By people who love to make a spectacle of themsevles by speculating on other peoples speculation over something that may just be barbed wire. . .

Careful your making a spectacle of yourself.

I don't think Sole Survivor would've appreciated him peeing on his/her front lawn, in full view, in broad daylight.

I wouldn't mind seeing him as a Ghoul. Maybe we do a quest with him to explore a vault to retrieve something that belonged to him?

Not yours maybe, mine's a kinky mofo.

once drank a little to much coffee , developed a nice twitch and was murmuring about seeing sound. Coffee is bloody dangerous once you get to 40+ cups in a day lol

No. The Enclave was actually a sort of shadow government. They had strong ties to Vault-Tec as well. That's largely why they stayed as such a large force in the wasteland.

Still think he has weird hands. Regardless of his true motive or intentions to PC/America in general. Could be a normal honest guy, wouldn't trust the plastic looking mother [censored].

I'd go through the clipboard scene grumbling "This is bull [censored]" under my breath perhaps already pissed because it sure wasn't my idea to register for a Vault in the first place.

Vault-Tec has always been shady, so that's probably a thing.

You would be pretty pissed to if a bunch of nukes are going off, and 2 power armored soldiers say there is no chance in hell your getting into the vault.

Perhaps the man in the hat is nervous because he does not want you to recognise him.

Of course he is probably a Doc Mitchell / Mr Brotch character who helps the the player to

establish his or her skills.

But It would be fun if there was a temporal element to the game.

After all they do seem to have put a lot of effort into creating a pre-war world.

(I know, I have come to the thread late, I'll go and sit in the corner and wear my special "Late to the thread", hat.)

Have you ever met a salesman who didn't have a bad conscience about something? Or maybe he just hates his job and gets nervous when contacting people. I don't see how a lowly salesman could possibly know about an impending nuclear holocaust, but he could potentially know it being an experiment.

Actually, on reflection I think speeddevil has it.

Here's some evidence with some annotated notes.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/87106516/vault-evidence.png

1. It's breakfast time, there is a newscaster on the TV
2. The clock has it at about 10 past 9.
3. The Vault-Tec van has pulled up outside and
4. here comes the Vault-Tec guy. He's keen to get the registration paperwork and importantly says:
5. 'Wonderful, that's everything. Just gonna walk this over to the Vault...'
6. A few moments later, the news is still on announcing the bombs
7. The clock remains at around 10 past 9.
8. You can see the Vault-Tec van abandoned through the window
9. and still blocking the street as you go outside.
10. And there's the sales guy (from the reveal trailer) trying to get let in.

So Vault-Tec were alerted that bombs were on the way.

The poor sales guy needs an excuse to go the vault

and getting some paperwork from the 'cleared' family nearest the vault seems

the best bet in desperate times.

Huh, that's really interesting. Never noticed the time. Regardless, it looks like he's either dead or a ghoul.

You think they'd let the sales guy know ahead f time? Cos Vault Tec has great HR services right? Vault-Tec was government sponsored, they likely got alerted when SAC or NORAD detected ICBMs heading towards the U.S.

While we're getting fixated about time,

the clock shown in the post-apocalypse house in the reveal trailer has the time at 9:30...

presumably the clock is stopped by the nuclear detonation EMP.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/87106516/9-20.png

So from the conversation with the Vault-Tec guy at 9:10 to the nuclear detonation seen atop vault 111,

we're talking some 20 minutes...

Time to weave some dialogue and a walk up the hill to the vault, but not lengthy conversations.

I was theorizing before that he wasn't just some random sales guy, but possibly somebody that would have been admitted to the vault. Like maybe the Overseer. But as others have pointed out, it looks like he was kept from gaining entrance, which leaves me to wonder if the guy was just weird. I figured Bethesda wrote him that way as some kind of foreshadowing.

I don't think that the Overseer of the Vault would be running the rounds doing recruiting.

He's just a goofy 50's door-to-door salesman. Frankly if they're still recruiting on the 23rd of October I'd say that's the biggest clue that Vault-Tec did not know that the war was coming or they'd have had this wrapped up sooner.

Well that was the point I was making before. From the looks of it, vault recruitment was still happening, yet all of the vaults seemed to have been at least partially inhabited. It struck me as weird that we never found an empty vault (abandoned doesn't count) despite recruitment still active. My point was that recruitment might have been concluded with the PC, and that the bombs dropping may have actually been a built-in part of the vault experiment.

I doubt vault-tec could predict when the bombs would drop, not even House got the time right.

Well probably because it wouldn't be very interesting gameplay. They aren't going to waste a Vault and just say it was never occupied when they can invent some "zany" experiment to have occurred there.

You have to remember that there are external factors outside of the game affecting what is represented.

However, even in media it was indicated that the vaults were all inhabited, or at least I was under the impression that they were. In fact, I was under the impression the slots for the vaults were filled way before the bombs dropped. You're probably right about it being all about gameplay, but the whole thing just seemed weird. I hope that Bethesda gives us some additional info on the whole thing. Maybe everything was legit (or at least as legit as Vault-Tec can get) but the whole scene struck me as weird.

Well yeah, Vaults are subscribed too or else look for specific population groups to fill their populations up. Some were finished in the 2060's, of-course they started taking down names.

Taking down names is one thing, but it looks like the bombs started to drop at the same time people were actually being enlisted or otherwise confirmed for clearance. Maybe we'll see uninhabited or broken into vaults in Fallout 4? Most of the attention was on the West coast after all, so maybe the East coast was lagging behind with filling them?

He prolly just constipated.

We do not know much and to what degree, however, it would seem that the Vault-Tec "salesman" we see before choosing our initial S.P.E.C.I.A.L., does in fact play some other role than what we've seen/know thus far. I do not know the exact timestamp and cannot find it, I've tried, to anyone who does find it, I'd appreciate knowing. Irregardless IIRC it can be found around 1/2 -3/4 into this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl65m-0fniI%C2%A0

*I warn of potential/implicated spoilers/hints, there isn't anything definitive but my modus operandi is to always be safe rather than sorry. To elaborate - This interview is with both, Brian T. Delaney & Courtney Taylor, The M/F voice protagonists for those that have been living under a rock. The key difference compared to other interviews is that this one is via Skype, you may or may not be able to read reactions and signs from their faces pertaining to the Q's asked.* BTW - If I happen to be remembering this wrong, I sincerely apologize, I'm going by memory from when I first watched this. My theory still stands however, which is down below

I'll refer to my original post per my prediction/theory -

"I have a similar theory(s) to put forth: Almost everyone continues to title this guy as a "salesman" what if he is actually much further up the chain of command then we could ever possibly know at the beginning of the game? Or he could be an ancestor to Dr. Zimmer, * I believe they use the same VA and to me, I can see a slight resemblance between the two, considering age discrepancies Etc." http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1525298-did-the-vault-tec-salesman-seemnervous/page-4#entry24137176

* I'd like to add - It could be Dr. Zimmer when he was younger, bare with me here for a minute if you will. What's to say if this were Zimmer that he couldn't of found a way to have survived, he may even end up in the Vault along with us for all we know;. The point is he could of survived for many years, explaining his age discrepancy, before going into cryostasis. The rest of what I was just thinking along with this theory I'll keep to myself. It's a very far fetched scenario and it's highly doubtful but I just had to throw it out there.