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Nice to see you back. I trust the adventuring is going well.

The Courier's brain, known in-game as the Brain Tank, is the disembodied, isolated, conscious, and interactive brain of the Courier.

Background[]

Upon their arrival at the Big Empty, the Courier's brain is removed by the Think Tank, and subsequently forgotten about. Soon after, Dr. Mobius takes the opportunity to seize the brain and secretly take it away to his stronghold, the Forbidden Zone, as leverage against the Think Tank. The brain enjoys the peace and quiet of its new home, along with the relative safety and cleanliness, when compared to the wasteland in the Courier's head.

Interactions with the player character[]

Interactions overview[]

Interactions
Perk nociception regulator color
This character is essential. Essential characters cannot be killed.
FO76 ui icon quest
This character is involved in quests.

Quests[]

Notes[]

  • The voice of the brain always sounds male even if the Courier is female. This is explained by the fact that a female voice modulator is, apparently, hard to come by in Big MT.[1]
  • The brain has some small scarring due to Benny shooting the Courier in the head, which the brain does not remember fondly.
  • Male Couriers with the Confirmed Bachelor perk or females with the Cherchez La Femme can hit on their brain. It is disgusted by the insinuation.[2] This also seems to work if a male Courier has the Lady Killer perk, and if a female Courier has the Black Widow perk.
  • The brain, if left in The Sink and not integrated back into the Courier, will act like any of the other appliances. These actions are limited to talking to itself, which include mathematics, claiming it doesn't want to be a robobrain but wants some "treads" and humming the music of Dead Money's "Begin Again" song which sometimes plays in the mysterious broadcast intended as The Sink's atmosphere music.
  • The Courier's brain can be implanted into the Courier's skull after the end of Old World Blues by using the "Swap Bodyparts" option on the Sink's Auto-Doc; this gives the Big Brained perk.
  • Like the spine and heart, the brain can be taken out and put back in at any time.
  • If the Courier is of low Intelligence, a dialogue can be opened questioning whether the Courier's other organs can speak, a topic which annoys the brain.[3] Further dialogue also reveals that the tank the brain floats in has been saturated with ground Mentats, thus explaining the improved Intelligence.
  • The brain is also one of the most versatile characters in the dialogue exchanges it has with the player character. Upon the discussion of reasons why the brain should go back into the Courier's head, the dialogue can be different depending on the Courier's Karma.
  • Once the Brain Tank has been "flushed" to the Sink or taken into the Courier's inventory, the empty tank shuts down. However, the tank is still treated as an NPC and can "detect" the player character while sneaking.
  • The brain may reference Jason Bright, HELIOS One, and Julie Farkas in dialogue.

Notable quotes[]

Appearances[]

The Brain Tank appears only in the Fallout: New Vegas add-on Old World Blues.

Behind the scenes[]

Sunil Malhotra, the brain's voice actor, stated that his performance was an homage to Stewie Griffin from Family Guy, and that "Stewie basically lives in MY brain, so naturally..."[Non-game 1]

Bugs[]

PCPC Playstation 3Playstation 3Playstation 3 Xbox 360Xbox 360 After progressing through the dialogue with the Brain Tank, the option to say "So, what, you'd rather just stay here? Never leaving that tank of... whatever that stuff is?" appears, however, if you choose it, you will get stuck in a never-ending speech loop. This also occurs on PC as well, specifically at the moment when the brain begins reminiscing about past feats by Courier. In the observed case, the loop occurred between the brain recalling Jason Bright's departure and the activation of Helios One. It seems that there are missing dialogue and sound files for the Brain Tank other than the two references to Jason Bright and Helios One. [verified]

  • PCPC Workaround: to get out of dialogue loop, in the console, type player.cam (close all menus). This will exit the current dialogue with the Brain Tank, and allow the player to walk away or enter dialogue again, but the loop will occur once more if the same response is selected, so choose wisely. [verified]
  • The trigger to this bug is the line about Jason Bright. If the Courier does not complete Come Fly With Me prior to speaking with the brain, this bug will not occur.
  • This bug is still present in PC v140525.
  • Reloading the game from a previous save is the best way to fix this on console.

See also[]

Gallery[]

References[]

  1. The Courier: "Why does my brain sound so... masculine?"
    Brain Tank: "Ah, well, as to that... you'd be surprised how hard a feminine-sounding voice modulator is to find in the Forbidden Zone. It's not as though brain-sustaining life support tanks grow on trees. I had to take what I could get."
    (Brain Tank's dialogue)
  2. The Courier: "Come on, you're my brain and I'm your body. This is meant to be, baby!"
    Brain tank: "Are you... are you coming on to me?! Sweet Lord, I don't even have the words for how repugnantly wrong that is!"
    (Brain tank's dialogue)
  3. NVDLC03BrainTank.txt#NVDLC03DialoguePlayerBrainNVDLC03PlayerBrainTankTopic034

Non-game

  1. Sunil Malhotra on Twitter: "Lol! Thanks!! It was definitely an homage! Stewie basically lives in MY brain, so naturally..."
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