Mr. House: Robert House, the Man Who Saved Las Vegas

Mr. House is Robert House, the pre-war founder of RobCo Industries who worked out that a nuclear war was coming, rigged Las Vegas to survive it, and lived on inside a life-support machine at the top of the Lucky 38 casino. In Fallout: New Vegas he is the unseen owner of the Strip and one of the four powers the Courier can back. Season 2 of the TV series gives him a pre-war history with Cooper Howard and brings him back in 2296. (Fallout: New Vegas; Fallout, "The Wrangler")

Who is Robert House?#

House grew up around Las Vegas, founded RobCo Industries and became the face of American tech money. He tells the Courier that by 30 he was "a billionaire 30 times over". He also bought into REPCONN Aerospace and the Lucky 38, and he talks about pre-war Vegas with real affection. (Fallout: New Vegas)

He ran his business on numbers. His models of world politics told him that a full nuclear exchange would come within a couple of decades, and he spent the years before 2077 preparing the city for it. He set up laser and missile defences to knock down incoming warheads and planned to keep himself alive in a sealed chamber wired into his computers. (Fallout: New Vegas)

How did Mr. House save Las Vegas?#

The defences needed one last piece: the platinum chip, an upgrade for his systems that was due to be delivered on the afternoon of 23 October 2077. The bombs fell that morning. House calls it a miscalculation of hours. Working with old software, he still destroyed most of the warheads aimed at the city, but the strain crashed his systems and put him into a coma for decades. (Fallout: New Vegas)

When he woke, he waited. Once the New California Republic reached Hoover Dam, his Securitrons came out of the Lucky 38 and he recruited three local tribes, who became the Chairmen, the Omertas and the White Glove Society. They rebuilt the Strip for him, and the NCR agreed to treat New Vegas as his independent city in exchange for using Hoover Dam and McCarran airport. (Fallout: New Vegas)

Mr. House in Fallout: New Vegas#

By 2281 the chip had been dug out of the ruins and House hired the Mojave Express to bring it to him. Benny, leader of the Chairmen and House's right-hand man, ambushed the courier carrying it at Goodsprings, shot them and took the chip. The Securitron Victor saw the Courier survive, and House invites them to the Lucky 38 once they reach the Strip. (Fallout: New Vegas)

He is blunt about what he wants. He calls himself an autocrat, dismisses the NCR as a nation of customers and the Legion as slavers, and wants both gone from the Mojave so New Vegas can lead a technological future under his control. He doesn't want worship, and says he has no interest in people's private lives. (Fallout: New Vegas)

His jobs for the Courier escalate: get the chip back, deal with threats inside the Three Families, then use the chip at the Fort to upgrade his Securitron army. He also demands the destruction of the Brotherhood of Steel bunker in the Mojave. If the Courier goes through his chamber door instead, they find a frail old man sealed in a machine and can kill him. (Fallout: New Vegas)

In his ending, House holds Hoover Dam, pushes the NCR and the Legion out and rules the Strip as he always meant to. The Courier can also take his network for themselves through Benny's reprogrammed Securitron, Yes Man. (Fallout: New Vegas)

Mr. House in the Fallout TV series#

Season 2 opens before the war with House, unrecognised in a bar, forcing a mind-control chip into a construction worker who picks a fight with him. The chip makes the man kill his friends, and then his head explodes. The public face of House is a body double who has played him for about ten years, so the real House can walk around unknown. That's how he meets Cooper Howard at a veterans' awards event without Cooper knowing who he is. (Fallout, "The Innovator"; Fallout, "The Profligate"; Fallout, "The Wrangler")

House is buying a cold fusion diode from Vault-Tec, delivered by Barb Howard, which he says will let him live on indefinitely in a robotic, non-biological form. In the Lucky 38 he tells Cooper that he saw the "demon in the snow" Cooper met in Alaska through software he licensed for Cooper's T-45 power armour, that the day his forecasts locked onto the end of the world was the day Cooper's daughter Janey was born, and that neither he nor Vault-Tec will drop the bombs. He believes there is "another player at the table". Cooper calls him a lunatic. (Fallout, "The Wrangler")

Barb gets the diode away from Hank, Cooper hands it to the president, and House never gets it. That other player turns out to be the Enclave. (Fallout, "The Other Player"; Fallout, "The Handoff"; Fallout, "The Strip")

In 2296 the Strip is overrun by deathclaws and House's screen in the penthouse is dark. The Ghoul gets in and uses the diode to power the penthouse screen, and House appears on it to greet him. House offers to guide him into the Vault for management under the Strip if he wears a Pip-Boy, and warns him that the Enclave is still out there. When his family's cryo pods turn out to be empty, House tells him, "You bet on hope, Mr. Howard. And you lost." The Ghoul walks away from him anyway, and the show doesn't say exactly what form House now survives in. (Fallout, "The Handoff"; Fallout, "The Strip")