Kid in a Fridge [All Spoilers] - Never could take it seriously.

[V-Bro - The Titan's Driver]

[Slight Edit: This post was written years ago. I've moved on, really, but people keep bringing it up with more comments long afterwards for some reason. Original text is below.]

I know I'm not the only one asking this. I just completed Kid in a Fridge, and one big glaring nail in my head refuses to be pried out.

HOW DID BILLY STAY ALIVE AND WELL IN A FRIDGE FOR 210 YEARS!?

I started this quest convinced there was more to the story - a trick or weird plot of some kind, as ludicrous as the Jamaica Plain security. Nope! He really was in there all that time, and surprise, we find his parents in the 1st spot we look! IMO, finding his Ghoul parents is the most believable part.

Let me get this straight:
- Billy just sat in there for 200 years; that fridge door should've already fallen off.
- No food, water, heck did he even have air? IRL, you'd suffocate in a closed fridge.
- Nobody else passed by in all that time that could or would open the fridge.
- His health, even as a ghoul, is fantastic! He just pops right out. No locked or creaky joints, no blindness from looking at the sun - his voice isn't even ghoulish.
- To add on top of it all, he stayed completely sane and coherent the whole time. 210 years, but the way he talked sounded like it was a week at most.

This is fictitious for fiction! Even in science fiction, there must be a believable logic in that reality, or people don't take it seriously. This quest shatters that illusion with a wrecking ball! Mr. House of New Vegas, why such an elaborate plan involving a Platinum Chip? You should've just sat in a fridge.
Did Billy just sleep it off!? Was the fridge a cryogenic experiment that managed to get tossed out of Vault 111 at some point?

I can't let this go. Somebody please help explain this to me!!

[MrEWhite]

It's a reference to Kingdom of the Crystal Skull probably

[Perfect Blub]

He survived the same way Coffin Willie survived in Fallout 2. He was buried for months outside new reno. Ghouls don't need to eat or drink.

[Yhwach]

BPSR Rubbinmahbelly님이 먼저 게시:

He survived the same way Coffin Willie survived in Fallout 2. He was buried for months outside new reno. Ghouls don't need to eat or drink.

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[cheli]

Read some of the terminals in the institute if remember right he is a test to see how a child synth would work.

[V-Bro - The Titan's Driver]

This discussion has a bad habit of coming back again years later.

cheli님이 먼저 게시:

Read some of the terminals in the institute if remember right he is a test to see how a child synth would work.

That could be an interesting twist in this. There seems to be disagreement on whether ghouls actually need to eat or drink, (and I still stand on them needing social contact to stay sane after weeks, but you could program a synth in that manner, I think. Neither synths nor ghouls age, either, so while a regular looking kid not aging would be noticed, a synth ghoul kid would be less obvious. Also, the institute could have placed their experiment synth in the fridge at a later time, while the synth believes he was in there all along (being in a fridge for 210 continuous years is a stretch.)
A major issue though is how they found a suitable test subject and installed the right memories.

[raubrey]

It's a statement: Take your pick.

Pop culture reference: Indiana Jones survives a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator.

Serious issue reference Fallout style: Children of war woes or children getting stuck in fridges, which was actually a problem enough to require Congress to intervene with a law in the 60s.

That or the quest writer stole too much Jet from Obsidian writers (i.e. FONV) and this is the result.

[Moon Rabbit]

I just did this quest for the first time last night. Hoo boy, I was blown away by just how lazy and stupid it was.

So this poor child has been sealed inside a cramped container for two CENTURIES. And that's not supposed to be nightmare fuel for the player? When you meet the Vault Tec employee after two centuries, he starts blubbering like a baby. With good reason! Sure he's still wearing the same outfit because Bethesda couldn't come up with a better way of easily identifying the guy. But at least his reaction was believable.

This kid has been in there, for the same time and still calls out for help like he's been in there for one minute. He should be insane, or feral. The voice acting and script are atrocious. When the family is reunited, the acting was so bad. The parents were like "Hey son! You're back! That's Neato!" No embrace, no crying. WTF?! Then they all seperate and wander around and when you talk to them they're all like "Huh?" "What are you doing here?"

The entire quest was made because Emil Pagliarulo came up with a joke about kids getting trapped in fridges (IRL this was a hugh scare back in the day). Isn't he hilarious?

[thorgaard]

V-Bro - The Titan's Driver님이 먼저 게시:

This discussion has a bad habit of coming back again years later.
,,,
That could be an interesting twist in this. There seems to be disagreement on whether ghouls actually need to eat or drink, (and I still stand on them needing social contact to stay sane after weeks, but you could program a synth in that manner, I think. Neither synths nor ghouls age, either, so while a regular looking kid not aging would be noticed, a synth ghoul kid would be less obvious. Also, the institute could have placed their experiment synth in the fridge at a later time, while the synth believes he was in there all along (being in a fridge for 210 continuous years is a stretch.)
A major issue though is how they found a suitable test subject and installed the right memories.

That's the most plausable explanation for the "kid in a fridge" paradox discussed in this old thread for so long. I didn't realize that the Institute must have a "test subject" to make a Synth out of. Can't they simply make one from scratch, as well as the ersatz memories?