Don't Blink!

Remember the haunted walking mannequin glitch in skyrim? I'll never be comfortable around mannequins again, theyre all institute spies.

I like to think the mannequins that suddenly float up to the surface were doing something underwater, and when you show up they freeze up like the toys in toy story and float up because they can't hold themselves down anymore, and then the current carries them away.

In FO4 at the Mass Bay Medical Center behind a locked door is a female mannequin with a cigarette standing on a charred pile of corpses. There's a flamer and flamer fuel on the counter. Always felt there was more to the story there. Love the creepiness of it.

still cant believe all those Mannequins survived nukes 😂

There is a Silent Hill overhaul mod for Fallout 4 called Whispering Hills. There are triggers in the mod where you can enter a room, and when you leave, the area you had just been in will be FILLED with mannequins. And not all of those mannequins are content to remain still. Honestly, it's one of the best mods I've ever downloaded. I play it every Halloween.

"The mannequins are alive" I assure you, nothing is alive - I saw to this matter personally.

I have to admit I have once shot at a Mannequin thinking it was an enemy by mistake.

in Fallout 4, mannequins are a sign of Synth Infiltration and offer clues as to who nearby might be a synth. I'm not sure whether it's an in-universe clue, where the synths use mannequins to hide like in that one example, or if it's just a hint from the developers, but it seems remarkably accurate. Many characters who are revealed to be synths have mannequins sitting in their living spaces someplace.

I always assumed that the violent mannequins/garden gnomes around the map resulted from Ug-Qualtoth's manipulation. The eldritch creature briefly possessed them after the bombs fell as a gambit to maintain the power it gained from the Dunwich site sacrifices. They roamed around looking for human victims, but couldn't find enough people for Ug-Qualtoth to sustain itself after the war. (much less 200 years.) This is why the mannequins/gnomes don't move anymore and why Ug-Qualtoth never attacks the player directly, it's become too weak after all this time.

I always assumed it was just survivors thinking it was funny.

There is a twilight zone Episode about living mannequins after the store closes, so many things in Fallout are linked to 50s and 60s TV & movies. It's one of my favorite things to discover. 🤔👍

What if the mannequins are equipped with an RFID chip that allows the Institute to monitor foot traffic/facial recognition in certain locations?

I always find them at the side or even in the middle of the roads, on boats floating upon what is left of great rivers and lakes, they dont move, yet they sometimes seem to be... doing something... exploring the apalachia is REALLY eerie because of them, i dont feel observed, but it always feels like they are the only ones thriving in the wasted world of fallout

"Some use mannequins for other purposes." Uh... "Making their group appear larger." Oh thank God

It is the Toaster.... he is behind it...

Another example of ghosts in fallout is that creepy little girl in the mansion from the nuka world dlc in fo4

I still kill every mannequin I see whilst playing fallout 4

Close to Outpost Zimonja there's a little hut next to a puddle of water. If you go inside there's a mannequin living there.

Bioshock mannequin room, they move when you looked away, stopped when you looked at them, they got closer and closer. Like the weeping angels in Doctor Who. Erie shit!

The Dr Who reference is probably closer to the autons in the Dr Who franchise. Sorry seeing alot of mentioning of weeping angels and wanted to mention the lesser known encounters of the Dr.

I would like to see one on the teddy bears. Most of them actually represent children corpses.

The original blade runner had a scene where one of the replicants pretends to be a mannequin, in a room full of dolls. We've always been scared of copies of ourselves, it might be a commentary of what we really think of ourselves, or maybe not. Fascinating and professionally presented video, thanks a lot.

I always found mannequins in fallout a bit creepy.

If you turn your back to the one on the boat you'll take damage

Would love to see a follow-up on the posed (or living? 😳) Teddy Bears.

Kremvh wields his servants.

I played a little bit of Frost and during my insanity, there was a mannequin that acted like a Weeping Angel... And ever since then, I believe that the Fallout Mannequins are Weeping Angels in a since. It makes sense in my brain and it defiantly makes them a lot more scarier .

That’s a nice nod to TES mannequins which also seem alive eerily enough

I have *always* assumed they were Institute synths awaiting an activation signal. I really thought there would be some kind of John Wick-style grand boss battle with endless waves of mannequin-synths coming for us....

i shouldn't be watching this at 4 in the morning

Don't blink. Blink and you're dead. They are fast. Faster than you can believe. Don't turn your back. Don't look away.

Those things really freaked me out on my first few playthroughs. Always shot at them just in case.

The Mannequins always reminded me of the Twilight Zone episode "The After Hours." If you haven't seen it, I recommend it for some context (and because it's just a damn good show.)

What if people are just posing the mannequins because they're bored?

There's a really great short horror film called Still Life that came out forever ago, and it has honestly always stuck with me whenever I think about shop mannequins specifically. For Fallout, I really like the concept that it's an easter-egg reference to the murder at the time. This also makes me picture a cartoonish villain setting up a murder scene five seconds before the nuke goes off.

I recently got back into fallout (shoutout the NV modding community fr) and saw that the KZfaqr I watched when I was 11 is still describing lore and creating new theories to this day! It makes me super happy as this will always be my favorite community, so thank you for the entertainment and knowledge :)

This is giving me flashbacks to the mannequin jumpscare at the end of the department store level in Condemned Criminal Origins.

Your theory of ghost actually make the most sense, in the theme about the Fallout Series, which is Capital Realism, and stagnations, and despite it's was the Prewar world that droves the world to unclears destructions, all factions within the games (in America at least) are still doing the same thing that set the world into destructions, and the skeletons are still doing what they do 200 years, never endingly repeating it. Even after people became the living misty dead, they still go on business as usual, and the capital economic system is ongoing, even an apocalypse will not end it.

The manikins around the bathtub in Concord still scare me. I'm terrified that they will actually move

I would love to see a video on the Fiends

There are too many doing and in positions doing things to be a coincidence in all the 3D games. Fallout is no stranger to paranormal activities. Theres definitely more to them than meets the eye.

there is a location that's controlled by the Gunners in Fallout 4, its a hospital in downtown Boston. There is a side quest you can do that takes you to this location. I think its one of the MYLA side quest. In one room you find two mannequins stand over a pile of ash with some scattered bones. One of the mannequins is holding a lighter, with flamer ammo on the shelf. Both mannequins are untouched by the fire. Entering the room creeped me out, because of how unexpecting it was.

Some of those mannequins might be synths

Love the gag of having Mannequins in creepy and surprising places. Fun video!

I see your vault series id like to see vault 22 soon :) keep up the lore its been great content

Entertaining content as always, thank you Synonymous!

How creepy would it be if mannequins were alive from the beginning, completely unrelated to the bombs, and simply never left anyone around to tell the tale. It's more Doctor Who or SCP than Fallout, but I kind of like the idea.

You could make fallout videos forever and i would watch.

PLEASE, make a Big Video about The Fallout TV Show and the Connections to the Timeline of the Games and the Easter Eggs of the Show

There are so many bizarre Mannequin encounters which make me believe they are alive. My favorite is the 5 Mannequins standing in a circle around a dismembered Mannequin on the ground. They surrounded and murdered a fellow Mannequin.

It would be interesting if it was a Zetan-type of espionage if they have been doing so with Giddy Up Buttercup horses too

i like the idea that there was a very brief moment of time -somewhere around the range of 1-2 hours- where the Maniquins spontaneously came to life, moved around, possibly killed people, and then just as spontaneously, reverted back to being inanimate. Maybe this happened more then once, and only covering small locations, explaining things like the pre-war ship, and the post-war displays.

Any chance you’ll ever do a video on the followers of the apocalypse? Love your vids!

I like to think there’s a type of hive-mentality bug that evolved to take over objects as a host

Can you do a video on Gatorclaws? They confused me since deathclaws are government made while gatorclaws are stuck in a zoo to mutate or something despite looking almost identical to deathclaws? I don’t have the knowledge to back most of what I’m saying other than playing Nuka World a few years ago. Love your content, watched your vids before but forgot your account till now, now I’m subscribed and enjoy all your other content I missed. Really really sick with the flu so I love the way your content makes my brain work👌🏻😎

You know come to think of it, millions perished in sudden atomic fire, it'd fit with standard lore there would be ghosts and haunting.😮

In fallout 76 I've discovered a rare spot on the map where you can find the victims of the killer mannequin and his partner in crime a Teddy fear bear along with about 7 skinned bodies. Its located in the woods south of Garrahan mining headquarters near the edge of the map. Look for a outhouse its where they hid after the murders.

Hmm, you can tell you have a young crowd here, lots of mentions of weeping angels, yet none of Autons …😂

I've always looked at the mannequins as a tool for breaking of the third wall with the player. Where the game uses them to show what happened to the skeletons lying about. Kinda like a shadow puppet show. But I also like the creepy factor of the possibility of them moving on their own.

don't forget about the mannequines that surround a skeleton on a bed in bradburton, holding objects like they just got done beating him to death.

I was playing FO4 the other day, and I walked past one. I could have sworn it turned its head to look at me.

I figured it was raiders creating sihloutes to draw fire and expose enemies. Thats what i would do

I hope they expand on the lore of the mannequins, or just expand the amount of memes of armed mannequins.

In Fallout 76, some of the random encounters you can find are these circles of mannequins. One version has a note saying that its a memorial, but other versions can have them surround a US supply crate, or even a dead body Furthermore, not sure if this happens in 4, but when you take Berry Mentats it also highlights mannequins as living targets. Almost certainly a side effect of how the CE does mannequins (eg, Skyrims walking mannequins), but still fun to speculate that theres something more going on in them

You know that one scene from ghostbusters 2016, where Leslie Jones’ character is being followed by a possessed mannequin and when she turns around saying “Was that there before? Please do not answer” and the mannequin turns its head at her and starts chasing her. That’s me with these mannequins

So, I like a lot of your theories here. And, I'd say a lot of them are true in some cases. However, I think you missed the mark a bit with the synth one. The modification I'd suggest is that at some point the synths were relocating the mannequins to help the older models blend in. I Suppose they developed specific models to look like the mannequins, but that seems like a short dead-end road with its own unique problems. It seems simpler and easier to collect and relocate mannequins where you'll be deploying synths and want more options to blend in. That would have likely stopped when they had better options, like crows, brain, and higher end synths.

I kinda wish they did more with them but at the same time the subtlety makes it creepier

Love me Synonymous videos.

I have a camp in 76 that 4 mannequins randomly spawn in 😂

Early prototypes no doubt is what i like to think but not really sure till more lore is mention for certain.

I am actually deafly terrified of mannequins

I saw a mod that made all the mannequins synths in disguise that only became hostile when damaged. I can’t find it now sadly

I don't know if you've played Fallout 76 or not. However, throughout the wastelands of Appalachia, you will periodically find mannequins in strange places that they shouldn't be. Come back later, and they're gone. This was even before the Wastelanders update. One of the more common places that this occurs is on the road leading from Sutton to Helvetia. Usually near the shell of a truck just outside of the town. However, it isn't the only location where mannequin are known to appear for no reason, and then be gone the next time to travel through the area.

I believe the mannequins are simply a Bethesda nod to Skyrims moving weirdness. How freaked out we all were to enter our homes and find our armour moving around, truly terrifying

Mannequins seem eerie to us because of the Uncanny Valley affect. My logic is that they’re not exactly doing anything at all it’s just our own mind messing with us

It's stranger to me that a whole cargo ship was packed with just mannequins, rather than THE MANNEQUINS ARE ALIVE!! 😅 this is fallout. Any shaped synths are a thing 😮

Even Toecutter knew not to trust mannequins. "She is not what she seems. Bubba Zanetti has it on good authority she's sent by The Bronze; full of treachery."

Wastelands haunted.

There are actually mannequin placeable in Conan Exiles and I have used them in PVP to make an empty base seem populated lol

Doing gods work my boy 🙏

now that i think about it.... i think hes right about the Mannequin on the boat were being used for smuggling that would explain why some of them float to the top they were hollowed out and used for storing other things making them lighter and why they float up.

Totally different topic but what do you guys think: I always wondered why Dogmeat from Fallout 4 isn't mutated/rough looking like other feral/raider dogs. So is the F4 Dogmeat the one from the tv show and was raised by an Enclave scientist (non mutated breed from a lab)?

Also, witchcraft was a thing in Fo4 universe, so spells or demonic possession outside of ghosts is a possibility.

1:02 I was about to comment about this guy lol. First thought I had

Since the doctor also exists in the fallout universe. They could be nestene

A video about the most influential people in the wasteland would be pretty intriguing.

They could very well be a reference to the crying angels from Doctor Who 🤷🏽‍♂️

iirc correctly there is a group of mannequins standing together on a road in FO76. Unfortunately, I don't recall where exactly. I do remember it was an odd and somewhat eerie sight to behold

I know it's not lore friendly but the silent hill mod for FO4 turns the mannequins into pure nightmare fuel. Like they actually move and attack you.

I heard about this theory from Epic Nate long before I even got my PS4 to play FO4. I destroy every mannequin I come across. I frequent the wasteland doing Minutemen quests for XP, and I frequented an area near the Saugus Ironworks. I had to come back to it 5 or 6 times. Once for the shishkabab, second for the bobblehead because I forgot it was in it and a few more times to clear out raiders. I usually walk from the farm to the Ironworks as fast travel is an extra unneeded loading screen and came across a line of mannequins in a single file formation going uphill. Blew them up with grenades and moved on. I trust nothing but Dogmeat in this game.

Bethesda really like adding supernatural stuff to fallout

Edit: has anyone considered that China had created their own sythn spies before the great war and had sleeper agents around the country that never got activated l? :end edit I have two ideas one sci Fi and one supernatural. Sci Fi idea is simple as the mannequin would just be early synth models. The supernatural idea is that the mannequin are just mannequin but there are entities in the world of fallout that can possess them.

Reminds me of Bioshock 1 (PS3). The underground area where it had some flooding, and the ballerina looking mannequins started attacking when the light flickered (I believe).

I FEEL FANTASTIC

have you covered Glowing Ones and Maypole? I'm interested to hear your take on them

Bro! Wake up Synonymous uploaded!

Dude why y’all scared of them just use the marksman rail cannon combo

The mannequins get a little bit… quirky at night.

I always felt uncomfortable when i would be in any building and theyre just there