Fallout New Vegas Darla: The Novac Shopkeeper From Fallout Season 2

People searching for Darla in Fallout New Vegas have usually just watched the second season of the Fallout television series, where the Ghoul name-checks a woman in Novac, and gone looking for her in the game. The short answer is that Darla is a character the show invented for a town the game built. This page explains who she is, what the Ghoul says about her, why she does not appear in the game, and who actually stands behind Novac's counter when the Courier walks in.

Who Darla Is

Darla is a store clerk in Novac who is mentioned, and never shown, in the first episode of Fallout Season 2, The Innovator. The Ghoul, the bounty hunter who was the actor Cooper Howard before the war, arrives in Novac and recalls buying a soda pop there roughly twenty-five years earlier from the woman behind the counter. He remembers her name as Darla and describes her as a reasonable woman, adding that the town stayed that way until the Great Khans in their matching jackets moved in. That is the whole of her role: a line of dialogue that tells the audience Novac was once a decent stop, delivered to the Khans who now occupy it.

Is Darla in Fallout New Vegas?

No. There is no character named Darla anywhere in the game, in its four story add-ons or in its cut content, and the timeline explains why. Fallout New Vegas takes place in 2281. The show's Novac scenes take place in 2296, and the Ghoul puts his soda about twenty-five years before that, which lands it around 2271, a decade before the Courier is shot outside Goodsprings. Darla belongs to a version of Novac that is already history by the time the game begins.

The counter she would have stood behind does exist. In 2281 Novac's shop is the Dino Bite Gift Shop, run by Cliff Briscoe, who sells weapons and supplies from the base of Dinky the T-Rex. Our unique weapons page sends you into its locked storage room for That Gun, the 5.56mm pistol modelled on the one from Blade Runner. The motel desk next door belongs to Jeannie May Crawford, who rents rooms for 100 caps, and the town's other names are the two NCR veterans who take turns in the dinosaur's mouth, Manny Vargas by day and Craig Boone by night, along with Ranger Andy and No-bark Noonan. Our doctors and vendors page also places Doctor Adda Straus in Novac.

Novac in the Show and in the Game

The Great Khans are the thread that runs through both. In the game they are a tribe based at Red Rock Canyon, and the Courier first meets them not in Novac but in Boulder City, where the Khans who escorted Benny are holed up at the end of the trail our walkthrough follows. The show moves them into Novac fifteen years later. Whether they got there because of what the Courier did to them in 2281 is the kind of question the show leaves open.

Darla and Carla

Part of the confusion is a name that sounds almost the same. Craig Boone's wife is Carla, and finding out who sold her to the Legion is the whole of his recruitment quest, One for My Baby, which also happens in Novac. Some viewers heard the Ghoul say Darla and assumed he meant Boone's wife. He did not: Carla was never a shopkeeper, and the game gives no hint that a Darla was ever in town. Boone himself, how to recruit him and what his quest asks are on our companions page.

Quick Answers

Can I find Darla in Novac? No. Nobody by that name exists in the game files, and the shop is Cliff Briscoe's.

Which episode mentions her? Season 2, Episode 1, The Innovator, in the Ghoul's exchange with the Great Khans.

Is she related to anyone in the game? Nothing in the show or the game says so. The similarity to Carla, Boone's wife, is a coincidence of names.