Benny

Benny is the head of the Chairmen from New Vegas in 2281.

Background
Benny was part of the the tribal gang called the Boot Riders before Mr. House took over. House assigned him and the rest of the tribe to renovate The Tops casino, and gave them a box of suits and ties and told them to call themselves the Chairmen. Benny was for the idea of deserting the old ways, but the tribe's chief at the time, Bingo, wanted to stay nomadic. Benny disagreed, and was challenged to a knife fight by Bingo. Benny won by sticking a knife through Bingo's throat, and became the chief of the Chairmen.

Interactions with the player character
Benny appears in the intro cutscene for Fallout: New Vegas, shooting the Courier. During They Went That-a-Way, Manny Vargas is the first one to give the player Benny's name, and where he went. When the player gets to the Strip, Ring-A-Ding-Ding starts and Benny is located at The Tops casino, which he runs. The player can opt to shoot him on sight (either with a concealed weapon, or by talking with Swank and passing a series of speech checks, which allows you to bring your weapons inside), or, using the Black Widow/Confirmed Bachelor perk, follow him upstairs to his room and deal with him there. If the player does not confront Benny here or allows him to escape during the confrontation he will be captured by Caesar and held at The Fort for the player to deal with later. If the player chooses to follow under the rule of Caesar, he/she may choose to end Benny in one of several different ways or to help him escape. Benny holds the unique Maria 9mm Pistol.

Benny is characterized as a brutal pragmatist, though not devoid of a sense of honor, opting to personally shoot the Courier rather than have his hired Great Khans do it for him. However, whether or not this was simply because the Khans were not willing to kill someone who would bring The Strip down on them (as revealed in 'All Roads') is somewhat ambiguous. Similarly, he kills an unnamed singer who was once a member of his old tribe (all of whom had gone on to become the Chairmen) with a Psycho overdose when he (the singer) was unable to become complacent with his life on the Strip. When he offers the same fate to the traumatized mute Chance, it is left to readers to decide if it was a genuine gesture of understanding, or if he simply wanted Chance dead to quicken the group's pace. Both show his skills as an orator, though the latter would run alongside his tendency toward an almost businessman's approach to his own preservation.

Notable quotes

 * "You're crying in the rain, pal-ly."
 * "Maybe Khans kill people without looking them in the face, but I ain't a fink, dig?"
 * "From where you're kneeling, it must seem like an 18-carat string of bad luck. But the truth is... the game was rigged from the start."

Bugs

 * Once you have the option to crucify Benny, and you choose to do so, he will end up being crucified outside of The Fort. When you go to his crucifix, you will see two Benny's, one crucified, and the other one standing behind the crucifix. The Benny that isn't crucified can be talked to, and you can also kill him for Maria and his suit.


 * If the player meets Benny in the 'comped' Penthouse, they will have the option of having one interaction with him before the being required to tell him "Goodbye". The player may speak with Benny again, this time without interruption, but this bug does tend to break the flow of conversational continuity.

Behind the scenes
Benny is voiced by Matthew Perry of Friends fame who appeared on Ellen DeGeneres' talk show and related that he'd played Fallout 3 so much that he's injured his hands. He presented Ellen a copy of the game saying, "I played this video game so often that I injured my hand so severely that I had to go to a hand doctor and get injections in my hand because I love this video game so much. The game is called Fallout 3. I'm not affiliated with this game at all, I just love it. But I signed it, so it looks like I created it."

Apparently, Obsidian and Betheseda were impressed enough to offer him the job.

Appearances
Benny appears in Fallout: New Vegas and All Roads.