About

I'm Sorry, My Companion, But No is a dialogue line said by the Fallout 3 character Fawkes (a super mutant) upon a request to enter a highly irradiated area in the final quest of the game, which he refuses. Since Fawkes can survive the radiation, unlike the player, the line has been brought up as an example of bad writing, later gaining virality as the source material for image caption memes around late 2019 and subsequent years.

Origin

On October 28th, 2008, the action role-playing video game Fallout 3 was released.^[1] In "Take It Back!" (the final quest of the original game), if the player is accompanied by the super mutant companion Fawkes, they may ask him to enter a chamber with a deadly radiation level in lieu of themselves. Despite super mutants being immune to radiation, Fawkes refuses the player, claiming that "he would not rob them of their destiny."

I'm sorry, my companion, but no. We all have our own destinies, and yours culminates here. I would not rob you of that.

In the Broken Steel DLC, Fawkes notably agrees to enter the chamber.^[2]

Spread

In the following years, the scene has been brought up as an example of bad writing in gaming communities on 4chan, Reddit and other websites. For example, on September 1st, 2013, a Redditor^[3] posted screenshots of the exchange, writing, "I'm going to die because of you, dick." The post gained over 1,900 upvotes in /r/fallout^[4] in nine years, with a user comment saying, "I'm sorry my companion, but we need you dead to advance this stupid plot," gaining over 720 upvotes.

On October 3rd, 2019, Instagram^[5] user salad.snake posted the earliest found image caption meme based on the line, with the image captioned, "When a coworker asks you to cover their shift." The post (authorship unconfirmed, shown below) gained over 31,000 likes in three years.

Starting in October 2019, the image was used in more image caption memes on Twitter, Tumblr and other sites. For example, on February 21st, 2021, Twitter^[6] user @zuza_real posted a meme that gained over 4,700 retweets and 50,000 likes in roughly two years (shown below, left). On September 19th, 2022, Twitter^[7] user @jaketropolis posted a Ratio meme based on the line that received over 170 retweets and 3,600 likes in four days. On September 20th, Twitter^[8] user @MallowyGoodness posted a screenshot of the post, with the tweet gaining over 5,300 retweets and 48,200 likes in three days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References