My friend was playing New Vegas and walked up into the dino when he heard Manny Vargas going "uuhhh", and when he came up Manny was not there. Then he walked down and saw Manny lying dead on the ground. Then a quest objective popped up saying "Find out why Manny died" or something like that, but there's no quest in his quest log. Anyone else experienced this? It seemed very strange.

There is no mention of this being a scripted event, nor any mention of any quest objective message like that, on the Fallout Wiki. No idea.

Your friend lied to you is my best guess.

Or he has a mod on.

The only NPC I remember that " randomly" died is that Malcolm guy that follows you and talks to you about star caps. He got blown up by powder gangers powder charges, left me a nice +10 barter bonus and star caps.

After he talks to me and warns me about people being after me lucky stars, I roleplay a wastelander who really wants his star caps and trader's clothing... Thank you, sir! The guy and the gal near Nipton who are shooting each other up over the bottlecaps... they somehow always both end up dead and looted too. Odd how that happens....

Oh, and the powder ganger dude who runs out of Nipton so freaking happy about winning the lottery, I figure that kind of karma just isn't good for anybody to have to carry around with them, so I chill him out too, just on principle. I guess RP'ing Mother Theresa just wouldn't be a good fit, for me...

Yah he must have lied to you because it cant be found on the wiki neither have i ever experienced this.

This is all the justification I have ever needed to shoot that guy.

Perhaps Manny realized he would never have Boone and so decided to depart from this world :whistling: