined and all of the sudden a bunch of mysterious strangers were born considering what a great inventor frederick was and how wealthy he used to be it's not unfeasible to imagine he may have even developed an anti-aging serum or something to that effect after the order of mysteries had collapsed who knows this is personally what i think probably happened if anything the mysterious stranger story is so jumbled and convoluted i'm not even sure if bethesda has a coherent idea what they're trying to tell but i think if there is an explanation frederick rivers is it i think after the death of his wife and the collapse of his order he moved on his own picked up a fedora and trench coat and restarted anew this time perhaps accepting boise news organization and building from there but wait a minute nate you said we were going to talk about the mysterious stranger's appearances in all the games we've talked about three new vegas 4 and 76 now but what about fallouts 1 and 2 how come i haven't mentioned them yet well simply put i don't think either of those games necessarily matter you see while the mysterious stranger was definitely featured in fallout's 1 2 which released in 1997 and 1998 respectively in these games he wore a set of road leathers and looked more like a greaser than a detective he also didn't appear in vats because vats wasn't a thing until fallout 3. instead he'd just be a random ally we could encounter if we had the right perk furthermore the original version of the stranger didn't have a custom 44 instead he used a random weapon based on the player's level and he could even die in battle if allowed to take enough damage that's right you could lose your stranger and after he died he'd be gone permanently in many ways the stranger of fallouts 1 and 2 felt less supernatural and more like just a normal guy who wanted to help you out what made him change from that into the godly detective he is now well i suspect it's because fallouts 1 and 2 were made by a different game developer than the rest of the franchise the classic fallouts were made by interplay studios not bethesda game studios who currently owns the series i suspect bethesda and interplay had two very different ideas for what the mysterious stranger as a character should be look like and what his backstory should consist of thus i'm hesitant to read too deeply into it furthermore even if we do consider those games seriously all they really tell us is that there might be more mysterious strangers and that the strangers are technically mortal which is great information but it doesn't necessarily prove or disprove any of our theories so again i'm kind of skeptical of its significance thus here we are it's been nearly one hour since we began our investigation and we still aren't really sure of who the mysterious stranger is i provided my theory that he is related to fred rick rivers and the order of mysteries but that's still very far from confirmed and we've went over so much conflicting information that doesn't seem to point in any one direction for example the references to him being an odd eldritch entity were just never touched upon again we don't know why he's associated with the musical riffs there's still so much that hasn't been explained and so much will probably learn in the future thus this is where we are going to wrap up thanks so much for stopping by everybody what do you think the truth is do you think the mysterious stranger is one man multiple men an entire group of people a time traveler an anti-aging person leave a comment down below as always like readings are very much appreciated and hope to catch you all in my next video peace out everyone

Channel: TheEpicNate315

Views: 698,516

Rating: 4.90412 out of 5

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Id: U2AOs8Tyo00

Length: 52min 6sec (3126 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020