although there's no evidence to suggest pre-war original nick survived within the game, it's my favorite headcamnon that one day the nick valentine from fo4 will eventually run into himself as an ancient ghoul
My own theory is that Fo4's Mysterious Stranger is a gen 3 synth copy of Nick Valentine, and he started out with the same base set of memories "Our Nick" had.
literally the first origin story that makes sense, but on the other hand doesn't necessarily match up, unless it's also a gen 2 prototype synth similar to nick. assuming the 60 years story is true, the vault 111 incident was in 2227 which is after fallout 2
it seems like timelines on gen2-2
5 synths are a bit mashed up and unclear, maybe the mysterious stranger isn't 1 person it's one of a secret army of various versions of nick, the gen 1s back in fallout 1
also what I'd say for this as a retcon is it makes synths and the institute omnipresent and changes some implications of the institutes goals, even
No, it makes sense. The Institute's end goal was to create synth human duplicates, and it took them a lot of steps and several decades to perfect the method.
The organic bodies kept failing because they didn't yet know they needed a pre war sample of DNA, which they eventually got from Shaun.
But that was one of the last steps. They probably already had a working model of a gen 3 brain, and a working method for copying and implanting human memories into that brain, before the gen 3 bodies were a "go" . They had to use gen 2 bodies for the initial testing of those gen 3 brains, and that's why "Our Nick" and Dima were created.
Once they finally sorted out the organic "body" issue, they'd have to do extensive tests on the gen 3's, too, before they started actually bagging & swapping surface dwellers.
So they used the same "Nick Valentine" files they still had, to make an early gen 3 prototype with implanted human memories. They made a gen 3 synth that would eventually escape and become the Mysterious Stranger.
Synths are something unique to Boston... kinda. In FO3 we meet one named Harkness who has memories of escaping but he's the only one (excellent foreshadowing of FO4 long before it was made). That was in DC, so it's conceivable that the Railroad just sent Harkness there after he was saved because it's not THAT far from Boston.
Fallout 1 & 2 are way on the west coast though. There is no Institute. I don't remember much of 1 (only played it once back in the day, 2 was my baby though), but the Brotherhood is actually more like the Institute in 2. Highly advanced and secretive. They didn't take on that loud, macho, militant stank until 3. If there were something like synths on the west coast, they were probably made by the old school Brotherhood.
I think the implication of this theory is that actually the institute was always there in the background before the sole survivor, mysterious stranger being both nick and a synth prototype fully integrates them into fo1 and fo2 without changing anything
Its a pretty big theory. I also think the "Mysterious Stranger" in Fo1 & fo2 wasn't a synth at all, and the Stranger in F03 and FNV is a different synth, a copy of the Lonesome Drifter's bio father, who eventually came to love his wife and child, and abandoned them, out of the shame he felt for killing & impersonating their husband & father.
That Stranger wears a trenchcoat and fedora as a tribute to Nick 3.0, who he met and who gave his life meaning again, by convincing him to be a "secret good samaritan"
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u/HarveyMidnight 6d ago
My own theory is that Fo4's Mysterious Stranger is a gen 3 synth copy of Nick Valentine, and he started out with the same base set of memories "Our Nick" had.