1st, we have Elijah...and old man, intelligent , devious, heartless, and soullless dedicated to nothing but making himself master of, and obtaining the treasure of Sierra Madre.
then we have Joshua Graham of HH who is bent solely on revenge...though there is one ending that envolves a partial redemption.
in OWB we have the Think Tank and Dr. Mobius who are so far out of human reality, thier only reason for existence is fighting each other for scientific authority and couldn't care less about real flesh and blood people.
which brings us to Ullysses...another character bent on revenge, whether real or imaginary, with such a warped sense of morality he's willing to kill just about anyone who's left alive in the Mohave.
all of these characters are so incredibly vapid and self-absorbed, not to mention pathetic and depthless; though some talk an awful lot, say nothing but affirmations of their own sociopathological natures, they also remain frightening in a way, as their semblance to some past and recent political figures of our real-life world.

my 1st impulse is to put down the devs for creating such flat-imaged characters, but when i compare them to those who parade across the news and tv today and yesterdays, they become more and more real to me, and become the true-life maniacs and sociopaths that infect the world today.
it suddenly struck me how a game could be so fantastical, and yet so real-life it makes your bones tremble.

maybe the Fallout universe isn't so unrealistic as we might imagine, and is, perhaps, just a nudge here or there, away.

Developers from Fallout 1 did make the statement that the Fallout world was supposed to be a social commentary on the real world today. And so it bleeds off down through the series. Doesn't surprise me that Obsidian, who had some of the developers who worked on the original Fallout, continued that pattern of social commentary.

Look at the NCR, it is basically a social commentary on the present day U.S.
They are corrupt, they "roll over" people using their military prowess, and they claim any resources they find as theirs. Yet they try to do the right thing (most of the time) and the individual soldiers within that army are innocent, and not responsible for the failures of their leadership. The NCR citizens generally support their nation's conquest of the wasteland, and I particularly like the quote, "We will bleed the ground red with anyone who opposes our peace efforts" This quote represents the irony of the NCR's attitude toward it's conquest of Vegas, kill anyone who opposes our idea of peace.

I always liked this about the Fallout series, that little bit of satire goes a long way to add a lot of depth to the game experience.

Elijah and the Think Tank are crazy, but Ulysses and Graham have well-developed backrounds IMO. Ulysses has been traumatized by what he's done and seen in the Legion and the Divide and Graham is struggling against his anger and shame from being foolish enough to get himself caught up in the Legion.

Who said that quote? I love it!

Random NCR citizens say it occasionally, usually when you walk past them. Try hanging around squatters, as they tend to repeat it a lot.